10/18/2007 - The ants go marching one by one . . .

We're being overrun by ants. Literally, they're everywhere, but mainly they're on the kitchen floor. It's understandable that this is where they'd be, since it's where most of the food in our home is. Isn't that where everybody else keeps meals and meals worth of sandwich crumbs and glumpy drying jelly, little crumbly pieces of turkey bacon and spatters of strawberry milk?

In the back of my head I think that if I just never clean the kitchen floor, then the ants will be able to survive and live quite well there, never having to venture out to other areas of our house. It's an excellent idea for their containment, even if I do say so myself.

But I can't do it. They drive me insane, the ants do, and so does the mess. It's not that we're unclean people, exactly . . . it's just that we have a very exuberant three-year-old who just loves to be Cookie Monster at the table. And if it's not that, then he's pretending that his sandwich crusts are actually bulldozers, clearing unwanted debris from the tabletop. And if it's not that, then . . . well, then he's just three years old and half of the food simply doesn't make it into his mouth. Between Tim and me, the floors do get swept at least twice a day, but it's a little like shoveling the driveway during a snowstorm. And we're losing the battle.


So in comes Jonah, who in the last two days, has learned to crawl. Oh we're so proud of his accomplishment, and so . . . well . . . so grossed out that he especially likes to lay on his belly on the kitchen floor and work on that pincer grasp thing with the fallen food. It's a little mini-buffet for him, I guess, but he's going to have to fight with the ants for his share of the crumbs. Of course, Joshua is happy to oblige, and to feed the masses down below, but still . . . yuck. So I'm calling all of the exterminator companies around, to see if there are any who aren't dealing in extortion. Which they all are because, seriously? Three hundred dollars to come treat the house and yards? At that rate I'd throw the ants a party and welcome them in with open arms. And Jonah would be just as happy to dine beside them, or even on them, probably.

Speaking of dining . . . would you look at Jonah and think that he eats his weight in food each day? That we must have started him on solids awfully early? Well, the truth is neither. The truth is actually that he hardly eats any solid foods at all (and by solid I mean as finely pureed as you can make it), and is mostly just nursing for nourishment. But he's such a little hoss that we don't even know what to do with him. At eight months old he is wearing eighteen month clothing. We've had to abandon the infant car seat in favor of a convertible one that holds more weight, and if he doesn't start walking soon we're going to buy stock in the chiropractic industry for the near future, when our backs go out.

And the funny thing? We wouldn't have it any other way. Because when I go in to soothe his big little self at night, and he cuddles his fat rolls into me and I feel his doughy weight on my chest, I am content. As he sighs a breathy sleep-sigh, I know that I hold the world in my arms.

10/14/2007 - Multi . . . hmm . . . cultural??

Mami. How would you say this word? Well, if you were three years old and you lived in our house, you would most definitely not pronounce it the way it was meant, in a lilting spanish-accent "mommy" type way. Because maybe your mom had read to you from a book called "Dora's Treasure Hunt" and pronounced it incorrectly one time, and you were forever stuck on the mispronounced way to say it. Which would be "mammy."

Not that I even took Spanish in college, so how am I supposed to know how these things are said? But that's not the point. The point is, if you lived in our house, you would decide that my new name should actually be mammy. Of course since you would only be three years old you would not be embarassed by any "Gone with the Wind" type associations that might be made in your, um . . . mammy's mind. And you would most assuredly not hesitate to run through the store calling "Mammy, mammy!!" as your female parent glances furtively around in embarassment.

And even your father would play along, unknowingly, by saying things like, "He misses his mammy. He just wants his mammy. He needs mammy to read him a story." Then your female parent would shoot daggers with her eyes and not-so-subtly mouth the words "Don't call me that!"

What? You're not a three-year-old living in our house calling me mammy? My mistake, that must have been Joshua I was thinking about.

It's so embarassing. And then several nights ago I was putting Jonah to sleep, and started laughing so hard I was shaking and making a wheezy sort of sound through my nose. I half dropped Jonah into his crib since I couldn't see through the tears in my eyes, and I had to run and find Tim to tell him my revelation. If I had to be mammy, then I would henceforth be calling him "Pappy." Guess who had a faster-than-fast about face on the topic? Ding-ding-ding, you guessed it! The male parent of the household!

Now Joshua gets reminded that I am either Mama or Mommy. Hopefully this will pass soon.

At least Jonah is calling me Mama now. And maybe we won't have issues like this to deal with again for a little while, because I might die from embarassment otherwise.

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