i can do impressions

here's my impression of my son:

Brandon - "You think you're finished feeding me for now? You think your nipples are going to get a moment to themselves to heal? You think this is a game?"

Brandon - "I see you've just changed my diaper. It would be a shame if someone were to rapid fire doo-doo inside of the new diaper that's been on my ass for 2.2 seconds."


Brandon - "Oh, it's bath time, is it? I disagree. Because while you're lowering me into that bath water you so carefully tempered to my liking, I'm gonna drop a massive, soupy deuce right in there. Like, directly in there. Now, clean it up damn you."

Brandon - "I see you've just finished bathing me. It would be a shame if someone were to shit on themselves, getting shit all over, including shit right in the palm of your hand, and now you have to bathe me all over again. Oh, and don't forget to swirl the shit covered towel in the toilet with your bare hands."

Brandon- "So. You'd like to do your hair, huh? Well, I hate to tell you this but, you work for me now. And as my employee, if you are not at my beck and call every second that I am conscious, I am going to scream bloody goddamn murder and make the other people in this apartment complex consider calling DCFS on you. And, you'll NEVER leave me in a room alone without having visions of me rolling myself up over the edge of my crib. Or worse things. All because you just HAD to do your hair.

Brandon - "Yeah, I'm taking a nap. But i'm not so much a peacefully sleeping baby as i am a TICKING TIME BOMB, and you'll never know what tiny innocuous sound is going to disturb my slumber, SETTING ME RIGHT THE HELL OFF.

Chicago Homicide: what is your problem with this slogan?

the other day on the red line I saw a plain-clothed cop looking dude wearing a t-shirt that said:

Chicago Police Homicide: Our Day Starts When Yours Ends.

......I'm sorry, WHAT.
First of all, the fact that the homicide department has such a grim slogan or a slogan AT ALL is a tad MESSED UP. And- what do you mean your day starts when mine "ends"? That might as well have said

Chicago Police Homicide: If You Live Here, You're Going To Be Murdered. We'll Investigate.
or
Chicago Police Homicide: You've Been Warned About Living Here. Anyway, We'll Totally Get To The Bottom Of Your Murder
or
Chicago Police Homicide: Rest Assured, We'll Catch The Person Who Murders You.

Alright look here, i don't need anymore reminders that my family and i live in the bloody murder-capital of the mid west, thanks. What, you think i wouldn't prefer to live in a place where the peeps don't constantly get capped? because that would be greeeeat. HOWEVER, i don't have the resources to just up and say deuces Chicago, I'm going to move to this affluent area real quick and hope i don't look out of place kicking it with a bunch of people who own instead of rent their cribs.

Anyway, get out my face with your pessimism, Chi P.D.

cooking, cleaning, telekinesis

I like to listen to old broadcasts of patrice o'neal on opie & anthony as i tidy up my dusty house. BUT, they employ heavy use of the entire curse word RAINBOW, and i don't want Brandon's first word to be 'cunt'.
So i'll listen to my wu-tang channel on pandora instead. Because i'd rather his first word be 'bitches'.

With all this round-the-clock baby holding whilst doing a plethora of OTHER jazz, never have i wished harder for telekinetic powers. Or a freakish but capable third arm to increase my efficiency by a respectable 25 percent. Especially with THIS baby, he does NOT  want to be put down. like EVER.

so i hold him with one hand and fold laundry with the other while we watch another movie on netflix. today's movie will be beverly hills cop because i feel it's important for Brandon to know what eddie murphy WAS in comparison to what he BECAME.

then i hold him with one hand while i whip up a dope meal for two before my huuuusband gets home from work. i feel it's important for him to behold the staggering amount of things i get done with one hand literally tied behind my back.
BEHOLD, SON.

guns, guns, GUNS

yesterday while Brandon napped on me, I watched that Pumping Iron documentary from the 70s about how Arnold Schwarzenegger (I can't spell "Schwarzenegger" but I live in a country where Schwarzenegger is already uploaded into Word spell-check) was training to defend his Mr. Universe title. 

Let me tell you something crucial about me:

I was raised on Arnold movies so I am a SUCKER for almost all things Arnold, particularly anything he was in from 84' to 94'. That 10-year span was, in academic terms: the most metal era in cinematic history, never to be re-created again.  

Terminator, Terminator 2, Predator, Commando, Total Recall, Twins, Red Heat, The Running Man, True Lies, Kindergarten Cop.... you get the point so I'll just stop right there.

And thanks to Arnold movies, I discovered the colorful spectrum of ways men could be creatively killed for my child-age blood lust. It also unearthed a bottomless well of questions about all the cartoonish ways a man can be killed. Do your eyes really squeeze out of your head if your helmet comes off in space? Can you actually snap a person's neck that easily? Can you really harpoon a man with a giant hollow pipe? With your bare hands? If you threw a table saw blade really hard at a guy would it really take a chunk of his head off? Why do you instantly die if you get thrown down a flight of stairs? If two big dogs were charging at you side-by-side, and jumped at you at the same time, could you really clunk their heads together? Liquid nitrogen is a THING that EXISTS? Can you really use a person's body like a shield so you wont get shot? If you shot a guy in the chest, would he just instantly die? 

And speaking of getting shot, it wasn't until decades later when I was learning how to handle my husband's handgun at the range, that I realized how wildly misinformed I was about basic handgun mechanics.  And I place the blame squarely on Arnold. 

