Jam-master Jeffrey

My son, Jeffrey is 9 months and has several toys that play music, or count to ten, or otherwise try to educate him. (An aside--thank you to the toymakers who have included volume settings on noise-toys). Jeffrey's at a stage where he's thrilled with trying to pull himself up on things, and uses whatever he can as a prop to get himself more vertical. One of his favorite toys is his "KiddieTrain," an educational toy with letters, numbers, and animal sounds, that turns on automatically when any of the buttons are touched. His favorite thing to do with this toy is to lean on it and spin the train's wheels. The result is that once he places his hand on it to lean, the nice train lady starts talking, except since his entire wobbly weight rests on the same buttons, she keeps trying to tell him that "Thi..Thi...Thi...This is the letter...this is the letter...this is the letter JAY." Sounds like a bad '80's rap.

A Fly-by shatting

This morning I took my 8-month old for a walk. As I was pushing his stroller through the parking lot, I took a direct hit from above of digested...whatever it is that birds eat. A big clump of it, right on my clean white shirt. It reminded me of several things, in no certain order:

1. that this would provide perfect fodder for a long-overdue post
2. the time when my dad took a similar hit, while in a convertible and proudly wearing his expensive cashmere blazer
3. at some point, as parents my husband and I will have to come to consensus on the terminology to use with our son to refer to what landed on me. It's amazing how many options there are. And our usually trusty "What to Expect" book doesn't offer any suggestions. My mom used to say, when I complained of a stomach ache, "Did you have a 'B.M.' today?" I'm not sure how long it took me to understand what she meant, but that one seems pretty obscure. I've never liked the "#2" way of differentiating. Like Mike Rowe from Dirty Jobs, who comes into contact with quite a bit of the stuff on his show, we'll probably just call it "poo" and hope it won't affect the boy's opinion of Winnie.