Lupus?! Is It Lupus?!

The latest addition to our festival of toys is the Johnny Jumper or Johnny Jump Up or Jeffrey Hop Around ... whatever it's called, Scooter Bicks of Sweetness gets a big kick out of it. I discovered that I could take mini-movies with my camera and got some adorable bouncing footage that I cannot figure out how to attach to the blog. Eowyn, help! What voodoo magic do you have to perform to post a video?

Andrew and I went on an exciting adventure to Kroger the other day, just to pick up a few essentials (milk, bread, tea bags, tea cookies, cream for tea ...). Since I wasn't planning on a major shopping experience, I just slung a basket over one arm and pushed the stroller with the other. At the self-checkout place, I decided to put the bread on Andrew's lap instead of in the basket under his stroller where the other goodies were going, and while I turned around to grab the last of my purchases, he started gumming the corner of the grocery bag. A vigilant Kroger employee rushed to the stroller and removed the edge of the Plastic Bag of Death from his chubby fingers, saying something like, "Ohhh, lets not eat the Plastic Bag of Death." I smiled at her as I left the store and she replied with a stony, "Have a nice day" which could clearly be interpreted as, "You are the most horrible human being I have ever come into contact with and I would like strike you with a tire iron." I'm glad I didn't stick the bag over his head and hand him the flaming hot steak knives as I had originally intended.

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Thanks to Eowyn-Wan-Kanobi, I now have a video for you! You've got to love all the crazy stuff we've got hanging off the contraption. My favorite is the toy flashlight. The voice at the beginning is my mother's, then you hear me chime in using a ridiculous squeaky baby voice saying something like "Weeeee! Jumpy jump!!!" So sorry. Just look at the cuteness.

But Why Is The Rum Gone?

Clearly, I do nof mulfi-fask well. Tor a monfh or fwo, I spenf a ridiculous amounf ot fime sfaring af fhis compufer screen while chunks ot house crashed around me. Lasf week I was overcome by fhe nasfiness ot my carpef (see all pef reterences in previous posfs), borrowed a sfeam cleaner and became a carpef cleaning junkie. Now I'm resurtacing wifh relafively clean carpefs and (tinally!) a healfhy baby, however Chooch (my lapfop) is all in a snif after being "cruelly snubbed and ignored." If appears he's exacfing his revenge by swifching my t's and f's, and he tlafly retuses fo lef me download any new picfures, so I'm posfing a couple ot my tavorifes trom a phofo shoof Phil's cousin did tor us back in Ocfober.

(After much pleading and promises of a mouse massage, sweet and kind and glorious Chooch has graciously permitted to let me type in peace.)

So guess what TCBITW is doing now? Clapping! I get applause for getting him out of his crib, changing his diaper, reading books, etc. It's great to be so appreciated. My favorite thing is that he claps to let me know when he's done nursing on one side, then claps again when he's completely done. Did I mention that he's TCBITW? I've also found that he will clap on command, the first indisputable evidence that he understands words (or, at least, word), so he shall hence forth also be known as TMFIBITW (The Most Freakishly Intelligent Baby ....) Since this discovery, I've tried to teach him all kinds of things (pointing to my nose, shaking hands, waving), all of which he responds to with clapping.

This morning Andrew and Daddy had bonding time while I went off and had all my hair cut off. My new 'do is a little longer than Phil's, but not by much, and I love it. I can barely tell that I have hair, which has been my dream for some time now, and if I decide I'd actually like to "fix it," it would take 3 1/2 minutes at most. Sallie, if you decide that I'm too manly now to be your bridesmaid and ask me to instead wear a tux and answer to Ernie, I totally understand.

Grace Dated Chooch Pertoochy?

