My life as a mombie: Ha HA!

Since his surgery a couple weeks ago (no fevers yet...yay!), Tate seems to have a new outlook on life. Mainly, everything is incredibly freaking funny. He wanders around the house all day going "Ha HA!". He sees something humorous on TV? "Ha HA!" Mom drops something on her foot and hops around cursing madly? "Ha HA!" Nora uses her peanut butter and jelly sandwich as hair mousse? "Ha HA!" He puts his underwear on his own head and runs around like a lunatic? "Ha HA! Ha HA!" At least he finds humor in the mundane. Because at this point, underwear-on-head-running-around is a pretty stock activity around here. It's a strange day when that doesn't happen.

He's changing so much lately. All of a sudden he just seems smarter and calmer and...less toddler-ish. I sit back and watch with an odd mixture of pride and mourning. Everyday he surprises me with something new that he knows and everyday I seem to need to fight back tears as I remember the little baby that he was, and is getting farther and farther away from. He likes to play outside by himself now. I watch him as he plays pretend and as he picks up his toys and dresses himself and writes shaky "T"s on his aqua-doodle, and I'm so proud at what he can do, and wonder what new thing he'll be doing tomorrow. I listen to him exclaim "Oh, my GOODNESS!" as he runs away from me and the face of Elmo imprinted on his big-boy undies peeks at me over the back waistband of his shorts. Soon he'll be in preschool, and then I'll turn around and he'll be in grade school and then all of a sudden he'll be graduating high school. Then he'll get married and have kids of his own and I'll be all old and wrinkly and wondering what the hell happened to my bladder control and when I started needing to wear Depends and to take my teeth out at night and put them in a glass by my bed and then I'll be DEAD.

Ah, good times.

Nora, on the other hand, is still my baby. And really lookin' fine these days. This is what happens when she spills something on her dress and it's late enough in the day that there's really no point in putting a clean one on her and neither of us can really be bothered to give a crap about what she looks like.

Now, that's a special looking kid.

And I'm thinking I may have to do something about her hair. Everytime I put pigtails or braids in her hair these days, they last approximately 2.4 seconds before getting savagely, forcibly undone. Then she ends up looking like this for the rest of the day. Imagine a few chunks of slimy crackers and ravioli hanging off the ends and you've got the perfect image of how great she's looking by about 5pm each day.