faboo mama

My daughter is at that stage where so many things are “secrets”.  That means that she basically just whispers nonsense in your ear. The boy, who can’t even talk, has picked up on that and often has his own secrets to share.  It’s always the same secret.

Wanna know what it is?

Mama.  Daddy. Ya-Ya*.  Ya-Ya.  Mama.  Car. Truck. Car. Daddy. Ya-Ya.  Moon.  Car.

Absolutely riveting, ain’t it?

*Ya-Ya is what he calls Ilia. 

But he’s so cute!

You should have seen his face and his little movements. He was total Jedi, right down to the hands using the force.

We tend to think of Alton as a baby still, even though he’s 2.  He’s becoming a person, and it’s hilarious listening to him and watching him interact.

Last night, I was out in the garage smoking, because it was pouring down rain.  Amid the spatters of raindrops, I heard the distinctive pater of little feet.  I looked out into the darkness then saw his curly head appear.  Seems he decided to come outside.  With no shoes on.  :/

I quickly picked him up to take him back into the house and as we walked down the driveway, he looked up, “Hey!  Rain!”.

“Yes, rain…that’s why you need to wear shoes.”

“Hey! It wet!” he shouted.

I replied, “Yeah, water tends to be.”

He looked up as rain fell on his face, “Cool!  Mama, rain cool!”.

The other day, I had to cut dreadlocks off the little boy’s head. He won’t let me comb it. He’s never let me comb it. 2 years old and I managed to get a brush on his head maybe 3 times since birth. He’s always cried bloody murder if a brush or comb got within 3 feet of his head. I feel for him. I remember the drama, the anguish of my mother combing my hair.

I have a friend who told me about how every night before bed, her mother would comb her hair for 20 minutes. She found it calming and even still her girlfriend would comb her head before bed. A story like that is pure fantasy. First off my mother doing anything besides yelling for 20 minutes before our bedtime would be a wonder. Hell, it would be a wonder if she was still awake since she went to be at 6pm most of the time. Secondly, like I said, tears. She would clamp our heads between her knees and with her long finger nails tenderly gouge our crania. Then the brush would come out.

The only thing worse than my mother combing my hair was when she braided it. Summer would be kicked off with 6 hours of brain-damaging corn rows. Our hair to tight that my eyes were on the side of my head. I looked like those Egyptian tomb paintings. She didn’t care. That hairstyle had to last at least until mid-August when she had a break from teaching. Even though I looked raggedy, I was thrilled when I learned that after the age of 9, my mother felt it no longer necessary to do our hair, thinking she’d instilled enough in us to do it ourselves.

Which is why it was so painful to comb baby boy’s hair. I didn’t want to be her. But his hair need it. It was so bad, you couldn’t even run your fingers through it in the back. It made nappy look over-processed. At first, I tried to comb it gingerly, but he wouldn’t sit still. Adrian said, “Cut it off.” So baby’s first haircut was actually two dreadlocks. That was two days ago.

Last night, he got another hair wash and I thought, “Here’s my chance!”. I put him across my lap and went to town. The drama! The anguish! I felt so bad. It was worse than when he got his shots. He got down and tried to run away. We caught him and went back to brushing and combing. 20 minutes later, you could get a fine-toothed comb through his head. Yay!

He’s been saying words, but this past week, we’ve gotten a lot of sentences from him. He’s a pretty funny kid. His big thing is “Oh, man!”, but he pronounces it “Aw, mane!”. I taught him to snap his arm when he says it. He had been either hitting his head or slapping his leg when he says it. Like when he dropped his sippy cup, leg slap, “Aw, mane!”.

Usually when he does something bad and we see him, he usually says, ‘Bad, bad, bad!”. He’s been doing that for a year. Lately, when he does something he’s not supposed to, he says, “OOOOOooooooh! Teacher! Teacher!” Leading us to believe that that school was full of tattletales.

When we got home, I was writing and he tried to grabbed my pen. I took the pen and tapped it on his ginormous forehead. He grabbed his head and said, ‘Oh. My head! Dat hurt mama! Bad, bad, bad! No hit!”. Lesson learned.

One last one…Adrian was just taking out the trash and carried the bag from the diaper pail through. Alton said, ‘Ew, dat’s stinky!”

Considering that Adrian told me when the little girl was in bed she said, ‘Oh man, my frickin’ feet are cold. Damn!” I’m a little more than worried to hear what the boy’s gonna be saying in 2 years.

I’m overhearing a conversation right now, by Ya-ya Mama.

Alton: Bee-bee (binkie)
Ilia: Alton you’re two now. You don’t need your binkie.
Adrian: Give it to him, it’s his birthday!
Ilia: But he’s two now. He doesn’t need it any more. Alton can you say ‘two’?
Alton: [crying] Bee-bee!
Ilia: You’re two now!

From a 7lb. preemie:

To a 30lb. giraffe:

You’ve amazed us by the changes you’ve gone through. You let people touch you and you’re finally eating sushi! You make us giggle with the way you talk, and I know that Ya-Ya Mama* adores you to pieces. Hope you have a very happy birthday. Next time we talk, it will be about potty training.

*Ya-Ya Mama is what he calls Ilia.

So, you know how in Madagascar, the animals are all excited because it’s Field Trip Day and they put on a show and all the kids just love them? Well, going to the LA Zoo, I’d laugh because the animals there are almost as lazy as most of the city. They’re usually just laying there. It’s rare to see them moving.

Well, I guess they knew it was Field Trip Day because they were cracked out. The zebras were moving. No. They were running. I’ve never seen them run. In the last 6 years we’ve been going to the zoo regularly, I’ve never seen them away from that back wall.

See, I got a pic because I knew you wouldn’t believe it. The bears were active too:

The kids loved every stinking minute of it. Adrian left Alton’s stroller at home, so we decided to wing it and see if he could handle not being in the stroller. That meant that this was pretty much his first time actually seeing a lot of the animals. We even made it up to Treetops because we weren’t inhibited by a stroller. Ah…I can taste the freedom (potty training, here we come!) of not having babies any more.

And now for some gratutitous photos of my family:

The zoo is already setting up the Christmas crap.

This is the last photo in a series of weird. Check my flickr page to see the other 3 photos.

Leaving the zoo.