Craigslist: I love you, I love you not...

I love you…

… for finding awesome, nice, really-in-need people to buy our extra washer and dryer, and for the fact that they didn’t haggle me to death.

… for being an online site where I can browse cheap furniture to fill the voids in my home caused by going from an 1250 square foot home to a 2600 square foot home.

… for providing endless entertainment for my (childish) husband and I when we read Casual Encounters to each other in a sexy voice, just to see who breaks character first.

… for the way you provide things right when I need them, like a home last June, or a jogging stroller yesterday…

Which brings me to…..

I love you NOT…

… for allowing married to post in the personals ad seeking “discreet” second relationships. Gross.

… for The Craigslist Killer. Seriously, Lifetime Movie Network, why did you have to do that to me? Now every time I’m selling something and people are coming to look at it, I’m also acutely aware of where the nearest baseball bat/knife/heavy-object –that-I-can-turn-into-a-weapon is.

To protect the (not-so) innocent, this is not the jogging stroller in question.

… for the woman I had to deal with today RE: aforementioned jogging stroller. So here’s the backstory: I want a jogging stroller because I have some baby jiggle around the middle yet to lose, and I just moved to a street that has a butt-kicking hill that I can burn some major calories (read: I eat Nutella every day)on. So I logged onto Craigslist yesterday at work, checked under the “baby&kids” section, and VIOLA, there it was, a $30 jogging stroller.  So I text the woman who is selling it (her request, not mine… I would have rather made a phone call, but ok, jogging-stroller-owner, we’ll play it your way). She is super standoffish when I ask if she is ever in Charlottesville, and waits a full 12 hours to text me back and tell me, “You can pick it up today if you want, but I won’t hold it. It’s first-come first-served.” Which is followed two hours later by one word: “Sold.”  Um, excuse me? I know for a FACT that I responded first to your ad, since I texted you less than 30 minutes after you posted it – so have a little bit of sales integrity and don’t sell it to the first person who can get to you.  Especially since the reason I don’t have much time to work out (aka I need to be able to take my baby with me when I work out and not pay for a gym membership AND childcare at said gym) BECAUSE I WORK ALL DAY. I do not have time to drive 25 miles in the middle of the day to get your stroller. I was temped to text her right back and say, “Well that was rude of you. I was going to give you $50 for it.” Instead, I decided to take the high road and vent via this blog instead. Though I would be lying if I said I didn’t stick out my tongue at my cell phone in a not-so-nice way. 

"Ball. I get it."

I had a moment of panic tonight when I realized that I have not been good about writing down Parker’s words! My mom has a faded, totally 80’s, teddy bears and too much pastel calendar where she wrote down each word I learned on the day she first heard me say it, and I have…. Nothing.

I have some mom guilt about it, but this is another one of those forgotten things that I attribute to being a working mama. After working 40+ hours a week, making dinner, doing laundry, doing homework, and pinching my husband’s cute butt, I just don’t have the energy (or the memory) to write all of that down! But just for you guys, I’m going to try.

Parker’s first word, believe it or not, was “Light.” He has always been fascinated with lights and anything that lights up, so one day we heard him in the living room saying “Ba, Ba, Ba” over and over – and we realized that he was talking about the light that was on over our dining room table.

Ok, so “Ba” for “Light” isn’t a reeeeeal first word, but that was the first time that we could tell that, in his mind, he was matching what he was seeing to something he could verbalize. Which to Mommy, the English major, was, well… major!

(Confession time: His first actual real word was “Da-Da.” But I am in denial about this. Wasn’t I in labor for 21 hours?? Didn’t I have 50 stitches? Didn’t I pull the night shift until month 4 when he started sleeping through the night? Can I get a “Ma-ma”?? No.)

Since then we have also learned to say:

• Ma-Ma (thank God)
• Mimi
• Nana
• Lala (our Monday babysitter)
• ba-ba (Are you starting to see a trend with these two repeating syllable words? Yep, me too. I speak in them all day long)
• Uh-oh
• Bye-bye
• Night-Night
• Aaaaaaaaamen
• shoe
• sock
• ball
• pee-pee
• poopy (my personal favorite…especially when he pulls it out in public)
• yogurt (which is more like “yuh-guh”)
• go-go (for Goldfish)
• diaper (he says “dipey”)
• sleep sheep

And tonight, for the first time, he said “Pizza.” So. Stinking. Cute. It’s actually more like “Sa-Sa” and he sticks his tongue out at the start of each syllable. I wish I had a video.

      We also have some phrases!

• I get it
• Thank you (does my heart proud, y’all)
• Bye-bye Da-Da/Ma-Ma
• Night-Night Da-Da/Ma-Ma 

Ok, ok, I’ll stop bragging. I know he is very advanced for a 16 month old. You don’t have to tell me he’s a baby genius. (Just kidding guys! I just have some Mommy Pride over here!)