Ho ho ho

My child wasn't thrilled about seeing Santa. I think Santa was equally un-thrilled about seeing my child. Even *before* the baby started creeping out about being on a strange old man's lap, Santa made a comment about how he'd probably cry and then rolled his eyes. He didn't even "ho ho ho" for the baby. Lame. We were, as you can see, suckers enough to buy the photo commemorating the event. He was too new last year to be taken to a busy mall, so this is our first picture with the baby sitting on a pedophile's Santa's lap.

Baby #2 checkup yesterday. I love waiting 45 minutes to an hour in a waiting room, only to pee in a cup, listen for a heartbeat that I couldn't even hear, asked if I have any questions, then sent on my merry way. I will, however, have an ultrasound next week to hopefully find out the sex of this child. Then I can stop calling it "it" and "the fetus" and by his or her chosen name. I do know, however, that this child is already huge, and that it has an attitude problem, as it kept kicking or punching or head-butting the doppler as if to say, "Get that damn thing off the roof of my house!"

I realized that I never posted a 13-month update on the baby. Still no walking - seriously, any day now. How long have I been saying that? He "talks" more and more every day - he can say mama, daddy, book, kitty, pretty pretty, tree, oh man, cheese (as in for the camera, or when he wants you to smile at him), ball, hi, bye bye, zoom (for the vacuum), Jesus(for Baby Jesus in our nativity set...not as an expletive. I think.) car, and caca (for a trash can, paper/dust/lint/hair/junk on the floor/couch/pant leg/rug, or for "Hey lady, I just went caca in my pants.") When he's not endlessly repeating "caca" he's speaking in tongues, and he constantly leaves me wondering what in God's name he's saying. He has finally started to clap his hands, something I thought he'd never do. Just started doing it one day, and in the right moment. Smarty pants. He loves to play with cars and makes a sort of "vroom vroom" noise when he moves them. He's obsessed with Winnie the Pooh. He enjoys washing his "parts" in the bath and dunking his head under the water. He loves to turn the radio on the listen to Christmas music. There are days when it must be on ALL DAY or he's not happy. By the time the hubs gets home on those days, I've had more than my fill of Bing and Dean and Eartha Kitt and the guy who sings the song about the little boy who doesn't have enough money to buy shoes for his dying mother on Christmas Eve so that she can look nice when she meets Jesus later that night. Seriously, dude - was that song really necessary?