It's the memory of childhood dreaming.

Once upon a time.
That is where I lived as a child.
In a land of make believe.
Imagine a girl who was so in love with "Gone With The Wind" and the era of hoop skirts, that she asked for a hoola-hoop every year for Christmas so that she could pin it into the hems of her dress-up clothes.
That was me.
I wanted a hoop skirt so badly. I wanted to be Scarlet O'Hara.

There were these paper dolls that my mom allowed us to photocopy out of a paper doll book. There was one with brass tacks at her shoulders, allowing her arms to move. But what was really amazing about Constance the paper doll was that you had to make her dresses. She came with one, it was a gorgeous, full skirted ball gown with puff sleeves. I had to color the dress and cut it out. And then I went into ball-gown designing overload. I would trace a new dress, pinning the original template to the window and using that general outline, would recreate all of Scarlet O'Hara's gorgeous gowns. But that was not enough. Oh, no. I scoured the library's inventory of wholesome family movies for any movie set in the Civil War era. Anyone else remember "Harvey Girls"? On and on I would design gown after gown for Constance to wear, and then hats, parasols, cloaks and mufflers.
At around eleven or twelve years old my mom gave me a book to read: The Hundred Dresses by Eleanor Estes. A story about a poor young, Polish-American girl. She claims to have one hundred dresses, lined up in her closet. It is obvious that she only has one, as evidenced by her wearing a faded blue dress every day. Her classmates make fun of her mercilessly. One day she is suddenly not as school, but there is a letter from her father that the teacher reads alloud to the class. The letter shames them all for making fun of her. For she was poor, and she only had one dress to wear, but she had the talent and the creativity to have designed one hundred dresses all her own designs. And dreaming of those beautiful dresses was how she coped with her own poverty. The clincher in the book, if I remember correctly, is that she even drew her mean classmates into the pictures. The mean girls are wearing the gowns she designed. She sent them in the letter to the very girls that loved to make fun of her so.
I loved that book and that spunky but quiet little Polish-American girl. Really I loved that she made them feel so bad, killing them with her kindness.
Anyhow...After I read the story of Wanda Petronski I could not rest until I too had designed 100 dresses, all my own design for my flimsy, paper Constance. And so I did. Aren't I spunky too?

Well, all of these memories came up for me last week when I decided to devote a Saturday afternoon to watching the wickedly selfish Scarlet destroy her own life and chances at happiness. And everyone in my house made fun of me for it!

I won't let them kill my adoration for the hoop skirts. I'll show them. I think I will go and join a Civil War Re-enactment troupe. Is there such a thing? Can I be Scarlet?

It's just that he puts everything in his mouth

Friday evening I get home from work to the news from my husband that the dreaded event had happened. The baby made his way across the living room with his lightening fast crawl, and put a piece of doggy poop in his mouth.
Yep
My husband tells me about this, with a mild bit of panic in his voice. We discuss the need to call the pediatrician. Justification ensues, 'I don't think he got it down his throat', 'I think that I got it all washed out of his mouth' etc. But I couldn't help it, I just made fun of him.

Monday morning, and my sister-in-law's big, huge, massive, polar bear of a dog had been staying with us over the weekend.
Wait, let me back up: Koda had been lumbering around the house all weekend. Koda, roughly 250 million pounds, and kept trying to engage Murphy, 6 1/2 pounds soaking wet, in some playful banter. Oh, and then Gabriel had been using Koda as a personal, walking couch. He rubbed his face into koda's 5 foot long fur, grabbing fistfuls of it all of the time...etc. She's a big, awesome polar bear and fun for any little baby to nuzzle. So there's lots of fur literally floating around my house.
Okay, so back to monday morning; Gabriel playing on the floor, supervised by my husband. And after Friday's poopy incident, I'll use the work 'supervising' lightly. We knew that it was going to happen, maybe, eventually, that Gabriel would shove something disgusting in his mouth. Ok, but Monday morning, Gabriel crawls over to me as I am putting on my shoes.
He's coughing and there's a Koda-hair sticking out of his mouth. I grab it, and pull out an entire hairball!!

It's in the way that we say things

"Can I put my finger in your bellybutton?"
"eww...no."
"why?"
"because it feels weird and I don't like it."
pause
"Okay, but it's all that I can think about now. So...you better not sleep on your back tonight."
rolls eyes
"Then can I bite your ear?"

It's funny that this conversation ended in a 'who can kiss better?' battle.
To explain a little, we decided that we were going to find some quality time together dammit, and if that happened to be at the end of the day when we are sometimes too tired to function...well, this is going to be the result most of the time.