Christmas!

Jasper in the new chair he got from his Grandma and Grandpa for Christmas. He LOVES it. Now, I just have to make sure he doesn't use it as a diving board!

Holiday Pics

Jasper helping with lawn decorations.

Jasper and Mom walk with Wiley.

Jasper and Dad at the Christmas Tree lighting ceremony in town.

Jasper helping in the kitchen on Thanksgiving Day.

The monkey climbing the stairs.

The stairs, again.

Being silly on the couch.

Hanging out with Mom after she decorated the house for Christmas.

Visit to a Christmas Tree farm with friends. This was the hay ride. He mostly danced to the Christmas music playing on a little stereo. Funny.

Mom and Jasper on the hay ride.

Jasper is very interested in the animal food dispenser. Perhaps more than the animals themselves.

Where does that food come from?

He loved running around the animal pins. He seemed to notice the chickens the most.

Funny words

So I did look up the signs for train and boat. Seth disagrees with the sign for train, which I pointed out that it wasn't really up for debate. Like, we can't just change hundreds of years of vocabulary because we don't like the way a word sounds.

While I was looking up those signs I found a few others that were helpful including the one for poop. It did seem helpful. Like it would be amazing if he could tell me that he'd gone potty instead of waiting for the disgusting odor to waft up to four or so feet above his little bum.

I started doing the sign when I would change him or check his diaper. Every single time he responds with a giggle. Seriously. It's like he's been hard wired to think the word poop is funny. Is my boy really a second-grader?

I showed him other new signs. Didn't even crack a smile. And then again this morning, I made the sign for poop, and the guy giggles. I guess I'll get used to it. If I remember my own childhood well enough, I think I'll be laughed at a lot more in the coming years!

Do you hear what I hear?

Planes, phones and remote controls. These are things that excite my little man.

He still doesn't say much in the way of real words, but listen up, he's not without a voice. He babbles and babbles as he plays, sometimes mixing in a "MA! MA! MA!" or "DA!DA!DA!" However, he's yet to shout those words in any attempt to talk to us or get our attention.

Still, I chat away with him. Narrating our grocery store outing as if I were a tour guide at Disneyland. Lucky for me, I shop during the day when all the shoppers are either seniors or moms like me. Today I heard three other shoppers who absolutely loved the little man's smile. Gush. Me, too.

So with me talking all the time, he's absolutely picked up on simple directions. He doesn't always carry them out, but I know he hears them. He's learning to throw away his diaper, put dirty clothes in the laundry, and, his favorite, throw his rubber duckies in the bath tub.

And, as if I needed another reason to think my son is smart, he is picking up a new sign or two a day. I started doing sign language months ago with simple signs like "more" and "milk." I looked at blank stares and quiet hands for so long that I'd nearly given up on it. And then, a little more than a week ago, he very clearly (and unprompted) gave me the sign for more. It's a little wonky, but I know what he's asking. He now tells me he wants more milk or more toast at breakfast. He also knows how to sign light, airplane and all done.

For several weeks he's been pointing at his ear when he hears something. It started with airplanes. When we'd be out walking or in the yard and a plane would fly by (for those of you who don't know, we live fairly close to a large, commercial airport and a small, private one, so we see lots of planes) I would point to it, and say: "I see it with my eyes, and I hear it with my ears," pointing at the body parts.

Well, he was paying attention! Now, the phone rings -- points to his ear. Wiley barks -- points to his ear. An airplane flies overhead, and he points to his ear. The last is amazing. Amazing because we can be in the house, doing our thing, and I won't notice it. Then, he'll point to his ear, and I pause for a second, and, yes, I also hear that airplane.

We also live close to a port, so we hear ship horns and trains pretty regularly, too. He points to his ear for those as well, and I'm scrambling to learn the signs for train and boat!

The other day, after laying him down for a nap, I was in the kitchen by myself, and I heard a plane fly overhead. I smiled as I imagined the little boy in his bed, sucking on a binky and snuggling with the frog his Nana gave him and a bear his Grandma gave him, upstairs pointing to his ear.

The numbers

• 6+ Times today I went down the stairs on my bottom, hoping Jasper will pick up on the sit and scoot method.
  
• 4 Times I got on my hands and knees wipe up the kitchen floor.
  
• 2 Towels were ruined with blood stains after Jasper took a spill in the kitchen and busted his lip.
  
• 7 Blocks away from home on a walk when the freezing rain started coming down.
• 3 Changes of clothes for the monkey today.
  
• 1 Rain boot does no good. Wish Jasper got that same memo.
  

The things I do

Just a couple of notes from the day since I don't ever have time for a real post:

• Had to take Wiley to the vet today, and naturally that means I take Wiley and Jasper to the vet. After a nearly two hour visit, Jasper's patience was wearing thin. So as I am talking with the vet (who is very nice but has no children of her own) I am holding Jasper and letting him stuff Goldfish Crackers into my mouth. I take a bite, look him in the eye, chew, say "mmm" and "thank-you." It takes me a few moments to realize that normal people don't have adult conversations while being force fed by their toddler.
• When I leave she's nice and asks if I need a hand with the dog and the kid and all the paperwork she sent me home with. I thank her and say no. Deep inside I am screaming, "Yes! Come home with me!"
  
• My umbrella stroller had a recall, so I went to fill out the online form to get the part to make the fix. Of course, they want the ID number on the thing. (They call it the VIN number, but doesn't the V stand for vehicle?) I go to drag it out of the car in the rain and spend five minutes standing in the driveway searching for the number. It's a damn 21-digit number, how hard can that be to hide, I'm wondering? I finally bring it in, go back to the den, look a the picture once again where they are telling me it's at, go back to the stroller, turn it upside down and finally find the stinking number. Why are things so hard? It wasn't where the picture showed.
  
• Had to clean out my freezer this morning to make room for my turkey. While Seth will love it that I threw away some things, it reminded me when I think I'm out of yeast, I should dig harder because there's probably another package in there somewhere. Same goes for nuts. Geez, you'd think I was about to open a bakery or candy shop around here with all those nuts and yeast! Another important reminder of how handy labeled items are in the freezer. A ton of zip-top bags with no dates is a nightmare.
  
• We are so damn gate happy around here now that I feel like I'm back in middle school running the hurdles in my own house. This is probably a better work out then I got when I was on the track team -- I kid you not, we actually jumped bushes because we had no hurdles for practice. We didn't even have a track! Note to self when researching schools: see if they not only have the extra curricular activities but the equipment that goes with them as well.
  

Oh yes he can

Three times in recent days I have been reminded how much Jasper is growing. Yes, I do mean growth in the physical sense. He's outgrowing clothes and bumping his head on things he used to breeze right underneath. But he's also growing as in getting smart.

Don't worry, I'm not gonna go all my-kid-is-so-smart on you. He is making amazing gains, but he's stopped doing other things like saying bye-bye or mama. But about him being smart, I can't believe the kid's memory. It seems he remembers every mischievous thing he's done just so he can try it once more!

He figured out how to open the last cabinet untouched in the kitchen, a narrow pull-out spice rack. I don't use it for spices, but for measuring cups, salts, vinegars and few other odds and ends. He now has the perfect wiggle and pull down to get the thing open. And while cooking dinner recently, I looked down and found him covered in corn starch. Perhaps handy for thickening drool, it seemed to do little else but make me laugh. And make a mess.

