Waiter, There's A Chicken In My Soup

In just two days my baby girl has learned how to drink from a sippy cup and to feed herself pieces of Cheerios. (Occasionally she does forget to let go of the cereal once she has it in her mouth). She is so proud of herself! As the water from the cup rushes into her mouth the initial look of surprise is quickly replaced with a laugh and smile.

We had some snow over the weekend, so my husband took our son outside to play and build a snowman. I am ashamed to admit that I have never taken part in this wintertime tradition. As has followed every snowfall so far this year, the air warmed up and the amount of snow decreased significantly within a day or two. The poor snowfellow in the backyard has thinned dramatically due to the increase in temperature and one of his stick arms has fallen off. The neighbor bought a snowman kit so their snowman has a black hat, pipe, buttons, eyes, nose, and even a little red scarf. He looks so cool. Our snowman is bigger anyway.

My husband, being a boy, has a small collection of rubber spiders. My son happily inherited these and I keep finding them lying about the house waiting to startle any unsuspecting persons. I don’t mind the purple spider so much as it obviously fake, but that small black and yellow one looks more real, especially when I am not wearing my glasses. However, my husband can tell you that I do not startle easily; as the possessor of nerves-of-steel I have not yet screamed, shouted, or otherwise jumped when one of these six legged rubber charlatans have crossed my path. My husband used to have a small rubber chicken that he would leave in out-of-the-way places (i.e. inside drinking glasses, in the medicine cabinet, under my pillow, etc.) to see if he could make me jump. He gave up after a couple of weeks. The chicken did find its way under my husband’s pillow once and was flung mercilessly across the room out of startled revulsion. I wonder how it got there?

Now that I am on round two of antibiotics I am hoping to be back to normal any day now. I have been woozy for a week and it has become a challenge to carry the baby and also avoid walking into walls. My left ear is completely stopped up and I cannot hear a thing with it. When a mother’s auditory system is only operating at fifty percent capacity it is difficult to ascertain the subtle sounds of a toddler getting into trouble. That is not a good thing.