Sorry, I took a little break. I had to go to the bathroom. It only took a few months and now I'm back.
It's confusing to me how little time I have now, compared to when I was working. I'm up between 7 and 7:30 am, and V passes into unconsciousness at 7:30 pm. Between those hours, I am at her every command, wiping her butt and wiping snot off her face if she hasn't already wiped it on my shirt. I have until 7:30 pm until whenever I go to sleep to clean the apartment, do dishes, do laundry, cook myself dinner, prepare V's food for the next day, watch Downton Abbey and cry hysterically and yell at Cora to stop making that face and making forehead wrinkles!, and then it's 1 AM, which doesn't leave that much time for blogging. During daylight hours, I can't cook, or email, or shop unless it's for (her) food. The start of any such grown-up activity causes a great deal of shrieking. What are you looking at you serf! Look at me! Look at me! Look at me! LOOK AT ME YOU EFFING GIANT!!!
But she's 18 months so it comes out as ENNNHHH! ENNNUUUUUAAAAHHH! GSIDBGODISLAAAAAAAAAAAAAA!!!!!
Which brings me to my latest anxiety. I was surfing a baby board earlier today and came across a post by someone who asked, "My pediatrician asked me to count the number of words my 18 month old could say. Do you count 'I love you' as one word or three words? I'm at 115 words if I count a phrase as one word."
My first reaction was to mentally poke her in the eyes and slap her in the face. OBVIOUSLY this is not a real question. This is a ruse, to show how many words her pants-crapping genius says. Like it matters if the kid can say 115 or 155. Your pants crapper is a freaking genius okay? That's what you wanted to hear right? Shut the eff up. I can see your cellulite.
What was worse though were the comments that followed. "Oh my 18 month old can also say over 100 words!" "Oh I stopped counting my kid's words at 75!" "I told my pediatrician she knew over 100 words at 15 months (ahem 3 months ahead of you), and the doctor was very satisfied." I hate you, you smell and I think you're lying. You mothereffers.
I hate them because they make my stomach contract into the size of a pistachio. V can say 8 words, 6 if you don't count "uh oh" or "oh no" as words. Maybe I should count each of those as two words. She knows words like "ball." That's useful. (That was sarcastic.) 99 percent of the time she communicates by grunting, whining and pointing. I don't know why I obsess over this. It's not like she is going to 16 and still grunting and running into walls. I can't pinpoint the source of my anxiety. It can't be the fact that she might not get into Hah-vah-de because well, I didn't get into Harvard. Nevertheless, I read books on the acquisition of language, learn that there are Advanced Toddlers and Slow Toddlers and I freak the F out.
Maybe it's time to start tutoring. Just kidding. Maybe.
