Tuesdays with Sadie

I've started this thing with lil s where I sort of growl at her and kind of rough her up a little bit. However, she's picked up on the growling bit, and now she's taking to growling at people like her nanny as she grabs their face and stuff. I think this sort of behavior is more acceptable from a little boy. However, I do sort of love it when she comes up to me and growls as she attempts to pull my face off. It's cute. But probably only because she's under three feet tall, such behavior will probably have to stop before she hits pre-school, or she'll have some issues. Today as she came in for the kill, growling like a little monster, she somehow managed to get her finger inside my nose and scratch it hard enough that I had some blood. I suppose she owed me one after while I was watching her the other day she took a fall on the floor and has a bit of a black eye. I'm assuming she blamed me for it because I was also watching the Steelers get destroyed and didn't notice entirely that she was playing with a bit of our futon that falls off at random. Anyhow, the point is, that with the black eye and the food stains all over her shirt, when that little growling urchin comes for you, you'd best run. I'd put up a picture, but you'd probably be too frightened to keep reading.

6:50 A.M. Who the hell needs an alarm clock? I have a baby. Lousy baby.

I spend the first part of the morning blockading the stairs because the stairs are scary. I do it with her boxes of toys though, so it's a real thrill for her to be able to rummage through the baskets and pull out random stuffed animals and plastic packaging that she'd like to play with. For the record, it's not the sort of thing that would suffocate her, and I think if the child wants to play with the plastic rather than the blocks, then you let them play with the plastic.

7:30 Breakfast. I feed her at the same time that I eat. I do this because lil s now has a tendency to crawl over to you and attempt to eat whatever you're eating and look up at you with street urchin eyes. The real joke is on her though because I giver her over ripe bananas. She's too little to realize how awful they are. Maybe she isn't. Either way, that will teach her to not fall down the stairs. I'm pretty sure she had a bigger breakfast than I did, but she still complained. I tried to tell her that it wouldn't be that hard to just ship her off to China where she could have a life full of pulling e-waste from her small villages watershed, but she just growled at me. The kids these days.

9:50-It's nap time. I include myself in this nap because I had been up late the night before maturely monitoring Monday Night Football. I mean, football doesn't just watch itself. Someone has to turn on the television and stay up late watching it. That person might as well be me.

M: (Earlier) I need to watch the U.S. Open Final. Tennis doesn't watch itself.

S: What did tennis do when we didn't have cable for the last five months.

M: I'm pretty sure it watched itself, but it's somehow lost the ability. It's complex.

Anyhow, we wind up taking this amazing two hour nap and the one of us who still poops the bed didn't even have an accident. Although, I guess at 9.5 months it's still less of an accident and more just babies being babies.

We go back downstairs and within a half an hour she's ready to eat because she's a little monster. I feed her creme brulee and lobster and steak. The child eats like a Middle Eastern dictator. Topical humor is always best. She throws half of it on the floor because she can, and because kids are inherently sinful.

R: Why has Michigan been so bad?

M: Manifold sins and wickedness. Also some weakness at wide side defensive end.

I'm not really sure how time passes with lil s. It just does. At one point she stars pulling her books on the floor, so I sit down and read every book on the shelf to her. She manages to remain interested for the first eight, but tails off after I deliver an off key rendition of Baby Beluga. Everyone is a critic. Crummy baby.

She pretends like she's sleepy around 3:00 to try and coax me into putting her down for a nap only to wake up shortly thereafter and cry. I go in the room and slap her a high five for putting one over on me. The kids got smarts.

For dinner she eats chicken, avocado, toast and pretty much a bunch of good stuff while I have an old burger. The point is, she's a princess, and I love her.