Who Taught My Baby How To Be A Jerk?

Is that bad, calling your baby a jerk? Benjamin has just turned a corner where his new found mobility has emboldened him to have a bit of an attitude. And some of the things he does, if any of us did them, we would be called jerks. Actually, we would be called something worse.

I'm not really calling Benjamin a jerk and he hasn't become "Damien" from the Omen movies, but he is definitely testing the limits.

For instance, if he's messing with an object he desires (phone, marker, remote, gold bullion) and we don't let him have it, he will run away squealing from us and then throw said object into the corner.

THEN, if we put the object back he will go back over to it, look you right in the eye and zing the object haphazardly behind him. And the look on his face says, "Oh yeah, you want this so much, go get it (ZING!)" There are some choice days where we call timeout for him more than the last 2 minutes of an NBA game.

And the absolute worse part is when he does the "Marlin" - a full body contort were his head and feet stiffen and fling in the opposite direction from his body. Much like a marlin jumping up out of the water and flopping around on the deck of your boat. At least now I know what it's like to be headbutted and kicked in the ribs at the same time. I could soooo make it in the UFC.

For full disclosure, he still has plenty of good moments and isn't filled with vinegar that often. The times that he has an attitude make up probably 5%, but going from 0% to 5% makes you think "oh no, is this it? Is the cheese sliding off his cracker? What did we do wrong? Whose teaching him this stuff?" Like everything else in the media, I guess we should blame the parents. Wait a second...

Life's a Zoo

Sometimes you just need a break, so I took one for 2 weeks. A break from pretty much everything except family. I had two big revelations, the first one is that I am programmed to remain busy. Even if I don't have work to do, I fill my time with some other form of work rendering me completely incapable of relaxing. That's why I never book a massage, I'd rather just rub my own shoulders so I feel like I'm accomplishing something.

The 2nd revelation is that every day I go to work, I am completely missing the sweetspot of Benjamin play time. I see him in the morning when he can't wait to eat breakfast, and then I see him at night when he can't wait to eat dinner, mess around a little bit and then go to sleep. I had two weeks of seeing him in his element and doing things that I didn't know he was able to do, like play piano. I kid.

(3rd revelation is how are all of these other people at Target at 2PM on a Tuesday??)

One treat is that my folks came in to town from TN to stay for about a week. They hadn't seen Benjamin since we was 2 weeks old, and Benjamin really has never seen them. They just looked like black and white polka dots to him. He had a blast, they had a blast, we all had a blast. They marveled at Benjamin's ability to do some things that are just kind of commonplace to us now. It was a great experience to see their joy from our little bundle of joy.

I did plan a family outing to the Ft. Worth Zoo while they were in town, which was the inaugural expedition for everyone. I thought that Benjamin at 16 months would be able to understand that there were exotic animals running around him, I was wrong. Let me set the stage a little bit with these three words - Texas, June, Hot.

We got there right when it opened to hopefully catch the animals in the midst of wrapping up their breakfast before they start running and swinging and breaking into dance in order to entertain the patrons. What we saw were animals submerged in water, huddled under any shade they can find or buried in a hole somewhere. To me, the looks on their faces read, "Please, send me back to Africa where it's cooler"

The animals that did play ball weren't interesting enough to pull Benjamin's attention away from people watching everyone around him. "Oh Benjamin, look at the huge gorilla right in front of your face... orrrr keep trying to touch that girl's barrettes in front of you" All in all we got to see about 1/3 of the park before we called it quits to find sweet relief in a room piping super cold A/C. And unfortunately there were no penguins to be found.