The Post-Mike Era

This week, we spent a few days at the beach with my oldest brother and his wife and my nephew. After being there a day or 2, my sister-in-law said that if she had a kid like Micah, she'd have to be medicated! I laughed! I probably do need to be medicated! But it's like I told my friend HJ when she had twins - it's not like you have an option to put up with or not put up with your kids. Besides, you get used to the insanity and it becomes a good friend!

So I was thinking of all the changes to our life since Mike came along, or more specifically since he started moving around. Here is the condensed list.

1. If you happen to fall asleep on the couch during waking hours, you would be well advised to lay with one arm over your face and the other over anything else you want protected, since you will probably awaken to the feeling of the "Itsy Bitsy Spider" book (which is surprisingly hard) being slammed on you and Micah saying "Gin" (which does not mean the adult beverage you will be tempted to partake of in large quantities following this awakening, but rather it means "please, dear friend, could you kindly sing the spider song again, for the 4,758th time today, for my enjoyment".)

2. We currently suffer from air circulation problems in our house, where Katie's room is about 50 degrees and the kitchen is about 90 degrees, due to the fact that all of the doors are shut in the house in an effort to minimize the damage that Mike is able to inflict on our belongings. It is also noticable on some of the doors a dent or 2 at the precise level of Micah's head, which he frequently uses to open things, the way that some people use their hands.

3. There is much enthusiastic love to be shared, especially with dad. But there are also many black eyes and bloody noses on the part of those receiving Micah's love. Yes indeed, sometimes love hurts.

4. Our furniture is arranged in an extremely strange way, to the untrained eye. There is a small cabinet in front of the entertainment center (to keep him from sticking things in the VCR and to keep the TV from being reprogrammed in Spanish, which is surprisingly hard to fix if you DON'T SPEAK SPANISH!) ; there is nothing on most of the shelves - I believe in other cultures, those areas are for books. What a strange idea! Similarly, you might assume from our furniture that we bought it from "L-bracket Wonderland" because there is a metal "L" shaped piece attached to everything which is in turn attached to a wall stud. These were added by the master of baby-proofing to each piece as Micah learned to pull each piece over.

5. We have come to wish that the Wiggles had made more videos, not because we like the Wiggles even slightly, but because listening to a variety of annoying videos is preferable to listening to the same annoying video over and over. (Can any of you veteran parents recognize this request? "uhhMEE uhhhMEEE")

6. We have stopped rolling our eyes when we see kids throwing a fit in stores or running wild in a restauarant and we have stocked up on suckers and other tools of bribery.

7. We have come to understand how you can so powerfully love someone that so powerfully frustrates you as he so pwerfully makes you laugh and then so powerfully gives you a bloody lip with a very well intentioned kiss that you wouldn't trade for anything!

Those are my thoughts for the day. Gotta go - it's time to restart the video!