I'm not high maintenance

I just know what I want.

After a solid month of my clueless parents trying every conceivable combination/recipe of rice cereal, oatmeal, applesauce, and formula, they have finally figured out my meal preference. They're not too quick on the uptake. For future reference, this is what I want:

1 tbsp oatmeal
2 tbsp Good Start Natural Cultures formula at room temperature
2 baby spoons of bananas

mixed together
microwaved for five seconds
served in my bouncy chair
while wearing my blue plastic bib with cars
eaten from my pink baby spoon. Because I'm secure in my manhood.

Was that so hard?! Try to feed me applesauce again. I dare you.

Yo Dawgs!

Mommy said living in the city is making me gangsta, so we need to move to the burbs.

Memphis Madness!!!!

Before I get into my post about Memphis Madness, there are a few prefaces that I need to make.

1. My mom is a total techno-tard. Seriously. Just to give you one example, yesterday when she took me on a walk she finally figured out how to unlock the front wheels on my stroller. I'm 4.5 months old. And then I had to endure her going around in circles in the parking lot going, "Look, Mikey! We can make circles now!" I say all of this just to let you know you'll have to forgive some of the layout issues she's having with this blog. She'll figure it out in good time.
2. I have lots of Aunts and Uncles. All are related by love, but only some are related by blood. So, when I call someone "Aunt" this or "Uncle" that, it doesn't necessarily mean my grandparents were the most prolific people on the planet.

Now that we've established that, let's talk about Memphis Madness!

First -- and not to brag -- but I was the cutest baby in the building. Like, seriously. All those mothers with cute little girls with ringlets wearing cheerleading outfits? Pshaw. They've got nothing on me. I make being a boy COOL.

We had lots of fun and I got to see some of my favorite people! Uncle Bob held me up high so I could see CDR raise the tournament banner from last year. Then we bet on who would win the three point shoot-out. I bet a dirty diaper on Taggert. I won. Somebody needs to pay up!

I fell asleep during the scrimmage, so I'm not sure how the team looks this year. How does the team look this year, anyone?

Diaper changing is always a challenge for my mom, but even more so in public restrooms. Getting me out of my tiger costume and changing me while two rather unusual women offered my mom unsolicited parenting advice was pretty awkward. Now, don't get me wrong, my mom LOVES parenting advice -- from proven parents she knows and trusts. But random people in public bathrooms? Not so much. She has this technique that she learned from another mom (that she knows and trusts) to deal with this type of advice. I think this method probably originated with Clark Gable (mom and I used to watch a lot of TCM during our 3 am feedings). Whenever someone gives you random, unsolicited advice, you take what they said and turn it into a question, thereby implying that: a) you care b) you're curious c) you just may do further research on the topic. So when these two unusual women looked at mom and said, "What about all the germs here? And the noise? Did you talk to your doctor about it?" my mom just looked at them and said, "I should talk to my doctor about taking my baby in public?" Yeah, that technique didn't work so well in that scenario. It probably goes over better with thumb sucking advice. "Little Bonnie has been sucking her thumb. I just can't get her to stop." "Captain Butler, did you try a little quinine on the thumb?" "A little quinine on the thumb?! Why, I never thought of that."

Besides, I'm a boy. I love germs. And noise. I plan to make plenty of both during my lifetime.


We tried to meet up with Uncle R, Aunt B, and my friends T and F in the lobby, but by that time I had stayed up three hours past my bedtime and was ready to go HOME.

Good times.

I don't really have nine toes...

I have ten. Count 'em.

Okay, in this picture, you can only see nine. But there are ten, I promise.

But I almost had nine, compliments of my dad. Hence the nickname, "Mikey Nine Toes." It has sort of a menacing air, don't you think? Almost like I'm from South Jersey and have spent time in the back rooms of casinos. Like I -- how do they say it? -- know people. What happened was this...

(cue dream sequence)

Daddy was perturbed by my baby super power ability to grow talon length nails overnight. Determined to remedy the situation, he reached for the baby nail clippers. That's how all these horror stories start. He had successfully completed both hands with nary a problem, he had wrestled me to the bed and clipped nine toenails to his satisfaction, but on the last remaining nail -- the big toe on my left foot -- I decided I had had enough. A boy's gotta have his limits, you know. What happened next was kind of fuzzy, but let's just say there was lots of blood, wailing, gnashing of teeth (my parents' teeth, I'm still toofless), and drilling questions from mom. Things like, "What did you do to my child?!" "Who's blood is that?!" "What the heck happened?!" And some other things that can't be posted here.

Thirty minutes, five bandaids, a call to the pediatrician, and a soothing bottle later, the flow of blood had been staunched enough to properly assess the damage. Turns out, daddy had not clipped my toenail at all -- HE HAD CLIPPED MY TOE!!! Took a huge chunk right out of it.

And that's how I got my nickname, "Mikey Nine Toes." It's also how daddy got permanently reassigned to swaddling detail.

Daddy had to take me to the doctor for an unrelated incident a few days later and the nurse there said that daddy's faux pas was nothing -- that same fateful day, another daddy not too far away had literally cut the entire toenail OFF. Of his baby's FOOT. I couldn't make this stuff up.