Then just yesterday we were playing with bristle blocks when I got very engrossed in my bristle block house I was building. Several minutes go by before I notice that Jasper has moved on to another activity: stamps!

He managed to grab the ink pad for a stamp I'd been using. It was sitting on top of the desk in territory he'd never touched before, leading me to believe it was a safe place. Nope. His hands were black and he was sitting on the dark brown rug. I cannot believe he didn't manage to touch anything. I panicked, threw down my bristle blocks, picked him and ran to the sink. After a good scrub, he only had a faint shadow of ink in the creases of his fingers and under his nails.

The last great thing may seem small, but it's actually turning out to be a huge help for me. I can ask him to find his sippy cup, and off he'll go. Most of the time if he doesn't actually find it, he'll lead me to it. If you've ever found a stray sippy cup full of last week's milk, you know why this is handy.

So, it's safe to say that he's got me hopping. That's about it from here. And a cute Halloween pic for the road.

Sickos

I think we can remove the hazmat tape from around the house now. This cold that has had a grip on my little family for the past 12 or so days is finally easing up. We all still have a cough and a sniffle or two, but we're starting to perk back up.

I spent the evening with some girlfriends at book club, and Seth was riveted to know that the biggest topic of discussion was the swine flu. What can I say, it's on everyone's minds these days. I am worried that if the cold and flu season is off to such a big start so early that it can only mean lots of snotty noses and coughs in our future. Ugh. I am stilling having a bit of PTSD from last winter, but maybe that's because of the newborn fog I was in.

So as not to disappoint, I'm just going to assume that when we all get well is when the next bug will strike. To ready myself, I'm building a war chest. Contents to include:

• Cold medicine
• Thermometer
• Cough medicine
• Tea
• Honey
• Humidifier
• At least two back-up meals in the pantry or freezer at all times
• Get-out-of-jail-free card

This last one is a long-shot, I know, but heaven help me if I, too, get the ick the same time as the rest of the family again. Moms should get immunity. Period.

My friend Kim said that she was mentioning to her husband that she hoped her kiddos didn't get the flu, and his response was that he hoped she didn't get the flu. So true, so true.

So ladies, let's get ready for a doozie of a season. And don't forget to call for reinforcements if it gets too tough in the trenches. I think it's the only way we're going to survive this one.

Strapped

I have this bad habit of once I begin to ignore something it seems to grow like the elephant in the room. It seems the longer I leave it alone, the harder it gets to tackle. That's how I've been feeling about this blog lately.

It's neglected. But I'm too tired to post something. And it seems my life is moving so fast that I seldom have time to stop and think about whether or not you might be interested in what's going on. I've been working more, and Jasper and I just returned from a week home with the family. Whew. And before we know it, we'll officially be headed into the holiday season.

We had a great time visiting family, and Jasper, it seems, had a fantastic time playing with telephones. At my grandparents' and my parents' homes there was a telephone within his little arm's reach. We tried to keep him away but eventually gave in. He even carried around a remote control at my parents' pretending it was a phone.

Once we came home, he seemed to take even more interest in our cordless phone, which is in our dining room. He pops open the baby gate and blazes a path with his short strides directly to that phone. Moving it is not really an option because in our antiquated house you can't find a phone jack and an electrical outlet in just every room. Of course, I could just let him play with the phone, but it is starting to break thanks to a few too many drops. And he now proceeds to throw a fit any time we take something away from him. So, it seems easier to circumvent the tantrum by just not letting him have it in the first place.

After two straight hours of fighting this yesterday afternoon, I just wanted to break down this morning when that was the first thing he did. Seth suggested I use a few bungee cords to lock the gate even more securely. My reaction? Yeah, let's do something that draws even more attention to this damn gate.

I suggested that Seth stay home with Jasper today, and I'd go to work. He laughed. He left. And I got out the bungee cords.

It's worked so far. I better go for now, while things are looking up!

The Birthday Cake

Here's video of Jasper digging into his birthday cake. Sorry for half of it being sideways on your screen. It's just shot on our camera, and Seth didn't realize it would be strange if he held the camera vertically. Oops. It's still pretty funny, and I think you get the idea. Scroll down to see still pics.

Jasper's First Birthday!

Started the day with banana chocolate chip pancakes and cottage cheese.

Dad and Jasper out for a walk in his new wagon!

First bites of birthday cake!

It's Happened

Have you ever seen one of those Mommy Makeover talk shows? I'm sure you know the story. Mom has three kids and a loving husband, but she hasn't worked outside of the house in nearly a decade. She volunteers and is loved by many. The rock in her family. And no matter how hard she tries, she just can't look as good as she used to.

Gasp, you think, when you see her frumpy jeans from so many seasons ago, the look has surely been forgotten. Her shirt is oversized, a little stained and one of three in the steady rotation. She wears sneakers and can't really imagine an outfit they don't go with. Her hair has long ago shed its cheery highlights and her cut looks military-grade: sufficient with zero style. We won't even discuss all of the grooming, trimming, shaving and toning that simply does not happen.

I've watched plenty of these shows. And until recently, I always thought, "How does someone let it get that far?"

Gasp again. I've come down with yo-mamma's-so-outta-style-the-PTA-is-making-fun-of-her syndrome.

Here's how I came to my self-diagnosis:

• I wear only jeans, sweats or shorts and pretty much none of them fit properly.
  
• When I wear shoes, the choice is easy: If it's sunny and warm I go with the flip flop. If it's cold and cloudy it's the sneaker.
  
• I think it is perfectly acceptable to use the eyelash curler while driving down the interstate. And then I realize it's absurd because I'm just going to the grocery store.
  
• I do not carry a purse, just a bag that looks like a Pottery Barn Catalog nursery picture threw up on a tote. In keeping with the theme, I stuff it full of diapers, wipes, toys, sippy cups and binkies.
  
• I shave my legs only after severe harassment from my husband and even then I do such a miserable job he still makes fun of me.
  
• My last highlight job has a good several inches of grow out, and I may soon have to stop calling myself a blonde. My cut could be cute, I suppose, if I took the time to style it.
  

How does this happen so quickly?

The rocky road begins in pregnancy when you naturally give up any hope of looking good or wearing clothes that fit. Gaining an extra 20 to 30 pounds in the girth never did anyone any fashion favors. Not to mention the additional weight that gets added to the face, fingers and ankles. And then once you've had a baby, you end up looking like a half-deflated bounce house whose clothes, once again, don't fit. Then you have the excuse of a newborn who keeps you up all night. But a few months later, and you begin to think, "If Britney Spears did it, I can, too." Well, hell, my kid is now 1, but still don't have it together, folks.

I'm not so worried about what I'll wear tomorrow as what it means for my future. This must be how women get stuck in a certain decade. My girlfriends and I determined that the hairstyle you have in your 30s is probably the one that will stick with you for the rest of your life. What if that spreads to other areas of style? Is this how we wind up with jeans so old that our great-grandchildren will beg for them because they're exactly like what's selling at the vintage shops?

As a kid growing up I remember a few shirts and sweaters in my parents' closets that they just never did get rid of. My grandfather wears Levis in that faint blue color that is only achieved through decades of washing. And my grandmother still has dresses hanging in her closet that look like they were stolen from the costume department of Mad Men.

