sleep training

Sleep Training...

OK, here's my situation. My Mommy has had me for almost 7 months. The first few months were great--I cried, she picked me up and fed me, anytime, day or night. Then something happened.

Over the last few weeks, she has been trying to STTN (sleep thru the night). At first, I thought it was just a phase, but it is only getting worse. I've talked to other babies, and it seems like it's pretty common after Mommies have had us for around 6 months.

Here's the thing: these Mommies don't really need to sleep. It's just a habit. Many of them have had some 30 years to sleep--they just don't need it anymore. So I am implementing a
plan. I call it the Crybaby Shuffle.

It goes like this:

Night 1--cry every 3 hours until you get fed. I know, it's hard. It's hard to see your Mommy upset over your crying. Just keep reminding yourself, it's for her own good.

Night 2--cry every 2 hours until you get fed.

Night 3--every hour.

Most Mommies will start to respond more quickly after about 3 nights. Some Mommies are more alert, and may resist the change longer. These Mommies may stand in your doorway for hours, shhhh-ing. Don't give in. I cannot stress this enough: CONSISTENCY IS KEY!!


If you let her STTN (sleep through the night), just once, she will expect it every night. I KNOW IT'S HARD! But she really does not need the sleep, she is just resisting the change.

If you have an especially alert Mommy, you can stop crying for about 10 minutes, just long enough for her to go back to bed and start to fall asleep. Then cry again. It WILL eventually work. My Mommy once stayed awake for 10 hours straight, so I know she can do it.

Last night, I cried every hour. You just have to decide to stick to it and just go for it. BE CONSISTENT! I cried for any reason I could come up with.

My sleep sack tickled my foot.

I felt a wrinkle under the sheet.

My mobile made a shadow on the wall.

I burped, and it tasted like pears (I hadn't eaten pears since lunch -
what's up with that?) The cat said "meow" (I should know. My Mommy reminds me of this about 20 times a day. LOL.)

Once I cried just because I liked how it sounded when it echoed on the monitor in the other room.

Too hot, too cold, just right--doesn't matter! Keep crying!!

It took awhile, but it worked. She fed me at 4am. Tomorrow night, my goal is 3:30am. You need to slowly shorten the interval between feedings in order to reset your Mommies' internal clocks.

P.S. Don't let those rubber things fool you, no matter how long you suck on them, NO milk will come out! Trust me.

it's like donuts

blogging, i mean. like, sometimes, i can go for MONTHS without donuts. but then, there's this like, deep, soul-rooted urging...like my spleen sends these little signals to the hungryplace in my brain and screams 'you will go forth and get me donuts NOW!' and then i get donuts and eat like, 4 in one day, and then feel sick, and then i'm done with donuts for a while. now, i've never gone MONTHS without blogging, but i do go days sometimes weeks. and then, there are times like this, where i have this serial posting problem. and it's not like blogger doesn't have an edit button. it's not as though once i hit submit, i'm locked into whatever i've already said. i mean, i could totally add this on to one of the four. hundered. posts. i've put up today, but i figure, i'm on a roll. i'm hot. smokin. see? actually, let's be honest. i don't really want to taint any of the other entries with my lameness. and internet? i. am. lame. for the last 48 hours, i have been in excruciating pain. my entire body has felt like a big, newly tattooed, and then acid burned bruise, and i've had a headache similar to that of the one after my 21st birthday and the jetfuel flavored shooters people kept pouring down my throat. and as queasy. my hands have been shaking, and i've been falling asleep unexpectedly, dreaming of weirdness like my dreds morphing into an afro, and then singing (the afro, not me) aretha franklin music but in james ingrams voice (i attribute that to the influence of teevee, but still.) so. i'm in withdrawl. not a sexy withdrawl, like brittney. not even a lax, sort of more for looks withdrawl like lindsay. it's not anything cool, like heroin chic, or expensive, like coming off a week long coke binge. nope. i'm in withdrawl. from. prednisone. let me say it again, internet. i am so lame. my feeble little skeleton got addicted to a drug they give to old people for arthritis, and asthma. can i talk about how this is like, the pinnacle of irony, to me? i mean, my misspent youth never caused me pain like this. if i had to feel like this, i'm really irritated that i got here legally.

i like this

i need to keep it in mind. like, when she's licking the cats flea collar for the 899th time, i need to remember that it's the absolute value of, um, flea breath. yeah.

