Unexpected returns

I was watching some quality children's programming with Riley this weekend and during a Blue's Clues episode (featuring Joe, who I am reluctantly warming up to because Riley seems to greatly prefer him to Steve, as evidenced by his joyous shout of "JOOOOOOE" whenever Frat Boy's mug appears onscreen), just about the time I was starting to nod off from the repetition and songs and the constant obtuseness of the host when it comes to seeing a goddamned clue and the charming misunderstandings when it comes to having the clue pointed out to them and the fact that I was deliberately watching a show targeted towards people who still regularly poop their pants, it was THEN that Joe opened that big-ass cartoon letter ("Wonder who it's from?") and do you know who it was from? THEY MIGHT BE GIANTS, that's who. TMBG, playing "Clap Your Hands".

Best Blue's Clues ever. Now I'm always going to be wondering who might show up as a guest singer. If anyone from the show is reading, may I humbly request an appearance by GWAR, because that would rule.

After that, we put on some Curious George (don't judge, we had already exhausted our various wholesome non-television entertainment options, such as art time and Naked Hula Hooping) and for the first time I noticed that the show is narrated by Mr. William H. Macy, AKA "The heck ya mean?" Lundegaard. This led me to wonder whether other kid's shows have equally oddball narrators and voice-over actors. Has anyone considered the value Christopher Walken could bring to, say, the Backyardigans?

Lesson learned: if you watch enough pre-schooler programming, you just may expand your music/movie star trivia knowledge. And you will definitely get really, really good at spotting blue pawprints.

More fully-featured by the day

Two ways in which my son utterly startled me this weekend:

1) JB has been gone since Friday, off on a camping trip with his father and brother in Oregon. When Riley first said "Daddy?" on Saturday, I told him Daddy was gone right now but he would be home soon. "Daddy bye bye," he said. "Daddy . . . backpack."

I guess he saw JB packing up his gear earlier this week and probably the word "backpack" was bandied about a little, but STILL. Freak me out, why don't you, kid. What's next, telling me Danny isn't here right now Mrs. Torrance?

2) Riley's had a nasty diaper rash all weekend (why does this sort of thing always coincide with a solo parenting gig, I ask you) and I've been saying "Sucks, I know. Sucks," whenever I have to wipe down his hurting little bum. "Sucksh," he now says whenever I start pulling out the wipes. "Sucksh."

I figured he was just repeating me, so imagine my surprise when earlier this evening after I'd pushed the wrong button on our stupidly complicated remote (okay, maybe the stupid part is the bag of meat mouth-breathingly hitting the buttons, but I swear to god there is no reason why one wrong move can suddenly reprogram the entire DVR) and once confronted with a screen of gibberish, groaned in despair—only to hear a tiny voice next to me issue forth a perfectly accurate commentary on the situation: "SUCKSH."

Is it just me

. . . or is this wrong on approximately 40571894532 different levels?

It's a good thing his laugh has curative properties

Are you familiar with the toddler game of I Don't Know What The Hell I Want? It generally goes like this:

"What's wrong, Riley? Do you want more milk?"
"NoooooOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOO."
"Okay then."
"MO MILK. MO MIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIILK."
"So you do want more milk. Here you go."
"Noooooooooooooooooo! Nooooooooooooooo."
"Okayyy. Well, it's here if you want it."
"Nooooooooo!" *angry shove* *loud clunk of cup falling* *splurt of milk cascading across the floor*
"Riley, no. No throwing. Okay, I'm putting this away."
"MO MILK! MO MILK! MO MIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIILK!"

Well, when you hear people talk about how rewarding parenthood is, and how it's the very best thing they ever did and their lives are so much more complete now and blah blah blah annoying-cakes, they definitely are not talking about THIS EFFING GAME.

