Saturday, February 13, 2010

(Almost) Valentine's Day

The boy and I woke early. 

Read: Monito woke at 7 am, and performed his version of laying perfectly still. This entails lots of jiggling, sighing, standing up to adjust his pillow and flopping back down.  When he isn't bashing his huge hard noggin into me like a billy goat [damn all those farm books we read]* he is the snuggliest child ever. When we wake up next to each other he presses his forehead to mine, rubs our noses together and presses his hot little palm against my cheek while crooning through his spit-covered pacifier, "Mommy, are you awake yet?"  He really does try to allow us to keep sleeping, but I was downstairs by 7:14 nonetheless. 



Luckily, we had a box from my parents full of Valentine's Day gifts for the kids.  I let Monito open his up as I made tea.  My mother is an amazing gift shopper.  She totally hit the nail on the head with the puzzle she gave to my boy who is not into puzzles.  It is a huge puzzle - 2' x 3' - made of cardboard so thick that in 15 minutes of play the boy had been unable to bend or crack any of the pieces.  It has pieces inside other pieces, so I could put together the main puzzle and then he could find the places for the little pieces.  There are also game cards with questions about all the little pieces in riddle so he has to think about habitats, habits and functions in order to guess which animal/object the riddle is asking about.  Amazing!  His older sister, who is already doing 100+ piece puzzles by herself, was also amused.  Win/ win, Mom!  Of course, after a short stint as a puzzle it became fodder for the CRANE!  This is the fate of all things in our house.





*I just had a most enlightening moment checking punctuation.  I am only a geek of a medium order, but have good company.  Hi, Noona!  Hi, Jill!

3 comments:

Jillian said...

My love the English language is so thorough and so... forceful... that my anthropology majoring friend used me as the inspiration for a class project; she calls me a "grammar Nazi" because of my habit of correcting people who make mistakes in front of me. It even extends to complete strangers and I have been known to go on quite agitated rants about the wrong "its" being on billboards. *blush* I just can't help it. I believe it's important to communicate properly and most people either don't know, or don't care! Bah! :-)

Grandma said...

So happy the puzzle was such a hit. I thought it was so cute and a great way to remember the visit to the aquarium and meeting Tim.
Sorry you had such an early morning rising to use it though. Maybe just as well as it gave Monito a chance to do it alone before the Puzzle Queen came to help him.

Unknown said...

Jill, I need to know more people like you! It takes unbelievable self-control for me not to correct other's grammatical errors. More shocking is how the more relaxed I get, the less correct my grammar is. I even catch myself not knowing for sure how to spell a word and it not really bothering me...
But I am really writing to ask Nora to post because I need her fix of real "momhood" experience. When it is late at night, I am exhausted, and I fear I am not the best Mom I could possibly be, I need your Truth!