THE DAILY GROOVE ~ by Scott Noelle
www.enjoyparenting.com/dailygroove

:: The Absolute Value of Your Child ::

If you were forced to study algebra when you were a
teenager, it probably didn't occur to you that it
would one day come in handy as a metaphor for
unconditional love. But here it is...

In mathematics, the "absolute value" of a number is
its *magnitude* regardless of whether it's positive or
negative. So the numbers +50 and -50 have the same
absolute value: 50.

Likewise, the Art of Unconditionality involves
disregarding the negative interpretations of a
condition or behavior and finding a way to see it
in a positive light. For example:

* Whether your child says "I love you" or "I hate
you," you can appreciate the magnitude of her
expressiveness and emotional honesty.

* Whether your child rebels or complies with your
wishes, you can appreciate his absolute freedom
of choice.

Today as you observe your child, if you see any
"negative" behavior then ask yourself, "What is this
telling me about the 'absolute value' of my child?"

http://dailygroove.net/absolute-value

This Daily Groove message was originally presented
on July 13, 2006.

Feel free to forward this message to your friends!

Copyright (c) 2007 by Scott Noelle

some updateish bits

i still have mono, but i seem to be doing better with the whole cough thing. peanut seems fine, altho there was a brief moment there where i was concerned that i'd accidentally dried myself up with cough meds, but we had a day here last week where we stayed in bed and on the couch all day, and she nursed pretty much non-stop, and i stopped taking the damn cough meds, and we seem to back to normal. it's funny, even though i am committed to child led weaning at this point (despite the occasional frustration with nursing during my period) and even though i know she'll let me know when she's done, that moment of terror at not having any milk for her pretty much solidified my committment to the natural weaning process. because she made it abundantly clear that she wasn't done. what cracks me up about nursing her this long, is the peculiar questions i field. i mean, i know we've all read the stories of moms who're nursing the toddlers, right, and the in-laws are comparing it to child abuse, but i've never encountered that in real life. (thank god.) but like, it's been suggested to my mom that she should tell me to wean peanut so that my mono will go away. what? i'm fully convinced that, A)mono is a virus, so it's actually better for peanut to keep nursing because then she's getting my antibodies, and so won't get mono, and B)it's not as though i'm over here wasting away. i should be so lucky. and like, my dad often wonders aloud about her food consumption. and no matter how many times i explain that she eats everything (even beef now!) except dairy, he always seems to hold in his head that she is getting ONLY breastmilk. i dunno. i'm glad, certainly, that they're not like, overtly critical in that judgemental fuckerupforlifewiththatshit sort of way, but it cracks me up too, that there's this much interest in what my kid eats.

i gave up on the damn socks. i got bored, and also, three stitches fell off of one of the needles, and i'd just gotten the vogue baby knits from the library, and i decided that i'd make the easy garter stitch cardigan in the pumpkin wool i got for christmas. i'm actually really happy with this pattern, because i think i can pretty much use the same idea, (just do a swatch, and then some mathy type things) to make my mom a sweater. and also, i think that, if i knit the front the same as the back, but keep the neck shaping at the center, that i could totally turn it into a pullover pattern. it'd be baggy, i think, with hardly any shaping, but it is a baby sweater after all, it's not like she needs darts. i've got the back completely knitted, and i'm about 2/3 of the way done with the left front side. since it is going to be frickin freezing here tomorrow, i plan to stay in, and knit.

