I think I blew Eliza’s mind tonight when I introduced her to the concept of trick or treating. She went to sleep a full half hour early, toddler nerve endings frazzled from the overstimulation. Good times, people.

Let me, therefore, launch into our doings of the past few days.

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This:

was sitting in a tree outside my building as I walked to my office this morning. I requisitioned the office camera and took a few photos. In my inexpert opinion, it is a red-tailed hawk. An impressive birdie, to be sure, it was not in the least intimidated by my presence. I was amused by the sign on the fence next to it.

Eliza’s favorite drink in the WORLD is the Horizon vanilla milk. Aside from its deliciousness, it comes in a box that was a cow on it (”Cow! Cow! MooMOO!”) and you drink it with a straw (”Swaw! Swaw! Dwink!”).

To differentiate it from the plain milk, I started calling it Special Milk. When I ask her if she wants special milk, she answers, as solemnly as you can expect from someone who speaks exclusibely in exclamatory utterances, “Feshow! Mik!”

I am a bad mommy because I have no shame at all in using the Feshow Mik for bribery. They sell it at Stop and Shop and to get her to chill out while I shop, my first stop is the organic diary case. If I shop with alacrity, I will finish up just as she’s slurping the very last drops.

The unexpected bonus of Feshow Mik is that she now associates the word Feshow with Good Things, and it has become as valuable a tool in my parenting arsenal as the milk itself.

Case in point:
I bought her some new one-piece footie pajamas recently because it’s getting chilly at night. For Eliza, sleeping is an acrobatic event and I didn’t want her waking up cold because she’d rucked up her shirt or kicked off her blankets.

I had not counted on an objection to the whole feet/legs attached thing, though, and the first time I put them on her, she plucked angrily at the footies, shouting, “Off! Off! Off! Off!” until I abandoned the project.

I regrouped and tried again the next day. As she started to object, I told her, “But, Eliza, these are SPECIAL socks! Don’t you want SPECIAL socks?!”

I tell you, it stopped her cold. She let me put them on her and is now completely reconciled to the footie pajama concept. The other day, as we were waking up from a cuddle that was more of a post-sleeping nap (sleeping is hard work, yo!), she stuck her feet in my face and announced joyfully, “Feshow! Shocks!”

In August 2005, my friend J forwarded me a message with a link to a post dooce had written about her baby’s constant nursing.

I liked her writing, and more than that, as I read her archives, I responded to the truth in her writing, which is that motherhood is easy and hard, blissful and awful, good and bad, sometimes boring and often terrifyingly exciting. From there, I quickly found many other people (mostly women, I must say) who wrote with grace, humor and insight about their lives. Some blogs mirrored my experiences, others fascinated me as the writer navigated their way through events that were totally foreign to me.

I’ve always sucked at journaling — I got a journal when I was 10 that lasted me through college. The journals of my semester abroad during my junior year of college are mostly scribbled lists of concerts I went to and reasons why Bono is hot. (As though I would forget some if I didn’t write them all down.)

For some reason, blogging is different. Or maybe it isn’t — maybe it’s my life that is different. Either way, I found a writing form that suits me. The freedom of it allows me to natter away in first-person in a way I couldn’t at the newspaper (not that I didn’t try constantly) but the pressure of an audience (even if it is still largely imaginary and 40 percent my mom) keeps me at it even when I feel like slacking off sometimes.

I am excited that one day, I will be able to give this to Eliza (with one or two entries expurgated, perhaps — who wants to read about their mom waxing poetic about Bruce Springsteen’s butt?) and she’ll have a record of what our life was like when she was a wee one.

It’s nearly NaBloPoMo, and I’m ready to go. This month will include plenty of off-the-cuff entries as usual, but I’ve also planned some entries I’ve long been meaning to write.

Coming attractions:
My City of Ruins
Eliza By Any Other Name
The Proposaversary
Forgotten Films
Bob, BB, and Me

I am, furthermore, predicting an entry soon about how much I detest apples. Two pecks was perhaps excessive for a family of 3, one of whom eats capriciously, if at all.

And of course, there’s The Elizasmom/Daily Kvetch Blogger Confab 2006!

Apple status report: Experiencing apple post-traumatic stress disorder. Discussion of apples banned in the house.

***

Five years ago, Jim and I traveled to San Francisco with some friends who had relatives there (=free housing!). It’s a gorgeous town (and I hope you are having a good time there, Grandma Texas!), and the surrounding area is equally lovely. If it had been warmer, it might’ve been my favorite town. As it was I came improperly prepared — California=hot, especially in summer, right? — and was a little goose-bumpier than I generally enjoy.

Anyway, we took in the sights greedily, and one of the unexpected side-shows of the trip was the banana slug, which looks like what you produce during a bad cold, only 6 inches long, which is about 5 15/16 inches than any snot-esque object really needs to be. They’re all over, and not a few schools and universities have taken them as mascots, which begs the question: What qualities of the banana slug, exactly, do they find inspiring? As a football or basketball player, I can see the traditional wildcat/wolf-type mascot fitting in with my ideas of sportsmanship a good deal better than a slug. Clearly the yellow booger has seized the imagination of the populace by dint of its ubiquity.

As we marveled at the sight, our friend told us that some years back, some form of Buddhist had visited the campus of a local university and, espying a banana slug oozing its way across a path, stopped in his tracks and asked, “What the holy hell is that snotlike abomination?!” only phrased more Zennishly.

Once enlightened, the Buddhist was no less disgusted and captivated, and the story goes that every single time one of these things crossed his path, he stopped and uttered a blessing: “May you come back in a better form in your next life!”

Apparently the blessing caught on and gardeners for miles around could be heard muttering it under their breath as they dispatched the pests with a flick of the shovel.

This story came to mind today, when I came across this attractive specimen while we played in the andbox:

They’re all over the yard, but usually the only way we know this is by the ragged path they eat through the leaves on my plants. They’re compellingly gross — like banana slugs, they resemble boogers — but this case, they are the boogers you produce when you blow your nose after spending a weekend in someplace polluted.