Life with a for-all-practical-purposes-already-two-year-old is exhausting, but rather good. I have a couple hundred adorable pictures in my camera (and a couple hundred blurry ones too) but my hard drive is so full of pictures that, if I download these, Picasa will crash my computer and probably set it on fire. So we'll have to wait on the pictures.
He's a very attractive child these days -he stood still for a home haircut last weekend. He even let Eric clip several of his nails without the usual wet sheet wrap. (I AM KIDDING. We have never, repeat NEVER, wrapped our child in a wet bedsheet.) (It would probably work, though.) If we work in a little personal care time every saturday morning. we'll probably have a fairly decent-looking kid, without the Wolverine adamantium claws.
He's also fun. He's talking quite at lot, with new words every day. Today, I sneezed, and he said "Bless you."
His best trick - he's been doing this for months - is this.
We tell him to do something.
He replies (as a matter of course, regardless of the request) "NO!"
One of us gives him a big admonishing eyeball and says "Excuse me?"
At which point he makes BLYTHE DOLL EYES and ask sweetly, "No, please?"
So, tiring, but rewarding.
Also, since the tiny corner playground in our neighborhood has been finished and re-opened, I have become much fonder of our development. We go play there nearly every day, and so I am starting to get to know the kids (and the other parents) who live nearby. And, though it isn't like I've found a new BFF, I do find the neighborhood much livlier now that we're a tiny bit connected.
Ian (who, it must be said, talks just a little like Scooby Doo,) asks every day about the playground. This is the way he asks:
"PLWAYYY?!?!??!! GWOUND?!?!???!!!?!?
[He uses that inflection for practically everything. He also has a little trouble with compound consonent sounds, like the 'nk' in the middle of 'monkey'. He gets a little wetness into it, like it's Hebrew. This is particularly cool when he catches sight of the photo of my brother and his wife that's in our living room. He sees it, and it's as if he's never seen it in his life - he gasps (this is actually true), gapes at me, and then shouts "UNKCHCHCHUL?!?!?!? SHANDY?!??!?!?!?!"
Uncle Sandy had dinner with us last week. Ian practically had an aneurysm when he walked in the door.]
We were at the playground after dinner tonight. Ian was starting to get tired (ah ha! My evil plan was working!) and I was ready to scoop him up and take him inside. He was sitting in the bouncy rubber mulch, and I leaned down to pick him up.
At the same time he decided to stand up.
The collision with his shockingly hard little head made me reel, and after a moment, my nose started to bleed. First a trickle, then a gush, which I tamped with my scarf, a pink pashmina-ish sorta thing. I wanted to hide it from Ian, who I thought would be upset be the sight.
While I tried to hide the blood (and get those little cartoon stars and chirping birds from circling my head), Ian decided that it would be a great time to mount the big slide (something he does safely all the time)and then go down it ON HIS FEET.
(Something which cannot be done safely by anyone.)
He made it most of the way down, before falling face-first onto the edge of the slide. No damage, just a bloodied lip. I pinched my nose closed with my left hand, picked him up with my right, comforted him a little, and we staggered home.
