Urban Drool

My little Pickle,

You turned 5 months old last Sunday, and per our agreement, you started kicking in your share of the room and board.

…no, not really, but wouldn’t that be nice?

Everyone is so impatient for you to grow up!! Grandpa K asks me all the time if you can “say the words ‘Tatoo’ or ‘Mazarati’” and your little cousin is so psyched for a young female relation with whom to share dolls and make-up tips that she seems almost disappointed that you are not as interactive as she wants you to be.

“when’s Lucy gonna walk?...will she talk to me yet?...I wanna play with her!...why doesn’t she smile at me?” are her plaintive cries as she shoves yet another toy approximately 1.2 inches from your face and waggles it around.

Good-hearted and patient soul that you are, you usually just stare at her bemusedly for a moment and then turn away to grab what you REALLY wanted…Mr. Crinkle Cow. Or occasionally, Mr. Duck.

What little cousin doesn’t see is how amazing and interactive you really have become. You have very definite wants and desires, likes and dislikes. You laugh! You talk! You have genuine playtimes and hold entire conversations. Sometimes with me, sometimes with papa, sometimes with your big toe.

I hereby present the Big List of Things You Like:

BLoTYL:

1) grabbing your feet and spreading your legs WAY open – ala Pamela Anderson. Or Paris Hilton. Or, you know, me on one of your Papa’s luckier days.

2) Car rides

3) Bananas (I don’t know why this particular fruit holds such power over you, but the night after you first ate ‘naners you pulled away from my offered nipple and HOWLED! “NOOOOO!!!!!! Woman, what IS this foul sludge which you offer me? Methinks it is akin to the most polluted pond scum to ever desecrate the universe. I need more NANERS!!!!”)

4) The marvelous singing Koala Bear that your Auntie Panda gave you

5) Tummy Time on the big blanket in the middle of the Living Room floor

6) Your best friend Mya’s pacifier. Or her shirt. Or any toy that she is holding. Or her hand. Any of the above are grabbed and go right in your mouth. But then she clocks you across the jaw and you grudgingly give them all back to her, bowing in grim respect to the 6 weeks of age, 2 inches of height, and 4 whole pounds that she has over you!

7) Mr. Crinkle Cow. Oh, my God. I shudder at the thought of the day when I will inevitably forget my brain and leave Mr. Crinkle Cow on some lone park bench, losing him to you forever. Your passion for him is so great, that I am sure that this would be grounds for immediate emancipation from me, your uncaring and brainless mother.

8) Food. And, food. It’s only been 8 days into the introduction of mushy-why-the-HELL-do-they-call-it-solid-food experiment and you already have the appetite of the average College football player.

9) My hair. My very long hair. Which you grab at any occasion and immediately entwine in a complex fashion between and around and through all your fingers. Um, ow.

10) The animals in the house. Any of them. All of them. You try and grab the cat’s tail. You laugh your ass off whenever the dog walks by. You even gaze at the fishtank for endless minutes with the most wonderful smile on your face.


And now, just to ensure that a fair and just depiction of your complex personality is presented, I feel compelled to create the Not Quite as Big List of Things You Really Hate:

NQaBLoTYRH:

1) Having your chin wiped. Which unfortunately has to happen quite a bit, what with all the sweet potatoes and ‘naners and spit up and dog hair and drool and all.

2) Being swaddled. Just the act of the swaddling itself. Once you actually are swaddled, and a nipple or some other object from the Lucy’s List of Approved Aids for Endless Oral Fixation is shoved in your gaping maw, why you are just as happy as a kipper on a cracker!

3) Sensing that Papa or I are going to be doing anything that even remotely feels like it might somehow in some capacity be in the neighborhood of sitting down. SITTING DOWN! You screech and protest most mightily when we are holding you (which is 99.9% of the time) and we start to try and kind of ease ourselves down from an upright, ambulatory position. It’s as if you are saying “Why? WHY DO YOU HATE ME SO, Oh WRETCHED PARENTS OF MINE? Why do you SIT me DOWN when there are THINGS THAT I CAN LOOK AT IF ONLY YOU WOULD CONTINUE TO WALK ME AROUND AND AROUND AND AROUND until you DROP?”

4) The stationary aspect of nursing. You still love to nurse, but you DETEST that it requires you to remain so still and miss something that might be happening JUST OUT OF YOUR LINE OF SIGHT! You are constantly twisting and turning around, taking a portion of Mama’s nipple with you (thanks!) to make sure that you are not missing anything important.

5) Sitting for too long in the Bumbo Seat. You will acquiesce to remain in the Bumbo for just around 5 minutes before you realize that it is so much better to be sitting up in either my lap or Papa’s.


Other big highlights of the past month include your first “meal” of avacados inside a swank little Sushi restaurant and the first of many, many, MANY shit-filled diapers that required assistance in clean up from the biohazard team at the local hospital plus extensive therapy for Papa afterwards.

The introduction of avocados, sweet potatoes, multi-grain cereal, ‘naners and carrots have made you very, very happy and allow you to sleep for the longest stretches of time in your tiny life. But it has also created the most foul looking and smelling substance that I have ever seen. Plus? It feels really gross on the skin too, as I found out the other night when some of it got smeared on your foot and you, in turn, smeared it on the inside of my left wrist (thanks again!)

Your smiles get bigger and your laughs louder and your eyes more beautiful and sparkly with every single passing day.

I spent all of last Saturday alone with you this past week and sobbed with utter joy three separate times while trying to sing to you. I’m sorry about that little bit of watery snot that got dribbled on your head.

I can’t wait to see you grow up, but I never want you to not be the magnificent and joyful baby that you are. Can we have both, please?

Thanks.









Warn sloppy kisses all over your belly,
Mama