He's either got a future on stage or perhaps insurance fraud. Tale of a Toddler.

Short Stuff, as I have mentioned, is something of a clever monkey and we keep a close eye on his actions lest he, I don't know, disassemble the television or something.

He is, at this point, proficient with stairs unless he gets distracted, but for safety is not permitted to be on them alone. The following incident has occurred three separate times:

The J was playing with his assortment of cars and trucks in the family room while I loaded the dishwasher. Our house has an open floor plan, so the kitchen and family room are kind of like one long room. After a minute or so, he silently got up and trotted down the hallway towards the front door and the stairs. I followed to see him sit down on the bottom step, nodding to himself. Seemingly lost in thought, he patted the carpeted stair and nodded again. Then he bent at the waist and leeeeeaaned forward slowly, until he slid off of his seat and was lying on his stomach a the base of the stairs.

Then, he lifted one leg up behind him and placed it on the stairs. The action was repeated for the other leg, after which he spread both arms out to the side and then put his face straight down.

And then? He began to moan and groan.

If I had not stood there watching this entire set-up, I would certainly have assumed he'd fallen on the stairs and apparently that was EXACTLY what Short Stuff was thinking.

"Nice show," I told him, "You do know I was watching the whole time, right? Cut the drama, silly man."

And he scrambled up and giggled and ran off to play some more.

Don't ask me where he got the idea to do this.

Managing my stress is stressing me out. But who's hungry??

Some people manage their stress through meditation or crying or painting or racquetball or eating or drinking or whatever. Me? I am prone to handling stress in two ways. If its the minor-but-annoying sort of stress, I dye my hair. If its the I-think-my-head-is-about-to-pop-off-and-roll-down-the-hall kind, I go crazy in the kitchen.

This weekend? Was a go crazy kind of couple of days.

It resulted in two batches of snickerdoodles, lemon lamb ragout over noodles, meat pie, chicken soup with homemade spaetzle, roasted and pureed butternut squash, sweet potato pudding and buttermilk biscuits.

And although this made everyone else delighted, it wound up creating three dishwasher loads of dishes, plus all the things that needed to be handwashed, sweeping up the flour I spilled and cleaning the counters 9 times.

And I seriously need to wash the kitchen floor now.

I need to find some way to manage my stress that doesn't make more work for me.


Also... Short Stuff has been sick this weekend. Not surprising, since I caught the current office plague midweek last week and it knocked me on my tush. Friday night started off badly, my husband and I getting into a rolicking, loud, painful argument after J was asleep that resulted in bitterness and hurt feelings... a horrible, wet sounding coughing from Short Stuff's room around midnight put the argument to rest for good as we both responded to his whimpers. Now, I know better than to stand behind both horses and cows. You'd think by now I would have also learned not to stand behind my husband when he picks up a sick child. Alas, both for J and me, he was immediately sick to his stomach. What is it about motherhood that turns you into someone that might once have covered your eyes in horror at a hangnail, but now lets you embrace a whimpering child without flinching at the vomit coating both of you?

Needless to say, I didn't get much sleep after that. By the end of the weekend, we had to make a trip to the after-hours pediatrician and Short Stuff has a humdinger of a raging ear infection and strep. My poor monkey has not had a good weekend.

But the only part of it he's complained about? The part that distresses him to the core? Not the high fevers, not the pain in his head, not the coughing that kept him up all night. Nope. He's horrified and I mean absolutely APPALLED by the fact that he's gotten "boogies." "Is TEWWIBLE!!" he tells me, waving his hands around for added emphasis. Go figure.

And after all that, the thing I felt most like doing was cooking. Clearly, the stress is getting to me.

Oops, all fresh out of supposedly witty titles.

Rock on with myself. But I have a working, REALLY working, computer of my own now AND a internet-capable cell phone where the keypad is not peeling away and the keys really work. It bites when most of your communication tools take a flying leap at the same time. I had to resort to my old standbys... smart mouth, mostly. It didn't get me far.

Mom's finished her radiation and first round of chemo and had her first surgrey on Halloween. She came home from the hospital last week and is doing well, all things considered. The surgeon said he was very pleased at the outcome of the surgery and he's pretty certain he got it all. For now, she recovers before the next round of chemo.