OCD at IHOP

There’s an International House Of Pancakes by my obstetrician’s office. This is very dangerous. “Pregnant woman” plus “pancakes” equals “rooty-tooty fat in the booty.”

For the most part, I can resist temptation (but only by taking the route that doesn’t go past the place). When I was pregnant with Lumpyhead, Bump came to every OB visit and we made several post-appointment IHOP stops, particularly during my last trimester.

I can remember sitting at that restaurant, nervously anticipating Lumpyhead’s arrival, while Bump freaked out about much we still needed to do. I started dilating six weeks before Lumpyhead’s due date. Three weeks before I delivered, the doctor told us I could go into labor “any minute now.” The first time she said this it translated to Bump as “Gitcher ass directly to Babies R Us and buy everything you can fit in the Jeep. Maybe rent a U-Haul.” I talked him down over the course of eggs and a waffle, and he didn’t immediately sprint to the store upon returning home. (He did, however, become singularly focused on painting Lumpyhead’s room.) We heard the “any minute now” line for the next three appointments, and we eventually stopped getting worked up about it.

Today Lumpyhead and Bump came to my OB appointment. They came to my last appointment, too, and Bump and I were reminded that we vowed then never to take Lumpyhead to the OB again. Like last time, we spent over an hour waiting for the doctor while trying to keep Lumpyhead 1) from being flattened by the waiting room doors, 2) out of the speculum drawer, and 3) away from the biohazard disposal.

But Lumpyhead found my doctor very entertaining, and we all got to go to IHOP afterward. Lumpyhead ate hash browns and eggs and sausage (sausage! Wheee!) and toast. While we waited for our order, he played quietly with the little containers of coffee creamer.

Bump and I looked over to find him carefully making sure all the creamers were oriented the same way. At one point they were all upright, at another they all were bottom up, but lazy creamers who were rolling around on their sides were quickly brought in line. We intentionally knocked over a couple to see what he would do. We got The Scowl and an annoyed grunt as Lumpyhead repaired our devastation.

I’m afraid he inherited this from me. When I was little, whenever I wore something with a drawstring or cord, the hanging strings always had to be the same length. My grandmother occasionally teased me about this, even when I was in high school and had obviously outgrown the need for order. She said she would tug on one end to make it longer, just to watch me obsessively even them out.

Maybe everyone has some compulsive tendencies? The clutter that overwhelms my house is headache-inducing, so it’s not that I’m tidy. I would say that I don’t exhibit many OCD characteristics, but then there is the matter of Aunt Bob’s birthday cake:


Please ignore for a moment that it looks like it was made by someone who was drunk or blind, possibly both. I was neither when I made it. I tried to blot out the numbers so you can’t tell how old Aunt Bob is, which makes the cake look like it has odd boobies or creepy eyes. It’s bad enough that the thing is lopsided, I feel lousy about subjecting it to further indignity.

I was busted by a six-year-old at Aunt Bob’s party, who had been staring at the cake for about 45 minutes straight, hoping her sheer force of will could compel it to be served. “There's a pattern in the M&Ms!” she announced. “Red brown yellow brown blue brown green brown orange brown.”

Her mother was very proud. “They've been learning about patterns at school. I'll have to tell her teacher she recognized a pattern.”

There is no such charming explanation for why there is a pattern in the M&Ms, except that I am a huge dork. Further evidenced by the girl trumpeting, “There’s also a pattern around the bottom! A different one!” What a little narc.

You may also notice that all the “m”s are facing toward the cake. This was actually trickier than creating the pattern, because I had to eat all the M&Ms that were facing the wrong way. It occurred to me later that this was unnecessary; those M&Ms weren’t facing the wrong way, they were simply for the other side of the cake. Oh well, lesson learned.

Fish Face, Headstands and The Scowl

Fish Face
Lumpyhead started making this face. We have no idea where he picked it up, or why he does it.

Just what he needs, for his cheeks to look thinner.

Headstand
He’s also started doing this little tripod thing. At least it seems to make him happy.

Happy? What I mean is: it cracks him the fuck up.

