A Sneak-Peak into Mal's Day Out with His BFF

Last Saturday, Mal wanted to go to Indigo Play, so we picked up one of his best friends, a girl named Kona (we've talked about her before) and she went with us.

I have to share some of the conversations, because it was a fun, fun afternoon.

First, when we picked Kona up, she gave us a packet of Christmas cookies. As we were driving off...

Kona: We made those cookies from touch.

Me: Oh, are they thumbprint cookies?

Kona: I mean, we... they weren't at the store.

Me: You mean you had the ingredients at home and mixed them together?

Kona: Yeah!

Me: You made them from scratch!

They had cute kid conversations on the way, then played for almost four hours. It was loud and exhausting, but they had a fun time. Mal was not ready to leave when I told him it was time to go (I later found out that Kona had been ready to leave for some time, and he hadn't relayed that information to me), so I tried to sweeten the deal by telling them that when I went to the grocery store, they could each pick out anything they wanted to take home with them.

In the meantime, Indigo Play had free lollipops sitting out, so in the car, Mal had the stick hanging out of his mouth.

Mal: I look like a guy from the 8000s.

Me: The 8000s?

Mal: No... the 18s?

Me: The 1800s?

Mal: Yes!

Me: With like a cigarette hanging out of your mouth?

Mal: No. The... tumbleweed.

Me: Oh! Straw? 

Mal: Right.

Kona: (brightly) Yeah, you do, Mal! You really do!

Mal: Kona, you're such a good friend. It means so much to me for you to say that.

When we got to the grocery store, Mal quickly decided that he wanted some Lucky Charms. I needed to get apples, milk, jalapeño slices (which Kona found for us), and eggs, so we headed back to the dairy section.

While I was looking (unsuccessfully) for lactose-free whole milk, inspiration hit Kona. "I want a small chocolate milk!"

Me: Good choice!

I didn't see her open the milk case, but as she put her choice into the cart, I realized she'd picked a half gallon... which IS smaller than a gallon!

Later, when we were in the car, Mal said, "Mom! Kona is drinking out of the bottle!"

Kona's mom reported that she did share with her sisters when she got home. I guess they don't mind drinking after each other.

Those kids were just a lot of fun to hang out with. 

It's weird: I remember being very stressed when D had a friend over for whom I was responsible. It always felt like I was "on." I don't know whether I've mellowed, or... well, yeah. I've probably mellowed. Anyway, I'm happy to chauffeur and eavesdrop on Mal and Kona any time.

Marrying Mal

A few weeks ago, Mal was asking me if his cousin's son was his in-law. I told him no, he doesn't have any in-laws. He was pretty bummed by it, and I explained that he wouldn't have in-laws until he got married. He thought about it for a few moments, then said, "If, in the future, I married Kona, then you'd be her mother-in-law! And her mom would be my mother-in-law."

He was pretty excited about the idea, and that was that.

Until a few days later... 

We'd been at a homeschool gathering, and on the way home, Mal said, "Mom, you know how I've been thinking about the future? Well, Kona has another friend who was thinking about marrying her."

Then the next time we saw them, Mal told me, "His name is Andy. The one who wants to marry Kona. I hope he changes his mind."

I said, "Well, actually it's up to Kona who she marries."

Then next time, after we left, Mal was musing, "I really do hope Kona chooses me." I said, "Mal, you have a lot of time to figure that out." He shook his head and asked, "Mom, have you ever heard that kids grow up quickly?" I tried not to laugh, instead explaining that literally, it was at least eleven years before he could legally get married.

Then after all of that time, earlier this week, we came back to Urban Air for the first time in months (Delta variant is waning). Mal met a girl and played with her for a couple of hours. When she left, Mal came over to me and whispered, "I have a secret that she told me not to tell you... We went and got another piece of candy from the front desk when no one was looking." 

I laughed at that and asked, "Did you tell her we don't care what you eat?" Mal said, "No. But I have another secret." Still whispering in my ear, "You know how Kona has someone else who wants to marry her? I can marry this friend instead." "Do you know her name?" He did not. He ran after to ask, but Urban Air is really loud.

And they all lived happily ever after.

This tooth NEEDS TO COME OUT.

There's Always Room for Beauty in the World of Magic

Mal loves magic. We've told him that Santa's an idea rather than an actual person, but he insists that since he spoke aloud what he wants for Christmas, Santa heard him and will bring it. Same with the Tooth Fairy. I had to leave a dollar under his pillow when his crown fell out because he insisted to me that it would happen, even though we've never told him there was a Tooth Fairy, and explained that in a video he watched, the mom or dad were pretending to be the Tooth Fairy.

Like Fox Mulder, he wants to believe.

The other day, we were playing with Mal's Star Wars Micro Machines when I asked him if he wanted to see something magic. I took a Han Solo mini-figure, which is exactly like a full-sized action figure he has, shook it in between my hands, and produced the larger figure. Mal looked amazed, but also said, "I want it to be small again!" So I shook my hands together again, and handed him the smaller figure. He asked me to do it again. I'd already set the larger one under my leg, so this time, I just shook my fist like I was going to throw dice, made a throwing motion into the air, and threw the larger figure.

Mal was amazed and said he wanted to try. I told him it wouldn't work because he wasn't magic. I "shrunk" the character and handed him the Micro Machine. He shook it between his hands, opened them, and... it was still the small character. He asked, "Why didn't it work?" I told him to try again, only to toss it in the air this time. When he did, I threw the larger character. They both hit the ground at the same time. When he viewed them both together, he realized the trick and his face fell. "I wanted to see REAL magic!" he complained, and I determined never to reveal the banal behind what he desperately wants to believe is truly magical.

When we visited my sister's house for a bit yesterday, he desperately wanted Tian to "teleport" for him. One time when we were there, a year or so ago, Tian had gone into the laundry room and "disappeared," only to reappear in the pantry. Tian was busy with something else yesterday, and didn't perform for him, but Mal so much was expecting "real" magic.

This reminds me of when I was a youngster, actually. We'd gone to the preacher's house for something, and their older kids had asked me if I wanted to see something cool. I did. They went into a bedroom, shut the door, and a couple of minutes later, walked in from outside. I asked how they did it, because the bedroom was partially underground and had high windows, so they showed me a built-in shoe storage box in the back of their closet. They said that it had a false bottom, and you could take it out, and drop down into the basement, then come out into the garage.

I loved the idea of this secret passageway in this delightful house. I thought about it from time to time for what seemed like years. The next time we visited them (which we did not do often), the only thing I could think about was getting into that room and seeing the passageway. It was a legend in my mind by this time.

At some point, I sneaked into the room and opened the storage box. I pulled a couple of pair of shoes out... it was carpeted, like the rest of the room. The floor was solid. I looked around and noticed a desk sitting not quite under the high window, but close enough that a teenager could stand on the desk and probably pull himself out of the window. Then they only had to walk around the house and come back inside.

I'd figured it out, but it felt like a loss. I wished I hadn't. The idea of a magic passageway was so much cooler.

I wonder if the reason I try to make Mal (and did the same with D) understand reality is that I don't want them to be disappointed when the magic they believe in reveals itself to be an illusion. There is so much about the world that is practically magic, I guess I want them to focus on that stuff?

Mal Adjustments

This weekend, Mal was doing something funny/irritating and I jokingly told him never ever to do it again. He immediately repeated it, and I said, "That's it. You're fired. You can't be in the house anymore; you're going to have to live on the streets." Alarmed, he immediately wailed, "But I can't live on the streets; I'll get hit by a car! Can I live in the grass?"

