Cracking Me Up

Desmond has been a riot this week in talking. I assume that since all kids are cute when they learn to talk, people don't want to hear my stories. Someone encouraged me to share them anyway...

-AANA - The American Association of Nurse Anesthetists sponsor NPR. We were listening one night at dinner and I realized "anesthetists" is a really difficult word. I tried saying it out loud. Desmond broke into giggles at my feeble attempt. He tried saying it out loud. Not much worse than me. For the next bit, we took turns practicing our "anesthetists" and our giggling.

- Actually - It's his new favorite word. Anytime he wants to do something that we just said "no" to, he breaks out "actually."

Des: Ride a bus, Mommy?

Me: Not today Desmond.

Des: (sternly with serious face) Actually, ride a bus.

-Thank You - I'm trying to give Des a bit more freedom and not always hold his hand in public when there is no imminent danger. As we left CVS today, a very tired looking middle-aged woman was leaving right in front of us. She half-heartedly held the door open for me. I don't think she saw Desmond below. I mumbled, "thank you." Desmond proceeded to chase after the lady saying, "tank you! tank you! tank you!" While she didn't know how to respond (after all, when do you actually address a toddler you don't know as a person?), she couldn't help but break into a big smile. I think he made my day and hers.

Bleach

I'm lousy at cleaning. I like an organized room, but I'm mostly indifferent as to whether it's clean or not. Example - the kitchen counters can be clean and everything in its place but the stove will have caked food on it and the microwave will have tiny bits and pieces of stuff stuck to it. (Yes, you now know some of my "dirty" secrets.)

When I do clean, I go with the shock-and-awe approach. If you've got to do it, use the most force possible. This is where my bleach problem comes in. Bleach is the most efficient thing I've found to kill pretty much everything bad in your house. I figure why not use it, and use a lot of it.

Well.

After cleaning the bathroom the other day with my best friend, bleach, I couldn't smell much of anything for at least two hours. How embarrassing! It's pretty stupid to clean with bleach in a low-ventilated room for an extended period. Even worse, this isn't my first time doing that. *sigh*

As I surfed the Internet to find out how many brain cells I probably killed, I found this comment on a forum.

"Hopefully it will kill you soon. One less stupid person in the world. -Pot & Peace"

How appropriate.

Desmond in the UK

Traveling with a toddler who is just old enough to have a strong will of his own, but not old enough to reason with, is not for the faint of heart. We all rose to the occasion, including Desmond, and had a really good time.

Here are some thoughts on traveling with Des and fun things he did on our trip.

- Befriend your stewards/stewardesses - All the milk, extra help, etc. they provided was really, really handy. Not to mention the fact that they helped us find extra seats on the plane for Des.

- Buy a seat for a toddler - Des isn't two yet, so we thought we'd take advantage of his ability to fly free as a "lap-child." For the record, Des is now over 3 feet tall and weighs about 28 lbs. Thankfully we were able to get a seat for him on both flights, but I think it would have been challenging to fly with him in our laps the whole time. Toddlers may be able to fly free, but it's not always a wise idea.

- Consistent bedding - Since we did a road trip through Scotland we didn't stay anywhere more than two nights. I was impressed that he slept quite well for the most part. We brought a portable crib Larry and Stephanie borrowed with us through Scotland. While it took up space in the car, I think it helped having the same bed in all these different places. If we couldn't have spared the space, I think having the same bedding from place to place would have helped.

- All maps lead to Scotland - We looked at a lot of maps of Scotland before our trip. Des now thinks all maps are maps of Scotland. This made him look quite brilliant to a few people though.

- Accents - We had an English-accented GPS system and toys. Des started picking it up and saying, "destination" or "bear left" or "circle" all with a British accent. Thankfully he's kept the words but lost the accent. How would I ever say no to him with those eyelashes AND a British accent?!?!

- Too much of a good thing - Once Des got a taste of something fun - tunnels, buses, bagpipes, etc. - the next word out of his mouth was "more!" It's hard to explain to a 19 month old you can't make tunnels appear out of thin air.

- Backpack carrier - We bought a backpack carrier on Ebay for $70. It proved really handy for both city and country use. If you're a hard-core hiker, I can see buying a nice pack that has been fitted well, etc. But for our occasional use this one worked just fine.

- Trash trucks/Fire trucks - Stephanie said she was looking forward to seeing Scotland through Desmond's eyes. I think this must have fueled her willingness to tail a trash truck through Inverness and find various construction sites for him to watch the back-hoes. Des was in heaven.

One of many amazing playgrounds.

Castle in Edinburgh

My boys on a rock fence. How British.

Ben Nevis, Britain's highest mountain, in the background.

The River Ness and the castle at Inverness. This was the view from one of our rooms.

Fail

Ever have one of those days where all you see is failure at every turn? You don't clean enough, don't return emails/phone calls quickly enough, aren't gracious enough. When everything you do is laced with futility or insufficiency.

You can't seem to prioritize well. Your cookies are flat when they were supposed to be poofy. You're cranky with your kids for unreasonable reasons. You can't get the weeds out of your garden, the dust off the shelves, or the sulk of your face.

You remember that 99.9% of the people in the world have worse problems than your trivial ones....then you just. feel. worse.

It's good the sermon this week was on how Christ knew we would fail and loved us anyway. I guess days like these you decide to love yourself despite all the reasons to the contrary, get over yourself, and move on.