Overheard at the changing table

Sung in a lounge singery kind of way: "And here we are again, changing your diap-diap. And oh, I see we've had a pooooo...."

"Eeeey!"

"Eeey!"

"Eh eh eh eh eh!"

"Don't clench your butt cheeks. Butt cheeks are a privilege, not a right."

Who knew?

Old MacJordan had a truck, E-I-E-I-O

One of the things that Nick discovered calms Big J down when he is flipping out - particularly on the changing table - is Happy Birthday.

So we sing, "Happy birthday to you..." Over and over and over.

Old MacDonald works equally well, and at least there's some variation. We were bringing him home past his bedtime last weekend and he was really screamy and cranky in the back seat.

And so we sang Old Fucking MacDonald. Allll the way home from Springfield. Which took, I dunno, somewhere near forever.

You go through all the animals you know. And then you start reaching. We took turns.

"And on his farm he had some...buzzards? E-I-E-I-O! With a buzz buzz here, and a buzz buzz there..."

"...And on his farm he had some okapi! E-I-E-I-O! With an ok ok here and a pi pi there..."

"...And on his farm he had a gin and tonic..."

At which Nick pointed out that we could actually recycle animals. It's not like J would know.

True, that.

Happy weekend, all!

With a week week here and an end end there...

The caulk issue. Because I am 12.

A couple weeks ago, in our weekly staff meeting, someone brought up The Caulk Issue.

Heh.

Have you ever discussed caulk in a professional environment? No? Let me tell you.

It turns out that a number of schools constructed from the 1950s to the 70s were built using caulk that contains PCBs. PCBs, if you don't know, are toxic and (it turns out) practically impossible to contain. So cleanup of these schools turns out to be a huge and costly issue.

I didn't know about the schools and the toxins, but had read that PCBs are responsible for the diminishing size of alligator penises in the Everglades.

Which brings us to the weekly meeting.

I work in an education-related field, and we write about these topics. Topics like schools and caulk. Not alligator penises. So in staff meeting, people talk about their article topics for the following week's newsletter.

My life is so much more glam than you ever imagined, no?

So we get to beautiful, elegant Michele, who says, "I'm going to have to write about the caulk issue."

She pronounces it carefully, trying to accentuate the L. CauLk. But still.

There is a pause. A pregnant pause, if you will.

And one of our older colleagues says - with complete sincerity - "Oh, the caulk issue. Yeah. The caulk is a big one."

Fortunately, I am sitting next to Michele, so I cannot make eye contact.

Someone else says, "What's the deal with the caulk?"

An explanation of PCBs and containment problems takes place. Schools have to be torn down, because you can't just remove the caulk.

I resist the urge to giggle like a girl. The caulk, people, the giant, dangerous caulk! What do we do with the caulk?

Half the table is avoiding eye contact, and the other half is discussing it in complete seriousness.

The giggle sits at the top of my stomach the entire meeting, flapping and fluttering, in much the same way a fly will bat itself against a window pane, trying to escape. I'm afraid to say anything.

Finally, we adjourn. I make it down the hall and around the corner before I turn to one of my Quad-mates.

I squawk, "The caulk! The deadly caulk!"

Little bitty bits

Seersucker. Nick is wearing his seersucker suit today. He decided that if it's going to be 90 degrees, it's summer, and he can wear seersucker. Plus it's almost Memorial Day.

I tease him about it, but the truth is, I think he looks so cute in this suit. And I totally want to get some seersucker for Jordan.

3:30 AM. Speaking of Jordan, he now likes to wake up right around 3:30 every morning. He's done this the last five or six nights. It's killing us.

Lipstick. I have started wearing lipstick in an attempt to balance out the hair. I've been wearing my wedding lipstick, which fortunately still seems fine. How long can you keep lipstick, anyway?

Kiddie pools. Nick wants to get a little inflatable pool to put on the deck. He was all, "Jordan and I can play in it together!"

Um. I'm going to let you conjure up your own responses to that one.

Happy Wednesday! Feels like summer! Time to dip our feet in Nick's office koi pond!

Kidding, honey, kidding. (Kind of.)

The maintenance

Have you ever gotten on a big diet and exercise kick?

You get all super motivated. You lose a bunch of weight. You fit in skinny winny jeans. You feel fabulous! You haven't been that skinny in years and oh, it's so great!

Then you maybe gain a couple pounds, because you can't maintain that level of starvation fervor forever.