Then he decided that the grass would also be a bad choice because once the grass dries out later in the spring, we get stickers that last until the fall. I assured him that he can live wherever we live as long as he wants, and even if I joke about kicking him out, I never will.

He had a very "opinionated" weekend, and he tends to voice his negative opinions with much sturm und drang. A couple of times, I had to ask him to just stop what he was doing because I couldn't handle it anymore. At one point, I asked him to stop whining, and he whined, "I'm not whining! This is my normal voice!"

Later, he'd wanted to go to the lake. He introduced his idea by saying, "It's the perfect day to go to the lake!" And he was right. It was in the low 70s and full sun. Again, one of the perks of living in the Austin area.

These days, we're all Sonic all the time.

When it was time to come home, he was suddenly very exhausted. He wanted me to carry him... which, thank goodness, I can no longer do, and he's big enough to understand this.

As we walked away from the park, he kept whimpering that he was so tired, and he couldn't stand to walk all the way home, and he needed a short cut. After a couple of blocks of this, I said, "I need you to stop complaining. We have to walk home, it's a beautiful day, and I don't want to hear complaining the whole way." He insisted he wasn't complaining, similarly to how he'd said he wasn't whining.

I started just stopping in my tracks when he'd start back up. "Oh my gosh, this is taking forev--" Then he'd notice I wasn't moving. After a few times of this, he said, "Mom, I'm NOT complaining! That was someone else!"

Eventually, we got to the top of the hill and he took his shirt off (we'd dressed in the morning when it was cooler, and ended up being inappropriately warmly dressed for the middle of the day) and once he could see our house, he perked back up.

Drama aside, Mal got a lot of vitamin D last week. It was gorgeous and we spent a lot of time outside.

I want Mal to feel comfortable talking about his feelings, even the really big ugly ones. I just need to help him understand when a situation is immutable and he just has to plow through it... preferably, for his own sake, with a good attitude. It's a tough one. Wish us all luck!

The Way Mal Talks

My son expresses himself often, and often humorously.

Last night, he was lying in his twin bed, almost perpendicular to the "right" way, and inching toward the foot of the bed. He has fallen off many times before, so I said, "I'm going to get you back to your pillow" before grabbing him under his arms and pulling him up. Mal said, "I don't like dealing with these things."

The day before, I'd had a dream that he and I were driving in Phoenix and when we were stopped at a stop light, a guy tried to get into the back seat because he thought we were his Uber. When I told Mal about it, he said, "I didn't want to hear that. I don't like lame stories."

If you're getting the impression that Mal doesn't like a whole lot of things, you'd be right. He doesn't like food he's never eaten before, which really limits what we can put in front of him to consume. In fact, though, he doesn't like or eat many foods he HAS liked and eaten in the past. But he definitely likes mashed potatoes; especially at 10:30 at night.

On Thanksgiving, we were at my parents when Mal needed to go to the restroom but thought the guest bath was occupied. It wasn't; someone had turned on the fan and shut the door behind them. Regardless, he apparently went just a bit, enough that it trickled down one leg. He tiptoed, bow-legged, into the living room, announcing, "Mom, I seem to have gotten myself into a situation."

-- It is now the following day, Sunday, December 1. Last night, James and I watched "Flight of the Navigator" with Malcolm. He started sobbing, tears streaming, when David finally got onto the space ship. I asked him what was wrong, and he said, "Why isn't he home yet? He needs to be home!" He asked us to turn the movie off and to read a book, which is something he NEVER does. I would have if the movie were fatalistic or objectively scary, but I really wanted him to see that it turns out well.

He did say once, "I don't even know why I'm crying. I'm just so sad for him."

Then when David saw his brother's fireworks from the sky (sorry if you haven't seen it and that's a spoiler), Mal cried even harder. "I'm so happy! He's going home!"

This sweet kid will watch Star Wars at a rate of about two full movies a week, over and over. But he is overwhelmed by a kid who just wants to be with his parents and can't.

After the movie, we DID read a book. Mal had gotten his first issue of High Five from Highlights. We read almost the whole thing, but when we got to the page with the "recipe" for a breakfast hot dog, Mal wanted to make it. We didn't have anything necessary for it, but it was only about 9:00 PM, so I took him to the nearest grocery store to stock up on fruit and to get hot dog buns.

We drove around the lake park on the way home, looking at the lighted Christmas decorations. He asked me if there were any more "Flight of the Navigator" movies, and I told him no. He said, "Good." I asked him about Star Wars. He said, "I like Star Wars, but I don't like the deaths, and that's why I don't want to watch the part with Darth Maul." I remembered that he does avoid the scenes where, for instance, Yoda dies -- of the most natural cause of age. So I said, "You know those are actors and no one really dies? They're telling a story, and they film it, pretending to die, then once the movie is made, the actor hops back up and is fine." I'm not 100% sure he's clear on that, so we'll have to talk about it some more.

Although the magazine recipe called for a hot dog made with peanut butter, berries, and granola, Mal only wanted the banana, yogurt (as ketchup), apple (as mustard), and grapes (as relish). He did eat a few blueberries on the side (as soda). Here it is:

Roatan, in Full

We woke up early enough to watch the ship approach, round, and dock at Roatan. There have been obvious changes since I visited in January 2010, namely that they’re expanding the port to accommodate a second ship. Well, anyway, that was the most visible change at the moment. Later, we passed an entire second port that CAN hold two ships. So, as opposed to nine years ago when the island could only hold one ship at a time, it can now hold three. And it did. There were two Carnival ships at the newer port, in addition to our Liberty of the Seas.

We had breakfast delivered, and then got ready to go meet our tour guide.

Another big change since last time is that they’ve built white kiosks for the guides to find people to hire them. Before, once you got out of the port’s gates, you were just bodily swarmed by people wanting to give you a ride. This time, there was still the yelling and trying to get attention, but it was a lot more comfortable not to be physically approached!

We found our guide, and walked up the road a bit to where her car was parked. On the way, we stopped in a storefront to purchase a water and Sprite, as they’d told us we couldn’t bring food or drinks off of the ship. Turns out we could have; no one checked. But it’s good to put as much money into the local economy, so I’m glad we had the opportunity.

Our tour guide was Nola, who grew up on Roatan. She is probably a bit older than James and me, not much, with sons who are 29 and 21. She described a childhood on an island that had no development, no electricity, and, she said, they were “wild,” sleeping with chickens. Then at some point, a head honcho of Century 21 visited and started developing the land. She said that now, they rely on tourism as, in the past, they could live off of what they farmed. Now, because so much of the island is privately-owned, there’s no room to farm and they need people to visit.

The wild Roatan sounded idyllic, so I asked her if she was sad that that way of life was gone. She deftly dodged the question, saying that when she was younger, “We didn’t know anything about how life was. We had no television, no internets. We didn’t know about what was going on anywhere else.”

Our first stop was a small animal “park.” It was really just a few habitats in someone’s back yard, and it was jammed packed with people. We were excited about seeing and holding a sloth, but the line was clearly more than half an hour. We went to see the capuchin monkeys first, instead.

The monkeys were high-spirited and very interactive. People were emptying their water bottles or letting the monkeys drink out of them because those monkeys were either really thirsty (one was licking the spilled water off of a 2x4 path) or just curious… sticking their hands down in the wider-mouthed bottles to see if there was any treasure hiding inside.

The monkeys jumped onto and off of Mal’s head, and onto James’s shoulder. One climbed onto my back. They have good grips, but not claws, so even when they’d jump off, it wasn’t painful. One girl complained that they “pulled” her hair, but the monkey had actually wrapped his tail around her ponytail and used it to swing a bit. The habitat was full of hanging braids of rope, so it made sense.

