The first and last time...

...he'll be put in the backseat of a cop's cruiser. Unless of course he decides to drive one after graduating as valedictorian and saving a pack of boy scouts from the jaws of a bear with nothing but a paperclip and three Weeble Wobbles.

The Nazarene church up the street had a block party today and they had us at "firetruck". It was a great setup, with dunk tanks and bounce houses and a big huge inflated slide thingy. I can't tell you how disappointed I was that Toby's too small for all that. Because I wasn't, not one little guilt-ridden overprotective parenting bit. I am a worrier, and a darn good one, and those kinds of toys make me think of the statistics on freak accidents resulting in a toddler with at least a black eye. Shudder.

He's repeating a lot more words lately. He says mama, but usually it's more like Moe mooooooe, with his mouth stuck out in an exaggerrated "o" as he staggers over to me in a silly mood. Then he gets a twinkle in his eye and hits me on the nose or clocks me with a toy. Did you know my sister nicknamed me Mean Streak when I was his age? Oh justice, thou art cruel.

I was asking J for some favor today while carrying Toby upstairs and he started saying "honnney" in such a way that I knew I was being petulant just from the way he repeated it. How embarassing. He also likes to say Go!!!!! in the car, which he apparently picked up from the exceedingly rare times I would eeever say something like that to my fellow very capable drivers. Not me, nope.

We are in a difficult (for me) limbo, staying or going, and I feel the capilaries I've put out in Portland shrivelling from disuse. J very logically pointed out that the roots are for me and the point is that I need to feel them, so why retract them yet. This is sounding like a bad Oprah, but anyway I thought at the time it made buckets of sense.

I hate to feel a lack of direction, and it's not easy for me to thrive without deadlines, connections and concrete goals. It's depressing, actually, and feeling dumpy makes me want to sit around on my butt all day, which feeds the blues and it's just such a bourgois problem to have I think I might have to slap myself. I suppose I could just enlist the kiddo there...