An unforeseen benefit to having a son.

As I have mentioned multiple times before, I do not like spiders. They are gross and creepy and generally all-around-bad. I mean, they do have their good points like they eat other bugs and *spoiler alert* turn Peter Parker into Spiderman and save pigs from being eaten (although I can't guarantee those were both done by the same spider).

But really, I'd just rather not have them around.

I know some people who are more humane than I am and will rescue spiders they find indoors and transfer them outside on a piece of paper or in a cup or something so they can live a free-range spidey life. And that's cool if they want to do that. I do that with grasshoppers my cats drag in to play with, and with bees that get in the house if I can catch them.

But spiders? I have put them on notice many times before—if they come into my house their eight-legged lives are forfeit.

For me, a major perk of getting married was having someone to kill my spiders for me. Don't get me wrong, I can and will kill spiders on my own if I have to (the summer Shallow Man was out of the country for an internship featured several harrowing run-ins with large arachnids, which I feel like I've blogged about before). I am adept at the shoe swat, the stomp, and the turn-the-shower-on-and-wash-the-spider-out methods. I just would prefer, if someone else is around who can do it for me, not to have to get close enough to the spider to actually kill it.

I also figured that, as the mom, I would have to be the designated spider slayer for years to come while dad's at work because the kids wouldn't want to kill spiders (GROSS!). So I've been reluctantly resigning myself to the role of spider killer, and have even whacked one or two when my husband's at home so he knows I'm not a complete wimp (remind me to tell you sometime about the times when the spider I wanted him to kill turned out to really be as big as I said it was, rendering his rolling of the eyes totally unjustified).

So this afternoon I got back from an errand and had taken off my jacket and shoes. The Little Guy was standing up by the TV stand waiting for me to get his jacket and shoes, and just as I reached for his coat zipper, I saw a spider running on the floor. I turned to put one of my shoes back on so I could stomp it, but the Little Guy took one look at that spider, gave me a glance that clearly said, "No worries, Mom; I've got this covered," and he and his sneakers proceeded to stomp the living daylights out of that trespassing arachnid.

Wow. If I'd realized this was one of the perks of having a little boy, I'd've done it *years* ago. (Oh wait. Never mind. We tried.)

And now I dream of the day when I can just relax in a lounge chair and sip a fruity drink as my army of little boys stomps away all my spider-related woes. That's not too much to ask for, right?



Maybe I should've named him Samwise the Brave. . . .

How can you not love it?; or, The ruler of the waves.

So today we took the newborn divider out of the baby tub so there was more room for the Little Guy to splash around. Seriously, I don't know why it took us so long to do it, because a funnier sight than the Little Guy reveling in the expanded size of his new watery kingdom I have rarely seen.

His first item of business was to turn around so he was facing the reclining wall of the tub, which gave him maximum splashage space. The next priority was to grab the little crab-shaped sprinkler cup that came with the tub.

And then, oh, then, he splashed.

He splashed with glee and reckless abandon and giggled and squealed and splashed and wriggled and shrieked.

And eventually he would splash enough to fill up the little cup. And then the next time he raised his hand to begin another splash, he would inadvertently hurl the contents of said cup directly into his face.

Then he would gasp and cough and splutter and blink.

Pause.

Grin.

Resume splashing/squealing/giggling/refilling the cup.

Rinse and repeat.

Poseidon had best watch himself; there's a new ruler of the waves in town.



Yeah, I love that Little Guy. And at least now I know that his nose has definitely been rinsed clean both inside and out.

A few items of note.

In no particular order:

The Little Guy has his first ever real cold. I blame Shallow Man's freaky immune system. Usually the way sickness works in this house is that instead of everyone catching a bug in turn, I catch it twice and Shallow Man maybe coughs a couple times and is over it. However, this last week Shallow Man actually had to take two—count 'em, TWO—sick days. This same bug is the first thing that's actually gotten to the Little Guy. I haven't been sick at all. (Being hungover from lack of sleep after taking care of the Little Guy most of the night doesn't count.) It's not fun for LG or for me, but it is comforting to know that I won't necessarily have to catch everything three times going forward. (Have my menfolk met their own personal Cold of the Century? Only time will tell.)

The only thing LG hates more than vaccinations is having his nose wiped. Kleenexes are bad enough but heaven help you if you bring a nasal aspirator within twenty feet of him. At times like these, I think of the medical staff who debated so long whether he and his lungs needed to go to the NICU or not, and imagine how proud they'd be if they could see him now. Actually, scratch that. I'm pretty sure they could hear him from where they were. I'm pretty sure FRANCE could hear him.

When he's not about to collapse under the weight of just how mean Mommy and her evil Kleenex-weilding ways are, LG's new favorite thing is to bury his face in my neck and blow raspberries. Each time he does this, he then leans back to see if I noticed JUST HOW AWESOME HE IS, and gets the cutest smug little smirk on his face. Like, "Yeah, I just did that." (LOVE THAT LITTLE GUY.)