At one point, a monkey was on my back for some time, then someone said it was getting into my backpack. Momentarily, he hopped away, climbing to the top of the habitat, well out of reach, with his treasure: a pink floral drawstring pouch.

Everyone laughed and the keeper asked, “What is that?” I said, “Well, actually, it’s a menstrual cup.” He said, “He’ll drop it eventually.” I assured him, “That’s okay; I don’t need it at the moment.”

He gave it the college try to open the bag and spill out the contents, but I have it knotted. Eventually, after he’d dragged it through the water, he got bored and dropped it. But we laughed so much. I made sure my zippers were zipped AND tucked after that.

I got a few pictures and videos of the monkeys, up close and personal. When they’d see the camera lens pointed at them, they’d reach out for it. I have a wind muffler on the top of the mic, and they tried to eat that, and tried to open the pop-up flash to see if there was anything interesting in there. They’re pretty clever. We could have stayed in there all day, but other people were waiting.

We tried to get into the sloth line again, this time much shorter. But just as it was about to be our turn, Mal started getting weepy and ready to leave. I walked him over to the macaws, and we got right in. But while the keeper was explaining what was going to happen, Malcom just almost lost it so we had to go. 

Still, James was right that the monkey interaction was worth the price of admission.

Our next stop was at the boat dock for a mangrove tour. This was the best way to see the way the people on the water actually live. I mean, yeah, there were plenty of makeshift bars and rich people homes, but also actual homes, churches, and even public schools right over the water.

The water taxi took us through a couple of bays and into the mangroves, trails hollowed out by pirates looking for a place to hide. Some of the island towns of Roatan are reachable only by boat, and those children have to take personal boats or water taxis to get to school.

May 1 is actually their Labor Day holiday, so we got to see many children out riding bikes, swimming, playing, and accompanying parents on errands. Whenever I saw kids swimming, I almost never saw adults with them. This is one of the things I always find wistful about visiting places like this. I’d love for our neighborhood to be the kind of place where all the kids could go down to the lake together unsupervised. The one grown-up I did see had a baby on her hip and was wading a bit into the sea, carelessly trailing her sarong into the water as she waited for a boat to beach.

Roatan is about 36 miles long, but only 3 miles wide, so, our tour guide explained, you can’t get lost. There is one main road that runs the length of the island, and it is politically split in two, governed by two mayors. It seems like the mayors are very wealthy (we passed the home of one), so I guess that’s just a global thing.

Nola also showed us a bus stop along the main road, and said that the bus comes by every three hours, because gas is expensive and they want it to be full when it runs. It doesn’t have a schedule, though. On our drive back to the port, I saw a woman wearing her baby, laid out relaxing, waiting. That’s one way to raise patient kids!I haven’t done that very well. 

Because Mal was telling Nola that after he turned 5, he wasn’t going to have any more birthdays, we got into a conversation about adult children. I told her that I think Mal’s not wanting to get older was due to the fact that D is about ready to move out, and Mal doesn’t ever want to. Nola said he should move to Roatan, where everyone lives with their parents. She said it’s too hard to have so many single households, so you just stay with your parents, then if you get married, you live with whichever set of parents has more room.

I was grateful to her for sharing things about her home life and family. She said that electricity here is a dollar per kilowatt hour, so they have to reserve it. For this reason, at night, they turn off everything but fans. This includes the refrigerator. After it’s dark and not so hot, they unplug the fridge until morning.

I’m guessing all of the foreigners, Americans and Canadians, and there’s even a big Czech village with a second one on the way, do not live that way.

I asked her if the influx of foreigners drives up prices for everyone else, and she said that everything’s always been expensive because it has to come on barges from the mainland. She said that they have to go over to Honduras if they need major medical procedures, even if they’d rather not. She said it’s very unsafe over there, while Roatan is peaceful. She said if we ever hear of any murders on Roatan, we can rest assured that it was someone who had wronged someone on the mainland, then tried to escape to Roatan, and had been followed and found.

Nola pointed out that since Roatan’s an island, it’s difficult to get away with crime. The only way to get away is by boat, and so people are easily apprehended. She took great pride in showing us the uncomfortable conditions of their island jail, which has cells purposefully tiny and without windows, where prisoners sleep on the floor, and if there is more than one person in the cell, they have to take turns lying down. She also said that they’re not given food, but that prisoners rely on family to bring them meals. She said if they’re lucky, people with no family can talk cellmates into sharing. Nola said that this discourages crime and recidivism.

We returned to the ship without going to West End. I’ve seen it, but it was deserted as our guide took us before the ship tours got there. Nola assured us that the beach would be packed, but that she would be more than happy to take us over there if we wanted. Since it’s basically a resort, we declined. James and I would happily have eaten at a local restaurant, but I didn’t figure they’d have anything for Mal (D would have loved the adventure) so we got back on board and had lunch in the Windjammer.

After lunch, we had a nice relaxing afternoon in the room. We wound down, watched the last people run the dock at 4:35, and found the unmooring process fascinating. Then it was time for dinner. James got there a little late as he was having some tech issues he needed to finish up, and Mal and I left a little early as they did the fun staff recognition/performance… but it was loud. And loud means Mal is OUT.

James had the tomato and goat cheese pastry, vegetable korma, and creme brulee. I had coconut shrimp, korma, and then James brought my pavlova to the room since I missed the dessert course. Mal’s dinner surprise was a Slinky.

Mal had been thinking about playing in the splash pad, but it seemed to be closed after about 6 PM. Instead, we played in the room and went to sleep very early. James and I were probably asleep by 8 PM, and Mal was ready to turn off the television and go to sleep by 9, which is early for him! All of this sun and fun is wearing us all out. I could have slept another two hours or more this morning.

Fortunately, we’re at a port we weren’t planning to visit, so we’ve had a lazy day on board, but more on that next post…

Roatan, Briefly

I am tired! I’ll try to go into more detail about our day later, but for now, know this: A capuchin monkey got into my backpack and stole my menstrual cup... in front of quite a crowd. James said it was worth the price of admission and Mal could not stop laughing. Good day.

Random. R-r-r-rrrandom

I keep making plans to attend alt school open houses, then when they get close, find reasons not to go. I'm sure not the least of these reasons is that tuition even for a part-time unschool-y place would finance a REALLY NICE and a couple of plenty good vacations per year. So maybe we'll just keep homeschooling. I need to find a good source for friends for Mal, though. At this age, D already had a core group of kids we knew would be homeschooling, so when we started a co-op, we already knew a lot of families.

Then again, I'm NOT doing a co-op again, and so if I want Mal to have that same sort of social stability, I'm going to have to pay for it. There are unschooling meetups, but we went to several when he was smaller, specifically preschool groups, and it was obvious that some people had been meeting for a long time, and we'd often not talk to anyone else the whole time we were there.

Besides that... we took a one-off "art class" recently at Mess-Maker Studios. It's a great place, and the facilitator doesn't make the kids do anything; she "strews" and lets them do whatever moves them. Still, Mal flitted from the sensory stuff to three seconds of painting, to playing with toys, and announced it was time to go half an hour into a 1.5 hour session. He WAS the only kid who showed up (it was an afternoon class rather than a morning one, which was packed, but... mornings), and he DID end up finding stuff to do for another thirty minutes while I talked to the owner.

But I am not certain that even in a year and a half, we could commit to a 5-hour day, even in a really laid-back, choose-your-own-adventure kind of place.

