Search This Blog

Monday, February 21, 2011

Snacks

Dear Mr. Baby:

Some moms may feel bad saying "no'' to their kids.  And you've become unbearably cute, what with the eyelashes and all, so I can see how, in a toy store, or a book store, or just good old Wal-Mart, you might get away with some such nonsense as talking me into buying an inflatable castle with club lights and a three-car garage.  Since I've had you, I can see how a lot of things can happen that, before I had you, made no sense to me whatsoever.  Now I see things with a much more raw clarity, like this: if your kid is sitting there in front of the TV for six mindless hours, it might be true he isn't getting any smarter, but that's six hours during which you might be able to move freely about your own home and perhaps complete an online banking transaction or understand what is being said to you on the phone.  It happens.

But just so you know, if you want an evil snack, even if you really really want it, you're up against it good buddy.  I will have NO PROBLEM telling you where to get off the bus and grab a carrot.  Because here is a list of all the things, traditional embraced with zeal in my diet, which I am now unable to eat:

Beer
Bread
Doughnuts
Cheese
Yogurt
Butter to go on the bread
Pasta
Pierogi
Alfredo Sauce
Vodka Cream Sauce
Blue Cheese
Yellow Cheese
Tasty Cheese
Processed Cheese
Fancy Cheese
Cheap Cheese
Expensive Cheese
Sweetened Condensed Milk directly out of the can
Pizza
Beer
Crackers
Crackers with Cheese

Oh what happens if eat these things?  If I'm like, oh whatever, when has a cracker ever caused someone's life to completely unravel, to totally disintegrate into a nightmarish hell?  When has one wheat cracker ever submerged a person in a blazing inferno, when has a solitary cracker dragged someone to the precipice of madness and lunacy, turned them into a shuddering, overheated creature, trapped in a prison of auditory anguish, condemned and filled with regret, shedding silent tears in a deafening purgatory?  It's just a fucking cracker. 

And if I think, I'd like to put some milk in my coffee, because soy milk in coffee is pretty much like licking the inside of a dead cow's ass?  What if I think, oh a single slice of cheese has never destroyed a human being, never shattered a person's soul with an incessant, stentorian caterwaul?  What if?

What if, indeed, Mr. Baby.  One tiny molecule of wheat, one little fleck of dairy, digested by me though it may be, and transformed, through whatever miracles of biology go on in there, into human milk, still hits your digestive tract and hell actually unfolds in your bowels.  Insomuch as hell is defined by what is probably some very intense discomfort, interpreted by you as soul-wrenching noise.  Accompanied by the most contorted, theatrical squirming ever seen outside of a circus. 

God help us all if someone gets wild and eats the traditional North American appetizer of a cracker with cheese. 

So expect some healthy, tasteless snacks in your future.  Not because I am a particularly good or nutrition-conscious mother, but because, Mr. Baby - I want revenge.

Thursday, February 10, 2011

Sleeping

So you're tired.

I can understand that.  You have a busy day, after all.  Eating books, staring at the futon, holding onto things and putting them into your mouth.  Tummy time.  It takes it out of you. 

But Mr. Baby, you don't have one other goddam thing to do in the evening.  You don't have a job, you don't have any homework, you don't do your own laundry, you've never even offered to cook, you have no hobbies as far as I can tell, you can't even focus on a television set and you probably wouldn't know what the hell you're looking at anyway, you don't even have to get up and walk to the bathroom if you feel like you need to tinkle.  Not only that, any time you even look like you're thinking about contemplating the idea of considering possibly mulling over having the glimmer of the general appearance of someone who is about to look as though he may possibly be about to rub his eye, everyone in the house bursts from their relaxing times in a confetti of warmed blankets and whispers and machines that make white noise and rigged curtains and Sleep Sheep and soft gentle voices and no more TV - all done so that Your Comfort is delicately cultivated like a rare, fragile orchid, and so that you may drift off to a pacific slumber in a pile of soft fuzzy things and aquarium sounds and awaken only if you should so choose.

I have some news for you, Mr. Baby, and that's this: lying around chubbily grinning while you are ferried by an entourage of obsequious servants dedicated to your sleeping whims, untethered to worry or even the part of your brain that has the capacity for worry, occasionally pissing yourself without moving from your mountain of blankets, and having your poopy pants soothingly removed by said servants - often getting your belly gently rubbed and your feet massaged by gigantic thumbs and your hair gently tousled while you fall back asleep - this is probably about as good as it gets as far as sleeping goes.  In fact, you have a pretty sweet deal because everyone will do anything you want to get you to sleep.  Rub gently in circles on your lower back?  More pressure?  Oh less.  Oh slightly less.  No problem...rub more in the shape of triangles now, you say?  Oh you'd like your blanket heated up in the dryer?  Too hot now - worry not, we'll fluff it until it's cooler.  Too cool?  Back in the dryer it goes.  Oh, you're tired of the back rub and want a head rub?  Oh, you meant both?  We'll call someone in here to help right away.

Yeah, Mr. Baby.  If there's one thing I can tell you from life experience, it's this: this particular shit is not gonna last.

So instead of lying around boo-hooing and just. yelling. about how tired you are, if you're sooooooo tired from sitting in your crib and waving your hands at things, and being floated around the house like an airplane while you look at things, and sitting in your swing where you sit around swinging, and....what else?  oh, being placed gently in a tub of warm soapy water smelling faintly of lavender......if you're that tired Mr. Baby...why don't you just fucking go to sleep?

Thursday, February 3, 2011

Nails

Dr. Mr. Baby:

Okay, ha ha, Edward Scissorhands.  Your nails fucking hurt.  Stop clawing me.  Not only does it hurt,  it's vaguely upsetting to the psyche, the way clowns and Teletubbies are.  (Don't ask me to explain).  The "'Most Babies Can Do" chart, which we refer to whenever you're doing something annoying or weird, says you should be getting your hands under control by now.  I don't know if that's supposed to be while you're doing the bit where you cry but no sound actually emerges from your mouth - you know, when your head appears to actually contain all of the blood in your body and really look about to blast right off your neck and go spraying all over the house like a deflating red balloon?  But try it anyway (getting hands under control, not blowing your head up).  Just because you're pissed off is no reason to be undignified. 

Back to the point, Wolverine; the nail clipper is really our friend.  You have to stop flailing around and whacking it if you don't want blood.  It's safe, because we paid extra, but not that safe.  I'm not trying to cut off your damn finger.  You won't feel a thing if you just hold fracking still.  Yes, I know, we've said that before and it was a pack of lies.  But this time it really is just a little snip. 

Mr. Baby, I'm just trying to keep people, dogs, and any errant paper products safe from your spazzy, mulcher-hands.   You could decapitate someone just getting overzealous about something interesting on the wall.  Also, you're literally going to dig your own eyeball out of your fucking head.  What are you going to do with one eye?  Be a pirate?  How the hell is that going to help anyone?

Mittens?  Ha.  You ate the last pair.  I mean, I really think you ate them, because the last time I saw them they were headed toward your mouth and no one knows where they are now.  (Don't expect me to be worried about that.  I have enough on my plate, and I stopped worrying about swallowed items long before you ever got here: just ask the dog.  He's eaten at least forty plastic bags and he seems fine to me).

Fingernails on babies, it turns out, are dangerous, Mr. Baby.  So just chill the hell out and let me cut those things with either one of my two pairs of Safety First! Baby Safety Nail Clippers, which are extra safe because they were made in the name of safety, but just can't help us if you jab at me the whole time.  Let me do it, Mr. Baby.  Before we all get shredded.  Shredded into a million little pieces by your demonic little hands.