It's been a rather uneventful week here in the Mobley household, mostly waiting around for my Precious to feel better. This cold from the pit has been hanging on with all its viral might and has now added a rattly cough to the fever, sore throat and runny nose it originally thrust upon my sweet boy. Sadness. Phil thought he seemed to be feeling a smidge better this afternoon, so we celebrated with an extremely white trash visit to Wal-Mart. Let me paint this picture for you: Phil and I were both wearing workout pants and ratty t-shirts; I had on no makeup and was holding stringy hair out of my face with a clip on the side of my head; we were strolling a baby with a crusty nose; we drove an old blue Buick (Lupe) that was (is) covered in pollen and bird droppings and is missing the passenger-side mirror (I knocked it off backing out of the garage); we were shopping for vacuum cleaner bags. Phil and I walked the aisles together discussing ways we could actually make the outing less classy. Here's what we came up with:

- begin the shopping experience with a biggie-sized meal from the in-store McDonald's

- add cigarettes and Vienna Sausages to the shopping list

- cut my t-shirt into a mid-drift

- pay for the vacuum bags with a couple of sweaty bills pulled from my bra

- have a loud argument at the check-out about whether or not we can afford the Vienna Sausages

Do you ever catch yourself doing strange things or having bizarre conversations and wonder if you're the only one ever in the universe to do such things? Let me fabricate a totally fake and made up situation for you, and you tell me whether you would ever do something like it. Let's say a couple nights ago, this couple sat at the dinner table talking to each other for quite some time with extreme underbites because they thought it was funny how thrusting your jaw out makes you talk like a hick. (Really, it does. Try it.) Then when they got tired of that, maybe they had a conversation that went like this:

Misty: Where on your list of things to be, employment-wise, would you rank beekeeper?

Bill: About 67th percentile.

Misty: Is a higher percentile good or bad?

Bill: Bee keeper would fall in the bottom third of my list of things to be.

Misty: Gotcha. How about deli-meat slicer at Kroger?

Bill: Um, that would be pretty low. Even lower than beekeeper.

Misty: How about someone who scrapes up roadkill?

Bill: Don't they have robots that do that now?

Misty: (laughing heartily at Bill's naivety) Robots?! Sure, honey .... OK, how 'bout nude dancer?

Bill: Ooooh, that'd be awesome. I'd rank that between astronaut and United Nations ambassador.

So anyway, you get the idea. What do you think? Could this be you and a loved one on any given Thursday night?

I Packed Your Angry Eyes

I talked with my Bradley on the phone yesterday for the first time in ages. I feel like I'm in the twilight zone when I stop to realize that my baby brother (9 years my junior), the one who cried when he found out I was getting married (he looked at with teary eyes and wailed, "But he isn't a Christian!" We don't know where he got that idea, but it was so sweet and funny and adorable - so like him at 11 years old) ... yes, this little boy is now a Navy corpsman who spends his days doing pushups and diagnosing manly Marine ailments. On April 10th he'll begin taping up soldiers on a ship, and we won't see him again 'til Christmas. Snif. We're hoping he'll keep in touch with us as he is able. He's one funny guy, and I know we'll all be desperate to hear all the tales he'll have to tell.

Just to give you another little taste of Bradley, I will share with you my favorite bit of the phone call yesterday. The conversation had hit a lull, so I asked him what he was wearing (it was his day off). "Tennis shoes, my Johnsonville Youth Basketball League t-shirt, and water pants," he replied.

"Water pants? What are water pants?" I asked, assuming this was some sort of special military attire.

"You know, like, a bathing suit."

Bradley is a fascinating specimen. Instead of pausing or stumbling around when he momentarily forgets a word, his brain has the most remarkable tendency to replace it with something it deems similar. And it rarely registers to him that he's said something odd until he's questioned about it. Phil says it's like English is his second language.

Water pants. We're going to miss that boy!

On the home front, Precious nearly pulled up on the fireplace hearth yesterday. Ahhhhhhhhh! So we woke Daddy up this morning and asked him if he'd lower the crib. Better too early than too late, right? And, as usual, something I thought would take 5 minutes ended up taking 45, a tool box and very nearly some bad words. But all worth it in the end to save this most adorable noggin!

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Look what happened within 30 minutes of my post ...