Levedy

Amazing

This is absolutely amazing. It's a video created by an autistic woman to speak to the non-autistic. The first several minutes are without speech but after that it is subtitled.

This woman is incredibly articulate. Her video is very thought-provoking. It's worth the eight or nine minutes it takes to watch it in full.

You can view it here.

9 Months

Bean,

It finally happened. I wasn’t expecting it to happen for a while yet, but you decided to surprise us.

We have been using sign language with you for the past few months. We always use signs along with words for things like food, more, all done, bath, and cereal. We didn’t expect you to invent signs of your own, but you had other plans.

You created a sign that you use to tell us that something upsets you. You hold your hand up to the side of your mouth and open and close your fist. We figured out its meaning when it immediately preceded your spitting out food all over yourself. And the high chair. And dad. Repeatedly.

Apparently, we’re slow learners.

Your first communication with us was to tell us that you don’t like my cooking. Great.

You will, however, move mountains so that you get a steady supply of mandarin orange segments. Meth addicts could take lessons from you on addictive behavior. If we DARE feed you non-citrus objects while the little oranges are in your line of sight, WE WILL HEAR ABOUT IT. Your charm and cuteness are gone, replaced by a creature that shoots fire from her nostrils: THE BEAST TODDLES AMONGST US.

When you’re out of your high chair, however, your charm melts even the hardest of hearts. Even the cat seems to tolerate you. I don’t expect her to stomach wearing a bonnet or being forced to sit through a tea party, but I think that she’ll get to the point where she won’t glare at you from above. Progress is progress.

You have figured out how to cruise by standing and using furniture and supine bodies to motor around the room. It’s only a matter of time before you’re walking. While I’m proud and exited, I’m not looking forward to baby-proofing the house.

The baby-stuff-mega-warehouse in town has an entire two-sided aisle dedicated to safety equipment for the house. A lot of it looks completely asinine. Is it really necessary to purchase a vise to clamp the toilet shut? It looked complicated enough to keep grown adults out of the potty. That’s too medieval for me. If I purchase all of the table bumpers, corner guards, and wall pads that are offered this place will look like an institution for the criminally insane. Now, that may be appropriate as you get to know your relatives better, but it really clashes with the sofa. I’ve decided to take a more common-sense, less paranoid approach to baby-proofing the house. I don’t want you going through life thinking that everything has been sanded down and pre-padded for you.

It’s my job to teach you that the world doesn’t have rounded edges and cushy places to rest your head just anywhere. Safe havens exist, but you have to choose them wisely. Home will always be a safe place for you, and I will always have a cushy place for you to rest your head, but I’m not about to encase the stove in bubble wrap so you don’t learn that touching a hot stove will burn you.

It’s not a lesson to be learned in the abstract. I’m never going to teach you that in theory, there are hot surfaces that can hurt you. I’ll make sure you don’t lose a limb, stick a fork in an electrical outlet, or eat (too much) cat food, but you’re going to have to learn directly that stupid behavior warrants painful outcomes.

The same holds true if you ever vote Republican. I’m saving a special wooden spoon for that one.

All day long you smile, blow raspberries, and entertain us with your joyful snorts and jerky little dances. Every day is better than the last. You seem to have mastered one of the most important lessons in life for a girl, which makes me proud. I’ll help you remember how in hard times, but I’m so pleased to see that you can stand on your own two feet.

I love you more than peas love carrots,

Mama

Rhyme Time

My Little Sophie, how I love you
Even if you have olive-filled poo.

The trade-off for feeding you food that's solid
Is changing some ghastly diapers quite squalid.

My secret hobby

I have to confess to a secret hobby: I collect bento boxes.

For those who don't know, bento is a style of eating common in Japan. Bento boxes are popular with schoolchildren as well as adults. Parents pack attractive, healthy lunches in these cute containers for their kids. Here is a group on Flickr that takes pictures of cutsie-wutsie bento boxes. And here is a bento blog. See? It's fun!

And here is my small collection. Atsuko (lovely mother to this boy) was kind enough to get me a new box on her last trip to Japan.

Hey, at least it's not Beanie Babies, or those horrid big-headed, dopey-eyed Precious Moments figurines.

Treadmill

Ann Telnaes' newest cartoon.

She annihilated the pom in 30 seconds

Here is the result of the Stich N' Bitch earlier this week:

It's a little too small (see: inherited her mother's GIANT skull), and the sticthing is uneven in places. Uneven stitching MAKES IT CHARMING, people, CHARMING.

Not bad, though, for my first attempt at knitting in the round. Four needles in use at once! Woo-hoo!

I share neither Stephanie's mania enthusiasm for knitting, nor Crazy Aunt Purl's skill with drinking wine and knitting, but I still feel a sense of accomplishment, even if it does cut off the circulation to her brain.

