We live in a house of mouse

I never appreciated the monopolizing quality of the Walt Disney Company until I became a mother. Not that it’s a bad thing. The shows mesmerize my son and are bearable for me (some are even entertaining – I’m looking at you, Phineas and Ferb). But I didn’t realize how hooked my son was on the Disney drug until I tried to put in a Thomas the Train DVD today. As the DVD went through its twelve-million piracy warnings, Suttie showed his usual level of excitement – lots of squealing and “giving it up to Jesus,” a motion in which he raises his arms up and looks to the heavens (patent-pending). But as soon as he figured out that this was NOT a Mickey Mouse Clubhouse DVD, he picked up a nearby wooden block, threw it down with all his might, and looked at me with more contempt than his father ever has…and believe me, that’s saying something.

Needless to say our TV stays on the Disney Channel…which is why I noticed something pretty interesting. Disney is launching a new cartoon called “Chuggington,” which is about…trains. Now, I am willing to bet anyone any amount of money that my son will watch that Disney-sponsored train show without the least hesitation, despite his earlier rejection of poor Thomas. And, in thinking about these two train shows, I started to recognize other Disney rip-offs. My son has never looked twice at Bob the Builder, but Handy Manny is a can’t miss. The Wiggles creep me out, but no more so than the Imagination Movers. There is just something about Disney that pulls you in, that makes you side with the mouse every time…no matter how many of his ideas are borrowed.

What was that theory about Disney and subliminal messaging? Was that ever disproven?

"I'm a paper chaser..."

Well, Suttie’s first Christmas was as much a hit as a 9-month old’s Christmas can be. He got everything that he didn’t even know he wanted and was able to try a least three different kinds of lard-based gravy. The only problem spot was the vicious cycle of excitement and then misery that we had to go through every time he opened a present. Was he so overjoyed with his gifts that each opening sent him into a bipolar spiral, first being delighted by the acquisition and then disillusioned by the reality that life was unlikely to get any better than this? Good guess, but, no, that wasn’t it. What caused each present opening to end with my son in a torrent of tears was the fact that, more than all of his presents, he wanted and was determined to have the wrapping paper that we insisted on throwing away.

Did he care about the TV for his playroom that I carried to my car in the dark, alone with mace in hand and keys at the ready like a tiger claw? No. But the red and white Santa Claus paper was the coolest thing he’d seen since birth. Did he oooh and awww at the little red wagon that his dad and I froze off our tookuses for during the Black Friday midnight sale at Toys ‘R Us? No. But he was willing to fight to the death for the curly gold ribbon that was tied around it.

So, every time he opened a present, Suttie would grab a huge hunk of wrapping paper, just as we were prompting him to do. However, unlike our instructions, he wouldn’t let it go. Instead, he would tear off smaller and smaller pieces until he found one that looked especially tasty and then tried to quickly shove it into his mouth before anyone noticed. At which point, we would dive in and wrestle the paper from him, thus instigating his next tearful outburst. A few minutes later, it was time to go through the whole process again.

With this experience still fresh in my mind, I’m already on the lookout for an empty refrigerator box and a gently-used grocery sack for next year’s big gifts.

It's beginning to be a Lysol Christmas...

I haven’t really considered myself to be one of those moms who is a complete germaphobe…until now. During Suttie’s first few weeks on the outside, I took the standard precautions: lots of hand washing and Germ-X and nervous nail-biting. When he got a little older and a lot bigger, I relaxed a bit and, until three days ago, was pretty laid back about the disease-ridden world in which we live. But things have changed, and today marks the day that I declare jihad on the spores of America.

My son has officially been diagnosed with the croup. After a night of coughing, sneezing, snotting, and vomiting, there are few lengths that I wouldn’t go to in order to postpone a repeat of this experience. In fact, I’m currently pricing air curtains for all of our doors and windows. So, if your child has a slight sniffle and there’s a chance that he or she may come into contact with my son within the next month or two, please give me a heads up so that I can Lysol his SARS mask and put on his babyGAP Hazmat suit. And don’t be concerned if I encourage the kids to play a game that involves residing on a planet where physical contact is punishable by death. It’s all in good, hygienic fun.

