Friday of Randomness

1. When Patrick was playing with his toy snail earlier, he bruised my hand. He was playing BamBam with it as usual and pounded it on the back of my hand. One of its little hard plastic antennae came crashing down right into the spot on the back of my hand where the bones from the first two fingers meet. I remember screaming, "Owwww!" at the same time that everything went black (I think I closed my eyes). All I remember for the next few minutes is intense pain, worse than labor--seriously. I've never felt anything like it. At some point, Matt grabbed Patrick off my lap, I guess so he wouldn't do it again. I don't remember much at all until I looked up to see Matt clearly worried about me. That's when I sucked it up, dried off my tears, and took Patrick back from him. About then, the pain started to fade. Now I can barely feel it at all, just slight achiness in my fingers every so often. It's hard to believe that such intense pain can disappear that completely and that quickly.
2. Our cable is out. Is this to prompt me to actually start doing stuff around the house--maybe to get ready to leave for the week tomorrow? I hope the TLC withdrawal isn't too acute.

3. Oh, yeah, we leave tomorrow to go out of town. Matt has a conference in Austin, one that would be foolish for me to attend with him. He'll be busy until late at night every night, and the location is different from before, so I would be stuck in the hotel pretty much all day every day--with an active baby, no less. But I would be terribly lonely here, so we came up with a plan for me to leave for the week too. He's going to take me to Dallas this weekend and leave me to spend the week with my parents. They'll be working during the day, but at least I'll have their company in the evenings. I'll also accompany them to Abilene at the end of the week to attend my brother's graduation from graduate school. Matt will meet me there. Things have worked out really well for me not to spend the week alone. I'd been worrying about what I was going to do for ages, so I'm glad that we finally have a good plan.
4. Last night Patrick went in for a real kiss. He was standing on my lap when he reached his hand out to the side of my face. He gently touched my cheek and then leaned in, a perfect 90-10 that would do Hitch proud (remember that movie?). He opened his mouth at the last minute and gave me a sweet open-mouth kiss right on the lips. We don't typically kiss him on the lips much; any moment is a likely moment for spit-up to come gushing out of his mouth. That makes it even more sweet that he chose to kiss me that way. I may need to have a talk with him, though, about when open-mouth kisses are appropriate. Weird. I didn't think I would need to have that talk for another fifteen years or so. (Let's face it. He's bound to be a little slow in the area of dating, with me as his mom.)
5. I have been having the strangest dreams lately. Last night teaching entered my dream for the first time in a long time. I was quite unexpectedly offered a teaching position teaching freshman English. I politely turned them down explaining that I wasn't ready yet this year and then launched into a discourse on the perils of teaching freshmen. It was really weird, and weirder yet that I remember as many details about it as I do.
6. Patrick has been unusually vocal today. Some of it has just been whininess, which is what I'm listening to right now, but he's been trying out new sounds part of the time too. I've heard a couple of mamas, some ama's and mma's, and the occasional bah or gah. I love how seriously he says them. It's not like the random chattering baby talk I'd always imagined; he says these words with utter seriousness, as though he is truly trying to convey some message to us with these words. I'm starting to wonder what he's saying and where I can find a translator. Maybe he's found the meaning of life or the secret of nuclear fission and can't find grown-up words to tell us.