Author: Shannon

[Scene:  Liam and I are sitting at the table having a snack after he woke up from his nap.  He’s having a granola bar (which he calls a chocolate bar) and I’m having cheese and peanuts.]

Liam:  Cheese!  Please!

Shannon:  This is my snack, Liam.  I’ll be happy to give you a piece of cheese after you finish your chocolate bar.

Liam:  [takes a bit of his granola bar] Please have some cheese now?

Shannon:  You may not have any cheese until you finish all of your chocolate bar.

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Just add this to the long list of things I never thought I’d say to my child…

Liam is currently taking his first nap in his big boy bed.

I am currently sitting downstairs emotionally eating No Pudge brownies with my eyes glued to the video monitor.

He’s not been totally still since I left the room (we had one major turning over episode a few minutes ago and again just a few seconds ago) but (knock wood) it appears that he’s at least resting at this point.  Judging by what his blanket generally looks like after a nap, tossing and turning is his MO, but I’ve never used a video monitor to observe before, so I’m kind of fascinated.

This is a big deal (both for him and for me) and I really hope it goes well.  Anything has to be better than what he was doing in there earlier while I was feverishly trying to get rid of all the hazards I could see and I came back into the room to find him with the (previously plugged in) cord to his lamp in his hand, all of his t-shirts pulled out of his drawer and all over the floor, and approximately 30 board books all over his bed.  I had been gone all of 3 minutes…

Fingers crossed, fingers crossed, fingers crossed.

For the past few months, whenever Liam does something accidentally that he’d rather he hadn’t done, he’s been saying (what we thought was) “Oh, Crackers!”  While adorable, it was also very confusing, since neither of us says anything remotely like this and we couldn’t figure out where he picked it up.

We had just chalked it up to being one of those great mysteries of life.  Until this morning.

Liam was watching an episode of Super Why while Matt was showering and I was waking up.  This morning’s episode took the gang into the story of The Ugly Duckling (they always jump into a classic fairy tale and change the story to solve some sort of a problem) and all of a sudden from the television I think I hear “Oh, Crackers!”

Obviously, my attention was immediately piqued and when I turned over in bed I saw that it was the story of a duckling who was trying to learn to swim.  He was saying “Oh, Quackers!” each time he had trouble.  I guess this is what I get for having had morning sickness and letting my child watch PBS on a loop for a month or so.  Also, this is just another reminder that his mind is a sponge, because I never left him alone in front of the TV, so he must have seen this episode once while I felt particularly crummy and wasn’t paying attention and then not only picked up the phrase but started using it in context immediately.

In any event:  mystery solved.

I’m not sure if Liam realizes it, but he’s just begging me to take off his clothes completely and let him learn the hard way about how to use the toilet (and more importantly, when).  The fact that he is now using the crackers he’s given with his hummus as a shovel (i.e. he simply uses the same cracker for the duration of his meal and licks all the hummus off over and over) is a sure sign that he’s ready, I’m guessing?  I mean, surely he knows that at some point the hummus poo is going to do me in…or maybe it’s all a part of some sort of sinister plan?

There aren’t many salads that I love more than those which include spinach, goat cheese, dried cranberries, toasted pecans, and raspberry vinaigrette dressing.  In line with yesterday’s post on the major differences in what I’m craving this go-round I thought I’d put together a summary of today’s lunch, which was a variation on my favorite spinach salad, complete with tips from yours truly.  Here goes:

• The tariff on goat cheese that is already crumbled is worth every penny (yes, I’m aware of how uppity that sounds).
• Even if there is a price difference between the two, baby spinach is far preferable to the full-grown variety.  It’s more tender and less bitter and makes a significant difference in the outcome of the salad.
• Adding white button mushrooms is a very good idea.
• Adding grape tomatoes isn’t as good of an idea.
• Adding crumbled turkey bacon instead of the nuts to the mix makes it into ecstasy in a bowl.

Now if I could just figure out what the hormones are that are causing these cravings and bottle them, I could be a millionaire.