Oh and for those of you who were worried about Suttie’s illness dashing his weight-related Guinness Book hopes, have no fear. Despite his lack of appetite, Suttie managed to gain almost a pound since his last doctor’s appointment…6 days ago.

Tis the season...

Let’s take a minute to talk about man’s most heinous invention…the bulb syringe. Yes, Suttie is currently battling his very first cold, and the bulb syringe has become public enemy #1 in our household. I’m not sure what they’ve been using down in Guantanamo Bay, but, if they ever find that the bamboo shoot/fingernail combo isn’t working, they should try sticking a baster up somebody’s nose.

I also never realized how snot-nosed a snot-nosed kid can be. When he sneezes, I feel like I’m in the front row of a Gallagher show without the complementary poncho. Between that and his constant stream of drool, we’re basically living with Slimer from Ghostbusters. This assessment is even more astute when you consider Wikipedia’s description (yes, I, too, use Wikipedia for all my facts) of the gooey green ghost: “Slimer’s personality is one of tremendous gluttony...and [he] exists only to eat food.” If they had only waited fifteen years, they wouldn’t have had to use an animatronic puppet. They could have had the real thing.

But all jokes aside, I do feel terrible for him. It is so sad to know that a simple nose blow would help him so much, but that he’s resigned to mouth-breather status until he figures out how. So, for now, we pump him full of saline nasal spray and Tylenol, while rigorously testing the humidifier’s performance guarantee. With any luck, he’ll be better by Christmas, and his room will be slime free by early 2010.

"We'll call it Operation Pluto"

Suttie’s 9-month photo session was this week, and things seemed to go well. But whenever there’s a photo session looming, I begin to feel like Eisenhower on D-day. It’s all about strategy….strategies for what he’ll wear, what we’ll wear, and what the schedule for that day will be. It’s like choreographing a toddler ballet, you can put together a beautiful dance, but at the end of the day, you’ve got kids hanging from the stage curtains and somebody’s pooped in a leotard.

The first step in picture planning is to locate and purchase the perfect outfit(s). Does the perfect outfit exist? No. Do we spend hours (literally hours) trying to find it? Yes. I spent a week searching through the homemade goods of desperate housewives on Etsy looking for the perfect green knit hat. And I finally found it—an adorable number with knit teddy-bear ears. But when it arrived, I discovered that it wasn’t the same shade of green as the outfit it was meant to accessorize. Did I cry? A little. Did he wear it just the same? Abso-friggin-lutely…because, at that point, my hands shook when I tried to type “green baby hat” into a search engine.

Normally, the next step is to find our outfits. Thankfully that wasn’t a problem this go round because Suttie was the only one being photographed. Otherwise, I would have spent at least another week scouring the racks of our local department stores (twice) only to end up ordering our things online last minute.

And then comes the hardest process of all. Figuring out how in the hell you are going to work in breakfast, lunch, and naptime in an order that even remotely resembles his normal routine. Now this is where I start to channel Erwin Rommel more than Eisenhower because, no matter how organized or well-thought out my plan is, I always end up shouting like a Nazi with allies storming my dad-gum beaches. And by “allies,” I mean my naptime-fighting baby, and by “beaches,” I mean my sanity. If the 0900 nap is blown, then the whole mission is a bust. So in a desperate attempt to claim victory, we take to the road, hoping that the vibrations of the car will put him under. And they do…ten minutes before his session starts.

So why do we go through this? It’s not like I don’t have somewhere around 1000 photos of him that I took and had developed (almost for free) in albums that are stacked chest-high in his closet…

Oh, I’m sorry; were you waiting for me to answer myself because that question wasn’t rhetorical.

"Johnny, wake up, honey, and guard Momma's spot in line"

Suttie’s first Thanksgiving was a great success. He was able to try gravy, mashed potatoes, turkey, carrot cake, and cranberry sauce, and then refused to eat his baby food for the next three days. But for his dad and I, Thanksgiving dinner (or dinners in our case) was more than a meal…it was an essential bit of carbo-loading before our Black Friday shopping.

