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baby-tude

September 19, 2004

today seb is an absolute grump, so i'm sitting here trying to ignore him and thinking of the charming stuff he did this week to distract myself from yelling at him. a particularly cute thing he did this week comes to mind directly, having already told several people about it this week. so i will record it here for the rest of the world who cares what seb is up to, and also so that i can reference it on future horrid days.

one evening after brian got home from work, the three of us were lounging around seb's room. usually, if we spend any time playing in seb's room, he inevitably goes to his dresser and empties his clothes from the drawers. this evening was not an exception. so, clothes piled up on the floor in between where i was sitting and brian was laying, seb trots out of the room, pointedly swinging his left arm at his side (he does this all the time now, along with other balance-assisting items). i'm sure at this point both brian and i are assuming that seb is on his way to our room to void clothing from whatever open drawers there are in our own dressers. but no. instead, seb turns back towards his room and "runs" (as well as he can) back into his room and "hops" (again, he tries his best) into the pile of clothes, rolling around and tossing apparel this and that way with squeals of absolute joy.

and this morning, just hours before descending into said grumpiness, he was attempting to climb everything-- chairs, walls, gates, tables--lifting a foot up and absurdly grunting as if it was the hardest thing he had ever tried to do in his young life. fellow climbers may understand this concept of noise accompanying trying very hard to propell the body in a certain direction against gravity. sure. but what i don't understand is, how did seb ever put these two actions together?

if i continue to try to unlock the mystery that is seb's mind, i will lose the momentary respite i just received from sharing these things. so i'm done. there it is.

mommy attitude

September 14, 2004

Today I decided it was high time I clean the windows in the back doors and the mirror in the living room that used to be one of Seb’s favorite play-things. And I decided to do it while Seb was not napping because lately he’s been into “wiping” things up with towels or shirts or whatever is in his hand at the time, and I thought it would be fun for him to “help” me. So I gave him a towel and took for myself the paper towels and Windex and began to clean. Spray spray spray. Wipe wipe wipe. Soon I realize that Seb is far more interested in my paper towel and placing his hand in the Windex on the window. “No, no, no,” I say, “use the towel. Wipe with the towel,” and he continues to use his hand while I get more and more frustrated.

A big black furry spider distracts him for a minute, and I am able to finish cleaning the back doors before senselessly murdering this nasty spider. And I say to Seb, “It’s okay. I killed it. It’s dead.” Now, what does that mean to Seb, these words, “killed” and “dead”? Probably nothing more than he saw me smash the spider after he saw it scurrying only moments before. I don’t think this will scar him for life, but thinking about it has made me feel sort of careless and scary. But back to the windex.

We move on to the mirror in the living room, and while I’m cleaning it, Seb places his finger on it. Not his hand. His finger. And he does it while he’s looking at me in a sort of defiance which really makes me angry and sort of disappointed. And he keeps doing it every time I pull his finger away from the glass. “It’s clean,” I explain, “keep your fingers off.” Then the whole situation dissolves into both of us being angry, Seb biting the coffee table, and me grabbing him and taking him up to his room for a nap. I didn’t even leave his room with my characteristic, “See you when you wake up, Bud,” but with silence. Ugh. I realize that I’m going to have to discipline Seb occasionally and maybe even a lot, but sometimes I truly forget to maintain realistic perspective: he’s 16 months old, and more than likely his misbehavior at this point is in response to my own inability to control my reaction to something silly that I don’t like. Like finger prints on the mirror. Was it worth the fight? No way.

heh!

September 10, 2004

didn't realize that i plagiarised brian's nutshell statement (see 9.6.04 entry). sorry brian.

raodtrip 2004

September 09, 2004

in a nutshell, we drove to philly, wed, sept 1, to manchester, ct, thurs, sept 2, to ocean city, nj, sat, sept 4, and home, mon, sept 6. i will probably never want to do that again. ever. that said, we had a pretty good time.

seb and noah played pretty well together considering they both only wanted whatever toy the other had at the time. there was minimal screaming and gnashing of teeth, and they both tried the sharing thing once or twice. me: "hey noah, why don't you give seb a different truck to play with if you want that one?" noah: "no, please." if nothing else, noah is very polite. our favorite noah-word ended up being "ganks".

after way too many hours of driving to ocean city on sat, through hellacious traffic in spots (people in ct seemed never to have learned how to drive up hill), we arrived in time to take a short jaunt to the beach to show seb the sand and the ocean. he was all about the sand, but when he finally came into contact with the immenseness of the ocean, he cracked. it really freaked him out. so we only stayed long enough for a photo shoot and headed back to the house to eat some dinner. unfortunately, we should have maybe stayed at the beach that evening with sunshine and no wind because we awoke sun am to clouds and 20+mph winds. bummer. we did go to the beach for a couple of hours, but seb and i had jackets on the whole time, and it was way too windy to sit and relax.

here's seb with ana (4 yrs) and james (23 mos)...

seb like to play with ana, but not when she was using "his" spoon. seb and james were not into playing with eachother. instead there was fierce competition for who could pinch the hardest (i think seb won that contest) and who could take away the most toys from the other (that goes to james, hands down).

man are the boys cute though! (we all know that seb is, so here is proof that james is cute too)

now we're home. yay!! summer's over. the sounds of kids playing in the schoolyard across the street are a daily occurence again. and it's time for me to go eat.