Papa in Mexico, Day Five

High
55° F

What is up with this crap??? I turned the heat back on again because it was too too cold for naked bodies. No time to post, need to ready myself for the mama blessing ("no time for infinity, gotta piece together a theory"), but will return this evening with tales of usual woe, I'm sure.

Getting ready is something that takes forever in my house. I'm so anal and uptight in general that I can't just walk out the door. I have to shower and get dressed and make sure the kids' teeth are brushed and the dishes are done. Call me crazy, that's fine. I am probably pretty ridiculous. It is what it is though. It takes me forever to get ready to go, however. The kids weren't even going anywhere - they were just getting babysat. My friend Jenny was supposed to come watch the kids for just a little bit before the babysitter Heidi could get here due to some rather complicated borrowing of cars and driving across town stuff. As is completely typical, we were all running late and this didn't happen. Jenny and I just left for the mother blessing together when Heidi got here and were on time rather than early as I planned to be.

I was trying to get the kids ready for the babysitter, at least. Ready enough that they were not naked and somewhat fed. That's kinda hard though when Bastian finds that damn Blendy-Pen again and starts attacking Aleks with it.


So my tattooed boys were going crazy and I kept telling Aleks, "put on your clothes!" I tried to entice him with the fact that people were coming, but he didn't care. I eventually managed both their clothes and all their teeth brushed and myself dressed and make-uped and ready, but as I said, I got to the dang party on-time, which was fine as Barbara was still doing dishes and one guest was helping arrange flowers. I brought snacks and programs and beads and cord for the wrist-wrapping ceremony and the lovely cake that Jo made, which has become sort of a tradition. I let the cherries drain pretty well this time though.
We did some Henna on the mama's belly too. I am not too great at this, but it turned out well.
Apparently while I was gone, the boys went to the big park, which is where Aleks always wants to go. I don't like going there because it's hard to see both boys at once because of the bigness. They had a good time though. Aleks also ran out the door a few times, which is disconcerting. I still haven't figured out what to do about it, though our rule about all staying together while Papa is gone seems to be working for now.

I gave the leftover cake from the party to Brad next door when I got home. Unfortunately, Aleks saw it when he ran out the door again and decided that he very much wanted some. Brad went back to his own house and I promised Aleks that after everyone left, we'd go get some. He didn't let up about the cake at all. He was ready for cake now. Everyone left and my dad called and Bastian didn't have any pants on, so I put some french fries and chick patties in the oven while I chatted with my Dad about how sad I was that nobody had come to see me at all and I was all alone and everybody had canceled on me. He might come up on Wednesday, after my mother leaves. The whole mama blessing thing was actually quite the reprieve, so in general I'm feeling better about being alone. I decided that bothering to do everything and cook is just too much, so I'll do what I can and get to that quiche soon enough (like maybe Tuesday while my mother is here).

After talking to my dad and getting Bastian in underwear and sweatpants, we headed next door to see Brad and Chris about the cake. The boys walked right into their apartment and started checking stuff out. Bastian made sounds like "Look at this!" as though he was so excited to see that they had a bathroom. They went out on their balcony to check out the view and were shown how Brad and Chris have the same couch that we do, only in green. Aleks was quite interested in the bike pieces and skis in the dining room. He'd never seen skis before and I asked him if he knew what skiing was, but he didn't answer. I'm still not sure if he's ever seen it. We managed to get our cake and get out of there pretty quickly, all things considered.

During dinner, Bastian ignored the food placed at his seat and prepared us wooden dishes instead.
He brought the basket of fruits and vegetables, the wooden pizza, and the box of wine corks over to the table for dinner. He still didn't touch his real food.
Then he climbed in and out of his elves & angels play kitchen again and again. He thought this was pretty hysterical. In and out. In and out. In...
...and back out again...
...and in again...
Aleks retreated to the living room for more Cartoon Network cartoons. Eventually, Bastian heard this and ran after him. I cleaned up the play kitchen mess while talking to my sister (who did not come visit this weekend) about her (ex)boyfriend and her potential job at the state department this summer and whether stainless steel was okay or not in a pan. Then I remembered that it was trash night, which Jon always takes care of. I got to work sorting the recycling while periodically Aleks came in and reminded me that he still wanted the cake we'd brought home. I put him off and put him off, sorting the recycling, taking out the trash, scrubbing the insides of both the recycling bin and the trash can, and scrubbing the nastiness off the floor beneath the recycling bin. Afterwards, things smelled much better and Aleks was quite pissed off about the lack of cake in his belly.

I gave them cake. I did the dishes, took the gross rug I'd pulled out of the kids room two weeks ago out to the tree lawn for trash, took out the compost, then came in to see Bastian with cake crumbs and icing on his head from having licked the bottom of the container clean. Into the bath with him.

I never sit with my kids while they take a bath. I mostly check on them often, listen carefully for their sounds, and keep working on all the stuff I have to do. Sometimes I clean the bathroom. For some reason, tonight I sat and talked to Bastian while he played in the bath. He made me clap my hands together over and over by putting his on mine and moving them together. I sang "Pat-a-cake" to him, showing him the hand movements, something I don't think I've done since Aleks was a toddler. He really liked it. I enjoyed it too. Which is so weird for me. Then I sang the "Itsy Bitsy Spider." So not like me. It occurred to me that maybe Bastian is missing out on this sort of thing and maybe I should do this stuff more. Then I rationalized that away by remembering that other people in his life do this stuff with him too - like Grandma. Grandma's are good at stuff like that. And aunts. Let them sing "Pat-a-cake" and teach him card tricks and how to jump rope. He'll be fine with me being his mom, washing his laundry and reminding him to brush his teeth. Right?

I sat and watched him play with the boat for awhile. I was mostly zoning out, until I realized that he was playing make believe. He does this all the time, but it's always the "Pew! Pew!" game. This time, I noticed he was using the megablock pieces to be something like people. They kept moving about the ship, climbing the ladder and making different sounds with different voices. He didn't use words, just his own little gibberish, but he was definitely pretending that these things were people and they were interacting. That's something Aleks still doesn't really do, and most of what he does do is prescribed by the media he absorbs (something I don't like at all, but...). (As an aside, I didn't get this on, er, film, but Aleks built a Lego structure the other day called the Dora Devastator, which makes me laugh!)

After his bath, I coated him in cocoa butter lest he does finally end up with chicken pox and his skin is too dry from all this bathing. Then he screamed and whined at me until I laid down to nurse him to sleep. He got too tired and was not happy that I wanted to do things like put his pajamas on or hang up his towel.

Aleks stayed up for a long time after, though he got really really tired too. He was laying on some pillows on the floor of the living room waiting for me to be done with posting on message boards, nearly falling asleep, but keeping up this whole little monologue. At first I wasn't paying attention because I had important things to tell people about...uh...babies? discipline? Something. After a minute though, something caught my ear. He was mumbling a lot because he was so tired, so I didn't catch it all, but it was something like this:

Aleks: ...is electricutable, which is fire, and if you add water...
a little later...
Aleks: ...40 plus 5 creates 45. 5 plus 1 creates 6. 3 plus 3 creates 6....

My baby does math! No one ever even told him how!!! He also spent some time looking at the Earth and Space book again and talking about shooting stars. I told him they were meteors which were rocks that shot down from space and just looked like stars because they're just pinpoints of light to us. He was actually pointing at a comet in the book though, which I reminded him is ice and rock with a luminescent tale which orbits the sun. He was into it. He kept babbling about Mars and where the aliens live and whether it's on the surface or underground and how if you went there you'd have to land underground. I'm not sure that I followed him exactly.