Recently I have had cause to believe that these may have a lot more in common than just the fact that God is supposed to be looking out for them. In particular, living with an infant - or a toddler/preschooler - is not unlike hanging out with a mean 4 am boozehound, twenty-four hours a day, seven days a week.
I don't spend a lot of time at bars around closing time these days. And when I say "a lot", I mean "never." But at one point in my life I did, and there's always some person - usually a guy - getting belligerent, being held back by a couple of friends, throwing air punches and bellowing. His counterpart on the other side of the chromosomal aisle is either puking in the bathroom, being propped up by friends because her legs have all the functionality of a mermaid's tail, crying, or some combination of the three. She may or may not have just gotten into a slap fight with another girl.
The realization that I see many of these same behaviors on a regular basis with my two-year old convinced me that I was onto something. Here is a partial list of similarities between small children and their inebriated elders:
1.) Both fall down a lot/are prone to jelly legs
2.) Both have lots of unexplained bruises
3.) Both are unreliable witnesses:
You: Are you drunk?
Drunk person: No.
You: Seriously. Are you drunk?
Drunk person: Yes. (Giggles.)
You: Did you just pee in the corner?
Kid: No.
You: Seriously. Did you just pee in the corner?
Kid: Yes. (Giggles.)
4.) Both have large, inconvenient memory lapses:
You: Where are your pants?
Drunk person: Dunno.
You: Where are your pants?
Kid: Dunno.
5.) Both find their own antics and bodily functions to be extremely entertaining (e.g. "I'm not wearing pants and I'm dancing!" "Fart!")
6.) Both think totally random things (e.g. toothbrushes, squirrels, doorknobs) are totally hilarious and/or menacing
7.) Both wind up with bedfellows whose names are not entirely clear.
Drunk person: Sarah - your name is Sarah, right?
Girl in bed: Susannah. Sarah is my roommate.
Drunk person: Oh yeah. Sarah. She was hot.
Girl in bed: (shoots drunk person dirty, incredulous look)
Kid: (in bed, surrounded by stuffed animals, hugs a rabbit) Rabby!
You: Is that Rabbit?
Kid: No. French fries!
You: The rabbit is named French fries?
Kid: No. Rabby! (shoots parent disbelieving, you-are-so-stupid look)
8.) Both end up slurring a lot/using non-traditional pronunciations of words:
You: What do you want to drink?
Drunk person: Glashoofwaddah.
You: You want a glass of water?
Drunk person: (nods, mumbles) Mmmph, Glashoofwaddah.
You: What do you want to drink?
Kid: Mimi Fresick!
You: You want lemonade and Fresca?
Kid: (nods, yells like you are an idiot) Mimi Fresiiiiiick!
9.) Both frequently fall asleep in their clothes
10.) Both have a tendency to go from giddy to ornery in the span of about 6 seconds
11.) Both are subject to delusions of control/think they can do things they, in actuality cannot do:
Drunk person: I can fly. I'm totally going to climb this building. I should run for president.
Kid: I can fly. I'm totally going to button my sweater. I should transfer this cup of milk into my Crocs.
12.) Both send inconvenient and incomprehensible text messages at odd hours
Drunk person (3:30am) to ex-girlfriend: I hate you. Wanna comeoverand seemeyurso cute?
Kid (5:30am) to your boss: soiejsesoijlesijjijjjjjjosikkm
13.) Both have odd paranoias/obsessions
Drunk person (in car): if you get a pizza, don't get it with olives (dozes off, wakes up suddenly). Did you get pizza? With olives? I'm gonna freak out, man. I said no olives. I don't want olives. Seriously dude, I'm going to freak out if you got olives. Do you think my ears look bigger? They feel bigger. You're not looking. (Tries to grab the wheel.)
Kid (at restaurant): No eat pizza. Spiders. Stinky poo poo. Pizza, nooooo! (Throws glass of water on the floor.)
14.) Both easily become totally fixated on random things
Drunk person: Can you believe we ran into that guy from the gym? Should I have given him my number? Do you think he likes me? I should have given him my number. He's hot. Do you think he likes me? Did I sound stupid? Maybe I'll text him. Should I wait to text him? I should have worn my red shirt. This shirt makes me look fat. Do you think I look fat? He's totally hot, isn't he?
Kid: Mimi Fresick! Mimi Fresick! Mi-mi Fre-sick! MIMI FRESICK!
15.) Both repeat things a lot
Drunk person: I love you, man. You're the best. I hope we get pizza. (dozes off, wakes up suddenly) Hey man, I love you. You're the best. Are we getting pizza?
Kid: Bert and Ernie! Bert and Ernie! Bert and Ernie! Bert and Ernie! (runs into other room, comes back) Bert and Ernie! Bert and Ernie! Bert and Ernie!
