The One About Energy and Everyday

The Swooper and the Sentinel

I wasn't too surprised to find her airborne in this photo.

The surprise would have been finding a photo of them where she wasn't.

The One About Funny, Frustrating and Fascinations

Some of the stuff that's rattling around in my noggin....

• The Eggroll has now learned to declare that she's "okay". Now, it's fabulous that she's using her words, but the "I'm okay" declaration comes after she makes any kind of noise at all. Flush the toilet? "I'm okay!" Drop a crayon? "I'm okay!" Stomp your foot? "I'm okay!" Move the chair? "I'm okay!" The list is just about endless. The amusing portion of this is that she's learning about inflection in speech, so the "okay" takes on all different intonnations... I'm O-kay, I'm o-KAY, I'm OOOOkay, Okaaaaaayy. I had no idea that there so darn many.

• Morning dressing around here seems to be taking a bit longer since the Swooper has discovered that he can make the Eggroll insane. He currently feels that it's his job to to steal her clean clothes. Oddly enough, he has no interest in the dirty stuff. He sits patiently waiting for her to be in the middle of taking off her PJ's or putting on her underwear and then he sidles up, picks up whatever has been left unattended, and saunters away. Funniest moment that I didn't have a camera for?? The Eggroll confronting the Swooper. He with her socks in his mouth and she naked as a jaybird, hands on hips telling him that those sock are "not yours".

•  Our home improvement investment this year involved a new airconditioner, furnace and a tankless hot water heater. As usual, it started out simple (Boob sweat! Fix my AC!) and morphed into a project. (AC unit too small for house, furnace cannot accommodate larger unit and what the hell, as long as you're in there let's do the water heater) Now while I currently have no idea whether or not the HE airconditioner is saving us any money, I'm pleasantly surprised to report that the water heater is costing us about half as much to run as the standard tank heater we had previously. Add that to the constant hot water, and well, you have a happy Nyt. A Nyt that can be found floating in her giant tub WHILE the washer's running! Nirvana!

• We are on our third faucet for the kitchen sink. When the first two went bad, I pleaded with handyman guy to check the old water heater. I figured that the tank had to be sending bits of something through the lines that kept screwing up my kitchen faucet. 3 faucets in 3 years?? He scolded me for even thinking that, the water heater might be bad, after all it wasn't leaking. After replacing the original heater with the tankless, he declared that I should never have another problem, since all the sludge and decay that was screwing up my faucets was now gone. I found myself somewhere between confusion and vindication....

• Much to Himself's consternation, the Eggroll knows her motorcycles. She can pick out a Harley and loudly declares the rest "rice burners". My bad.....
  

The One About Enforcer Bunny

This sweet looking critter is the "Enforcer Bunny" and he rules the Eggroll with an iron carrot....

During our trip to the Great Southwest, a friend of mine left the bunny on the doorstep. She called to tell me it was there and I brought it in and set it on the counter while Eggroll was napping.

It was one of those "throwdown" days, where every fifteen minutes Eggroll was having a fit over one thing or another. I forgot about the bunny on the counter, and later on that evening, she noticed it. She immediately declared it "Eggroll's Bunny". I was exhausted, and I'd had enough for the day. I told her she could have the bunny when she had a day with no "fits".

Bunny sat on the counter for two days. Each day she'd ask me about it and each day I told her she could have it when she went a day without a fit. On the third day, while I was putting her to bed, I asked her which one of her stuffed hippos she'd like to sleep with. She looked at me and began wagging her finger back and forth. And then, my child, who rarely speaks more than three words together, said "No fits today, I can have the bunny"..... She got the bunny and I laughed until the tears ran.

Since then, Bunny has become the enforcer. Fits can be quelled instantly with the threat of Bunny denial...

I love the bunny...

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The One About The Stuff We Teach Our Kids
Without Really Trying...

Before the Eggroll's arrival, I had made a conscience effort to control my language. Let's face it folks, I spent my formative years in the garage or the bar with a bunch of grease monkeys and felons. Then there were the years on the floor of the commodities exchange. It would not be an exaggeration when I say I could make a sailor blush.. and not in a good way either. I calmed down some over the years, but, like any other human being, I'm flawed. And let's face it, sometimes a good !*&@# just fits the occasion, or the person...whatever...

One we got the referral for the Eggroll, I started on a mini-mouth-makeover. I began to substitute ordinary or nonsense words for the offensive ones. I tried...oh how I tried.. And now my child....well...my child has learned a few things....

While searching for something that Himself had put away, I declared him a "pinhead". Now, if you ask the Eggroll what Daddy is, she'll say "pinhead". She also waves bye-bye to him while declaring "Bye-bye Pinhead!" I'd nip this behavior in the bud if I wasn't laughing so damn hard.

Inanimate objects frustrate me. One evening, while trying to get a movie to load in the DVD player I started madly pushing the button and yelling "HELLO!?! HELLO!?!" at the television screen. Now, when you turn on a DVD the Eggroll says to the screen "Hello, hello, movie"

I chatter incessantly to my child. It's supposed to be good for her language skills. When going through a store, or running errands, I usually say "we're moving on" when one task is finished. The other day, while I was comparing prices at the local Tarjay, my child, apparently bored in the cart, started yelling.."Moving on, we're moving on!" We moved right on to the ladies room before I wet my pants.

Then there's the whole road rage thing... I've got it.. I accept it... Recently, after a particular test of my driving reflexes, I ended up in the wrong lane. I swerved rather roughly and after the "Wheeee!" from the small child, I said something like "sorry baby, Momma did the stupid". Now my kid looks up at me in the kid mirror and says "momma stoooopid". Again, I'd correct that one too if it didn't make me laugh so hard.....

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The One Where Sweet Isn't Just For Candy

Seriously, the cute is almost painful..... and it scored her a ton of sugar....the real kind.....
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