Self-Portrait

Me and Ben. He does this very cute thing where he presses his cheek up against mine and grins into the mirror. Trying to get a picture of it isn't working too well.

According to A.:

• "No, thank you." - A. on potty training.

• A, about the animals gathered on the train table: "Dey having a con-ver-sa-tion."
  Me: "Oh, what are they talking about?"
  A: (pause) "Bout da con-ver-sa-tion."
  
  - A. being a proper child of therapists and making his animals process their communication styles.

• "I'll be just a sec, OK?" - A., mimicking me.

• "You say, 'Crap'?" - A. missing nothing after I've dumped half a box of cereal on the floor.

• "Wow, what a mess." - A. a few moments later.

• "SBS spider climbed up the water spout..."
  More Things that Make Me Cranky:

• I hate stuffed animals that say "I love you!" How long does it take us to learn that we may love things, but they don't love us back?

• Lady today at Quizno's, looking at Ben: "Wow, he's so beautiful he almost looks fake." Me: "Um, thanks." (Didn't really make me cranky but I don't know where else to put it).

• More horrible children's books: G. actually threw "Carl Goes Shopping" away. Slacker parents leave the baby alone in a department store with a rottweiller. Rottweiller puts baby on his back and goes gallivanting around the store. They steal food and dog biscuits and become a liability nightmare. Maybe I'm hyper-sensitive because we've had several incidents of dogs mauling kids around here, but the pictures are so realistically drawn that there's no reason a kid wouldn't think their friendly neighbor rottweiller is a perfect babysitter. Or maybe I'm just jealous that I can't leave my babies with Carl.

• I don't think I like the Doodlebops. I've given them a chance, and I'll watch them instead of Barney any day ('course, I'd watch pretty much anything short of a snuff movie over Barney). Still, I don't like the guys' manic energy. How long can they really keep it up? The male actors I knew in the theater world like Moe and Rooney ended up living fast, burning bright and going into rehab, if they were lucky. I find myself staring at them and thinking about them off-camera - wondering how long it takes to put on all that makeup, and if they light up when the cameras stop rolling. I never wonder those things about the Wiggles.

• Found this press release:"The ultimate goal will be for the DoodleBops to explode into selective rock concert venues in November, which is a key family entertainment time period," says someone. Exploding DoodleBops in November! Don't say I didn't warn you!