Little People

Anonybabe got this DVD from her grandparents last Christmas, I think. It looked insipid as hell, so it's been stashed away in the DVD cabinet ever since. Anonybabe found it the other day and held it up for me to see "Wa!" she exclaimed.

"Sure, we can watch that," I answered.

And lo and behold, I was kinda impressed. It shows all of these claymations shorts of "Little People" going throughout their day in the requisite world of sunshine and rainbows. But I like this stripe of rainbow. The shorts are aimed at really young people but cover such topics as:

• Everything (plants, animals, people) grow at a rate that is intrinsically right for that being
• It's great to be helpful, but it's even better to be loving...as in, love is the most important commodity you bring to a friendship. (Hear that, Thomas?)
• When you love someone, sometimes it's hard to let them go, but if you do and they choose to come back of their own free will, it's sweet.

Not to mention a theme song sung by Aaron Neville that will have you humming "cocoa but-taaaaah" to yourself the rest of the day.

Contrast my new found love for the Little People with my continued disgust with Disney. Anonyhub picked up a copy of some new show that features Pooh and Tigger being super sleuths in the hundred acre wood. God, the story was bland. Until I thought about it, and then I decided it was downright infernal. Rabbit makes a supergrow potion for his pumpkin patch that accidentally gets on the little girl Pooh and Tigger super sleuth with. She grows into a giant and really enjoys all of the cool things she can do until she realizes that being big is a burden on her friendships - she is hard to feed, play with, and talk to. So she goes to Rabbit for a shrinking potion to make her small again. The subtext, as I see it? It's good to be like everybody else so you don't piss people off. Potions aka medical miracles can easily make you into whatever you want to be at a snap of your fingers. Ugh. Uuuuuugh.

Okay, let's cleanse our palette with the Little People theme song "Cocoa but-tah to the re-he-he-he-scue" :
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=-mzJwv4cH5A

P.S. I found some older Little People cartoons that are a little effed up...kinda makes me like them more. You're weird Fisher Price.

Dreamy

I think I woke up last night cradling Anonyhub's face in my hands and kissing his forehead. I was confused to see his face because I thought I'd been leaning over to give Anonybabe kisses. But I may have dreamed it; it's all a blur.

Preemptive hi

Anonybabe is still standoffish if approached by anyone...hell, they don't have to do more than speak in her direction from across them room and she mums up and stares.

But she's miss social butterfly as long as she gets to start the interaction.

"Hi!" she'll call to every stranger we pass on the street. "Hi-ee!" And then if they say hello, she stops to soak in the pleasure of initiating a call & response, pausing on the sidewalk and giving a goofy little guffaw before moving on.

We went into a coffee shop on Friday, and drunk with the pleasure of saying hello, she called it out as soon as we got in the door before she could really find anyone to direct it to.

Some people seem annoyed, as if they don't relish having to talk to anyone on the street, but how do you not respond to a chipper little toddler? I try to withhold my "isn't she better than quantum physics with a side of creamy peanut butter" smile from those folks after they murmur a begrudging "hi" back.

Growing Pains

Anonybabe and I walked to the grocery store on Saturday. It's a long walk, probably half a mile. I picked her up several times to move things along, but in general I wanted to take our time, make it a leisurely stroll. Anonybabe did not want to hold my hand; she wanted to walk alone (all the while chanting "wa, wa, wa" for "walk, walk, walk").

I was surprised how stricken I was by this. I want my little girl to be independent; I do, I do, I do. Especially after talking with a friend about Anonyhub's family - whose style is to stay very enmeshed, vs. my family - whose style is to push you out of the nest with a cheery "buh bye!". My family can be a little distant, a little stand-offish, but by god are they gonna let you do your thing. They are impressed & pleased with people who can take care of themselves. I want to pass some of those values on to Anonybabe, because they have served me well. I don't think all families should be like mine; I know at least two of my exes were perturbed at the distance from which my family operates. But I was equally perturbed by their dependence on their parents' approval. So I plan on pushing what worked for me. I'm sure there's a happy medium, and it'll be up to Anonybabe to find it.

But I digress. She wanted to walk alone! And instead of glowing with pride, I felt sad. I felt lonely. I could beat myself up for those feelings, but I think instead I'll soak them in and let them pass. I can grieve being joined at the hip. And try to console myself with the hope that this is the beginning of a long passage into a different kind of relationship. The kind where I revel in her personality and not her proximity.

Potty Time

Anonybabe has peed in a toilet. Thrice. I would be more excited about it if she was into it, but she's thoroughly unimpressed with the process.

I have a feeling we're in it (and by "it" I mean manually extracting poop from Anonybabe's pants and hindquarters) for the 2 1/2 - 3 year long haul.

