Geometry sucks. Seriously, I’m feeling moderately confident about my GRE math review so far, but ever since I hit the geometry crap, I’ve got no clue what’s going on. Do I really need to know how to get the area of the shaded part of a triangle that has been drawn inside a rectangle with a superimposed circle over everything? I highly doubt it. So a break for some better things.
I don’t believe I’ve shared our nickname for our daughter with the full group. More often than not, when talking to M., we call her Tootie rather than her given name. Tootie McTooterson, that is. Tootie as in toot as in fart. See the kid, like most babies, isn’t afraid to rip them off any time she needs to. Let’s face it, farting may not be mature or appropriate in mixed company, but it’s always funny. A well-timed fart can erase the tension from even the most difficult situation. It can knock even the coolest cat off their game.
I’ve been admonished at great length to stop laughing hysterically when I’m holding M. and she decides to fill her diapers up. I can’t help myself; it’s quite possible the funniest thing I’ve ever seen. More often than not, the bowels decide to move either during or just after she takes a bottle. She’ll stop feeding or interacting and get a glazed look on her face. Her eyes tear up. The tip of her tongue sneaks out of her mouth. When it’s time to get things moving, her shoulders hunch up to her ears, her chin juts forward, and she starts grunting. It’s usually the grunting that gets me. If I’m not already laughing, when the noise from down under kicks in, there’s a pretty good chance I’m going to lose it. No matter what S. says, I don’t think my reaction affects M. in any way. She goes about her business, grunting, straining, and farting as need be, then relaxes and gets the biggest grin on her face (In the past couple weeks she’s thrown in a laugh or two). In general she’s a very happy baby, but she’s particularly happy when we get that nasty diaper off of her. I think she puts up with my laughing because she knows she’s going to be freed from her Pamper prison for a few minutes soon.
The tooting isn’t always associated with filling the drawers, though. I think my favorite comes when I go to wake her up. I’ll reach down softly to touch her and slowly wake her. As soon as my hand comes into contact with her, riiiiiip. It’s as though she got it out to the very edge, and was concentrating on holding it in, but I surprised her and it escaped. It always makes me think of my grandmother, who would try to hold them in when she walked to the bathroom, and never make it more than halfway through the room before they started slipping out. If you’ve not had the pleasure of experiencing them, baby farts are, well, less mature I guess than adult farts. M.’s, for example, tend to be higher pitched and shorter that those of an adult. Sunday night, however, she nearly knocked S. and I both off of our kitchen stools. She was sleeping in her crib in the living room while we quietly ate dinner. She ripped one off that would have made a 19 year old college boy proud. We nearly choked on our pasta trying to stifle our laughs. Later in the evening, as she and S. napped on one end of the couch while I watched the World Series on the other, she ripped tiny fartlets off every five minutes or so, each one followed by a small moan.
Just as it’s not terribly mature to fart in public after you’re seven, it’s probably not mature to joke about your three-month-old daughter’s bowel sounds. I can’t help it, though. The kid kills me. And that’s why we call her Tootie.