Are you going to walk today?

I wage a small internal battle each day: Should I encourage my 13 month old to walk on his own, or just leave him alone? It's not that I'm worried he's not walking...I realize there is a large age window when kids start walking, plus he walks all over the place with the aid of his lawn mower, high chair (a topic for another blog), and anything else he can push around. It's more that I fear my right arm is rapidly approaching a mutinous state from carrying an increasingly heavily child around. So, because I would like to keep my right arm, I'm keenly interested in my son beginning to walk on his own.

Of course when I ask Jack, "Are you going to walk today?" I'm met with something like "Pshaw, ha-thee (Haley), dee dee, pshaw pshaw...da da da". I think that means no, with something about Haley thrown in there.

My husband came up with a pretty good idea to try and entice Jack to let go of the table by holding up two toys for him to grab, the idea being he takes one in each hand and lets go of the table. This worked pretty well the first few times, but now he's onto our ploy, so we need some new ideas. Anyone have anything?

As a side thought, I bet if someone did an experiment comparing the biceps of all young moms, the dominate arm would be significantly bigger than the other. Now if we could manage to use both arms equally, who would need a gym?

Random Thought #1: Why some men's shirts cost so much

I'm deviating from the "mommy" theme of the blog I know...

So the mailman delivered yet another of my neighbor's catalogs to our house on accident again yesterday. This one is called Cutter and Buck, a men's clothing catalog. The clothes definitely look pretty nice, complete with Pottery Barn prices to match. I think I'm onto them in how they price their clothing: the more words you add to the name of the product, the more money you can charge.

Instead of advertising something like "Men's Polos" for $30-$40, I see "Nano CB DryTec Luxe Benson Polo", $69, or "CB DryTec Luxe Dimension Polo", $64, or "Cocona CB DryTec Luxe Mezzanine Polo", $86.

I think I'll stick with "Men's Polo" for now :)

Stinky Mookies: the case for Toddler Talk

I think most people would agree that a person's grammatical skills are tied heavily into the perception we have of his or her intelligence level and education, right? So a lot of us moms and dads do our best to avoid the dreaded "baby talk" syndrome where bright, educated adults are reduced into blathering dunderheads at the sight of our precious children's smiles or coos.

Well, for most of us that high and lofty goal gets chucked right out the window as soon as our babies come home from the hospital. It did for me, and soon I found myself adding "ie" to every adjective known to man, not to mention discovering how much easier it is to make words rhyme using this technique.

I'm beginning to discover though that baby talk doesn't really go away as kids get older, it just sorta morphs into a slightly more intelligible "toddler talk". I'm still a toddler talk novice myself with Jack only 13 months old, but I've observed many a friend's foray into this new level of communication with their kids. In essence I think it boils down to a parent's attempt to glamorize three of the most unglamorous things: bodily functions, bodily noises, and body parts. Case in point: stinky mookies, one dad's attempt to make a poopy diaper sound a lot less unpleasant. And hey, how can anything that rhymes be so bad??

So, anybody out there have any "stinky mookies" you're willing to own up to? What silly names/phrases have you come up with since your kids came along?

P.S. Thanks to my sister Jen for sharing the stinky mookies story with me...I had a good laugh!

P.S.S The picture is from a book called Safe Baby Handling Tips by David and Kelly Sopp. It's hilarious!

Spaghetti dinner..the de facto dunk-me-in-the-bath meal for toddlers

What is it about Spaghetti dinner that beckons even the seemingly innocuous child to go from clean to meat-sauce drenched in 2.3 seconds, and every mom (ok, maybe just me) to whip out the digital camera to document the event? Sure, for those kids out there who make dinner messes every night, this is a given if you're going to serve spaghetti, but not for Jack.

This is the child who studied every square inch of his first birthday cake loaded with bright blue icing before carefully pinching off a small piece of it in his hand, studying it some more, and then managing to get the piece in his mouth without one shred of bright blue icing smearing anywhere on his face. Meanwhile his cousin Nathan, who also turned one a few days before, had quickly devoured his own piece of birthday cake and was trying to dive into Jack's as well. So Jack could navigate the perils of messy blue icing, but not the spaghetti and meat sauce...needless to say bathtime was a little longer this evening :)

What about you, what is your messiest dinner story?

Switching Gears....

My foray into the world of blogging starting off on a good foot, but petered out about 6 months ago as my husband and I returned back to Texas from Virginia and became busy locating a house, church, friends, the nearest Taco Cabana, etc. At 13 months into motherhood with my absolutely fabulous son Jack, I also realized he gives me more to write about on a daily basis then just about anything else. So with that, I'm switching gears from blogging weather and joining the many other moms out there to blog about motherhood!