peanut has started making up songs. did i mention that? i'm going to mention it again, because it's stinkin adorable. she's got this song about a dinosaur, who moos. that's about the gist of it, but there's a lot of 'dun dun doo doo dinooooosaaauuuuuuuuuuurrrrr MOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOo' and bum shakin involved. and i have cute video of her singing other stuff, pending my lazy ass uploading it. and she has this crazy bionic nose for chocolate (chawkwhat!) my mom was eating a lindt truffle thing the other day, and peanut wasn't looking at her, so she popped the whole thing in her mouth, and chewed, and had the wrapper balled up in her hand, and all of a sudden, peanut popped up like a jackrabbit, and made a beeline to crawl in her lap and yelled CHAWKWHAT! i love that kid. i can't blame her tho. assuming she's sensitive to the ins and outs of my cycle, i got my period today, so she prolly had the same chawkwhat jones i had that day. i think she's got a future as a dentist. she spent about twenty minutes today, sitting on my chest, prying my teeth apart while hollering 'open that mouth! open your mouth!' and then shoving her fingers down my throat and yelling 'teeeeeeeth! tongue! mouth!!!!' and then giggling hysterically while i gagged and coughed. and then, her and her daddy spent about 30 minutes dancing on newspaper, which was more cuteness than you could shake a stick at, i tell you what. and THEN, oh my god. why are they always cute when i have pms? so then, gene takes her, and helps her stand on his feet, and they danced together that way. *tear* and that is why, i lurve him. i know he wonders lots, if he's doing well in his daddy role. and i worry that he doesnt' listen to me, when i tell him i think he's doing a fabulous job. but he is, and it's shit like that, that i wish i could secretly video, and show to him later. (he'd never let me video it straight out, he's worse than a girl about stuff like that.) anyway. i think that's all the shizz thats fit to blog, so, i'll go to bed now.

w00t! my kid? still a farkin geenyus!

why? because not only can she count to ten, but she can actually count 7 items. correctly. she's adding new songs to her hit list each day, and i think she's making some up as she goes a long. today, she was singing about a spider in a boat. i'm never, ever bored when she's got her on switch flipped.

we went to the library tonight, and she tried to poke gene's eye out with a pencil. he seems to be okay tho, but he did make a really loud noise in the library. prior to that, though, she was sitting in his lap, and i was standing at a shelf near them, where she could see me. so i walk around the end to look at the other side (out of her view) and she goes 'mama! come back!' super loud. i'm lucky to be friends with the librarian, or we'd so be kicked out.

why does my podunk library not have the miseducation of the negro? isnt' that like, required reading these days? i have to unpack all of my books. i'm pretty sure i own that one, i just didn't feel like looking for it.

so, in the great sense of humor department, peanut has taken to lifting her arms to you beseechingly, and saying, 'uppie? uppies?' so that you'll pick her up, right? but when you put your arms out to pick her up, she squeals no!!!! and runs away giggling. then comes back 30 seconds later for a repeat. this can go on for ages.

her newest animal learned, is raccoon. which she pronounces 'ratoon!' and i think it's cute, and don't want to correct her.

i'm pretty sure those are the big updates.

blogging up some karma here

so. my last post was political. this one is too, but it's not nearly as whiny. in fact, it's more of a celebration! why? because my favorite human being is running for president. maybe. at least, an exploratory committee has been formed. this person mirrors my ideals, my hopes for america, my dreams for the sort of nation that peanut can grow and thrive in. who? barack obama of course! i've donated 25 bucks to his campaign. this is big, since i currently have no income which is purely mine. so i was sort of hoarding that last 100 bucks for like, i dunno, new yarn or something. but sometimes, someone so extraordinary comes along in politics, that you just have to put your money where your mouth is. and stumping for future president obama is most def on my list of shit to do this year, but sometimes money talks. this is also the first time i've contributed to a political campaign in a fiscal manner. he wrote back (well, emailed) a really beautiful letter, about grass roots, and humility, and restoring america. tear worthy. i like him, but not just cuz he's black. i like him because he's a writer, and he's got this way with words that make me want to have his babies. i like him because he refuses to call anyone an asshole, he just says they disagree. i wish i were as nice as he is. i also like him, because when asked on the tonight show with jay leno, if he inhaled when smoking weed, he said 'isn't that the point?' which tells me that he's got a sense of humor about himself, and he's comfortable enough with his past to admit to his hijinx. i wish that hilary heifer would cancel her damn exploratory committee. it's not that she doesn't have her good points, it's that obama has more good points. and he's nicer. and he doesn't come complete with all that blowjob baggage, you know? but i've been voting on the web polls, and so far, it's looking like the top 2 will be rudy and barack. i am, (despite being the daughter of a politician) fairly uneducated on how one selects a candidate for a VP, but i personally think, that if barack asked rudy to be his veep, they'd win it by a landslide! at any rate, he's probably going to come up again here and there as i blog. because i lurve him like pie. and now that i'm in the south, i lurve me some pie.