In other news: Tonight, we took advantage of a $4.11 per serving cheese fondue at Melting Pot. Mal and I got there before James, who got hung up in traffic. As we sat in the lobby waiting, Mal was obsessed with the real actual oil candle on the table in front of the bench. He was waving his hand over it to see the flame flicker, and having one of his Sonic toys fly over it. After observing how the flame really wavered when he swung his hand pretty hard in the air above it, he thought for a minute and blew lightly. It blew the candle all the way out.

"We were supposed to bring our lighter so we could light a candle if it goes out!" Mal told me.

I said I didn't have a lighter, and they'd just have to light it again later.

Mal looked panicked, and said, "But I don't want to go to jail!"

As we were seated, I told the host that Mal had blown out their candle, but really didn't want to go to jail. She said, "It's a first offense, so we won't press charges."

Later, after we'd had our cheese course (Mal enjoyed playing but ate only some bread and green apples; he didn't even try the cheese), we ordered dessert. Mal told the server he'd like marshmallows, and when she brought the trays out, she had made a special (non-communal) one for Mal and pointed out the graham-cracker-covered marshmallow and the Oreo-covered marshmallow.

As she went on to say what everything else was, Mal interrupted loudly, "Excuse me! Sir! I'd like plain marshmallows, please." She brought him 4.

This weekend, I was thinking about a lot of the things that I'm sorry for in my life. Here are a few:
1) I'm sorry I ever believed the lie that parents have to win the battle of wills against their kids, especially when they're small, so it sets the precedence of who's boss.
2) I'm sorry I used to think that there were certain bodies that could "get away" with wearing certain articles of clothing, and others to which the clothes would be off-limits.
3) I am sorry I never really listened to my next-door neighbor's dad practice guitar because I thought he was going to hell for playing an instrument in church.
4) I'm sorry I was so ignorant that I didn't know the pain it would cause when I did the "Pointer Sisters" lip synch in our high school contest in 1987/88, when I was 15. And I'm very sorry that when a black girl, a neighbor of mine, complained, that the school didn't bring us all together to talk about it. It didn't matter that I LOVED the Pointer Sisters, or that I meant it as a tribute, or that I was just trying to be as realistic as possible, or that I didn't even know the history. I needed to learn. I needed for her to be able to look me in the face and say, "You hurt me. This is wrong." And I needed to be held accountable for finding out why.
5) I am sorry I ever intentionally lost weight.
6) I'm sorry I never offered to mow the yard or wash the cars or do jobs that weren't "mine" when I was in high school.
7) I'm kind of sorry I got an undergraduate degree; not only in theater, but at all. Not sure what else I might have done with my time (and parents' money), but it couldn't have been MORE wasted.
8) I'm sorry for all of the things I missed out on because I was "busy" trying to make some guy like me. I'm sorry I ever tried to date at all before I turned 30, although I'm glad I had D.
9) I'm sorry for any rumor I've ever listened to without speaking up. Same goes for racist or otherwise abusive jokes.
10) I'm sorry for any aggressive beliefs I've held that I believed were justified by the Bible but that did harm to other people and, ironically, the Gospel. I'm growing to hate the term "sincerely-held religious beliefs" because it sounds so innocuous, but I see how it's weaponized. It's heresy.
11) I am so sorry for people I hurt when I was hurting. There's a list, and I think about them often, and I am learning to sit in the sorrow and discomfort, because my "bent" is to try to fix things... even when there's no fix.

I've been thinking about things for which I'm sorry because of freaking Joe Biden, who might/might not be running for President in 2020. For posterity's sake (because sometimes I read decades-old blog posts and don't get the pop references), several women have accused him of approaching them physically in a way that made them uncomfortable. He's gone out of his way to "apologize" by saying social norms have changed, and that he will never apologize for his intentions, and that he always tried to build a human connection.

But, golly, Joe, all you need to do it take responsibility for your actions. Tell the truth: You never thought about how your physical advances might be taken by women because it's just not a thing you think about. It doesn't matter if "society" taught you not to worry about that kind of thing... The fact that it never occurred to you that someone might not like being hugged or kissed or having their shoulders rubbed shows, first and foremost, male privilege/assumption of space/rights to others' bodies, etc. Acknowledge that. Apologize for hurting people. Stop centering yourself by talking about intentions. That's not the point here. If someone accidentally steps on my toes in a crowded place, it's still appropriate for them to apologize. You're more culpable than that, so you owe it to these ladies.

If you asked me, and I rarely get political on here, but this kind of crap is a big reason I'm super over the old white guy President. We need someone with a different outlook on life. Not because old white guys necessarily are compromised or evil or anything like that; just the inability to conceive that your default way of thinking might be able to be improved upon is a liability, as far as I'm concerned. Let's try something different, can we please?

Taking another turn: We were supposed to get our new just-weaned pigeons yesterday, but the supplier caught a cold, so we're waiting one more week.

Mal's awake, so that's it for now. Enjoy your week, internets!

More conversations with Mal

Me: You need to poop.
Mal: I just did.
Me: Did you? I'll see it when you get up.
Mal: (sitting on the toiled, closing his legs so I can't see inside the pot) It's invisible poop.
Me: What?! I didn't hear it, either!
Mal: Because invisible poop is very quiet. It goes like this: (silently mouths a "bloop")

++++++

Mal: My uncles have inchy pliers. They're awful, so no one wants them.
Me: Then why do your uncles have them?
Mal: Because they have gloves.
Me: What exactly is an "inchy plier"?
Mal: It hurts unless you have gloves.
Me: Okay, what do they look like?
(Lots of discussion I didn't understand.)
Mal: It's like a bear trap.

++++++

Me: Where did Pappy and Nana's Christmas present go?
Mal: I don't know. Someone must have stolen it.
Me: Does it happen to be under the blanket on your bed?
Mal: No. I didn't steal it.
Me: Really? Then who did?
Mal: A raccoon.

++++++

Me: I love you.
Mal: I stopped loving you two weeks ago.

++++++

Mal: You took a piece off my creation!
Me: I'm sorry; you wanted me to build you a monkey and I need it.
Mal: (punching his fist into the box of Legos) Dammit!

++++++

Mal was in full meltdown mode as I was trying to get him dressed to go on a fun Christmas outing one night. I had asked him to come to me so I could put on his shoes, but was in his room, refusing. I walked in to pick him up and make him get ready, but as soon as I bore him aloft, he put his head on my shoulder and cooed, "Oh, this is nice."

++++++

Me: Daddy will be home soon!
Mal: I don't love Daddy anymore.
Me: That's too bad. Daddy loves you.
Mal: No, he doesn't. He doesn't want me.
Me: He absolutely wants you!
Mal: No, he doesn't. He wants Harrison.

++++++

Mal: (in a fast food play place) Mommy, come up here with me!
Me: I can't. There are too many kids here.
Mal: (sing-songy) If you come up here, I'll buy you a pony!

++++++

Mal: I want to go to Walmart and get a flip toy!

Me: We're not buying any more toys. You just got a bunch of toys for Christmas and it's too much.

Mal: Mommy, I just need ONE more toy. That's it. Then I'll be happy.

++++++

If James or I says something to Mal in the car and he's not into it: Please! I just need a little piece of quiet!

If we are wanting to go somewhere and Mal is not interested: I just wanted to have a quiet day!

Our Sunday

This morning, Mal woke up asking to go to Target. I told him we would, but only on the condition that he agreed we'd look at the toys but not buy any. "We can look AND play," he informed me. "Yes," I agreed. "Look and play with the toys, but we're not buying any today."