He's also tried to raspberry my chin, with less than satisfactory (to his way of thinking) results.

He's not quite crawling yet, although he's definitely thinking about it. With the way the cats keep taunting him by waving their tails tantalizingly close to his grasp, I give it another couple weeks at most. Heaven help us all once he's mobile.

I had another surreal I-swear-I'm-not-old-enough-for-that moment today when the pediatrician's office called today to do a survey on customer satisfaction and they asked for "the parent or guardian of Little Guy" and I answered "Yes, that's me."



Well folks, the sad little snoring and whimpering from the nursery are telling me that it's probably going to be another long night, so I'll sign off now. I've got a sad little boy to snuggle.

Best. Baby. Ever.

So I know I'm way behind in the blog posts I'd like to get written. There's still the birth story, 2010 in review, and a few others that I want to get done, but haven't. (All together now: Sometimes being a good mommy makes me a bad blogger. Sigh. Rinse and repeat.)

But I did want to take a brief moment to brag about my awesome child share this story. We just got back from visiting Shallow Man's grandparents in Alabama (and oh, the stories I could tell you about that trip. But that's for another time). We were pretty nervous going into it because although we have flown many times, we've never flown with a not-quite-four-month-old infant before. I was worried the Little Guy would have problems with his ears or the noise or have a massive blowout on the plane (yeah, I have a few more "I'm not blogging about poop" entries, too). I dealt with this anxiety the only way a mother can: by over-packing. But we flew on Southwest which = free checked bags. Which, of course = very yes.

I needn't have worried, though. Little Guy was, as per his usual, a champ. On each leg of the flights, I would start nursing him once we got in our seats, and he was completely asleep by the time we took off. He would wake up, briefly, once or twice during the flight and then conk out again in the face of the humming of the very large engines (our boy is curiously susceptible to the lulling sound of the car, so it wasn't too surprising that an airplane has the same effect).

The best part? At the end of each flight, the passengers around us (even one sitting right next to Shallow Man!) looked around when they stood up and said in surprise, "I didn't even know there was a baby on this flight."

Yeah, I know.

Best. Baby. Ever!



Unfortunately, between holding the Little Guy and worrying, we somehow neglected to get a picture of him being angelic on his first air voyage. Hopefully he'll do a repeat performance the next time we fly anywhere.

Victory Lap!!!

Well, we made it! I didn't know, at the beginning of the month, if I'd be typing up my 30th post in as many days today, but it worked! Thanks to all of you who have stuck around during this undertaking.

I've realized that blogging more frequently is a lot of fun, and completely doable as long as I make time for it specifically. That being said, I've also realized that I don't necessarily have enough to say to keep blogging every day. Looking back at the last 30 days, I've done:

*A whole lot of cop-out posts, usually about how tired I am because of something the Little Guy has been up to. Don't get me wrong; I would much rather be tired and boring and have the Little Guy around than be energetic and witty and still childless. But as I have said before, being a good mommy sometimes means I have to be a bad (or at least uninteresting) blogger.

*A few posts about musicals you may not have heard of but should totally check out.

*A book review.

*A series about word nerd-age.

*Much linkage.

*A moderately successful De-Lurk Day (if you never did de-lurk, or if you thought you weren't included because you don't technically lurk, you are still more than welcome to comment now!).

*Maybe one or two actually interesting posts about random stuff from my brain.

Not too shabby, I suppose, but it also has lots of room for improvement, substance-wise. I'm thinking of some changes and organization for the blog which I hope to implement in the coming month. But I reserve the right to occasionally pop in with nothing more than a note saying I'm still a mommy, and I'm still alive. But I guess if you've made it this far with me, you'll probably understand that. And, as always, if you have any suggestions and/or requests for blog post topics, please let me know and I will do my best to oblige.

Thanks to all of you for reading, and for making me feel like there were people I shouldn't disappoint, which kept me posting here this month. I love knowing that people read this random stuff I write, and that some of you even enjoy it.

So I guess I'll see you in December!



My Amazon PayPhrase today was "Elliespen's Unstable Essays." I'm not sure what to think about that.

And, in case you didn't notice before, yes, this is DAY 30! Mission accomplished!

This post is not about poop.

Before I became a parent, poop was not a part of my daily conversational routine. Despite the fact that everyone does it, it's not something I talked or thought about on a regular basis.

That is no longer the case now that the Little Guy is in our lives.

However, I realize that for all the folks out there who did not just become parents, the topic retains its less-than-savory nature. So out of concern for their tender sensibilities, I try not to talk about it in great detail or at great length.

But it's pretty much all that's on my mind at the moment.

Which doesn't leave me a lot to blog about.

So this post is not about poop. So sorry that it ever came up.

And, having thus exhausted my topic, this post is now finished.



I can't believe this is still going after 2 weeks. I would like to point out that today is the closest I've ever run it to the deadline and still made it on time. Procrastination for the win, I suppose.