You have all this enthusiasm for the getting there. But how do you stay there?

Because, crap, in order to maintain, you have to keep this up.

For the rest of your life.

Somehow it dawned on me, just yesterday, that the bulk of life is just maintaining.

This is something I have historically sucked at. I was good at leaving, moving, starting over, getting a new job, quitting a job, falling in love, falling out of love, starting a project, getting bored in the middle, moving on to another project...

The beginnings and endings I could throw myself into. They tend to be filled with anticipation, drama, motion, commotion.

It's the middles, the maintenance, where I've struggled. And fallen down.

I thought about this yesterday when picking up Jordan's toys and my clothes for the gajillianth time. You pick all this stuff up...just to take it all out. And pick it all up again tomorrow.

Dishes are clean. Dishes are dirty. Same with clothes. Floors. Carpets. And so forth.

I'm not in a woe-is-me place, or thinking my life is an endless cycle of drugery.

If fact, I actually really like my life more than I ever have. And lately it's been calmer and more normal and routine than pretty much ever.

I used to pull the rug out from under myself whenever anything got routine. And now, I fully realize that my life is one routine after another.

Perhaps it always was; I just had larger, more chaotic circles of routine, of dramatic start and stop, rise and fall.

I'm just wondering - do most people struggle with the maintenance?

Me, me, and oh yes, more me. Served with a side of, uh, me!

Here's way more of my new hair than you ever anticipated.
I finally washed it last night and while I think the color is still very faintly reminiscent of pale Scandinavian furniture, the beige that she put in is almost gone. And I don't think you can even detect a purple tint.I like the cut, although I'd like more length. But what I'm struggling with are the bangs. Bangs!

Bangs have been an issue for me since I begged and begged for them in second grade, and the minute my mom cut them, I burst into tears and wailed, "I hate them! Put it back!"

But you know there is no putting it back.

I think they look OK without my glasses, but they kind of sit weird with them on. I either have to scooch them above or kind of smoosh them around the side.

I probably need a product. The problem is I'm not really a product person. Nor am I a hair arranger.

I probably need product and arrangement.

Also, I maybe ought to wear lipstick. Which I am terrible at; it always makes me feel like I'm pretending to be a grown-up. But that's a whole nother issue.

I think my dark chunky glasses work better than my greeny and purple ones. I realize it's hard for you to compare with these photos.But by the fourth picture of myself, I kind of felt like a narcissistic asshole. You know?So all in all, I like the color, don't love the cut, but I think (hope) it has potential.

Violet Beauregard

Sooo, yah. I did it! I said sod the conservative! (Hey, Maude!)

And my BlackBerry was dead, so I couldn't even read your input while waiting! But what you said is exactly how I was feeling.

It's summer! It's just hair! Jump!

Here's before:

Here's during:


And now we get to the after...

I'm quite sure I'm going to like it. I'm really pretty certain. Almost.

Because currently, my hair is faintly violet from the toner. It'll wash out in one or two washes (she says) but I should wait a couple days before doing so.

At which point, I'll post a picture.

Also, I have bangs. I agreed to them - they weren't stealth bangs. And I think I'll like them, too.

Pretty certain. Almost.

Here's to a violet-tinted bang-ful (um?) weekend, all!

To blonde or not to blonde - that is the question (of the morning)

So a week ago I got this wild hair (not to play guitar) and marched over to the salon to see if I could somehow get an appointment thatveryminutenownownow.

Because you know how when you've had enough of your hair it feels like you simply cannot live like that for one second longer?

I've been known to snip and dye my own hair when I hit that point. I've made some good hair choices, some great hair choices, and some very very terrible ones.

The ones I did myself never fell in anything but the Very Terrible category.

Fortunately, my impulse control has improved dramatically. Or maybe marginally. But enough.

And so instead I made a hair appointment.

I said the following: I either want highlights or all-over bleach. And I'm not sure which.

Because you know I have been thinking about this for a while now. I cannot find any of my old pictures, alas.

Pros for highlights: they look natural; I can go months between appointments; they're conservative.

Cons: I've had the same color and style with minor length variations for years.

Pros for platinum: fun!; good with my coloring; easy to find me in a crowd.

Cons: Very not-conservative; this is DC, after all; might invite more of the dumb blonde assumptions.

I'm still not sure. I feel like it's going to hit me once I'm sitting in the chair.

And I do realize this isn't a world hunger kind of issue...

But you know, you wake up with your hair every day.