anyone who donates to his campaign, leave a comment, and i'll put you in a special sidebar section on my blog roll thingy! let's start us a revolution!

we are halfway through january

and that means, that, we've made it through another rote MLK day, where most of us slept in, or went grocery shopping on our 'day off'. it also means that we are fast coming up on black history month. so i'm gonna be radical this year, and say what i feel about black history month. ready?

i realize that carter woodson had his heart in the right place, when he started black history week. he said "those who have no record of what their forebears have accomplished lose the inspiration which comes from the teaching of biography and history". and he's right. and i fully and totally support all the rhetoric about martin, and malcolm, and rosa. i do. but martin did not create the civil rights movement. the civil rights movement created him. same with malcolm. and rosa. they were products of an environment which begged for drastic social change. i mean, i could be wrong, but i'd be willing to bet that rosa parks wasn't the first person to be like 'piss off. my feet hurt.' i do think, that she had the connections with her church, and her community at large, to be able to facilitate the organization of such a large scale boycott. i mean, it wasn't the not standing up thing that was revolutionary, it was the not standing up, and then telling other people to NOT RIDE THE BUS for 381 days, that caused the revolutionary change. at any rate, i respect her for her balls, i will say that. and i respect her rightful place in the pantheon of black history.

what i have a problem with, is the current marketing of black history. we don't start in africa, you know? they don't talk about the hittite empire, or the kingdom of kush, or credit early africans with the initial math. nope, we start black history with WHITE folks, taking the black folks on to their big bad ships. we're chained and shackeled to our past as victims, and we trudge onward, trapped in this xeroxed ethnomemory of stinking death and salt water. so we get to the new world, and we're beaten with whips, and our tongues are cut out for insolence. we're allowed to sing, lawd lawd, we's a sangan' bunch, and we magically invent blues! then, abe lincoln realizes that slavery isn't working out economically any longer, so he's like, 'i proclaim all y'all negroes emancipated.' and then we run to new york, and form harlem, and romare bearden paints pictures on walls, and the black bougousie is born, and lo! the harlem rennisance. so we're bobbin all on jazz now, but only in OUR clubs, and we can pee in public, but only in OUR restrooms. and we can even take the bus! but only in the back. and through out all of this, let's not forget the mean white people who keep lynching us, and burning crosses on our lawns. and exploding our little black girls who are just doing what's right and hangin out in church! CHURCH! those poor girls. so then, we get irate. and we're like, this wouldn't suck so bad if we had better schoolin. so we send 9 kids to school in arizona, and they're teased and tormented by more mean white people, but they persevere, and we win brown vs. the board of education! so now, we're being bussed all over hells half acre, but we're getting taught at THEIR schools now. and because of this access to white education, suddenly, we're smart enough to start all that boycottin, and sittin in, and protestin, and fightin the powers that be. and then jim crow is repealled, and the civil rights act is put in place, but not before we have 2 diametrically opposed martyrs lost in the struggle. and i'm sure some places will mention jesse jackson for fun, but mostly, that's the extent of black history month in public schools.

