cranky pixels

A thing I learned today? When toddlers vomit, there is little to no preamble. One minute they’re cranky and clinging, and the next, a fountain of unpleasantness is erupting from their mouths. The first time, the poor kid fixed his big eyes on me, giving me such a look of panic that I almost didn’t care that he’d soaked my shirt in baby puke. Poor monkey. It’s hard to be two.

At least it explains some of the crankiness from last night, and the fact that he pretty much slept the morning away. No fever, no other symptoms, just a lot of lethargy and several changes of bedding. (I changed my shirt, but long for a shower.)

He seems better now – had a long nap, woke up cheerful and grinning, and is now eating goldfish crackers like they’re going out of style. I’m glad, because I really want to go to the PMI meeting tonight but I don’t want to leave if the kid’s too ill. Already had to cancel a (potential) client call at the last minute, since I can’t exactly chat on the phone while my baby’s actively being sick. Guilty as I feel about bailing on work like that (so unprofessional!), I made the right choice. Prioritizing. If I don’t get this project, the world will not end. (I just hope they reply to my email at some point…)

I just – just! – had lunch, so my brain is all ping-tastic and fluttering hither and thither. Thither. I don’t think I’ve ever used that word without hither attached to it – have you? I am scampering to Merriam Webster right now to see the fun I have been missing.

Well, so. Here I am in the unexpected silence of my house (silence being a term I use loosely, as the whoosh-whoosh of the dishwasher is providing this afternoon’s background noise). The kid and the cat (one of them, anyway) are napping adorably on the bed, and I’m sort of nominally waiting for a phone call from a potential client while searching the internet for cookie recipes using agave nectar. Oddly, I am not finding very many. I think it’s time for a baking experiment, don’t you?

I also think that I need to think of a new moniker for Happy Fun Baby. He’s a toddler now, so the “baby” bit is somewhat outdated, and “Happy Fun Toddler” sounds weird. I could call him by his name, since it’s not like that’s a big secret or anything, but I like using aliases because it makes me feel like a spy. I would have made a very poor spy, although I would have liked the outfits. Probably. As long as I wasn’t undercover as a badly-dressed person. Certainly there’s more call for those than for Jennifer Garner-esque wigs and push-up bras, yes? I mean, way to blend, right?

But speaking of the kid, and my brain, and the two together…he woke up last night at midnight, cheerful as you please, and then would not go back to sleep. He snuggled. He sang songs. He played with my hair. But sleep? Sleep is for losers! At 3am I finally broke down and went to get Not So, who (of course) was still awake, since insomnia apparently runs in the family. Even after he came to bed, the kid was all wriggles and kicks, so basically I shared my pain instead of finding a way to fix the problem. Hey – YOU try thinking rationally at 3am when you’ve been repeatedly yanked from the edge of sleep by a tiny grinning demon baby. Er, toddler.

All I can say is: it’s a good thing he’s so cute.

I need to slow down.

Maybe it’s the Wellbutrin, maybe it’s the whole “death in the family” thing, maybe it’s just that I’m constantly doing twelve different things at once, but I can’t seem to muster up an acceptable amount of enthusiasm about, well, anything. Even things that are fun (like reading, or drawing, or playing with the kid) feel like chores. Ugh, you mean I have to have a good time now? Can’t I just work, instead?

I’m noticing this because I need to buy Christmas presents (yes, we celebrate Christmas; no, I have not yet drowned in the deep, deep lagoon of my hypocrisy). Usually, Christmas shopping is something I plan months in advance. Granted, I always leave it for the last minute and then scramble to get all my gifts overnighted so that I seem reasonably competent, but I have a party making lists and figuring out what the perfect gifts for friends and family would be. Same with cards; I collect cards, so on holidays and birthdays I will have the absolute best cards ever, and I love sending them out and dorkily picturing people’s faces when they see a card in the mail.

Except this year. This year, I think about sending out cards and it just makes me sigh. Cards. Meh. I’ve bought a couple of gifts for the kid (who has a birthday in three days and then Christmas) and one for Not So, but my usual gift-giving fever is not there. Not So was all “I don’t want to get the kid a whole bunch of gifts for Christmas, just a few things he’ll really like” and I was all “Sure, whatever.” Even the Santa photos (see: hypocrisy, above), which I have theoretically been looking forward to all year, are just another thing I’m probably not going to do because, meh. All the getting ready and going out and being enthusiastic and having a good time sounds exhausting. I could be working. I have plenty of things I need to do.

Which is just lame. Hello, priorities, where are you hiding? Maybe it’ll be better once I’m done with school (which will be, er, Saturday, and my thoughts on that are a totally different rant for a different day) and can ramp down my work schedule a bit. Because sometimes I look at my kid and I think I am going to blink and he will be grown, moved out, gone and it just devastates me.

