Chicken rice soup and my 2-year-old has a potty mouth
Gargantubaby is 2 and a half. He's in the 95th percentile for height and weight. At his well-baby checkup, Kaiser once again told us to stop giving him whole milk, which we will continue to ignore. He has a nickname for me, which I find extraordinary: It's "Mama Llama" (from the Llama Llama books), and he knows he's joking, which is the part I find extraordinary. It's no surprise that I find humor the highest sign of intelligence.
His verbal skills continue to accelerate. He's on a funny cusp: In the same five minutes, he'll say something simple incorrectly—like, "Oh, he here," when he finds his sister in hide-and-go-seek—then say something complicated correctly: "Let's wrestle in the living room."
He experiments with language all the time: "I like your earrings, Mama. I like your body parts. Your body parts are busy."
He can tell me what he did at daycare, although I'm pretty sure he's lying most of the time:
GB: I watch a movie with Lety.
Jenny: What movie?
GB: Scary creatures. With crocodiles, and bunnies that go wrong for. Matthew plays basketball. (Grunting sounds.)
Jenny: Did you play basketball with Matthew?
GB: Jacob!
Jenny: Did you play basketball with Jacob today?
GB: Yeah. Don't play basketball with Jacob today, Mama.
Jenny: OK, I won't.
He says, "Don't laugh at me," and, "Don't scream at me," when I'm doing neither. He likes to pretend he's crying or angry. He likes to say things are "scawy" and asks me to read the story about the "scawy Gwinch" almost every night. He runs from the front door to the back with one arm pressed to his chest, the other extended as if he's flying, crying out, "Soopahewwo!"
He tries on words he's heard, like "disgusting": "That's disgusting. This is mommy's tea. That's disgusting!"
He also says, "Oh, my god," all the time now, my proudest contribution because it's SO FUCKING CUTE TO HEAR A TWO-YEAR-OLD SAY OH MY GOD: "Oh, my god! You finish your toast already!"
Unfortunately, he also swears like a sailor, which is, of course, our fault. The other morning, we were pretty sure he rattled the child gate and said, "Oh! I'm fucked!"
A friend suggested he might have been saying, "I'm stuck," which he does say rather often, but SJ confirmed that shortly before then he'd been going through his clothes saying, "Fucking shoes, fucking socks, fucking pants, fucking shirt."
The single time it occurred to me that maybe I should try to stop swearing was when GB and I were sitting at the kitchen table, playing Go Fish (which mostly involved us picking a card from the other person's hand, then switching turns). I stood up to pour a cup of tea, and GB, who had petitioned hard for me to keep playing and not stand up to make my tea, felt I was taking too long to come back. He stood up on the bench and exclaimed in irritation, "Holy fucking shit!"
The world kind of creaked to a stop for a second. I managed not to laugh, but only because it wasn't so much funny as breathtaking to hear a phrase I—and only I, in my house—say all the time but apparently am not conscious of, repeated back to me by a teddy bear in Christmas pajamas.
He's had a total regression since the holidays. He went from being almost completely potty-trained to refusing to sit on the potty and then five minutes later exploding with urine and crab-walking in his wet pants to the bathroom. Also, he's pooped on the carpet twice. He talks baby talk ("Goo goo"), pretends to nurse, and wants me to "feed me like a baby." It would be cute except for, you know, the poop.
Still, he continues to charm. He likes superheroes and "bootiful princesses." He likes pretty much everyone. Our gay next door neighbor is always outside smoking cigarettes, his butt crack hanging out of his jeans, chasing after his housemates with his camera when they park blocking the garage as if he's really going to go to the police. He has described his mother as a French nihilist. Gargantubaby warmed his heart one afternoon by crawling out of his car seat and calling, "Hi, Clark! I like you!" Clark was stopped in his chatter and finally called back, "Aww! I like you, too. Everybody else on this block is boring."
Most of the time GB doesn't like it when I have to work, and it breaks my heart to hear myself say I can't play or read to him because I have to work. There's one thing he likes even less, though, which is me taking pictures of him. I tried to sneak a picture of him sleeping with his sister's Elsa doll, but he held up his hand and said, "No. You need to work."
He has moods, of course. The beginning of the year has been a bit of a sprint, with four house guests, my car crapping out on me and landing in the shop for three days now (with no end in sight), and daycare refusing to let GB inside last week because his nose was running and his eyes were watering so much it looked like he was crying. So he and I were home together for two days, unable to leave because I was working and him being completely bored with movies, and he finally toddlered out: He wanted an apple, so I got him one. Then he didn't want an apple, he wanted a pear, and I told him we didn't have any and said I'd eat his apple if he didn't want it, but then he wanted it. Then he repeated over and over, as if I were arguing with him and as he ate crackers (but not the apple), "I want my apple. I want my apple. I want my apple." I just looked at him tiredly. It was 4 p.m. on Friday evening and the sun was going down.
"I'm angry at you," GB said philosophically.