Scowler Monkey
Lumpyhead scowls. Often. It’s usually when Bump or I fail to comply immediately with one of his demands, or when one of his toys vexes him, or when he’s just not pleased with the way things are progressing.

Bump and I tried to replicate it the other night after Lumpyhead had gone to bed. Usually when we mimic Lumpyhead, one of us is dead-on (which figures, since he probably inherited it from somewhere, right?), but neither of us could do it justice. We thought it was odd that neither of us could convincingly reproduce The Scowl.

The big, sweet smile is fleeting, but The Scowl? The Scowl he’ll hold for as long as necessary.

Oh, and I’m Fat
I’ve already gained 30 pounds this pregnancy, and I’ve got a trimester to go. The fat trimester.

After telling Teresa at lunch on Friday that “at least my hands and feet aren’t swollen this time,” my hands promptly puffed up like frightened blowfish.

I Need A Parenting Tivo

As a working parent, I’m not surprised by the sense that I’m missing out on a lot of Lumpyhead’s life. I expected to feel this way. I’m gone for at least 10 of his 12 waking hours during the day, which means I will not be around for stuff.

But lately I feel like I’m not taking full advantage of the little time I get to spend with him, and I didn’t expect that.

On those mornings when Lumpyhead rises before seven, I blearily get him breakfast and spend our first fifteen or thirty minutes together trying to shake the cobwebs out of my head. On those other mornings when I leave before he wakes up, I spend all day pining for those few minutes - foggy or not - that I didn’t get.

When I get home at night, I’m always a little droopy. I feel like I have to power through the hour or two I spend with Lumpyhead before putting him to bed.

I want to be enthusiastic and energetic when I’m with Lumpyhead, able to invent games and sing songs and play.

Instead, I’m tired and boring and slow. I have a tough time heaving my expanded self off the floor to follow Lumpyhead when, after tiring of our current activity, he goes prattling off to another part of the house.

After he’s been asleep for awhile, after I’ve been fed and have spent some time staring at the TV, I miss him. I get a second wind and want a do-over of those minutes when he played with his toys and I just sat beside him with my head on the ottoman. I wish I would have spent that time better.

Rather than watching last night’s episode of Lost, I want to be showing him which stacking cup is blue or encouraging him to say Grandma or giving him kisses. But he’s asleep.

The Royal Netherlands Embassy Cordially Invites You

Several years ago I got a strange call at work, asking me if I was of Dutch heritage, by any chance. The Netherlands Embassy was hosting its first annual Congressional reception, and in order to build attendance, they were calling all the people in the Congressional directory with Dutch surnames and encouraging them to come.

I offered how my great grandparents on both sides of the family were born in Holland, and my father still swears in Dutch. The woman sounded very excited when I agreed to attend.

I was sure that on the night of the event, the hosts would take one look at me and ask me to leave. I met the Dutch ambassador, who exclaimed happily upon reading my nametag, "My! Where did you get such a Dutch name?"

"From my parents," I replied, unsure how else to answer the question.

"Of course you did," he said without missing a beat. Then he smiled broadly and looked a little sheepish. (And that's why he's an ambassador. Diplomats come back with things like "Of course you did" and still manage to look charming. If I had done something like that, I would have just stood there, mouth agape and puzzled, until the other person wandered off.)

It turned out to be a huge party, with lots of herring and Heineken and tulips. They shouldn't have worried about boosting attendance; the place was packed. Nobody cared one bit if any of the guests had a drop of Dutch in them.

But I walked around like I was special, because the Embassy had called to invite me.

I Probably Now Owe Harry Belafonte Sixty Bazillion Dollars in Royalties

In full flaunt of copyright laws everywhere, I present to you:

Sooo Big!
Music credits: Jump in the Line, composed by Stephen Somvel and performed by Harry Belafonte




I’ve replaced the audio of the footage so you won’t recoil in horror at the sound of my squealing voice. I think I managed to edit out most of my big butt.

