mama, da, kitty, car, elbow, puppy, apple.

Such are the words that our kid can pronounce (well, sorta) thus far, in the order that he's learned them. A few are perfectly clear, while others require a bit of aural creativity on his parents' behalf.

Most amazing of all: today marks the first day that Ben initiated play (as those child-rearing guys phrase it) before I left his daycare room. On Mondays and Wednesdays, he immediately sits down for his lunch, and on Fridays, he usually whines and/or cries and/or clings and/or looks absolutely stricken while I shove his food and sippy cups in the fridge. Yet, this morn, after the (cling-free!) fridge-shoving, I turned around to see him happily wheeling a toy shopping cart around the room. Shocking. He seemed content until the other Ben shoved him away from the cart and--insult to injury--stole the lone block that was inside. Of course, lead teacher reminded both Bens that "nice touches" were expected of them, which remarkably prompted Other Ben to look a bit ashamed and wander all of 16 inches away to play with Other Shopping Cart. And my Ben was still playing with his cart after I left the room (yes, I peek, every lovin' day).

Dearest Ben, have we turned over a new leaf with the daycare thing? Other Ben, where did you learn to glower like that?

Drawing a blank.

I really, truly do believe that having a baby really, truly rots one's brain, just a little bit. I can think of nothing witty to say (well, I've never exactly been Oscar Wilde), yet I feel compelled to type. Perhaps it's best that I'm doing so on my very own blog, which no one ever reads, rather than on Facebook, or in an e-mail, or in a chatroom. Do chatrooms still exist? Haven't seen or been in one since circa 1998, at Chris's old apartment. (On AOL. Does AOL still exist? Does dial-up AOL still exist?) Mostly, I just logged in to politically conservative rooms and tried to rile people up with liberal comments and arguments. Yeah, that's me: the troublemaker, the rabble-rouser, the rebel. Ah, memories...

And as for the word "e-mail": are we skipping the hyphen these days? Has it come to that, finally? At one point it was "electronic mail," and then "E-mail," and then "e-mail." Or is everyone else texting or twittering or whatever, and e-mail's just totally passe? I, for one, am sticking with "e-mail" and e-mail.

I think this is why I never took up journaling after 6th grade-ish. I think I need to get to bed...

3.

So, I'm only posting again because it's depressing to have more than 5 full months of the year under one's belt--well, under all of our belts, I suppose--and to see that I only have "2" posts for 2009. And now it says "3." And I think I shall take this as my accomplishment for the day...

14 months, 3 weeks...

I thought that I'd planned to post here more often, yet I see it's been (almost) 4 months since my last...and I'm only posting now because I likely will forget next Friday, when Ben is 15 months by the calendar. Ye gods...as Rob and I say nearly every day--as maybe most people with little ones think every day--where has the time gone? Walking, babbling, imitating, feeding himself...and Ben's really progressed as well (ha).

Well, Ben, you and I have a full (vacation) day tomorrow of garage sales and thrift stores, just in case your Da is laid off/fired soon; Guy must be fashionably dressed, and there are still a few things I'm hoping for that are a bit too pricey new (wagon, bike trailer, etc.). Oh, who am I kidding? If we earned triple what we do now, I'd still hit the ol' Value World and block sales...