stupid question

As part of baby-j's Friday morning class, parents are encouraged to do crafts. This usually involves cutting, or folding, or--my favorite--knitting, which I've recently taken up for projects not related to school. I'm not very good at it, but I enjoy how keeping my hands and eyes busy forces me away from the computer. I like doing these crafts; P's not so crazy about it. One of my current projects is a stuffed cat for school, complete with ears and whiskers. I'm almost done; I just needed a last minute consultation. So a few minutes ago, in our living room, I asked P how long he thought the tail should be.

He answered with four successive questions:

Why are you asking me this?

Then, immediately,
Haven't we agreed I suck at crafts?

And,
Do I like cats?

Then,
Am I not grading papers right now?

Um, the man has a point. Not much to say after that.

done!

Hooray! I am officially finished with the research-paper-grading and my final grades have been handed in. Now I can get worried about the upcoming semester instaead of the current one.

ribbon

baby-j and I are alone today: a loooooong day. What did you do with the boy today? P will ask when he returns.

Well, let’s see. There was some holiday cookie baking. There was laundry folding (on my part--baby-j prefers to just throw the laundry down and hump the warm, scented pile). There was an attempt at wrapping Xmas presents. There was much ribbon strewn about. There were a few meltdowns on my end because the child has only napped for 30 minutes total all day and it’s 5:30 and I have about 8 million desperate student research-paper-related emails to which I must respond. And there was the inevitable explanation to baby-j that mommy is just not as good at these long days as daddy, followed by the acknowledgement that, due to my teaching evening classes, daddy’s simply had more practice.

But now he’s singing “Twinkle Twinkle Little Star” while shaking some bells, and all is right with the world. Oh, and I did give him a bath today.

scary sights

We are completely screwed. Last night I was cleaning up in the kitchen while baby-j played in the living room. I heard some movement of the window blinds and ran out of the kitchen to find him kneeling precariously on the arm of the chair, with window blinds in one hand, and a branch of the Christmas tree in the other.

I guess he can climb furniture at this point.

charlie brown

I was reminded that I never did post some of the shots of baby-j as Charlie Brown for Halloween, so here they are. They're not great, though these are the best of the bunch. The rest of them were yellow-and-black-blurs as baby-j whizzed by me.

This was my first attempt at fabric glue, so there was way too much of it, forming a crunchy zig-zag around his belly. This may be why he was never too keen on wearing the shirt. Ah, well... all in good time. I will become The Craftmaster. Oh, yes. I will.

fun stormin' the castle

I am sick. Baby-j is sick. P is not sick yet, but he still has some scary looking poison ivy residue. Blech.

Some new baby-j words, though... like “aff” = “giraffe,” and we heard “goggle” at breakfast. And my favorite one happens at mealtime, when we tell baby-j about the “fire fairies” who light the candle on our table. Now he says Figh...uh, Figh...uh even before he gets in his highchair. It really is quite cute, so I try to prolong the moment by imitating him. Figh...uh, Figh...uh . Unfortunately, my imitation sounds a bit like Carol Kane in The Princess Bride.

bean

baby-j is way into into cannelini beans, and so we've added yet another word this weekend: "Beh-heh-heh." Said, of course, with a growl.

These phonetic spellings leave a bit to be desired. The "heh-heh"s especially might make it seem that we're living with our own little bald Beavis.