Well, my mackerdoodle was in fine form while Nana and Papa were visiting.  She was always making us laugh with her little sayings and fun ways.  She would crawl up beside my dad and say “Nana, I yike dis Papa.”  When praying for meals she would thank God “for NanaPapa come, for Nana come, for Papa come,” and she continued to insist that she was NOT a baby, she was a big girl.

One day we had done a little shopping and on the last stop I left my two kids in Papa’s truck with Nana while I ran into  K-mart for batteries.  I returned to the truck to hear my mother saying “Oh really.  Is that right?”

Apparently Nana had challenged the mackerdoodle to do something because she was a big girl, and my mackerdoodle has promptly answered, “I no a big girl.  I a yittew girl.”

This had elicited Nana’s dry response.  Once in the truck myself I asked her myself if she was a big girl, and her answer remained firm.  She was a little girl, not a big girl.

“Are you a baby?”  I asked.

She was clearly insulted at the question.  Drawing herself up as far as her car seat buckles would allow, she loudly proclaimed, “I no a baby!  I a b. . . “  there was just a hair of a pause as she caught the word and drew it back and then she finished the sentence, “I a small girl.”

If I can’t catch her up at two and a half, I’m really in for it in a few years.

The first line from the first post of each month in 2009 gives a pretty accurate picture of my year I think.

January:   Well, it’s late in the evening of January 3rd and I am just getting around to posting a New Year’s post.

February: One of Jonathan’s favorite meals is tuna casserole.

March: The forecast had been for a winter storm, but in ten years we had only seen one snowfall stick in Georgia, so we were naturally skeptical.

April: Well, it’s no April Fool’s Joke for me.  I heard the official news today that I DON’T have gestational diabetes!  HOORAY.

May: 331 confirmed cases of H1N1 (swine flu) in eleven countries worldwide, with ten deaths in only one country.  More people have died of leprosy in the United States alone than have died of H1N1 worldwide.  So what’s the fuss?

June: My parents are selling my childhood home in order to move closer to their grandchildren – oh, and also their daughters and sons-in-law.

July: Well, the cheesedoodle is three weeks old this afternoon and that seems like an auspicious beginning for our 12 week challenge to weight loss.

August: So it turns out that being a stay-at-home mom to two is busier than being a working mother of one.  I have three blog posts about my life started – none are finished.

September

October: With only two sleeps left until Nana and Papa make the trip back to close on their new house in Ontario, we decided to take our first cooler day in their visit to explore Warm Springs, Pine Mountain and FDR state park.

November: Today I baked burned a batch of bread.

December: My son will be six months old next week and is already out of most of his six month clothes.

What does 2010 hold?  I don’t know, but I know the God that holds it in His hand.

My mackerdoodle is a big girl – just ask her, she’ll tell you.  She’s not a baby, she’s a big girl.

My mom is a pet name type of woman.  She has called children things like sausage and babe ever since I can remember.  My mackerdoodle is taking it personally.  “I no a babe!  I a big girl!” she started saying to my mom within minutes of them arriving.  You can imagine my chagrin, and how it deepened 24 hours later to hear my little girl say to my mom, in her most petulant voice, “NO CALL ME BABE!”

It’s at times like this that my heart swells.

In yet another “oh, really?” moment, I realized I’ve become that mom who expects a higher level of obedience and respect from my daughter when someone else is looking than when it’s just our little brood.  I swore I wasn’t going to be that mom.  I swore in vain.

I suppose some of it is to be expected.  I want people to see the beautiful, fun loving, lovable, appealing side of my children and not the sinful, disobedient, pull-my-hair-out frustrating side of them; but do I want that so that people will love my children, or so that they will think I’m a good mother?  I think it’s both and I know that my mother, having already been a mother, knows all of this as well.

So, I’m not going to let my daughter talk to her grandmother that way, not because I’m scared that my mom will think I’m a horrible mother, but because if I *did* let my daughter be so disrespectful, I *would* be a horrible mother.  And because my mother loves me and my mackerdoodle, she’s really trying hard not to call her littlest grand daughter babe – because she’s a big girl.

