Bits and bobs.

As a work at home mother juggling solo parenting the majority of the day seven days a week, I've come to be more permissive about television than I'd have ever previously believed. I came into parenting with rather a lot of ideals and still certainly aim for them, yet have grown to find compromise of some of those ideals as essential to maintaining the overall balance and health of our family. Thereby, Teletubbies, Thomas and Friends, and Sesame Street have made their mark on our home in recent months. Oh, and Jakers! (Zig's understanding of the quirky expletive, however, is that it's the name of a pig, therefore he hollers out "Jakers" upon seeing pictures or models of piglets; soon enough, they'll all be Wilbur, I am sure.) On demand programming allows us to settle in for a small time when called for together, and on occasion, I'll set Ziggy up with a "show" when other options fail and I've no choice but to meet a deadline or complete a conference call. I suspect there could be far worse than my child learning Brit speak from Thomas, inspiring his comment to our beloved friend Kate as she frowned over sweeping, "Cheer up, Kitty Cat!"

Perhaps it should make me wrinkle my nose in disgust, according to those previous held ideals, but I can't help but laugh when Zig says "PBS Kids."

I think, too, that the recent obsession with big and little, introduced in conversation and multiple books over the course of a day's reading, may well be shored up by the big / little talk on his "shows" leading to talk of "big button, little button," Daddy's "big pants" and Ziggy's "little pants," and the one that makes me laugh so much: Mommy's "big bip" and "other bip," which is a dead on representation of the slightly unequal proportion of MBH's super full nursing mama bosom.

So Ziggy was nursing evening before last and suddenly stopped to point to my face, saying, "Eyes, Mommy. Blue eyes. Mommy blue eyes."

He also lately talks about Mommy's brown hair, and sight unseen, told me that Diggy also had brown hair.

He's known his colors since early on -- a fact which came clear to me when over a period of days he repeatedly said "green diaper" each time a particular nappy came into rotation. That was January, as Em gave us that stash in exchange for childcare just prior to Christmas. Zig was 16 months old.



Earlier in the same day, Ziggy rejected the blue batik tee shirt I'd put him in and asked for me to "Help put on" a little baseball jersey that buttoned down the front. Promptly he sat on the bed's edge and pointed from top to bottom, "One button, two button, three button." My Beloved Mister and I can not agree on whether this is counting. He says it's merely a sequence, which I believe to be counting itself. The Mister says counting is seeing three objects and saying that they are three. Me, I call that addition.

Regularly, Ziggy "counts" the moles on my breast and belly while nursing and cuddling.

Color me amused when he then turns to the mole on his wrist and tells it, "Come out!"


Yesterday, while nursing (something that happens so often & naturally through our days that I can not relate to mama friends with babes and toddlers who have a schedule of any kind, even self imposed, and nurse a countable number of times a day-- it's simply foreign to my experience) Ziggy pointed to the tag moles under my arm and announced, "Nipple." I explained that mama's body had made lots of tag moles since pregnancy with him. (Seriously-- they're everywhere! A year ago I had to get a mole on my neck taken off, as my seat belt was seriously agitating it. The doctor, a young man whose wife was expecting their first child, seemed somewhat aghast that my vanity didn't declare his removing the tag moles on my eye lids and underarms and legs a financial priortity.)



We planned a library visit for yesterday morning, in an effort to just have some normal around here. The Mister departed for work while the boy slept late (unusual, but we're all still so dang beat) and it was a bumpy transition from waking without Daddy in the house and onward. "Hold you, Mommy" and "Stroller!" and "No!" were the declarations of the morning and while I thought I was navigating this all quite gently, it did not prepare me for the snot flinging, body slamming, hysterical fit that took place for twenty minutes on the front porch and in the front yard by the car.... While Ziggy raged and crawled backwards all into my flower beds, I merely lowered my body to the ground, sat quietly and told him I knew he was frustrated. I told him I'd hold him if he wanted, or wait until he was feeling better. At last, Ziggy sat and sobbed and told me he wanted a graham cracker and he was "ready for seat."

Ziggy insisted to "stay in stroller" for most of the library visit, save for an ever so brief jaunt into storytime, in which after presenting Mary-Mary with a MAU Handbook and taking note of Tommy Dog's appearance, Ziggy merely wanted to join the Professor on stage for dancing, singing and juggling and was such a busy fellow we had to take off for the out of doors lest he disrupt the other storytime goers further. Once outside in the glorious courtyard, Zig tickled me by recognizing rosemary by sight and smell. We did get a whole passel of books for both the boy and the mother (who has a renewed goal of reading even a little bit daily) but checking them out with the card Ziggy wore on the lanyard around his neck proved quite distressful. The boy LOVES wearing his library card, and it was even MORE upsetting to remove the copy of Thomas Gets Ticketed & Other Stories and Kevin Henkes' A Good Day from his hands to get scanned.

The remainder of our day progressed with great tenderness meaning that little work was completed and supper and bedtime were drawn out exponentially. The Mister and I are working in what I tell Ziggy is "cooperation" to find a meaningful and consistent rhythm to our evenings, which don't start as a family until later than would be most desirable due to Daddy's work schedule.

Even this morning, as Ziggy slept fitfully, calling out, "Mama! Nurse! Nurse!" (reverting to calling Mama rather than the "Mommy" or "Hey, Paige" he has favored of late), he seemed to be processing leftover anxieties of last week's hospitalization as well as all the new stuff that he's over stimulated and excited by. Post nursing back down, Ziggy wiggled and laughed in his sleep saying, "Re-bo, bebo, re-bo, bebo.... funny! Pick up truck. Put up, put up!! Sit down, Bert. Fall down, Mommy." The rhyming, like so many other things, I'd not yet expected, but our boy is on his own jublilant path and everyday, a new adventure.