Stitch and Bitch

Last night my friend Ann hosted a stitch and bitch at my house. Ann lives in a teensy tinsy village called Blue Diamond on the outskirts of town. It's an enclave of UNLV professors and people nicknamed Twitchy. It's an odd town, to say the least.

In any case, seven women sat around my living room, drinking wine, eating popcorn, knitting, and gabbing about work, men, weddings, and Chlamydia. Good times, good times.

I'm attempting to knit Bean a hat, using four double-pointed needles! (Egads!) I think, after my third attempt, that I have the hang of it. At first, the brim was big enough to fit me, so I unwound it and reduced it by 2/3. While Bean has her father's beautiful blue eyes, she unfortunately has my huge noggin. Hats and narrow doorways can prove difficult.

It was very nice to have a bunch of ladies to play with. I feel so isolated sometimes, what with the whole kid-strapped-to-my-side gig. It was nice to talk to others about something other than diaper rashes and Ferberizing. Talking instead about the Clap was really refreshing.

Delurk

...and embarass me by how few of you there are.

I like Verbatim's idea. If you're a reader of this site, please leave a quick comment at the end of this post. De-lurk yourself, and make your presence known (at least to me.)

For those of you who have never left comments, you will get a really lame error messge after posting. Don't worry, your comments still post, though. The feature has been busted for newrly two years.

Yes, I know my husband is a programmer who could fix this. You know, though, what they say about the feet of the shoemaker's kids.

So let me know that you're here, and I'll bake you some cookies. Or something.

Zombie Eye and Skee Ball

Dim and I went to dinner last night while my mom and dad watched Bean. We decided to skip our planned movie and went instead to Chuck E. Cheese for $3.00 of pinball and skeeball. It was lots of fun, and I have my very own hockey stick-shaped pencil to commemorate the occasion. (I could have instead gotten a rubber bug, but at least this one can be used on my crosswords.)

The zombie eye is healing, I suppose. I had to wear my contacts again, since I needed to drive and I have no depth perception when I wear glasses. The blood has moved toward the colored part of my eye but stops short right at the edge of my contact lens. That means that I have a crescent-shaped ring of blood around my iris. I know, sexy.

Kat got a new kitten, and I really want to meet it. Little Miss Chuck Norris, Jr. is adorable, even if we are all living in a Chuctatorship.

kb

I got bored and cut up an old (but clean) pair of Costco socks. Pretty ugly, but Bean loves him:

I gave my sister the Stupid Sock Creatures book and kit for Christmas. I hope that she makes a better one for me, I mean, for the Bean.

Free Kitchen Aid and Flung Bebidas

I was telling Sophie the other day that it's a big drag making Bean's baby food because my food processor is so small. It takes hours because I have to do it in a billion little batches because I only have a little teeny chopper instead of a big food processor.

I was also telling her that a food processor would cost me $160 if I got one from Costco, and I didn't know if my laziness was really worth that much money.

She said "Food Processor? I have one in the garage that I've never used. You can have it."

Score! She saved me $160!

See, Sophie's mother used to own an appliance store in Salt Lake, and got prizes and floor samples and stuff from the major appliance companies. 25 years ago or so she got four full-size Kitchen-Aid food processors and passed them out to her kids and kids-in-law. Sophie never even took hers out of the box. It was a little dusty, but in perfect shape.

I was a little leary of a 25-year-old machine consisting mainly of heavy spinning blades, but it works slick as a whistle. It's almond and charcoal brown colored. Hooray!

-also-

Last night I was out returning a few Christmas gifts, and I was in the neighborhood of my friend's Mexican restaurant, so I stopped in to get a to-go order for me and Dim. While I was waiting, a couple at the next table over were arguing pretty heatedyl, to the point where the woman splashed her drink all over the guy and both stormed out of the restaurant. Wow! I've never seen an argument that heated before!

Zombie Eye

New Years came and went with little fanfare. We stayed at home, Dim payling his dumb Warcraft game and me in bed with my book. We kissed at midnight and went to sleep. Sooo exciting.

The next morning, we went to Sophie's with Athena for breakfast (and lunch, and dinner, it turned out.)

I wore my glasses, which I am terribly self-conscious about, because a blood vessel broke in my eye overnight for some unexplained reason. I looked like a zombie, and I didn't think that keeping my contacts in was a good idea. Here is a picture of my eye from this morning. My eye actually looks a lot better (ie less bloody) than last night. It is scary for two reasons: the broken blood vessel and the pores. Click at your own risk.

I'm trying to do common sense things to heal it faster, like not wearing contacts and drinking lots of liquids. I might try a warm compress to open the vessel a little bit and speed blood flow. It doesn't hurt, it just makes me look like I should stagger around and crave BRRAAAAAINNNNNNS!

Any other ideas?