The man I love

(photo credit: Chen Hualin via Wikepedia)

We had mozzarella with dinner the other night.

I promise this isn't one of those "cereal for breakfast/chicken for dinner" kind of posts.

So I said it was buffalo mozzarella - mozzarella di bufala - I said, all dramatically and Italiany.

This got both Betty's and Nick's attention. Betty spoke first.

"Buffalo?"

"Buffalo."

"What kind of buffalo?"

I could see her wheels turning. I knew exactly what she was thinking. Being from North Dakota, she was picturing trying to get a bison to hold still and let you squeeze some milk out.

I wasn't wrong.

Nick said, "Probably water buffalo. It would have to be domesticated, so it wouldn't be bison or Cape buffalo."

"Cape buffalo." I pictured an animal with a long fringe of hair, like, well, a cape. "What's a cape buffalo?"

"Only one of the top ten deadliest animals in Africa."

"The top ten deadliest animals in Africa?"

"Yes. They kill you by goring you. And they're fast and mean."

"Like hippos?"

"But deadlier."

"How do you know?"

"I read a book."

"Oh, really? What was it called?"

"The Top Ten Deadliest Animals in Africa."

Naturally.

Awake ye muses nine, sing me a strain divine

Today, my little cutie-face, today you have been out for as long as you were in.

Because today you are NINE MONTHS OLD!!!

Nine!

I used to have a housemate from New Zealand, who, whenever anyone burped or farted, would say, "Better out than in!"

Not to compare you to a burp or fart, of course.

You have your nine-month appointment next week, at which point we'll find out just how ginormous you are. My best guess is: very.

I look back at even my most pregnant pictures and then I look at you and I find it astounding that you, such a big little man, were ever inside of me. And then I think, how did we create someone so wonderful?

Having you reminds me that sometimes the universe lines up just right and gives you exactly what you need, and even more than you feel you deserve.

In these nine months you've transformed from an adorable, smooshy, mouse-noise making, sweet little clenched-hands lump of newborn to a gorgeous smiley biggie boy who never stops moving. Who doesn't miss a detail. And who has opinions! Lots and lots of opinions!

Your new favorite thing is to drag yourself across the floor. I know you're trying to crawl, but you have only figured out how to use one arm and one leg, while your stomach stays flat on the floor.

You pick up an astounding amount of schmutz this way. It's kind of horrifying how dirty our floors are. Particularly since you like to lick them.

I've briefly considered taping Swiffer sheets to your clothing and setting you loose. But that seems kind of trashy. Also, Dad won't let me.

So it kind of looks like you're a wounded soldier crawling with your rifle in one hand and dragging your bum leg behind you. You get very far very fast this way, though.

I can only imagine how things will be when you figure out how to use all your limbs.

You're sitting up by yourself, and you would like to stand, but you cannot seem to figure out how to put your feet flat on the floor. You're an excellent toe pointer, though.
You had started saying "Mamama" and "Babababa" and "Dadada" but now you mostly just say "Eeeeey!"

Currently you're much more intent on motion than sound.

You say, "Ey!" when you see something new. And then drag yourself over to it with astounding alacrity. Then you put it in your mouth.

Aunt Jen's husband said this is because you're in your oral phase.

And then Aunt Jen said, "Well, thank God this isn't his anal phase. Because can you imagine what he'd be trying to put in his butt?"

He told her very sternly to behave.

(He doesn't yet know that we love her so much precisely because she doesn't.)

Happy nine months, my lovey dovey snoochie bottom!

Love,

Mama

For some reason sleep deprivation catapults me into battlefield analogies

You all are wonderful. Thank you. We're doing OK.

I've gotta say, though, that I have been getting really close to considering Nick's proposal to reproduce again.

I'd see a seriously pregnant woman waddling slowly down the street and thinking, "Oh, doesn't she look happy! Look at her cute outfit!"

When not that long ago I knew the over it look on her face and spent time wondering why they put those stupid strings on all those pregnanty tops. Who suddenly wants to tie bows just because they're pregnant?

But the pregnancy amnesia had really hit full force.

. . .and then Jordan and I slept over at Betty's last night.

By slept I mean dozed in 13-minute increments. So that we could wake up, wonder where we were, cry, verify that mama was right there, calm down, go back to sleep. And repeat.

We woke up exhausted. Bitter. Actually, only one of us was bitter.

The other was all, "Mama! So nice to see you! And if you think I'm napping today to make up for lack of sleep last night you are sadly mistaken! Hahahahahaha!"

