Grateful (gritting teeth) Mondays

I knew that living in a house would be more work than an apartment, but moving in and making a few upgrades, all while hoisting a babe on my hip, is getting to me.  Also not helping that my car thermometer read 94 DEGREES outside when it was 4:30 in the afternoon as we were heading over THE HOUSE WITH NO AC to unpack some more. To make things even more super-duper-fun-time, I realized that I had forgotten the house keys just as we were arriving, and Addie was already getting fussy in the back, totally unsatisfied with her water bottle, giraffe, personal car keys, rattles, and book (too many choices, mayhaps?).  WIET H)PQQU# *U#@* WOEIH. That's what my head feels like right now. 

Zach is still over there (it's 10pm), wiring Cat-6 cable within the walls and being all manly with his dremmels and drills and full-on bodysuit/goggles/headlamp he wears to go underneath the house. God, I wish I could post this photo I just took of him right now, but I took it with my iphone* and am way too lazy to transfer it now. Later, though... 

Back to business. Let's see how the list goes...my mind is currently blank. 

1. There is a tub of Scharffenberger chocolate pudding from Whole Foods sitting in the fridge, but it won't be there for very long. 

2. Zoe and Addie love the new house. We sat in the backyard tonight as the sun was disappearing, listening to crickets and watching birds fly overhead. Playing with the grass and laughing. Zoe zooming across the driveway, spinning like a black fire-cracker, and then taking off again. 

3. My mother is visiting our family in Japan--she gave my grandfather and grandmother each a photo album of Adeline. I miss my family a lot, but I'm grateful that they are hanging in there (health-wise) and we will be visiting them at the end of the year. 

4. My order from Urban Outfitters came in the mail today and I'm in love with the canvas prints I bought for Addie's new room (she has a room! With butterflies and pink robots and a little sheepskin rug!).  Here's one of them. 

5. I got a shower in today. 

*I've realized that owning an iphone makes you waaaay too dependent on a single technological device--yes, it saves me from having to carry around an mp3 player, phone, planner, camera, Zagat guide, constellation map, and my ocarina, but it's also making me forget to take quality photos with my REAL camera...hence, the skimpiness of the cute pics lately. Here, I'll distract you with this July photo of Addie meditating/doing yoga: 

Namaste.

One Heckuva Baby-The Swearing Dilemma

Our daughter is going to be eight months old in three weeks. According to the books, she may start to crawl, pull herself up on the furniture, sit up, play peek-a-boo, and eat finger foods. Those are fun and all, but the most stirring change I have been witness to lately is her ability to observe and copy what we are doing.  She watches me clap my hands, and she clumsily claps hers. She watches me pet Zoe, and she tries ripping her ears off (almost the same). My favorite Simon Says so far is opening and closing my mouth like a fish, making a pop, pop, pop sound, which she ever so graciously indulges me in.  But this revelation of mimicry is also a bit troubling, because it makes the whole "being a role model"-thing REAL---that every action she sees us perform, her little brain synapses are strengthening and telling her to try the same. And that especially goes for language. 

Now, Zach and I are relatively intelligent folk. We throw in some SAT-level words in our day-to-day conversation, and Zach loves to babble differential equations to Addie when they sit on the couch. But we also swear...a LOT.  Not like every other word is fuck, but you have the usual shit, hell, asswipe peppered into daily conversation.  And we've come to the point where we know she is keenly listening to our speech patterns, and we have to act on curtailing, or banishing, the "bad" words altogether. Preferably before her first word is cocksucker. 

I know it can be done. We have perfectly polite conversations with nary a douchebag when we're talking to friends, colleagues, and the check-out person at Trader Joe's. But you know how your slang, your tone, your level of vocabulary, changes depending on the context of the situation and the people you're with? When Zach and I get together, there's just a natural inclination to swear--it adds color, depth...GRAVITAS, to the stories we tell each other at the end of the day.  

"That bad, troubled, drunk man swerved into my lane and almost killed me today." 

"Helen told me she and her husband are making love like jackrabbits to get pregnant again." 

Just doesn't have the same pizzazz, si? 

Of course, my fear is that we will have a child like the ones you see on Nanny 911 (or whatever the show is called with the British lady who looks like she gets kinky in the bedroom). The ones who bite people and kill cats and tell their parents to go fuck themselves. I've seen a five year old gleefully saying "shit, fuck, shit, fuck" in a sing-songy voice on that show. But I also have a feeling these children are the product of more then just swearing. 

At $.05/word, you owe me about..a Nintendo Wii. 

I know Adeline will eventually hear all the words we try to shield her from. And I'm torn, because I believe that words only have as much power as we give them.  So should we stop swearing altogether? Wouldn't it make the words more powerful and appealing for kids who often want to do exactly what they're told not to? Do we try our best to curb our language around her, and if she asks about it, tell her they are "adult words" and shouldn't be used with her peers? Or am I making WAY too much of this and just continue with our colorful conversations? I remember my Dad swearing intermittently; my mother, never. But I never ended up repeating his most popular phrase ("Get your head out of your ass.") to my 10-year old friends, and still don't to this day.

I guess there's only so much you can do as a parent to teach your child how to express herself without swearing, and then at some point, they're going to decide whether to incorporate that language into their speech.  I'm genuinely curious what other parents' experiences have been like regarding this subject---Do you have a curse jar you put money into when you're caught? Did you explain to your child that it's a "bad" word, or, that it's perfectly acceptable in certain situations, which they may discern when they're older? Did you curse when they were a baby, and now you're paying for it? 

Any funny stories with little ones and words? :) 

Grateful (Punctual) Mondays

I'm on time! Although it hasn't felt like a Monday since Zach stayed home from the office to finish a crazy deadline. I could go off about his job at the moment but it would take ten angry posts, and I'm supposed to be writing this to make happy, peaceful, Ariel, not rage-filled, protective-of-her-family, Ariel. So another time...

1.) I'm sitting next to a dirty diaper, which I could care less about, with Zach and a slumbering Zoe on the other side. I look over at them every night and smile and feel happy. 

2.) I was offered by five different friends to baby-sit Addie so I could actually get some housework and packing done without stopping every five minutes to entertain her. And I trust all of them to watch her. 

3.) We got the keys to the house we are renting this past weekend. Unbelievably lucky...like, holy-shit-how-did-we-get-so-lucky, to be able to afford renting this adorable house in a great location that is in close proximity to at least six or seven friends. And farmer's market. And the community center. And Trader Joe's and Recycle Books and Tiny Tots and the jogging trail! 

4.) Addie is sleeping. 'Nuff said. 

5.) Went to a meeting today and was able to catch up with good folk, and listen to fellow people in recovery talk about how drastically their lives have changed for the better. Amazing. 

Breathe in...breathe out. Nothing is so terrible in the world that I cannot enjoy this moment right now.  

Good night, A. 

At a recent wedding we went to.