clumsy

muddled

I overestimated growth spurts, I think. Or I added too much of Squirt's personality into the mix and expected the shoes to fit! I don't know why I thought this was a good idea. I do remember vaguely that I thought I was being a responsible parent on a budget. But I will deny that when confronted!
I'm sure they'll fit on his first day of school...

This drawing might not seem so silly, but I was when I bought these shoes! So there, that qualifies me ;)

announcement

inflamed brain not matching pretty soul

lesson

Yesterday, I made a parenting mistake so basic, I don't think it's even covered in Parenting 101...
I took Squirt into a. Toy. Store. Because I wanted to look at a DVD. For him of course. See, my intentions were good. They usually are ;)
But then I expected we could just walk out - without the DVD because it was rediculously over-priced - and be on our merry way. Without investigating all the cars in the shop. Or buying one or more. Without mini-tantrums & dramatics.
Silly beginner, me.

headless

Not an ancient site in Rome. Just a garden-variety mishap. Quite literally. The back garden in fact. Poor little plaster(?) lady who'd been hanging out on our garden table long enough to gather mossy bits... When it happened, I almost cried!

But wait - I can sort of explain that. Really. A few days before this incident, a little rose quartz heart I had been carrying around in my pocket for luck (quite obsessively), fell on my toe when I forgot to take it out before taking off my jeans. Ouch!

The next day, I knocked the bottle of rose water my mother gave me when Squirt was born (yeah. I know. But never mind that now) off the ledge where it - granted, precariously - had stood ever since I'd come home from hospital.

And then, this happened. Decapitation no less...

I saw signs. And they weren't good. I caught myself, standing puzzled, wondering what it all meant. Feeling I was surely headed for some great disaster...

But before you start to worry about my sanity - here it comes: the anti-climax. The soppy bit - the wisdom in the center of the bowl of oatmeal. I straightened my shoulders and took a deep breath. And I decided that - if it meant anything at all, it would be that I should stop looking for signs in the weird little accidents happening around me - to stuff. Stuff I was holding onto, holding dear, for no other reason than the idea that it all meant something. I decided then and there, that I should trust myself much more than the stuff I've been holding on to.

Paradoxically, I wouldn't be me if I didn't think that is exactly what these signs meant ;)

So I took the dear lady & her head, and glued them back together. They're inseparable for now - for as long as the weather lets the glue hold. Just hanging out on the table again.

I've made a mental note, though: if this chick loses her head again, it's more to do with the quality of the glue than with any sort of misery looming. Not sure similar guarantees apply to this here chick losing sense of perspective again - that happens on & off... I'm getting over myself though; one garden-variety mishap at the time!

Anyone else out there, putting too much stock in signs? I totally understand if you don't feel comfortable facing up to it all here - I only wrote this post so you know you're not alone ;)

submarine

the faucet & the blonde

Have you ever wondered - if you'd sit on the drain in the shower, would that turn the bathroom into a swimming pool?
It does. If you don't have much of a threshold and you sit there long enough, you can actually turn the whole second floor into a pool! Great for getting dust out of those hard-to-reach corners!
It would have been amazing to see the indoor waterfall I could have created, but I inadvertently got up, shortly before that would have happened.
I'm leaving that to other courageous explorers... Let me know if it works?

P.S. for privacy reasons, the faucet photographed is not the tap involved in the actual incident. As for the blonde? Well, yeah - that's her.

Oh, and edit: the duck is an innocent bystander. It has no idea what the fuss is about ;)

demise

An egg, hard boiled for safety. Ready to go on a trip around the world. Or one or two provinces of this little country, anyway. Which is an oddity in itself, all part of the photography workshop I've signed up for - but more on that later!

This is what happens when you leave an egg on the table around here :-)

Luckily, it was boiled. Happy coincidence that I was already focused on egg-picture-taking or I would have cleaned the mess and regretted the missed opportunity later!

care

In the morning, before Squirt took his tumble, I had dropped a plastic container holding spag bol (well, something like it, anyway) on the kitchen floor. It cracked & spilled. Of course. I tried to clean it before little man crawled through the dregs, and in a 'mental note: clean pants later' kind of way I succeeded. Also, he was wearing one of his old shapeless onesies because I had had to change him three times the day before, for various reasons, and that's what was left. And, as I had spent the morning cleaning the attic and spare room, I was still in 'shower later' mode, which isn't pretty either.

So Squirt took his spill and we had to get to the doctor's office quickly. And that's how we looked. Squirt in his sauce-stained pants and his overly washed onesie, me with my unwashed hair in a careless ponytail. I had only just taken the trouble to put on 'real pants' instead of the tracksuit bottoms I was wearing! I'm painfully getting why old ladies tell you to always wear clean underwear because you don't know what the day will bring. It's not limited to underwear. Really.