I hope like hell that the jeans I'm wearing right now have a different home 20 years from now. And please, oh please, give me another shot a my rest-of-your-life hairdo. Next time you see me, save it. Don't tell me I look good or ask where I get my hair cut just to be nice. Your energy would be better spent inviting me to shopping, bringing over the waxing kit or booking me a hair appointment.

And even if the offer comes with free clothes, a professional stylist and a trip to Chicago to sit on Oprah's lap, do not sign me up for a makeover show. It's bad enough I walk around my own neighborhood like this. It would just be mean to subject a nationwide audience to it. Besides, I bet if they look out their own window, they'd see a few moms just like me pushing strollers down their streets.

Tweet Mistake

I've been a bit out of touch lately because I'm busy. I'm doing a bit of real-live paycheck work.

Today I took advantage of Seth's fall football schedule and went into the office while he stayed home with Jasper.

The morning got off to a surprisingly good start. And when I left Seth was feeling confident, a little boost thanks, I'm sure, to my changing the morning poopy diaper just before I left. And apparently about 15 minutes later is when things began to deteriorate.

Jasper showed his daddy a new trick of climbing onto the ottoman in the parlor. Dad, ever with the iPhone, decided to take a picture of said trick. Then, what else to do with it but put it out there for the world on Twitter. With one eye on the little guy and one on the phone, he wrote a cute quip, hit the button and then froze. He'd accidentally sent it to his work Twitter account, not his personal one.

That means a few dozen friends and relatives who like reading every blip Seth makes in 140 characters or less did not receive the post. Instead, a mere 1,600 people who signed up for Oregon sports news got a snapshot of my monkey crawling on the furniture.

When he realized the mistake, he said he grabbed Jasper and headed to the computer in the den. Trying to pin Jasper on the couch next to him with an elbow, Seth called it up on the computer to fix the error. He then realized he couldn't do it on his own. About that time Jasper fell off the couch, thankfully, making a plop landing on his bottom. Once he spotted the remotes, the kid perked right up, he said.

At this point in Seth's relaying the morning to me, I ask, "Why didn't you put him in the Baby Einstein?" which is what we call our jumper/baby jail contraption, which Jasper is too big for but it works in a pinch.

"It was a moment of crisis," he said. "I wasn't thinking clearly. It was like that time when you spray painted the kitchen. Afterward you realized that was a really stupid idea."

True, so true. I very much underestimated the over spray factor and spent the next few weeks scrubbing tiny silver dots off of every surface in my kitchen.

In the end, the Tweet was pulled after Seth begged a colleague for help. Because the photo hadn't been saved anywhere else, I -- unlike the 1,576 Oregonian sports Twitter followers -- didn't get to see the picture. Perhaps a few of those people logged on expecting to see the latest on Chip Kelly's Ducks and instead got a glimpse of Jasper.

Too bad the grandmas don't follow that Twitter feed. I'm pretty sure they'd have thought it was newsworthy.

All for not

You may remember I've written a little bit about baby gates.

I guess I've become the de facto baby gate expert on my block. Friends and neighbors are now following up the "How's it going?" with a comment about the Gate Depression. And when they come over, they see the gate into the kitchen and ask if it's the one that caused so much trouble. In fact, I have to show most of these guests how to operate this gate -- the only one I've liked since the beginning.

It's simple, I tell them. Just pull up and swing. After a time or two, they get it and move freely in and out of it.

As a parent, I've anticipated a lot of things -- the newspaper on the table needs to be moved to the center because little fingers can now reach onto the edge. Or opening a cabinet in front of Jasper is an invitation for him to give it a try. And out of sight no longer means out of mind.

But I wasn't prepared for this.

Last night, as I was slicing some veggies to throw on the grill, I watched as my little angel did his drunk-sailor walk over to that gate, fought with it for about 10 second and then with ease, opened it right up and walked through.

With horror, I put down the knife (good mom points), retrieved him and shut the gate. A fluke, I thought. Back to the veggies. Then, once again he did the same thing, with more ease than a new adult guest to the house, he opened the gate.

Crap. And crap again when I told Seth, who responded: "Oh yeah, I saw him do that this afternoon."

Three times in one afternoon can only mean the boy knows what he's doing.

So it appears the joke's on me. Seth and I talked last night about how Jasper's rapid cognitive and physical growth may not be a good thing. Bad mommy and daddy.

Well, on the up side, maybe I won't get stuck behind gates anymore, and Jasper can now show visitors how to maneuver through our baby-proof house.

The Cleavers We're Not

The sweet and sticky chicken almost took us down tonight.

It's really unfortunate. It's a great recipe from Christiane back in the days at ATT when we had so much fun at work we almost peed our pants laughing every day. That was, of course, before we worked a 36-hours-straight shift and got laid off. But I digress.

As I started throwing the chicken in the pan, Jasper opened one of the last cabinet doors without safety latches and pulled out a ceramic dish that he then dropped on the floor, watching it shatter into a gazillion pieces. He was bare foot. I was bare foot. I had raw chicken in my hands.

I called for Seth, and managed to pick up Jasper without touching him with my wet-raw-chicken fingers. Seth appeared, and I shoved Jasper into his arms and started cleaning up the broken bowl. That's when I should have stopped.

After the cleanup, the cooking continued, and Jasper romped around the room, now taking his pants off whenever he pleased. The heat from the pan set the smoke alarm off, which, in turn, made Jasper cry. Baby crying on my hip, I am waving a kitchen towel at the alarm to get it to shut off. Then it goes off again. And again.

My mother-in-law will not be impressed because there was neither smoke nor flames. She's got the kitchen-fire-thing down. She once started a fire in her kitchen and managed to actually clean up and repaint before my father-in-law got home. This is a woman I can learn from, folks.

While I was cooking, Jasper had something in the works himself. He had a poopy diaper that Dad had to manage. Given Jasper's tendency to flip and climb and crawl, Seth actually straps him into the changing pad. And it's on the floor. All I hear on the monitor sitting on the kitchen counter is F*&$# -- D@#%* and the like. According to Seth (who snapped the boys hands down next to his side), Jasper couldn't keep his hands off of his dirty diaper area.

Finally, we all sit down to dinner and Seth asks why the floor is so sticky. After pan-frying the chicken, there was a layer of grease over every horizontal surface within 30 miles I suspect. This just pushed me over the edge. I saw the little foot prints in the greasy floor, too, but for some reason when Seth suggested I clean it, I just lost it.

The chicken was good, we all agreed. But not that good, Seth said, for this kind of mess. I sent my boys upstairs for bath and bed. I was a little disappointed when Seth came back downstairs. I was hoping he'd put himself to bed too.

Oh well. I spent the next hour cleaning the kitchen and nursing a glass of wine. Or two. Another day. Another dinner.

Righting my wrongs

Dear Safety 1st,

This is a heartfelt apology for all of the public disparaging I've been doing.

Like calling you Safety Last. Or suggesting you use real moms to test your product. And telling everyone I know, including my 198 Facebook friends, that they shouldn't ever buy one of your gates.

