Chasing the Dragon

I think I have mentioned before that Mr. DD and I have a penchant for rocket lollies. The entire top drawer of the freezer is full of them. When we run low, Mr. DD instructs me to go and gather new materials for our space program. luckily, they are only 1/2 a point according to Weight Watchers, so you can stuff yourself with them and still feel okay about it.

The Prawn has also developed a worrying fondness for them. It started when she was terribly grumpy about things that were occuring in her gum region and thought we'd give her a little cold treat. But I believe we have now created a small sugar shark and are going to be forced to get a bigger boat.



I am now forced to share my rockety bounty with my daughter.



After some thought, we decided to try her out on a yoghurt lolly instead. The resulting scowl and Colonel Sanders goatee were too good not to document.

Lobstergirl

Oh.

My.

God.

I have to admit, I almost peed a little when I saw this baby costume. It's like the gods themselves had answered my Halloween prayers. Literally, within seconds of seeing this on one of the threads on the BabyCenter boards, I had purchased one. It'll have to be shipped from the States at a cost of nearly $20.00, but DAMMIT, MY CHILD WILL BE DRESSED AS A GIANT PRAWN FOR HER FIRST HALLOWEEN.

Before this development, was there any chance of us going anywhere on October 31st? No, but now I will drive her to every neighboring town and village to show her off. Is there really any point in HAVING this costume if you're not going trick or treating? Hell yes. And that point is the 25,000 pictures that we're going to take, cause it's not every day that you get to dress your baby up like a lobster.

So.

Excited.

A Distant Memory

When you've suffered with IF or recurrent losses, one can't even imagine a time when two lines on a First Response test were cause for terror rather than joy. The times that you can just barely remember from high school or early college, when you might have laid awake at night going, "When was the last time I had my period? Holy shit, I can't even remember. OMG, I CAN'T HAVE A BABY RIGHT NOW. " Of course, Aunt Flo would dutifully show up the next day and you'd be so relieved that you even relished the cramps.

I had pretty much forgotten about all of that until this month when I suddenly realized yesterday that I had NO idea when I'd last had my period.

Mr. DD and I are all over having another baby, providing that my body will cooperate. This is not a given. Obviously, I take the idea of another miscarriage seriously. I think we're both pretty uncomfortable with the idea of having a second child at the moment. For starters, we're still looking for the instruction manual for the first one. Secondly, we have no space. Thirdly, I have about 50 pounds to lose to avoid problems like GD the next time around. And fourthly, just....hell no.

There's a certain sheepishness about purchasing a pregnancy test while pushing a baby buggy containing a rather young baby. The girl ringing up my purchase definitely had a bit of a smirk on. A "rather you than me" look, I feel.

I was so anxious about it that I went to the grocery store loo to discover my fate.

Only one line. Whew.

"No siblings for you just yet, young Prawnling." I said.

She blew me a raspberry.

Ink

So, here's the latest edition to my little collection of body art. Just inked this morning by a very talented woman who looks and talks more like a hair dresser than a tattoo artist. (No visible tats whatsoever- slightly unusual. Most inkers I've met have large and extensive collections of sometimes very disturbing tattoos.) At any rate, it only took about 15 minutes and I'm pleased to say that there was no screaming on anyone's part. Mr. DD graciously offered to stay home with the Prawn so that a girl friend could come with me and that we could go out shopping and to lunch afterwards. I could just lick him sometimes.

The tattoo parlour I frequent is probably much like every inkery in the known universe. Giggling teenagers anxious for belly rings that will inevitably piss off their parents, staff with enough facial jewelry to set off airport metal detectors and walls covered in flash. The woman who did my tat had, in her portfolio, a picture of a design that she once did on the sole of someone's foot, which, I have to admit, made me feel slightly queasy. You would have to hold me down with the anchor of the Queen Mary to let someone do that to me.

Some of the things that people have immortalized into their flesh absolutely astound me. One begins to see the reason for the rule that most reputable parlours abide by in respects to not inking the inebriated, because the sober often have bad enough taste just on their own. Once, while perusing a coffee table book on unusual tats, I came across a jaw droppingly awful piece of ink (which I had a quick troll on the internet to see if I could find, but I abandoned the search after coming up with too many disturbing results) that consisted of a number of stylized and brightly colored penises strung in a necklace around a woman's neck. One of them even said "Mom" which brings up all kinds of Freudian questions that don't bear thinking about. It was obviously a labor of love for the artist, and one would hope, for the poor, cracked cow who now has to live with this chamber of horrors permanently etched into her flesh for all time. Apparently, this particular tat is well known in the ink slinging trade and was done by an artist called Dave Lum. There are actually forums where tattoo enthusiasts debate the ethics involved in doing such a piece of work. Mr. Lum, if you're out there, more power to you, but you are a twisted, twisted man.

