Um, no.

"Mommy"

"Yes, sweetheart?"

"Where is Daddy?"

"I think he had to poop."

"Oh. Is he outside?"

---

"Mommy?"

"Yes, honey?"

"We need some more stuff. Could you get my parking lot from downstairs?"

---

"Mommy?"

"Yes, love?"

"When I sit down my pee-pee squeezes out of my diaper onto my bottom."

"Ewww. Let's take off your night diaper."

"I want to keep wearing it. Can I wear it to school?"

Hello, hello, baby, you called? I can't hear a thing...

Dear India,

You are now 13 months old, and you are hilarious, relentless, exhausting, and delightful.

Seriously, you have an agenda, all the time. You totter quickly through the kitchen on your way to the background to destroy Jordan's train tracks. You confidently tippie-toe your way into the bathroom to stick your hand in the toilet.

You know what you want, even if you don't know how to say it. You point imperiously at things, and then shriek if we don't get them to you fast enough.

You can now say Mama, Daddy, Nana, buh-bye, ball (bah! BAH!) and Aiyya, which I'm pretty sure is Jordan. 

You absolutely love to go out on walks, and you'll march over, pick up your hat, and bring it over, trying to put it in. Hat! Walk! NOW! If we don't respond fast enough you're all, "HAT! IMBECILES! THIS IS MY HAT! CHOP CHOP!"

As soon as you learn to talk and snap your fingers, I'm sure you're going to be all, "Blueberries, stat!" Snap, snap!

Jordan has taken to putting his toys up on the counters, ostensibly so you won't choke on them. We all know that you're not about to choke on a garbage truck. But we also know that your forays into everything that is his drive him up the wall.

Last week, for the first time, you grabbed a toy from him and then very stubbornly would not let go. To his credit, he didn't clock you. He got upset and said, "Mommy! India isn't sharing!" And boy-howdy, you WEREN'T.

For the most part, though, the two of you have a great time together.  Jordan loves it when we pick you up from day care, and he delights in pushing your stroller. This does mean that you very narrowly avoid crashing into trees and cars and your stroller gets stuck against walls and the curb. But you're both closely supervised enough that nothing huge happens.

Yesterday we all went on a traditionally Daddy-Jordan adventure to the marina. It was sprinkling and you didn't care. You sat down on a wet dock, and you didn't care. Your butt and your feet were soggy, and life was grand.

This makes me suspect that you are your father's daughter and I am not going to wind up with a shopping buddy after all. Unless Jordan discovers a fondness for it, which seems unlikely.

Anyway, the marina. The river. The airport. You were astounded, pointing and squealing. Water! Boats! Ducks! Planes! Whoa! What is all this? Awesome! We walked to the end of a dock, watching the boats, and you did your very best to wriggle out of you father's arms and leap into the water.

You're a menace. I'm not kidding.

I realized what city kids we are raising when we first saw the ducks yesterday, and Daddy said, "Ducks!"

And Jordan said, "And garbage cans!"

Love you love you love you,

Mama

Touch to believe, 80's delight, and my Midwestern roots

1. I came across this bra at Target. I didn't quite know how to think about it. I'm going to assume that the invitation "touch to believe"is aimed at the potential purchaser.  Like, reach over, touch this on the hanger, and then try it on and be all thrilled that it's that comfortable and strapless or whatever.
   
   Because I'm fairly cavalier about my breasts, such as they are, and even so I wouldn't walk around with that kind of open invitation.
   
2. A friend of mine gave me this fabulous spiky bracelet, which the teenager inside of me jumped up and down and screamed over. Do you know how hard I would've loved that in the 80s? With my Cyndi Lauper shaved hair and my neon green Relax shirt and my Billy Idol sneer (which I can still do, in case you're wondering)?
   
   Do you know how much my son loves it? So much. Sometimes he wears it, and sometimes he just kind of caries it around like his Precioussssss.
   
   And sometimes he adds it a tower of his today-favorite things:

3. In the favorite things category, I got new sneaks for the Out of Darkness walk, which at this point is two weeks(!) away.
   
   
   I'm working my way through thank-you notes. I'm still overwhelmed and so very touched by the incredibly generous and kind response I've gotten. I mean, I upped my goal to $6,000, and I've almost hit it, which I find incredible.
   
   I've also received notes from people who are not in a position to give money, and have written to offer emotional support. It makes my heart happy. People are beautiful and amazing.
   
   A friend asked me the other day about how I'm training for it, and I was all, "Training? Huh." It never occurred to me that I wouldn't be able to walk 18 miles, overnight or no.
   
   Basically, I'm operating on the assumption that my general fitness level and my extreme Midwestern-Scandinavian stubbornness will carry me through.

