latina genius vs. scraggly old mom

This morning, as usual, I got Josephine dressed and then put her in her high chair for breakfast. Normally, that triggers a litany of desired breakfast foods: toast, fruits, juice, O's, cereal bars, anything she can think of that her body will process as straight sugar. Of course, I promptly start her with vegetables, but it's good for the girl to dream (of all the ways she can destroy her metabolic regulation of gylcolysis as an autonomous adult)...

Today, however, she got exactly what she wanted because I was so tickled.

The first and only thing Josephine requested, completely unprompted?

"Black beans."

I'm not kidding.

Must have been the shirt.

It turns out beans must be pretty serious brain food, because I was even more bemused by the conversation that followed.

After scarfing her oddly requested bowl of black beans, I scrambled her an egg with cheese and buttered a piece of toast. I put them all in her bowl, but placed the bowl out of reach saying, "The eggs and cheese are still too hot."

"Eat toast first?" came the quick reply.

Folks, I had not had my coffee yet. She had already stretched me out of my habitual motions with the request for black beans, and now she was forcing me to reconsider something ELSE.

It literally took my brain several seconds to process that we were having a conversation about the toast and eggs and then debate the worthiness of her request. It was a painful lag as my old brain attempted to catch up with the one belonging to my 1 year old problem solver.

Eventually I eeked some computation out of my frazzled synapses, and sure, sure-- eating the toast first was a perfectly fine solution. So I acquiesced again, and she proceeded to intermittently munch on toast and blow all over her eggs to cool them down.

Where did this person come from??

Does a strong enough coffee bean even exist?

josephine's watermelon seeds

Texas, our Texas! All hail the mighty state!

Texas, our Texas! So wonderful so great!

Boldest and grandest, withstanding ev'ry test

O Empire wide and glorious, you stand supremely blest!

(....so why not pass those blessings along to Texans with disabilities....)

Well, Josephine's been in heaven! Sean's parents' visit on Saturday was quickly followed by a stay by my mom, who came down Monday, since she was scheduled to meet with her district's Texas House of Representative's member, Todd Smith, on Tuesday morning. I, with the excuse of being her chauffeur, tagged along. She and her teammates did an excellent job, discussing the effects of the budget cuts to home and community based services for individuals with disabilities. A state cut as high as the proposed 29% would eliminate billions of federal dollars, too, and effectively shut down all programing outside of state schools for individuals like my sister, Janell. State schools are an inaccessible, dismal, and segregated option for the 27,000+ people who would be left up a creek... and all personal feelings aside, while those rage extremely strong.... by national standards, that would be a shameful and disgraceful landing point when our state has been struggling for decades to empower this population towards community integration and independence.

I know budget cuts are rough right now, and subsequent losses are rampant, but really--- my mom's group had excellent proposals for ways to make the programs more financially efficient (which unsurprisingly calls for REDUCING state-run options and moving towards waivers for privatized services). From what I can tell, though, it requires legislators to see beyond the shortfall this biennium and acknowledge the enormous financial benefit that would come from restructuring the system towards long term improvements. Being ridiculously cynical, I don't even expect politicians to consider human dignity, which is PRICELESS... but come on! Just the budget numbers alone are convincing!

Anyway, I was proud of my mom's political debut, so I made her take a picture in front of the capitol building:

In other news, Josephine has fully recovered from that awful cough!

And my CT scan came back totally fine-- yay! This reassured my doctor not to worry about a cysts or inflamed appendix, and led her to all sorts of abdominal shovings that made me want to either cry or hit her. The conclusion, however, is encouraging. It's nothing worrisome; apparently c-sections commonly develop adhesions... strands of scar tissue that bind one's uterus (in this case) to other organs or places in your abdomen. The binding is what causes pain when I move and my gut, in all it's bondage, doesn't. She showed me how to inflict further pain on my abdomen in hopes of weakening those strands of scar tissue and loosening their binds. Fun stuff. We'll see how it goes. I'm just relieved it's nothing serious.

Grandma reading Josephine a book, at which point Josephine proudly showed off her perfect ability to repeat back any word she chooses... "Peacock" came out plain as day.

I, watching, quickly was like, "How about 'MOM?????'" (Because, according to her, I am still "Ba." It's like she's decided I am not worthy of being upgraded to official "Mom" status.

But come on!!! What do I have to do??? I bathe her, clothe her, feed her, play with her... She can say words like peacock, goofball, and full sentences, plain as day... "Clean up this, too." But Mom? Nope.)

Almost all our amaryllis bulbs are in bloom!

Josephine, being proud of more dirt relocation:
Politics, medical issues, and verbal capabilities aside... some things like moving around dirt just stay consistently great.

a silent time

There's been a straight-to-the-lungs sickness for Josephine, a CT scan for me (trying to decipher some abdominal pain that I've had for over a year), four cubic yards of compost for Sean to spread through the yard (with much "help" from Josephine), a kitchen island to rework as I start on the next phase of the house projects, some church hunting, my darling sister's 26th birthday (not that we/she hardly got to celebrate it-- but it did happen!), a visit from Sean's folks (bearing some Christmas presents that our car couldn't handle in December), and A LOT of playing in the backyard, soaking up the precious few weeks we get of spring before the mosquitoes ruin it!

Josephine in her thrift store dress questioning Mama Jo about the blue people in the windows at the Domain (yes, I'm proud that isn't a customary sight for my kid!)... unpictured are all the questions I wanted to ask about what the blue people were wearing...

We've also had some buds...
...and a supermoon (something about it being the closest full moon since 1993). Sure has made for some nice nights outdoors lately.

Anyway, I do apologize for the blog silence, the lack of personal contact, and the fact that the camera has mostly been off the last couple weeks. The next couple weeks don't look much different, I'm afraid! Except for the fact that they're the LAST weeks of Josephine being ONE. (It already feels like she's 5, so who are we kidding.... but officially, on April 2, she'll be TWO. Gracious sakes.)

Hey, Josephine...

... what's that???(at the time of questioning, it was just the triangle on the left with the three bricks in a row) and she said, "tchtchtch ... CHOO CHOOOOOOOO!!!!" Which made me smile, and I said, "Train? Choo choo?" And she was clearly VERY pleased with herself. I asked if she wanted me to take a picture of it, which she did. Hence her addition above and her carrying it below. She just got very excited about the attention it was getting.
That was this morning.

Back in Atlanta we had the first of this kind of exchange. She was coloring on a blank piece of paper, and for kicks I acted curious and said, "What is that?" .. I wasn't expecting an answer. But she looked at it, thought about it, and said very definitively, "Girl." (I had to play it cool, even though I got a total charge out of her responding like that.) So I looked casually at the two brown lines, and I said, "Oh, I see. Does she need hair?" And Josephine seemed keen on that, so the drawing became THREE brown lines, followed by a VERY proud expression on her 22 month old face. I said, "Great hair! What about arms?" And she looked excited and colored vigorously side to side. Et cetera.

Looking at the picture above you can tell we went on for quite a while! It was just cute that she seemed so intentional about what she was coloring. I'm loving her imagination-- but in various ways it's been evident that she's always had one of those. So mostly, I guess I'm loving that we're having a conversation about it-- that I'm now being allowed into her imagination.