The pictures above have nothing to do with my post I’m about to write. I was too busy scrubbing spaghetti O’s off the floor to take pictures today. Plus, my camera has a lousy flash and all the things I wanted to take pictures of (like Baby Bug squeezing behind the refrigerator) were too dark and badly lit and turned out with a horrible case of the red eyes. I should take the time to illustrate something but I’ve had a glass of wine and my pillow is calling me.

Phew what a day! I feel pretty dumb complaining about it too because a lot of people who read this blog have THREE kids or they have a kid AND a job or maybe they take care of their old diabetic grandmother who sneaks into the kitchen in her wheel chair and steals bread with sugar on it (a story Toby likes to tell). I know I’ve got it easy and I don’t deserve to complain. But since this is a blog and it’s either complain or go to bed, I think it’s okay to ramble on just a teeny bit. As long as I don’t belly ache too much, right?

I just want to say that this week Baby Bug has turned a corner in development and she is peeling out at ninety miles an hour and leaving steaming hot tracks behind her. Goodbye Sweet Babyhood, Hello Terrible Twos! She is into EVERYTHING!!!! I used to think I had the house pretty well baby-proofed. I didn’t realize it’s not something you can finish. It’s an ongoing process that needs to be reexamined every six months or less! She’s found places I didn’t even know existed to go and get stuck in. The old barriers I put up to keep her out of danger zones, like behind the television where all the cords and speakers are, they don’t work any more. She is like the monster truck of toddlers. She just scrambles up and over everything with her knobby grippy feet, leaving broken glass and waste behind her. I might as well just go live in a giant warehouse with a cement floor that I can hose off.

I think what tires me more than this latest explosion of activity is how she doesn’t want me any more. She doesn’t want me to hold her. She wiggles out of my grasp this way and that like a worm on a hook. She doesn’t want to hold my hand when we walk down the street. She wants to run ahead and pick up muddy rocks and dirt. She wants to examine bugs and cigarette butts that lie dead on the side walk. I’m so used to her being an extension of myself, all tucked away in her little baby carrier smiling and being cute… that this latest growth spurt of defiance and independence has left me spinning. And she’s ONLY 15 MONTHS!!! Whatever am I going to do when she’s a teenager?

Who knows.

Is that too much belly aching?

Maybe I should have just blogged about how much fun it is to buy ladybugs at Home Depot and let them go. That’s what we did this weekend. I took another quick trip out to the sticks this weekend and my mom surprised us with a bunch of ladybugs that we got to release into her garden. Baby Bug loved it. She’s partial to ladybugs. Every time she sees anything red with black spots, she starts sputtering raspberries because of this movie that she loves so much. It’s so funny. Bbbbbbbssppllspspslt! Baby Bug loves her bugs.