WAAAAAAAAAAAHHHHHH

It's a huge flashback to the early days of no sleep and lots of exhaustion and bitterness and generally feeling like you could be felled by a single bullet out of nowhere at any moment.

And that has nipped the ohh, Nick my darling, let's make a sweet, smiley, chubby-feetsy cutie-face baby! right in the bud.

Now I am thinking more like, listen, husband, let's bear in mind that one person's suspicious package is another person's Weapon of Mass Destruction and maybe let's keep that over on your side of the bed.

Favor

Could I ask you for a favor?

If I haven't exhausted your patience, could you send some positive energy and good thoughts in Betty's direction? I would really appreciate it.

Hugs,

Lisa

In memoriam

Thank you all for lovely comments yesterday and for kind emails.

Technology is not my friend today.

If you'd like, you can view the slideshow I made for my dad's memorial in Picasa photos here.

Hugs,

Lisa

The day of the forty-four sunsets

This is the weekend.

I've been dreading its approach. I think about it, and my throat closes. My stomach turns over.

I fight the what-ifs.

A year ago today, I rushed out of work at noon, and sped to my parents' house...to wait.

Somehow, even after all those years, I was unprepared. With the call, I knew. And yet, I was absolutely unprepared.

Unprepared for it to happen. Unprepared to sit through hours upon hours of waiting, knowing nothing. A whole Friday of nothing. Most of a Saturday of nothing.

In the end, I was unprepared for the answer to be yes.

And now, a year later, I still have some very dark, painful moments. But more and more, I can look to the light.

I hope that once my dad let go of the heaviness of mortality, he found peace, and rediscovered joy. I hope it's like the Little Prince. I hope he's reveling in the sparkle of the stars.

I hope he's keeping company with old friends and family, watching as many sunsets as he wants, tamping down the baobabs - although the gardening was not so much his thing. He'd do fine with the volcanoes, though - he was always assiduous with the air filters and such.

I'll post the slide show this weekend. I know a day early shouldn't matter, but somehow, it does.

Talk to the hand, 'cause the head isn't listening

I used to have a housemate from New Jersey. And she would say that. In a thick New Jersey accent.

"Talk to the hand, 'cause the head isn't listening!"

She'd say it jokingly. She knew I loved it. I'd be all, "Say it! Say it!"

This is exactly the look Big J was making when I took this photo. Look at that attitude.

And now he has started saying, "Eeeeeyyyyyyy."

He looks at you and goes, "Eeeeyyyy!" Same when he wants your attention. "Eey!"

You expect the next words out of his mouth to be, "How YOU doin'?"

And then when he's all lounging around in his PJs, I feel like he's doing a Hugh Hefner impression.

"Eeeeyyyy! How about a martini, honey?"

I mean, of course, if Hugh Hefner wore diapers and monkey pajamas and lolled around under coffee tables on the Jersey shore.

Climb the stairs they're not so steep. Bend down the branches.

Isn't there some Eastern saying about strong trees bending but not breaking?

Maybe Buddha or Confucius? One of the big names, anyway.

We saw it this winter, with the endless snows. Some bent low and survived. And others broke under the strain. Some fell over entirely, roots raw and exposed.

There's only so much flexibility until the breaking point.

You'd see these elegant white snowflakes falling, landing like little kisses, gentle and sweet. And yet, you'd get enough in one place, and suddenly, it was too much.

I would wonder which snowflake tipped it, you know?

Most of the time, I can't imagine spending my life with anyone other than Nick. I'm never bored with him. He makes me laugh. He makes me feel safe. I respect his brain. Our world views coincide.

But we're constantly back to the same arguments. They circle and strangle like angry vines. And our branches, they are full before the words even begin.

This past year has been a pile-on year.

Not all negative - some wonderful. But a relentless stream.

Pregnancy. The death of my father. Moving. Moving again. A C-section. Jordan. The new old house that's justjust started being nice. The one that my friends now admit to thinking was "scary" and "creepy" and "worrisome" when we first moved in.

Sunday night, after our second fight of the day, I really began to think that maybe we wouldn't survive this year. Maybe neither of us could bend any further.

Maybe the lack of sleep and the endless work on the house - Every. Single. Weekend - and the lack of time to ever just BE, just the two of us, maybe the cumulative effect was just too debilitating.

Maybe our roots weren't deep enough when we began. Maybe the kid and the new old house would actually break us.

