Poor Baby Brother.

Brother races motocross.

Race, Brother, race.

Brother falls off his motorcycle.

Fall, Brother, fall.




Physics, 1. Brother, 0.

And that was my weekend.

...and stay off my lawn!

When did I become the crazy hermit lady yelling at hooligans? Seriously -- when in the hell did this happen?

A and I live in the heart of the "city," meaning, we don't have much of a yard. Well, we do, it's just deep rather than wide. I can reach out our bedroom window and practically touch the neighbor's house. The side of the house where our bedroom and The Punky's room are borders the next-door neighbor's driveway. Which is quite funny, sometimes, such as last summer when we'd leave the windows open and I'm sure the neighbors heard a few bouts of afternoon delight.

The neighbors have a son who's actually my age, 22. A and I call him Kidney Boy because he has a bumper sticker on his car about being a kidney transplant recipient. He's weird. Not because he's Kidney Boy, but just because he is. I've caught him peeking around their garage when I'm mowing the lawn, which is just creepy and weird. To add to the weirdness, he likes to drive his car with his music cranked as loud as his little factory speakers will allow -- usually death metal. This was just mildly annoying when it was just me and A here. However, now he pulls into the driveway with the death metal blaring feet away from slumbering Punky. Which have I mentioned it takes me FOREVER to get her to sleep in her crib?

I just want to step out onto the porch and shake my fist angrily at him and yell at him to turn that racket down. When did I become that person?

Oh yeah. When I became so totally sleep-deprived that I savor -- SAVOR!!! -- any opportunity I have for a nap. I'm not just tired. I'm not just kinda cranky. I am at the point where FOR THE LOVE OF SWEET FREAKING TAP-DANCING CHRIST LET ME HAVE MY DAMN NAP...haha, hahahaha, heeeeeeeeee!

Damn kids. And next time his Frisbee comes into our yard, I'm keeping that, too.

Five hundred twenty-five thousands, six hundred minutes...

It's amazing how much life can change in a year. It makes me dizzy sometimes thinking about it. Today I got one of my friends' college graduation invitations in the mail and it sent me into my own little walk down memory lane.

A year ago I was graduating college. A and I had decided to up the relationship to the next level and move in together, so bit by bit I was moving my own stuff into his house and getting ready to wrap up the lease on my apartment (which I was never in... since I was always over here anyway). I was completely stressed with senior thesis presentations, final papers, studying for exams, and finding the ambition to actually go to class in the senioritis haze.

My weekends were spent dancing on tables/bar counters and getting drunk out of my mind. I remember my graduation celebration girls' night out... okay, I really don't remember it. At all. I do remember being hungover for two days following it. My three best friends and I would pre-game at AH's apartment and walk to the bars, getting even more falling down drunk, dance in the cages, hit on guys for free drinks only to diss them five minutes later, and stagger back to AH's apartment, where I'd pass out on the living room floor, or occasionally in bed with her.

A and I would go to the bars to watch bands. We'd stay out ridiculously late, somehow make it home, and.... anyway. We were boyfriend and girlfriend and we were the couple that everyone envied, but at the same time baffled everyone because we were the two people that nobody ever thought would settle down, much less with each other. But we had, and have, a chemistry that works for us. Probably wouldn't work well for many people but it works for us.

And then the bomb dropped. Exactly nine days after my graduation, on my 22nd birthday, the jelly bean that would eventually become The Punky started partying in my uterus. Six months later A and I got married in a Vegas semi-elopement (everyone knew we were getting married and just let us go do our thing). Three and a half months after that The Punky was born.

In less than a year, I went from party-obsessed college senior and live-in girlfriend to wife and mom. It was a harsh adjustment... it still is. I remember preparing to walk out at graduation and looking at Irwin, my favorite professor ,who was in charge of herding the Arts & Sciences graduates, and half-jokingly saying, "I'm not ready to grow up. Can I just stay out here in the hall?"

