You Know You're the Parent of a Toddler When...

You leave the house wearing clothing covered with food, and you don't really care. I don't mean you have an old stain on your clothes - I mean there is a glomp of food attached to your leg that you don't even bother to wipe off.

Monday afternoon I left the house for my last final exam of law school (hooray!) wearing a pair of jeans that actually had two giant curry spots on them. The accident happened 2 hours prior to leaving the house, but I didn't bother to change. And THEN, when I got to the final, where I walked among people who do not leave the house wearing food on their clothes, I received TWO separate comments about my curry stains.

COMMENT 1: "Looks like you spilled something on your jeans! Do you want to use my stain remover marker?"

COMMENT 2: "Did a highlighter explode on you?"

Alas, I didn't have it in me to explain that, well, I just didn't care. And I knew that in a couple of hours, I would have cottage cheese, or blueberries, or sweet potato, all over me anyway.

Owen and James Brown

The (Little) Music Man

I am a big fan of singing in the car - really loud, breeze through your hair kind of singing. And in the past few weeks, Owen has become a fan as well.

I was driving home, the windows down, the music up, when Owen started "singing" along with loud "aaaahhhhhs" while kicking his legs back and forth. Then he started clapping. It was great!

But Owen's love of music has also ended one of our favorite nighttime rituals of singing lullabies. I would be singing and rocking him back and forth in the rocking chair. The lights were out. Owen was nursing. And then he would start clapping. Or better yet, he would sit up, milk spewing onto my lap and his pajamas, and clap.

That ended the lullabies. But just for now. Or maybe I need to pick songs that will really put him to sleep instead of making him into a party animal right before he drops off to sleep.