Chronicles of a Single Mom

Before Little M came along, I had long hair, about halfway down my back. When I was 10, I let my mom talk me into getting it cut shoulder length and instantly regretted it, so I kept it long for the next 20 years. About a month before giving birth I got it cut about collar length. I don’t really know why I did that, I blame hormones and wanting to do something I knew the ex would hate. So I was thinking of growing my hair back out.

Enter solid foods.

The other night after I put Little M. to bed, I ran my fingers through my hair. It was full of rice cereal and bananas! Not only is she eating solid foods, she’s also going through a stage where she likes to grab everything.

So I guess it’ll be kind of short a few more months.

So I’m watching Sesame Street with my daughter (yeah, I know she’s just shy of 4 months old, but she really watches the tv sometimes) and Bert comes on and says he’s “kicking it old school.” Then he proceeds to rap about eating your vegetables. Wow, Bert’s a rapper now. I feel so old.

Then the Purple Spawn of Satan, otherwise known as Barney, came on. One of the kids on Barney decided to make a snack out of all his favorite foods. Ended up being strawberries and yogurt on a rice cake. I couldn’t help thinking that his concoction turned out much better than the time Tanya and I decided to mix up all the spices in the pantry with the Tang trying to come up with a new drink. That stuff was nasty!

Then I wondered why I was watching Barney when my daughter had fallen asleep and was no longer watching so I changed the channel.

The cashier noticed I was buying bananas and ice cream.

Cashier: Are you making banana splits tonight?
Me: Nope. My little girl is teething. The bananas are to freeze for her to teethe on. The ice cream is for me to help me cope with the teething.

Little M has a lot of toys. People have given her toys and my mom has found quite a few at garage sales. Some of these toys are just crazy. They respond to the baby so that when she kicks them they’ll make noise or flash lights. This is great for giving her incentive to move around and get her motor skills growing. But they may also drive me crazy one day.

For one thing, many of the “baby activated” toys are actually sound and motion activated. I have 3 cats in the house. I brought over a toy that had previously been at my mom’s the other night and put it in the nursery where I was sleeping with the baby. Bad idea. Cats are nocturnal. They curl up in bed with me around 10 or 11 but wake up in the middle of the night to prowl around. This sets off motion activated toys. So I was awakened from my peaceful slumber to the sounds of “Old MacDonald.” I closed my eyes hoping this will stop, but it wasn’t a nightmare, it was real life. When I got out of bed I stumbled over to the offending toy and tried to turn it off. Of course the toys can’t have switches that say “on” or “off,” they have symbols and each maker has a different symbol for “parent activated,” “baby activated” and off. So of course instead of turning the toy off I turned it to parent activated mode, which just means it DOESN’T STOP!!!!

I’ve had other incidents with these “smart” toys. Little M has a “baby activated” swing. It’s actually pretty cool how it detects that she’s fallen asleep and slows down the rocking till the swing has stopped. What’s not so cool is when she screams loud enough to set it off from the diaper table across the room and suddenly it starts swinging and playing “How Much is That Doggie in the Window.” (ok, looking back, thst is kinda cool, but not while it’s happening!)

And finally there’s a toy at my mom’s that looks like some sort of rattle but it’s playing music and won’t stop. I can’t find an off switch. I can’t even find out how to take out the batteries. Right now it’s downstairs in the basement closet waiting for the batteries to go dead so we don’t have to hear that song any more. The batteries have to run out sometime…..don’t they?