Not that it's incredibly relevant, but on Wednesday, we went to Toys R Us to see how their closing liquidation was going, and they had a Vampirina play set he'd really wanted for some time on sale 25% off, which was a huge improvement over the paltry 10% from the week and a half before when we'd gone in. It's a big one, and they only had two left, so we bought it. Then yesterday, we'd gone to Target and had gotten three (more) Disney Cars for him to add to his collection. So he's cleaned up this week.

We went to Super Donut on the way, I got a lemon kolache and a maple bar, both were amazing, but Mal only ate his sprinkle doughnut and decided to bring the chocolate doughnut holes home to Daddy because he was READY to go to Target.

When we got there, he immediately picked out three Cars that he wanted to get. I reminded him gently that I wasn't going to buy toys for him today. He said, "Mommy, don't talk and don't move your head." I was quiet until he asked for help looking at another car, when I said, "You can look at it, but we're not going to buy it." Very calmly, Mal said, "Don't talk or I'll have to kill you."

He was sitting in the basket of the cart holding these cars, and I suggested we go to other aisles and look at other toys. While I did, he said, "Daddy told me it was okay to buy these cars." Like about 8 times. I said, "You don't seem interested in looking at other toys, so let's just go get our groceries." As we walked past the Cars aisle, I asked, "Do you want to put the cars back now, or hold them until we get up front, then the cashier will have to put them away?" He elected to hold on to them.

I picked up a few groceries and we got in line. Mal was holding the cars close, saying, "I'm a super hero, and I'm protecting my cars!" I again gently reminded him, "You can hold on to them for about 3 more minutes, then we have to give them back." He said, "Pew, pew, pew, Mommy; you're dead!"

After I checked out, I leaned into Mal and said, "I need you to give me these so we can leave them here." He was so so sad, but just let them go and started crying. He said, "Now no one can ever play with Disney Cars!"

Walking out to the car, he said, "I don't understand why we have money for groceries but not money for toys!" Ahh, the eternal conflict. I tried to explain that we have to eat, and we have to budget for food so we can live, and also that we'd spent a LOT of money on toys this week. He cried most of the way home.

When we got back, we were talking and he said, "I had the cars, but you STOLED them from me!" He was so sad for about an hour, then we got distracted by reading books. He actually picked out "Red Hat, Blue Hat" by Sandra Boynton, and read it to me first. He announced, "'Red Hat, Blue Hat' by Sandra Boynton." It was so cool! I remember reading when D was a child that it was important to read the author's name after the title, just so they'd realize that humans produce books. Anyway, he "read" the picture book mostly correctly, though he skipped the next-to-last page, then asked me to read to him. We went through most of our Boynton collection before James got home and we'd started in on The Cube Game.

Now... before I go on, I want to mention two things: It's taken YEARS, but more, when Mal has times of pushing back against limits to his autonomy (i.e. he would have gotten those toys under his own volition), although I sometimes am worn out, I am genuinely not frustrated or angry. I can empathize, because I've chosen to.

Also, some people would find the "threats" and talk of death horrifying, but Mal has only cartoon context for what "death" is, and clearly no violent intent, as he physically wilted, surrendering the toys when I asked, although maintaining his verbal dissent. I think this is actually quite mature. He will, of course, learn in time that threats aren't the ideal way to handle disappointment, but today, I think we both did okay. And I did laugh, hopefully mostly internally, at many of the things he said in trying to persuade me to come around to his way of thinking.

We ended up having a fun rest of the day. James and Mal walked down to the park while I helped a little girl who'd had a bike wreck across from our side yard, then I joined them for a while. It was a gorgeous day, and the lake was packed.

Concentrating mightily on the climb.

One more funny thing Mal said: Tonight, I was putting on his nighttime diaper, a thing he hates (ironically, he also hates using the actual restroom right now, too; we're going on three days with no business and I think I'm going to have to slip a softener in his drink tomorrow, so when he finally does go, it's not horrifying and painful). James was standing there watching us, and Mal said, "Daddy! Get this woman off of me!"

More Stuff Mal Says

Lately, chatting with my little is an absolute hoot. What comes out of his mouth belies so much of what's taking place in his mysterious mind. So here are some examples I want to remember.

The other day, Mal asked me to go do something with him, to which I agreed. He lit up and said, "Really, you will?! That'll be precious!"

+++

One night he wanted to make pancakes, so we just threw stuff into a bowl and every time he had an idea of something we should put in  (mostly food coloring), he pronounced, "It will be FAB-uh-luss!" Over and over again.

+++

Today at Little Land, Mal was obsessing over the 18-month-and-under play area, affronted because there was a kid in there who was over 18 months. I told him that I was sure it was because he had a smaller sibling in there with his mom. This conversation started, beginning with Mal:

I wish I had a baby so I could go in there!
You want a baby?!
I could be a babysitter.
Yes, if you were a babysitter, you could go in with your baby. Maybe when you get a little older.
I'm getting bigger right now!
But you need to be a little more mature before you can take care of a baby.
I can be a babysitter.
Okay, if you were a babysitter and your baby didn't feel good, what would you do?
Hug it.
What if the baby were hungry?
I'd give it breakfast.
What's breakfast for a baby?
A Popsicle.
What would you do if the baby threw up?
I'd clean it up.
What if you needed help? Who would you call?
Spiderman.

+++

James and I have discussed lately the unfair reality experienced by most families: That the kids go to the mom for EVERYTHING, regardless of which parent it would be more convenient to approach. Today, James and I were both hanging out, lying on the master bed, while Mal played with his cars in "Radiator Springs" (the cat condo). He said, "Mommy! Wake up!" I suggested, "Why don't you ask Daddy to wake up?" He reasonably answered, "Mommy, no! Daddy's sleeping!"

Then James laughed so hard he cried, and the same again later in the day when I brought it up again.

+++

Along the same lines, later I was working in the kitchen. Mal had gone to the back restroom and passed his dad in the hall to come ask me to help him put his underpants back on. I told him to go ask hi Dad to help as I was in the middle of something. He went to the back of the house yelling, "Daddy! I need Mommy!"

+++

Mal wanted mashed potatoes the other night, and the only potatoes I had were little new potatoes that had been cooked in a beef stew. Because of the carrots and tomatoes, the potatoes did have an orange tint, but I made extremely tasty mashed potatoes out of them and handed them to Mal. He received them with, "This isn't right. Try again, Mom."

+++

In pulling out his desk chair, Mal accidentally knocked it over. Very understatedly, he said, "My beautiful plan... Ruined."

+++

We were eating with my parents recently, and Mal asked my dad something. Dad responded genuinely, but Mal thought he'd said something about boogers. Mal reprimanded him, "Pappy, don't be a jerk."

+++

I think on these things when I'm lamenting how tired I am, how hopeful we were when we removed caffeine from Mal's diet and he was sleeping hours on end for a while but we're back to the same or worse than usual, or how monotonous so much of parenting a tiny person can be. It's also very rewarding and outright hysterically funny much of the time. I'm grateful to get to accompany this kid through his days.

Decoding and Interstellar Visitors

When we were sitting in the car waiting for D to emerge from Dr. Who: Twice Upon a Time, Mal seemed to be zoning out, talking to himself. Then I realized what he was doing: "C... I... N... E... M... A... R... K."

He has been obsessed lately with "starts with." He'll get it wrong as often as he gets it right, but this morning when he was talking to James, he did something he's never done before: He spelled his name. They were talking about words that start with "m" and James said, "Your name starts with 'm.'" "M-A-L."

Along with this interest in spelling, he's just recognizing tons of corporate logos. Gosh, we're so... proud? Anyway, we can't sneak anywhere because he knows more than "French fry," which is how he used to refer to McDonald's AND Sonic. Also, we might eat fast food too much.