After about three weeks of rendering our top-of-stairs gate useless, my husband and handyman cousin fixed the gate. Now, it works as it should. I'm able to hold my baby in one hand and open the gate with the other. It makes you look brilliant, Safety 1st.

I, on the other hand, look just plain wrong. Know it is not often I admit the error of my ways. Just ask my husband.

I was wrong for making Safety 1st the butt of all household jokes. Like, Did you hear the guards at Guantanamo Bay said using their prisoners to test Safety 1st products was just too mean?

And it probably wasn't wise for me to call it the "effing gate." Online.

I apparently made such a big deal about it that my neighbors stopped me in the grocery store to share their own miserable gate stories. Oops.

I'm going to take this as a little lesson in parenthood. Sometimes things aren't as bad as they seem. It's easy to get caught up in the moment, like when you've been stuck on your second floor for 15 minutes with a baby who wants his breakfast. But after a little work and some patience, sometimes things work out.

Some things can be fixed. We just have to stop cursing long enough to let someone else get a word in.

Thank you for your attention to this issue, Safety 1st, as I am sure my baby's safety is your utmost concern.

Sincerely,
Amy McFall Prince

P.S. The Push 'n' Snap Cabinet Lock still could use some refining, I'm afraid. Or perhaps you could just change your target audience and market them as safety deposit box locks.

This is the way we learn, the way we learn, the way we learn...

I can't stop singing this song.

Counting, counting, counting is such fun
Count with me, come let's start with one
One, two, three, four, five, six, seven, eight, nine, ten
Wasn't that the best?
I'd love to count again

Over and over again. It's like I've lost all control. I'll be scrubbing the egg yolk off the breakfast dishes and just start singing out loud. I won't even be looking at Jasper -- sometimes he's not even in the room. I'm in one of those zone moments where you just go on autopilot. You know like when you get in the car and all the sudden you're at your destination and you can't remember driving there? Well, that's me with this song.

It's not exactly a new thing, though. Seth's always thought I had an uncanny ability to memorize the words to songs. My sister does the same thing. In fact her friend Hayden once told her that if only she could carry a tune, she'd be a great singer. The same could be said for me. We come by it honestly. Our mother is the queen of this, and you should see what happens when the three of us get together with some Bing Crosby at Christmas.

Without thinking, I used to bust out the lyrics to the Dixie Chicks ("The sheriff tipped his hat and said thank you, ladies..."), Aerosmith ("I was cryin' when I met you..."), John Mellencamp ("Jackie's gonna be a football star...") or even a little Cher ("If I could turn back time...").

Some tunes are just catchy, you know? And when you hear something over and over again, it starts to sink in. Especially, I think, if you're not trying to learn. If you're just letting life happen around you, things become familiar. I always sing the counting song when I walk into the kitchen because that's where I hear it most. It plays on a new toy we inherited from Dina, the Learning Play Home, and it sits in the room beside the kitchen. Jasper is in love with it as well as the other gazillion songs it plays.

He, too, is picking up on things going on around him. He's not singing Taylor Swift yet, but he is learning, every day. About six weeks ago he started shaking his head "no." For about five seconds I thought it must be some hard-wired human thing because I didn't think he learned it from me. But then I realized I was shaking my own head, I just wasn't thinking about it.

That's exactly what happened to Jasper yesterday when we were waving goodbye to the babysitter. He raised his own hand, did his own fist-clenching wave, opened his mouth and said, "Bye-bye."

Just like that. His first words that were something more than an indiscriminate sound. No "Dada" or "Momma," just "bye-bye."

It was amazing and adorable, and I have witnesses, so I know it wasn't a crazy-Mom-wanting-her-kid-to-sound-smart moment. We've been saying "Momma" and "Dada" a lot in an effort to teach him. All the while, he has been learning. Just like I learned the counting song. I didn't set out to memorize that song, trust me. I was just doing my thing, and I picked it up. Kids are no different. In fact, they probably learn more than adults do because we often stop paying attention to the small, common things.

Maybe I'm catching on. "Bye-bye" is hardly a meaningless phrase in my book, now.

Early to Rise

Jasper woke up at 6 this morning. Surprising, actually since Seth's alarm started going off at 5:30. I don't know quite how he does it, but he crawled into bed about midnight last night and got up at 6 as well to head to the gym.

What annoys me most isn't that he gets some time to himself, gets to work out or gets an invigorating start to his day. It annoys me that he gets six hours of sleep and still gets out of bed for the gym. Even as a mom I feel guilty in his company complaining about being tired when I am getting at least seven uninterrupted hours of sleep a night these days.

Oh well. This morning I'm doing better following a very mom-centric trip to the neighborhood Walgreens yesterday. I picked up coffee, milk and a $20 to pay the babysitter today. Last week at the grocery store I bought only decaf coffee -- I usually mix caf and decaf bulk beans. I'd been having heart burn, and thought reducing the caffeine would help. Ouch. It's been a rough week's worth of mornings. The caffeine in the morning is so worth a little tummy ache in the afternoon. This morning I said to Seth, "Despite getting up at 6, I feel good thanks to some caffeine."

Seth's response: "I know enough to know that when you feel good, I feel good."

And Jasper seemed to take part in this morning feel-good moment. You might remember several months back when I posted a pic of him practically climbing out of the bouncy seat (oh, those were the days!)? I was surprised back then how quickly he outgrew a toy. Well, that little activity table I bought him about three months ago seems to have suffered the same fate as the bouncy seat. I'd been noticing it upside down with legs sticking straight up. Hmm, I thought. Just how is that happening? Then, I witnessed my little angel, just some 30-inches tall, flipping the wide-legged table over with one hand as if he were the Incredible Hulk.

We're just about done with that toy, I thought.

This morning he made it official. We're done with that toy. I turned around to spot him on top of it. Literally, no limbs touching the floor. He slid off, giddy, and did it again. Please don't think I'm a terrible mom because I snapped a picture before pulling him off. Notice it's fuzzy. At least I didn't take multiple ones to get him in focus. Anybody in need of an activity table?

Growin' Up

I can hardly believe it, but Jasper will be 11 months old on Saturday. When I think back to this time last year it makes me a little sappy, but it also makes me remember that I like being able to climb the stairs without getting out of breath. And sleeping on my stomach is so relaxing. Plus, I don't have anxiety about making plans more than a day ahead, not quite knowing when I could be headed to the hospital.

To celebrate, I'm going to give you a little update on the little guy.

• Jasper is nearly walking. He can stand on his own quite well and will even take steps if he can hold on to mommy or daddy with one hand. This is going to change things dramatically, but I am so excited for this next phase (please remind me of that!).
  
• The little man waves to daddy every morning when he leaves for work. It is absolutely adorable.
  
• Jasper thinks Wiley is a hoot. He loves to throw balls for the dog and watch him fetch. We are happy that Wiley is at least tolerant. Actually, we think he secretly loves it. He won't give up the ball to either one of us, but he will turn it over easily to Jasper.
  
• Jasper is a good eater. He's in a stage where pretty much anything orange is awesome. Cantaloupe, cheddar cheese and carrots are all on the favorite list. He's eating pretty much whatever we eat, and I am loving cooking for my boys even more than I thought I could. Seth, however, could do without the mess!
• Jasper is sleeping through the night most of the time. It means we usually get up pretty early, but I'll take it. I do still find myself sleepy at times and thinking I need a new excuse -- my baby doesn't need me all night!
• Jasper plays well independently, but there are times he's becoming even more clingy. Usually I can help him out by introducing a new toy.
• I am struggling with how on earth you cut a toddler's finger nails since the little guy won't be still for more than a second. So far I'm taking the advice of a friend and carrying the clippers around in a pocket, so I don't miss an opportunity.
  
