Mooo-ve over, human...or, You've come a long way, mama

Few days back, a group came over to my house for brunch. A college buddy who has a son about five months younger than Anonybabe asked if I'd weaned Anonybabe yet.

"Weaned?!" another friend piped in, "weaned? Is that the word you use?"
"Yeah, I think so," college buddy blushed a little and looked to me for backup.
"Weaned," I concurred. And looked at other friend a little perplexed.
She wrinkled her nose. "That sounds so...animalistic."

Yep. It does. It is. The moment made me realize how much more comfortable I am with my body since having a baby and nursing this long. I didn't even bat an eye when my male buddy brought up my breastfeeding routine in a room full of people who hadn't breastfed. I thought of it as normal breakfast conversation.

To that I can only say: Yea!

My community - I'm really, really sorry if I make you uncomfortable with my casual talk of boobs, my occasional whipping out of the breasticles, even now. But it is SO DAMN NICE not to worry about it anymore. And really, aren't all of our lives a little nicer with the introduction of a little casual nip?

I added Hathor the Cow Goddess links to my website - she's a chick who is gaga over whipping out her breasts. I used to find her a little too strident about it, but now I think she's right.

Happy holidays! Give boobs a chance!

So it's not just me?

Anonyhub threw a birthday party of sorts for me last week, the dear. This is not pertinent to the post, but I gotta pause here to give due credit: Anonyhub cooked like a fiend and the party had a delicious spread: meatballs with pineapple sauce, sweet & savory cookies with herbs on top and cut into wagon wheel wedges, grilled asparagus, spicy roasted sweet potato blocks...it was just delish. Unfortunately, I had one of those nights where the more drinking I did, the more I wanted to just be an introvert. My friends kept me rolling in laughter most of the night, but when things inevitably petered down there were some awkward silences and I just couldn't jump in to fill the void. Ah well...sometimes you feel like a party nut, sometimes you don't. I was really, really glad friends came over in the cold, snow and ice on a pre-Christmas weeknight and didn't want them to get the wrong impression.

Anypartypooper, we hired a babysitter to take Anonybabe off the premises during the party, but she was returned before anybody left, and surprised me by toddling around the room and talking non-stop. This led to some mild amusement amongst our guests. At one point, a partygoer made a joke and did it in the same tone Anonybabe had been using all night...the one I blog about here...the one that was driving me so crazy when she first started using it. I've gotten used to the way she talks now, for the most part, but when I heard my friend mimicking her spot-on, I thought, "Ah! So it isn't just me! When she raises her voice like that it is freaking annoying!!" There's a teeny part of me that feels like a heel for often cringing at the sound of my daughter's voice....but a big part of me that feels glad I'm not alone.

I'm going to assume she won't talk like this for the rest of her life, while simultaneously scouring Craigslist for Anonybabe's very own Henry Higgins. No slipper fetching required.

A, B, C, Delicious

Anonybabe really likes reading the Dr. Suess A-B-C book. And until this weekend, she really liked demanding that we sing the alphabet song to her when we opened it to a multi-color spread of the 'bet. Woe upon us if we sang the wrong version...there's the traditional "Twinkle twinkle" one and then another from a PBS show sung by Alpha Pig. "Aeee? Beee? Seee? Aaaah Piiiiiih?" means you better step proper to the mike, yo, lest you be "NO?!"ed off the stage.

In the last couple of days she ventured to sing her own toddler version, where she skips around to all the meaty parts and then ends with "ting wi meeee".

She'll also sing a fill in the blank version of Rudolph the Rednose Reindeer and Frosty the Snowman. To wit:

Anonymom: Rudolph the.......(healthy pause)

Anonybabe: (bobbing and swaying)...wed....waindeeee

Anonymom: Had a very........(healthier pause)

Anonybabe: Shy.....Noh!

Anonymom: And if you ever......

Anonybabe: (making a run for the dollhouse) Mama...pay...dah house....tooooooo?

It's fun to pull it out at parties...makes the roughly five thousand times in a row she asked that we sing it seem almost worth it. I'm worried it's going to lose its appeal before we get to pull it out in front of her biggest patrons, aka the grandparents.

Wine Oh

I am sorry to report that to counter the cabin fever brought on by four days of house arrest...house arrest due to the cold here, mostly...I've taken to drinking wine coolers during the day. Homemade wine coolers. Like, I forewent drinking some half-way decent wine in favor of mixing it with something sweet and fizzy. All while taking care of my toddler.

