Fashion Roadkill

I am frickin’ fed up with Kirk’s refusal to wear anything besides sweatpants and long sleeved stripey shirts. Honestly. It’s ridiculous. Part of the problem is the dwindling supply. I was unaware that Minnesota had canceled Spring so I didn’t stock up on additional sweats while they were still available in stores. The Summer clothes are there but…the Summer weather is not. Kirk keeps on growing and so he’s down to 4 acceptable shirts and 3 pairs of pants. That are in constant rotation.

At first we were delighted with his preference for the sweatpants. We thought it meant he was going to start taking a more active role in his pottying since they are much easier to remove than jeans with snaps and a zipper. But nope. No luck there. And I honestly don’t know why the stripey shirt thing caught on as completely as it did, except that his daddy sure has a lot of them in his own wardrobe.

For a while now I’ve been giving Kirk a choice when it comes to the Battle of Getting Dressed every morning: jeans or khakis. “Jeans are yucky! Khakis are yucky! I want sweats!” So I give in, because it means that he’s at least out of his jammies. The next round is shirts: long sleeved or short sleeved. He is completely against short sleeves. But he was fine with them in Texas…? Next I’ll pull out two shirts that match as closely as is possible whatever clean sweats he’s in and let him decide. “NOOOO! I need a stripey!” My kid dresses like Frankenstein from Big Daddy. *sigh*

Fruits n Veggies

An interesting side-effect of being a mother is improving knife skills. As a result of providing delicious and healthy snacks for a toddler, I have become very proficient in removing the skin from an apple slice using a paring knife. I have also become adept at whittling down a full size carrot into fairly uniform sticks. My current lesson? Supreming an orange. I’ve discovered that if you do it over a bowl and then provide a straw along with the segments, then the juice will be consumed as well!

I would also like to take this opportunity to make an introduction. Mr. b: Internet. Internet: Mr. b. Please stop by. Please leave him a comment. He really, really likes comments. Or go make fun of Steve Zahn. Or at least vote for him for president.

Baby Talk

It’s been nearly three years. That’s how many bottles of Johnson’s baby shampoo we got as baby shower gifts. We’re about halfway through the final one, which is travel size so won’t last too much longer. I’m truly astounded at how long it took to get through it all! It’s going to be a little weird to pick out a new bottle. Should I stick with standard yellow No More Tears? Are there other tempting colors and flavors that will win me over? Maybe I’ll just let Kirk go for whatever Dora or Thomas or other branded, overpriced option is currently available.

Kirk’s actually been in a strange baby-reversion phase for a while. He’s *choosing* to behave like a baby. He’ll demand to be carried where he’d normally walk himself. Or he’ll decide to crawl. He wants to be coddled and cradled. He needs us to feed him his soup that he’s perfectly capable of messily eating himself. Brushing teeth, climbing into his crib, putting shoes on, everything has gone back to a desire for us to do it for him.

I’m not really sure what’s caused this behavioral back-slide. I hear about it happening to older siblings when their new sister or brother finally arrives. This just seems so much more out-of-the-blue. Could it really be because K has her 2 month old at daycare? That seems more likely than my sister’s guess of two new cousins since September of last year. But it does worry me a little. I hope it’s the standard "step backward before leap forward" that we noticed while he was much younger. In which case I definitely hope the leap forward is frickin’ potty training already dammit! Because what happens when he actually does have a new sibling in the house?

Kids Today

Sometimes the fact that Kirk is growing up in The Future really hits me. The technology divide doesn’t seem so big when you’re texting and blogging along with all the rest of the kids. But when you look at their birth dates and realize that kids not only don’t know what it’s like to not have cable, they don’t know what it’s like to not have YouTube, well, that changes things.

Kirk can request to watch something and, with very few exceptions, said request can be honored within seconds. Either it’s on DVD or VHS or else snippets can be found online with little effort. Even photography is changed. Disposable cameras are completely foreign. My nieces were perplexed about why the picture wasn’t immediately viewable long before Kirk was the one demanding, “Me see! Me see!”

The article The Longest Day really illustrates how integrated technology is in the lives of the so-called Generation Y. And while that’s an eye-opener in and of itself, Kirk has shocked me with his expectations. He’s grown up with video so commonplace that we’ll capture temper tantrums and inanities just as easily as actual milestones like first steps and first solid food. And he’s begun to request to see things that were never recorded.

I find that a startling mindset. To have your every living moment available to replay is a horror described in sci-fi novels and shown in movies. It’s the very definition of Big Brother. And for Kirk it’s beyond an expectation; he takes it for granted. As a good thing. Sure, he’s not expecting to be busted for thought crimes. He doesn’t live in the world of Harrison Bergeron. But it’s still a mind-blowing paradigm change. One that I don’t think anyone has yet postulated as a positive.