• I'm also pretty sure that Jasper is a full-fledged biter. I sometimes react with an "Ouch! That hurt Momma!" He in turn has one of two reactions: laughs or bursts into tears. Yikes.
  

Here's a pic of him at dinner last night. He loves beans, as you can see. He's trying (unsuccessfully) to feed himself with spoon.

Soaked

When I was in grade school I spent a lot of time, especially in the summers, hanging out with my sister and her friends. She's four years older, and I couldn't think of anything cooler than whatever she and her girlfriends were doing.

One of her friends belonged to a country club, and a few times we were lucky enough to go there with her to swim in a huge pool. After swimming we'd go to the bathrooms, which were the biggest and nicest public potties I'd ever seen. I think there was a hot tub in there, saunas and a huge vanity with baskets full of toiletries, including tampons. I watched with amazement as my sister and her friend plugged the sink and dropped in a tampon. I couldn't believe how the cotton would swell.

That's not a thought I recall often, but today, in amazement, it's all I could think of. I was moving a load of Jasper's laundry from the washer to the dryer and was a little scared when I grabbed for something that was squishy. I pulled my hand out of the washer and discovered a diaper -- a disposable diaper -- in my hand along with a washcloth and a bib. It weighed about 10 pounds and was the size of a small cat. Like the tampon, I imagined a moment of the water filling the washer bin and POOF the diaper multiplied like those those tiny foam capsules that turn into dinosaur toys in the bath tub. Not surprisingly, the diaper was clean. But, I thought, what had been in it?

I had no idea how it got in the laundry. I suppose I could have swept it up with a pile of clothes after bath time. Or had I thrown it into the pile on my way downstairs with the laundry basket with the intention of taking it outside because it was so disgusting? Or could it have been a clean diaper that Jasper was playing with and somehow managed to get it into his laundry basket? This last option is possible but not so probable. Still, I like to think that there's a small chance the diaper was clean to begin with.

Previously I'd found whole beans, chunks of chicken and baby wipes in the laundry. This, however, caught me by surprise. I'm pretty sure, though, I'm not the first mom to make this mistake.

Still, I was grossed out, so I took the diaper straight to the trash. Then, I pulled the wet clothes that had already made it into the dryer back to the washer and started the load again.

Heloise, I think, would advise me not to dry my salad greens in the spin cycle anymore. Oops.

Rookie Mom Mistake: Assuming it's only dirty clothes in that pile of laundry.

Feeling Good Underneath

I once heard on Oprah that every woman should wear matching lingerie. As in a bra and panties that match. Every. Day.

Really? It's supposed to make you feel better about yourself. Much of the past year and a half of my life, I've been wearing one of two bras, and the underwear, thankfully, haven't been maternity for several months. If there is one word to describe my undergarments of late, it is not sexy or even flattering for that matter. Utilitarian is more like it. They're frayed, rumpled and over-stretched. So, since Jasper is now officially weaned from breast feeding I decided maybe it was time to update my underwear. (If this were Facebook, Seth would click "Like" beside this sentence, giving it the thumbs up.)

To celebrate I went to Nordstrom. I know, it's not really my speed. I felt like a total loser in my jeans, T-shirt and Converse browsing through the lingerie department. Yes, I could have gone somewhere cheaper, but I'd heard amazing things about shopping for bras at Nordstrom, and I wanted to check it out. I needed serious shopping and no distractions of teenagers plucking through hot pink thongs at a back-to-school sale.

A young clerk who seemed far too hip to sell grandma's nightshirts offered to help. A reassuring sign, I thought. She politely listened to me explain how a pregnancy and nearly a year of nursing had left me clueless to my bra size. And then it began. She measured me, fitted me and began bringing me more pretty bras and panties than I'd ever had in my own dresser. I told her that the leopard print and hot pink weren't my style, and I prayed she didn't notice my tattered pink Xhilaration bra from Target crumpled on the dressing room stool.

In the end, I came home with two new bras. I almost asked to wear one out of the store, like you can do with shoes, but I thought that might make me look a little too pathetic. After all, she was giving me bra advice that sounded like a mother-daughter conversation from another era. She told me that a woman really needed at least four bras in her rotation, so that each one had proper time to rest before the next wearing. That way, she said, the elastic will last longer. I had no idea there was a science as to which bra to wear on which day. Don't tell, but I also stopped using a lingerie bag for laundry a long time ago, too. And, I use regular laundry soap. Gasp!

I spent more money than I thought possible on bras, and I didn't even buy the most expensive ones they had. I've done a double take while I passing by a mirror today. Of course, the pretty bra is hidden under my tattered "Goonies" T-shirt that I'm pretty sure most of my neighborhood thinks must be one of three shirts I own. But I can see that pretty bra working. I've got a bit more shape, sure, I mean, how can you get less shape than a nursing bra, that, while comfortable, comes only in sizes S, M, L and XL? But I do feel good about it, too.

My sneakers are stained with red sauce, my capri-cut off Levis have frayed hems and my short hair is falling from the pony tail I try to pull together. And today I've got a few snot trails on my jeans thanks to Jasper, and the quick makeup job of mascara and powder. But the best part is that I feel pretty good knowing what I've got on underneath all of this.

I'm pretty sure that when Jasper starts crying, throwing a tantrum because I will not let him climb up the steps for the 300th time, I won't have some zen feeling come over me just because of some lace and elastic. It's not that kind of feel good. I feel just a little less frumpy. Even if you couldn't tell from the outside.

Rookie Mom Mistake: Getting rid of heartburn is not worth being sleepy all day, so drink the coffee with caffeine and pop a Tums later.

Safety Last

I think I'm not alone in keeping my dishwasher soap, Windex and Comet in the cabinet under the kitchen sink. In that Heloise's Kitchen Hints book I mentioned on my other blog I read a tip about moving these things to a higher cabinet. Heloise, however, wasn't worried about children consuming toxic cleaners. She professed how much energy we'd save by not bending over so many times a day.

Heloise clearly did not have kids. Bending down to pull out the Palmolive is hardly the most taxing thing I do in a day.

Jasper is now tall enough and smart enough to open the cabinets using the knobs. And since I think Heloise's advice is a bit off for 2009 (I'll give her a pass because I think in the 1960s when the book was published dishwashers weren't next to every sink, making that cabinet the logical place for the soap.), we needed to do something to make sure Jasper wasn't able to lick the chemical-laden bottles.

We bought and installed some of those safety latches that mount inside the cabinet and you press down after opening them slightly. But my sink is so deep that it gets in the way, rendering the latches as useful as that stupid baby gate. So I put a fat rubber band around the knobs until we could find a better solution. I made a trip to the hardware store down the street where the manager helped me find the kind of safety latch that goes on the outside of the cabinet. He was sold out of them, so he ordered more just because I asked. How sweet, I thought.

