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M is for Monkey and N is for Newt!
The letter “M” could be for nothing other than monkey. Monkey Monkey Monkey. Or as Baby Bug calls them, “Oooh Oooh Aaagh Aaaagh’s”. She loves monkeys. I’m already planning her second birthday party in my head (because I’m a freak like that and that’s what I daydream about when I’m bored, like when I’m watching teletubbies). I’m thinking I might plan a Green Monkey party or a Green Hawaiian party. Green because that is Baby Bug’s favorite favorite color and Hawaiian because we will have just gotten back from our trip to Hawaii in December and who knows, maybe I’ll be inspired.
That’s my next big thing. The Dog Days of Summer are officially over and now I can think about Hawaii! I’ve never been to Hawaii. I have a grandfather who lives in Honolulu but he divorced my Grandma and left her with six kids so I’ve never really thought of him as family. He’s a Deadbeat Grandpa I guess. I think I’ve met him twice in my whole life.
Anyway, we’re going to Hawaii because Toby is shooting a couple of houses over there and we are tagging along. It won’t be a crazy touristy trip. I imagine we’ll be stuck stranded in a hotel quite a bit but I can’t complain. If you’re gonna be stuck some where, it might as well be Hawaii.
But back to the letters…. Hawaii is a ways off. I still have three months to get excited about it.
“N” is for Newt! This was a bit of a thinker for me. I didn’t want to do Narwhale because what the blankety blank is a Narwhale? Do they even exist? Isn’t that like a unicorn whale from Narnia or something? I thought about doing Nightingale, which is a very cute bird, but Toby is kind of a snob about birds. He has some sort of prejudice against birds from the East Coast. I didn’t want to listen to him going on an on about it so I just skipped it. He’s weird.
Then I googled “animals that start with the letter N” and Newt came up. I love Newts! I almost bought one once way back when I used to live in a lonely apartment in Irvine and I had no pets. They are so cute and little. I was at a pet store holding one, thinking about buying it when suddenly the silly thing just ran off the edge of my hand and landed splat on the floor. He was fine but after that I decided I didn’t really want a Newt as a pet.
Who knows, maybe someday Baby Bug will have an aquarium with a Newt. Newts are cool.
Download your letters here!Oh no! You missed the free letter download. Stay tuned. They will be released again for sale in my shop. -
out and about
Guess what!? The jogger stroller is finally fixed! Yaaaayyyy! Oh, right. I already told you. It’s huge news over here. Every pore in my body is singing happy songs about oxygen and living forever and stuff. It’s great. I didn’t realize how sedentary I had gotten over the last few months until I pushed myself out of the house and took a little jog down to the beach.
If it’s not one excuse it’s the other. There are always a million reasons not to get out and force yourself to sweat a little bit. At first it was because Baby Bug needed breakfast and that took forever and then the sun was too hot by the time we were done. Then it was because I needed a shower afterwards and trying to schedule a shower during day time hours at I-am-the-Mom Corporation was pretty much impossible. Then it was the jogger stroller having a flat and next thing you know our morning routine included watching television all the way up to Dragon Tails. ACK!
Getting the jogger stroller fixed (and the fact that it’s not dog-breath-hot anymore) has greatly improved our morning routine. Less tv. More outside. It’s fantastic! It’s probably a little too early to be bragging and celebrating but I am very very happy with my bad self.
Another good thing about getting out and walking with jogger stroller is that I can take pictures of the beach again. It’s been too long. I’m tired of trying to take pictures of Baby Bug while strategically framing my shot so the stains in my carpet don’t show. It’s time to get outdoors! I know fall and winter are coming but around here, that’s the most beautiful time of year.
In other news, guess who I was lucky to meet last night? Sophia! The famous wife of Neilochka! She was beautiful, of course, and charmed Baby Bug right away with her Russian accent and a very long sparkly necklace. Neil was there too but he doesn’t have a mysterious accent or a long sparkly necklace. He is very funny though. Anyway, I met them so I could sign the back of Neil’s art that he bought at the gallery show. Some how I forgot to sign his particular framed picece before he bought it. What an idiot I am sometimes.
Hanging with Neil and Sophia was great but Baby Bug was a holy terror! It was my fault for scheduling to meet them at the end of the day when Baby Bug’s low battery light starts blinking. There is just no pleasing her when she needs food or sleep. I fed her early but that didn’t improve her mood at all. Maybe she just wanted to watch her “Tubbies”. Who knows.
Baby Bug being in a bad mood was not good because I had to write an ode on the back of Neil’s frame and of course I didn’t work on it until I was driving to meet them. Yes, I was that mother scribbling on a wrinkled piece of paper on my steering wheel at the stoplight yesterday. I know. I’m terrible. But you try being a mom and getting things done. Ha.
Anyway, I managed to get all of my long beautiful somewhat poetic ode written (while stopped at stoplights) except for the very last sentence. I thought I could just wrap it up really quick like at the restaurant and all would be well. I didn’t take into account that Baby Bug would want to run around the restaurant and bonk her head on the edge of a table and then require me and only me to console her. I didn’t take into account that Baby Bug would cry buckets of tears if I paid attention to the back of Neil’s art or a pencil instead of her. Oh the tears.
It was terrible. For some reason the restaurant became very hot and I started sweating and next thing I knew I was scribbling some kind of nonsense and then booking it out of the restaurant with Baby Bug screaming in my arms. Motherhood is sooooo glamorous. Thankfully, it was a good twenty degrees cooler outside and I managed to distract Baby Bug from her bonked head by letting her play in the water fountain outside and all was well.
Neil and Sophia packed up my giant mom purse for me and even brought my cup of coffee outside for me. They were so great. They were so great and we had so much fun talking that I said, “We should do this again sometime!” completely blocking out the crazy toddler experience that just happened in the restaurant minutes earlier. Neil and Sophia nodded and smiled and then went off to their show muttering under their breath, “Not on your life you crazy mom person.”
Well, they probably didn’t mutter but I’m sure they are glad they are the ones going to a show on a Sunday night all dressed up and looking nice and not going home to fight with a toddler about bedtime.
