Well, I already showed you the marshmallows.
This was a bad move all around. I now cannot drink hot chocolate without them. And I keep forgetting that I don’t want to drink hot chocolate every day.
But I’ve made it worse.
I discovered that if you add a third a cup of cocoa powder to gelatin mixture when you warm it, you get these:
Cocoa marshmallows.
Oh, friends. Where I have gone, do not follow.
Especially don’t do this.
Some day, when he is capable of rational thought, Amos will reflect on birth order theory and its alleged effect on personality, and he will scoff.
But he will be wise enough to be grateful for birth order and its effect on his parents‘ personality.
Because he benefits immensely from Theo having done it all first.
Anyone want to guess what Amos’s favorite place is?
Well, he was there yesterday.
And the day before that.
And the day before that.
And, you guessed it . . . the day before that.
This morning, guess where I found him. No, seriously. Guess.
I shook my finger at him and said, “No, no, Amos!”
He responded thusly:
But I’m not fooled. This ain’t my first rodeo.
And maybe that’s why it’s less stress-making than it was when Theo did it. Oh, yeah. Been here, done this, clearly didn’t learn my lesson, but I remember how to handle it without losing my cool.
Or, at least, I remember how little losing my cool works on such, um, ebullient personalities.
So, apparently, there’s this thing called Pinterest out there that . . . people . . . like.
I’ve finally started playing around with it.
I’ve figured out how to pin something and how to repin something and what happens when you click on a pin and follow a pinner and all that.
I’m not addicted yet, but I can see that there may be some value to this enterprise.
Do you have any favorite pinners, boards, or what have you?
Have you ever learned something totally new thanks to Pinterest?
Have you already moved on to the Next Cool Thing and forgotten that you even have a Pinterest account?
“Wow, this oatmeal sure is yummy, Mom.”
“Finger-lickin’ good.”
“Good to the last drop! Licking the bowl, it’s so good!”
“Oh em gee, are you serious? The bowl is empty now? How can this be?
WHAT DOES IT MEAN?!”
“Honey, I don’t think it’s supposed to look like that.”
“Well, can you just . . . hold him . . . no, like, his head. There.”
“Oops. Sorry.”
“Uh, okay, I guess I can . . . fix the other . . .”
“Maybe you should do it with him sitting up instead of lying down.”
“Maybe you should try it for ten seconds and then tell me how I should do it.”
“Here, I’ve got him now.”
“Honey, he’s crying. I don’t think you should hold his neck like that.”
“Well, he keeps moving!”
“Um . . . maybe Isaac can entertain him enough to keep him still.”
“Aaaaaaaaaamos! Amos, look over here! NO! I mean, over here!”
“Okay, Isaac, you clap while I hold his ear.”
“Can you bend him down a lit– . . . never mind.”
“OH, NO, Amos, DON’T . . . okay, no, go ahead. It’s okay.”
“Maybe we should finish it up when he falls asleep.”
“There’s just that ONE little lock I think I can get . . . if he would . . . well, that’s not . . . awful.”
“Mom, it really doesn’t look so good.”
“You should see how yours looked the first time I cut it. You should be grateful for non-digital cameras.”
“That’s okay. We’ll just tell people Theo did it.”
“No one would believe him if he denied it.”
Isaac and Theo both have many fine qualities.
But Amos sure seems like he’s trying to make both of them look bad. All the time.
This morning, I was trying to teach him how to say please, either verbally or in sign language. He really wasn’t getting it. Fruit, bread, milk, cheese–nothing was tempting him to say “please.”
So I gave up and sat down to my breakfast of sauteed kale and eggs.
He started whining for my food.
I said, “No, Amos, you won’t like it. It’s kale.”
Do you know what he did? Do you know what that little stinker did?
He signed “please.” Like he’d been doing it all his life.
So, of course, I gave him a piece of kale. And he loved it. And kept pestering me for more. By signing “please.”
Little stinker. Don’t get taken in by the cute face.
This one had Stephen, Isaac, and me guffawing out loud.
(GOL isn’t an internet abbreviation. But it should be.)
A nice piece by NPR (no, really!) on the recent election:
I swear, I am not making this up.
This morning, Amos climbed up on the table again.
(I’m sure that part isn’t all that hard to believe.)
I got him down, and I scowled at him, and I said, only half joking, “Go to time out!”
He looked at me, looked toward the stairs, looked at me, and (I swear, I am not making this up) went to the bottom step and sat down.
He stayed relatively seated (still not making this up) for a full minute. I called him over to me, and he came.
I asked him, only half joking, “Amos, why did I give you a time out?”
He put on an I’m Sorry face, looked sadly at the ground, and babbled something.
I said, “Okay, don’t climb on the table again.”
Amos, my one-year-old son, nodded at me and went off to play.
I swear, I am not making this up.
But I haven’t gotten to the funny part yet.
Theo watched all of this with intense interest. When the whole of it had transpired, he turned to me, looked rather seriously in my eyes, and said, “Gosh. He does that better than I do.”
You said it, kid. Not me.
