pristine

I love the first week of January.
When you live under the impression that a New Year lies ahead, unsullied. And things will be different!

And then I wake up. Almost always on a Monday. And I realise there was no magic fairy dust. Change needs to be, as always, hard-won...

fun

Squirt might not be radically expanding his vocabulary at the moment, he is developing a sense of humour :-D

What started off with an actual spot on the wall tiles in the kitchen has changed into a little game. One day, about a month ago, Squirt tried to pluck a drop of dried-something off a tile with his little tweezer fingers, to put it - where else? - in his mouth. When he found out it was still there, he tried again. And again. And again. Until I sort of took pity and cleaned the spot*. This didn't faze him, at all. He kept on pretend-plucking at imaginary spots, putting bits of nothing into his mouth, and he knew it :-D I still think this is so funny, that I keep prompting him to do it at least once a day... Yesterday, I pretended to take something out of his hair to eat, and he responded by doing the same :-)

I guess both me and Squirt are quite easily amused, at times ;-) Either that, or I don't feed him enough, and he is despairingly waiting for me to take a hint...


* Interesting, though... How I cleaned the spot out of pity - not because I was aware that it was there ;-)

squirt, revisited

By popular demand ;-)

I heard someone call his little girl 'squirt' a long time ago. I can remember who it was, and where, although not quite when, but I won't bore you with the details. Or reveal myself as the soap addict I really am. It struck me as cute. I never looked it up, but took it to mean something similar to 'chick pea' in its endearing form, 'shorty', with a bit of a naughty connotation.

I have recently found out that googling 'squirt' will not exactly lead you where I, in good conscience, would send you to look. Now don't say I didn't warn you ;-)

Googling 'squirt synonym' will get you closer to the truth - here are results from thesaurus.reference.com
Main entry: child, definition: very young person
Synonyms: anklebiter, babe, bairn, brat, cub, kiddie, lamb, little one, minor, mite, moppet, nipper, small fry, sprout, squirt, tadpole, toddler, tot, tyke, urchin, young one, youngster (and that's after I've taken the liberty of omitting some!).

Obviously I take offence to definitions containing phrases like 'person of little or no significance'. And I can't find proof for the slight bit of naughty. But since I haven't found proof to the contrary either, just consider it attached for this blog's purposes, okay? ;-)

P.S. Incidentally, Squirt is also the cute little turtle in 'Finding Nemo' - courtesy of Google. I must have known once, but forgot. When you consider that a turtle/tortoise (one word in Dutch) is the only animal Squirt wants to acknowledge by name these days ('patta'), his nickname is an apt little coincidence :-D

happy

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Happy New Year!
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2009 has been a rollercoaster. Finding my footing as a mom. Great ups, deep downs, but overall it has been a good year. A happy year.

I expect 2010 to bring more of the same. Challenges, happiness, great big grins and a couple of tears, too. If it's in any way up to me, 2010 will be another happy year. I hope yours will be, too!

I want to feel more, smoke less and be more creative. Anticipate less, do more! Those are my resolutions, in so many words :-D

The New Year has begun, and I say - bring it on!

soundtrack

I grew up with... Well, without music, pretty much. My mom never had much time for it, really, and that was that. One of her standard jokes: "A CD? But I already have a CD!" I'm not denying I was around before CD players were, but it's emblematic. My dad never played his Stones collection in front of her, or us, for that matter. In my memory, the soundtrack to my childhood consists of tediously monotonous football results on the car radio driving back from my grandparents on assorted Sundays.

I got my first radio/cassette player when I was around 13 years old. From my mom's first salary going back to work, incidentally. It's not that she is 'against music', she just doesn't have an innate need for it, like I do :-) So that was the end of my life without music. I haven't looked back since. Squirt hears music on a daily basis. I still miss that I didn't. He might grow up to think my taste in music is pathetically old-fashioned, but he'll know what it's like to soundtrack your life, accidentally.

Who knows? He might even buy me a CD for a birthday one day!

tomato

Squirt eats a tomato with his lunch every day. He loves them. But to be honest, he's not that fussy about food in general. Yet. I'm knocking on unvarnished wood here, like mad.

Yesterday, I gave him a couple of Pure & Honest brand cherry tomatoes. To be fair, they were really good! No cheating, ingredient-wise, when it comes to tomatoes. Squirt was chew-suck-chewing quite seriously. Not a smile to be coaxed from him. He was looking at me accusingly the whole time.

I swear he was thinking, in so many words: "Where have you been hiding this good stuff all of my life?!"

tall tales

Squirt is a very talkative little man. He babble-babble-babbles away, and he's not shy about it either! This past week, at least three passing strangers asked him what he was trying to say. I told them that I would very much like to know, too. But that was form. I didn't want them to feel silly about not understanding. It's all a matter of being plugged in, you know! Yesterday afternoon, for example, he told me he loved the new Moke CD (The Long & Dangerous Sea), but wasn't too sure about Muse (The Resistance).
You're thinking that's all just projection? Not true. I liked both CDs on first play.

squirt

Baby Boy is no longer a baby, really. I might not want him to grow so fast, but he does. Henceforth (yes, really!) he will be known as Squirt :-)

homely

I'm drinking lemon scented tea... I'm wearing a scarf! And eventhough it is freezing outside, I'm enjoying the tea, and the scarf is - horror! - purely for decorational purposes!
OMG! I'm turning into an actual, real-life mother!

vulnerable

I've got to get this off my chest - quite literally. Damn the consequences, I guess. I haven't been sure about showing vulnerability since I started this blog. I'm still not sure. But if I don't do something, I'll scream!

The breastfeeding is over. Baby Boy is done. I'm not. But there are moments in a mother's life - I'm discovering this, like every parent must - when you're not in charge. As simple as that.

I knew this moment was coming. I knew it was coming soon. I had my own deadline of January 6th - @ 14 months, rather randomly picked. I knew that this wasn't going to last forever. I knew it wouldn't last as long as I wanted it to, either. I knew that from the beginning, which was far from smooth, and through all the hiccups and obstacles along the way.

The moment came yesterday. Actually, it was the culmination of several moments. Yesterday was just the 'grab that darned ostrich by the neck and jank its blissfully unaware head out of the sand already'-moment. So I tore the plaster off. Followed by such a bad migraine that I had to call Man to come home from work so I could go to bed.

Baby Boy was 13 months & 2 days when it happened. A grand score after a bad start. But it might take a while for me to see it that way. Today, it feels like the umbilical cord is truly severed at last. And unlike the first time, it hurts like hell!