Am I drinking one now? (Cue husky voice) Why, yes...yes I am.

Baaaaaad mommy, on so many levels.

And what, praytell, is the evolutionary purpose of shame?

A dirty little secret concerning breast feeding? It is not entirely unpleasant to have someone sucking on your nipples throughout the day.

That is, once you can get over your hangups and accept that boob-to-mouth is probably pleasurable for just this reason and it is okay to enjoy it.

Now that Anonybabe is almost 21 months old and weaning is closing in on the horizon, I'm just about there.

Birthday bytes

I am wearing my come-fuck-me birthday boots tonight. I am hoping they adequately distract Anonyhub from my don't-touch-me leg hair.

Moon unit

Sometimes I think Anonyhub hangs the moon. Sometimes I think he can go hang himself on it. Today I am leaning towards the former.

We watched 2 days in Paris last night, a movie about a couple - she's french, he's american - spending 2 days with her family in Paris. They have a horrible time and their relationship teeters on the edge of extinction. The movie is funny and sweet and realistic. It made me aware again of the fact that I do love Anonyhub. That I'd like to laugh and play with him more. That even good relationships can take a turn for the ugly when it involves two thinking, growing, emotional people.

At the very least, I like the fact that we liked the same movie.

All for one, and one for all

Anonyhub and I are both disgruntled Protestant Christians. So disgruntled that we don't identify ourselves as such anymore. But we both want to continue to pursue god in our own time and way and want to give Anonybabe a spiritual lexicon so she has the vocabulary and framework to decide how and whether she wants to do the same.

This show was geared towards people like us.

Here's a quote from Rabbi Sandy Eisenberg Sasso, who is one of its interviewees, about everyday activities she thinks of as spiritual exercises:

“…We don’t usually think of reading as a spiritual exercise, but I think it is because in order to hear a story you have to quiet yourself. And you have to empathize with the characters in the story, and isn’t empathy part of the spiritual life? Isn’t quietude part of the spiritual life? And you also discover in story that you don’t have control. You might like the characters to do one thing and another. You might wish they would make one decision or another, but you can’t control the situation. And part of the spiritual life is learning that we are not always in control. And also if we are also truly listening, then all the details matter. It matters what the color of her hair is, or what he’s wearing, or what the time of day is, and paying attention to the details of life is part of a spiritual life.”

Blinded me with Science

So to keep Anonybabe occupied while I made dinner Sunday night, I gave her some carrots, an empty bowl, a bowl of water and a scrub brush and asked her to help me wash the carrots for our supper. She set to with great gusto, taking one carrot at a time out of the water, giving it a earnest swipe, and then moving it to the empty bowl. When she'd moved all the carrots to the dry bowl, she would reverse the process. Back and forth, back and forth.

At one point I started taking carrots and peeling them, letting the peels fall into the dry bowl. She started experimenting with the peels. Tasting one, putting one in her hair, moving the pile of peels back and forth, in and out of the water.

When she finally got bored with this, she dug in the cabinet under the sink and found some pop-up sponges...the kind that swell when you put them in water. So I got another bowl of water for her to put the sponges in. She liked watching them grow, and then liked carrying the soaking sponges to various places in the house and squeezing them so the water would splatter onto the floor. I kept her from doing this on the carpet, but let her do it on the linoleum.

I thought, "I don't really want to tell her that isn't appropriate, you're making a mess, the floor will get slippery, oh look at your tights you're soaked we're going to have to change you for the third time today." I was really jazzed that she was experimenting and observing. I toyed with a fantasy of never encouraging her to think of the practical consequences, to always push her to go ahead, try it, see what happens. "A scientist," I thought. "Oh boy."

I tried to push the thought of the boyish, eager, gee-whiz scientists who'd developed the atom bomb out of my head. They hadn't been bogged down by pesky things like the political/social/biological consequences of their research. They'd just wanted to get to the heart of the matter, to see what made the universe tick. Their open inquisitive nature was a beauty to behold. The soul-wrenching consequences were horrifying. Not that the scientists decided to bomb Japan. They just didn't worry their smart little heads over the fact that that's what their bosses wanted to do.

As I sighed, wondering if we could ever live in a world where we didn't have to be more watchful, Anonybabe slipped in her puddle on the floor, her feet contorted as she landed on them at odd angles. She cried as I held her, then calmed as I had her wiggle her toes and feet, relieved that my momentary fantasy of a world without consequences hadn't resulted in a twisted baby ankle.