how much do I want this t-shirt & other various things

right?

wow.

it's been a while since I've posted here & so I felt like I needed to do something here.

what is new? let's have a mina update:

mina now says "no no no" while wagging her finger at you.

the other day she shook her head yes, with a very sincere face, to every question you asked her.

now she says no to every question you ask her. including "do you want to say no?"

she also says flower & yellow (her first two 2-syllable words), as well as stuck, up, down (mostly she says "uuuuuuuuuuuuup! dooooooooooooooooooooown!"), shoes, water "wawa," & calls herself "nana."

she's a real person. & kind of ornery sometimes. I wish she was a bit more cuddly. it's like you have to get in your cuddles when she's tired or not paying attention. like someone said the other day, "you don't have a baby, you have a cat!" which is exactly true. she'll come & give kisses when she wants but try & sneak a smooch & you'll get the grubby little hand to the face.

we're at this point where she is getting to be a little tyrant & we're supposed to "break" her or something, lest she become this little terror no one wants to be around. you know, we were so busy reading pregnancy books when I was pregnant that we forgot to read the baby books, then we were busy with the baby books & now I'm finally getting around to the other ones. who knew it would be this difficult? I mean, why the hell did no one say, oh hey, by the way, these first years are crucial to mina's social formation for um, the rest of her life?

I realize I rarely talk about mamahood here (I mean, in comparison with how much time I spend as a mama). and perhaps it's so I have a space where I don't have to be constantly IN it. but it's a lot. really. like it literally brings up every issue one can have in life, which is good, but you're basically practicing a social experiment on a human being. & you know, maybe there should be a license for that? who knows if we're doing a good job? who can tell when you're so close to it? I think that's how families become dysfunctional--you get into this groove of just trying to get through things without having the chance to get a little distance to make changes. like we still rock mina to sleep, though we've been told a million times to put her down while she's still sleepy. sometimes she'll do it, or I should say, she has done it a few times, but mostly we want her to go to sleep, so we'll rock her to sleep & put her down. I mean, it gets the job done faster, but I swore after being a nanny for so long, I'd make sure my child could go to sleep on her own. oh well. it's not the end of the world I suppose. I mean, I'm not going to have to rock her to sleep when she's in college. & of course, it is the only time she lays in my arms peacefully...so perhaps there's a part of me that likes it. which is what all the books say, look at how you contribute to the behavior & if you're actually ready for change.

look at the kind of process I'm making here. before your very eyes. what do I need to pay a shrink for?