I was talking to Bethany today about what a crappy blogger I’ve become recently. My biggest excuse is that my peak creative time does not align with Bug’s nap schedule anymore. This is very true. But it doesn’t help that I’ve discovered that I can watch television online when Bug is asleep. (Where have I been? 1993?) My productivity has taken a steep decline since I became hooked on Mad Men. Groan.

So I’m prying myself awake with a cup of java and hammering out a listy post. You guys like those, right? What’s been up around here? I started a meme called 101 Quirky Things My Kid Does but I’ve only gotten to about ten. So much for that idea.

Here they are so far:

1. When Bug needs to go potty she will insist I come with her only so she can yell, “PRIVACY!” at me and demand that I shut my eyes while she poops.
2. Pacifiers that are old are called “yucky pahs.” Pacifiers that are new are called “yummy pahs.” Only she can tell the difference but according to her it’s a really really big difference.
3. She hates potatoes. She always has, even when she was a baby. She wouldn’t eat any baby food if it had potatoes in it.
4. She walks up to random strangers and introduces herself. I really need to teach her not to do that.
5. She doesn’t like chicken or pork unless it’s the “dark kind” that I make (aka drowned in soy sauce).
6. To Bug, people are color-coded. Everyone has a color. If you don’t have one she will assign you one. (Her color is green, duh. Mine is red and Toby is blue, Bethany is yellow and orange, SuperChic is purple and pink…they usually match your favorite color but not always.)
7. She has her own Moleskine sketchbook that she draws in when she is bored.
8. When bathtime is over if I don’t let her pull the plug and say, “I caught a shark!” as she dangles the plug on its long chain into our hair-rinsing pitcher, she will fall to pieces. Same thing with the vacuum cleaner plug. If I unplug it myself we have water-works so bad that I will just plug the cord back in so she can unplug it.
9. If anyone but me takes her out of the carseat without explicit permission, she falls apart.
10. When she says she’s hungry it just means she wants a pah, aka pacifier.

Those of you who know Bug will be totally bored by this list because it’s so old news.

In other news we have a pumpkin growing on our porch! A real pumpkin!…I think. It could be a watermelon. It’s growing in a big pot with our struggling palm tree and even-more-struggling orchid. I just looked over one day and there was this giant sprout growing out of the rocks. It didn’t look like a weed, it looked like a squash leaf or something. So I pulled back a couple of rocks and lo and behold there were some big flat pumpkin seed looking things. So I’m almost convinced that somehow last year when we were carving pumpkins some stray seeds crawled over there and planted themselves.

I’m very happy about this development. I never ever remember to plant a pumpkin and every year about October I kick myself because how easy would it be to plant a pumpkin? So this year it planted itself! Bug and I are watching our little (but actually pretty big) sprout very carefully. I can’t wait until it winds itself around our porch and produces a big fat baby pumpkin. If it makes it. If it dies I think I will cry.

And that’s all she wrote.