Long Time No Post

How can life become more hectic? I thought life would calm down once Simon got a little older. I'm so naive! I remember congratulating myself on having such an easy baby because Simon was so peaceful and quiet when he was 2 days old! The wake-up call came to me on his third day. My optimism surprises me. Where does it come from? It's nice to know it's still there somewhere. Still, as can be seen in my lack of blog posts, my life is getting busier. With Simon running around, I barely have time to turn on my computer (except for work) these days. In fact, I'm stealing a few moment to rite this while Simon is nursing--yes, I'm typing this with my left hand. Yes, Simon is still nursing.

We sold our house. Escrow closed 4 days ago. We are renting a nice house less than 5 miles away from our old house. It's smaller, but has a nice yard and is just a few blocks away from a park. Simon loves to be outside, especially looking at cars driving by. "Outside" is his favorite word lately. He yells it whenever he's inside. He wants to be outside all day and all night. We go for long walks. Well, usually Simon wants to be carried, which is super fun for my weary arms. He walks a little bit, then wants "up!" And he won't sit in his stroller. He hates being strapped down, I guess.

Simon loves cars. "More cars!" he yells about 300 times a day. We go out to the street and watch the cars. "Many cars!" he yells. "So many cars!" He then catalogs them: "blue truck," "silver car," "black car," and so on. There can never be enough cars for him.

More later...

Water

Here are some videos of Simon playing with a sprinkler at Nonna and Papa's from last weekend. The sound is funky because a piece of scotch tape got stuck over the camera's microphone and I didn't realize it until later.

The List of Words

This is really something only a mother cares about, but I'm that mother and tant pis pour toi!

Words Simon says (well, all I can remember right now):

bath, duck, dog, no, down, up, on, nose, ball, book, cat, key, man, boy, girl, baby, bye-bye, mommy, daddy, egg, pear, belt, clock, car, shoe, fan, music, milk, breast, knee, toe, towel, bra, train, mole, eye, mouse, water, bean, bread, more, pen, papa, nonna, Esthela, John, pillow, grandma, can, spoon, bowl, boat, boom, cookie, arm, comb, bunny, funny, pig, dart, goal, go, gummy, apple, juice, blanket, night-night, Rose, Kanga, Roo, Pooh, Mickey, Minnie, Thomas, Nemo, Po, Laa-Laa, Dipsy, Tinky Winky, Noo-Noo, Jackie, Ron, Simon, Elmo, bubble, Spot, Ollie, turtle, shirt, cup, broccoli, Gonzo, macaroni, monkey, yoyo, fish, vacuum, camera, grass, bluebell, booboo, light, phone, Hector, ravioli, yummy, ant, tummy, chest, pan (Spanish for "bread"), pasa (Spanish for "raisin"), yay, whee, door, Amy, banana, hello, cow

I know there are some more, but it's hard to think of them.

Another Story

I've got a better story now. Okay, not so much a story as little "snapshots" of non-horrible things...

One day last week I tried to get Simon to take his second nap, but he wasn't interested. I gave up and started to cook dinner. I held Simon most of the time, but put him down to chop veggies and stuff. I was mostly done--just had to boil the water for the pasta--when Simon tugged at me and said "nah-nah." Huh? He kept saying it and pointing toward the hallway. Finally, I realized he was saying "night-night"--he wanted to take his nap. So we took it.

Simon is saying more and more words (I've counted over 50 words he uses on a regular basis) and saying them better and better every day. Three days ago he couldn't say his name at all well--"ehmah" or something like that. Today I said to him, "Can you say Simon?" He smiled and said "Shymuhn." He's working on the "s" sound these days, which comes out as "sh." He normally calls Esthela "Dah," but today, for the first time, he said "Shtela." He's very proud of his accomplishments, too.

A few days ago Simon grabbed Michael's horchata drink from a Mexican take-out place and put the straw in his mouth. I thought he was just playing with it, but I noticed it seemed like he was drinking. After a while he dribbled some of the white horchata out of his mouth. Yep, he was drinking. I thought you had to teach toddlers how to use a straw. Simon figured it out on his own, seemingly without much effort.

