She Doesn't Need Us :-(

Lately I've been running into more and more reminders that Alexis has a life away from us. Obviously, I understand that while she's at daycare she's going to be exposed to things and people that we don't know about. But it's still throws me for a loop when I hear her say someones name that I don't know. For example, she introduced me to Tyler at daycare today. This weekend, I was downright shocked when I started to sing "If you're happy and you know it" to her only to learn she already knows it. She's got all kinds of little hand motions that go with the tune. I had no idea. And then there's the fact that she has started to say parts of the alphabet. I was just starting to think about trying to teach it to her. Apparently daycare has been doing it for a while.

Probably the most blatant example of her learning things from someone other than me and Daddy is her mad phone skills. It's no secret that no adults in this house are known for their telephone using abilities. I'm thinking that the fact that Alexis is real good at carrying on a phone conversation is evidence that somebody in her world is a pro. I'm guessing that someone has red hair and adores Alexis, but that's just my guess. (BTW, the quality of this video is horrendous. I apologize for that, but it didn't occur to me to turn on more lights when Miss Chats-a-Lot decided to sit still and carry on with her invisible phone partner.)

And now, it's time for y'all to try to guess what that sound is in the background. You're only hint is that it pretty much never stops at our house.

To Prewash or Not to Prewash

I find it utterly amazing the number of people that find this blog by Googling things like "infant poop coin if she eats it" and "prewash baby clothes." I suppose the former is made with attempts at finding stories detailing others' experiences. Fair enough. I can't help anyone with that because so far our child has been kind enough to not actually swallow any forbidden objects (as far as we know). Now if you want to hear about bulldogs eating things, that I can do. We have witnessed the art of eating and passing Legos, crayons, entire turkey carcasses, shoe heels, footstool legs, toy stuffing, plastic, and much, much more. Really, it would take hours to detail the things that Meg has eaten. It's more like, what hasn't she eaten?

So instead of going down that path, let me speak to the latter of the intriguing Google searches. I have come to the conclusion that anyone that Googles "prewash baby clothes" must be trying to figure out whether or not they should do it. The fact that you would ask Dr. Google that question in and of itself says a lot about you, but I won't even begin to go there. Instead, here are the pros and cons as I see them:

Pros:
1. Clothes, in general, go some pretty gross places before they hit store racks. And I'm not just talking about the sweat shop in China where the fabric was made. I worked retail for a lot of years. I could tell you a great little story about a box and a small four-legged creature, but my brain shuts down when I try to access that memory. Just trust me when I say new clothes are NOT clean. At all.
2. Prewashing baby clothes will, in theory, make them softer. Softer is probably a good thing.

Cons:
1. Do you prewash your own clothes? No? Anything real bad come of it? (Other than the time that you didn't prewash the dark jeans that specifically stated you needed to prewash them if you didn't want smurf blue skin--that doesn't count.)
2. Have you ever heard an infant complain about his or her clothes not being prewashed? Me neither.
3. I guarantee you that no matter what you do, there will be clothes that will never get worn. That's just the way that it is. If you prewash it, you can't exchange it for diapers. That baby will wear every one of those that you have in your house in a matter of days.
4. Did you know that babies spit up A LOT? As in every five minutes a lot? Think about that for a second. Now, if you are the kind of person that is pondering prewashing baby clothes, then you are probably the kind of person that won't want your bundle of joy lounging around in stained clothing. So you'll be changing those clothes faster than Lindsay Lohan changes rehabs. And you'll be doing fourteen loads of laundry every day to keep up with the quick changes. Do you really want to start with the all day laundry battles now?
5. Don't you have better things to do with your time than wash a bunch of clothes that haven't even been worn in a fitting room? (Think about it--no 3-month old is hanging out at the Gap fitting room seeing how their butt looks in that pair of bootleg jeans.) If you do have that kind of time, then I suggest you sit your butt on the couch and stare at the walls for a few hours. Enjoy the sheer boredom of it all. When that monster miracle pops out, life as you know it IS OVER. You'll be lucky if you get to brush your teeth once a week let alone do anything fun like sit and do nothing.

So, there you have it. Now I shall await the phone call from my Mother-in-Law chastising me for being so irresponsible as to not have prewashed Alexis' baby clothes.

Bopwan Fooleg Waffles Ehnosoo Bop Elmo Aaangto Dora!

It started about two weeks ago. The speaking in complete sentences, I mean. Alexis and I drug Daddy to a playground. He claims he is going to die of boredom at a park someday. Apparently watching your one-year old squeal with glee as she slides isn't exciting enough for him. On that particular day, he was in luck. Just as Alexis managed to climb to the top of Mt. Slide Alot, my nose detected a familiar odor. I don't know about you, but I consider slide time done when there's a present in a diaper. Nothing good can come of leaving that situation as is for any length of time, especially when sitting and squishing is most likely involved. So we went back to the car and did a quick change. At that particular park, it's about a five minute walk to and from the playground, so Daddy decided we were done. He strapped little Miss So Fresh and So Clean in her car seat just as she started saying "I want to slide." She said it nicely at first, but as we started to back out of the parking lot, it quickly turned to "I WANT TO SLIDE, DAMN IT!" (OK, maybe she didn't actually say "damn it", but it was definately implied.). There was much screaming and hollering, but it was quickly silenced by some parental pride. After all, no other child has ever before managed to put four words together to create a sentence.

Perhaps we displayed a bit too much pride. For now, no matter what she's saying, Alexis builds everything into a sentence. The problem? She's pretty limited by her vast knowledge of nouns and NO OTHER kinds of words. I think she has two verbs: want and eat. You can get pretty far with them, but we're not exactly talking about a mastery of the English language there. As for adjectives, she signs "grumpy" and can say/sign lots and lots of colors, BUT SHE HAS NO IDEA WHAT THEY MEAN. In fact, I'm really beginning to think she may be color blind. If I ask her what color something is, it's blue. It doesn't matter what it actually looks like, it's just blue. If I ask her the color of a second item, it will be whatever color I said the first thing was. And the third item? It takes on the color of the second item. When she loses track or forgets, she resorts back to blue. So without verbs or adjectives, you're pretty much stuck with making up your own words when you try to describe something. That means we get long strings of gibberish, with a real word or two thrown in for good measure. Somehow we are supposed to understand this new little person language, but it's not really working out. I know Alexis was telling me something about Elmo, Dora, and some waffles earlier, but I don't know what it was. And she's still mad at me for it.