The next week I returned, found the Safety 1st Push 'n Snap Cabinet Lock, bought it and came home. I popped it out of the package and gave it a try. Hmm. Not so easy to open, and it wasn't even on the cabinet yet. Maybe it had a learning curve, I thought. So I fastened it on the knobs. Smiled, and walked away.


Next thing I know, Jasper was VERY interested in this new thing. And the cabinet doors he'd ignored for the past week were once again intriguing. He pushed and pulled on the thing, tightening the lock even more than I did. It was a success, though, in terms of keeping him out of the cabinet. I'd worry about opening it later.

I kind of forgot about the lock altogether until I was cleaning up the dishes from dinner that night. I plunked the last plate into the bottom rack of the dishwasher, pushed the door shut, and in the routine motion, reached for the cabinet to grab the soap.

It was a no go. Seth, who was downstairs but within ear shot, asked what my grunting was about. I halfway explained as I cursed, pushed and pulled. Please, I asked, would he help. Finally, with both of us pushing and pulling, using a chopstick to press down the tiny button and a butter knife for leverage, the lock popped open.

It was kid-proof all right, and, I imagined, more stressful than calling poison control.

I pulled the lock off the knobs, threw it back in the packaging and mumbled how I didn't want to take it back because the friendly manager had ordered it just for me. "Take. It. Back," Seth said.

I then wondered if any mom had ever gone postal at a Safety 1st. How funny that would be, huh? I could see the headlines now, mixing the words safety, crazed, mom and weapon. All joking aside, I do not want anyone to get hurt, inflict pain or otherwise maim people over design flaws. But is it really too much to ask that things just work right? I personally volunteer for product testing.

So, I'm back to the rubber band. It's one of those really wide ones that doesn't have too much give, so it doesn't slip right off. I'm pretty sure you won't see it mentioned in the baby safety manual, but it's working. Sue me; it works better than anything we've actually paid for. Jasper simply leaves it alone, and I can run the dishwasher all by myself, no spouse, chopstick or butter knife required.

Rookie Mom Mistake: Believing that baby safety products will work the way they're advertised. Or that they reduce stress. Heloise, I'm pretty sure, would agree that a little less stress can do wonders for a woman's day.

Confessions of a Cable Junkie

So I have a confession to make. Remember recently how I talked about the luxuries we used to have? Well, despite our better budget-conscious judgment, we went and got cable again.

There. I said it. I felt a little like I was cheating on you, leading you to believe I wasn't really siting here watching HGTV while I blog. Let me explain, we canceled cable more than a year ago. But thanks to someone not doing their job, we were still getting all of the channels, just no bill. Then, the cable company made the digital switch, and we lost several channels. Then the regular channels did the digital switch, and we got like no channels. We bought antennas, placed them here and there, and cursed a bit that Jasper wasn't old enough to hold onto to them so I could watch me some Oprah with clear reception.

It was the last straw when I lost all channels on the TV in our bedroom. We're not talking just bad reception, it was fuzz. Before you get feeling all holier-than-thou about TVs in the bedroom, calm yourself. I watch it from my full-size hand-me-down bed I've had since high school. It ain't the Ritz. And we managed to have Jasper, so it's not ruining my marriage. I must have it; I have some crazy fascination with watching the weather every night on the local news. I blame this on my parents. Mom and Dad, you should feel proud. There are worse things I could cry to a shrink about, right?

Seth did the cable deal when I wasn't even home. He told me I deserved it since I was here at home alone (as in without adult company, he means) a lot. I believe him, but I also think he doesn't mind getting multiple sports channels in HD either. And he clearly sneaks a peak at E! every once in a while because he mentioned that Kendra from The Girls Next Door had her own show. (Just to be clear, he did not call her by name, but he was able to describe her as the one who married the football player.)

Now when I think about how indulgent it feels to have cable again, I'll remind myself of that master bathroom fantasy. Then, I'll remember, I do deserve cable.

And that Rookie Mom Mistakes list? A memory that recently made me laugh deserves to be on the list: At about six months pregnant I spent hours online researching which diaper pail I should buy. No joke, I read reviews, scanning for the word "odor" for days, stressing about it and afraid to commit to one. Oh, the time I had on my hands. I now know, just throw the shit in the trash.

The Gate's Not Closed Yet

Just when we thought we'd closed the chapter on the Gate Depression, I got stuck. Literally, I got stuck upstairs. Just me and Jasper, home alone at 6:30 in the morning with the magical one-handed gate stuck shut. Seth was off at the gym, probably being invigorated to the likes of adrenaline, sweat and Radiohead. I was invigorated, too, all right. Even sweating. But the only thing I heard were the expletives coming from my own mouth. Thank goodness Jasper found the cord of an unplugged fan to keep him preoccupied.

After 20 minutes, a near mommy meltdown and a few thoughts of how exactly I could climb over, holding Jasper, and stick the landing on the next step, I managed to pull the damn thing open. So naturally when Seth arrived home moments later I breathlessly explained how traumatic my morning had been. He seemed neither thankful for our safe return to the main floor of the house or mildly interested in fixing said piece of crap gate.

This battle was mine, and mine alone. After all, I'm the idiot who insisted on the gates, right? I knew better than to push this topic. I felt thankful I'd been able to convince him to install them in the first place. So, to take out my frustration, I fired off a nasty letter to Safety 1st, the manufacturer of the gate. I had every intention of posting the entire piece of prose right here on this blog. It would make you all howl with laughter, I thought. I made jabs about how maybe next time, for giggles, Safety 1st should test the gates on real moms who were holding babies and baskets of laundry. I mentioned that I would tell all of my mommy friends how terrible the gate was -- isn't a bad product review like the worst thing ever for a company like that?

But then I took a closer look at the gate. No doubt, the Safety 1st Smartlight Stair Gate is by far not the best invention in the modern baby-safety-retail-scheme. I am convinced the reason there was a man with a baby pictured on the box is because the one-handed operation only works if you've got a bear paw for a hand. But our gate, I believe, is maybe, just possibly, not exactly installed 100 percent correctly. So I bagged the letter-writing campaign and called my cousin Nathan who is a farmer and handyman. After explaining how Seth might divorce me if I asked him to re-install the gate for a third time, he happily agreed to come over and remedy the situation. (Mother, that was a joke. I do not really think Seth would divorce me over the gate. It would take something much more dramatic, like, say, throwing out his iPhone with a bag of dirty diapers.)

Other than the safety hazard of my second floor (I refuse to shut the gate again until it's fixed), things are going well here on the home front. Jasper is standing on his own, and I think real steps are not too far off. We're nearly weaned (HOO-RAY), and he got the thumbs up from the doc about his sluggish weight gain. Football season has begun, so I am now the newsman's widow, at least for the next few months. I may be the only one in town who gets pissed when the local college teams win. Their good fortune could drag the season out longer or even get them to a bowl game, which would land in the middle of the holidays.

Next up, I'm working on a list of Rookie Mom Mistakes. Like the one last night: Laughed at Jasper when he threw a chickpea during dinner. Laughter prompted repeat action. Sigh. When will I learn?

Just a Mom

For some reason, I've felt uncomfortable about saying I'm a stay-at-home mom since the day I decided not to go back to work. When people asked, "What do you do?", how would I answer?

