My current refrain

Here are the sentences most often repeated at the moment. Aside from, y'know, I love you / you're beautiful / sweet boy blah blah blah...

• Where is your other sock?

• Don't eat that

• What are you eating?

• Don't bite me

• Ow!

• That's my phone

• Give me back my phone

• How are you not tired?

• That's cat food. Not baby food. 

• He will bite you

Survival of the whiniest

Another theory (I have many): whining is a key survival skill that has evolved over the eons and is now embedded into the genetic makeup of all children as a means to get what they want. It cannot be ignored or tuned out - it's the parenting equivalent of a mosquito in the ear and must be stopped by any means necessary.

Children know this.

They're programmed to know this.

So they keep going until finally. FINALLY. We cannot take it any longer and give in. Obviously this is the wrong thing to do. Obviously this teaches them that whining works. But the thing is, it does work. It's supposed to work. If the neanderthals had only held their ground and not given in then maybe this superskill wouldn't have developed to such great whiny heights. But they didn't. They gave in. And now we're doomed.

The eons are against us.

 

Origin story

W is starting to understand us and it feels miraculous. We say Uh-oh, he says uh-oh. We say clap, he claps. We say 'say Dada', he claps.

It's intermittent.

Yet aside from echoing 'uh-oh' to us (and we don't say it at appropriate uh-oh times, so we're not helping him much) , he's not talking yet. The sounds are all there, he just needs to attach them to objects. To people. To me.

But I've noticed that the sound he makes when he's upset, or tired, or angry is 'mamamamama'. And while I don't think he's asking for me, I do wonder if I will attach myself to the word rather than him attaching it to me - if by responding to his mamamama, the sound will eventually become a call. If maybe this is where the word found its root - from a pissed off baby and a responsive mama.

One of those days

Yesterday was one of those days. One of the days where I'm not sure if he's making me grouchy or I'm making him grouchy but we're both very definitely grouchy. One of the days where I spend far too much time on my phone; where I want to be writing or drawing or even running (and I never want to be running) - anything other than repeating the same tired songs in an attempt to keep him happy, to stop the whine.

We went to Walmart to look for baby gates, so that I can turn my back for five seconds without him setting off to eat cat food. There weren't any gates and a man in Walmart told me these were the best days of my life and I thought 'oh dear'. Then we went to PetSmart to look at the animals (so far he prefers PetSmart to any zoo or nature reserve I've taken him to) only all the animals had died or been sold, bar a lethargic mouse and a few sad budgies. Then I went into Old Navy where everything looked like everything I've ever owned, stretched. overwashed and thrown away. Followed by Nordstrom rack where everything was cashmere and really didn't deserve to be covered in baby snot. And then back home for another scrappy nap and the long long wait for Jeremy to get home.

Amid all of this grey boring day, there was a moment where I'd paused for a second to cry and wallow in just how tired, bored and covered in baby snot I was, and W turned around to look at me. I made myself smile at him and the grin I got in return - so perfect and toothless and adoring of me - broke through the grey.

So it was one of those days - snotty, guilty, boring, grey and the most perfect sunshine of a smile.