Clear the Decks! Impending Toddlerdom!
Why, hello!
About ten minutes after I put the baby to bed tonight, I heard this mysterious noise coming from his room. Like: “BOK-click. BOK-click. BOK-click.” I’m standing next to the monitor thinking, “what the heck is he doing in there? where did he find a BOK-clicker amongst his many deliberately noiseless blankets and stuffed animals?” I can tell he’s awake because he’s kind of mutter-gurgling to himself. So the dilemma is: do I go back in to find out what the noise is, and thereby risk the baby thinking it’s time to get up and party? Or do I ignore the mystery noise and wait until morning to discover how Babyzilla has managed to destroy something from inside his crib?
Then I realized what it probably was, and it amused me so much I had to go make sure I was right.
Indeed: the baby was standing up in his crib, reaching over to the changing table, and flicking his star turtle nightlight on and off. Oh, he was MOST PLEASED with himself. Especially when this activity resulted in an encore appearance by Mama. He is LE GENIUS.
Ha ha! Baby for the win!
And then about ten minutes after that, he managed to find his sippy cup on the other end of the changing table and pour water ALL OVER himself and his pyjamas and his bedsheets and his blankets, which of course meant lots of hollering, because WHO WOULD DO THIS TO THE BABY??? And Mama returns! And he gets to go play on the floor while everything gets changed! Hooray! Best bedtime ever!
Needless to say, we have entered a hilarious new phase of baby skills. And now it’s apparently time to empty our house of, oh, everything. Heavens!
Say, that looks like a fun thing to practice my new chasing and squashing and grabbing skills on!
Poor, poor beleaguered Sunshine.
All right, who wants to hear about the Fascinating Writing Challenges I am Grappling with right now? No? OK, how about some of the Even More Fascinating Things I Have Found Online While “Researching” instead?
Such as! Impending mammoth baby! OMG! On the one hand, so wrong! Hasn’t this guy read any science fiction ever? Doesn’t he know about the inevitable punishment for scientific hubris and messing with nature and so forth? Is he aware that he is totally going to be eaten by a velociraptor by the end of the movie?
But on the other hand, awwww! I want a baby mammoth! And in fact there is actually a baby mammoth in one of my upcoming series, so clearly what needs to happen is for this scientist to get cracking, make a baby mammoth, and then send it on tour with me. Yes? Awesome. Tres excellent plan!
Also! I completely 100% agree with Kristin Cashore and Meg Cabot that Downton Abbey is the new best thing on television. Oh my gosh, it’s hilarious and brilliant and fascinating, like a new Upstairs Downstairs. The poor hapless valet trying to do his job with the guy who just wants to dress himself! The housemaid with a secret typewriter because she dreams of becoming a secretary! The shocking dead guy in the lady’s bedchamber! (And the reaction from the Dowager Countess: “One can’t go to pieces at the death of every foreigner. We’d all be in a state of collapse every time we opened a newspaper.”) I want MORE! Right NOW!
And! Something that may be the bones of Amelia Earhart but may also be a turtle! OMG OMG! This kind of freaks me out, actually. You know how we all thought Amelia Earhart died in a plane crash while flying around the world? Well, it turns out she might instead have landed on this tiny Pacific island and been stranded there with her navigator for who knows how long. So, it’s weird, because at first I was like, yay she didn’t die and mystery solved! And then I was like, wait, is this actually better? Waiting to be rescued but never getting rescued? What would that have been like, and did she get along with this guy she was stranded with, and what did they eat, and what did they do to try and get rescued, and did they fight, and did they blame each other for crashing, or were they glad to have each other, and was she brave or sad or hopeful or mad, and what ended up happening to them? And so actually now we have a whole lot more mysteries that can never be solved plus kind of a brain-scrambling imaginary scenario of her last days to think about.
I am profoundly disturbed about this. I almost hope it is a turtle.
But I guess we’ll find out eventually, since the bone is being tested now. Weird! Freaky history stuff messing with my brain!
And I actually need my brain, because I am trying to write a book, for goodness’ sakes. Luckily there is Castle and Top Chef All-Stars and White Collar and Pretty Little Liars and Downton Abbey to keep me sane. 🙂
Not to mention this face!:
(Well, we had a giant box in the living room. What else were we going to do with it?)
OK, well, obviously that. 🙂
January proceeds apace! I must away! To the manuscript! At once! Stay warm, everyone—apparently there is YET MORE SNOW coming! YEEP!
Quote of the Day:
Cora: He must come here.
Mary: He’ll know why you’re asking him.
Cora: I can’t think what you mean! His mother’s a friend of mine; she’ll be pleased at the idea.
Mary: Not very pleased. She’s dead.
Cora: (pause) All the more reason then.
— Downton Abbey