As a grade-school kid, I had a couple of friends whose moms stayed at home. There was one friend, whose mom was our Blue Bird Leader. And another, whose mom played a lot of tennis. And still another friend, well, I'm not sure what her mom did aside from smoke cigarettes and clean her already immaculate house. But none of those girls lived in my neighborhood. They were, it seemed, in a different league. They had neighborhood pools, rode their bikes to school and rode the bus only on school field trips, enjoying it for the novelty it would be if you weren't harassed on it daily by the boys on the block.

I don't remember a time when my mom didn't work. She went to nursing school and worked a variety of jobs when I was just starting school. Then, to pay back her school debt, she worked the night shift at Mercy Hospital, leaving my dad in charge of getting my sister and I out the door in the mornings. Her schedule eventually changed, and she went to work with most of the rest of the world, during the day.

Staying at home seemed foreign to me. I thought most of us in the middle would naturally go back to work. Stay-at-home moms, I thought, were sandwiched on the other ends of the socio-economic ladder -- those who had children young, had little education and couldn't climb out of a cycle their families are wedded to and then those who've never worried about paying the mortgage or buying designer clothes for their kids.

So I struggle to understand where I fit in. My family lives fairly comfortably. But we do worry about paying our bills, especially in light of recent news of more pay cuts and layoffs at Seth's work. I haven't bought myself one piece of clothing that came from anywhere nicer than Target in more than a year. I'd love to grocery shop exclusively organic, especially meats, but I know that would more than double our food costs. And Jasper is outfitted in mostly gifted, hand-me-down or consignment shop clothes.

This isn't a pity party, though. I feel damn lucky that we can afford for me to stay at home with Jasper. I tell people that if I'd been in love with my career, it might have been different. But I don't know if that's true. It would have been hard for me to handle a job and be the one responsible for getting Jasper to and from childcare, doctor's appointments, stay at home with him when he's sick and still put dinner on the table. We have no family in town, and Seth's schedule leaves me wondering at times if I'd see him more if he were a doctor.

I spend a few dreamy moments a day getting excited thinking of ways I could fit "work" into my life. Maybe I could get paid to write. Maybe someone will stumble upon me online and give me the book deal of the century. Or maybe I could be a cooking coach and help families learn to shop and cook for themselves.

Usually my thoughts are interrupted by a crash of blocks hitting the wood floors, or the now rote "no-no" I say when Jasper climbs onto the dishwasher door. Have stay-at-home moms always had dreams about what else they could do? I mean seriously, I know the 1960s feminism happened, Betty Friedan and Affirmative Action, but wasn't it mostly the daughters of stay-at-home moms wanting to buck the trend? I'm happy for their efforts; it gives us a choice. In college I had a women's history professor in college who predicted that not too far in the future we'd see the stay-at-home-mom model revived much like the 1950s. Everything, she said, comes back around.

I'm still searching for my right to this lifestyle.

In that vain, I made myself a business card. It helps validate my other blog, which I need to get more people to come see what I write there. Plus, it's just kinda fun. Reminds me of when I was a cub reporter and felt so proud to hand my card to a small-town county commissioner or sheriff.

I never really had an answer to that question everyone asks kids: What do you want to be when you grow up? I was great at dreaming -- actress, equestrian, Saturday Night Live writer, and, of course, my ambition at 15 to be a performer in a water ski show. Maybe, I thought, if I let myself percolate long enough, something greater than I could imagine would surface. A dream I'd never even thought of, a job I'd never really considered. Then college came around and I had to stop dreaming and get serious.

I am a mom. It's a job, no doubt, but I'm still left feeling a little sheepish about it. That must be why I keep volunteering for things, leaving myself frazzled at the load I pile up for myself.

I need to start believing that I have realized my potential. Sure, I can always grow and become something more, but, where I'm at right now, isn't a bad place to start.

A Little Retreat

Back in the days before furloughs and layoff scares, we had a few luxuries around this place. Like cable. I'm talking 70-plus channels of everything from Playboy Bunnies to Sportscenter to QVC. I also had more time, especially when I was pregnant.

Looking like I'd swallowed a basketball seemed a plenty good excuse to sit around and watch HGTV like a drunk zombie. Why, I would always think, if I had $35,000 to remodel a room in my house, would I pick the bathroom? I wouldn't, I'd tell myself. I'd put it into a room I spent more time in. We did, after all, remodel our kitchen a few years ago, an investment I could stomach. Don't get me wrong, we've updated our bathrooms in this house, but those jobs consisted of new tile and toilets. The extravagance was our beautiful pedestal sink in the upstairs bath. The total cost of that job was probably about $1,500. A price well worth it if you'd seen the stink hole it was before -- literally, there was no toilet for several months after we first moved in.

When I was pregnant I did begin to see that a master bath was not a luxury to be overlooked. How pleasant would it be to not share a bathroom with a toddler, I'd think? Seth was already having minor convulsions at the mere mention of bath toys and infant tubs.

Our bathroom, one of two in the house and the only one on the second floor, is cute. All 48 square feet of it. We used to joke about how one could literally use the toilet and brush his or her teeth at the same time. Sometimes multi-tasking is just inappropriate.

Now that I'm a Mom, I see the beauty of those spa-retreat-inspired bathrooms. The kind with cushioned benches, a separate WC and oh, those huge showers! The bathroom, it seems, is the only place I can go in my own house and be completely alone and not feel guilty. OK, to be honest, I do still feel guilty sometimes, like say, when Jasper's awake and I have to take a shower. He cries as he bangs on the crib bars. But I rationalize it by reminding myself he's safe. And I skip the extras like shaving my legs or standing under the warm water for a few extra minutes.

I remember as a kid that my mom would disappear to the bathroom for a while at times. And I recently learned my grandmother who doesn't smoke enjoys a cigarette in hers. And there's the story of my younger cousin who, as a toddler, got so pissed that her mother was enjoying a bath without her that she retrieved a bottle of ketchup from the fridge and squirted it all over the door -- a sort of see-what-happens-when-you-leave-me note.

Seth tells me that master bathrooms are over-rated. He, obviously, still gets his bathroom time, uninterrupted. He tells me that our lovely old home, built in 1907, has seen lots of families raised and surely all of them adjusted to life without a master bathroom or other luxuries such as great rooms, baby gates and air conditioning.

Well sure, people survived in 1907. But some great things have happened since then. Like women's suffrage, the invention of the dishwasher and immunizations that eradicated disease. And, my friends, the Master Bathroom.

Someday, I'll get mine. I probably still won't be able to spend a small fortune on it, and it likely won't feel just like I stepped into a spa. I don't even need multiple shower heads or garden tubs (although my own sink would be dreamy). If it's a place for a few solitary moments in what seems like an otherwise crazy house, it will be worth it.

And if Seth quibbles, I'll also remind him that the iPhone did not exist in 1907. That, I'm pretty sure, will register with him.

A Day's Work: Calf Roping and Rodeo Clowning

I'm thinking of joining the Professional Rodeo Cowboys Association.

The PRCA, as it's known to those in Wranglers and ultra-stiff cowboy hats, isn't for the weak, but neither is motherhood. I'm thinking with a little more practice I could be quite good at calf roping. As a kid I got my horseback training riding a crazy Arabian named Feather who was known for his bucking rants and spooking streaks. I'm pretty sure everyone who rode him got thrown at least once.