Also behold the World's Skinniest Child. I swear we spend all day following him around with food. We're trying our damnedest to fatten him up, but we haven't had much success. We're limited by the following factors:

1) Lumpyhead won't eat meat. I've been hesitant to tell you about this, because I'm a little horrified that Bump and I seem to have produced a vegetarian child. Bump and I are both dedicated carnivores ("A meal without meat is like a day without sunshine."), and while I know some very nice vegetarians, they puzzle me. ("What do you mean you don't eat meat? Not even bacon?") Bump and I are just so flabbergasted when the boy won't eat sausage ("But it's sausage! It's made of pork! Pork is good!") we don't know what to do. He refuses chicken. He spits out ground beef. He likes tofu. [shudder] We don't know how to begin to prepare tofu. I mean, once you've laughed at it, what do you do next? At the Chinese barbeque hosted by Bump's brother-in-law, Lumpyhead tore into the tofu. We order it for him when we go out, but we're both a little too intimidated to try to prepare tofu at home. Plus, it would mean one of us would have to endure the embarrassment of standing in the checkout line at the grocery store with tofu.

2) Lumpyhead loves fruits and vegetables. He'll eat cherries until his stomach explodes. If he's refusing everything else, he can be convinced to eat some green beans or edamame.

3) Lumpyhead has bottom issues. Hence we don't want to stuff him with cheese. We've just started giving him bananas, because he loves them (see #2) and they don't seem to stop him up.

We try to butter everything. We've replaced most of his water with juice or milk. We're constantly haranguing him to Eat Something. He does like sweets, but a lunch of brownies and M&Ms doesn't seem like a good idea, even though the baby would be all for it. Any suggestions, other than putting half and half in his sippy cup?

Should I Have Tried a Limerick Rhyming “Gurgle” with “Burgle"?

Yesterday was a shitty day.

I went to another funeral. A friend and colleague’s father fell ill a few weeks ago and passed away on Tuesday. Even though the service was three hours away, I decided to attend. I worried my friend would feel alone during this difficult time, and if a few hours in the car was all it took to show a little support, then it seemed the least I could do.

Bump and Lumpyhead were going to accompany me, (I mean, com’on: a toddler, a six-hour car ride, and a solemn, tearful event scheduled right smack dab in the middle of naptime? What could go wrong?) but I ended up going by myself. It’s not that I came to my senses about the plan to take Lumpyhead, (“We could go to Monticello after the funeral. And there will be farm stands along the way, we can buy pumpkins and pick apples! It will be an Autumnal Road Trip, the envy of scrapbookers everywhere.”) rather, we had a plumbing emergency that required the involvement of a professional.

I was saved from my own stupidity by a clogged drain.

For the past couple weeks, the tub has been making ominous gurgling noises when we flush the toilet. We addressed this problem in the usual fashion: by muttering “that can’t be good,” shrugging, and walking away. We eventually switched tactics from Ignore Ignore Ignore to Liquid Plumber Down the Tub plus Plunger in the Toilet along with a sprinkling of Hopeful Incantations. Shockingly, that didn’t work either. (You’d think that a haiku containing the words “flush, toilet, drain, and shower” would do the trick, but no.) We called a plumber and $250 later, we’ve got a shower that drains and a toilet that flushes. I think Bump might have paid $250 simply to avoid taking Lumpyhead on the Autumnal Road Trip/Funeral Trek of Doom, but we got working plumbing for that price too. Bonus.

Because of the midday “strange man in the bathroom making lots of noise” activity, Lumpyhead napped late, so when I got home we decided to go out to eat. We went to a Salvadoran place close to the house, where I once had a dish so hot it made the back of my eyeballs hurt. I keep ordering it, but it hasn’t been that hot since, and I’m always a wee bit disappointed.

We ordered plantains and flan for Lumpyhead, thinking he could also have bites from our plates. He rejected both of his dishes, of course, instead only opting to eat the maraschino cherry from the flan and the tomato and beets from our salads. He also ate some yucca and sucked on the lime from Bump’s beer. That kid is a little weird.

Afterward, I decided I needed some pie, so we went to the diner next door. When I was about halfway through the pie, Lumpyhead dropped a deuce most pungent. There was no changing table in the mens room (I never thought to look in the ladies room, I was focused on pie) so Bump took him outside, where Lumpyhead’s bottom continued to rumble and Bump’s eyes continued to water. We had to drive home with the windows open.