16.) Both pick fights, usually at random, often out of nowhere
Drunk girl: Why didn't you tell me this shirt makes me look fat!
Kid: (grabs other kid's face on the slide)
17.) Like Austin Powers after the un-freezing process, both have difficulty controlling the volume of their voice.
18.) Both are prone to magical thinking and/or non sequiturs:
You: How exactly are you going to get home?
Drunk person: Tele-portron. Tele-fusion. Guddammit. (mumbles, points to the sky, enunciates very carefully) Tele-por-tation. Like on Star Wars. Star Trek.
You: How did mommy's keys end up in the fish tank?
Kid: Rocket ship.
19.) Both are prone to projectile vomiting
20.) Both ultimately treat you like a total fool for trying to offer them advice or help. Hopefully that scores you some protection, too - from the projectile vomit, if nothing else.
Drunk person: Wannanother beer.
You: Here's a glass of water.
Drunk person: Pffff. Water. Humph.
Kid: Hungry!
Parent: Try this mango. It tastes delicious.
Kid: No mango. Freaky! Stinky poo poo.
Sunday, March 18, 2012
Monday, February 27, 2012
Boobies Are Good!
The very wise aunt of a friend once told me that she had yet to attend the wedding of any of her nieces, nephews, or grandchildren who couldn't eat, talk, or sleep through the night by the time they walked down the aisle.
My first thought was that there might be a connection here: the inability to do these things might also adversely affect the ability to meet or secure a mate. However, I think that the whole marital aspect of the observation was probably incidental to the fact that we were having this conversation at a wedding and not meant to be either a predictive timeline of when I could expect my daughter to achieve all three of these milestones - it only took twenty-eight years but she fell in love and finally finished a plate of food sitting down! - or a sign of nuptial preparedness - alright kid, you're six and you didn't get up to ask for water once last night, time to get hitched.
I have tried not to be overly concerned with developmental milestones. Kids come into their own on their own terms in their own time. But my daughter is a (somewhat) late talker, which is not to say that she has an excessive speech delay, but rather that we started to notice that while other kids were stumbling through the stages of more coherent babbling, and then stringing words together in cute but mystifying combinations, my daughter was grunting, panting, shrieking, and showing zero interest in learning any words beyond her first six: mama, dada, this, that, go, do.
I guess if you're going to choose six words to speak at that stage in life, those are pretty good ones, because you can actually use them to communicate a lot of things fairly effectively. (Mama do! Mama go! Dada this! Go do!) The key word being fairly, and the key point being effectively for her. The rest of us, her minions, were left scrambling around like lunatics, asking cascades of questions (do you want Cheerios? bubbles? salami? Elmo?) and furiously pointing at things as if we were playing a spectacularly lame two-player game of charades. Some days it felt like living in a house full of Sisyphean mimes, endlessly churning through the same exhausting array of exaggerated, ineffective gestures.
But slowly, slowly the words started coming.
Many are incomprehensible. Many more are incomprehensible without context. And a lot of them sound totally crazy, which I find completely charming. For example, she pronounces Fresca (that refreshing low-calorie grapefruit soda I consumed by the case in high school) "Fresick" and runs around yelling it like a deranged Hobbit. Fresick! Fresick! Fresick!
Things are starting to pick up, just as everyone said they would, and watching this happen is pretty darn amazing, just as everyone said it would be.
We're getting lots of random word strings now like "Mama! Gym! Cry! Goldfish! Gym! Dance! Potty! Little! Ladybug! Bye!" So I wasn't really prepared for my daughter to look at me and speak a coherent sentence, her first to my knowledge: "Boobies are good!"
How perfectly delightful, for at least three reasons:
1.) It's true
2.) My boobies are the ones with which she has had the most contact and a vote in their favor is always appreciated
3.) It shows that she is aware of certain key cultural trends, in other words: I have succeeded in not raising her under a rock.
There may be hope for her yet. Fresick!
My first thought was that there might be a connection here: the inability to do these things might also adversely affect the ability to meet or secure a mate. However, I think that the whole marital aspect of the observation was probably incidental to the fact that we were having this conversation at a wedding and not meant to be either a predictive timeline of when I could expect my daughter to achieve all three of these milestones - it only took twenty-eight years but she fell in love and finally finished a plate of food sitting down! - or a sign of nuptial preparedness - alright kid, you're six and you didn't get up to ask for water once last night, time to get hitched.
I have tried not to be overly concerned with developmental milestones. Kids come into their own on their own terms in their own time. But my daughter is a (somewhat) late talker, which is not to say that she has an excessive speech delay, but rather that we started to notice that while other kids were stumbling through the stages of more coherent babbling, and then stringing words together in cute but mystifying combinations, my daughter was grunting, panting, shrieking, and showing zero interest in learning any words beyond her first six: mama, dada, this, that, go, do.