"Why?" I said.
"Because I'm angry at you."
"Yeah. That makes sense."
There's always a reprieve when his sister comes home. He follows her around like a mother hen and does EVERYTHING she says, and she's proud of the fact that she has this magic power. This weekend, after he refused to sit on the potty, she led him into the bathroom, and I listened from the kitchen sink as she began the routine of reading him a book, then got bored.
SD: Want to learn how to be sassy?
GB: Yeah.
SD: OK, put your hand on your hip. Can you do that?
GB: Sassy!
SD: OK, GB, be normal.
GB: (Dinosaur voice). I not normal. Din-o-sauuuur!
SD: GB, want to learn how to be sassy? Put your hand on your hip. Now flip your hair.
GB: Sassy!
As usual, SJ is the glue that keeps us all together. I've spent most of the last two months starting a newsletter and an Instagram account, redesigning my website, doing a photo shoot, making funny videos, and working with my agent on a book proposal, all for the purpose of getting my message of righteous indignation into the hands of other moms. We both come home from full-time jobs every day to dive into cooking, cleaning, homework, flute practice, piano practice, bath time, and bedtime. During bath time I love hearing SJ sing to our son, whose greatest fear in life is getting water on his face:
No water in my face
No water in my face
I'll get water all over the place
But no water in my face
I spent most of the first part of our marriage complaining about the uneven distribution of child care and household duties, which led to an approximate evening out. But last week, when I found an exploded rat in the garage, we both somehow agreed it was his job to clean it up. I must have run over it with my car, either once or twice, but the question of how it got under my tire is a mystery. Rats are speedy, and I pull into the garage slowly, so it's not like I surprised it. So that leaves the rat being dead already in the path of my tire, but how did it die? We don't have rat traps out in the open, so did it have a heart attack on its way across the floor? Did it fall from the ceiling? If so, how did a low fall kill it? Etc.
Anyway, normally we find desiccated rats that have been caught by traps or that have died behind a box or something, and although they're not pleasant, they're not exactly gross because they don't look like rats anymore.
SJ: Is it flat?
Jenny: No. That’s why it's gross.
I bought SJ a wearable sleeping bag for Christmas because I've been joking about wanting a wearable sleeping bag since living in Chicago for four years in the '90s and then somebody made one. This is SJ celebrating while my stepdaughter tries to pretend he's not dancing around the living room in a wearable sleeping bag.
One more thing: I have to get a gum graft—two gum grafts, actually, but my insurance won't cover both in the same year—because I am getting old and shit is breaking down. After my surgery last year I swore I would never have surgery again, and then I had to get a crown and now this. Anyway, during the consult with the dental surgeon, I joked to the technician that since I have a 2-year-old and a full-time job, lying down in the middle of the day is actually a kind of treat.
"Oh," said the surgeon, reaching for something under the chair. "Do you want the massage?"
"THE WHAT," I said. "THESE CHAIRS HAVE MASSAGE."
"Do you want the heat, too?"
"YES PLEASE."
So on March 27, I have a date with a massage chair (pictured below) and a Triazolam (brand name Halcion). I might take the entire day off. I've never been so excited in my life.
I like this chicken soup, although SJ is not a fan of the lemon. Also, my stepdaughter prefers noodles and carrots, so we swapped out the rice and sweet potatoes, confirming to SJ that recipes are a waste of time. Anyway, this soup is not amazing exactly, but it's quick, it's the kind of recipe where except for the chicken we generally have all these ingredients, and it's chicken soup that doesn't take all day to make. So. You need:
12 oz. skinless, boneless chicken thighs
4 thinly sliced garlic cloves YEAH RIGHT GARLIC PRESS PLEASE OMG I HAVE TO TELL YOU SOMETHING: I just discovered that YOU DON'T NEED TO PEEL GARLIC TO PUT IT IN THE GARLIC PRESS WHAT. I got so fed up one night last week I just shoved them in there, and low and behold, they smush just the same! First I was amazed, then I freaked out that I had been peeling garlic cloves for years before putting them in the press when everyone else knew they didn't need to. Then I asked SJ and he didn't know, either. So in case you didn't know: You don't need to peel garlic cloves to put them in the garlic press!
2-in. piece ginger, peeled and thinly sliced
1/3 cup rice
2 small sweet potatoes, sliced 1/2-in. thick
2 TB lemon juice
2 TB soy sauce
Cilantro and pepper to serve
You need to:
Boil chicken, garlic, ginger, and rice in 5 cups of water. Add a big pinch of salt.
Reduce heat to medium-low and simmer, stirring occasionally, until rice swells and chicken is firm, 10 to 12 mins.
Add sweet potatoes, still stirring occasionally, until they and rice are tender and chicken is cooked through, another 15 to 20 mins.
Transfer chicken to cutting board and shred with 2 forks (TOO HARD. I JUST CUT IT).
Return meat to pot.
Stir in lemon juice and soy sauce.