Week 181: Squash, Swimming, and Pumpkins

The pictures this week are a little heavy on the Mandy, mainly because she’s finally gotten to where she’s sitting up and doing stuff. You can only photograph her so many times just lying there on her back. She has, in fact, started to get much more interactive. She still hasn’t learned, however, where to draw the line between conversation and screaming. It’s not uncommon for her to sit in her chair and babble making all kinds of fun nonsense sounds, but she’s just as likely to grab one of her stuffed animals by the ears, lean into its face, and just start screaming at it in a strangely purposeful way. Like she expects it to GET HER POINT, YOU INSIPID LITTLE BEAR! So this puts her communicative prowess on par with most Internet message board users, but still with plenty of room to grow.

Mandy is also improving her table manners, and has moved on from simple rice cereal to all kinds of theoretically delicious foodstuffs. She seems to really dislike the green mush that’s supposed to be peas, but she absolutely loves the brown mush that’s supposed to be butternut squash. This is a passion we do not share, mainly because of the time I was taken out to lunch as part of a job interview while I had the stomach flu and I had the misfortune to order a big bowl of butternut squash bisque, which I reasoned would be the mildest thing on the menu. I had one spoonful, then spent the rest of the meal desperately trying not to vomit all over everyone in sight –the interviewer, the waiter, the people three tables over, everyone. Mandy, on the other hand, seems to take willful delight in projecting her squash all over the place, often explosively and with a big grin. Good thing she’s already got the job.

We finally took Sam to the pool-slash-megawaterplex (goggles and all) this last weekend, much to her initial glee. Of course, shortly after we got there she busts out running across the concrete and falls down, scraping her knee and forearm fairly badly. Badly enough to bleed and leave her a crying, blubbering basket case. She kicked her freakout up a couple of notches when the blood from one of the wounds started spreading, prompting her to shriek “It’s getting bigger! IT’S GETTING BIGGER!” Even after the scrapes were washed, disinfected, and bandaged she couldn’t calm down and wanted to go home despite our declaration that we had just paid $21 to get into this place and weren’t going to leave before Daddy had a chance to get good and sunburned.

After about 20 minutes of incessant freaking out, we were getting kind of embarrassed and exasperated. We had tried everything we could think of and I eventually had to just taker her out to the car to calm down. Still, it was hard to be mad at her when she sat in my lap, pulled my arms across her chest and said between blubbering gasps, “Put your …arms around …me and never …let go.” Eventually she was fine, though, and we had to deal with a new hissy fit when we told her it was time to go home.

Still, sometimes it IS easy to get mad at Sam, since her willfulness is quickly becoming legendary in our household. Last night we were sitting on the floor playing when she spontaneously picked up one of her toy trains and threw it against the wall.

“Sam!” I said. “Do not throw your toys! If you do it again, you’re going to get a time out.”

This said, she looked me straight in the eye while kneeling down to pick up the next nearest toy –a plastic orange pumpkin.

“Sam,” I said, knowing the look in her face by now. “Do not throw that.”

She stood up, smirking and cocking her arm back.

“Don’t do it, Sam.” I felt like I was trying to talk down a lone gunman. As it often does, the theme from The Good, the Bad, and the Ugly was running through my head.

She paused, looking me right in the eye for effect. The pumpkin twitched in her hand.

“Put it down, Sam. I’m warning–”

The pumpkin bounced off my forehead and continued on a secondary arc to the ground some distance away.

There was much screaming and taking of time outs (both by her, actually), but I had to admit –it was a pretty good throw. I was actually kind of proud of her on that.