I said as much, calmer, cooler, close to midnight. Will we break?

And Nick said no. Look, love, look around. Look at the beauty we've made. We've finally dug out from under. We're starting to live in the light.

DC how to #745: How to get your trash collected

Ostensibly, our garbage and recycling get picked up twice a week, on Tuesdays and Fridays.

The reality is that the Tuesday people almost never collect the garbage. They've probably picked it up a handful of times in the almost-year that we've lived there.

The Friday people, they're a lot better

Except when they aren't.

End result is that sometimes our trash doesn't get picked up for a week. Or two, as was the case earlier this month.

So this morning I awoke to a frantic ringing of our doorbell. I wondered why Nick wasn't getting it.

And then it turned out it was Nick. Clad in a T-shirt, boxers, and felt clogs. As you might be at 7 am.

Because this morning, Nick heard the garbage truck, and he sprinted outside. They come early, and he was up with Jordan. He set J in the playpen and dashed out back. And the door locked behind him.

Click.

Which meant he had to mince down the alley, up the block, and halfway down our street to get to our front door.

Heh.

Oh, but my how-to point is this.

So Nick said - and I love how he acted like he was just strolling out there to ask them a casual question in his underwear - that he was just wondering why they didn't pick up our garbage.

They wanted to know if it was a group house.

No.

"Well then, we should be picking it up."

(Yes, gentlemen, yes, you should...)

"The problem is," Nick said, "it never gets picked up on Tuesdays. So I'm wondering if there's some issue?"

"Well, you know," the guy said, "we do accept Christmas cards. And I don't believe we got one from you last Christmas."

So next Tuesday, they're getting a Christmas card. So that we don't have to shovel up a bag of diapers that's gotten ripped into and strewn about (by what I of course assume to be rabid, diaper-munching raccoons) in the week or so that it's been in the alley.

And that, my friends, is how to get your trash collected in our nation's capital.

Galumphing forward and back. Or, now we are in for it.

When he's on the floor, Big J has been confined to a play mat or a pretty small patch of carpet - regardless of room - for much of his life.

No longer.

And while taking the second video, oh, 20 minutes ago, I realized that now we are really in for it. You can hear the ohh-boy-are-we-screwed in my voice.

Not ready! Notnotnotnotnot ready!

Yikes!

Poll: white before Memorial Day

I bought this dress when I just started being pregnant. It's not maternity, but I figured it had room for me to grow.

And then my ass grew at a much shockingly faster rate than my stomach, and by the time I could wear it, um, I couldn't wear it. I seriously couldn't squeeze it down past the top of my butt. Yes, there was great chagrin all around.

But now!

It's deliciously warm and sunny in DC, so I decided to throw rules to the wind and wear white.

Of course, I now commute to work in my toe shoes. And my Liberty bag (which, no, I've not yet had the balls to wear with the dress and hat). I got some weird looks this morning. I assume it was the combo, but maybe it was just the inappropriateness of a white cotton shift?

So, white before Memorial Day is:

A. Lovely and refreshing! Rules are made to be broken!
B. Gasp! Horrendously inappropriate! What next!?
C. OK this once, and thank goodness you have the sense not to wear white shoes!

I blame lack of sleep

Because you know I'm an intelligent person who sometimes or maybe often says dumb things even when she's stone cold sober, I'm going to share this with you.

OK?

Also, you should know that I almost never know what's going on in the world. Current events are usually no longer current by the time I hear them.

So as we were walking to work Nick said, "So you know they caught the bomb guy. The one who left the car in Times Square."

"No! Where?"

"He was on a plane for Dubai. They'd figured out who he was and put him on the no-fly list. They stopped the plane."

"It's alarming that he didn't get caught at the airport in the first place."

"Well, they had just put his name on the list, and it hadn't been updated yet for the day. They recognized his name from the passenger manifest."

"But they should've arrested him before."

"How?"

"With the bomb. And anyway, how did he get it out of his car?

"What? The police have the car. They didn't know it was his bomb until they figured out who he was."

"But how did he get the bomb through the airport?"

"What bomb?"

"The bomb he was taking on the plane to Dubai."

"He didn't have a bomb on the plane."

"You said."

"What?"

"You said the guy who had the bomb. He was taking it to Dubai."

"No. No. I said the bomb guy. The one who had the bomb in his car. In Times Square. He was heading to Dubai."