Beloved blob

I love reading those "Your Pregnancy This Week" websites. Here's what the 11-week page says on BabyCenter:

Your fig-sized baby is now fully formed — measuring 1 1/2 inches long and weighing in at a quarter of an ounce. His skin is still transparent, allowing many of his blood vessels to show through. Some of his bones are beginning to harden, and tiny toothbuds are starting to appear under his gums. His fingers and toes have separated, and he may soon be able to open and close his fists. He's already busy kicking and stretching, and [...] these movements will increase as his body grows and becomes more developed and functional. As his diaphragm develops, your tiny tenant may also start to get the hiccups.

Awwww. Okay, so the baby is a terrifying see-through blob of gelatinous calcified goo who may or may not still be sporting flippers instead of human appendages, but still: awww.

Weekend SOS

All right, people, I need your help. We have officially spent too many weekend afternoons praying for the sweet, sweet moment when this happens:

I mean, I know most parents probably look forward to naptime but it is normal to perform an end zone dance once the kid goes down? And to weep actual, physical tears of joy? And also to thrust your fist in the air so vigorously you dislocate your shoulder? I'm just saying.

Weekends have been hard lately. JB and I give each other breaks—where one person stays with Riley while the other jets off for an hour or two of Home Depot/used bookstore browsing—but the hours of kid-wrangling are long and tedious. Especially on a weekend like this last one, which served up 48 hours of mugginess and rain.

Too often we give up on trying to brainstorm outings and stay home instead, where it's inevitable that we hit the Long Dark Tea-Time of the Toddler Soul. When we run out of Blue's Clues and all the rocks in the backyard have been thoroughly inspected and toys have been strewn all over the living room floor and subsequently ignored/tripped over and now all three of us are sick of each other.

I actually find it easier on the days when JB works and I stay home, mostly because 1) when JB's not around, Riley's less likely to stagger around howling "DAAAADDDDYYYY!" the moment JB is out of view for half a flipping second, and 2) I can always look forward to that blessed 5:30ish timeframe when Daddy walks back through the door and I can pass the torch.

So anyway, I'm looking for creative weekend ideas. What are some good family activities to do with an almost-2-year-old, after you've visited all the parks and playgrounds?

A visit from Mrs. Claus

This morning I had to get out of my house (remodel in progress, loud contractors everywhere running power tools and blaring a radio that seems to CONSTANTLY be playing Fleetwood Mac) and so aiming for a time-killing activity that didn't involve getting drenched in the rain I took Riley to Target.

The trip went south almost immediately, when he started wrenching at the confining buckle strap in the cart and howling "DOWN! WALK!". I tried to distract him with a cracker, which he ate while whine-crying, so then he was covered with tears and little wet cracker remnants. He lunged at random things, he yelled, he responded to my various coos and angry hisses by cranking up the volume to ear-shattering levels while other shoppers shot me sidelong glances—their own children perched quietly in their carts, probably reciting Bible verses.

I picked up one of the items I went there for in the first place, a new magnetic doodle pad to replace his old broken one, and for a brief shining moment he was entranced with the box. Soon enough, though, he was frustrated that he couldn't open the box, and then he REALLY went batshit.

My head ached, my hair was frizzy from the humidity, and the whining was making me want to throw him down a well. I shoved the cart towards the nearest cashier line, and stood there drooping, while Riley—snot-stained, red-eyed, and sporting a giant wet spot on his shirt from the drool—settled down to a kind of low-grade whimper.

I felt a hand on my back, and turned to see a grandmotherly woman standing behind me. She was comfortably upholstered, and sported a white bun and twinkling blue eyes. She asked what he'd been so upset about, and I said I didn't know. "I think he just didn't want me to have a nice shopping trip," I blurted, feeling resentful and snivelly.

"Oh, of course not," she said gently, her sparkly eyes crinkling into a smile. She rubbed my back a little, a gesture I would normally have reacted to like a feral cat, but I found myself melting. "That wouldn't be any fun, would it Mama?" Her voice was soothing, her face so understanding and wise.

I paid for my stuff, feeling a thousand pounds lighter, and shyly waved at her as we left. I felt as though my perspective had returned: kids sometimes have tantrums, and sometimes it happens in public, and it's not the end of the damn world.