Guess what else? Mal has a new friend, and that guy is a bad influence.

It started the other day, when Mal wanted more Oreos but had eaten a whole row of them already. I told him that we needed to save some for the rest of the family. Mal went into our bedroom, came back, and said, "He told me I could have more Oreos." I asked, "Who? Your dad?" James had been with me in the kitchen the whole time. Mal said, "No. Him. Audie-ah-Poddy." "Well, tell him he's wrong. You cannot have any more."

Then yesterday, after I explained for the bazillionth time that he can't have more than two vitamins, Mal said, "He said yes." "I said no. Sorry. It can be dangerous to take too many vitamins." "Audie-ah-Poddy said yes. He's an alien." Oookay.

Finally, tonight the alien told him he could take his new Tonka micro fire station into Chick-fil-A after I'd said it was a bad idea because there were so many small parts. What a jerk that guy is.

Last night, in the bathtub, Mal was asking about aliens. He asked whether they were human, and I told him it depended. We talked about extraterrestrials and about anyone in a foreign place. He mused over it for a moment and said thoughtfully, "I love human aliens. They're so interesting to me." But I think he meant ETs, because then he said he wanted to go to Roswell (which he only knows from a 30-second video my parents took of some space creatures getting ready to beam off the planet). I had to promise him we'd go some time, but it probably won't be until he's 10 or so. Fortunately, he's still a bit gun-shy, so he's fine with waiting.

At the end of his bath, which is turning into a semi-eternal affair every dang day, Mal let the water out while he was still in the tub. He wanted to see the "tornado," then still just sat there after the water was gone. I asked him if he wanted to get out, because it was pretty chilly, but he said no. A couple of minutes later, he hollered out, "Oh no! I don't have balls anymore!" James assured him they'd reappear when he warmed up.

I think of a million things I want to write down during the day, but it's 12:20 AM and I think I'm done for now. I need to start jotting stuff down so I can remember it once I finally get to sit down for a hot minute, which feels less and less likely lately. Good night, friends!

Mal's Three-Year-Old Brain

This morning, Mal and I had a long drive all the way through Austin to meet my sister and nephew at Altitude Jump Park. We were listening to Weird Al's "Mandatory Fun" album, which has been Mal's recent favorite, and of which I approve, especially after six months of the single "Music Together" CD that's been his go-to.

As an aside, his favorite song is "Sports Song," which has a bridge that repeats, "We're great and you suck" over and over again. When he was belting this at the grocery store yesterday, I can only imagine the admiration other people had for my parenting prowess.

Today, though, at the beginning of the requisite polka, Mal asked, "Mom, do you hear the accordion?" I did. A few minutes later, "Do you hear the trumpet?" That one impressed me because it was muted. Then when we went back to "Sports Song," he asked, "Do you hear the xylophone?" It's specifically a glockenspiel, but that's a xylophone, so it counts. Then he asked, "And now you hear the drums?"

I was really amazed. James has an app on his phone that has different instruments, a sample (sometimes pretty bad) of the sound, and then the name (which is pronounced by an autobot voice, so often mispronounced, or just wrong -- i.e. a djembe is called a bongo). Regardless of the quality of every portion of the app, Mal loves it. He scrolls through it and goes back and forward to his favorites. He actually has used it a lot less recently than he did six months ago or so, but apparently it's stuck.

Two days ago, this video popped up in my Facebook memories. It is from last year, and shows Mal running up and down the hall at our hotel in Waco on our way home from the State Fair of Texas (which we're missing this year; sigh). What struck me, aside from the fact that he just has always had a crap ton of energy, is that he was basically non-verbal. He says, "Daddy," and something else that might be "fast" or might be something he made up. He does the sign for "cry" and makes a vocalized motor noise to indicate the elevator. But he just wasn't talking yet. He had just turned two. The "average" vocabulary at that age is 50-75 words, and adding more daily. He just didn't have that. We weren't worried, though, because he knew a bunch of signs, and we knew he could understand us.

Cut to exactly a year later, and I couldn't count how many words he knows. He talks all the time. He knows all of the words. Take-away from this: Don't waste too much concern on milestones if you don't have other reasons to worry.

"All aboooooooard!"

Mal has very strong opinions about how things should be. If I rearrange the colored chairs at the table in his room after I've vacuumed, he says, "You made a 'stake!" and puts them back the way they were before, which, of course, was completely arbitrary in the first place. He has a set of "rainbow" drawers in his toy cubby, and when James purposefully rearranges them, Mal tells me, "Daddy just made a 'stake!" and fixes it.

One of his funniest (to me) insistences is that I am not to wipe his nose when he's crying. If he's particularly snotty, I'll ask, "Do you want me to wipe your nose?" He'll say, "No! I want to cry!" I tell him that he can still cry, but it doesn't matter. There have been a couple of times that what has come out of his nostril is so gross, I insist and swipe it. He says, "You took away my cry! I wanted to cry!" For some reason, those things are connected.

Mal really seems to like lists. I posted a video to Facebook tonight of him going through is Star Wars workbooks, naming every character on front. He does the same thing with the Cars 2 set Nana and Pappy got him for his birthday. He also does it with a set of print-outs of Paw Patrol characters we have. He also likes to "count" things, although, even though he can count out loud, it's sometimes difficult for him to keep track of what he did and didn't count. If he skips over something, he'll usually come back, but then he'll recount whatever is after that that he did already count. I show great restraint in not explaining that he made a "'stake."

Cute times. I love this age so much! He's still an energetic handful, but, gosh, he's funny.

Verbal Explosion

Mal was slow to the talking game. I wasn't worried, though, because D was, too, and by the time that kid hit 4 years old, my poor old brain tapped out several hours before bedtime from the onslaught of constant words.

And, sure enough, now that Mal's caught on to some language basics, every day he seems to have a few more words in his arsenal.

He went from not really putting two word sentences together to just talking. He will often just use two or three words, but sometimes will just go off with a full sentence or two.

One thing that's cute is that he often past-tenses the wrong word, if he's using an phrasal verb: "Mommy! You came backed!" "Mal jump upped!"

At least he's saying "jump" now. For a while, he pronounced it "gump." And if he says he wants to "jump (or gump) rocks," it means he wants to throw rocks out at top of the grotto. Just FYI, if you're ever over here and it comes up.

Oh, I just asked James about stuff Mal says, and he mentioned that today, Mal was counting through things on Starfall and doing pretty well, so I need to mark for posterity's sake that for several weeks/a month or two, he's been counting fairly consistently like this: "One, two, eight, seben." I guess he's getting it right now, so that's kind of a bummer because it was pretty cute the other way. Ironically, he can count down from 5... but it always ends with "blast off!"

The best part about Mal's newfound ability to express himself is that we get to peek into his brain. For instance, here's an exchange from when we passed a fire hydrant the other day.

MAL: Siren truck?
ME: Yes, that's for a fire truck. It hooks up a hose to spray water on the fire.
MAL: Fire *hungry!*
ME: Yes, the fire *is* hungry, but it eats wood and houses and other stuff. The water actually puts the fire out.

He does seem very concerned about the hunger of others frequently. I'll tell him it's time to start getting dinner ready because Daddy will be home soon. "Daddy hungry!" I'll tell him that we want to save one yogurt for D. "D hungry!" The dog will drink water out of the watering can outside. "Doggy hungry!" We're working on the difference between hunger and thirst.

Last week, Mal and James both had doctor's appointments. James' was for his Achilles' Tendonitis and Mal's was just a well-check/meet the new doctor thing. As we were getting ready, I explained what we were doing.

