Friday, August 31, 2007

oy vey...ouchies

...what a morning. In order to beat off some post-move blues, I had this sweet (read: naive) little plan to get up, play a little, have breakfast, clean up and then head to the pool. Well, two and a half hours later, Ari was in my arms (for the third time this morning) sobbing over yet another owie. Obviously, I decided to nix the pool idea...with that kind of an a.m. track record, who needs the risk? And it was probably the right thing to do because a half hour after his last accumulated goose-egg, he fell asleep on my shoulder. I guess he just decided the morning was a complete wash and he would try again in the afternoon. Me too, kiddo, me too.

Tally for the past 15 hours:
  • one large, purple goose-egg on his forehead from ramming himself into the edge of his crib last night
  • one, becoming-larger, goose-egg on his eyebrow from falling into his toy box today
  • one nice-looking red impact mark by his ear from same
  • one bruise/bloody scratch combo on his side from slipping off the door of the dishwasher and scraping himself down the corner (I told him to never play on the dishwasher door but does he listen? Noooo....)

...what a shitty mother I feel like at times. But what can I do? The kid has a battering ram for a head. In more ways than one. Sometimes I wonder from whom he inherited his head-strong nature...and then I choose to not think about it. Because it wasn't me. Nope.

And so, no pool to beat off the post-move blues...I'm blues-ing it on my own with a cup of joe and my blog (how ungodly pathetic is that?). But wait, I have a call to return! And so, I will blues it up a little with a good friend. Hopefully (dear God), my next post will be a bit more cheery.

Tuesday, August 28, 2007

After Dinner...


...we went for a walk on the beach tonight. That was nice.

New Things

Yesterday, I got lost trying to find the grocery store. Twice. It wasn't really any old grocery store I was trying to find, that one I can simply walk to. No, I was trying to drive to Whole Foods. On my own. For the first time. I was on the phone with Paula while driving into La Jolla, which provided great moral support at first. However, after my second, "Damnit. Well, I *thought* that was it." She asked if it would be easier if she let me go. I agreed that, yes, it probably would since I can, apparently, not multitask in that manner. Ari also took pity on me and fell asleep in the backseat while I wound my way through La Jolla's bumper to bumper traffic at 3:00 in the afternoon. Cripes. In the end, I did find it...after a 40 minute drive. The trip home was snap, though.

On the plus side, today I met my first person who did not give a glowing report of life in San Diego. This requires some background story...upon moving here, we discovered that the water absolutely bites ass (i.e. it's very hard). It clogs pipes, damages anything but chrome finishes, clogs pores, dries out your skin, doesn't clean really well and tastes pretty funky. And so, most people here drink bottled water or have a water refiner. The irony of this does not escape me. We live a 3 mile drive from vast quantities of sparkling, beautiful Pacific Ocean. (Yes, I know it's salt water. But, still...) And, yet, we need to spend inordinate amounts of money on water in order to pleasantly drink it. So, we just blew a whopping $undisclosed.00 to refine our water, joining the masses of crazy Californians who spend money on ridiculous things. Anyhoo...the guy who installed our refiner was my first experience with a realistic and thinking local when it comes to San Diego attitude..."well, there's too many people here and the water sucks, but the weather's nice." Thank you, Rick, for renewing my faith in human intelligence.

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On a final note, I am watching the condo across the street get "tented". So they can spray for termites. This gets to happen to us soon, as well. We have termites.

Food and Boo Boos

Monday, 8/27/07 (I'm a day behind on posting this)

We’ve had a productive morning over here. In an attempt to acclimate Ari to the fun of feeding himself, I decided to throw caution to the wind, strip him down and let him have at it with a plastic spoon (which he quickly chucked to the floor) and a pile of cottage cheese on his tray. You’d have thought I handed him a pile of extension cords, he was so happy. Of course, not much of the cheese made it to his mouth after he swipe-swipe-swiped his arm back and forth over the tray. However, the floor and pretty yellow walls soon boasted a lovely smattering of white fleck. I sat down next to him with my oatmeal, feeding him a bit of that and some fruit to make up for the carnage left on the floor. As I was finishing my oatmeal, I noticed how cheesy his hands were…just as he reached up to scratch the back of his head. Now, my son never touches his head – unless he’s in his high chair sporting the grimiest hands you’ve ever seen. What’s that about? After wiping his hands on his hair, he grinned at me and I noticed that he had, after all, been eating some of the cottage cheese. At which point, he blew me a great big, loving raspberry. Cheesy Mommy.

I must say, it’s amazing to watch these little buggers develop into big buggers. Over the past couple days, Ari’s developed a slightly more gourmet palate…meaning, he digs cottage cheese, egg yolk, “banana nuggets” (house recipe) and little bits of flotsam off the floor along with the ubiquitous Cheerios and fruit puffs (i.e. infant junk food). Just recently he’s been initiating his own sippy cup action, lifting it up to his mouth with one hand (frequently with the sippy part jammed into his chest) to get a slurp. Today, he realized he needed two hands in order for it to really work…but only after repeatedly pushing my hands away when I tried to help. Okaaay, hint taken, backing off.

After the feeding cyclone had passed, I mopped him off and set him down to jam with a little Elvis in the living room while I attempted some kitchen clean-up. He laughed, pointed at me, sucked on the CD case and “danced” while I sponged up the floor, myself and the dozen or so items it takes to feed an almost-toddler breakfast. I remember reading, while Ari was in utero, that “babies don’t take up much space”. Ahem. Now, I’m sure these books were trying to tell you that you don’t need a nursery or a fancy play room to have a kid in your life. In fact, you could just “appoint a corner of your bedroom” for the new baby. Bullshit. Our entire home has become BabyVille. “They don’t take up much space”? That’s crap. They take up all the space.

But they also fill it with a lot of laughs, smiles, sloppy hugs and cheesy raspberries…so I guess the swap is worth it in the end.

On the home front, we finally found an arrangement for our living room that works. Thank God, because I’ve been pushing furniture around since we moved in and, frankly, I’m tired. By 11:30 last night, things were looking pretty damn good and I decided that I was going to move one last speaker. This speaker weighs 30 lbs. Big ass speaker. And I dropped it. Wisely, to break the fall and avoid the expense of a damaged floor and broken speaker, I tried to "catch it" with my shin and foot. Bad idea. The speaker weighs 30 lbs (did I mention that?). Immediately, the impact site swelled to a nice egg-shaped lump, enhanced by gash down the middle. I sat down, trying to avoid shock, and got ice on it right away so today it's just slightly swollen but I’m sure it’ll be a lovely shade of purplish yellow in a few days. Should’ve left “well enough” alone…but that’s not really my style.

But the living room looks great.