I guess if you're going to choose six words to speak at that stage in life, those are pretty good ones, because you can actually use them to communicate a lot of things fairly effectively. (Mama do! Mama go! Dada this! Go do!) The key word being fairly, and the key point being effectively for her. The rest of us, her minions, were left scrambling around like lunatics, asking cascades of questions (do you want Cheerios? bubbles? salami? Elmo?) and furiously pointing at things as if we were playing a spectacularly lame two-player game of charades. Some days it felt like living in a house full of Sisyphean mimes, endlessly churning through the same exhausting array of exaggerated, ineffective gestures.
But slowly, slowly the words started coming.
Many are incomprehensible. Many more are incomprehensible without context. And a lot of them sound totally crazy, which I find completely charming. For example, she pronounces Fresca (that refreshing low-calorie grapefruit soda I consumed by the case in high school) "Fresick" and runs around yelling it like a deranged Hobbit. Fresick! Fresick! Fresick!
Things are starting to pick up, just as everyone said they would, and watching this happen is pretty darn amazing, just as everyone said it would be.
We're getting lots of random word strings now like "Mama! Gym! Cry! Goldfish! Gym! Dance! Potty! Little! Ladybug! Bye!" So I wasn't really prepared for my daughter to look at me and speak a coherent sentence, her first to my knowledge: "Boobies are good!"
How perfectly delightful, for at least three reasons:
1.) It's true
2.) My boobies are the ones with which she has had the most contact and a vote in their favor is always appreciated
3.) It shows that she is aware of certain key cultural trends, in other words: I have succeeded in not raising her under a rock.
There may be hope for her yet. Fresick!
Thursday, February 9, 2012
7 More Videos
Last week's video countdown had such a good response - and there's been so much going on around here, my daughter had a lot of YouTube time this week - that I've got seven more to share!
7.) Don't Know Y with Norah Jones - I probably like this better than my daughter because in graduate school I earned extra money doing fMRI experiments and this song always makes me think of being in the scanner. They would play music in between scans, and this song was really popular at the time. Those were some crazy days, and I'm pretty sure my brain messed up a lot of experiments (outlier = me) but at least I learned that I didn't have a brain tumor. At least not an obvious brain tumor.
6.) Furry Happy Monsters with REM - I would put this higher on the list (check out the crazy green monster's moves) but I'm not the boss around here anymore. I'm just glad it's in the mix.
5.) Love Love Love a Lever with Sutton Foster - I have a love/hate relationship with show tunes, but who doesn't love a lever? That's just un-American!
4.) Bye Bye Binky - "Elmo wants to talk so people understand." We all do, Elmo. We all do.
3.) ABC Disco with Grover - it's like a condensed version of Saturday night fever, without the adult plot elements.
2.) Elmo's Got the Moves - yes, Elmo. I do have the moves.
1.) Primary Colors with OK Go - the fact that I found this video before my daughter but didn't show it to her, and that she found it and fell in love with it all on her own rocks my world. The fact that she loves the music I love - dance, trance, house, techno, electronica, etc. - is nothing short of incredible after years of her father coming in the room asking "what is this crap?" This crap? This crap is AWESOME!
7.) Don't Know Y with Norah Jones - I probably like this better than my daughter because in graduate school I earned extra money doing fMRI experiments and this song always makes me think of being in the scanner. They would play music in between scans, and this song was really popular at the time. Those were some crazy days, and I'm pretty sure my brain messed up a lot of experiments (outlier = me) but at least I learned that I didn't have a brain tumor. At least not an obvious brain tumor.
6.) Furry Happy Monsters with REM - I would put this higher on the list (check out the crazy green monster's moves) but I'm not the boss around here anymore. I'm just glad it's in the mix.
5.) Love Love Love a Lever with Sutton Foster - I have a love/hate relationship with show tunes, but who doesn't love a lever? That's just un-American!
4.) Bye Bye Binky - "Elmo wants to talk so people understand." We all do, Elmo. We all do.
3.) ABC Disco with Grover - it's like a condensed version of Saturday night fever, without the adult plot elements.
2.) Elmo's Got the Moves - yes, Elmo. I do have the moves.
1.) Primary Colors with OK Go - the fact that I found this video before my daughter but didn't show it to her, and that she found it and fell in love with it all on her own rocks my world. The fact that she loves the music I love - dance, trance, house, techno, electronica, etc. - is nothing short of incredible after years of her father coming in the room asking "what is this crap?" This crap? This crap is AWESOME!
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