The Cookbook Junkies

My name is Jenny.

My husband calls me Jen. That is fine. He’s my husband, he can call me that (it is preferred to wench, b*t*h or woman).

People he knows calls me Jen. I hate that. I hate that. I hate that. He says it is because he always says “Jen this…” “Jen that…” (again preferred to “that old lady of mine…”)…

I never sign anything Jen, I never leave a message starting “this is Jen”, when someone answers the phone, I never say, “Hi, this is Jen.” Idios mio.

Then there are the people that assume your name is Jennifer. Okay, that isn’t my name either. Don’t assume anything. I assume you graduated high school, have a common grasp of the English language, can sit upright and use a fork without hurting yourself…silly me — we’re both wrong.

I keep thinking of funny/cute/weird things Andrew does…

Besides the “W” obsession, he loves his elbow. He puts his elbow out and pats it and says “elbow, elbow, elbow”. He hugs Jim and my elbow saying “I love my mommy’s elbow.” “I love my daddy’s elbow”. He grabs our elbows and bangs his head on them…”elbow, elbow, elbow”. I hope this is an indication that he will be an orthopedic surgeon and not some perv in the movie theater hoping someone puts their elbow on his arm rest.

He also likes to do what we call “the happy dance”. He sets up a block formation and then does this weird hop, step, jig dance around it. He gets a favorite toy and does the same thing. At Mommy and Me, he finally gets the “item” he wants – puts it down and dances – some other toddler grabs it – he then does his “angry, I’m going to bite your head off” dance.

He does dance as if no one is watching. He is so far more advanced than me. It takes me a half a bottle of mudslide and a blunt object to my head before I could dance as if no one is watching.

I bought a decorative tile at Hallmark yesterday. It reads:

The “Real” to do List:

Sing.
Smile at strangers.
Keep learning.
Notice kindness.
Eat ice cream.
Hope.
Count your blessings.
Laugh.
Love.
Love some more.

I bought it because I do need to be reminded to live. We all rush through every day. We don’t take time to just sit and really play. I am guilty of playing cars with Andrew and while I’m smiling and acting happy I’m stressing over what I should be doing. One day he won’t want to play cars. One day he won’t want to hug and love mommy’s elbow (dear God, I hope). I need to be reminded to count my blessings and dance as if no one is watching.

Enough with the rant titles – I’m giving myself a headache.

My son is addicted to the alphabet. My friend, Crissy, with loving sarcasm calls him the alphabet prodigy because at 18 months he could identify any upper case letter that you would point to or write. Now he puts them in alphabetical order (the fridge phonic letters), knows upper and lower case, goes around the house saying “I love W so much” (the letter not the President), “I love the alphabet”…it’s absolutely makes me break out in a cold sweat. Mind you, he loves trucks, cars, toys, lots and lots of toys, his best buddy, John (Crissy & Denis’ son), his parents, his cup – but he has continually played with alphabet and number games for almost four days in a row now (previously only 50 percent of the time). I need to find a program for him…

“Hi, I’m Andrew and I’m an alphabet-o-holic“….

I have to say he does love “W”. We have an alphabet train puzzle and we use to start the puzzle with A – but he would say at least 100 times before we got to the middle of the alphabet – “I want W” “I want W” “I want W” W W W W W W W W. I have nightmares of giant Ws chasing me….now we just start at Z and go backwards, if he ends up dyslexic it is his own damn fault.

I’m proud of him that he loves to learn but I think the majority of ability in his INCREDIBLE memory. I could bore you with countless examples but I won’t. He inherits his memory from me – I remember everything much to my husband’s dismay. My husband, a wealth of knowledge, by any standard, is like the nutty professor sometimes – he once lost two sets of car and house keys within a space of two weeks. He is no longer allowed to carry keys to any of our assets. I was the one that had to go to the car dealer with a signed letter from him (at that time his name was on the title of our car as we had just gotten married) to have duplicate keys made at the cost of $10 each. The key maker had to call my husband on the phone to verify that he indeed approved of the duplication of keys to the car. The guy told me he has to verify everything now because someone came in and made copies to an ex-husband’s car and then went and drove it off. He said divorce was nasty sometimes. I told him, “if my husband loses these keys…our divorce will be nasty too.”

Well, mudslide is calling…