Baby Mutant: Tornado

The last thirty minutes have been spent with me holding baby girl tightly to my chest and trying to prevent heart attack aftershocks. I'm sure this is one of those moments I probably shouldn't blog about because child protective services will be banging on my door seconds after it is published.

Children are miraculous in their ability to learn, experiment, and live without defeat or fear. Miraculous: always, but not necessarily the good kind of miracle.

Hannah has been rolling from her tummy to her back for a couple weeks now. She is much more optimistic about tummy time than Noah was. Sometimes, we can't keep her on her back. I have only seen her roll from her belly to her back once. It seemed an exhaustive effort, and she was disinclined to ever try it again. Therefore, from past experience, I assumed my daughter to be capable of moving at her best about three feet in either direction.

I want her to be able to move about and explore her world, so I will lay her down on a big blanket in the middle of the floor. Tonight the blanket was positioned like so:

Any of you who have had young children can probably already see where we are going with this. In my defense, the perspective on this photograph doesn't show that the blanket is five feet long, the distance past that to the left corner of the stairs is over six feet, and I was sitting next to Hannah playing at the edge of the blanket furthest from the stairs.

From the kitchen, Noah started begging for some milk. There was a cup ready in the fridge for him, so I got up to grab it, and hand it to him. It took me all of one minute.

I heard Hannah make a noise from the living room, so I patted Noah on the head and looked over. There was my baby girl at the far left corner of the stairs (because that's the highest point, silly mommy)  one leg dangling over the edge, most of her body laying under the railing, trying to roll over and away one more time. I freaked. I don't think that the English language has the letters to form the sound that I shrieked as I dashed into the living room, slid baby girl out from under the railing, and crushed her to my chest. Noah, baby girl's fellow daredevil, looked at me with big eyes that said, "What is your problem? That looks like fun!"

Still, I am trying to conceive of how she could cover more than eleven feet in less than sixty seconds. I think I have an X-Men child, who's mutant name is Tornado. She has some kind of super stable inner ear canal and super-physics rotational musculature. I've started designing her hero outfit in my head. "The Pink Tornado." It's adorable.

She's fine.   See:

I had a coronary, but she's fine.

After strapping her tightly into her bouncer (just in case the Pink Tornado decided to strike again), I retrieved the walker from the basement and the pack n play from Noah's room. She has lost her free range Hannah privileges. Blanket time only occurs now when mommy or daddy is within arm's reach.

Beauty and the Beast - meow

It's Friday night, and I am standing in my nothings staring into a dresser full of blessings (you can call them clothes if you're feeling dull). Big date with the husband? Night out with the girls? Yes and no. I'm sure Justin considers the first softball game of the season a date, and if by "the girls" you mean my hardcore fellow softball chica sluggers, then yes to both. April games are always tricky. You don't want to wear long pants and give everyone the impression that your legs haven't seen the sun or a razor since sometime in September (they have, right?). However, you also don't want to traipse out onto the field in your lil' shawty shawt shorts, and be standing on two perfectly Else icicles five minutes into the game.

Yeah, because I'm totally that girl who empties her wardrobe onto the bed looking for the perfect softball outfit to play in what weather.com claims will be a torrential downpour. And really, bright yellow jerseys built for a size small, who is six feet four inches tall: not helping.

So now I am at the softball game and the little droplets have starting splashing down. I am in knee length white shorts, a long sleeve gray t-shirt, a hoodie, and my jersey. I am wearing socks that only barely sneak over my heel and shiny black cleats. This will all come into play as I come into play.

Five minutes into the start of the game the following things will happen:
1. Friendly little droplets will turn into Hurricane Irene.
2. My gray shirt will ride up to the middle of my ribcage.
3. My batting gloves will be soaked, so there is NO WAY I am reaching up to fix said offending gray garment.
4. A player will slide into me at first spraying my white shorts with nice sandy red mud.
5. Nice sandy red mud will lodge itself between the flesh of my achilles tendon and the heel of my cleats, rubbing my ankles raw and, as an added bonus, bloody.

Do you have the visual picture? Just imagine a kitten in an over sized bright yellow smock, drowned wet, frozen cold, and starting to hiss at inanimate objects.

Now, it is Saturday morning. Formerly drenched kitten has her long hair curled/waved and pulled up Princess Buttercup style. She is in a bright pink dress (say what?!), four inch white heels with bows on the top (get out!), and she is wearing... wait for it... make up (shut the front door!!!).

In January our women's ministry team decided to hold a generations women's conference on April 26th. I must have, in a moment of temporary dissociative disorder volunteered to speak at this conference. Or they may have kidnapped me and forced me to speak at gunpoint. Someone should pat down our team for weaponry before I claim any responsibility for my actions. Either way, today I stood there in pink and heels with big hair and war paint, speaking.

It was all very surreal. In my mind I am the drowned kitten. People will say things like, "Oh you look lovely," and I have to try very hard to not stare at them like a dog listening to a high-pitched whistle. In my mind I am still the tomboy sliding through mud, and making fun of girls who do insane things like wear four inch heels they will have to stand in for forty-five minutes in front of fifty women. I suppose there are hints of our every reality marking us as we drift from form to form. Under the strappy stilettos are the scrap marks of red mud. The graceful, slender hand holding a microphone as I share a distinctly feminine story is starting to turn blue with the bruise of a misplayed out at second. And the sweeping locks falling in waves about my shoulders are only really that curly because I left them out in the driving rain far too long.

A mentor of mine once told me, "First God made you a woman, then He made you an athlete." Actually, first I think He made me His, and everything else (make up or mud) is just window dressing.

Oh... and we worshipped. Lots. Which is nice.

My Minion

Disclaimer: I don't own Disney, Despicable Me or any actual minions. If I did, my family would live on the Pirates of the Caribbean ride, shouting scalawagian threats at one another over tourists' heads, and stealing their mouse shaped creamsicles.

Noah has become that guy who poses questions to himself and then answers them. However, English is not his strong suit yet, so it sounds like my son is one of those Disney minions from Despicable Me having a conversation with himself. What is even funnier is how much he looks like a minion, sort of like a round, pale pill with big eyes. And adorable. Cute up-to-here adorable. The conversations go something like this:

Curious Noah: "Da brag?"
Noah Know-It-All: "Da basho yang ana."
Curious Noah: "Oh..."

Curious Noah: "Da Ding?"
Noah Know-It-All: "Dish duc wanna brag da nana."
Curious Noah: "BA!?"
Noah Know-It-All: "NANANANANANA..." giggles "Head!" (smacks himself on the noggin')

This posing and answers of questions with himself will go on for a good ten minutes before he has sorted out all the mysteries of the universe (including why the duck wants a banana on his head [why to brag about, of course]).

Justin thinks that Noah has a minion language all his own that makes perfect, eloquent sense in his head and to other minions. Since they do not make Munchkin Minion Rosetta Stone, I have to struggle through deciphering his sentences all on my own. The worst part is he will spew out a good fifteen word sentence with a subject and predicate, prepositional phrases, demonstrative adjectives; the works. Then he will stare at me with those big beautiful minion eyes in anticipation of a response. The longer I delay in confirming or denying his theory of reality, the more that cherub face falls. To reduce the number of these heart crushing misunderstandings, I have translated several key words below:

Du - 'Duck'
Ish - 'Fish'
Nana - 'Banana', or my mother, this word is contextually dependent.
Long, loud, glass-shattering shriek - 'Well, that didn't go as I had planned, perhaps this world is not the malleable, gently solace I had imagined... And why would anyone put the silverware drawer way up there, where I can't have at the spoons. Crazy people.'