"Why didn't you say that? I was wondering why he'd take the bomb to Dubai instead of just making one there."

"Who are you?"

Learning to fight, and fight fair

I don't know how you are when you fight?

For me, I've had to learn how to fight, and I'm still learning to fight constructively.

For years, I just didn't fight, or at least, not much, and not in any direct way. It's not that I wanted to be passive-agressive. I just didn't know how to have a face-to-face fight.

So it has been a challenge figuring out how to fight directly, and fight fair. To take what's making me angry and to address it in a constructive way.

I mean, sometimes you are just too hormonal or tired or whatever to be productive. Sometimes you're just out-and-out itching for a fight, for no good reason. Or the reason you think isn't the real reason, which you don't realize till later.

But sometimes, you know what it is, and you need to say it. Or to hear the other person, and respond.

My tendency when I'm really angry is to lash out. You make me hurt, I'll pay you back five-fold.

Nick is similar. He's quicker to anger, but has more restraint during the argument.

You make me really mad? You hurt my feelings? Yeah, well let me remind you how much your family sucks and doesn't come through for you. Let me give you five recent examples.

Even though that has nothing to do with the precise matter at hand.

See how not constructive this might be in a marriage?

A couple weeks ago, Nick came home all sullen, in a swirling black mood of doom, which is really rare for him. It lasted all night. It blanketed the morning.

And as we were having breakfast, he said a couple terrible things. That I took in the worst possible way.

So I made an analogy that possibly included his mother. (I know, I know.)

It turns out what he heard - which is not what I said - was, "You're wrong about how you're feeling. Oh, and your mother sucks."

And this made him even angrier. As it might.

I knew there was no way that I could get to any reasonable place within the conversation. And so I said, "I cannot do this right now." And I got up and left.

I walked out. Ran down the stairs. Clump clump clump clump clump. And then next stairs. Clump clump clump clump clump.

I grabbed my stuff. I heard Nick behind me. Clomp clomp clomp clomp clomp.

I hurried down the next flight. (We have many a stair, in case you're wondering.) I heard him behind me, and I quickened my pace. Clumpclumpclumpclumpclump. Locked the door behind me and hastened down the street.

I'm pretty sure the chill of the morning kept my head from melting.

We talked a couple hours later, when we were both calmer. That night, we had a really good, in-depth conversation. We listened, we heard each other, and we are ultimately stronger for it.

It made me feel like I'd made some strides in the constructiveness department.

Although I must admit I did mutter, "Just try and catch up with me, fat man." through clenched teeth all the way to work that morning.

Sit 'em up sit 'em up sit 'em up

So Nick traipsed off to his college reunion this past weekend and left Big J and me to our own devices.

We went for a run. We read books. We did a lot of eating. And floor-swimming. And rolling. And snurfle-snorting.

And sitting! Sitting! We can sit up on our own! Or anyway, we've done it twice!

It's very exciting.

However, and I think due to the vastness of the world and the daily expansion of his possibilities, the boy is a little big high maintenance lately.

So when he's down, he wants to be up. When you pick him up, he peers over your arms and sees something on the floor and is all, "Pretty, shiny, sparkly! Down! I want down!"

Obviously, he doesn't say that.

What he does is flail his pink chubby little arms and make this NNNNNNNGGGGGGGGG GRAAAAAAOOOOOAAAANK kind of noise. And EEAAAAAAHHHAAAHHHH! AAAAGHHH! MAAAAAAAH!

It's sort of the same noise our washing machine is currently making.

Fortunately, it's under warranty. So we'll see about that one. The washer, I mean.

As for the boy.

Life is a big adventure. So many potentially delicious things to be put in one's mouth! So many floors to swim across! So many carpet patterns to inspect! So many music buttons to bang on! And floor tiles!

The rapture!

And hey, wow, a ceiling fan!

Pick me UP! I want to see!

Ooh! The floor! Is so much more enticing from here!

Put me DOWN!

I'm hungry! Where's the boob? Yum!

Hey, look, a tree branch! Just kidding! Not hungry!

Flail!

And so it goes. I love him with all my heart. And I'm exhausted.

The noise I really want to make (and sometimes do, when it's just the two of us) is NNNNGGGGGGG GREEEAAAAOOONNNKK GRAAAAAAHHAHAHAAA!

He doesn't bat an eye.

He's all, "Oh, Mama. I agree. Now pick me UP!"

BABAAA HAAAAAAA MAMAMAAAAAA NNNGGGGNGNGG