and then there were four…

Miss O’s bathroom is decorated in fish. Fish rug, fish photos, fish bathmat, fish tub stickies, FISH! So, every night when we give her a bath, we point them out and say “Fish”.

Recently, our incredibly smart daughter (hey, I’m biased, okay?) points out the fish and says “bish” and goes all around the tub pointing out the “bish”. So freaking cute. She also looks for fish everywhere else. Sometimes she gets them, and sometimes mommy or everything else is a “bish”.

I don’t like that…sounds too much like “bitch” for my liking. I bet that deep down, she knows that (ha!).

Tonight I was attempting to get her to say “bish” on camera, because it is really cute. Instead, I caught her playing with her telephone. She opened the phone, talked into it, I asked her who she was talking to, she crawled over to the door and shut it in my face.

Oh yes she did.

I died laughing.

Apparently it starts early.

Last week I hurt my back and didn’t feel up to writing, and on top of that, I’ve been super busy trying to get Miss O’s birthday party organized, so I apologize for my absence.

Last weekend we went to a local bakery that has the yummiest deserts to order Miss O’s birthday cake. I wanted a half sheet (feeds 20-30) very simple cake: chocolate with buttercream icing. I assumed they would be able to write something on the cake as well. However, I got in and saw they had the cutest cake with tons of zoo animals all over it (I think it was from the Madagascar movie), and I thought it might be cool to do something like that for her instead. When I asked how much it was (mind you, this cake only had a couple of plastic animals on it, nothing airbrushed or too extravagant going on), they said they started at $75. I decided to go with the plain jane cake: after all, she won’t remember and I can save those crazy expensive cakes for when she is older, right?

Not so much. Her cake ended up costing $60. Bill asked me what I expected. I didn’t expect to pay $60, I guess. Cakes are a hot commodity. I can only imagine what one of those Ace of Cakes cakes cost (wow: they start at $500). Oh well, it will feed everyone and be delicious, but next year I may as well spring for the little animals, right? After I realized the cost of the cake, I decided against buying a smaller cake from the bakery for Miss O to smash. However, I am thinking I will go to the grocery store and buy her one of those small personal cakes they sell. They are around $5 I think. I just like the idea of giving her her own teeny tiny cake to have fun with.

I’ve still got to get decorations and rent tables & chairs, plus get the house in order for my mom & grandma’s arrival next week. I’m very excited about seeing them, and I know they won’t judge me if the house is a little untidy, but you know me.

I just have to have it in order.

We went for a walk today, and ended up in the cute, quaint park I mentioned in my last post. Miss O was so happy; swinging, giggling, just having a terrific time. I decided we could lay on the grass and relax, enjoying the beautiful morning sunshine.

Except there was too much dew on the grass and then when I did find a place that was nice and dry, I found out that my daughter has a secret.

Grassphobia. That’s right…she is afraid of grass.

Weird too, because she liked the grass just fine when I plopped her down in it and took pictures of her a couple of months ago. But apparently she has now developed a distaste, fear, distrust, (disgust maybe?), of grass.

I sat down on the grass, Miss O beside me.

“See? It’s nice grass, look how pretty!”

“I don’t care how pretty, get me AWAY….and NOW!” were the cries I heard from her, as she frantically climbed up my body, looking back in fear as if it were going to jump up and eat her or something similarly horrifying.

Okay. I’ll try again (I’m very persistent).

I pulled Miss O into my lap and pulled a blade of grass up and laid it on her chubby leg.

“See, it’s not going to hurt you, it’s grass, kind of like the carpet in our house, only it is green and it grows!” I understand that she has no idea what I am saying, but it made me feel better anyway.

It seems that in one or two green shiny blades, grass is okay. In fact, it looks mighty delicious to my usually fearless Miss O. It is the mass of grass on her ass (ha ha ha–that was horrible, but I had to go with it) that freaks her out. I patted the grass, rubbed the grass and said “nice grass, baby, see?”. I’m sure the Indian lady doing calisthenics thought I was bat-shit crazy. But I continued to try and show how nice the grass was (and I wasn’t lying: this grass was particularly nice).

I tried “walking” with her on the grass, holding her little hands and allowing her to take steps in her tiny shoes on the grass. I assumed that since she wasn’t really touching the grass she might be more at ease. Not so much. She directed me straight back to the concrete walkway that snaked through the park, where she plopped herself down and tried to crawl away.

“Not on the concrete!” Can you imagine the road rash that would have caused? I picked her up and cuddled her tight. She was traumatized. All because I wanted her to play in the grass. She didn’t babble to me the whole way home either. I can only imagine in 20 years, she’ll be telling it all to her therapist “She kept putting me on the grass doc, putting me on the grass” while holding her legs to her chest and rocking back and forth.

Who am I kidding? She’ll have plenty of other ‘traumatizing’ things to tell the therapist, so I guess I’ll just keep trying to re-acclimate her to grass with each visit. One day, she’ll thank me, right?

For about 10 seconds at a time, anyway.

It’s true, we’ve entered a new stage in the life of our baby girl. She’s standing unassisted.

