Mama Home. Yay! (Mama Gone. Boo!)

So, Libby drifted through our lives last night, and left this morning, like a merchant marine on a brief shore leave (only with none of the boozing and lechery and far more of the going to bed early and sleeping--so, maybe like a seventy year old merchant marine on shore leave).

As the first four days of Libby's hiatus from home passed, Gabe's joyful bursts of "Mama home, yay!" grew somewhat more frequent but decidedly less hopeful and exuberant as he came to expect the inevitably level explanation from me that "Mama isn't home, but she will be soon" to thwart his every expectation. By yesterday, he was repeating his mantra on an hourly basis, and I dutifully counted down the hours for him until Libby would return. Then, surprisingly, when she DID get home from work, he blew it all off pretty nonchalantly and his only utterance for her was "Fingerpainting?"

I am mostly to blame for this--though Gabe's uncannily good toddler memory could also have a finger pointed at it.

Round about 2:00 yesterday afternoon, Gabe insisted that it was time to fingerpaint again. "Not a chance," I informed him. "I already told you we were done with art for the day." And as far as I was concerned, we were. Shortly before nap time yesterday morning, Gabe had taken up marker and paper and decided to create yet another masterpiece of modern scribble art. Then, within about ten minutes, he decided that the paper was a limiting and disappointing canvas, so he took his art to the streets. Or, more specifically, to the wood floor in the dining room. He scribbled and markered like there was no tomorrow, using all seven colors at his disposal, to completely deface our floor.

Now, I'm sure there are those out there pointing admonishing fingers and wagging them tellingly at me. "What did you expect?" they ask. "You can't leave a toddler unsupervised with art supplies! Surely you've learned that lesson time and again--or at least you SHOULD have since you've documented Gabe's art adventures quite thoroughly on this page numerous times." To which, I would say, "Get stuffed."

If there is one thing that Gabe and I share, it is a short attention span for things that don't really interest us. And, frankly, toddler art doesn't really interest me that much at this point. Currently, he plays with either his markers or his crayons two or three times a day. He KNOWS he's not supposed to do certain things with them, and, even though I suspect he probably will do those things nonetheless, since he doesn't about 75% of the time, I just can't muster the energy to stay 100% focused on his activities every time he goes for his art supplies. Yes, it is a failing as a parent, but for the sake of my sanity, it is a necessary one. And a pretty minor one. It's not like I'm leaving him alone with a paring knife and the cats. Plus the markers are washable, so he really can't do any damage that a wet cloth can't fix.

Admittedly, this time I had another excuse beyond simple disinterest. I was also making lunch. But saying I had a legitimate excuse outright wouldn't have been nearly as interesting.

Anyway, the first time he asked for the fingerpaints, I said, "Nope, sucka. You lay that sass on your mama when she gets home," only I probably said it with slightly less slang. And, even though he only asked one more time to remind himself of my suggestion to ask Libby when she got home, he somehow managed to remember it.

It kind of sucks that he's getting old enough to remember these sorts of things. Gone are the days of the empty promise, I suppose. Now when I say, "We can go to the park after your nap," I'm going to have to expect to follow through on that promise or pay the consequences. Damn you, brain development, for keeping me true to my word!

While fingerpainting, Gabe did do something new and interesting, though, so I better share that. He took his art to the next level and created facepainting. No, not painting his face. He's done that plenty of times before. He discovered painting WITH his face. After applying generous amounts of paint to his face, he put it to paper.

The first time he did it was the best. Libby and I watched him as he spread his paints on his face then slowly, with purpose, he lowered his face onto a piece of paper. It caught us so off guard that we exploded with laughter, then, of course, I got out the camera. His next application of paint wasn't nearly as good as the first, but you get the idea.

My favorite part of this video is that, the first two times he goes to put his face down on the paper, Libby looks as though she's going to smack his face down to get a good print. It reminds me of grade school. We used to play a game called "Guess Who?" The rules were simple. You smacked someone on the head and said "Guess who?" It could be the front or the back, but it was most fun when you smacked someone who was reading an assignment on the back of the head, which made them smack the front of their head on the book. Then you got a twofer! Probably not the most sophisticated grade school game ever, but it certainly might be a contributing factor towards the lower than average level of academic excellence in the place where I grew up (this isn't just me slandering my redneck roots, either. Here's a telling example. I was my class' salutatorian. And I graduated with a 3.5 gpa. Yeah. I think our valedictorian had about a 3.75. No battle between 4.0 students in MY class. We'll stick to our head smacking, thank you very much!).

But now Libby is attending a work conference until Saturday night, so we're pretty much back at square one, except that NOW Gabe has had a taste of Mama being home. So we'll see how that pans out tonight when she doesn't come home from work like normal again.