I was going to post a picture, but I’m on Not So’s laptop, which means I’m only using one browser, which means – you really want to hear this? Okay – I’m not logged in to Flickr under my Cranky Mama alias, so I can’t grab the code for the image I want. The short version is “because.”

Today I went to the office, where there is STILL NO BLOODY INTERNET, and spent the day stitching together the various and sundry body parts of a new batch of Cranky Pals. Then I came home so I could work some more! My life, you wish it was yours. Also, I wore unflattering jeans, but that’s okay since I haven’t exactly been feeling like a sex beast, what with the death in the family and the…death in the family. Yeah, weirdly, that’s not hot. I was surprised too.

The kid is currently sleeping on my chest (I’m in bed, which is the beauty of using the laptop). You will note that is is 9pm; he’s been out since 8. Miracle? Why yes, if you call the Great Nap Boycott of 2007 a miracle. At least it means I can get some work done without anyone jumping on my head. Yes, cats, that means you.

*…not really. But it made me giggle, so it stays.

I grow weary of all my angst-filled posting, so I bring you fluffy bunnies. Look, the bunnies. They are so fluffy.

We found a place to have Happy Fun Baby’s birthday party (yay!) and as soon as I have the time/energy/misc. I will figure out invitations and food and suchlike. I think I have a loose theme in mind: frogs. The kid, he is obsessed with frogs. Like so many things, he says the word backwards (‘gof’), which makes me snicker every single time, because I am 12. (Anyone who frequents my favorite message boards will recognize the ‘GOF’ acronym, and will probably snicker accordingly too.) But, yes. Frogs. I think I might doodle up a frog illustration and make it into a shirt for him, either as a stencil (easy) or a felt applique (…less easy, but still not hard). Oooh. That gives me an idea for gift bags. Score.

I just discovered that the kid carefully placed his uneaten banana segment inside my running shoe. There are things you expect to say as a parent, but an earnest dissertation involving the words “Please do not put your banana in my shoe” is not one of them. I don’t think it had much of an impact, anyway – our shoes are currently host to his Boy Doll (stuffed head-first into Not So’s slipper), a small plastic cow, and several Duplo blocks. And, uh, apparently some (dry) corn flakes, which I totally would have missed until I tried to put that shoe on. Sigh.

It’s a good thing he’s so damned cute…

Today I got the newest email from the in-laws, looking for a Christmas list for Happy Fun Baby. Christmas. Isn’t it way too early to think about Christmas? Except that clearly isn’t true, since it’s only a little over a month away.

The thing is, I haven’t even really started thinking about the kid’s birthday, which is December 13th and will require a celebration of some sort, obviously. A party, one might say, except that we can’t have a party at our apartment because we like our friends and do not want to have to conduct some sort of Party Lottery to determine the lucky three people who will be able to fit in our living room. (Did I mention our apartment is small?) So I need to find a venue.

Here’s the problem with that: it has to be someplace toddler-friendly but also low-key and somewhat inexpensive, which sort of invalidates my favorite idea (party room at the Children’s Museum). “Why not something like Chuck E. Cheese?” says Not So, whose other suggestion was glow-in-the-dark miniature golf (for a bunch of two year olds, which – the mind, it BOGGLES). I responded by saying that if we did Chuck E. Cheese I might as well just wear a shirt that says “THAT Mom” across the chest, because – two year olds. All a two year old requires to have a good time at a party is cake and some toys. They do not need video games and giant animatronic singing mice. Rats. Is Chuck E. a mouse or a rat? I don’t think I’ve ever thought about it before. Weird.

Also not the point, because whatever arrangements I was going to make should have been made weeks ago, as I am almost certain that every other December birthday-having kid’s mom did. Because there’s only one day we can do the party. Because I like to live on the edge.

And don’t even ask me what we’re going to get him for his birthday. My brain only holds so much.

Or, I guess, sniffle sniffle would be more accurate, but whatevs. I’m getting sick. I can feel it in my head, in my poor beleaguered sinuses, in my cannot-drag-self-out-of-bed-to-save-life-ness. I woke up this morning and immediately needed a nap. Waking up: it’s harder than it looks!

But I don’t have time to be sick…or do I? Reassuringly, my husband just began a sentence “Well, he was standing at the sink with the bottle of shaving cream,” and it did not end with anyone needing to be hosed off. Clearly things are fine without me.

As an aside: somehow I have taught my son to cackle maniacally after giving kisses. “Mwah! Ha ha ha!” It’s hilarious, yet I wonder how this will go over when he’s playground age. Will he be the creepy kid chasing the girls for kisses and then running off with a sinister laugh? Given my playground hijinks I suspect the answer is, tragically, yes.