Order in the court

While pregnant, I became obsessed with comparing the size of my gestating fetus with obscure vegetables and fueled this fascination by registering with a good half dozen baby websites. As a result, I would receive a handful of weekly emails detailing the weird and almost disturbing things going on in my womb. In retrospect, I could have lived without knowing that my unborn son would consume his own fecal matter until birth but pregnant ladies be cray.

Much to my chagrin, I still receive some of these weekly updates. Mostly it's crap about your baby discovering it's own feet and a whole lot of notifications about what your baby should be putting in it's mouth and how it should get there. Case in point, somewhere around the eight-month mark Rinn should've been grasping food between his thumb and forefinger in an effort to feed himself. For him, getting sustenance to his mouth was not the problem but rather than doing it in the dainty fashion as described in these ridiculously imposing newsletters, he was stuffing his pie hole using his entire fist. We were able to thwart this gluttonous behavior by distributing his cheerios individually rather than dumping a mound of snacks on his tray.

Now we're at the point in Rinn's development where it's suggested he start using utensils as a vehicle for sustenance. So far, his spoon serves only as a gavel so I'm betting he will be the kid at dinner on prom night calling the forks on the table "dinglehopper's" and ordering chicken tenders because his mommy always cut his steak for him.

"Help Me" or "Hump Me".

For starters, I'm coming to you live from Arkansas.  Yeah, that happened.  We've only been here a few weeks so for me to pass judgment this early in the game would be unfair and unjust, but, between you and me, all of those jokes you hear about bad teeth and double-wide's...well let's just say they aren't too far off base. 

Rinn seems to be adjusting just fine.  He appears to have plenty of pleasant conversations with the locals.  I say "appears" because his speech consists solely of incoherent babbling other than the words "hi" and "mom" and I catch about every 5th word of the southern accent.  Basically, when the girl at the grocery checkout tries to make small chat, Rinn and I look eerily similar; smiles, eager nods and polite laughter.  Rinn has no qualms about this but I walk away confused as to whether she wanted to "help me" or "hump me."

One oberservation that I can speak on is that Arkansas is overrun with the elderly and every damn one of them has an opinion about child rearing. The cost of living here is ridiculously inexpensive so it's no wonder that it's a mecca for geriatric retiree's looking for a small slice of land to park their gigantic RV and consequently dole out unsolicited advice to the younger generation found toting around small children. I really should be more receptive to their wisdom considering that whole respect-your-elders thing  but its hard to decipher which are actually wise in the ways of the world and which left their wits somewhere in the late 60's. I want to take you seriously but then you try telling me that by giving my son soy milk, I'm all but guaranteeing that he become one of those "homosexuals" and I start to look around to see if you've been separated from a group being led by a person donning white scrubs and carrying an empty straitjacket.  

If you ignore that, and the fact that my dad and husband unknowingly slaughtered one of the most revered snakes of the state by clobbering it with a pickax in the driveway, I'd say we're doing an alright job of adjusting to our new culture.  

I may have been absent from the blogging world, 

But I've always kept up on the Twitter machine so follow me: @RebeccaRinn