And then Squirt started 'talking' to the doctor's assistent. And I said, as a sort of joke, 'oh, that's normal, he always talks like that!' The guy looked at me critically and asked me what Squirt was saying, then. I told him I didn't know; he's only 16 months old, and while he has a vocabulary of 50-odd words (which is impressive for his age!) I can't make sense of everything that comes out quite yet. Which was okay, because the assistent had thought Squirt was older than that. But still.

And then what happened yesterday!
Man took Squirt out on the train - a free ride to and from the town where he works, just for fun - and decided to change diapers in one of the bathrooms at his workplace. It was a bathroom for the disabled, so it had an alarm pull cord installed. You can connect the dots, I suppose ;-) Squirt happily pull-pull-pulling the cord while Pappa was obliviously bent over naked baby bum when security came bursting through the door using a passkey...

It all adds up! Had the proposed Electronic Child File been in place yet, I'm sure Squirt would have been flagged for showing possible signs of neglect AND abuse! That's how easily our efforts to be responsible parents can be misconstrued (hey, my kid might have fallen down the stairs, but I got him to a doctor real quick!!).

It has been quite a week!

sick

We all have serious colds over here.
It started with Baby Boy, and that left me wondering what he caught when I didn't...
I shouldn't have. And anyway, with the type of hugs & kisses BB lavishes on me @ times, there was no way I wasn't going to catch it, too ;-)

A day or three ago, it was only Baby Boy who was leaking from all orifices. And he looked droopy. And we felt really sorry for him. Poor little mite! He was wearing a t-shirt which said 'STOER', which means 'cool'. But he wasn't cool - at least not where 'cool' isn't a superlative for 'cold'... So I went out and bought a baby nose spray. Which didn't really help him much.

Yesterday, I started feeling sick. And sorry for myself, too... Baby Boy is feeling slightly better, which is a good thing, because I have found out I'm no Mamma of the Year when feeling off-ish... Somehow, spending large chunks of time on the floor is the first pass-time to go off the schedule when I'm leaking and feeling like I'm fraying at the edges.

This morning I decided to use Baby Boy's nose spray for myself. I hadn't been feeling well enough to go out and buy my own (yes, I know, you're bringing out your violin...), and seeing that it wasn't doing much for him anyway, I decided to live dangerously & disregard the warning on the packaging leaflet ('Never use someone else's nose spray'. At 4 euros a spray, I would say that, too, if I was the manufacturer).
It was on the chest of drawers in a darker corner of the living room. Next to the synthetic oxytocin I had been using for breastfeeding. I have used a score of different aids to keep breastfeeding, but that is a long, and different story. I remember thinking earlier, to make sure I pick up the right spray. Which, of course, I didn't at 05.30 in the morning, feeling clogged and sorry for myself. Serves me right. I took three hefty squirts. Then looked down at the brown vial of oxytocin in my hand. And was left clogged. With serious let-down reflexes in both breasts...
Oxytocin is not a cold medicine.

wuss

That whole giant ant-wasp-beetle-thing story cut deeper than you'd think!
This morning, I forgot to take the black elastic band out of my hair before taking off my shirt, and it got tangled to the side of my face. From the corner of my eye I saw this Huge Black Thing swinging from my hair, and I actually - almost - screamed!

& the challenge is...

... having a baby, really. Full stop. Every single time you think you've got it all figured out, Baby grows another little bit - brain-wise, although physically surely too - and puts you slap-bang in front of the newest dilemma. And granted, most of these dilemmas fall into the 'oh, gosh, yes, that does make sense, really'-category, but still. Baby Boy is trying his darndest to catch Mamma out!
This morning I was taking my shower, and for the first time, I put Baby Boy on the floor to sort himself out, as opposed to in his empty baby bath, as usual. The baby bath not being the best of ideas anymore as BB is doing the above - brain-wise growing - and when he wants to fish for the toys he just threw out of the bath, the bath tips, he finds himself alongside his toys, where he didn't plan on going, so much, really, so he cries - which is what he does.
Anyway, getting back to the floor, where I'd put him, cutting out the whole falling-onto-it bit - thinking I was being smart and on top of my game after Wednesday the 29th. I got into the shower thinking; "Darn, didn't close the door, now what if Baby Boy decides to go for a tummy-slithering-stroll towards the stairs?! Ah, not to worry - I'll catch him..."
So what does Baby Boy do? Head for the stairs first chance he gets? No, of course not! That would be too easy; he's got another cunning plan! He slides across the floor, all nice and dressed for the day, double-time into the shower!
Didn't see that coming! Should have, but then again, being a mamma just wouldn't be the same if I had ;-)