Baby Ian

So. Long time, no see. It's only been... what? Twenty-three days since my last post? I don't know. I've been busy at work and, eh, tired. Very tired.

I feel like I must apologize to my ardent readers who send bags of fan-mail and request Winiferd in the Burb t-shirts (please start sending bags of fan-mail and requesting Winiferd in the Burb t-shirts. God knows, no one else does). 

To make it up to you, here are some scrumptious scans of Ian as a baby. We spent several days with Ian's mom recently and took the opportunity to scan eight billion childhood photos of Ian:

Oh man, I can't even handle this photo. He's like the Gerber Baby meets Buddha, completely calm, serene, and blissed the hell out.

Baby in a bow-tie

Baby hypnosis?

The forehead wrinkles slay me. He's like a puppy.

Baby Beef-Cake on the beach

Looking a bit Hugh Hefner 

Learning to walk. And work his angles. Both very important life skills.

Ian told me, "That car seat was so hot." I, on the other hand, can't remember a darn thing about my toddler car seats.

Forget all the baby-cute stuff for a minute. I think we can all agree this picture is terrifying.

I mean, you would suspect he was a beautiful child, but damn if his parents couldn't have sold this kid off to the advertising world.

"And here we have four-year-old Ian modeling K-Mart's latest in overalls. Only $8.95 at any participating K-Mart."

Ian's most smoldering preschool look

SMILE WITH YOUR EYES

This was a common theme throughout the photo albums. Beats the hell out of me if he actually used the real swings. I saw no photographic evidence.

He wore lots of costumes: bunny, Indian, Pilgrim, Indian...

Eh. That bow tie and hat aren't really big enough to look authentic.

Real Native American men wear pink.

I have tons more, but Spottswood's feeling jealous that everyone's cooing over Ian instead of him. So this will have to do.

Spottswood the Menace

Life is full of irony, something Alanis Morissette went on at length about back in the 1990s.

Which is why one week you're branding your surly fat cat and needy dog the grossest, most annoying animals in the universe, or at least the house, and the next week the cat you deemed perfect is rampaging around the house acting like the devil with his pants on fire.

Spottswood, perfect, dainty, adorable Spottswood, erupted into hell on legs last week.

Spottswood has chewed three keys off Ian's computer keyboard, insists on chewing up computer cords, crams candy wrappers and plastics into his cheeks, hops onto shelves and knocks all the contents off, and is continually running between Ian's legs making them both skid around erratically.

"I am so gnawing on that ethernet cable."

Hell hath no furry like a cat who chews up your computer hardware, so Ian has taken to calling Spottswood, "asshole" and "bastard."

By contrast, Winnie has spent the last few days being cuddly and sugary sweet.

Ian and I usually walk the dog together, but the few times Ian has declined to walk, staying home to fix his mangled computer hardware full of fang bites, Winnie has leapt into Ian's lap, burrowing into his legs. She'll give me a mournful look, hiding in Forever Daddy's lap, upset at the prospect of separation.

And, well, you try to despise a dog with that kind of loyalty. Ian can't. He emits all kinds of "Awws" when that happens.

And then you factor in Winnie's new haircut, which makes her look like a deformed lamb mixed with a miniature Luck Dragon, and then the time a sleeping Winnie jerked awake, shaking and wild-eyed, tail tucked between her legs, scaring the ever-loving crap out of both Ian and me, and you suddenly have a wildly sympathetic Forever Daddy.

Laura: "She must have had a nightmare. I've never seen a dog react so emotionally to a dream."

Ian: "I was waiting for an earthquake to happen. Poor thing."

So we currently have an asshole of a cat and an achingly sweet dog. We're patiently waiting for Spottswood to level out and for everything to return to normal.

In the meantime:

Laura: "Did you know 'dog' spelled backwards is 'god'?"

Ian: "Yeah."

Laura: "Did you know 'cat' spelled backwards is 'tac'?"

Ian: <Giggles>