shake it, baby! He's dancing! Dancing to The Hives's "Main Offender"! Brilliant!

Kurosawathon 2003 This will be a very random entry. I know how to write a unified paragraph but am choosing not to. Of course I should be watching "Sanjuro." But of course I'm not. My article is due this week, and I keep falling asleep in front of the VCR. I love Kurosawa movies, but there's something about *obligatory* movie-watching that sucks a lot of the fun out. Blahrg. Wow, I sure do like Charles Aznavour. J is at school today, prepping the kids who have been identified as "borderline" for the TAKS test. Teaching sucks. I advertised for a twice-a-week sitter so I can start taking more editing work, and I've been flooded with responses from hardcore nannies. Everybody's really overqualified. I don't know what to do next. I guess I'll wait for the apps to slow to a trickle first. Baby Boi is doing a bunch of delightful things lately. He put a hat on my head yesterday. Then he put it on his head. We were reading a cloth book, and when we got to the word "hat," he put the book on his head. We walked all through Half Price Books yesterday, saying "Raaahhr!" back and forth to each other. That's the first real verbal exchange! I guess I should count the "ha da da" incidents, but "Raaahhr!" is almost, almost an onomatopoetic WORD. Woo woo woo! If I'm not watching Sanjuro (and I'm not) I should attempt to be at my neighborhood planning meeting, but the boy's asleep, dammit, and an 11-month-old just isn't good company for a boring three-hour civic meeting. Can't we do something online? Let's get with the 21st century here, people. Chop chop! I'm really hungry for some cheese. I think I have some cheese. I could go for a nice Jarlsberg. Next week will begin another stage in our rotation diet. I am going to cut out the wheat. Man oh man, will I ever miss that. I love wheat. I could eat a field of wheat, chaff and all. I like shredded wheat in the morning and wheat-bread sandwiches and wheat pasta. I like wheat waffles and muffins and wheat germ. I'm a wheaty gal. So I guess it's time for oatmeal in the morning and rice bread and spelt pasta. I hate the wheat-free waffles. All this talk is making me want some wheat. I really hope it's not the wheat. But if it is, we'll be better, right? I'm using the steroid cream, and B's knees are still welty. (Eudora Welty?) Who the hell knows what it is? But what are you if you don't try?

and for Sheila How's this for a picture? He's cruisin' for a bruisin'. We got the most wonderful CD--it's called "The Bottle Let Me Down," and it's a compilation of rockabilly artists doing kids' songs--"Hinky Dinky Dee," "Don Gato," and my favorite, "Godfrey (The Sickly Unemployed Amateur Children's Magician)". Great stuff. We swapped for it with a very cool mom. And B has started saying "Rraaahhrr!" along with the gorilla in one of his books, except he sort of whispers it, like "rraaahhrr..." We went to the playground today, and B was enraptured by the class of kids (kindergarteners?) playing on the playscape. He stared at them while I swung him back and forth, his eyes never wavering from those walking, talking kids. Here's something interesting: Did you know there's an allergenic *syndrome* associated with bananas, avocados, and latex? They're chemically similar somehow--don't ask me how, I don't have their molecular structure handy--and apparently this is a real problem for some people. Of course bananas and avocados are my kid's two favorite foods. Sheeeit, man, I don't know. It gives us something else to think about/obsess over. I'm not too, too bothered, but he got rashy again (not as horribly, but still...). I almost made a total ass of myself on the playground my trying to strike up a conversation with another woman who had a toddler with her. My opening line would have been, "Oh, your granddaughter is so cute!" or something equally weak. And of course I would have felt like a dumbass, as I later realized the toddler was calling her "Mommy." Egads. Since I left my workplace, I'm not used to being around people with perms and leather flats. I'm used to being around people in thong sandals and bleach-stained cutoff cargo pants. Gotta go, the boy is up.

We miss you, buddy.

go, man, go! That's Ken and El Nino jammin' on the skins during Christmas break. B likes to beat on our Tupperware with spatulas (spatulae?). I've trying to teach him to play "Iron Man." He seems to have an affinity for percussion, though I've warned him that no one'll help you carry your drums. I'm doing research on an article on Kurosawa, so we showed him the second half of "High and Low." He doesn't seem to "get" TV, so he was pulling up on the couch and giggling in my face instead of watching the movie. In other gripping news, I'm going to bust out the tofu this week and see if there's a soy allergy. As soon as I finished the last entry, he woke up from his nap ready to play. So out we went to visit with the sitter. An hour and a half of crying later, I gave up. The sitter said that in ten years of child care, three children of her own, and a grandchild, she'd never seen a baby she couldn't console--until mine. Great. Well, you know, we'll keep working at it, and eventually he'll be thirteen and desperate to get away from me. This entry is going to be really nonlinear because the roofers are fixing the hole over our garage and I can't exactly concentrate. Audrey and Nathan visited today for a few hours. We made plans to go out for Mama Night and leave our four guys at home with some beers and Kraft Dinner. (Um...the beers are not for the babies.) J took his break yesterday afternoon and saw Bowling for Columbine and ate a gyro. We got a kit of cards that teach you sign language so we can try it with The Boy. After seeing a signing toddler at Abby's party, we were intrigued...but lazy, you know? I figured if we could do the signs for "excruciating pain" or "six teeth at once" or "furious itching caused by nearby cat," it'd take a lot of the guesswork out of parenting. So now that we're working on it, I really enjoy it. I like making the sign for "poop." I love that the card, which is published by Parents Magazine (which is not really my style--all those silly designer travel systems and ads) says POOP. And the gesture isn't exactly genteel, as it approximates a sphincter and an extrusion. I don't know if ten-month-olds can make that gesture, but I sure can!

the web ate my homework I was typing and typing, la la la, and my machine went AAACK and I lost everything. Okay, that's not quite true. It was User Error. I'm so ashamed. I caused it. Here are the highlights: (1) My ass got mondo busy with three assignments this week, so I summoned a babysitter to mind El Chico while I worked uninterrupted. So naturally (2) The Boy went down for a nap and I got my stuff done and the babysitter is warming the couch while I blog. I was going to start my article that's due at the end of the month, but (3) the book I need is gone; I'm assuming it's at school with a certain Media Arts teacher. Therefore (4) I'm totally going down the street for a coffee when B wakes up. There's a four-hour minimum for the sitter since I used an agency. What else is new? We've said farewell to Scooter, the Allergenic Cat. His departure precipitated a remission of B's eczema symptoms, the likes of which we've not seen hitherto. We are quite pleased. I miss Scooty, though. I miss the way he'd attack Jim's nethers and bat my nose in the night; I miss his plaintive cry and the way he'd flop over onto his side to be petted. My feelings for Scooter ran so deep that I feared I might become one of those weird Cat Fancy people who have their cats' names listed on their mailing labels. My other concern is that B will be one of those sickly kids who can only have fish for pets and recoils from the animals children love--fluffy bunnies and friendly puppies and tiny kittens. Now I guess we need some board books like Bumpy the Happy Iguana or Hypoallergenic Pets Are Fun! or something. Apparently one of Jim's gifted students is reeeallly into tropical fish; that's all he writes about in his journal, and all his projects have marine themes. Maybe we can get B some brine shrimp or hermit crabs or something. Or turtles. I really like turtles, but I hear they reek.