Harrison This, Harrison That...

I have a friend...scratch that...HAD a friend who recently made me lose steam for blogging about Harrison.  Within an hour of my last blog post, she deleted me as a friend on Facebook and then got all passive aggressive and pretended it was an accident.  It was pretty gross.  So I'm just going to start this one by saying this:  


If you have any problem with my happiness...get lost.  If you feel like I'm undeserving of what I have...get lost.  If you resent me for having what you want...get lost.  If you can't handle me bragging to the world about the most perfect human being ever created...get lost.  If you consider me going on about how great my life is now a "rant"...you get the idea.  


And now that we have that out of our systems, I will go back to yapping about my child anytime I feel compelled to, and now happens to be one of those times. 


Harrison Peyton Ker...ooooh, you silly little man.  Who told you it was ok to grow up this fast?  I'd like to have a talk with them.  Within the past three weeks, he has taken to rolling over (both ways), holding his bottle himself (sometimes even using his feet), watching grown-up movies with mom and dad, recognizing certain people, reaching for us, and last but not least...."eating" rice cereal.  If you can even call it that. 


Here's my new diet plan.  Harrison taught it to me.  I'm going to strip down to my undies, grab a bowl and a spoon, and feed myself tiny spoonfuls of goo, letting at least half of it dribble back out of my mouth and into my lap.  That way, I get to taste all the gourmet delights that come my way without having to deal with the calories.  And if someone could just have a bubble bath ready and waiting for me when I'm finished, that would be pretty special.  Harrison is not a rice cereal fan.  I think he's starting to get used to it, but I read that babies sometimes have to try something fifteen times before developing a taste for it.  Awesome.  Only nine more feedings until he makes his final decision.  I think it looks like paper mache paste, and could care less if he ever wants it, but we keep trying to do what the doctor says.  Listening to him is starting to feel like listening to your parents tell you what to do.  You know they know best, but it doesn't make following directions any less annoying.  Most of his instructions are met with an internal response by me of, "Ugh! Whatever....fine."  On the outside I just smile and nod.  But in two months, when he asks how the rice cereal went, I may pretend it was great and that we didn't start vegetables three weeks early.  


Also on the list of new activities is giggling.  Harrison is now a pro at laughing, but seems to prefer to save his energy for when daddy is acting like a goofball.  Which is a lot.  YouTube video to follow shortly.  But be warned...Harrison laughing is the best thing in the history of ever, and all other things in life may seem to fall short after you experience it.  How's THAT for bragging?


I'll leave you with some photo evidence of foot-assisted bottle-holding, in case you thought I was kidding.  

The Grass is Greener Over Here

"Families with babies and families without babies are sorry for each other."  ~Ed Howe

Ain't that the truth?  I remember reading this quote when I was single and had plans to stay childless forever.  I saw screaming kids go running from their mothers in the mall and would take comfort in knowing that would never be me.  I remember sitting on the patio one night with Peyton and high-fiving each other for not having kids and getting to do whatever we wanted, whenever we wanted.  Kids, to a person without them, especially to someone who doesn't want them, look like nothing more than an unpotty-trained obligation.  They look like a commitment too overwhelming to ever consider, and a lot of the time, they look dirty and gross too.    

All of those things are true.  

What the people without children don't understand though, is how wonderful all of that stuff is.  I don't get to go to happy-hour anymore, because instead, I have to come home to an adorable baby who is bound to be doing something new and unexpected today, and needs me to take his picture.  I used to look over at mini-vans at red lights and feel so badly for the women driving them.  Poor ladies not only had to put up with incessant yapping from the back seat, they had to drive a nerdy car too.  Lucky me.  Sitting in my convertible by myself, listening to whatever I want to.  Now, I play songs by Moose A. Moose for my four month old, who probably doesn't care what's on the radio, because I like the songs.  

Everything I do for Harrison, right down to cleaning poop from places I didn't know poop could go, makes me ten times happier than anything I ever did for myself.  As I sat in the massage chair getting a pedicure the other day, I grew increasing more frustrated with how long the woman was rubbing my legs before painting my toenails because I just wanted to get home to my baby.  Who even cares if my legs are massaged?  What I have to go home to now is more rewarding and exciting and fun and interesting and fulfilling than anything my life every provided me before.  

I've been on both sides of the fence.  The thing is, people who don't want kids can always change their minds.  People who have them would never want to.  

I don't miss happy hour.  And there's beer in the fridge.

Sometimes Reading is for Stupid People

Since baby Harrison has come along, time has become so much more precious than it used to be, for many reasons.  Every minute of the day is like money being spent, and naturally, we want to spend it on things we want and need, not the things that don't matter.  


For that reason, I would like to say, that if the book I am currently reading was an actual book and not a downloaded iBook on my iPad, I would throw it out the window right now.  I have spent five-hundred pages of my life (which equals who knows how many hours) getting into this dumb story about this girl trying to figure out what killed her brother and a few other people in town.  A murder mystery, right?  Not so much.  Some idiot character in the book actually saw her brother get killed and just didn't want to tell anyone (until page 502) because it turns out, he was eaten alive by a walking corpse wearing a 3-piece suit in a cemetery.  Are you f*&!ing kidding me?!  There is a giant pile of laundry in the corner of my bedroom that needs folding!!  Oh, and by the way, he was gay and dying of AIDS but was scared to tell ya, lady.  THAT'S the part of the story she found unbelievable, by the way.  "But...why didn't he just tell me he was gay?"  Beware the FREE DOWNLOADS on iBooks.  When was the last time you walked into a Barnes & Noble and were just handed a book?  "Here.  Free of charge.  Our gift to you."  NEVER.  I should have thought of that two weeks ago when I started this..."novel".  NOTHING worth having is ever free.  


"He looked back as the creature popped out one of Nick's eyeballs, devouring it with what looked like an insatiable hunger."  


There are no words...


Anyhoo, that wasn't even going to be my point, but this just happened to me last night, while Peyton was out of town and my time was therefore all-the-more precious.  There are no less then nineteen other things I could have been doing that I would not be embarrassed to talk about today.  Now I've totally forgotten what I was going to say in the first place - which adds about ten minutes to the amount of my life this book stole from me, because that's how long I just wrote about it.  Sheesh.  


The good news is, this led me to discovering an app called Overdrive Media Console, which allows you to download eBooks and audiobooks from your local library for free.  So next time, I won't have to worry about the cost of a book, and can just read something worthwhile instead.  


Seriously...he got eaten alive.


I'm so sorry, Harrison.