Our gift to each other was a fancy schmancy little digital video recorder – which makes it just oh-so-easy to snag and upload these little glimpses of the little man – so there will be many, many more movies coming your way. Lucky you.

Sammy: Maybe… tomorrow?
Me: Maybe tomorrow what?
Sammy: Maybe tomorrow… I play violin?
Had a wonderful holiday. Lots of being amazed at the little baby in my sister’s belly (both me and Sammy), lots of food, fun gifts, beautiful gifts, relaxing, and a lot of simply enjoying. My stupid brain got the best of me at moments, but for the most part, it was a wonderful few days. I spent today playing with Sammy and all his new puzzles and games and toys, watching him change by the hour. I’m serious – his language is exploding, the way he interacts is fascinating, and he’s just so much fun. I know I’ve said that at every age, but really, this age is the best. I mean, Maybe tomorrow I play violin? How random is that?

So Sammy was on the porch playing while I sat on the couch in the other room, folding some laundry.
And it got very, very quiet.
I peeked in and saw what looked like Sammy with his nose pressed against the window. How cute! I thought. He’s looking at the snow!
And then I got closer and saw that he was licking the window.
Now, I get that the window is very, very cold and it’s probably a new sensation for him. BUT, the windows are insanely old and the frames likely have lead paint under a layer or two.
I called out his name, and he jumped and turned around.
“Mama!” he exclaimed with a touch of anger and irritation. “Go COUCH!”
Excuuuuuuuuuuuse me? I catch him doing something he shouldn’t be doing, and HE’S telling ME what to do? And in THAT tone? WTF?
He grabbed my hand and pushed me back towards the living room. I went back in and pretended like was sitting down, and sure enough, the moment he thought I was out of sight, he started with the nose against the window, very clearly going to do the very thing I JUST told him not to.
Shit. I’ve seen fairly large chunks of the terrible twos pushing through his personality over the past few days, moments of Sammy exerting his free will – but this? This telling mama what to do, this telling me to get out of the way so he can go back to what he shouldn’t be doing, this tone? This is new. And this? Means we’re screwed.
Interesting times are clearly ahead, my friends, and this mama is so not prepared. Oy.

Ugh. I am ridiculously, insanely, woefully behind on cards this year.
Really, I should have gotten to them last night, but the house needed to be cleaned, gifts wrapped, laundry folded – no excuse, but you know how it goes.
So here’s my question: knowing that they won’t get there before Christmas, do I send them anyway?
Hrm.

This morning, during our playdate, way too early for his nap, Sammy got up and declared, “Bye bye Nora. Naptime. Mama, baba. Go nap. Bye bye Nora.”
Sure enough, a bottle and fifteen minutes later, he was out cold. Not the most polite way of ending a playdate (especially one with a little girl he asks for constantly), but this whole being able to tell me what he wants? Rocks.
Then, later, in the car:
Sammy: Too dark. Turn on light.
Mama: What do you say?
Sammy: Please?
Mama: Good. (turns on the light) Now what do you say?
Sammy:….
Mama: You say thank you. And what does mama say after you say, “Thank you”?
Sammy: (nice and loudly, with appropriate cheer) YAY!
I was going for “You’re welcome” but in all fairness, I do tend to cheer when he gets his manners down right. I’m particularly fond of his “thank you welcome” lately – throw in a “please” and he’s got all his bases covered!
A little while later:
Mama: What do you want to have for dinner?
Sammy: French fries!
And then he burst into gut-busting giggles. Not sure what was so funny, but I’m glad he had a good time of it. Heh. It was almost enough to forgive him for informing me, over and over (like 40 times over), while I drove us down rather treacherous snow-covered roads: “I go to the mall, I ride the train. Go to the mall? I want ride train! I go to the mall. Mall, mall, mall, mall. Train! Mama? I go to the mall. Mama! Train!”
Two days ago, I bitched to Jay about some car commercial where the parents are all blissfully gleeful that they didn’t hear a peep out of their kids for six hours because they were glued to the DVD players installed in the backseat. “What kind of parenting is THAT?” I judged.
Mall, mall, mall, mama, mall, I go to the mall! Man, I so would have popped Blues Clues in five minutes into the trip. Heh.

Yesterday, I came home from work and opened the porch door. Sammy came running, threw his arms around my legs and said, “I love yooou!”
Now, this is the first time he’s said I love you, and even better, it was completely spontaneous and perfect. It made me want to go back outside and open that door a hundred times over and over and over.

