Archives for February 2006

– There’s something wrong when I see a Special K commercial featuring the Wiggles song “Hot Potato” in it. My head has never snapped up to look at the TV quite so quickly. Strangely, the thing that really caught my attention was hearing the song not sung by the Wiggles. Special K advertising using Wiggles tunes – think they are going for the mommy demographic?

– We have a new head injury record: three in a single weekend. You may remember the previous two: one from a cat dish, the other from COSI. The third happened this morning, on the Ohio State University campus, as Cordelia attempted to run after me because I had the gall to attempt to go to the bathroom without her. She didn’t make it up the step in the room, and the result was forehead meeting marble step. A quarter sized, purple lump now accompanies her other head injuries. A friend describes this period of toddlerhood as the “period of time when you think the parents abuse them.” I tend to think of it as the time when their coordination just hasn’t caught up to their speed.

– And finally, I had requests to see Cordy’s dishtowel Russian yenta, so I tried to catch her in action. Sadly, I couldn’t get her to do it. However, she did grace us with a performance of several Bible characters.

I present, Moses (“Let my people go!”):

And the Virgin Mary:

Sigh.

My daughter: large for her age? Oh, yes.

Coordinated? Not so much.

Spent the afternoon at COSI again, and as usual, Cordy finds new and creative ways to injure herself.

Today, not even 60 seconds after being set free in the play area, she collides with another toddler. They were both running and not looking where they were going, and the collision knocked both to the ground. Cordy started crying, and the little boy, who was smaller than her, was fine. A little soothing and all was good as soon as she saw the water table.

Later, she was playing up in the treehouse area, making herself happy throwing balls and looking into the air jets in the floor. Larger kids came running by, flying up the two steps nearby, then running back down the two steps. Cordy climbed up the steps and walked around the next level up. I could see the wheels in her head turning, as she analyzed how those kids were getting up and down the stairs so quickly.

Now, at this point, I should mention: she’s climbed up and down these stairs before. She knows these stairs well. She’s even given herself a carpetburn on those stairs when she missed a stair while climbing once. You’d think she would have remembered that incident and given those stairs a little more respect.

But this time, she decided she didn’t need to back down the stairs, and tried to step down them. My child. Walking down the steps. My kid, with the short legs, long trunk, and gigantic head. This can’t end well, right?

It didn’t. She got one foot squarely on the first step down, but then forgot that she couldn’t put all of her weight on one leg yet.

The next part was in Mommy Terror Slow Motion (TM): the leg on the first step buckled, throwing her off balance. This allowed her large head to pitch forward, since it’s the heaviest part of her body. The back leg was off the ground now, and I watched her free fall to the next step. The free fall was then stopped short by her head, hitting and bouncing off the railing.

I knew it was going to be bad when she didn’t cry right away. Her little face got red, then purple, as she built up pressure for the scream that was about to be unleashed. And what a scream it was! It stopped one of the older boys cold in his tracks, as he snapped his head around to look at us and say, “Is she OK?”

So we left COSI with a new lump on her forehead. My daughter, the klutz. I somehow think she’s got a long life of klutziness ahead of her (like mother, like daughter). Maybe it’s time to invest in a bike helmet. And make her wear it everywhere.

Note to self: Never claim it’s a boring day when the day isn’t over yet. Never. Fate has a strange way of making you eat your words.

Case in point:

3:48 pm yesterday – Posted about my boring day

5:45 pm – Aaron, Cordy and I are having fun playing together. Cordelia is holding a metal cat food dish (don’t ask). All in one swift motion, she drops the dish and proceeds to lose her balance and fall in such a way so that her face hits the edge of the dish, full-force. She now has a nasty, red lump just outside her left eye. I’m relieved it missed her eye, but that didn’t stop the mommy guilt from making an appearance, since I was right there when it happened.

10:50-11:50 pm – We hear Cordy over the monitor. She’s awake, but strangely she’s not crying, as she normally would be when awake in the dark. She’s talking and laughing and having a conversation with – her stuffed animals? the blanket? a ghost? Amazingly she did this for an hour. Close to midnight, I decided this was far too weird for me, so I went upstairs to check on her. She was still cheery, although when I picked her up I noticed she was very warm. Feverish, even. So, a dose of Motrin and some rocking, and then she went back to bed, with only a little fuss.