I don't think I'll ever forget how such a simple, friendly gesture turned my day around. It's enough to regain your faith in humanity, really. The kindness of a stranger in Target.

Straining my confines

I took pictures of my belly every three weeks or so the last time I was pregnant, and I can't help but notice that my current belly—a 10 weeks' pregnant belly—looks an awful lot like the 19-week photo I took in 2005. I seem to be 9 weeks ahead of schedule in terms of belly growth, for the love of god. I've always heard that second pregnancies show a lot faster than first pregnancies, but COME ON.

My pants don't fit and I can't stand the sensation of something clinging to my waist, so I'm currently wedging myself into a series of summer dresses as a last-ditch effort before going to maternity clothes. It seems insane to wear maternity stuff before I've even hit the second trimester, but once these dresses start looking less like flattering disguises and more like sausage casings, I just might need to start rocking the elastic.

I do have a closet full of too-big clothing from losing weight earlier this year, but everything feels uncomfortable -- ill-fitting all over except for the waist, which strains outward in that oh-so-attractive Dead Bloated Possum manner.

I hit this stage much later in my last pregnancy, obviously, but now I remember just how much I hate the in-between weeks of looking not pregnant but simply fat. My gut sticks out in an alarming way, but not quite far enough to make it clear that something's in there other than fifteen frozen Snicker's bars.

Here's where you come in: what did you do, wardrobe-wise, during your Is She Or Isn't She stage of pregnancy? Any advice for keeping things under wraps, so to speak, for a little longer before giving in to the tentwear?

By any other name

Swistle has a great post up about baby names, and how in her opinion boy names are more difficult to choose than girl names. I completely agree, having spent a fair amount of time over the last several months idly discussing name options for the Potential Second Child -- we easily agreed on a girl's name (with several backup options, in case a trainwrecky celebrity suddenly steals our idea) but a boy's name has been a long time coming. All the boy names we considered were too common, too weird, belonged to someone we knew (don't you hate that, when you glom onto the perfect name but it also belongs to, like, your coworker?), too gender-ambiguous (I'm sensitive to this having chosen Riley's name without a clue that it was becoming a very popular girl's name as well), too slushy-sounding when paired with our last name, or one of us loved it and the other really, really didn't (example: JB liked Garrett, I suggested Calvin--much to each other's dismay).

We had a girl's name all picked out—Madeline—when I was pregnant with Riley, and while I still like it, it's not our choice this time around. I guess I feel like Madeline was the right name for that baby if we were going to be having a girl, but this is a different baby and if it's a girl we need a different name. Is that weird?

While we've chosen family names for middle names, we've never really considered using a family name as a first name (not enough names we like, too many worries about favoritism, etc). We've mostly picked names by flipping through baby books, as unromantic as that sounds. How about you? How did you pick your baby names?

Nocturnal activities

We're not quite ready to start potty training in earnest yet, although we did buy a potty and occasionally plop Riley on it, where he sits and gleefully shouts "PEE PEE!" but doesn't appear to Grok the Concept with Fullness, if you know what I mean. Sometimes he likes to take off the rubber ring at the top and bring it to us, saying "Circle? Circle?" and sometimes he likes to put toys in the basin and say "Bye bye", but the notion of using the potty for its intended purpose hasn't occurred to him yet.

That's fine by me, I have no desire to fast-track my kid's potty process before he's even two years old, but I've been wondering about something. Riley hardly ever poops while he's up and about—he seems to save his, er, dietary output for when he's napping or sleeping at night. I'm guessing this will change over time, or maybe it will stop once he starts learning to produce bodily waste as part of a specific effort rather than having it be something that just sort of mysteriously happens on its own (I'm reminded of the time a while back when he was peeing outside as he ran around diaperless, and the look on his face—like, what the HELL?), but if for some reason Riley remains a Night Pooper -- well, do you ever have to wake your kid up at night to offer the potty? That seems weird, and annoying for all involved parties.