That in spite of her current obsession with this little ditty. Imagine me growling this to Anonybabe repeatedly if you're in the mood for a very weird pick-me-up:

Big Wheels

Okay, perhaps I was a wee bit melodramatic when I worried that Anonybabe was going to be a constant, Six-from-Blossom type blabbermouth. She's back to a reasonable rhythm of talking & silence. I think being on a trip and in strange places made her a little nervous, she echoed the background drone of her nerves with a constant sonar of talking aimed in my direction: "Mama? Mama? Mama? Whee! Yea! Nana? Baby? Mama? Mama? Mama!!" and so forth and so on.

Yesterday we all (Anonyhub and Anonybabe and me) went to the pediatrician for Anonybabe's 18 month checkup. After Anonybabe was stripped to her skivvies and the nurse had weighed and measured her, we had a long wait before the doctor arrived. A wait that we filled by having her Dorothy doll tap dance on the window sills, ride the doctor's rotating chair like a Merry-go-round, and slide down the heat registers. I sat on the floor next to Anonybabe, and at one point sang songs she liked to her. When we got to "Bicycle" by Queen, I circled my feet in the air to mimic cycling. Usually I sing that to her on the changing table and pedal her feet around for her. Anonybabe's eyes lit up and she pointed to her chest "Me!" she cried. "Mama. Me!" by which I knew she meant I should sing the song and she would do something. While I sang "I love to ride my bicycle" in my best Mercury falsetto, she sat on the floor and kicked her legs in the air.

But I'm mostly impressed with Anonybabe's response to shot-time. We got her two shots this go-round, and when the very gentle and sweet nurse walked into the room holding a tray with her gloves and the syringes on them, Anonybabe waved to her "Hi!" The nurse greeted her back and then turned to us, "Okay, we're going to be giving Anonybabe two shots today." "Bye!" yelled Anonybabe, which cracked the nurse up. She had me hold Anonybabe in my lap, squeezing her and her arms close to me, while Anonyhub held her legs in case she kicked. Anonybabe watched closely, not at all wary, while the nurse wiped a little alcohol on both thighs and then went in for the kill. She was finished quickly and Anonybabe just stared at her while she readied the other needle and plunged it in. It was only as the 2nd needle was coming out that Anonybabe started to cry, but after one long moan and a few tears she realized it didn't hurt any more and she stopped. The nurse asked if she'd gotten any stickers and when she brought over a box, Anonybabe peered in, curious and excited to see pictures of Pooh. As the nurse left the room she waved as if they'd just been two ladies lunching together "By-ee!" I couldn't believe how smoothly things went.

Doll Baby

Anonybabe has been playing with her dolls by herself lately. I'll look over at her to see that she's babbling to her Pooh and moving his arms. Or she'll mime that she wants her doll to do something, and when I ask the doll "oh, do you want some food?", she'll take a moment to position it in her hands so that she can nod its head, and say "mmm HMMM" in a high voice. Or get the doll's hands in her hands so she can help it make the sign for "more" or "please".

And her new obsession is our Elmo's Potty Time DVD. It is a truly disturbing and truly helpful special all about (insert every known euphemism for urinating and defecating here). Elmo's dad sings a song called Potty Time that Anonybabe requests loudly and often. On our way back from Denver I treated our seatmates to it several times.

The flight back home yesterday had me so incredibly crabby and exhausted, yet I'm delighted with all of the little games Anonybabe and I played. We found a picture of a guitar in a magazine and took turns pretending to strum it while we sang Potty Time. We had a Dorothy doll (of Wizard of Oz fame) slide down every imaginable surface, including Anonybabe herself, where she would stop regularly to blow zerberts on Anonybabe's belly. Pretty soon Anonybabe would lift the shirt herself and position Dorothy on her fat tummy and grin up at me. The doll closes her eyes when you lay her back, so when her eyes were closed I would snore loudly three times and then have the doll sit up and "wake up", very confused and jerking around as if in a sleep haze. Anonybabe caught on pretty quickly and would lay the doll back, doing her best heavy breathing and then jerking the doll around and smiling through her pacifier at me, telling me with her eyes to do sound effects. On the el coming back from the airport, she sat both her dolls one to a seat opposite us. It was incredibly sweet to see them looking small and forlorn in the big dirty clinical seats.

I take it all back

Know what I just said about worrying that my daughter is too much like me? Forget it. Horse shit. I just spent a weekend with Anonybabe and my best friend and her baby daughter and husband in Colorado. Anonybabe was incredibly comfortable there. So much so that she jabbered non-stop.