5:15am – I wake up to the sound of a cat yarfing, which is probably one of the worst ways to be jolted awake. It’s close by. In fact, it’s on the bed, on me. Our cat Dante not only threw up all over the comforter, but his little cat buddy Marlowe got hit as well. Marlowe, a little surprised to wake up in vomit, raced off the bed, taking care to run across my bare back and leave a little bit of partially digested cat food for me on my shoulder. I jump up to see if Dante is OK, and put my hand right into the mess on the comforter, and my foot into the little bit that hit the floor. Lovely.

My lesson has been learned. I will never say my day is boring until the day is completely over. Ever.

Not much to report today. Cordy and I have been home all day, nothing interesting has happened. OK, she did put a dish towel on her head and looked like a little Russian yenta, but the camera is recharging, so I missed it.

In other news, if you haven’t done this yet, get over to BlogMad and sign up. It’s only a matter of days until they go live. If you like BlogExplosion, then you’ll want to sign up for BlogMad too! Hell, even if you don’t like BlogExplosion, sign up anyway.

(Yeah, I’m a whore for more traffic. Lemming, lemming, lemming.)

I write about Cordy most of the time here. Well, now you all get to find out a little more about me! Aren’t you so lucky!

Four Jobs I’ve Had:

1. Retail clerk for a Champion-Hanes outlet store, where the work uniform was sweat pants and t-shirts or sweatshirts (that they paid for). Yeah, at 16, it was a pretty awesome job.
2. Retail clerk for a Motherhood Maternity outlet store. OK, so the only jobs in my small town were 10 minutes outside of town at the giant outlet mall. I worked there long before I even thought of wanting children of my own. And thanks to some of the women who walked in there, I was totally sure I was not ready for kids yet.
3. Daycare worker for an expensive daycare. Me, one other teacher, and 16 two-and-a-half year-olds, all in various stages of potty-training. Can you understand why I only did this job for 5 months?
4. Performer for the Ohio Renaissance Festival. I did this one on the weekends for 10 years. I was one of the women wearing the 30 pound velvet Elizabethan court costumes, complete with historically accurate corset. Loves: everyone wanted my picture (I was an Elizabethan rock-star, baby!), met my husband there. Hates: Wearing those outfits on a 90 degree day royally sucked, trying to use a port-a-potty in a hoop-skirt and corset was impossible. Want a good diet? Wear a corset – with nowhere to expand, your stomach can’t hold much food.

Four Movies I Can Watch Over and Over (in no particular order):

1. Moulin Rouge
2. The Princess Bride
3. Pirates of the Caribbean
4. Pride & Prejudice (the Colin Firth, 6-hour BBC version)

It’s very tough to pick just four movies. There are several more I could watch over and over as well.

Four Places I Have Lived:

1. Washington Court House, OH – my hometown. No movie theater, a K-Mart, several fast food joints, and that was about it. Is it any wonder there were so many teen pregnancies? There was nothing to do but have sex!
2. Oxford, OH, while going to school at Miami University. Great little college town. It’s a shame it’s so damn hard to get there.
3. Richmond College dorms, right down the street from Kensington Palace in London, England.
4. Columbus, OH

Four TV Shows I Love:

1. “Bones“
2. “House“
3. “Ghost Hunters“
4. “Supernanny” (my guilty pleasure)

Four Places I’ve Vacationed:

1. Walt Disney World
2. St. Petersburg, FL
3. Inverness, Scotland
4. New York, NY

Four of My Favorite Dishes:

1. Cajun shrimp pasta
2. Chicken tikka masala
3. Szechuan shrimp & vegetables
4. Bison burger, medium rare

Four Sites I Visit Daily:

1. Blogging Baby
2. e-Bay (it’s an addictive habit, I tell ya)
3. Columbus State Community College Website
4. Yahoo News

Four Places I Would Rather Be Right Now:

1. Home in bed asleep with no one else there
2. With my daughter and husband
3. Someplace warm and sunny
4. On a trip to the British Isles

Four People I’m Tagging:

Since most of the Internet World has already done this, I’m not posting a list. If you read this and haven’t done it yet, then consider yourself tagged.