A rare weekend post. Tomorrow is the day the plumbers/electrical people come to hopefully repair our sewer problems for good. It’s only supposed to be 90, so going with out A/C won’t suck at all. Thankfully, I found a sitter so I can stay here and monitor the work while M. chills in climate-controlled nirvana.

Here’s a running diary of my morning with M. Friday.

4:45: M. cries. Wake up and check her. She’s rolling around, grinding her binky against her gums. Damn teething! I pick her up and let her rest against my chest for about ten minutes. She’s out, but I know if I put her back to bed, she’ll just wake up again in 15 minutes.
4:55: Grab a blanket and lay down on the couch. M. takes a few minutes to get comfortable, but eventually falls into an uneasy sleep. I say uneasy because as soon as I fall asleep, she moves around and wakes me up. She also manages to get her hair right against my chin or nose, so it constantly tickles me. Make mental note to shave it all off later in the day.
5:30: She’s slumbering peacefully, but my back hurts from my awkward position so I can’t sleep.
5:55: She starts to wake up, staring at the ceiling and jabbering.
6:00: British Open comes on. Finally, something to watch! Get M.’s milk and sit back to watch some golf. She loves her milk, you know.
6:30: Check OLN. No Tour de France until 7:30 today?
6:31: Curse the French.
6:45: Someone has poopies. It’s not daddy.
6:50: Change diaper. As soon as I get her cleaned, M. flips over, laughs, and crawls away from me bare-assed. I grab her and put her on her clean diaper. Someone in the Open makes a putt and the crowd applauds. M. claps along with them. Funniest moment of the morning.
7:10: The Today Show really sucks these days.
7:15: Freaking <a href=”http://empyrealenvirons.blogs.com/empyreal_environs/2005/07/falter.html”>A-Rod</a>.
7:20: M. seems uninterested in my monologue about how the <a href=”http://sports.espn.go.com/golf/britishopen05/news/story?id=2109938″ id=”2109938″>greatest golfer of all-time and his heir apparent</a> are dominating coverage on TNT this morning. Apparently, sucking your own toes is more interesting than this golf history lesson.
7:40: Is that mommy I hear upstairs? Crying from M..
7:45: S. gets up and relieves me.

Still no walking. Unless S. holds her hands, that is, then she struts around like a champ. I predict she’ll walk one week from Monday, which of course is her birthday.

Although her recognizable vocabulary is still pretty much “mama” and “dada,” she does have some other “words” that she reuses in similar situations. Example, when she’s babbling about something, she often uses the term “Bop-mmm.” I don’t know if she’s dyslexic and means “mmm-bop” or what, but we hear that a lot. Anytime she sees a duck, she said “Bah-bah-bah” which is about as close to “quack-quack-quack” as she can come. “M., what does a duck say?” “Bah-bah-bah.” Always three times. She even points at the <a href=”http://duckgear.aflac.com/ccduckgear/”>Aflac duck</a> and says “bah-bah-bah.” Very cute.

I think kids enjoy repeating things because parents force them to. You know how little kids want to be swung around over-and-over, or go down a slide 50 times, etc.? I used to think that was because repetition is a learning tool or their complete lack of cyncism and total devotion to the pleasure of the moment was what caused it. Now I believe it’s because the typical kid has to put up with this from their parents:
“M., how big are you? Where’s the fan? What does the duck say? Where is your tongue? Where’s your mommy?” Repeated about 20 times a day. I can only blame myself when she wants to read the same book ten times before bed each night next year.

Another cute but somewhat unfortunate development is M.’s kissing skills. She was learning how to blow kisses when we were in KC, so some of you saw that. She puts her palm against her mouth and holds it. She hasn’t really learned how to blow it away yet. If you asked her for a kiss, though, she would slowly lean into you and put her forehead against yours. Very sweet. Yesterday, though, she spit out her binky and came at me with an open mouth. Like 20 times. I need to explain that we’re not in Kentucky (no offense to any Kentucky readers out there) so French kissing your dad isn’t cool. It is pretty funny though. When I turn and put my cheek towards her, she thinks it’s great fun. She’s now connected “Give daddy/mommy a kiss” with the action, too. “<a href=”http://www.imdb.com/title/tt0091042/quotes”>So that’s how it is in their family?</a>”

As I mentioned above, she likes to clap. What’s scary is she now knows when the appropriate moment to clap during her Baby Da Vinci DVD is. A week ago, she wouldn’t clap until she heard the clapping from the screen. Now she starts clapping at the exact moment the kids on-screen clap.

I forget if I mentioned we got M. a wading pool that now sits on our deck last weekend. Thanks to a week of rain, she’s not been able to use it much. But Sunday we took her out and stuck her feet in. She shrieked with delight. 30 seconds later we had stripped her down and dropped her in naked. She loved it. I hope this isn’t a habit that carries over to high school and college. The picture at the beginning of the post was obviously taken last week when we still had the good manners to put our daughter in her bathing suit.

Happy Monday to all. Hope to return Monday night or Tuesday, electrical availability allowing.

Now Playing: <strong>Feels Good</strong> from the album “The Revival” by <a href=”http://www.google.com/search?q=%22Tony%20Toni%20Tone%22″>Tony Toni Tone</a>