It’s so cute to see her wobble around and then flop to her butt. Cute, but sad at the same time. It just means she is getting so big, and growing up. I guess sad isn’t the right word. Bittersweet, maybe? I’m so happy she is doing so well, and I relish every single accomplishment, but I do miss her tiny little baby face, her tiny baby cries. When I could hold her, and she was just our little “burrito”. Now, she’s a wiggly worm.

We’ve started taking walks around the neighborhood, and on Monday, we happened upon a Gymboree–which was very exciting. I went in and got the material to see if a membership would be right for us. I talked it over with Bill who said it would be fine to do (at $65 a month, I had to make sure we could swing it!), and then I decided maybe I would wait until she is a little older. The next day we went walking and I stumbled upon a park! It’s a tiny little park tucked away and it is about a mile (or a 15 minute stroll) from our apartment. Not only that, we met a little boy who was Miss O’s age (in fact, he is only 6 days older, small world, eh?).� I love this neighborhood! It’s a mix of small town with a nice sprinkle of shops and parks…the best of both worlds, as the cliche goes.

I realized last night that I am learning to reign in my overabundance of excitement for new projects. I’ve always been one to get really really excited about something (a gym membership, a mystic tan package, diet programs, etc.) that cost WAY too much money and involve some fast-talking salesperson. I want so badly to believe the hype, so I jump in and ask questions about it later (or, in many many cases, just waste the money without reaping the benefits of the program). I have found that since I have become a mom (seriously!) I am WAY more cautious with things, and I take the information and think it over, usually allowing my excitement to subside and my common sensibilities to take over and help me realize I don’t need said product or service.

There really is something to be said about “sleeping on it”.

While I like the idea of Gymboree for Miss O when she is a bit older, right now she isn’t interested in playing with other kids, so why not see where my tax dollars have gone (no, not THERE) and utilize the park facilities?

We’ll see how it goes.

I’m still missing my photo album.

How long does one wait until they reorder prints and buy a new photo album?

Murphy’s Law dicates that as soon as I do all of that I’ll uncover the missing album.

Again, it’s the principle.

I KNOW it has to be somewhere.

We were poor when I was growing up. When I was REALLY young, we had to get all of the pots and pans out when it rained to catch the water that dripped from the roof. The living room smelled of mildew and there were green growing patches on the portion of the ceiling that leaked. We lived there until I was about 8, and then we got a new trailer after my mom got married. I felt rich! My bedroom finally had four walls (That story will have to wait for another time, I suppose).

Don’t get me wrong, we always had food on the table, and we never really went without, but we wore LOTS of hand-me-downs and didn’t always have the latest fashions or fads (I’m actually glad my mama never broke down and bought me the Hammer-Pants of the early 90s). But, more often than not, I was a member of the “wish I had it” group.

That being said, my little sister and I LOVED our Barbies. We had a gaggle between us, because every birthday or Christmas, that would be one (or more) of the gifts we received. What we didn’t have a lot of, however, were Barbie clothes.

To remedy this, I took old socks, underwear, anything I found that I thought my mama wouldn’t miss or yell at me about if she realized I had re-purposed for Barbie. It was during this time I decided I wanted to be a fashion designer…I later realized I wasn’t exactly the most fashionable person, nor could I draw worth a damn, so my fashion design career went the way of the dinosaur.

However, my creative side was still alive and well. I was always creating new and different situations for Barbie. More often than not, she was an orphan who was the sole guardian of her younger siblings (yep, all 8 of them!). Now that I think about it, what does that say about me?

Anyway, my point is this: would I have been just as creative had I been given everything in life? All of the toys and dolls and things my heart desired? Would I have carried around a magazine clipping of a Cabbage Patch Kid that I wanted when my mom told me to cut it out because that was the only way I was going to get it? (Oh, how my 4-year-old brain didn’t understand what she was REALLY saying). Would I have written stories and daydreamed of my perfect life if I had been given it? In turn, would I have gone out and made my own way, winding up 3000 miles away with a family of my own and doing pretty darn well for myself?

The short answer: No.

So that leads me to something I have been thinking a lot about since having Miss O: Do I give her everything she wants? I don’t mean in a spoiled brat kind of way–giving in to tantrums and letting her always have her way, I know that isn’t an option. I just mean do I buy her things that I know her little heart desires and yearns for so I can see the joy in her eyes, or do I hold off on some things so she always wants, the way I did? I know that if my mom could have afforded the things my heart desired, I would have gotten them, and more. As it is, she is spoiling the ever-loving snot out of my daughter because she can now afford to do so, and she told me as soon as I got pregnant that she wanted to do for my child what she couldn’t do for us when we were little.

I suppose the real answer is that I probably won’t be able to give my child EVERYTHING she wants. The reality is, she (and most kids) probably always want outside of their family situation. I mean, if we had had more money, perhaps I would have had more expensive taste, and wanted a 4-wheeler, like a lot of kids in the neighborhood. Instead, I wanted the Cabbage Patch Kid with the real hair instead of the yarn kind.

I guess that is it: after we had a little money, we did get more expensive taste and asked for more exorbitant items (A CD player when I was 13–for instance).

If we can afford the 4-wheeler, Miss O will probably want a pony.

And, I DID get the CD player when I was 13, so I guess it’s not the worst thing in the world to give your child what their heart desires–within reason.