And now, Jasper is teaching me the finer points of catch and tie, or, in his case, diaper swap. A couple of weeks ago he took a liking to playing (ie. throwing, licking, crinkling) with diapers (don't worry, they were clean), so I removed them from the lower shelf of his changing table and placed them up top. Changing him on the changing table was becoming a joke, so now the pad lives on the floor, and that's where we begin the drill.

Plopping him down on his back is like the opening of the chute. All of the sudden it's a race between the two of us. I make a break to pull his pants off before he makes his initial flip. Then, I grab is tiny barrel of a chest and flip him to his back, grab his legs, pull 'em up high, slip the clean diaper under his bum and, try my damnedest to get the old diaper off and butt wiped before he flips again. As you may have guessed, the event gets more challenging based on what exactly is in the diaper -- when it's really messy, it's as if you've gone from saddle club to the PRCA finals in Las Vegas. The stakes are higher because mastering the wipe and change, or tie-down, is a matter of mess. A bare poopy butt on the move is a disaster even the pros don't want to wrestle.

We'll give extra points for moms who are able to keep baby's hands out of the "diaper area" as its known in our field.

I think even if I can't cut it in the calf-roping arena, there's still the job of rodeo clown. And maybe that description fits us mommies even better: The under appreciated rodeo clown wears baggy clothes and make-up that appears to be applied while driving in a sleepy haze. Pockets are a necessity to carry around those hankies to throw at a moment's notice. When a cowboy is in danger, the clown's job is to get between him and the bull. Not only is the job to distract the bull, but the clown is the distraction. And a good day's work means no one got seriously hurt. It's OK that the cowboy gets the prize because the clowns aren't in it for the glory. We've come to like the job of keeping everyone else safe and happy. Besides, when you're in the arena with the bull, it's not like you have a choice, right?

Now if we could just see about getting those barrels for hiding when the bull is too much to handle.

Extra! Larger Baby Proof Area Saves Mom's Sanity

Since I've been a bit of a killjoy lately, I thought I'd let you all know that I'm not a raving mad mother. In fact, some things in my life have taken a remarkable shift toward the direction of sanity. Granted, these are often minor things -- like finding a way to unload the dishwasher without my little monkey crawling on the door and standing up -- but I'm in a stage where small things can equal big rewards (such as the ability to write this blog post while Jasper plays).

The gate situation was a major improvement, but I took it a step further. On Monday with Seth safely away at work I swapped our living room and dining rooms. I'd been plotting the shift since Saturday but thought it best to do it on my own, sans a major discussion regarding the merits of the shift (Seth, ever the planner, would have requested an outline of the pros and cons). Sometimes I operate better when I just get to act on a crazy thought streaming through my head. Here's where I should thank my friends for helping plant that seed.

After much grunting and sweating, I'd pushed the furniture all around this house. Then I went and borrowed a wide gate from Dina to block the traffic between the two rooms. She offered to come down and help when she heard what I was doing, so I thanked her and let her know the work was done. And once I had her gate in hand it was heavenly.

The new living area is completely baby proof. No electrical cords, no delicate furniture and no stairs. He can now move freely from the kitchen to the living room (former dining room), and I know he's safe, so I can take an extra second to unload the dishwasher while he's distracted.


To my surprise Seth said he liked the shift. This means one of two things: It was a smart decision on my part and he sees me as the wise woman I am, or, following the Gate Depression, he has decided to conceded to my powers as chief decision maker regarding all things house and baby. Either way, we've taken to calling the new living area The Parlor, which is funny because it conjures up an image in my mind of a stuffy adult room.

Frankly we weren't using either of those rooms much to begin with seeing as if we do very little entertaining these days. And our house wasn't blessed with built-in china cabinets, bookcases or anything else that distinctly designates those rooms as living or dining spaces. So, the switch will stick.

Jasper is enjoying the freedom. I am enjoying the couple of extra minutes this affords me throughout the day, and Seth, I'm pretty sure, is just happy I'm happy.

The Gates of Hell

On Saturday I was a crazed mom. The one you look at and avoid. I was in the gate aisle of Babies Suck (my new name for Babies R Us, besides I can't write the stupid backwards R). I was ripping open boxes, sitting on the floor, reading instructions and inspecting hardware. I was my second trip in two days. I called Seth and asked once again for measurements. Here's where I should mention that I later made yet another trip because the one stupid box I didn't open there in the store had its hardware missing. Lovely.

Back to Babies Suck. Why, I wondered, are all of the babies pictured on the boxes old enough for high school? OK, maybe that's a bit much, but they are not 10 months old like my little monkey who wants to crawl and climb onto everything. They're big. This one had a kid with clean, pressed khakis on who stood as tall as the 36-inch-high gate with combed hair and a clean Polo shirt taking a sippy cup from his Mommy, who also had clean clothes, nice shoes and shirt tucked in. Oh, and their house was clean.

This is what Jasper looked like this morning, trapped in the zoo, as Seth called it.


His hair is a mess. He's on outfit No.2 of the morning because his diaper leaked overnight. His diaper leaked because I cannot keep him still long enough to get a good fit around his hips (remember the climbing and crawling comment?). His nose is snotty. He's got a yellowing bruise on his right cheek thanks to a bath-time incident (remember the climbing and crawling comment?). When I step through the gate, leaving him momentarily, he cries. This is the picture I want to see on the damn baby gate box. Or maybe there should be one of Mom and Dad looking really angry while installing the gate. Or maybe one of Mom drinking a glass of wine while baby cries at the gate. Oh wait, what about one where Mom, holding baby, looks frustrated operating the "One-handed" handle.

After all of this I remember that the gates were intended to bring a little relief. Maybe now I can cook dinner without a thousand interruptions to keep Jasper from going to the stairs. Or I can let him crawl out of his room into the hall just as he did this morning. The gates help create a safe place for him to play. Or cry.

Home Again

We just returned from a 10-day trip back home to Oklahoma to visit family and friends.

We're catching up on things around the house and Seth with work, but I promise to offer up more pics soon. Here is a picture of the three of us at Possum Kingdom Lake near Graham, Texas. Jasper likes sand!

The Mother Load

So last week was a blur. I was doing a lot of work for Mint Tea, helping redo their web site, and I'd somehow managed to fill my plate with volunteer duties as well. In one week's time I volunteered for a food and wine festival that Leah helped organize, did my monthly neighborhood newsletter editor duties and helped pull off the first of this summer's Uptown Movie Nights. I'm exhausted just writing all of this. And somewhere in there I was fighting off another round of breast feeding issues. Seems I have blocked-duct disease. Fun times in the milk factory!

That said, it's been a good time. Jasper's latest trick is that he is walking while pushing his little wagon. It's too cute. Here's a little video. It's super short, and please don't think I'm a bad mom because I laugh when he falls. He was just fine. Wouldn't you know it, the time I catch it on video, it's the one time he takes a bad spill. Such is life, huh?

Lost in the shuffle

Here are a few pics from back when my parents visited. Just found them while looking through some other files. Papa thought it was fun to give Jasper an empty beer bottle, while I enjoyed putting my straw hat on the little guy. Thanks to that little adventure, Jasper now likes to dig beer bottles out of the recycle bin!