Yesterday's News

SO. Now that this one project at work is over, I have a little head space for the summer and shall commence a self-flagellation of posts in which I update my audience* on all the things that have happened over the last month or so. 

For example, this one fine day last month (okay, maybe six weeks ago) when seven different babies whose mommies are all friends got together and wreaked havoc on Jenny's apartment. 

Seven babies aged 1 month to 2.5 years, including 1 pair of twins. MAYHEM.

The sensation of things coming to pass is particularly strong when you first see your friends' children playing with your children, I think. It's so strange that they are all finally real. 

Because when you're a little kid you do imagine your children, but with the extravagance and lavish uncertainty that you consider every aspect of your adult life ("I shall live in a wooden house in a tree on an island with my seven children and a baby tiger, and we wil have a special cozy helicopter for flying in and I'm going to save all the drowning baby whales"). 

The imagination of kids got realer for me when I was a teenager, but not necessarily more mature ("It's too bad you and me are both girls so we can't make a biological baby, because it would be totally hot." "If you and Rex had a baby it could have black hair and green eyes. That would be SO amazing.") 

The biggest kids randomly hogging the stroller, while one of its usual occupants looks on and jiggles.

Then you spend your twenties (okay, I spent my twenties) avoiding actual reproduction while nonetheless developing a keen sense of maternal anxiety ("I really want kids one day. But I'm not ready for kids. I'll just ruin them. I don't even know who I am! I need to travel. I need to focus on my career. My "career". Oh god oh god. And I really like sleeping all morning. And I have no money. And I'm not ready for the commitment. But I really want kids.") 

Then suddenly you have a baby. And half your circle of friends is getting knocked up like lab rats. And there are babies friggin' everywhere. 

Thus, as after every irreversible thing, you can hear the slamming shut of doorways or even peepholes into alternate lives. You love a new person that you can never unlove. He or she will never not be your kid. 

And all the theoretical children you and your friends could have had (and all the theoretical people you could have had them with) vaporize entirely and are replaced by something much, much better: the kids you DO have. 

It is noisy. There's less sleeping and also fewer adult beverages than you might have previously desired at a party. And the festivities break up before 7 p.m., because bed time. But actually, eating berries and cake while a seething pile of infants and toddlers howl all around you is more beautiful -- and fun -- than you'd think. 

If there is ever a situation where several thousand tons of berries have to be gobbled up in order to save Planet Earth, all we have to do is unleash the toddlers. 

So thanks for the baby party, Jenny! And to all the babies -- including those not pictured here -- y'all just keep on drooling 'til next time. 

_______________________


*Hi, Mom and Dad.

A Reason for Tadpoles

People keep telling me that kids just get more and more difficult as they get older. 

Sure, the story goes, newborns are hard. But after this initial hurdle, your average four-month old is an immobile blob of placid joy. It's all downhill from there, they say. First you have to start cooking for them, then they start crawling around and destroying your home (fact), then they start walking and drawing on the walls and running into traffic, and then, once they start talking, they just don't stop. The questions ("But why?") start coming, and then the opinions ("NO"). And the questions become harder and the opinions more and more obnoxious until they finally move out, at which point the child, now an adult, becomes merely expensive and disappointing. 

Bundle of Joy.

Obviously, none of this applies to me. MY kid is going to be angelic, friendly, successful and emotionally stable even through her teenage years. Just like her mother was (HAHAHHahhahahaha...HA!) 

Ruh-roh.

But there is one thing about her impending childhood that I'm really looking forward to, and that is Doing Experiments. 

It was my favorite, favorite thing as a kid. Kitchen science (volcano, anyone?). Investigating bugs under a magnifying glass, and perhaps accidentally frying a limb off in the process, thus Learning an Important Lesson both about the relationship between heat and light and also the fact that with great power comes great responsibility. Making oobleck (by the way, when I lived in Malaysia we had nothing like the oobleck they're doing there these days).  Playing with prisms and colored lights. Toying with magnets. Hunting for treasure with a crappy metal detector. You know. The good stuff. 

Project!

So far the Noodle is, of course, not yet interested in any of nature's unexpected delights, since she's still coming to grips with the banal. Gravity, for a start, is something she battles daily now that she is learning to stand (my money's still on gravity, generally). And then there is everything else we take for granted by the time we're five years old. 

I point out an unusual-looking dog; she is closely inspecting a tiny piece of floor crud. We got stuck in a massive rainstorm with my friend James and she couldn't stop staring at the rain where it hit the ground and bounced back up. I showed her a little inchworm in the park; she tried to eat it. 

But anyway, her interests aside, I now have a great excuse for indulging MY interests and therefore we have now got TADPOLES. Yay!

These were "rescued" from near certain survival in the rain-cover over our friend Gustav's mother's swimming pool. We had gone over to help (okay, watch) them pump out said water and fill up the pool for the summer, but the pump was broken, so instead we spent the afternoon grilling ribs and watching zillions of tadpoles slither around in the muck. 

My little frog puppies.

And now about 20 of them are slithering around in a container in our living room, to my endless joy. I've been feeding them tiny pieces of boiled-to-death green beans and cucumber, and they appear to be doing well. My dear husband is utterly disinterested, as are the cats, who appear not to have noticed that there is a container of swimming treats by the windowsill. The Noodle is only interested in splashing the water, so she is no longer invited to assist in their upkeep.

If they make it to young adulthood (after they grow legs but before they get jumpy) they shall be released into the pond of a local park. I saw some heron-looking birds there yesterday, so I'm certain they won't be bored. Wish us luck! 

Floor Swimming

So what have I been up to lately, you ask?

A little work, a little play, but the short answer is that I've been up to nothing. Yet I've been oddly busy. Not in a bad way, just a busy way. 

Have you ever had one of those weeks where you feel like you did the army crawl through a mud-drenched obstacle course and then, at the very end, you got hosed down with elephant dung? This wasn't one of them. This was just one of those weeks on the hamster wheel, where you do one little thing you have to do and then another and then another and the next thing you know, you're a week closer to death and no more fulfilled than you were last Monday, and you still haven't done the things you really meant to do. And now it's Tuesday and I've caught the sniffles. 

The good news is that while I was busy chasing my tail, young Noodle was moving in better circles, namely floor circles. For a couple weeks now she's been wheeling around on her belly like a top*. Progress was marginal until yesterday morning's nap. When she awoke she could propel herself forwards with her fingertips and tippy toes. Ladies and gentleman, McNoodle has achieved locomotion. Crawling ahoy! 

Hope you're achieving great things this week. And I'll be cheerier tomorrow. *Sniff*

* I haven't seen anyone playing with a top in years and in all my recent visits to diverse toy stores I have not seen a single top. I haven't even thought about toy tops (or semi-professional tops, for that matter) in years. Do they even do tops any more?