MAL: Daddy nervous?
ME: I don't think so.
MAL: Mal nervous.
ME: I'm sorry you're nervous! I'm not. The doctor will just look into your eyes and your nose and your mouth and make sure you're getting big and strong.
MAL: Mommy nervous?
ME: Nope!
MAL: Mal not nervous.

(Note: he actually says "nerbus.")

The other night, as he was getting ready for bed, he asked, "Monsters coming?" I said, "No! There are no monsters in this house." "Mal safe?" "Yes, Mal's safe." "Mommy here." "Right. Mommy's here, and no monsters." So he hugged me and said, "All better."

He still breastfeeds *a lot* and I'm really trying to discourage it as much as possible by distracting him during the day (it's hopeless at night, because he gets upset and wakes himself up crying and trying to get to it himself). He gets so desperate that sometimes he'll parlay a typical toddler spill into a demand for "deedees." If he falls down or trips or hits his hand on something or is even mildly upset by the dog stealing his food or something, he'll cry, "Mommy, deedees. Feel better."

That child.

In addition to this, if he hurts himself, he'll say, "Dr. Anna's office?" This is the doctor on Daniel Tiger's Neighborhood. Honestly, I tried to find a female Indian pediatrician around here because that's what he expects, but there wasn't one close enough. (We ended up with a great doctor, anyway, it seems.)

He has a sense of humor, too. He'll play along and even take over when we ask questions that are definitely wrong. He'll ask, "Mal girl?" or "Mal puppy?" and laugh, and usually end by asking the appropriate question. Then on to "Mommy boy?" etc.

Usually, when I say things like, "Sorry, Mal can never eat again. No more food!" he'll just laugh and say, "Yes, food!" But tonight, I was moving his computer out of the way so we could pull his bed out. He said he wanted to watch ChuChu TV, and I said, "Nope. No more ChuChu TV ever." He wailed, "Yes, more ChuChu TV!" I guess I shouldn't be silly when he's really exhausted.

One thing that we don't do is  tell Mal, "Say thank you." Or "Say please." That kind of thing. If someone does something nice for Mal and he doesn't express gratitude, I do it. Well, it's funny because started saying, "No, thanks." And, "Thanks so much." I thought he must have gotten that from television, too, but now that I'm listening for it, I say it often enough. Today, after Mal had taken a swig off of my soda, he burped and followed it up with, "Excuse me!"

Sometimes, though, I can't understand what he's saying (although, necessarily, I do better than most in terms of translating his toddlerese). The other day, he said something like, "Fefferknees?" and he smiled really big.

ME: What?
MAL: Fefferknees!
ME: (thinking) Strawberries?
MAL: No! (grinning bigger) Fefferknees!
ME: I don't know what that is.
MAL: Fefferknees!
ME: Fefferknees?
MAL: (ecstatic) YES!
ME: I still don't know what that is! Can you show Mommy?

Actually, that probably happens 2 or 3 times a day. And sometimes he can show me. Other times, we just have to wing it.

Misunderstandings happen pretty often. He's pronouncing things phonetically, the way he hears them, and not always as they are spelled. I think he is saying "Pancakes, Nana Pappy's house." And tell him next time we go, he can have pancakes... then realize, because of what he's watching on TV, that he's saying "Pink eggs, Nana Pappy's house." And that actually makes more sense.

He calls an umbrella "ungabunga." This goes along with his early speech development, where anything that had a difficult tongue movement was pronounced "blub." "Quarter" was "blubblub." Incidentally, he can say "quarter" properly now, though he cannot with any consistency, identify a quarter.

There's more I'll probably think of as soon as I lie down, but I want to go do that right now. My body feels like we fell back instead of sprung forward!

Growing, growing, growing

That kid. Oh my goodness, he's learning at an astonishing rate.

Last week, for the first time, he started being territorial with the toys at the gym. He was going up the slide and another kid was going the opposite way. Mal held his hand out and said, "Na na na na na na na." That's me, I'm afraid. When he's doing something and I want him to stop, I notice that I repeat, "No no no no no!" really quickly, I guess to get his attention.

Also, in the past week, kids have twice pushed him off of things. He's looked at me both times like, "What just happened?" but moved on. As opposed to when a kid starts to use something he wasn't even interested in before but now wants, in which case he starts to throw a fit until I point him elsewhere.

Actually, a kid hauled off and hit Mal, too, but Mal didn't really notice. The kid's mom was mortified, and kind of chased us all around the gym, demanding that her son apologize, which he did not. It was... Well, I would have handled it differently. Anyway, no harm, no foul.

Mal doesn't always "obey." If he'd rather do something besides what I'm asking, he will often carry on. However, more and more, he *is* doing what I ask, even when he doesn't like it. He will typically respond now if I call out (in a pretty stern voice) in a parking lot. Actually, if we're walking in our complex and I say, "There's a car," he'll come stand next to me until it has passed.

A couple of times last week, he obeyed but wasn't happy about it, which was adorable. One time, we'd just gotten home from the store and he wanted to walk around the parking lot but I had an armful of bags. He was motioning that he wanted to go up to the office for a Jolly Rancher, and I said, "Mal, we can't go right now. I have to take this stuff upstairs. Please come this way." He started bawling and yelling, but came with me. I'l take it! It's progress.

I was thinking about it, about how now it's developmentally appropriate for him to start understanding and sometimes bending his will to mine and wondering: Would he have gotten it any sooner if I'd punctuated my requests with swats when he didn't comply, or some other form of "discipline" to get his attention? I don't think so. And I think our relationship is stronger for not having had to resort to those things.

Also, yes, I do expect him to run full out into traffic next time we leave the apartment, now that I've waxed philosophical about that.

In the past couple of days, he has cracked me up so much.

The day before yesterday, I had gotten an outfit to put on his baby doll. He didn't want her dressed, so he took it from me. I said, "Mal, she's half naked and the elastic is worn out of her drawers. She wants some clothes!" So I picked the outfit up again. He took it AND the baby that time. He then went on to play, and I was going to put the outfit back into the drawer. When he saw me pick it up, he shook his head, took it, walked across the room and put it down on his couch, where I couldn't reach it, and went back to what he had been doing.

Yesterday, we were getting ready to go to the gym. He hates wearing clothes right now. I don't blame him. It's already hit the 90/90 death zone at least once... 90 degrees, 90% humidity. Take me home, Jesus. Anyway, he had his shorts on but had decided to go play with his kitchen instead of putting on the shirt. I followed him over and put one arm into the sleeve of the button-up you see in the picture above. He pulled the shirt off and threw it down. I picked the shirt up and tried the opposite arm, then he took the shirt from me, shoved it up under his arm so he could keep track of it, and continued to play.

That kid cracks me up.

He will pretend to be asleep, too, when he's nursing and I mention either his changing his diaper or that I need to go to the restroom. Suddenly, he's in sleepland and I guess none of those awful things are going to happen. But if I say, "No no! Don't go to sleep!" he'll start grinning, which isn't a great thing to do when you're nursing, if you're at all interested in your mother's comfort. But it's on me for cracking HIM up, and it's so cute, I still do it.

He's fallen asleep twice this week shortly after nursing, but not with the milk dispenser in his mouth at the time.

He is increasingly interested in his dad, and spent a whole hour with him last night while I ran to the grocery store for snacks. He didn't even notice I was gone until I was on my way home. That is the first time I've left him on a weeknight like that, and the first time I've gone to the store alone since he was born, and the first time I've been out of the house at night alone in like two years. So it's a pretty big deal.

James has always wanted to practice his guitar "more," and one great thing about Mal being so into his daddy is that Mal asks to play with him a lot, and James has gotten back into it. Mal has a ukulele that he plays while his dad works on songs he used to know, and scales, and learning new stuff.

