Addendum to the infamy

Last night I carefully got into bed, so as not to disturb Gaz, who was out cold. I was very careful not to shake the bed too much or bump into her. And then I sneezed loud enough to wake the dead. Gaz shifted a bit in her sleep, and mumbled "I farted," before rolling over to snuggle with me.

It took all the energy I had left at that hour of night to not wake her up laughing.

A day that will live in infamy.

Gaz has known the word "fart" for quite some time now. She knows (or at least has been exposed to) other kinder, gentler ways of expressing the same sentiment, but we all know which is the shortest road to the labeling of flatulence.

Today we had some tofu for lunch that maybe was a little closer to its expiration date than I thought, and I'm guessing that was what led to the musical afternoon and evening we had. But the real fun happened when, during naked time*, she was running around the dining room table, propelled by some vile posterior force, shouting to us "I farted! I farted! I farted!" Because you know the first time she made the declaration at all, she couldn't just stop with saying it once. I suppose it didn't help that she was repeatedly gassy as she ran around the table. She finished the display by running to leap onto the couch between Mark and me, holding her backside the whole time, rolling around in glee as she told us again for the 10th through 30th times that she "farted."

And since she was so insistent on letting us know about her wind issues, I felt it was my moral duty to let you all know that today Gaz farted. But she'll probably tell you all about it the next time you see her.

Also, she learned how to shoot herself in the face with breastmilk while trying to convince me that one breast was empty. It's been one of those days.

* Naked time is that period of time between when her diaper comes off and when bath time commences. The joys of running around diaperless for a few minutes in the evenings takes some of the sting out of the indignity of having her teeth brushed by mean old Mom.

of feet and failure

Gaz loves fingerpaints, but we have none at home. (I prefer to keep the mess at Nana and Papa's house for now.) She has discovered that she can use her Color Wonder markers to turn her hands and feet into stamps, and all without ruining her clothes and the carpet. She really loves making footprints, and now I marvel at how much work it took to ink her foot while she slept in order to get a print while she was just a few months old. Now I have to tell her "enough" when the page looks like a multicolored blur.

We've got a couple of good prints that aren't too smudgey, which brought on the realization that Gaz's feet really are huge. She has new, flashy Dora sneakers, size 7. We've always had to buy shoes for her based on the chubbiness of the middles of her feet, so I haven't been thinking so much about overall foot size. I can no longer deny that my little girl has enormous dogs. The mind boggles.

Gaz has a new favorite sentence: "I can't do it!" It is not my favorite, for obvious reasons. She runs into a problem (sometimes something we can fix, sometimes she wants to walk on the ceiling) and she disintegrates into a flood of "I can't do it," repeated ad nauseum, regardless of what encouragement or assistance is offered. It's simultaneously heartbreaking and annoying. We're still working on ways to defuse the I-can't bomb that don't exacerbate her temper that we're contradicting her.

On a happier note, she suddenly started calling me Doctor Mommy. "Sure, Doctor Mommy! Here you go, Doctor Mommy!" I have no idea where this came from, but it's cute and it's nice and it makes me forget that sometimes she "can't."