things we say

All of a sudden, it's like a language explosion at our house. (I've read recently that some kids begin talking after they are weaned - a process we are working on, but a post for another time.) At any rate, whatever the reason, suddenly we have a little tiny person (a little tiny bossy person) who can say:

things she's been saying for awhile, like:
mama
dada (usually shouted, DA!!!!)
ba (ball)
mow (mole) (yeah, I know. But she loves pinching the mole on my neck while she nurses.)
lo (hello)
yeah
no

and all kinds of new things, like:
atsahhh (outside)
bu (bus)
maw (meow)
cack cack (quack)
bye
doh (door) (or possible Homer Simpson impression)
mo (more, accompanied by frantic and/or forceful signing of same)

Plus a whole lot of other language that I have, as of yet, not quite figured out, much to her consternation.

It's amazing, all the changes that happen overnight - when there are so many other things that seem. to. take. forever. But suddenly there's a little person living in our house, where there used to be a baby. What?

You know who else should get to say a new word for themselves? Mo and Will. They need to say "mommy" and "daddy" and it needs to mean them. They're in the beginning of another pregnancy and, if you don't know their story, suffice it to say this: please God, may this be the one. Go over and cheer them on if you haven't already.

leap (late).

In the spirit of "better late than never," accompanied by the spirit of "last week was insane but we survived, so here's to better days," a post in honor of Leap Day. Or, the one week anniversary of Leap Day.

The other day, I bought four boxes of Sam.oa cookies from my local Girl Scout Drug Pusher Cookie Salesgirl, and I hid them in the bottom drawer of the desk in my office. I do this because, although we also buy said cookies openly from somebody at my husband's school and eat them at home, the rate at which my husband consumes these cookies (lightspeed) is problematic for me, since I rarely get to enjoy them before they are gone. Which conversation usually goes like this:

me: where are the Sam.oas?
husband: (silence)
me: WHERE ARE THE SAM.OAS?
husband: you mean that box from yesterday?
me: (eye roll)
husband: did you want another one?

My dear, you have known me for nine years. You should know by now: I always want another one.

So, I have developed a Girl Scout Cookie Season Survival Strategy, which is to buy four boxes of Sam.oas secretly and hide them. At first I felt a little guilty about this. Spouses are not supposed to have secrets from each other, right? Surely this means my marriage is on the rocks and it is but a hop, skip, and jump from Hidden Cookies to Raging Affair with the Copy Boy (if we had such boy, which we do not, in my office).

But then I leapt to the realization, the other day, that the cookies might be about something else.

Here's the thing: we have fully entered toddlerhood in our household, and it. is. hard. Also fun, because she cracks me up with her emerging language (such as starting every "sentence" with rapid-fire "um, um, um, um," while trying to get out whatever mysterious word I won't understand anyway). And she is more communicative in other ways, like pointing at her bum when she needs to be changed - or, as the other day, laying down on the floor, throwing her legs up in the air, and putting a kitchen towel on her butt. Ah, subtlety.

But her frustration level is also markedly increased, I'm guessing because a.) she is so freaking close to being able to say things and, in fact, thinks she is saying discernable things, and she gets pissed off that we don't understand her; and b.) we are starting the weaning process. So we have a lot of screamy mornings, in particular. And given that our mornings start at about 5:00am (sohelpmeuniverse, if you know how to fix that, please tell me) it can make for a long day.

But those little funny moments - like how she has learned to sign "cold" by holding fists next to her upper arms and shaking them when you say, "brrr!"; and how she makes herself laugh when she thinks something is supposed to be funny; and how she lays on her back with a book held up in the air and 'reads' it, usually upside down; and how she says, "yeah," or, "no," in answer to everything regardless of what she actually means, and how, the other day, when I gave her dinner and asked her if it was hot, she said, "no," and then I said, "what would you do if it was hot?" and she blew/spit on the food - they're my Samo.as in the desk drawer.

And I need them. I need some hidden sweetness, in these days and the days to come, when I am going to lose my mind from getting up at 5:00am or trying to figure out what she needs or simply wanting to bang my head on the counter because I'm losing my mind with the whining. I need to be able to reach into the back of my head and pull out the moment when I asked her for a kiss and she ran across the room, lips pursed, and crashed into my mouth, saying, "mmmmmm." And the moment when she started saying, quite clearly, "what's this?" 

I need those hidden cookies because there is a lot of - I don't know, brussel sprouts, or whatever vegetable you don't particularly love but know is part of a healthy diet. Good news for me: there's a lot of sweetness. I just have to remember this.

Especially at 5:00am.