so what? it seems pretty concise, and, after all, you ONLY have 28 days to cover that shit. less, cuz of weekends. but my problem with it, is that it paints this picture of persistant victimization. we get TAKEN on boats. our DEAD are tossed overboard. we're BEATEN, and MAIMED, and ENSLAVED. then, we're SEPERATE. eventually, we tack equal on to that. then they ASSASINATE martin and malcolm. but they didn't die in vain because look how far we've come. right? but even if you don't start black history with african history-even if you start on the slave ships, you have mutinys, where we took the ships back. (even more than just the amistad, but don't tell steven spielburg, or he might make another interminable movie). we ran away. nat turner organized the biggest (tho i'm sure not the only) slave rebellion. we fought in the civil war too. see what i mean? from the start, we've been fighters, revolutionaries beating the path to our own freedom. but in each and every ditto handed out, you'll read about the poor 'bama bombing girls, and emmet till who got lynched for whistling at a white woman, even tho it wasn't a cat call, but just that he had a stutter, and his mom taught him to not stutter by whistling, and all that pooorrrr emmet wanted to do was buy him some bread. it's victimology, and we eat it up.

i think that, if carter woodson were around for the current iteration of black history, he'd prolly lynch his ownself. because he also said "If you can control a man’s thinking, you don’t have to worry about his actions. If you can determine what a man thinks you do not have worry about what he will do. If you can make a man believe that he is inferior, you don’t have to compel him to seek an inferior status, he will do so without being told and if you can make a man believe that he is justly an outcast, you don’t have to order him to the back door, he will go to the back door on his own and if there is no back door, the very nature of the man will demand that you build one." and i see that shit played out every day on the television. baby mamas, pimps, hos, bitches, niggers, what are we doing to our young black children? how early do we start the internal self loathing that eventually leads to that sort of culture being played out across the nation?

i think also, that part of the problem with the marketing of black history, is that it's all about FIRST black this. as though we have to show that we are equal. i mean, neil armstrong was just the first man on the moon. he wasn't the first WHITE man on the moon, see? when you categorize an achievement racially, you also categorically label it inferior. because if it was just an achievement, then it would just be a first. i give much respect to those first blacks, tho. i mean, the first sucsessful heart trasnplant was done by a black doctor. but see how that sounds? how it looks? does that make it more impressive than if i'd said 'the first sucessful heart transplant was done by a doctor', you'd be llike, duh. of course it was! but you'd probably also assume, that it was a white doctor. because, after all, if it was a first, AND it was done by a black person, OF COURSE i'd clarify. it's insidious, isn't it?

and now, even now, people are still playing to the firsts. i hate me some GWB, but either he, or his handlers, have some brilliant wag the dog ideas. i mean, right there in the midst of all that WMD drama, what does george do? he says 'i'm gonna nominate me a black woman as secretary of state'. boom. our focus shifted completely away from all that 'he lied!' shit, and beamed straight down on the awesomeness of condi, the FIRST BLACK WOMAN secretary of state. i mean, they debated forEVER on CNN and FOX as to whether she'd get confirmed. of course she would. because, despite her total failure to act on three warnings pre 9-11 about the pending attacks, she is a BLACK WOMAN so if you vote against her, you are obviously a racist chauvanist, and probably a card carrying member of the KKK.

i don't want peanut to be about someone because they were the first black person to do something. or because they were the first woman. or the first halfro. i want her to be realize that she's got strong fighters on BOTH sides, that one side didn't 'save' the other. that black people are not victims. that we do have the power to change things, and that, contrary to what she may learn in school (if she goes) the black political struggle did not end in the damn sixties. we've still got a long way to go to equality. and i want her to know how to be about getting there. that's MY black history month. foment me a peanut revolutionary.

i got my lunch box and i'm armed real well!

i woulda skipped the second Blade flick

i might be crazy, but

but it seems to me, that sending more troops to iraq is a bad fucking plan. especially considering, that 20 000 is a somewhat paltry number, when you compare it to the 130 000 already in place. but seriously. they keep shooting each other. it's a civil war. let them solve that shit on their own. america is like a pagent mom. i mean, we hover over shit, and we never let other countries figure things out on their own. so then, once we decide it's all copasetic, or we run out of cash, or we elect a new prez, we back out, and leave these nations floundering without our guidance. i don't think pulling out completely is a plan. but i do think that giving the current government in iraq some basic lessons in how not to be fuckups, or get overthrown, would be a better idea than sending 20 000 more people over there to get shot at.

