2004-02-17
The other day I took Clay to the grocery store. Out front is a little ride--a mechanical dragon (the store mascot). I usually let him sit on it, and have been enjoying the fact that he doesn't yet know that you can put a quarter in to activate it; just the sitting on it has been entertainment enough. But I've been feeling like kind of a mean/ascetic mother lately, what with depriving the boy of sugar and TV. (What kind of an American am I?) So, I decided to introduce a new potential whining opportunity and let the cat out of the bag.
I gave him a quarter and warned him that the thing would start to move (the one time we took him on a carousel he cried). He put the coin in the slot and it did move, and he dug it. It also played music (which he consistently refers to as "kiki"). Predictably, when it ended, he wanted "another money." I had no other quarters, however, and he accepted that fairly gracefully, especially when I reminded him that there would probably be a free balloon inside for him. (This grocery chain has cornered the market on appealing to families--they also give out free--crappy, trans-fatty acid-laden--cookies in the bakery and designate a special section of the parking lot for shoppers with young children, neither of which we usually take advantage of.)
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It is just so cool that he's growing up and can DO things now. When I make banana-yogurt popsicles, he drops the frozen banana chunks into the blender, helps spoon the slush into the molds, and inserts the sticks into the slots. I say "Clay, you are such a good helper!" and he says, "Mommy good helper, too!"
Over the weekend I remembered a family I babysat for when I was a teenager. For snacks they offered their children homemade popsicles made from yogurt and orange juice, a combination I found too repulsive even to taste. I recall the little girl referring to their pet cat's vagina, which mortified me. I found them to be a peculiar and unappealing family, but now I'm thinking that I should try the orange popsicles as an alternative to the banana ones. And I suppose it's possible that Clay will someday learn that female cats do indeed have vaginas, and will want to discuss this fact. I can't remember specifics, but I'm pretty sure there were other, less concrete things that made this family so distasteful.
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A book I'm reading talks about irregular verbs--ones that form the past tense in a way other than adding "ed." Examples: go (went), take (took), swim (swam). It said there are only 150 to 180 of these (I'm not sure what the variation is due to--maybe words like kneel which has both knelt and kneeled as acceptable past tenses).
So last night as I lay in bed I thought it would be fun to try to come up with as many as possible. I started making a list, fearing that when B came upstairs he'd make fun of me. Instead, he helped me (though I got the lion's share). So far we have come up with 111. I did a Google search for "irregular verb list" and squinted as I clicked on the first hit and it appears to be a complete list (I didn't want to look too closely). So it's easy enough to check but I am enjoying the challenge.
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At the grocery store checkout, I found a little Reader's Digest-sized book of a hundred or so tips for dealing with clutter courtesy of Martha Stewart. It cost $3.50 and I figured if I got one good idea it would be money well spent. B mocked me a bit upon learning of this purchase; it does smack of magical thinking, I admit. I have yet to implement any of her specific ideas but I think leafing through offered some general inspiration, for this weekend I transformed our disastrous spice cabinet--an avalanche waiting to happen--with the help of a two-tiered lazy susan. I haven't seen or even thought about these little devices since I was a kid, and it makes me nostalgically happy each time I open the cupboard door.
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