Summer Vignettes Begun

Vignette is a word that originally meant "something that may be written on a vine-leaf." (Wikipedia) --followed by about 15 varied uses for this little French word.

For me, it's a way to capture what may be stream-of-conscience, little thoughts that I don't want to slip away. Now that summer is here, I might actually have the time to hold onto these thoughts. A post on Facebook feels too self-important, personal, or trivial (and I don't want to end up as someone's example in an "are you THAT kind of Facebook poster" survey). For example:

*I love how, upon getting down from his high chair, O will survey the damage he has caused, pointing and saying NananananNANAnana, and occasionally picking up an especially nice morsel to re-eat. 

*I love how he scrunches up his face when he's trying to smile, when he's aware that he's smiling, rather than just smiling out of the joy of new discoveries. 

*Everything is temporary. When a child goes through phases, it's sometime hard to see them as a phase. I tend to think "Oh, he's grown out of sleeping in the car" or "oh, I guess we're done with macaroni and cheese." I need to remember to be flexible, and try these items again, not give up on them. Today, we had a one-nap day that went from a few hours at the zoo (THANK YOU TIAs for our membership that makes a few hours reasonable), to falling asleep in the car (what? He can still do that?) to me going through a Starbucks drive-through to kill some time, to a successful transfer from car seat to bed! I'm thankful that he can grow in and out of these things.

*When I'm woken up early in the morning, I easily decide to take a nap at the same time as my toddler, but in order to get successfully to nap-time, I must ingest enough caffeine that a nap becomes out of reach. Elusive. A mirage. (Easy solution= go to bed earlier. Easier said than done.)

*I'm not one to covet. But I'd like to have a gene or magic trick, whatever it takes, to make my house even an iota of the clean-level of our superhero (pregnant) moms' group host. It might take a whole personality augmentation. Recently, we've had a fruit fly outbreak. I've become cleaner, for sure, and obsessed with my super-secret guilty pleasure, the counter wipe (Seventh Generation, but still surely killing all the good bacteria with the bad). But I cannot seem to achieve even a bit of the shiny floor, glistening (and clutter-free) table top, or fly-free environment that I experience at her house. Now I don't actually want to be a neat-freak, I'm glad that my priorities are 
on fun, flavor and, well, occasionally blogging, but it would be nice if the hours I spend cleaning up the kitchen and the same high-chair messes actually produced a cleaner home. Ah, well.

*Ollin keeps getting more fun. I used to think it would be sad to leave behind baby-ness, but every day is a new adventure with a cooler, more interactive, more intense, expressive, amazing little boy. I cannot get enough. From increasing sign language, to dancing, to singing, to watering the garden, to understanding exactly what we are saying and responding (to the point that we realize we need to really watch what we are saying), it certainly doesn't allow me time to miss the tiny baby that I started with. 

Okay. Those are your paragraphs-on-a-grape-leaf. 



Upcoming posts: The Garden Mafia, Summer Recipes, Toddler Adventures...