Okay, so I grew up. It's not as bad as I thought. Some days I really miss the things I did a year ago, but I don't miss the person I was. I feel like I had a mental and emotional growth spurt. I just hope the stretch marks don't show.

The new shaken mama

So last night I got to cross one more thing off my list of things to do in this lifetime:

I survived an earthquake.

I say "survive" like it was a harrowing tale of drama and tragedy. All reality, it wasn't. It was just enough of a shake to wake me up, but nothing fell off shelves, walls were not ripped from their junctions and fires and chaos did not erupt. But it's definitely something of note when you live in...ahem...the midwest.

(Don't know what I'm talking about? Read yo' news, fool.)

It was another awesome night of No. Sleep. Til Brooklyn! with the Punky, so she and I were sleeping on the couch. I had just gotten her to sleep and had barely fallen asleep myself when I woke up to the house shaking. These are the following explanations I then rendered up in my sleep-deprived mind, in the order in which they occurred to me:

1.) Wind.
2.) A big train. (Our house is about 200 yards from tracks.)
3.) The ghosts that inhabit our house are fucking with me. I've seen Poltergeist, I know it's possible.
4.) Somehow A is fucking with me.
5.) Armageddon... maybe I shouldn't have been so adamant against the existence of a god?
6.) I am so sleep-deprived that I am imagining this. I have finally, officially lost my mind.

Notice, "earthquake" does not appear on the list -- but the possibility of ghosts does. That is how rare earthquakes are in these parts. I will suggest unproven supernatural phenomenon before I suggest natural occurrences.

A. came out of the bedroom and went to the bathroom, then peeked into the living room to see if I was awake. By then I had decided that whatever forces exist and abound, they just don't want me to sleep. First, I have a screaming infant til 4 a.m., and now the house is shaking for reasons yet unknown? Are you fucking kidding me?

"Is it just me or did the house just shake?" I asked him.
"Okay, you felt it too. I was just thinking I imagined it."

With that, we went to bed, content with our various explanations (none of which involved "earthquake") until the next morning when A read the news online before he left for work. He peeked into the bedroom to til me the news.

"Argarblegrabackgrahahhhhh," was my response. Because, you know, I never sleep. But somewhere in the depths of my sleep-starved mind, I found the news intriguing.

Best left unanswered.

Lately we've been introduced to the glory that is projectile baby vomit. It's not very often that The Punky decides to send all the contents of her stomach flying at an impressive speed and angle, but it does happen. And whenever it happens, I'm not sure if I should be concerned, angry, or just plain impressed. I mean, hey, if she can clear my shoulder and hit the wall on the other side of the room, whatever. It's one less puked-on t-shirt I need to toss in the laundry.

The other night she was feeling especially saucy (and again, "saucy" is code word for "incredibly pissed off at the world and everything and everyone in it, for four solid hours"), the only remedy for which is to walk around the house. I was bouncing/walking/burp patting, hoping to get a burp out of her and, for lack of a more delicate term, get her to shut the hell up. Suddenly I hear a "splat" behind me hit the hardwood floor. I knew what it was before I even turned around, but I turned around nonetheless -- with the same amount of dread as Janet Leigh in the shower in the Bates Hotel -- and there was the milk/bile/phlegm puddle on the floor.

Fucking great.

I'm drenched down my back in puke, The Punky has managed to get it on herself, and simultaneously she had, and I'm totally serious here, managed to take a giant dookie. *sighs* Off to the changing table we went. A, who had seen the whole gory mess, was left to deal with the puddle of awesomeness.

Or so I thought. I realized, in mid-diaper/onesie change that he was in the nursery with me, hoping to provide any assistance he could to his puke-covered wife and daughter. I finished up the changing and cleaning and wiped most of the puke out of my hair and came out to deal with the puddle.

The puddle was gone.