i mean, there was a big ass war in south central LA, between rival gangs, and that shit didn't even warrant the police chief. just some beat cops, you know? and that was here. that was americans. what the hell are we doing, sending our kids over there to die?

i hate that fucker. i hate him like brussel sprouts

thanks ali

My blog is worth $23,951.78.
How much is your blog worth?

long, and sort of term-papery

when i was pregnant, and found out i was having a girl, i told people not to buy my kid pink stuff. that we still wanted the gender neutral tones of yellow, green, and so on. and my mom told me that i was taking the 'fun' out of shopping. but to me, starting in infancy, training our girls to be frilly, pretty princesses seemed counter-intuitive to raising independent thinkers. so much of feminine identity is wrapped up in image, and i just didn't want my kid getting off to that sort of start. i don't mind so called 'girly girls', so much as i despise the categorization of women. and face it. you put a kid in all pink, and give them the full disney princess press, and even if they don't wanna be, they end up looking the part of the girly girl. the princess. the 'good' girl.

so then, my kid was born, and i kept the no pink rule, altho i relaxed some, because bitches don't listen, and we got a shit load of pink anyway. and when you've got a refluxy, spitty kid, whatever is clean is gonna look damn good. but i had a whole new problem. toys! i hadn't even considered how gender biased toys were (infant toys, no less) and now, in addition to the no pink rule, i felt the need to add on the whole, please don't ONLY buy her dollies and kitchen sets. this is ironic, since i'm a stay at home mom, basically putting into practice all the things that dollies and kitchen sets teach little girls. but i also know how to apply for grant funding, and hotwire a car...so i mean, i want my kid to have choice.

my mom says i've effectively made it 'hard' to shop for my kid. i totally disagree. i think that if anything, i've made it simple, because the gender limits aren't in place. a good friend of mine, when peanut was smaller, sent her a sweatsuit with dinosaurs on it. and it is still one of peanuts fave shirts. and as a result of it, my kid, who isn't even 2, can identify several dinosaurs. now, she calls them all dinosaurs, not by the actual name like t-rex and so on, but you can show her almost any dino, and she'll say, dinosaur. she can identify butterflies too, because of a shirt. so i say fashion does play a part, and that those kids who get to wear only girly stuff are missing out. no trucks, no dinosaurs, no firefighting stuff, no sporty stuff (unless it's like, 'soccer cutie' or 'cheer princess') and why? because there are no female truckers? paleontologists? firefighters? i think not, but this is the message we send to our kids from infancy. that boys are rough and tumble do-ers, and girls are supposed to shop, and sit and look pretty, and be a princess. and nurture. and cook. i posit that girls can do all of that-but they can also do all that boy crap too! and it may seem kinda duh-ish. but think about it. you start at 0-3 months with the 'mommy's lil princess' or 'daddy's lil buddy' stuff, and you're essentially ingraining the cultural gender stereotypes that limit our girls (and our boys, but that's a whole other rant.) and if you start it, if the parent does it, then the kid is going to believe it. and it doesn't matter how many times you play 'free to be', she's still going to live up to that expectation of feminine that you've been feeding her in teh form of clothing and toys. bratz? passion for fashion. polly pocket? how many outfits can one midget possible need? barbie? at least she had a few careers to choose from, in addition to being housewife barbie.

i guess my basic rant, is that we limit our kids, when we stay within typified gender ideals. we talk so much about wanting to give our kids the world, and wanting them to have better than we had, but it seems the scope of girlhood is getting as narrow as it was in the 50s. girls are being trained to be watchers, consumers, and to stand idly by looking hawt for the boyz, while the boys are being trained to objectify, and to crash, bash, and rampage (all names of 'boy toys' on the market) and we wonder why more young women are being sexually assaulted, why more boys are ending up seriously injured, or dead from fights, why our kids in general, are as 'troubled' as they are. and i think a huge part of it, is the way gender identities are marketed. mattel doesn't care about your daughter. her self esteem, or her self worth. tyco doesn't give a shit if your kid shoots someone. it's all about the benjamins.

