Well, I am reeling with my new knowledge. I'm as off-kilter as that time a few years ago when I learned that ENGLAND IS AN ISLAND! And NOT a country on the coast, between France and Germany! At least I can blame that on my football-coach geography teacher.
My latest discovery is that I seem to be the only person in the world who completely loses taste and smell for five days (give or take a couple) during the common cold! Sweet Gummi Mary! To think of all the times I've been miserable, being one who loves to eat. All the efforts to bring back just a smidgen of taste for a meal. Holding salsa in my mouth in an effort to send fumes to open up my sinus congestion. Eating two or three Halls Mentholyptus cough drops during the class period before my school lunch. Blowing and blowing my nose with food in my mouth, hoping to catch a layer of flavor. Maybe 1 out of 5 tries, I got a little taste, but nothing long enough to last the whole meal.
THE UNIVERSE CONSPIRES AGAINST ME!
Now I'm taking back all the sympathy I've had for people "suffering" with a cold. Those malingerers! They could smell and taste all along! Why should I feel sorry for THEM? I bear them no ill will. I wouldn't wish anybody to be sick. But a cold isn't really all that inconvenient if you can still smell and taste. Just wipe your nose, then blow your nose when it gets congested. Stay hydrated. And enjoy your vittles, you smelling, tasting sickos!
Anyhoo... this kind of reminds me of when I was taking care of young Genius. He was my first baby, you know. We had the Parents As Teachers lady come for home visits at my $17,000 house. She said Genius was pretty advanced. Of course I agreed! Then she said it was because I talked to him like he was an adult, and he was picking things up at a rapid pace.
WAIT A MINUTE! Are you not supposed to talk to babies like they're adults??? Is that frowned upon? Should I have been making baby talk with Genius? Too late now!
I got a transfer from my job at the South St. Louis unemployment office right before I had Genius. My buddies up there were disappointed. "He's OUR baby! That's not fair!" Some of them came down to Hillmomba for a visit. To see Baby Genius. Even Della, whose mother had told her never to go south of Lindbergh, because there are no streetlights.
Anyhoo... Baby Genius was 4-6 months old at the time of their visit. I remember that the weather was warming up, and he was barefoot. We sat around the living room, watching him in his little play mat that reminded me of a dry swimming pool. It was padded with a rim of cushy sides a few inches high. I had dressed him in a Mizzou Tigers onesie that my mom gave him. She loved her Mizzou Tigers basketball team!
Anyhoo... Baby Genius was rolling around on his back, doing what he loved to do: playing with an empty cardboard can that had previously held Planter's Cheese Balls, smiling and showing off for his audience. He was a people person.
"Look at him!"
"Oh my gosh! Isn't that cute?"
"Where did he learn to do that?"
I was not getting it. Baby Genius was doing what he always did with his toys. He had grabbed the Planter's Cheese Balls can with his feet, and picked it up to hold while he played bongo drums on the top with his hands.
"Um. What do you mean? Don't all babies do that? He holds everything with his feet. He's like a little monkey. He'll pick stuff up with either hands or feet, and transfer them back and forth as he plays. Sometimes he plays with one toy in his feet, and another one in his hands."
Apparently, such behavior was not all that common! Which I learned later. This everyday foot-grasping play with Genius was not observed in the Baby Pony.
You learn something every day! Or at least every three or four decades.
6 comments:
Hence their names... Genius and The Pony. Those should be on their birth certificates.
The foot grasping is uncommon, but everything else is the same as with my babies. I spoke to them without baby talk and they were all capable of holding conversations with complete strangers by three and one that has the same name as you was two and talking to everybody she met. The alertness and strong muscle tone was commented on by almost everybody, "look at that! Look how alert he is, looking around at everything!" The baby was two months old at the time. My grandchildren were the same. I've known other babies who lay limp in your arms like a half-stuffed rag doll and didn't even try holding their own heads up until two months. I prefer "our" variety, who sit up and take notice.
Sioux,
If only I'd known their personalities before leaving the hospital with them!
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River,
Yes, they've always taken notice. But in opposite ways. Genius begging to leave my side in The Devil's Playground, to go ask the electronic department if they had any new hard drives (at 5 years old). And The Pony going under a round clothes rack to stand hidden in the middle, observing, while I shopped! Let the record show that I never let them out of my sight. Well. I couldn't SEE The Pony, but I was right there within 10 feet of him.
Heh, you had a Sheldon Cooper on your hands :)
I confess to baby talk. I do it with my dogs, too. I did a combination of baby talk and adult talk. When I had time to talk at all. I was 17 when I had my first child and 24 when I had my last child, number 5. She was tongue tied. I noticed it right away, but the pediatricians kept saying her tongue would grow and it would resolve on it's own. That didn't happen. She wasn't very vocal for the first year and a half of her life. We moved to a different city and a new pediatrician. He was appalled that it had not been clipped. A very simple procedure requiring no anesthesia or stitches. Mouths heal very quickly. After that we could not shut her up. She spoke like an adult in full sentences and she seemed to have a lot to say about everything. All that time she was taking it all in! She is still voicing her opinion in her special commanding way that makes you pay attention and shut up!
River,
I think Genius's friends have made that comparison to him!
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Kathy,
Doctors think they are so smart! They need to listen a little better. I really miss my old Army doctor. HE was in the Army. Not me. He got things done, and he listened and explained. Sadly, he got fed up with the bureaucracy, and left my hospital-associated clinic and their "standard of care" policies, to work at the local VA. I guess he was used to THAT bureaucracy!
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