Mal loves to sing and play and wants music going pretty much all of the time. In the gym, between songs, he always looks at me and signs "more." It's like he forgets that they always follow one song with another song. But I'm glad he's into music. Maybe he'll like it enough to want to learn to play an instrument or two, unlike his mom and sister.

Because he'd had a very late three-hour nap yesterday, Mal didn't go to sleep until ten. Consequently, I didn't go to sleep until midnight, knowing I'd regret it today. Of course, Mal woke up earlier than usual, as he always does when he goes to sleep late. It's weird. His "normal" bed time is 8:30-9:15; in that case, he typically sleeps until 6:45-7:30. When he goes to sleep after 9:30, we can pretty much know we'll be up before 6:30. I guess he just misses one whole sleep cycle in that case.

Well, I was so sleepy this morning, so I got up and moving. Because Mal was in such a great mood, I was able to dust the house, do "deep" vacuuming (where you move everything but the biggest furniture), get a chicken ready for dinner, empty the dishwasher, get the recycling ready for pick-up (we had a couple of Amazon deliveries, so there were boxes to break down, etc.), do a load of laundry (that's still in the dryer because I'm on break, dang it), and clean up where my sweet boy soiled the carpet (but at least we saved a diaper, I suppose). That was in addition to watching some music videos together, playing in his room, reading some books, having breakfast, and wrestling on the bed while he wound down for nap. And I got twenty minutes of sleep at the top of his nap!

Now I need to go do some retirement stuff for my hard-working man...

Predicting the Past

Facebook Memories were fun yesterday...

Four years ago, I posted this:

Ahh... Nope.

(Incidentally, if you read that entry, "my friends" was one specific person in particular, and now I kind of want to go back and kick 2012 Laura's rear for giving a flying crud about it. Ahh well, hindsight.)

THEN, one year ago yesterday, I posted this:

Aaaand again... Nope.

When I pointed this out to James last night, he wondered if we could do this negatively and it would work. For instance, could I post, "We're definitely not winning Powerball this time! We aren't even buying a ticket!" Then two years from now when we read that, we would laugh so hard, our butler would have to bring us glasses of Diet Coke and beer (you guess who gets which).

Now, we're vaguely planning to buy a house in a year. We've already talked to a loan officer, and, man, was she about 1000 times awesomer than the stupid VA outfit we tried to use last year. That company didn't bother to tell us about a pretty substantial collection account that we were able to settle easy enough (since, you know, this new lady actually TOLD US ABOUT IT). And she's given us a lot of pointers about things to do between now and then to keep our credit squeaky clean.

But, really, who knows? Apparently, I can't even plan things for two days in advance (as you saw if you read about my failed lease-signing), so two years from this moment, I might not be blogging in my newish house. I might be on my way to Mars in a private space carrier. You don't know.

In other news, Mal is growing by leaps and bounds, developmentally. He's had a rough couple of weeks with teething/congestion, then a stomach bug that only lasted 24 hours but shied him away from eating food for nearly a week, and now teething/congestion again. BUT he's eaten more than ever the past two days, and he's insisting more and more upon feeding himself.

Also, he's finally putting his hand up to his mouth and smacking when he wants something to eat, so we have a really clear sign when he's hungry!

He is obsessed with his dad. He goes around every few hours, looking throughout the apartment and saying, "Daddy?" like maybe he got back home and sneaked in. Especially after Mal wakes up from his nap. Cute but a little sad because, man, James has some long days to get that every other Friday off. Thankfully, tomorrow is the actual Friday (which isn't his day off, but it is his payday, so it's still a good Friday), and Mal will get him for the whole weekend.

Our apartment is going to be "upgraded" next week. I thought they were doing it when our lease renews at the end of May, and I'm actually kind of glad they're doing it now and gave us short notice because that minimizes the time I have to feel anxiety about it. I did mention to the manager that we've worked really long and hard to come to a 1 o'clockish naptime and if they could get here early and be done by then, I'd love it. She thanked me for touching base and said she'd put us on the top of the list every day.

They're replacing our hard flooring with darker flooring I don't love, but it's supposed to be nicer; they're actually replacing all of the carpet on the bottom floors, too, with the same hard flooring, but they can't do that up here because they didn't do the proper sound insulation stuff when they built the building and it's too expensive to do now. I'm glad. I know lots of people hate carpet, but I love it. If I can afford nice rugs some day, maybe I'll get over my love for carpet. But for now, it's just more comfy to me.

They're also replacing our formica in the kitchen with granite. Fortunately, they're going dark-to-light with this switch-out, so the flooring won't bring down the brightness of the apartment too much. We're also getting a goose-neck sink, which Mal should love (eyeroll) and a new lighting fixture in the kitchen. That stupid thing now is the one thing I said I hated when we moved in. It is the one upgrade I'm really looking forward to.

Then they're putting in a white tile backsplash all the way from the countertop to the cabinets, so that'll be useful. And trimming out our mirrors in the bathroom, because... well, who cares? I guess someone does.

It will be interesting to see how much our rent goes up at renewal because of these things. They're upgrades, see? Our downstairs neighbor said that she's heard increases as much as $200 a month. That'll suck bigtime, but to more would be more than $2400, so we'll suck it up for a year.

It has nothing to do with anything, but if they try to raise it that much, it'll be tempting to ask how much we can deduct in past rent for the fact that our gated community has only been properly gated for about two months of the now 9 months we've lived here. Speaking of that, when I worked as a property manager in Las Vegas, it seemed like the gates were always causing problems. Does anyone live anywhere that the gates are actually functional the majority of the time? And by "functional," that includes the ability of people to call you from the gate and you to open the gate from your house. Because we've NEVER been able to do that. But we haven't made too big of a deal about it because I just tell everyone who's coming over what is supposed to be the super secret master gate code.

I have thoughts a lot, and I think I want to blog more. I have started about 5 blog posts and had to stop when Mal woke up and then never cared enough to finish them (most are about parenting, and you guys don't give a wet carp about that), but often when I can just sit, I mostly want to veg out, plan our mini-trips, or catch up on a sitcom. That's who I am now. Maybe I'll have more energy to blog in a year or so.

Oh, but I want to do something big for Easter for my daughter. Don't tell her. But if you know where to get the biggest, highest-quality chocolate bunny (read: not Palmer's), let me know!

Oooh, a new opinion!

Today, I've been feeling like death all day. Allergies have been the bane of my existence for the past three or four days, and today it all came to a literal head (mine). I was sitting in Mal's floor wishing that James worked at home so I could sleep (or for sweet, sweet death) when I realized that if I didn't get up and walk, I was going to pass out.

I asked Mal, "Do you want to go down to the mailbox with me?"

He immediately headed toward the door. I put on the harness, and we went outside. I let him walk out in case he wanted to try the stairs, but after kind of hanging around the next-door-neighbor's door for a few moments (probably to see if he could get the dog to bark), he held out his hands to me and I strapped him in.

We got downstairs and about twelve paces past the van when he started kicking and whining. Huh?

He'd never done that before, but I had an idea what he wanted. I turned back and went to the van. As soon as I'd turned, he stopped fussing. By the time I'd gotten to the van's back doors, he was giggling.

That boy wanted to ride in his stroller rather than my wearing him on the walk. And he "told" me, very succinctly, even without words.

All the way down to the mailbox and back, he was craning around, looking at everything. He tries to do that in the carrier but it makes me exhausted and he doesn't really have much range of motion. I guess we know what he prefers. Today, at least.

Love it when we can understand each other!