Super Fun Happy Love Time

Let me tell you a story about a woman whose in-laws are being sued for a very large amount of money after defaulting on a commercial property lease. Well, it turns out that her husband, as co-signer of the lease, is also being sued for this very large amount of money. And since her husband is the only party with assets, he is the one who is going to have to pay the very large amount of money. Even though he had nothing to do with the property and only co-signed on the lease as a favor to his pleading, promising, "nothing will go wrong" guaranteeing mother. She needed the property for her business and couldn't get it without someone else's good credit. And then her business failed due to gross incompetence and irrational behavior (she may have purchased some "magic beans" for half a million dollars--that would not surprise me). Deeply in debt and without a business, she still had an expensive lease she couldn't get out of. And so now her son, for being stupid enough to lend his name to one of his mother's crazy schemes, is seriously fucked.

Actually, that story is no good. Let me tell you another. Hmm... I'll get back to you.

The Update

Simon is just racing down the developmental highway these days. It's hard to keep up with all his new words and concepts and abilities.

Here are just some of the newer words he says: Towel ("dow"), Shoe ("zhoo"), Bean ("bee"), Keys ("ghee"), Fan ("ban" or "van"), Boom, Mole ("moh"), Water ("wah wah"), Bra ("bwah")

The other night Simon took the Singing in the Rain DVD off the shelf and put it on top of our portable CD player (which, by the way, is always playing the Rutles). He looked at me with a meaningful expression. He wanted me to play the disc, thinking it was music. I had taken the disc out of the case so he couldn't destroy it, but he knows that such cases usually hold discs and that those discs can play music. So I put the disc in the DVD player and skipped to the "Moses Supposes" dance sequence. At first Simon was skeptical, but then he saw the tap dancing and really liked it. "That's Gene Kelly," I told him (Donald O'Connor will come later, I guess). We watched that number several times. Simon stomped his feet really fast like he was tap dancing. Very cute. He was excited and proud. "Where's Gene Kelly," I asked, and he pointed at the tv screen. If you ask him, "Can you tap dance?" he'll stomp his feet for you.

The House

Being the financial geniuses that we are, Michael and I are trying to sell our house. You know, to take advantage of the booming real estate market. No? Okay, just because we want to live somewhere else. As wonderful as our house is, we have kinda grown to hate it. We went through so much hassle to fix the house up that we always feel annoyed here. Also, we want to find a more toddler-friendly place, closer to parks, sidewalks, and other little kids. We don't have to move; we just want to.

That said, what a pain in the ass it is to clean up and clear out every weekend for the Open House. It's really hard (impossible) to keep the house clean when Simon's around, so every Friday we race around making everything spotless (because just clean doesn't cut it), then we head over to my parents' house to spend a night or two. We've done this for three weekends so far. My parents have helped us "stage" our house to look its best. During the week we don't touch certain things, like the dining room table and the elaborate place settings on top of it. There are a lot of "off limits" areas, actually. We don't use the breakfast nook table either--it's all decorated ("staged") and we don't want to mess it up and start over again. Oh, yeah--and about half our stuff is packed away in a storage facility.

The house looks great. Closets, cupboards, bookshelves, etc. are organized and pleasingly arranged. We have flowers in many rooms. It's nice to live here now! Well, except for the hassle of the Open Houses. When we leave for the weekend we take certain valuables with us--cameras, laptops, jewelry, financial documents, etc. We also lug some stuff up to the attic--the highchair, an electric fan, an air purifier, a curtain rod and curtains. Then, when we come back home Sunday night, we have to lug these things back down. Blah, blah, blah.

We have a few people who are interested in the house, and a husband and wife who will probably make an offer soon. That's good. I don't want to live like this for much longer. Unfortunately, I haven't seen a house I'd rather live in. I've just been looking at Internet listings, but what I've seen isn't all that great.

Simon is handling all of this really well. He has fun at my parents' house--he loves to play with Nonna and Papa! And he's learned a lot about cleaning from watching us scrub and wipe and polish. He likes to take a paper towel (or baby wipe) and run around the house "cleaning" surfaces--floors, tables, walls, furniture. It's very cute.