So I’ve been a bit of a blog slacker. Hell, I’ve been a bit of a phone slacker, bathroom-cleaning slacker, dishwasher-emptying slacker -
But the Christmas shopping is like 3 gifts away from being done! And the gifts to family far away have finally been shipped! There is a light at the end of the guest room, and I’m guessing it’s because all the boxes are gone, gone, gone!
Amen for USPS pick-up at home! I was dreading lugging three large boxes AND Sammy to the post office. How would I have even done that? Oy.
Speaking of Sammy, holy whirling tornado, Taz! I know that skipping naps and insane wildman energy tend to come with his developmental spurts, but I haven’t been allowed to think long enough to put a sentence together for days now. Oy. Sammy, on the other hand, has been putting together sentence after sentence after sentence, stunning us with the most random of statements, pulling out things he could only have absorbed months and months ago. What concerns me is this – if he’s calling his recorder a clarinet, and he hasn’t watched Little Einsteins in ages, what does he remember of me cursing out the driver last month (and last week, and yesterday, and…)? Will he suddenly kick his feet against the back of my car seat and scream out, “You f*ckin’ idiot, I had the right of way, you self-centered bastard! I HAVE A KID IN THE CAR AND YOU HAD A F*CKING STOP SIGN, IT’S CALLED COMETOACOMPLETESTOP, YOU PIECE OF SH*T!”?
Ahem. I never swear like that, I’m just sayin’.
Anyway, a to-do checklist beckons – does it ever end? Hope you’re surviving the last of the holiday rush – I’m looking forward to seeing Sammy’s face when he sees the presents under the tree. He’s a bit obsessed with presents and “new toy?” these days. What happened to our steadfast and stubborn “no-tv-no-commercialized-crap-nothing-but-wooden-toys-we-made-ourselves, the-holidays-are-about-family!” rule? Seriously, I’m the biggest offender of that rule. What Sammy? You want a new toy? Sure! Mama will buy you a new train! Trumpet? You want a trumpet! We’ll order you a trumpet AND a saxophone AND a clarinet for Christmas and tell you that Santa brought it!
WTF?
Sigh.

Nothing like swinging by your doctor’s office to pick up some paperwork – and seeing Abnormal mammogram next to your name – especially when you were told at the mammo that everything was so a-ok, they weren’t even going to do the ultrasound.
And nothing like having to wait several hours after that before seeing the breast surgeon, and spending those several hours fuming that the mammo people lied or didn’t tell the whole truth or who knows what the hell happened – all I knew was that they gave me the thumbs up and now, in front of me, was something that said things were not cool.
Not cool. Abnormal mammogram? Not cool. Soooooooooo not cool.
So the breast surgeon (who rocked!) did an ultrasound, during which she found what was likely a ruptured cyst (probably what I had felt, which explains the pain I had, too) and another much, much, much smaller cyst. She said that if she spent enough time, she’d probably find more and that they’re common enough. It’s if and when they get bigger that they get worried enough to biopsy it and make sure it’s just a cyst.
So – mammo in six months and then, if that’s good, they’ll do them every year after. Good times.

So yesterday was the mammogram fun.
I was kind of dreading it. The worst part was worrying about what they might find – which was absolutely, positively nothing, thank god. They think I just have cystic breasts (how’s that for TMI?) and anything we’ve felt was simply hormonal. I’ve got a follow-up mammo in six months, just to be safe, and then yearly from then on.
In the end, the worst part of the whole thing was the waiting room – filled to the brim with issues of magazines like Redbook and Health with articles like, “So you’ve got breast cancer, now what?” and “How breast cancer turned my world upside down” and “How health insurance is failing women with breast cancer”.
Because sitting there, waiting with a brain filled with “what ifs”, isn’t torture enough? WTF?
For those of you who haven’t had a mammo yet, it’s not really painful at all. I read somewhere to take some Motrin before to help with the discomfort, but at one point I actually said to her, “That’s the worst you’ve got? Pshaw. Bring it on, woman.” She laughed – and then stepped on the little squeezer and really smooshed things and then I kind of regretted saying that.
But in the end? Not nearly as bad as I was expecting, glad it’s over, relieved that they didn’t find anything. One more thing to cross off the mental list of things to worry about.

Jay: I can’t get my cock to hang straight.
Me: Hrm.
Jay: Really. It leans to the left a little.
Me: Do you want me to do it?
Jay: Always.
Me: Hrm.
Jay: I’ve tried it in all the positions…
Sadly, we enjoy the double-entendres this painting provides more than any 30-somethings should. We are so going to have too much fun embarrassing Sammy in front of his friends.