Saturday, March 08, 2008

Ethan gets an "F" and I completely lose my mind...

Remember last week when I posted about Al Ponte? Yeah? Well, he's gone. This week, Ethan finally got his top teeth and lower lip coordinated into an "F", and Al Ponte is forever lost to us, gone the way of the newborn "sneeze-scream" and "guh-gah" (kitty). While it is amazing and wonderful to watch them grasp new concepts and clarify their language, there is something so bittersweet about saying goodbye to a word or a sound that was truly Ethan's.

We are, however, hopeful that Ethan will soon learn to form the "tr" sound so that "truck" sounds more like "truck" and a lot less like "cock". Let me tell you, there's little in this world as mortifying as letting him run through the toy section of Target yelling, "cock! cock! cock!" Today, Husband and I actually had to endure the repetition of "big cock! big cock!" as Ethan marveled at some, well, big TRUCKS. I am thinking we can't leave the house again until the "tr" sound makes it's appearance in Ethan's vocabulary. I am taking away all toys except "trains" until we can perfect "tr".

On the "I completely lose my mind" front, this week, I managed to do the one thing MORE mortifying than listening to my child yell obscenities in Target. When our fabulous baby whisperer came over yesterday morning to play with Ethan, I found myself doing my usual "oh my god, am I a bad mother for leaving my child so I can go blog and drink tea in front of a fire at Panera??!!" internal monologue. Turns out, the energy it takes for me to have this internal argument with myself leaves me with precious little awareness of what I'm blathering on about outside of my own mind.

I was simply going over with Kayla when I thought he might want a snack, based on the fact that he barely touched his breakfast (remember, "toast, toast, toast" from yesterday?), and telling her that I'd just re-introduced him to sunflower seed butter. The next thing I know, I am ...wait for it...explaining to her how to (oh god, the humiliation of it all)... how to make a sandwich!!!!

Yes, I ACTUALLY recommended that she just "put a thin layer of the sunflower butter and a thin layer of the jelly on two pieces of bread and put them together..." oh my god, did I just tell a grown woman how to make a sandwich??!!! Did I??!!! Could anything be more insulting, EVER?!! oh, my god, I'm an ass!

What the hell is WRONG with me??!! This is a woman I trust to care for my child every Friday, sometimes TWICE. Clearly I know she's capable of making sandwich. I just couldn't make my mouth stop forming words. It made my head hurt, I swear.

As a side note, I am SO not "that" mom. I don't think I micro-manage others who are with Ethan. I know that when we first started leaving him with the baby whisperers, I was confused about how much information to leave. I tried to fall somewhere between writing down a minute-by-minute itinerary of his evening for them, and just tossing Ethan to them as they came in one door and we went out the other. I *think* I've done a pretty good job of not obsessing because I am so comfortable with them and I know that Ethan loves them and is perfectly happy with them.

But apparently my brain just skipped over all that and for some reason decided to offer a mini-course in introductory sandwich making. The horror.

Next week, I plan to just say, "Hi Kayla. You know what to do. I'm going to go now before I say anything that gets me re-nominated for 'ass of the week'", and then I can have my little neurotic internal monologue in the car, where no one can be insulted by my faulty verbal filter.

7 comments:

Tress said...

So...what's this "toast" stuff you mentioned? Maybe you could explain to me how to make that?

Also, baby whisperers? What in the world? Do they come in the grade school variety also, and do they cook? Oh wait, sandwich lessons, right..

Becca said...

Oh gosh! How embarassing. I think once you are in kid mode it's hard to get out. Once I made my husband a sandwich and before I could stop myself I artfully arranged a sliced up banana around the edge of the plate.

KMW said...

DO NOT FEEL BAD for Leaving him on Fridays. It's good for you to get some alone time and good for him to get time with other adults! Good mommy!

Sarah said...

I cut the crusts off Ben's sandwich last week at lunch.

Becci said...

That is classically funny...

Crystal said...

I could not stop giggling after reading this post! You're a great writer, a hilarious person, and absolutely NOT an ass!

Molly said...

OMG, the "big cock" thing kills me! Max does the exact same thing with both "shrimp" and "shirt"--they both come out sounding like "sh*t." When my in-laws visit and want to go out for seafood, I take particular joy in urging him to name everything on his plate.