After Thanksgiving dinner (which followed Thanksgiving lunch), we dropped Suttie and all of his gear off at my in-laws and headed to town. First item on the agenda – see New Moon for the second time, thereby becoming indefinitely indebted to my husband. We had to sit in the Privѐ seats so that he could drink a beer before he fell asleep during the previews. But I have to admit that I like the fact that Sutton is not into these kinds of things. The overweight, 40-something gentleman to my right “oohed” and “aahed” like a pre-teen princess throughout the movie and had me poised to report an Amber Alert as we left the theater.

From there, we made our way to the Toys ‘R Us midnight sale. Our mission: save $30 on a wagon. To accomplish this mission: spend $45 on coffee, Hot Hands, and a bribe for a better place in line. To say that it was crazy is a vast understatement. Since we got there around 10:30 pm, we were able to secure a decent line position, but within another thirty minutes, the line had wrapped itself back around to the starting point. There is something called a Zhu-Zhu Pet (essentially a robotic rat), which people were figuratively (and perhaps some literally) wetting themselves to get a ticket for.

However, what I will NEVER understand is how parents can think that it is reasonable to stand in line with an 8 to 10 month old baby for two hours (or more) in the freezing-ass cold to save money on things that they really don’t need. If you can get a babysitter, great, come join us as we shake and shiver like the idiots that we are. But don’t bring a child out in this mess! You may get little Johnny that maze-running rat, but you will have also given him the gift of viral pneumonia.

In the end, we got Suttie’s discount wagon without any struggle because, apparently, wagons (not being electronic rats) are not a hot ticket item this year, meaning that we could have waited until normal store hours to buy one. But then we wouldn’t have gotten to see the near fist fight in the board game aisle or the insane line system that Toys ‘R Us uses, which makes it impossible to reach half of the store’s merchandise. We also made a 4 am stop at the mall and a 6:00 am run to Target. We got everything on our list and saved almost 50% of the costs. So, was it worth the stress, the sleeplessness, and the cold, you ask? Absolutely. But don’t ask my husband because he’ll lie and say it wasn’t.

"Suttie, put down the Dr. Brown's"

A lot of kids have a security blanket or teddy bear that they cuddle as they’re going to sleep. These objects help them to feel safe and comforted wherever they are. It’s cute – think Linus in the Peanuts cartoons. And, then there’s my son, whose chosen security object is not soft and plush or cute and cuddly. No, the thing that he snuggles up to as he drifts off to sleep is hard and plastic with a silicone nipple on one end and ounce markers on the other. Yes, my son now has a security bottle. Or I guess I should say bottles because it doesn’t matter which one I give him as long as one’s there.

It all started when we happily discovered that Suttie can now hold his own bottle. This was a great thing because, instead of bending over his crib to feed him before naps and bedtime, we could just hand the job over to him and take care of other fun things like emptying the diaper genie or gathering up dirty clothes. And, yes, I do miss the days when I had to feed him because his tiny hands could barely get around my finger, much less an 8 oz. bottle. But he hasn’t let me cradle him for some time, so feeding has become more of a task than a bonding opportunity.

However, when Suttie finishes the bottle, I dare not take it away. I tried that the first night. He was just gliding into a soundless sleep when he sucked in the last tiny remnants of milk. I put in his pacifier and lightly tugged at the bottle to take it downstairs. That was a mistake. His eyes, which had been previously closed, snapped open, and he began to howl and yell in such a loud, obnoxious way that I’m sure they heard him at Super Griners, some three miles down the road. I immediately did the only thing that I could think of, which was to give him back the bottle. As soon as the plastic cylinder hit his hands, he fell silent. He examined the bottle for a few minutes, turning it over to look at it from all angles. Then, he tucked it underneath his arm and rolled over into his normal side-lying sleeping position, quiet as a lamb. Later in the night, I snuck back up and retrieved the bottle for washing, fully prepared to insert a decoy in its place. But I didn’t need to; by that time, he was comfortable and tired enough that he was willing to let it go.

So, do I find it odd that my child prefers a bottle to a bear? No. If you’ve seen him, you wouldn’t expect anything different. Am I willing to let this strange attachment continue? Yes, because whether it’s a blanket or a bear or a plastic Dr. Brown’s bottle, kids need something to hold on to, in every sense. I’m just happy that I’m wise enough to know that it can’t always be me.