My dad taught me how to drive. One evening, when we were out practicing on the roads, we came up to State Street from a small side road. He told me to turn left onto State Street. "No way," I said. I knew of someone who had gotten into a car-totalling accident when turning left onto State Street and I was terrified of it. My dad, however, was insistent. He wanted me to be able to do it successfully before I got my license. I still resisted.
And then he said to me, "You want to know the trick to turning left onto State Street?" "Yes," I replied. "Be patient," he said. I was somewhat taken aback by this since it didn't exactly sound like a "trick", but I gave it a try and it worked beautifully. From that point forward, any time I had to turn left onto State Street, I simply used my dad's "trick". It worked every time. Not only did it work on State Street, it worked on just about every large, busy road. And then I discovered that it doesn't just apply to driving, either. It works on a whole host of situations. Often, when I feel myself getting overwhelmed, I hear my dad's voice in my head, "You want to know the trick? Be patient." You want to know the trick to shopping at CostCo? Be patient. You want to know the trick to dealing with a crying baby? Be patient. So thank you, Daddy, for teaching me this trick. I've really found it useful. Gary painted the west side of our house this past weekend, so now we just have one side left! I helped a little bit, but it looked like I helped a lot because he let me do all the easy stuff. :)
Gregory and I were brave and went to CostCo by ourselves today. We did not kill it. I'm seriously considering canceling our CostCo membership and buying everything off of Amazon instead. I bought a laminator! I love it. Totally wish I had gotten it back when I was a Young Women's advisor. Genius IQ levels? I think so. And I didn't get this on video, but I'm pretty sure what I asked him was, "What does a sly dog do?" Gregory makes three categories of sounds: 1) his happy sounds, 2) his distressed sounds, and 3) his attention-getting sounds. His attention-getting sounds are like the equivalent of our "hey" and he uses them for things like, "Hey, my ball rolled away again. Can you get it for me?" and "Hey, come back! I prefer you to sit by me while I chew on this strap." and "Hey, I wasn't done with that juice yet!"
Nugget also has an attention-getting sound. He snorts. So, over the past few months, I've noticed that if I go to Gregory right when he wakes up in the middle of the night, I can get to him back to sleep pretty quickly. But if I allow him to fuss for a few minutes first, it's nearly impossible to get him back to sleep for at least 2 hours. Naturally, I choose the first option. Of course, this comes with the rather predictable consequence that he now knows that I'll come to him whenever he calls. He didn't abuse the power until two nights ago. On that night, he woke up every hour or two to call for me. As soon as I would walk into his room, he'd get a massive grin on his face and start flapping his arms around all excited-like. It was cute as all get-out, but it was also at 2 a.m. After getting up and attending to his slightest whim all night, I was exhausted the next morning and resigned to the fact that we were going to have to change the policy. So last night, I decided to wait until his attention-getting sound turned into a distressed sound before going in to him. This is what it sounded like: "Hey. Hey? Hey. Hey! Heee-eeey.... Hey hey! Hey? Um.... Hey! Heyyyy....Hey." This went on for a few minutes. And then I heard Nugget right outside our door. He stuck his nose in our room and started snorting. This is what it sounded like to me: "Hey! The kid's awake! Aren't you going to do anything?" It was adorable. I caved. Me: "Hey Gregory, how are you feeling today?" Greg: "Oh, you know, a little cursmudgeony." (P.S. "Cursmudgeon" is one of Gary's words. I think it means "a smidgeon of curmudgeon".)
Gregory can officially get to things now. It's not exactly crawling, per se, but it's definitely intentional movement, a combination of scrunching up, kicking, and rolling.
He's also showing a preference for balls, which is weird to me. I know that boys and girls are inherently different, but it's still surprising when it happens, you know? Besides, I'm the work-smarter-not-harder type (or, more accurately, work-lazier-not-harder) so I think it's strange that he goes for the toys that roll away from him. Oh well. To each their own. |
AuthorI'm Jody Henrie. I'm the kind of person who would name my first-born son Colby Jack. Because I love cheese. Archives
November 2013
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