Secret Agent Josephine

…and not a thing to play with. Hmmm… doesn’t really have the same ring as “Water water everywhere and not a drop to drink” but you know what I mean.

So what do you think Baby Bug’s favorite toy is?

a. her pink stuffed bunny
b. the stuffed space gun that beeps when you push it’s fuzzy trigger button
c. an old remote control
d. mommy’s laptop

If you answered “d”, you are correct. Baby Bug always wants to play with my laptop. She’s figured out that the silver toy that lights up and clicks is really really fun. Mommy is always playing with it, so it must be. Sometimes I put her in my lap and I try to type with her balancing between my arms. Before I know it, my sentences are in cap lock and there are giant spaces and numbers where there shouldn’t be. Two seconds after that, she’s pulled herself up on my desk and is trying to climb right up on top of the keyboard and into the screen. She is fascinated by it.

I can’t totally blame her. I’m fascinated by it too. I think I went wrong when I showed her that it can play movies of puppies and babies laughing. She must think it’s the magic box. The problem is, it’s magic to me too.

All day long I think about all the things I could make on my computer if I could just find a minute. This feeling reminds me of my old boss. He was really good at making funny voices. Out of nowhere he’d start talking with a lisp or ask for something sounding like Chubacca. He always had us rolling with laughter. One day I asked him where he came up with all these voices.

“It’s like there’s a rave going on in my head,” he said. “All these crazy characters are jumping around and every once in a while one of them jumps to the top. That’s the voice that comes out.”

I always think of that description. I think there’s a rave of creativity going on in my head. There are all kinds of designs and characters to illustrate that are just dying to get out but I have to keep a lid on them and pay attention to the baby because if I don’t, she will pull plugs out of the wall and suck on them. But I didn’t really come here to complain about that. Because very soon I am going to hire a babysitter and I will get four hours a week to do whatever I please with my laptop. Woo hoo! (Watch me do nothing but stare at it and miss Baby Bug.)

What I came here to blog about was how funny it is that I can dump almost every single toy out of her toy box (it seemed like a fun idea at the time) and Baby Bug will not want to play with a single one of them. Even the sheer quantity didn’t amuse her.

How did she get so many toys anyway? She’s not even one year old yet. It’s not like I’ve gone out and bought very many. I’m constantly thinking I need to get her new toys because the old toys are so boring but I don’t because I have no idea where to put them. I even discourage relatives from buying her toys. What a mean mom I am. Maybe I should start a storage system so that old toys can be stowed away for another day and become new again.

Or… I could just give her my laptop.