so what, right? i've got all this complaining, but so. what. so i say, let your girls play with trucks and blocks, starting young. let your boys play with dolls and kitchen sets, starting young. and TALK to them. if you watch a crappy princess flick, ask your daughter why the princess had to change for/wait for/catch the boy, or why the butler was the one with the sage advice, and not the mom, or the spunky best friend character. ask why in chick flicks, the girl wars are featured, why the 'bad' girls are always one dimensional, and schemeing, but we never know why they're so angry...just that the 'good' girl always wins. talk to your boys about how they don't have to be rough and tumbley macho men. talk to your kids. let them know that the marketing stereotypes, the cultural ruts that hold the gender bias in place, are things that they don't have to pay attention to. teach them to think critically about the toys, the clothes, the images in books and movies and magazines. ask them to show you when they find something that defies the norm.

there was more, but my kid is coloring on her toes.

how funny is my kid?

sooooooooooooooooooo funny.

so we've mastered the concepts of push and pull, right? so she was sitting in my lap, pushing on me, going, push, push, push. and then she pushed on my boobs and said



wait for it



squishy.

and then, she gets the idea of tickle, right? that mommy tickles her feet, and her ribs, and such. so the other day, we were all at home, and gene was changing her diaper. since we use cloth, we've got wipe solution in a spritz bottle, right? so it was a fairly gooey poopy dipe, and he spritzed her directly on the bum, instead of spraying the wipe first. so she goes, 'daddy! no tickle the bum! tickle the feet!'

i peed a lil bit.

and she's into dancing. and she's been able to say shake your booty for a while now. but you know how we rock the babylegs a lot. and they look like leg warmers. so when she dances in those, i tell her 'flashdance' and she stomps her feet a la jennifer beale in flashdance.

and

my mom gave her some old costume necklaces, and she calls them bling. and she'll ask for her bling, and i'll put a necklace on her, and ask 'how do you look?' and she makes this CUTE lil sneery face, and says 'i'm fierce!'

yesterday she yelled at me. i was figuring out our bills, and she'd been playing nicely on the floor with her blocks. and she keeps a constant stream of chatter going, all day long. but usually, if she's talking to me, she says 'mama' or 'mommy' first. so either she didn't say it, or i didn't hear her, cuz she got in my face and went 'DRAW ON PAPER! NOW!'

i love this kid, but i may die from laughter before she's three.

mo'dredy pix

new years revolution

i have been reconnectingwith myself
and the earth
and so many of the thoughtst
hat have been careening
in my being for the past
three years
i roll my hair in my fingers
thick and matty
while i re-watch michael richards
for the 23rd time
talk about lynchingin 2006.
i wonder if mel gibson called himto commiserate?
moving my fingers to the root, i circle clockwise with my left hand
surf the web with my right hand
and read about little girls in cars
in my hometown, threatened at gunpoint
by policemen, and women on planes
who are asked to cover nursing breasts
because it is offensive
(but didn't i just see brittneys coot over on TMZ two clicks back?)

i have high hopes for this new year,
for my family,
for my daughter, of course
for my hair, and my ability to nurture it into self-sustainable locks

and for the world, becauseif we taunt saddam, when he is dying
if we excuse bigotry with alcohol
if we accept gitmo, and homeland security
if we just
sit
back
and watch it all on foxhow can we hope to stop it?

so i am fomenting a new years revolutionand it won't have cammo, or boots
but i'mma rock my dreds proud
i'mma nurse my kid proud
i'mma protest the war loud
i'm gonna question why gerald ford got three days of press
and the only reason i knew james brown died
was cuz i got a text message on christmas
i'm not gonna be quiet when intolerance is otherwise accepted

this is my new years revolution
wanna join me?