Studies in human behavior
When last we visited Food Stealing Lady (mere days ago), she was taking food that might possibly have been mistaken for community goods. I mean, not really, since it was in a specific area that she had no business in, and since it was obviously a potluck-style mishmash of contributions of which none were hers, but okay. We’ll give her the benefit of the doubt and assume that she thought it was free for the taking. Now, however, she has moved on to labeled food. A few weeks ago, my department had an ice cream party. We clearly labeled the leftover cartons in permanent marker – “DEPARTMENT NAME” and stored them in the breakroom freezer. This seems to have worked fairly well – no one has been getting into them except for people in said department – until yesterday. One of our administrative assistants happened into the breakroom and there she was, merrily scooping some into a bowl. You know, the thing I find to be most bizarre about this behavior is that it just started out of the blue. As I mentioned before FSL has worked at my office for quite a while but just within the last few weeks has started doing this. Or maybe not. Maybe she is just becoming more brazen and obvious with something she has actually been doing all along. Hmm. If this keeps up, I might have to dedicate a whole category to it.
In other news, this evening we are taking Miss T to the local university’s Psychology lab for some language testing. Not as in SHE needs the testing, but they are conducting a study on language cognition and for that they need babies her age. We contribute a little of our time for their language experiments and she gets a free toy. Everyone wins! Plus, I look forward to seeing what kind of language tests you can actually do on a four-month-old. I’m thinking there won’t be much in the way of actual “language”. They said we could bring AE along and I wonder what he’ll think about the whole thing. Usually he finds stuff like that pretty interesting, so hopefully he won’t just sit there whining about wanting to go home and play Nintendo.
Speaking of AE, last night we had a Traumatic Event. It shouldn’t have been traumatic at all, but somehow it got totally out of control. The past few weeks AE has been in dire need of a haircut. I have cut his hair at home before, and while…um…challenging (imagine trying to trim the mane of a bucking bronco) it did not become a Major Life Event. I’m not exactly sure what happened last night but you would have thought that instead of using those clippers on his hair, I was trying to use them to remove one of his arms. He started wailing with the very first touch of the clippers to his head. It then escalated into full scale howling and eventually hysterical screaming. But since a haircut isn’t exactly one of those things that you can just stop in the middle of, I had to keep going. Soon he was flailing and grabbing at his arms and face as if he was covered in fire ants. It was horrible and somewhat amusing all at the same time. While his reaction was ridiculously melodramatic and unnecessary, it was partially my fault. I think I made two fatal errors here: 1) He had just come from tee-ball and was all sweaty; and 2) I made him remove his shirt. So all of the hair was sticking directly to his sweaty, sticky little body and face. Finally I got his hair to a point where I felt like it was good enough (it looks like total crap still but at least it is pale blond so it hopefully isn’t that obvious) and off to the bath we went, screaming and crying all the way. Enter fatal error number three: there was no way in hell that I would be able to get all that hair off of him if he was sitting in the water. I told him he needed to stand up so that I could turn on the shower and he ramped the hysteria up a notch. Unfortunately AE has inherited his father’s distaste for getting water on his face (THANKS FOR THAT, BABE) so he started freaking out at the very idea. Argh! But there was nothing to be done except for me to make him stand up, aim the showerhead at him, and try to ignore the shrieking. By the time all was said and done we were both exhausted, stressed out and soaked.
If I ever, EVER, consider cutting that child’s hair at home again my husband has been instructed to shoot me. The outcome of that would be preferable.
April 29th, 2008 at 1:57 pm
I can’t imagine giving a haircut to an unwilling kid – yikes! As for the water in the face bit, I used to be like that too as a kid. My mom finally gave me a washcloth to put over my face because I hated the water running into my eyes so much. I still have to have my towel hanging over the curtain rod so I can quickly stop any drips before they reach my eyes.
April 29th, 2008 at 2:50 pm
Oh, he was holding a washcloth over his face, all right. So tightly that then he started screaming about not being able to breathe!!
April 30th, 2008 at 6:33 am
I never would have survived my childhood without allowing water to touch my face. In my family you were not allowed to swim with your face above the water. Much less complain about a little bit of water on your face.
I always looked forward to those psychology labs (we had to do 5 the semester I took PSYC 301.) Unfortunately I never got to do the fun ones that my suite mate did…mine were all boring quizzes and stuff.
April 30th, 2008 at 3:03 pm
I’m glad AD is currently growing out the Toddler Mullet, because I cannot imagine the horror of trying to cut her hair. Exhausting.
July 21st, 2008 at 3:43 pm
[...] One more thing: I cut AE’s hair last night, after swearing up and down that I would NEVER do that again, and he did just fine. Well, sort of. After some initial protesting and attempts at negotiating [...]
August 13th, 2008 at 9:07 am
[...] seem like the right word, maybe “situation” is better. Not quite as traumatic as the Great Hair Incident of 2008, but close. He was in the bath, and I was scrubbing his hands with soap to get all the marker [...]