I am pleased to say that there will be no colorful cock necklaces in my immediate future. As a matter of fact, I'm not entirely sure how many more times I'll go under the needle. Excepting a similar tat for the birth of, I hope, our second and last child, I'm not sure how many more bits of ink that I need. I have to admit to a small fantasy of the Prawn asking me to join her for mother/daughter tattoos on her 18th birthday, but it could be that she decides to be a nun or something and doesn't really want ink ruining her chances at being Mother Superior, but who knows what the future holds?

I'm a pretty big coloring book. I've still got some blank pages left.

Toys

The Prawn sleeps. I make a beeline for the keyboard.

Vis a vie her continued development into a human being, I broke my “no bloody expensive toys before she’s capable of playing with them” rule in order to purchase the two obligatory baby toys without which you are not allowed to keep your Mommy Membership card- the colourful stacking rings and the little xylophone. Along with the order, I also purchase a swim nappy which won’t necessarily help her to become a well rounded human being, but will at least prevent her from taking a hellacious dump in the swimming pool.

I had both of these toys as a kid. I remember that when I was about 7, I was absently playing with one of the rings (having long outgrown it, the base of it spent a good deal of time being used as an offensive weapon against playmates) and getting it stuck on my wrist, resulting in a removal that I believe included margarine. The xylophone was also used well beyond its shelf life as an annoyance device to all adults within a 100 meter radius. Not wishing to deprive my daughter of the same opportunities to drive me up a tree in the near future, I thought it’d probably hop to it.

The xylophone was pretty much as I remembered it. In fact, the version that I bought is actually simpler than the one that I spent hours banging on tunelessly when I was a child. The Prawn’s musical device is actually made of wood rather than metal resulting in more pleasing musical “plonk” noises rather than the maddening “plink” of its metallic cousin. My only complaint is that it is somewhat out of tune. Only blessed with four “bells”, it should sound like a vocal warm up scale. However, the lowermost bell is out of tune and I fear that it might lead the Prawn to turn up at her first music lesson only to be chastised by her teacher by ear-bending pitch deficiency.

The rings, on the other hand, turned out to be slightly more high tech that my old plastic wrist entrapment device. Caveat Emptor- especially when you neglect to read the description of the items you purchase. Not that this thing isn’t cool, but it seems a little unnecessarily high tech for a stacking ring set. I liked the idea of the lovely, colourful bits hanging off the side of the rings, but discovered to my consternation, upon opening the package that it was graced with an “on” switch. After batting at it experimentally for a few minutes, I discovered that it revolved while playing midi sound clips of disturbing music and children laughing. Why is it that everything today has to move, wiggle, sing or vibrate to keep a child interested? It might go a long way toward explaining why we have a whole generation coming up with the attention span of hummingbirds.

My favourite toy as a child? A cardboard refrigerator box.

Bad Mommy. Very Bad.

Forgive me for the lapse in normal blogging service. My parents came from the States to visit us (well, the Prawn, mainly) and my time was taken up with family related merrymaking.

The Prawn has taken what seems to be her first step on the road to some semblance of sentience. (Does that work, gramatically? Semblance of sentience?) While I am pleased with this development, I'm not sure that it came about for the right reason.

She has got the baby bird trick down pat. When she sees her bottle or dummy, (Yes I use a dummy and I will wrestle anyone who believes that I am evil for doing so.) she has begun to open her mouth in anticipation. Great, right? I now feel obligated to mention that the reason she started doing this in the first place was because we have, er...very occasionally let her suck on the tips of ice lollies.

She's teething! Honest!

Last night, Mr. DD was eating one with her on his lap and she launched herself, shark like, in the direction of the lolly, little gummy jaws open and wanting. No more ice lolly for you, little sugar fiend.

Did I mention that we also gave her a fingertip's worth of a taste of homemade strawberry ice cream at 2 weeks?

Yup, we're going straight to hell.