Sleep now.

Okay, more venting.

First of all, a roach just crawled across my coffee table. While I am not immune to the fact that I live in a giant high rise in the middle of New York City, surrounded by roughly (figures in head: 46 stories times 14 apartments on each floor, with roughly 35 people per floor equals...) a lot of fucking roaches is what it equals. But still, to have one come out in bright light, with two cats in the room, right in front of a human? That's wrong and disgusting and it makes me feel all crawly and dirty and like I'm a terrible housekeeper and now I'm going to spend the rest of the night worrying that a roach is going to nest in my ear and lay nasty little roach eggs. AND DON'T TELL ME THAT DOESN'T HAPPEN BECAUSE I HEARD A STORY ABOUT IT ON THIS AMERICAN LIFE. I mean sure, we keep the cat food on the floor and yes, there are toast crumbs and baby food droppings and god knows what else under the couch but FOR THE MOST PART I try to keep the place pretty clean. (Vouch for me, people who've seen it.) We just had the exterminator come last week so I'm hoping that they're just coming out of the woodwork to die off but regardless, gross.

Can I just say how great it was to have mom here this week? Just having an extra set of hands to keep the boy from going nuts with the (Almost) 9 Month Blues was invaluable. Man, being 9 months old is really rough. You’ve got the No Sleeps because your body keeps forcing you up on your hands and knees, Separation Anxiety making you extra special spooked because mom and dad aren’t around when you wake up on your hands and knees, Crazy Neurological Development making your brain buzz over the fact that you can recognize words like “sky” and “Millenium Falcon”, Big-Ass Growth Spurts making your joints hurt and your clothes too tight, and Tooth Pain because you can’t seem to cut a break between breaking teeth. Not to mention the fact that at 9 months, certain baby boys (ahem) really want to talk. I was hoping that the whole Baby Sign thing would ease frustration a bit but ever since I spent an entire afternoon convinced that Will was waving “bye-bye” when in fact he was making the sign for “milk” he’s wanted nothing to do with that crap. I can milk as many imaginary cows as I want - he ain’t playing.

Other weirdnesses at 9 months:

- Songs have to have lyrics. Humming “Lullabye” is no longer acceptable. In fact, it is slightly insulting.

- Cheerios are the most perfect food imaginable. All non-Cheerio food will be met with grunts of displeasure.

- Naps are 40 minutes, period. And if you have somewhere very important to go, like, say, a callback where meltdowns are a definite NO, naps may be skipped completely just to freak you out. Yet baby will miraculously hold it together, even though he’s gone 8 HOURS between rest periods.

- Baby will not crawl to father or mother, or even beloved grandmother. Baby will, however, crawl to daddy’s Millenium Falcon.

- Tasting mama’s arm and calf and thigh like a tiny Lestat is not only acceptable, it is necessary. When mama reminds baby “No Biting”, baby has no idea what she means. After all, he isn’t biting. Yet.