The floor was almost completely dry. It wasn't even sticky. It was like the puddle had never happened. I know what I saw. I know it was there. And I know Bodhi was sitting next to where I swear I saw the puddle, licking his chops like he'd just had filet mignon.

Sometimes it's really for the best that you just don't ask certain questions.

A is for Abnormally Huge

My boobs. They're magic, ya'll.

And not in the way that creepy guys in the dance clubs would tell me. No, they've taken on a whole new magical wonder to them. They cause my child to grow at freakish rates.

The Punky had her two month checkup today and is growing by leaps and bounds, according to the benevolent nurse practitioner (BNP, for future reference). Our newest stats stand at:

24.5 inches long, 98th percentile (up from 22 inches last month)
13 lbs., 13 oz., 95th percentile (up from 10 lbz., 1 oz. last month)
Head is 15 inches circumference, up 13.5" from last month.

Holy hell. Two inches and damn near four pounds in a month?
She's growing like a damn weed. I mean, I'm pretty decent sized (5'10 and 140 lbs.), so it was assumed she'd probably have my build since she was skinny and tall when she was born (7 lbs., 7 oz. and 21 inches). But seriously... baby growth spurts are amazing to me. Based on her percentiles, she'd get an A for growing. Go baby go. My kid is by far superior to most.

97% of children her age, to be exact.

Not funny.

Why, oh why, am I surrounded by people who do things they think are funny but AREN'T? First I had my husband tricking me into juggling a pair of period-stained panties that, mind you, did not belong to me. Now my mother has joined the ranks (or reaffirmed her position on the public enemy list) by handing out my cell phone number all willy-nilly.

Yesterday I had a phone call from a number I didn't recognize. Based on the area code, I knew it was coming from my hometown (it's not the same area code as the anal passage of the world state where I presently live). But I'm anti-social, and I was just about to go clean up another diaper blowout, so I let it go to voicemail. I come back, check the voicemail, and it's a guy that I will call Jimmy.

"Hi [Prego], this is Jimmy Whatshisname, from [hometown.] I ran into your mom today at the mall, and we got to talking, I asked what you were up to these days and she told me how you're married now and have a little girl, congratulations. Then she gave me your cell phone number and said I should give you a call. I'd love to hear from you, so give me a ring, my number is [whatever], and I'll talk to you soon!"

Okay. Nice enough. But let me tell you about Jimmy. He was THE biggest dork in school. Which there is nothing wrong with being a dork. I was a dork. But he was one of those loser dorks that has absolutely no clue of his status, and exists with the same cockiness of the most popular guy in school -- and he thinks the popular crowd is his friends. He wound up dating -- and knocking up -- girls much younger than us, because they were too far behind in school to know that he was completely rejected by people his own age.

I was with the same boyfriend through all of high school, and we were notorious for the on-again, off-again. We were "off" for about one week. During this week, Jimmy asked me out. I politely declined. He then -- and I'm completely serious here, and so was he when he asked -- asked me if we could just "hook up." Jimmy was repulsive on top of being a dork. And he was serious. Want to talk about creeping me out? I was creeped out. And he asked me out almost every day leading up to prom, despite the fact that I had a boyfriend I'd been with for years, and it was assumed we'd be going together.

He was an oblivious dork with a superiority complex who just would NOT GET THE POINT.

And now, five years later, he has my cell phone number thanks to my mom.

This is like the adult version of your mom making you take the geek to the school dance. I know I've discussed with my mother about Jimmy (small town, everyone knew everyone, so I know she can't claim ignorance here). And she agreed that he was creepy and a skeez. And I know Jimmy. I know he will keep calling, whether I talk to him or not. I could ignore the call altogether but he will just keep calling. This is why I don't hand out my cell phone number all willy-nilly. I will sit here and tell you about my taint stitches, my bowel movements, my sex life, my menstruation, whatever you want to know... but my cell phone number is sacred.

This is payback for something I did, I'm sure.