Here's what I discovered:

I am waaaaay more noodle-armed than I thought. And the noodle-armed should never hold a gun with one hand. Or sideways. Or upside down. I DON'T KNOW, however the cool kids are holding their guns nowadays. An improper hold pretty much guarantees you're not going to hit your moving target: a morally bankrupt henchman, or the final bad guy now that you've reached the end of the movie. The kick back alone would make the gun fly out of your hand.  

And, oh yeah, guns "kick back".  You have to have retard-strength level of grip in your hands when firing a gun, otherwise that bad boy is going to kick back HARD, and you MIGHT bash yourself in the face.   

And did you know the shells that case the bullets get flaming hot when ejected from the gun as you fire? Did you know these hot bastards could ricochet off the nearest wall and tumble hilariously down the front of your shirt and get trapped in your bra? Did I mention they are as hot as the sun and will leave burn marks on your skin?  

And, were you aware that guns are loud as HELL? I don't posses the vocabulary to accurately describe how awesomely LOUD guns truly are. The general public thinks of guns as "air horn" loud, or maybe "police siren" loud. In reality, it's more like "standing in the wake of a jet plane" loud, but condensed into a split second.  I grew up on the west side, and dammit, I am no stranger to the sound of gunfire. But said gun fire was always heard from a distance, such as: from the end of the block while standing in within the confines of my house. Standing next to a firing gun is a whole 'nother level of experiencing the sonic-goddamn-BOOM they emit. There is no way to look cool and talk shit to the guy you just shot while your ears are bleeding.  

Also, has anyone told you that there is no need to cock your gun? Wanton cocking of the gun is not only unnecessary but also bad for the gun. Wanton gun cocking makes YOU look like a huge tool, but when Arnold does it, it's a punctuation to a timeless one-liner. 

Consider that a divorce CLACK-CLACK! 

See you at the party Richter CLACK-CLACK! 

It's not a tumor CLACK-CLACK!  

And proper aiming is the exact opposite of effortless, it actually takes A TON OF PATIENCE AND SKILL. My gun held 12 bullets, but I only counted 9 holes in that target practice sheet they give you at the range. The sheet couldn't have been more than 6 feet away, directly in front of me, and was not moving. Yet, I still managed to miss my target an entire 25% of the time. And I can forget about head shots. I'd be one of those broads that got eaten if this was the Walking Dead. Though slow and lumbering, zombies are notoriously bad at holding still while you aim your gun at their face. All these cold facts about REAL gun handling totally suck the sexiness out of guns and are some bullshit. 

Sleep regression: I stab at thee

And we were on such a good roll, too.

oh my god, go away, sleep regression. I didn’t even know you were a thing until last week, and now you're shaking my confidence in my ability to ACTUALLY BE A PARENT. you're making me want to throw myself through a closed 3rd story window. be gone, sleep regression.

 Since his grand entry into our material plane, Brandon has slept in the bed with my husband and I. Despite advice to the contrary by his pediatrician, I decided to walk on the wild side and co-sleep with my baby. Tangent alert: I didn't realize what an immediate threat my husband's habit of throwing bows in his sleep presented to Brandon's health (dude, could you not elbow our baby), but I also underestimated my own motherly instincts for detecting and deflecting those threats. Even in my sleep. I guess I'm just a bad ass momma-bear like that. One night, my husband was up to his old sleeping antics, probably dreaming about fighting crime or whatever, and threw an elbow that nearly connected with Brandon's head. Something compelled me to wake up a moment before this catastrophe almost happened, and I caught his elbow in my palm an instant before it made contact. I was like Neo stopping the bullets. Elbow my kid? Not on my watch, my dude. This scenario hasn't happened since. Everybody gets one. 

After Brandon hit four months old, I wondered if now was the time to start transitioning him into sleeping in his crib. Not entirely for his sake, but also for mine. Up until this point, Brandon slept directly on top of me and it was really starting to do a number on my back. I wasn't sure how much longer I could hack it as a borderline cripple trying to stankylegg my way out of bed every morning. And since I breastfeed, nothing is easier than rolling over and popping a boob in his screaming maw in the middle of the night so we can ALL get back sleep. Anyway, he was a textbook awesome baby about the whole thing, it took three days for him to get use to sleeping in his crib without getting all pissed off, just like babycenter.com said he would. That third night after he went straight to sleep without protest, i jogged around my crib humming the theme from Rocky, i was like YO I GOT THIS MOTHERING GAME ON LOCK, SON. You could set your watch to his napping & sleeping routine, because he was sleeping like a goddamned CHAMPION.

Then one day.... He was like screw a nap, MOM.
I was like, alrighty...
Then that night, he was like, SLEEP IS FOR THE WEAK. All night long. And into the next morning.
I was like, SERIOUSLY DUDE WHOSE BABY IS THIS?

Wash, rinse, repeat.

After the third night of his not-sleeping shenanigans, I jumped on the internets at 3 in the AM, trying to figure out what in god's holy name was wrong with my kid. The internet was like, sounds like sleep regression to me, yo.

Sleep regression is a thing that exists, no one told me about it, it is EXCRUCIATING, and all you can do is strap yourself in and ride it out until your kid snaps back to normal.

In other words, sleep regression is the Keyser Soze of baby phenomena. It shows up out of nowhere, messes your whole world up, and then suddenly POOF! It's gone...