That’s right, post-it notes.

 

Though I have the savant-like ability to remember random, unimportant bits of pop-culture trivia, I don’t always have the best recall about other stuff, and I am also not, shall we say, the neatest or most organized person around.  [I can hear my friends, especially my dear wife, laughing until they cough right now.]  Put those two things together, and what have you got?

 

Post-its.  Lots of them.  Everywhere.  I jot stuff down that I want to remember, and if I’m lucky, I find the post-it in question in a timely manner before it gets thrown away or lost forever under a pile of other crap.  Specifically, in this case, I like to write down funny things The Pumpkin says to save them for a blogpost, or to tell her mother, or both.

 

Yeah, well, things don’t always work out as planned.  So I started to gather up the existing post-its I could find around the house—in the kitchen (in random drawers I put them in for safe-keeping), in baskets on shelves, on the family room bookcase, and, of course, in the office.  Our desk, or rather, the way I keep our desk, makes my poor partner in crime want to cry.  I’m sorry, babe.  Really.

 

But if I wasn’t such a frakkin’ mess, literally, would I be able to write that I just found two post-its, stuck together end-to-end, dated one-year-plus-one-month-ago, of tidbits from The Pumpkin’s language development at almost-age-two?  [No, I am not kidding, and sad to say that’s probably not the oldest thing on this desk.]  Now, of course, the thing with my little note habit is that I don’t always know what the hell I’m talking about.  I may not remember the context, or I may not even be able to read my own handwriting.  But, on 9/7/06, this is what I wrote on two post-its:

 

•“Daddy no email” to ABC Song.  [Okay, simple, she was tired enough of me getting on the computer that she was telling me to stop doing it to the tune of her favorite song.  Heh.]

 

•contraction’s [sic - wow, that’s bad, I usually don’t do stuff like that, even on a post-it]:  where’s daddy; there’s daddy; from “there is” [with notation for missing “it”]; it’s empty [I have no idea if I’m saying that she starting using “is” contractions” at this point or what, probably]

 

•[under a line of separation] “Oh shit” = who/what is it/that; “what it is” [Heh, guess I found her pronunciations and grammar inversions amusing, poor kid]

 

 

Oh yeah, sometimes, I guess for context or record keeping, I put a date on these things.  Sometimes, not so much.  And the other thing I was reminded of, in collecting all the post-its I could find, was that this post-it thing must be genetic, but I found as many, if not more, post-its covered in tiny little pen or pencil doodles by my little budding artist.  Give her a post-it pad (or let her find one) and minutes later, you’ve got individual notes everywhere, blank and drawn on, on the floor, on the futon, on the doors, on the chairs, on the dog (only once, I think), written on the front and the sticky side, pads now divided into halves and thirds, glue dried out from exposure.  I like to ask her what her little scribbles are supposed to be.  Sometimes she ponders it, like she hadn’t considered that it was supposed to be anything when she did it, and then she’ll go, “Uhhhh, a straight line.”  Yeah baby, that’s not a straight line, but whatever.  Heh.  Sometimes I’ll even date them.  

 

So, without further ado, here are all the post-its I found last night, first her captioned artworks (which all look the same to me), then my “dialogue notes”:

 

The Pumpkin’s scribbles:

•”a straight line”

•”a straight line with a man”

•”a happy face”

•”a drum maker with a man”

•”alligator”

•”alligator” [again]

•”Waldo” [our dog] 8/3/07

•”it’s a different pig” 8/3/07

•”a different paper” 8/4/07

•”it’s a white cow” 8/4/07

 

The Pumpkin’s quotes, transcribed by daddy:

•”I was sleeping and then I was not sleeping.”

•”And we have dirt too.”

•”Good job staying still [illegible] Waldo!  I so happy.”  sings

•Her: “That was me singing the song ‘the people go in the bus.’”

  Me: “Can you sing it again?”

  Her: “I did it already.  You like that song?”

•Waiting for her “Happy Healthy Monsters” dvd to load so I can cook dinner:  “So what you do to get Cookie Monster game?”  When menu is up: “Here it goes!  Here it goes Daddy!  That’s it!”

•”Oh that’s great, you did a good job trying Daddy.  Here’s your chip and your french fry.”  (helping close bag)  [I can only assume this means I was zipping up the backpack she keeps her toy food in, and she decided I deserved a reward—of praise and some pretend food.  Heh.]

 

That’s all I can find for now  (didn’t look under every pile and in every crevice, however).  I’m sure I’ll accumulate another stockpile soon.