Blessed by the Potato

It’s been a while since I’ve posted any baby anecdotes. I don’t know, I figure it’s kind of like talking about my cat: I enjoy it, and think she’s just ever so cute — indeed, the cutest cat ever — but the rest of the world might not appreciate it to quite the same extent. Plus, I haven’t really had any post-length stories to share, so here are a few short vignettes for you to enjoy or conveniently skip in one easy step:

Me: “I see you’re eating your sock. Let daddy tell you the tale of the greatest sock of all time. It was in Super Mario 3, and appeared but once to help Mario stomp all the spikey-shelled…”
Wayfare: “That was a boot.”
Me: “What? No, it was a sock. We called it Sockey. It was green.”
Wayfare: “Yes, I know the part of Mario you’re talking about, with the wind-up key. It was a boot.”
And so it was.
Moral of the story: I need to learn some more conventional fairy tales for story time.

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So Wayfare is playing with Blueberry and she discovers what being upside-down is, and it is hilarious. Wayfare’s holding her upside-down, and baby is giggling and having a grand old time… but she is teething. Which brings with it a ridiculous amount of drool production. There she is, upside-down and giggling, with the drool pouring out of her mouth and up her face… and into her nose. She’s not happy with that. Not one bit. Coughing and sputtering, drowning in her own goobers.

Upon learning of this episode I exclaimed “You waterboarded the baby?!”

Wayfare: “OMG, I waterboarded the baby!”

Whatever the future brings, however many times I accidentally bump her into furniture with my clumsiness, get oatmeal on her nose at mealtime, or embarrass her in front of her friends, I can always say that I wasn’t the one who waterboarded the baby. (Yes, to be fair, she waterboarded herself, and she’s totally fine. But Wayfare’s exclamation was too funny not to share.)

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There was a bit of a water getting behind the siding causing rot issue at the family cottage on PEI, so some windows and part of the wall had to be replaced this year. We knew this way back in February when we booked our tickets, and were assured by many that this relatively minor renovation would totally be completed before we got there in June. Well, of course it wasn’t. So we’re down some bedrooms and forced to “rough it” and put Blueberry in with one of us. In a cute-in-the-retelling-but-not-live-in-concert it turns out that Blueberry thought sharing a room was a grand plan. Finally, she could wake up in the middle of the night, shout “Da! Da! Da! Da! Da! Da!” until I got up, asked her what was up, and have her say [sign] back “Tired!” and lay back down to go to sleep.

In the middle of the night, awoken from a nice, deep vacation sleep my attitude was all “Thanks for that update Blueberry,” and “damn but we need that bedroom window to get installed so she can sleep somewhere on her own.” In hindsight, it’s super cute that she wanted so desperately to share her current mood with her parents — though if it wasn’t for the fact that she also did it with Wayfare, I would have sworn it was a passive-aggressive commentary on my snoring.

Oh, speaking of sign language, I am so glad we did that. I wasn’t sure we should bother keeping it up when we got to 10-11 months and she still wasn’t signing anything back to us or seeming to understand the signs any better than what we were saying (the book I had read implied I should expect signing to start at 8 months). Then around 13 months a few key signs seemed to click (we only ever learned about a dozen that we use consistently with her), like tired, hungry, and want. As a parent I am a professional worrier, so of course I worry a bit that she’s not using her (verbal) words when she has signs for things and that it’s going to delay her speech a bit. But she’s so much less frustrated when she can express some things to us and have us understand where she’s coming from.

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Grammy bought Blueberry a wagon, and I took her out tearing across the lawn and sidewalk in the rain. She has this massive happy grin for going fast over rough terrain, she was just loving it.
Grammy: “She’s so brave, and so relaxed in there! She just took right to it, no fear at all of the bumps and speed!”
Me: “She’s faced death already, she has no fear of it.”

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Wayfare: “Your cookbook is DELICIOUS!”
Me: “You mean it is filled with directions to make all kinds of yummy food?”
Wayfare: “No, the residue of sugar and flour and shortening on the pages. Blueberry was over at the bookshelf, licking her fingers, wiping on the book, and doing it again and again, so I had to see what the big deal was. And I agree: It’s delicious.”

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I have recently been sucked into Doctor Who by Wayfare. I found the show strange and frightening as a kid, and kind of hard to follow, so I never bothered trying to get into it with the 2005 relaunch. Given that it’s a show about time-travelling, I’m going in mostly the wrong order, starting with the most recent Doctor, Matt Smith. And I’m loving it: it’s sweet and funny and ridiculous, and ever so quotable. There is such a strange disconnect between the really terrible, cheesy special effects and the truly excellent makeup work on the show.

Anyway, in practically no time at all (less than two weeks), Wayfare has managed to teach Blueberry the Doctor Who theme song. Basically, she bounces baby on her knee going “Bump-bump-bump-bum” and Blueberry will chime in with “Wooo oOOoooOooooo OOOoooo” and a little bit of baby dancing.

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It’s great having a baby and going out for a walk, particularly one as wonderful and happy as Blueberry is. You can just see people lighten up and smile left and right as she waves and giggles at them, or even if she’s just chilling and they think she’s cut. Wayfare says it’s like going out and hitting people with a happy stick.

Budgeting is a necessary part of life: resources are finite, and we have to allocate them somehow. Though some may revel in the min-maxing challenge of budgeting, it is at its heart a somewhat painful process of self-denial. So what mechanisms do people use to stay on budget? There are mechanical ones, such as using jam jars and cash, but for most people with access to credit psychological control must be exerted.

There are several coping mechanisms to deal with the psychic strain of not buying what you want. Myself, I think of life in terms of video games, with money being the points I can spend on my character, and there are simply some areas of spending that result in more happy points being accrued than in others, and I keep those trade-offs and opportunity costs in mind. I could buy this DVD, but I’d be happier saving that money for a video game next month. There are other similar rationalizing-based mechanisms out there, for instance you can focus on your long term goals and needs, and determine if a particular purchase fits into those.

Another one I’ve heard is to shift the money focus of budgeting to a dimension you may be more comfortable with, such as space in your house: if you buy whatever it is facing you, where will you fit it in your house (or hard drive)? There’s a limited amount of space, after all.

Wayfare presented me with a new one recently: when she comes across something awesome (a T-shirt on Think Geek, or a cute baby outfit in a store) she says to focus on the joy of the knowledge that it exists in the world, but know that you don’t need to have it in your house. It will still exist and be awesome and you can appreciate it even without spending money to have your own copy.