Leta has the chicken pox. Sort of. It has to be the worst mild case of chicken pox on record. Her pediatrician said she might get a few bumps from the vaccine, but he didn’t mention the fever or the grumpiness or the fact that it would make me want to run head first into a brick wall. Without a helmet.
She also fell over and bit her lip yesterday. God, the risks of mobility. She finally has the ability to move around, but that little puzzle piece of LOGIC is unfortunately missing which in most cases comes in handy when something is in motion, like say NEAR THE EDGE OF A BED, or UNDERNEATH A TWO TON TELEVISION SET. The worst part — you knew there had to be one — is that she only likes to move if there is potential danger within her range of motion, not if she wants something across the room. She remembers the old arrangement and prefers it to the new one, the one where she has to get off her ass because Mama is no longer her monkey butler.
Recently she’s been trying to say her own name, Leta, because that’s all she hears every day all day, LETA LETA LETA LETA. That and, CHUCK SO HELP ME GOD. Except she doesn’t say LETA, she says LEEGO LEEGO LEEGO LEEGO, and she says it incessantly: in the bathtub, while having her diaper changed, while reading books, EVEN when she is crying. When she was having blood drawn from her fingers she was screaming and in tears, and after catching her breath in between each scream she would mumble really softly, leego leego leego. It was heartbreaking, yet both Jon and I had a hard time not giggling, and the lab technician was like, “What language are you teaching her?”
Because of the chicken pox and the lip incident — she looks like she has a gigantic canker sore, poor thing, and I can only imagine what people were thinking at the grocery store today, A BABY, WITH HERPES! I bet her mom works out of the home and lets her watch BoohBah! DO YOU SEE WHAT CAN HAPPEN? DO YOU? — Leta has been in a bit of a sore mood. While trying to find a parking space today at the store I ran into my friend, Kahli, who had just sent Jon a free pair of Timberland shoes, and I stopped to talk to her, only Leta WOULD NOT STOP GRIPING. It went like this:
“Hi, Kahli, oh wait one second…” I turn around to Leta who is LEEGOing like a banshee in the backseat and hand her an empty Altoids tin. “Here,” I pleaded, “SHHHHHHH.”
“Thanks for the shoes, Kahli….” I turn around again because Leta has thrown the Altoid tin to a place in the car that is out of her reach and she has begun LEEGoing again, only this time she is adamant. LEEGO LEEGO LEEGO, which translated means roughly, “THIS IS BORING. THIS IS BORING. THIS IS BORING.”
“Um, yeah so, dinner soon, Kahli,” at which point Leta begins banging her head against the head rest of the car seat in rhythm to the syllables of LEE-GO, LEE-GO, LEE-GO.
Still, I managed to get in a few sentences between the Leegos about shoe size and its relation to the anatomical make-up of the member of the species who determines the gender of a child, and although no specifics were mentioned I’m sure that if the conversation had been taped it could be classified as INAPPROPRIATE, especially since an impressionable grumpy muffin was yodeling in the backseat and could hear everything, and if the universe conspires against me as it is wont to do, Leta should greet her father this evening with, PEENSIP, PEENSIP, PEENSIP.