One of the best things Harmon says is: Here comes Babyzilla! It’s a fair name given to my smaller child who celebrated turning 10 months yesterday because she growls like a tiger and tries to attack anything Harmon is playing with or you were working on. I understand the need for destruction or whatever, but really, why does she think that this is ok?:
Not safe Babyzilla, not safe.
Yesterday I went to a baby shower for many hours leaving the kids to have fun with Aaron. Part of their afternoon was spent at the church where Aaron had to fill the font for a baptism. At one point all three were in the men’s bathroom, where Harmon sauntered over to the urinal, stuck his hand in, then tasted his hand and exclaimed “mmmm, it’s good!” As the story goes Aaron was appropriately horrified, but apparently not horrified enough to stop Harmon from doing it a second time.
Although I want to die thinking about this, somehow it makes me feel just a bit better that I’m not always the worst parent of the two of us.
Last night we took Harmon to the demolition derby. We left Sammy with G-Pop (Kelsey’s dad) and Grammy because it was at night and it was too late for her. It was past Harmon’s bedtime too, but this was more important.
Just as Kelsey feared, it was too loud for Harmon, and he got scared. While she spent most of the night in the concession area below the bleachers (waiting to buy me a hamburger and fries), I tried to take him up to see the races. But every time we got up, the roaring of the engines was too much for him, and he begged to go back down to Mommy.
Finally, she got the food, and we all climbed the stairs in a quiet period and went back to our seats. Soon the races started back up. Kelsey held Harmon and covered his ears while I fed them both french fries. Harmon was tired and nervous, but he settled down and if not enjoyed, seemed to tolerate the races.
The annoying, indecipherable announcer was the loudest part. Every time Kelsey took her hands off Harmon’s ears, the announcer would start up again with some thing banal and indecipherable to try to amuse the crowd.
She’d ask “Do you want to go home?”
“No.”
“Do you want a drink?”
“No.”
“What do you want?”
Harmon would mildly answer “Cover my ears.”
The boat races (2 cars with a boat tied inbetween) didn’t happen. Technical difficulties forced them to have to be towed off the track. We were ready to go home, but the buses were lined up. Kelsey said we’d go after that. Harmon seemed to warm up to it then.
The buses weren’t nearly as loud, and besides, a pink bus careening around a figure 8 nearly t-boning another bus is pretty dang entertaining.
Still, we left after the buses and before the smash-up derby, and as we walked across the parking lot, Harmon lit up and said “I love you buses. Goodbye buses.” He was all for staying to watch the rest of the races, but we thought we’d better leave on a high note.
And G-Pop had called and complained that our baby was crying.
Harmon talked about the races all the way home and the first thing he said when he woke up this morning was “Harmon go see the cars race?” Followed by “Harmon ride on the bus?”
Now, he didn’t actually watch the races, and didn’t like the little bit he did see, but I think he’ll be ready next year. Tonight he was crashing his cars together and carefully turning them upside down before sweeping them off the table and shouting “Crash cars!”
Remember though, that we left before the demotion derby.
Kelsey’s mom is moving. She’s moving from a big house to a small house. So she doesn’t have room for her piano. So she gave it to us. (How nice!)
She moved a load of stuff today, and had CSI Movers help her do it. When they were done, they dropped off her piano at our house. The arrived about 1 hour & 15 minutes after Kelsey’s mom sent a text message saying they arrived at her new house. Talk about a fast unload! It’s at least 30 minutes drive.
Kelsey was just putting Harmon down for a nap. Sammy woke up. Harmon got up. I helped (a little bit) bring it in, and the kids played. I don’t know if it’s still in tune, but it sounds (and looks) great.
trying out the new piano
Now Kelsey has to put Harmon to sleep (he really wants to play piano) and take Sammy for a drive to get her to sleep.
a duet
Thanks MoMo, thanks CSI Movers.
Yoga video + 8-11 year old girls = AWESOME.