BRAT

I'm so sorry to have left you with that last post for too long. I know it was icky.

So. It got worse around our house before it got better.

It's been a long time since I've asked you a hypothetical, and in fact, the stellar paisley jacket one is the only one I can remember, so let me put one to you now.

Say you'd seen your wife suffer terribly with the aforementioned stomach affliction for nigh on four days. And so, on Friday morning, after having been up all night yourself, when you were complaining of the same affliction, and she handed you yogurt and expressed sympathy, and then suggested that you limit yourself to stuff that would be easy on your stomach that day, like maybe toast, would you:

1. Heed her advice, because she's been through it?
2. Heed her advice, because you know about the BRAT - bananas, rice, applesauce, toast - diet for diarrhea and upset stomach?
3. Heed her advice, because why the fuck not?
4. Go to the nearest deli for lunch, because after all, all you had for breakfast was yogurt, and get a giant pastrami, cheese and sauerkraut sandwich? And then be up all night Friday, and complain about it Saturday but insist that food had nothing to do with anything?

Just wondering.

All the perfumes of Arabia will not sweeten this little hand – which I've been washing a lot lately. Along with the other one. I wash them both. I promise.

After posting I realized that I actually ought to preface this tale with the following: It's really gross. You might not want to read it.

-----

If you have a child, and if that child has ever been out in the world with other human children, or if you don't have a child but have ever seen one in its natural habitat, you know that children are filthmongers.

They feed each other rat-walked-on wood chips in the park. They take their stuffed animals swimming in the toilet when you're not looking. They taste everything you don't want them to, like railings, car keys, signposts.

And then they call broccoli yucky. The hell?

I know for a fact that if they find chewed gum on the sidewalk they will pick it up and chew it, because I myself did this. Actually, my friend Natasha found it, started chewing it, and then gave me half. We both remarked on how sandy it was. Probably because we were living in Egypt at the time. There was sand everywhere.

Kids are revoltingly disgusting. (Is that redundant? I don't care.)

Listen. If they have the opportunity to stick their hands in their own poop, they will, and then be all, "Hey! Look what I found!"

They basically careen around in the world like wee human lint sticks except instead of lint they attract germs.

And then they come home and rub those germs all over you and stick them in your mouth in the guise of doing something cute and charming like saying, "Hi!" and pointing with their index finger and then you kiss their adorable little finger and BAM! Germs! Transferred!

And then they go sit in the corner and cackle maniacally.

I'm kidding about that last part. Because what they actually do is get down on the floor and find a hard, shriveled noodle from three days ago and promptly shove it in their mouth.

And what this all leads up to is this: India had about a week of diarrhea. Which I mistakenly attributed to milk.

Because we had the throwing up with the milk, so I put her back on formula while figuring out what to do. And then her tummy got better, and then we started slowly introducing milk - not a lot, but enough to see.

And then she started having diarrhea.

Since she's a baby, and since she will, given the opportunity, handle in her own feces, I know it won't currently embarrass her if I share details. (SCATOLOGY ALERT! Maybe a little too late, now that I think about it.)

Also, I'm sharing her details so I don't have to share mine.

Sometimes it was normal diarrhea, whatever that may be. And sometimes it was the kind of diarrhea that seems like pee, except that you know that it is not because it's brown and smells like mushroom soup would if you covered it and then left it in a warm place for like two weeks.

So there was that. We changed a lot lot lot of diapers. She was up a lot at night. We were up a lot at night. She got a hideous diaper rash. We staggered around like zombies.

And then it was over. But not really.

Because then I got it. And I realized that it sucked more than I knew. I've had approximately six pieces of toast and some noodles since Monday. Oh, and a little cereal.

I'm still afraid to eat, right now, as I type.

But poor little India. I just had no idea how terrible she felt.

Because Monday night, my whole body hurt. My skin hurt. My head hurt. My stomach was upset. I was exhausted. I had chills. I had fever dreams. I thought I was getting the flu.

Tuesday my mom took care of India, while I alternated between bed and bathroom. If I didn't eat or drink, then it was less of an issue. But you know, I'd get hungry or thirsty, as you do, and then...

Wednesday was even more about both places.

Nick called to see how I was feeling and I said, "Pretty crappy!" Which made me laugh which made me almost shit the bed.

HAHAHA....hahahaha...haha...h...a?

I told Nick he's lucky I have cat-like reflexes and excellent sphincter control.

Yesterday, I forced myself to go to the office, because I felt marginally better, and I had a shit-ton (hahahaha...ha...ha) to do.

I wore a maxi-pad so that in the event of a crisis, I'd be able to make it to the bathroom.

Because I'm a smarty-pants. HAHaha...