butts ‘n’ pieces

butts ‘n’ pieces

La dra. often reminds me that not every post of mine has to be some long, wanna-be-philosophical essay trying to reach for some deeper meaning—that I could just write about the little bits of day-to-day minutiae that make up life in The Pumpkin’s World, things that, if I don’t write them down, we’re in danger of forgetting.

As if to underscore that point, we just found our babygirl’s “first year calendar,” which we were supposed to have filled in, lovingly and in great detail, with milestones great and small. Well, looks like we started slacking by the time she was barely half-a-year old, resulting in a whole lot of blank pages. And the pages that we did fill out... Can anyone hazard a guess as to what might have happened on a random weekday in March, 2005, marked as the day our little epicure first tasted “Uncle Ben’s dumplings” [that’s our RL friend, not the stereotype on the rice box], that would have made me also write in “#26”? ‘Cause I have no frickin’ clue.

So, in that spirit, here are some bits ‘n’ pieces that have been crackin’ us up or making us shake our heads (or both) here in The Pumpkin’s World (‘cause as the saying goes, we’re just livin’ in it).

• In case you were wondering about the title of this post, not that even this makes much sense, but here it is. Whenever she bumps or hurts herself, our dear Pumpkin has taken to asking for a kiss on the injured body part of the moment. Lately, there’s been a lot of kissing of knees, elbows, hands, and head. But imagine this one: your little one picking herself up and backin’ up toward you, saying, “Butt ow, daddy.” The shape of things to come....

• Speaking of butts, we’ve sorta begun the long road to potty training, getting The Pumpkin used to going to and sitting on the potty, flushing, washing her hands (which she loooves). We even installed a toilet seat with an attached, inset kiddle seat, and she’s got a stool at the sink and a stool at the toilet now. She’s still not clear on the whole “telling us before she goes” part, or the waiting on the toilet ‘til everything’s out part, but hey, it’s early. And today, actually, she woke up early from her nap because she had to go, and she told me so, for the first time.

• Okay, last butt-related tidbit, I promise. I tend to go overboard on early preparation for things—not the actual getting ready, but the purchasing necessary to get ready to get ready. I’ll have books and products months in advance of when we’ll need them—but that doesn’t mean I’ll actually read the books in advance or know how to use the products way early. I just like having them, is all. Makes me feel ready. So anyway, with the potty training sorta underway, I of course ran out to Target to buy stuff. Easy-ups [‘cause Pull-ups have Disney princesses on them, and I ain’t playin’ that], those new toddler-friendly soap pumps and pop-up wipes [not like she can even get her pants off alone yet, but what did I just say?], and, just ‘cause I am that in denial of how long this process could take, size 2T panties. Okay, somebody explain to me why, besides the basic briefs, little girls should need to choose between styles including “low-rise,” “bikini,” “boy-short,” and I don’t know what else, and so help me, I hope I didn’t just miss seeing little-girl thongs. And then there’s the licensed character stuff—fine, if Dora and Elmo motivate babygirl to want to trade in her diapers, that’s one thing. Hello Kitty, Barbie, Tinkerbell—meh. But no. frickin’. way. am I buying “Little Bratz” underwear. What is wrong with people?! Aack.

• Say what you will about the annoying, omnipresent little guy, but Elmo has become a great teaching tool. She’s gone from putting him in time-out to reading to him to showing him stuff in the real world (“Moon, Elmo!,” “Look, Elmo, kitty bed hiding.”). And just the other night, when la dra. was putting her to bed and she asked for both a sippy cup of milk and one of water in the crib, she tried to drink milk while giving Elmo the water. Needless to say, as she was half asleep and cranky, this wasn’t working. So I missed the glorious spectacle of my partner in crime helping Elmo take a drink of water so as to free up babygirl’s hands. Heh.

• Our little genius is picking up language at an astounding rate, and putting together some complex sentences with nouns and verbs and adjectives and everyhing (just not in the right order). Some of The Pumpkin’s current favorite phrases:

Here you go.

There it is!

(Be) right back.

Right there.

(I) did it!

No hit Waldo, okay?

No, [insert name of dog or best friend here]!

[Insert name of parent, friend, or self]’s turn.

See you.

Pretend. [said when putting plastic food and toy kitchenware in mouth]

And, to get me to change the radio in the car to what she wants:

No [word for “music,” sounds like “wei-wei” or something], daddy—hip-hop.