Matt: (fill in whining and complaining about something irrelevant)
Me: You know, you may think the squeaky wheel gets the oil, but really, it just gets kicked in the head by me.
Matt: You should put that on a motivational poster.
(Maybe you just had to be there 
)
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I have a friend who lives several hundred miles away, so although we chat online I don’t get to see her and her son (who is the same age as CJ) interact too often. My family had the opportunity to visit her family a few months ago, and her son calls her “Mom”, not “Mommy”. I didn’t notice at first, until CJ started calling her “Mom” too, because he thought that was her name. I found that pretty amusing, CJ calling her mom, and so did my friend. But my friend also seemed a little sad about the fact that her son always called her mom now and never mommy.
Well, now CJ has started to call me mom on occasion. It is bittersweet to me - he doesn’t do it all the time, there is still plenty of “Mommy” thrown in there, but it is often enough for me to notice. My little boy is growing up. And although I like that he is growing up and maturing and becoming his own little person, I can’t help but wonder what happened to the little baby I spent so many hours rocking and holding, the toddler who ran as far as he could run, but always made sure he had me in his sights. As CJ sets off on the bus each morning, he often doesn’t even look out the window to wave goodbye to me anymore.
Mom.
Sniff.
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CJ has always been picky about food. From the day he was born he’s had an opinion about what food he wanted, and he hasn’t changed yet. Alexa on the other hand, has always been much more easy-going about food and where it comes from. Solids were no exception at first, but then she decided she would only eat what she could feed herself, and she would not accept anything fed directly to her. At 7 months old, with zero teeth and very rudimentary spoon skills, this limited the amount and variation of things she ate. We kept trying, but it seemed a losing battle. Eventually, even when she could handle picking up and getting to her mouth small bits of soft things, she wasn’t all that thrilled with them unless they were of the cheerio or pizza variety. Even her birthday cake was mostly poked and prodded and not really attempted as far as eating.
And then she was sick. Very sick, and she barely nursed at all for a few days. When she began to feel better, it seemed a change had come over her in regards to eating solid foods. She still insisted that she feed them to herself, but put something on her tray, and she’d shovel it into her mouth as fast as she could. Noodles, rice, veggies, meat, cut it up small enough and she’ll try it.
In fact, she gobbles it up and begs for more.
It’s nice to be back to only one picky eater. Well, unless you count their dad…
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CJ has not really been a child who asks for specific things he might have seen on TV, or requests certain toys for Christmas or his birthday. I am not saying he is shielded from consumerism, he watches several DVDs and On-Demand episodes of Disney and Nick Jr shows, but he hasn’t yet asked for specific things related to any of the shows he watches.
Until now.
For Christmas he received a Mickey Mouse Clubhouse toy cell phone from my brother. It is cute, it teaches you to add, I have no objection to it. What I’m not thrilled about is the brochure that came in the box. I don’t blame the brochure, but I am none too pleased about CJ’s reaction to it. I let him have the brochure, as I have in the past with the train brochures that come with his train set, thinking he would look at it for a few days and discard it. But… no. Not this time.
“Mommy, I want… I want… I want…”
He’s made the leap to understanding the items pictured are real items that exist somewhere and that he could potentially have. And I don’t like it one bit. He even counts them: “Mommy, I want one Mickey Mouse Clubhouse, two Mickey Mouse Clubhouse…” pointing at each toy as he counts.
Next Christmas will be much less peaceful than this one was. I’m still working on getting CJ to understand that Christmas is over and won’t be happening again for a long time…
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I function much better with a plan. Today, I have no plan.
My car is still not fixed. In fact, I still have no idea what is even wrong with it. The shop didn’t have time to get to it yesterday more than just a cursory “Yep, doesn’t run.” Because we are also having recall work on it, they offered us a free rental car for the night, but that would have been more trouble than it is worth. However, if they don’t get to it at all today, we’ll be taking them up on that offer for the weekend.
I have no idea what it will cost, which is a subject for my finance blog, but at the same time, just not knowing anything is driving me batty. I’m a planner without a plan. I miss my car. I think of all the things I need to get done and all the places I could be going - now, would I go anywhere in sub-zero weather with two little kids even if I had my car? Probably not. But still, I feel like I want to just because I can’t.
I hate not having a plan. And I’m not too impressed by my own dependence on having a vehicle at my disposal.
But mostly, I just miss my car.
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