For a shit-themed day, it actually wasn’t so horrible. The trip to the funeral was quite pretty, it was a sunny day and the leaves are turning. The funeral was sad, but since I didn’t know the deceased I didn’t feel as though my insides had been ripped out. The worst part for me was when, during the VFW’s graveside service (the deceased was a WWII veteran), I realized similar rituals were probably being observed all around the country. Rituals not for eighty-year old men who had lived full lives, with caskets surrounded by grandchildren and frail friends; instead for men younger than me who had so much more life to live, with caskets surrounded by parents and grandparents and friends who can still easily sleep off a two-day drinking bender.

My toilet flushes reliably, and I didn’t have to change Lumpyhead’s Level 2 Code Brown. Bump did it, imploring the little guy to find some middle ground between a poop every two weeks and thrice-daily old man hobo shits.

It was a pretty good shitty day.

I'm Really Embarrassed by This, So Maybe I'll Just Tell the Whole Internet About It

NPR, please, for the love of god, bring back your regular programming.

I know I've complained about this before, but pledge drive week has a surprisingly hefty impact on my life. I can't listen to the NPR shills after the news at the top or bottom of the hour, so I surf around the dial until I find something that doesn't make my ears bleed.

I took a break from futzing around with the stations when I had to merge or do some other driving-related task this morning. A few minutes later I realized that I had wiped out on a station playing Howie Day's Collide.

And that I was humming along.

I think it was an acoustic version. It's still stuck in my head. I'm gonna need an intervention or something.

Baby's New Tricks

Lumpyhead can say Mama. Consistently. And he seems to be referring to me when he says it. I’m considering this a big milestone.

When Bump or I tell Lumpyhead that we love him, he responds by saying “Mama.” I’ve taken this to mean one of the following:
1) He equates love with me. Yay.
2) I often follow “I love you” with “Mama loves you” so he’s starting the next line in the litany.
3) “Mama” can also be interpreted as “Right back atcha, babe.”
4) He has no idea what Mama means and is just throwing the term about willy-nilly.

He also clearly and reliably says “Spongebob,” but only when he means Spongebob. I’m trying not to be offended.


Lumpyhead has started shaking his head, which sometimes means “no” and sometimes means “I want to shake my head vigorously back and forth and possibly fall down.” He grins when he does it, but is very peeved when you misconstrue the headshake as no when he doesn’t mean no. Like when you ask him if he wants a grape and he shakes his head so you don’t give him the grape and then he’s all “Where’s m’damn grape, Woman?”


Last night’s new trick: signaling “touchdown.” It sounds very cool but sadly, in practice, the trick is actually sing-songy and annoying. I ask, “How big is Lumpyhead?” and trill “SOOOOO big!” when he raises his hands above his head. It’s something my mother used to do, and the sound I make when I say the last part splits my eardrums and bugs the crap out of me. But it’s awfully cute to see the boy tramping about the house with his arms in the air.

I Spy

On the drive in today, I saw a fellow commuter brushing his teeth.

That’s weird, right?

I see a lot of amazing things on my way to work that no longer strike me as incredible.

The Jefferson Memorial and Washington Monument? They blend into the background. A convoy of black SUVs with flashing red and blue lights? Boring. The grey-green helicopter headed for the South Lawn emblazoned with the words “United States of America”? Not much more noteworthy than United flight 600 headed for National Airport.

But a middle-aged man driving an old Toyota while brushing his teeth? That’s worth telling you about.

I have so many questions. Was he using toothpaste? Where could he spit? How would he rinse? Why didn’t he wait until he was no longer behind the wheel? He couldn’t take care of this before he left the house?

If this is the most interesting thing that happens to me this week, should I be relieved or worried?

Video

That loud popping noise you heard was me getting my head out of my ass on the video front. It was wedged in there pretty firmly, so you can imagine the difficulty I faced in removing it.

Behold:

Lumpyhead tells my parents about Akutaq


Lumpyhead tells Bump's Mom about Akutaq


Lumpyhead gets licked by a ribeye