a slice

Oh hey! Not much, what's up with you?
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I've been hiding out, trying to force February to pass through sheer force of will, but the shortest month just takes its sweet time no matter what. There have been many colds! Some puking! Some snow falling and then melting! I know, it's pretty special.

It takes a crazy amount of energy to get out the door every morning, and I'm blaming it on winter. It's like herding cats, and then trying to force them into snowsuits and boots. And strapping them into carseats. And then they're crying and whining cats. I get my undies all in a bunch and invariably I am close to blowing a fuse before we even make it to the car. We're going somewhere that you LIKE, dammit, hup hup hup!

But more than I am sick of winter I am sick of hearing myself whine and complain. I'm worse of a toddler than both of 'em put together. So I'm going to highlight some of the better things that are happening around here:

Auden talks to toilets. At some point one of us must have called the automatic-sensor toilets "robots," so now that's what they are, and they should be properly thanked for their services. Yours truly provides the voices, and you can imagine how awesome it is to be a talking robot toilet in a public restroom. If it's the kind of toilet with a good old fashioned handle, it's a "manual robot." In fact, a lot of things are getting that descriptor lately: his phone is now his "manual phone," his step stool is a "manual stool," and the other day he even told me he was going to clean up a mess with his "manual teeth."

Isla is signing like crazy, but most of her gestures are basically variations on a finger to her mouth, which makes them kind of like the signing equivalent of homonyms. Kitty? Finger to the mouth. Horse? Finger slightly higher on the cheek. Water? Finger in the mouth. Mama? Palm to the mouth. Other signs, like fish and dog and giraffe, which have nothing to do with the vicinity of the mouth, she executes with dramatic exaggeration, the way they always tell you to MAKE THINGS BIGGER WHEN YOU'RE ON STAGE! BIGGER! EVEN BIGGER! It's hilarious and mind-blowingly cute.

She adores books, as long as they have animals in them. Preferably barnyard animals. She hasn't said any recognizable words yet, but she's trying her best to crow like a rooster: "cock-a!" she says. "Cock... cock-a!"

For a little while there was some confusion about head-shaking. If she wanted something she couldn't have, I'd shake my head and say no. She must have associated the head-shaking with her wanting of the forbidden object, so in another context if you asked her if she wanted something, she'd shake her head but actually mean yes. It was kind of like a "Who's On First" routine of befuddlement. But now she's figured out how to nod, and she does it with her whole body. It cracks me up every time, not least because it's awesome to communicate so directly. We can have whole conversations now!

Speaking of conversations, we had this one in the car the other day:

me: "Auden, is Isla asleep?"
Isla: "Daahhhhh!"
Auden: "She's awake!"
me: "I heard."
Auden: "What'd she say?"
me: "I don't know, what'd she say?"
Auden: "She said, 'cugger jugger' and then I laughed about that funny joke."

There's a lot of utter nonsense in Auden's vocabulary, probably because he watches too many Japanese movies or too much Spiderman or because he's almost three. He'll prattle on in Lewis Caroll stream-of-consciousness, describing what his characters do:

"And they fradelay with me, and they gauduban with me, and they listabye with me a little bit."

(And the mome raths outgrabe!)

Or he'll whip them out like insults:

"Come on, you nokker!"
"Move over, you slubber dugger!"

And my personal favorite, an exclamation that I've adopted for my own personal use:

"Cunger my nungers!"

It's surprisingly versatile.

You took EVERY SINGLE BOOK off your book shelf and piled them on your bed? Cunger my nungers!
It's almost March? Why, cunger my nungers!

Every so often, Auden and Isla will actually engage and play together. Mostly it's just toy-stealing and pushing, but then there will be moments like this:



I need to remember these particulars, otherwise I'm only going to look back on this winter and see my unending funk, accumulating and thawing and accumulating again. The things that seem so huge will not matter. The small things will be tilled into loam. And of course I'll marvel at how fast it all went.

Jason's friend, newly a father, summed it this way, "Each day lasts about 1,000 hours and is over in 45 minutes."

So, how about you?

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