I’m really struggling to dress the Cheesedoodle.  Here’s my dilemma:  when I put him in 6 month pants they are too short.  He looks like he’s wearing knickers or something.  His legs get cold.  He’s uncomfortable.  It’s just not good.  The problem is that the 12 month pants fit his legs – maybe some are a hair long, but not bad – but the only reason they stay at all around his waist is that diapers have fuzzy strips to which the velcro strips to adhere.  The slightest motion and all of a sudden my son has gone all Gangsta McSaggy Pants.

It makes it look like I’m dressing him in clothes that don’t fit.  Well, I guess it looks that way because I am, but it’s not like I can walk into a baby clothing store and say “6 month waist, 12 month leg please.”  So what’s a mama to do, apart from continually pulling up his pants, and putting him in as many overalls as possible?  Do I let him look knickery?  Do I let him look saggy?  Do they make infant belts?  Am I the only one with a problem like this?

If you don't get the reference, click the picture.

PS (note the hot spot has become hot again.  Sisyphus had his stone, I have my housework.)

Friday evening I had the kids in the tub and was going through my normal evening ritual when my phone rang.  It was Chrissy.  I love Chrissy, but neither of us are phone chatters, so we rarely call each other.  When I answered, she started with, “I did a bad thing!  I didn’t know whether to be intrigued or horrified or sympathetic.  I did wonder why she was calling me with her confession.

“I just left a comment on your blog and I USED [mackerdoodle]’s REAL NAME!  You’ll have to delete it RIGHT NOW.”  I was simultaneously touched at her concern for my daughter’s well being and very relieved.  With WordPress I can edit comments, and I frequently edit my children’s blogonyms into comments.  I use the little names here and here alone.  We don’t call them mackerdoodle or cheesedoodle at home, or at church.  People know them and love them by their given names, so it is natural for people to use those names when referring to my children.

There are a lot of reasons people use nom de plumes when blogging, so I thought I would address my reasons for using the titles “mackerdoodle” and “cheesedoodle” for my children and other titles for my nieces and nephews.

When I first employed the name “pomegranate” as the fetal name for my mackerdoodle it was because we weren’t announcing her name until she was born.  The world referred to my unborn daughter as pomegranate so much that there were pomegranate scented and flavored gifts sprinkled through her baby shower. It was a fun way to celebrate  her as a living human before she  was born.

As her birth approached I thought seriously about how to refer to her after she was born.  I read all the arguments for not using your children’s names on public blogs, I read blogs by mothers who used their children’s real names, and I weighed it all.  In the end I decided to not use my children’s names for completely different reasons.

This internet thing is relatively new, and we don’t yet know how long these blogs will last.  What if my blog gets tucked into some backwater off the web and one day in 2020 an HR director or college admission director plugs my daughter’s name into a search engine?  I know that now I’ll come across something on the internet and it won’t be until it mentions “president Clinton” or some other anachronism that I’ll realize it was written in 1996, not last week.  Context is everything.  When I write now that the cheesedoodle drank too much and threw up on the floor it’s a story about the digestive system of an infant.  In 17 years the same sentence would sound like frat boy debauchery. I don’t want my children to suffer in the future for a cute story today taken out of context

Additionally, as my children grow up they’ll want more privacy.  Providing I’m still blogging, I will adjust the way I write about them, but the blogonyms will stop little school friends and casual acquaintances from finding their names while still allowing me to share cute stories with family and friends around the world.

So it’s not really the here and now with which I am concerned.  If you slip up on a comment, I’ll fix it when I read the comments next and it will be okay.  My children are so blessed to have biological and  church family who love them so much and care about their safety.