I wished she had an off button. I wished I could send her to my in-laws. I wished the thought of a little future blabber-mouthed Anonybabe didn't make me think longingly of boarding school. What if she talks like this all the time? I like my quiet. I will go insane.

Mirror Me

Was thinkin' this morning on the way to work (by the way, did your parents ever demand "don't think!" when as a child you did something that frustrated them, and then you explained why you did it with "but I thought..."? I got that a lot. If I ever do that to Anonybabe, please shoot me immediately in the gut.) how I didn't expect having a child with such a similar personality to be so hard.

I worried a lot that a child of mine would be my complete opposite, and that I would have a hard time relating. Instead I have a child who seems to be very very much like me, and I have a hard time accepting her as such. I've had 33 years to build up impatience and resentment towards the parts of myself that drive me crazy, so when Anonybabe stares blankly at strangers, or demands that I do something for her instead of doing it herself so that it can be done easily and "right", or yearns savagely to immerse herself in television, I get embarrassed. I get disdainful. Which never helped me as a child and sure as hell isn't going to help her.

I know I'm being a little melodramatic, but it makes me gulp hard to think that if I want to be a good parent to Anonybabe, I'm going to have to work on accepting myself as-is.

Business Time

I should probably reflect a little on whether I really want to blog about this before putting it out there, but what is a thin little cloak of anonymity for if not to talk about things your friends have no desire to know about you?

Anonyhub and I had sex last night. It still happens rarely enough that it's an event worth noting. Also worth noting was how relaxed and casual it was...like it was a part of the partnership package. I didn't feel the need to be sexy for him and as a result the whole proceeding lost a lot of that grim, let's-get-down-to-business vibe it's had lately. We were also a teensy bit creative for once. It was fun. Nothing over the top fantastic, but it was nice to weave something pleasant and bonding into the fabric of our work-a-day lives.

Here's something to cleanse your palatte of Anonyfamily sex talk. You're welcome:

a bitch AND a moan

Instead of listing all of the amazing things Anonybabe has been up to lately (walking exclusively, eating with a spoon and fork and patting her face with a napkin when she's done, repeating words), or the fun things we've been up to lately (camping in Indiana, driving to Door County, Wisconsin, having a par-tay), I think I'll bitch about the nominally bad night I had last night.

It was a work night for Anonyhub, so as soon as I rolled in at 7pm from my job, he left me at home with the mushpot.

We'd had a very nice party the afternoon before, which had ended at 8:30pm or so. Plenty of time to clean up, relax, and get some well deserved rest. Anonyhub went in to work for a couple of hours, Anonybabe crashed early because she'd skipped her nap, and I was so elated with the time alone that I took the opportunity to gorge on mental junk food. I watched Desperate Housewives, all the while thinking "this is horrible!", and then dove into Facebook for a couple of hours. When Anonyhub got home, we cleaned and played online Scrabble together. I finally climbed into bed at 1:30am, happy and exhausted.

Cut back to the moment I walk into the house to take care of Anonybabe...my lack of sleep had caught up with me and my fuse was so short. I thought I was going to kill myself if I had to watch Elmo with Anonybabe or help her dress her dolls while I fought boredom and sleep, so I decided we needed a walk. "'Tay!" agreed Anonybabe, but when I tried to get shoes on her, she wanted to put them on each of her dolls first. Pooh had on her brown shoes, The Count had on her green ones, and creepy garage sale doll aka "Baby" was outfitted in her black shoes. She only has three pairs of shoes, and if I tried to take a pair off of a doll to put onto Anonybabe, she would see the empty shoes and point to another doll. "Pooh!" and if I tried to put them on her instead, she would cry and complain, tears instantly pooling in the corners of her reddened eyes. I don't believe in forcing her to do anything unless I really have to, so I kept gritting my teeth and helping her redress her bear and trying to inch us toward the door.

Once we got outside, everything was fine. Great, in fact. But I'd hated being stuck between a baby-dressing borefest and a temper tantrum. It made me crazy that Anonybabe wasn't ready to do what I needed her to do for my sanity. It made me realize I need my sleep because I really need my patience.

Feedback

*tap, tap, tap*

Hello? Is this thing on?

Hey, there. Sorry about the long silence. I'd like to blame my new addiction to Facebook, or the fact that work has become so very work-y, but the truth of the matter is that I've been taking a blogcation. Anonybabe has been developing in leaps and bounds and the idea of chronicling it all exhausts me. Plus I think I might have been a wee bit depressed for a while. So a sabbatical was in order. I did so very enjoy blogging before that I hope I get back into the swing of things, but I don't want to make any promises yet. I'll just blog as the inspiration strikes and let the blog entries fall where they may.