It’s no secret that I more often than not love my friends’ moms. My friends’ moms are in large part what influenced my friends to be who they are, their spunkiness, their kindness, their sense of humor, etc. Some of these moms I love so much I have forcefully declared myself part of their family, or taken a more democratic route of being voted in. In the last several years I have met a new mom whom I adore. World, today I give you Bookie!
First of all I should explain the name. This is a name given to her by her grandchildren. This makes me extra happy when I get to say to Harmon: “do you want to go see xxxx’s Bookie?” Rumor has it that the name was given because she likes to read her grandchildren books, but I have seen no evidence of this, so I’m sticking with my original theory of horse racing.
If I had to describe Bookie to someone here is what I would say:
-Bookie is spiritual: “Take your family proclamation off the wall with all your stupid flowers and teach it to your children!!!”
-Bookie is caring: she will go the extra mile and injure her ribs just to rescue toys that have been carelessly thrown behind the couch.
-Bookie has good judgement: “I don’t trust you two [me and her own daughter] to watch your own children!”
-Bookie has good taste: she likes my blog and on one occasion forwarded it to all her friends.
-Bookie is a good judge of character: “I’m bringing back the cookie dough, and taking out the trash, you two [me and her daughter] are losers!”
-Bookie is long-suffering: a postal employee told her that she must be her grandson’s great-grandmother and she didn’t even chop him.
-Bookie is youthful: she is always willing to hang out with young men suitors that come her way.
-Bookie metes out just punishment: if her granddaughter misbehaves she pushes the stroller down the “boring” street instead of the “exciting” one.
What I’m trying to say is, Bookie is out of town and we miss her. Even if she isn’t really our Bookie, we’d like to claim her as our own.
(See Bookie, I told you you have enough material to write a blog. I know I would read it anyway. Also I just checked and although http://bookie.blogspot.com is taken, http://thisistooconfusing.blogspot.com is free)
Aaron has been having back problems lately. Could this possibly have anything to do with it?
It’s not hard to see why Daddy is favorite.
Remember when I solved my problems with Comcast? I doomed myself, and here I am 6 months later trying to drop to a lower internet/cable package again but “surprisingly” the online support can’t help me. This time it only took me 20 minutes to get them to tell me they couldn’t help me, but I could call the magic number again and they could give me special deals. It’s amazing how easy it is to get premium services online, but how difficult it is to downgrade… Stupid stupid Comcast, if only I didn’t love the internet and tv so much…
I would like to blame extreme sleep deprivation for the following stories. And also, before you call CPS, just remember that this is a blog, so you can’t prove it really happened unless you were there.
On Tuesday while parked in a parking lot with our children playing happily in the back seat, Esther lamented aloud that we couldn’t drive across the parking lot to the Burger King without strapping our children into their seats, because it would be 10000 times easier. Instead of doing this we went our separate ways, and I put my children into my car like normal: let Harmon climb into his seat, shut the door, put Sammy in her seat and strap her in, return to Harmon and strap him in, drive home. Except I missed a step. Upon pulling into my driveway and opening the door to get Harmon out of the car I found it really easy to get him out, as he was not strapped into his car seat at all. Did I mention the part about driving 30 minutes on the freeway? Worst mother ever, I know. But miraculously he survived and didn’t even get out of his seat.
Today is Friday. Friday pretty much always means more tired because it is the end of the week, having had little to no rest because of a kind husband who works during the week to pay for our unused car seats. Today as I loaded my children into the car in the parking lot I followed the usual routine. About 4 minutes away, through city traffic, I hear Harmon saying “it’s ok! it’s ok!” to which I reply “yep, it’s ok!” because who knows what he was talking about? I was just glad he thought it was ok. Next thing I know there is a Harmon head right next to mine saying “it’s ok!” Despite almost having a heart attack and crashing the car at the same time, I managed to pull the car into a parking lot and properly restrain my child, much to his disappointment.
You can bring me my Parent of the Year Award now, I think I’ve earned it.