We’ve been teaching our mackerdoodle to pray for several months now.  At first it was just “thank you for this food” at meals and “please forgive my sins and help me to love Jesus” at family worship.  When we noticed that she was doing the meal prayer as she slid into her chair, and had it timed so the first fork full of food was hitting her tongue before the sound of “amen” had faded from the air, we thought maybe we should be taking this prayer thing to another level.

All we asked was that she thank God for the specific food we were eating.  If I put a plate of turkey fried rice in front of her (one of her favorite meals – done in the crock pot!) she didn’t hesitate.  “Dear God, hank oo for dis TOOKEY WICE!!!!!! amen.” she would say.  Then she would open her eyes and look at us for affirmation (which we granted eagerly) before she began to shovel the tookey wice into her mouth.  It was all a little more complicated, however, when the meal was, say, bean soup.  She doesn’t really like bean soup, so she didn’t really want to say “hank oo” for that meal; but we worked at it, and soon it became the new routine to thank God for the specific food of each meal.

Lately, she’s realized that she can improvise within the assigned parameters of her prayers.  Prayers for lunch lately have been very entertaining.  Yesterday it was “Dear God, hank oo for” little pause, as her closed eyes wrinkle in concentration, “Daddy, Abigail, LukeAndrew, slides, squirrels, Luke’s party. . . ” then a quick peek from between her fluttering eyelashes “eggs, bacon, and bwead.  amen.”

I need to remember to thank God for the every day things like squirrels and slides.  I think we’re learning from her as she learns from us.

Dear God, thank you for a little girl who is already learning to thank you for the things and people in her life.  And for bacon.  Amen.

Wednesday morning was the first sunny day we’ve had in WEEKS, so we took the opportunity to get out of the house and went to a local playground (towel in hand) to let the mackerdoodle work out her cabin fever.  On the way she made some comment or other from the back seat, and Jonathan remarked that she was being true to her Canadian heritage.

“I no yike Canadians,”  she immediately asserted.  When asked for clarification she was insistent and unapologetic.  “I no yike Canadians.”   She repeated it several times while shaking her head emphatically.

We kept asking her in different ways why she didn’t “yike” Canadians.  Finally she told us: “Canadians eat bugs stead peyut budler.”

Jonathan looked at me as I roared with laughter.  “What on earth did she just say?” he asked.

I translated: ” Canadians eat bugs instead of peanut butter.”

“Why would she say that?” he asked.

I tried to explain this page from one of her favorite stories:

Apparently when I say “Green Alien”, she hears “Canadian.”  Even when we explained that Nana and Papa and Grandma and Grandpa and Aunty Melissa and Uncle Brian and all her cousins were Canadians, she still shook her head.  “I no yike bugs.  I yike peyut budler.  Peyut budler toast.”

So all you crazy Canadians, if my daughter ever tells you that she “no yikes” bugs and that she “yikes peyut budler” you’ll know why; and if you get a chance to read “I Love You Stinky Face“, please do so – just articulate better than I do.

I realized that I have blogged about a series of things, and then I move on with my life.  But y’all don’t live with me.  You don’t know how these things work out.  Here are a few updates on past posts:

My glasses from Zenni Optical are great.  I am wearing the fun and funky ones as my primary glasses.  They are a little heavier than the silver frames, but they are taller which makes them better for everyday wear.  If you order from Zenni, I would recommend that you take some time at a WalMart optical center, or another optical retailer with very little customer service who will leave you alone to try on glasses in peace.  Once you find several frames you like, take note of the style, and the dimensions.  My silver glasses were narrower than I anticipated, because I didn’t measure the sample frames I had tried on.

My son is sleeping much better thank you.  He has almost completely recovered from his ear infection/congestion and with the recovery came a return to his normal sleeping patterns.  I am apparently far too willing to accept personal responsibility for temporary situations. 

Finally, my new slippers are very comfortable.  I purchased them to avoid wearing my running shoes in the house and while not providing entirely as much support, the slippers are a much better alternative to walking about barefooted or in sock feet all day and ending up feeling like a train hit my lower body at the end of the day.

So that’s an update on my life.  How are y’all?