Your child has developed a personality

7:15 A.M. Awake to Sadie crying. I enter her room and notice that she's managed to roll over. This is the sort of thing that gets parents really excited. "Yay," I tell her, "You rolled over." She seems uninterested and continues to cry. If she cries every time she rolls over maybe it isn't the greatest thing in the world that we're encouraging her to do it. Maybe we should invent some sort of contraption that holds her in place all night on her back, so she sleeps for fifteen hours.

7:15-8:15
The usual drill. Hey, s, it's tummy time. You love tummy time. s does not love tummy time, and I end up having to jump down on the floor and squeak a giraffe in front of her face and talk like I just swallowed helium to keep her interested. I guess I wouldn't have to talk like that, but I'm pretty sure Sophie the giraffe is a girl. Anyhow, I'm trying to work on my ventriloquism, so she can't tell it's me talking and will think instead that she has a magical giraffe, which, I assume, will raise her self-esteem.

8:15 Nap. I giver her a small flat pink toy blanket but not quite sort of thing that she shoves happily in her mouth. As soon as I've put her down I make big plans to go mow the lawn before the landscapers arrive, so they don't think they're putting shrubs and flowers in for some person who can't even mow his own lawn.

8:16 Landscapers appear. I take pictures of the yard through the window/of the landscapers...creepily.


8:55-10:00
I take pictures of the developing yard from the upstairs window, so the landscapers won't see me and think I'm creepy. At some point I realize that hiding while I'm taking the photos may make the whole thing even creepier. Mentally curse all the dandelions. At least I planted wine bottles.

10:50 Sadie wakes up from her second nap and develops a personality. Okay, that's probably not true, she's usually a smiley little ball of cute, but I noticed something about her today for the first time while I was feeding. She decided that she wanted to give herself the bottle rather than me. The only problem is that she doesn't really have gross motor skills yet, so she can't really do it. However, this didn't prevent her from crying when I held it there without her assistance. The whole process was entirely frustrating and would have sort of been like if I had gone outside and advised the landscapers on putting in the proper flora for our region. Or like a kid showing up for work on the first day and telling the boss what to do.

However, I lose every argument because s just starts crying when she doesn't get her way. Believe me, I've considered crying in response to try and make her feel bad, but I'm pretty sure, based on prior experience, that she'd just laugh. So I'm left instead playing tug of war with a five month baby and looking like a jack-ss. And that's when I realized that my little girl was going to have a personality and cry at not getting things her way and such, and I think I speak for most parents when I say that a little part of me died inside.

Of course you get mostly good things from your child having a personality like good conversation and friendship and the joy of watching them grow into a real live person.

11:30-12:00 I continue to take pictures of the landscapers and the yard from various hidden places in the house. It would be like the worst Mission Impossible movie ever. At one point as I'm about to snap off a shot one of the guys walks into my frame, and I pulled the camera down and pretended to be inspecting it. This despite the fact that I was inside and he hadn't even noticed me.

12:00-1:00 Take Sadie out into the new yard, so I can mow the lawn and do some weeding and stop sucking at having a nice yard. Meanwhile Sadie leaned over in her bumbo and tried to pick up pieces of grass to eat. She only got one, and it was old anyway and she threw it down. I'm glad she's developing a good taste for food as well. It's one thing to eat grass, but it's not okay to eat old grass. I also snapped off a few photos of her and worried about mosquitoes because that is the sort of thing that you do when you're a parent.

1:00-4:00

Walk around trying to keep the little master happy. Attempt to discover if we have the same shrub as our neighbor by walking across the street and peering into their yard. Apparently this is just what I'm to today. Eventually I determine that I'm probably just grooming our white flowering shrub wrong or it would look glorious like theirs. However, just to make sure that I am right I start using Google to find out if our shrub matches a picture. At which point, by clicking on Anne Russel Vibernum (sp) and trying to look at a picture my computer gets hijacked. I mean, are people really putting up viruses on Anne Russel Vibernum? Who has the time? I thought these all went up on adult sites. Well that's the last time I try and figure out what that shrub is. I'm just going to let it grow ten feet tall and take over the neighbor's yard and look terrible.

3:30-5:15
s takes a nap. Dad takes a nap. Yay!