Update on bar study and Baby-missing

Starting bar study was a lifestyle change for me, and I tend to deal with lifestyle change by developing new junk food addictions (Fritos, anyone?) and plunging myself into temporary mild depression. Depression lends itself to staying in bed while I wait for dishes to wash themselves and Baby to learn to refill his own sippy cup with soy milk. It doesn't lend itself to blogging, at least, not for me. I've learned that when I blog depressed, I get embarrassed, just as I get embarrassed when I blog while I'm delirious with happiness.

So if you haven't seen a blog post from me in a while, send me a box of cookies. It will always be appropriate.

I'm over the depression (I think). Now I'm just bored with this stuff. It's a special type of law boredom combined with the type of feeling you'd get if someone put you in the room with an elephant carcass and a fork and said, "go ahead: dig in." It's interesting, logical, illogical, maddening, and huge. And every two minutes or so, I miss my son.

How I miss my son. He now spends six+ hours a day, not with me, but with a few carefully chosen caregivers who nurture him with love, enthusiasm, and goldfish crackers. In the back of my mind, I know I should spend my few hours a day with him on "quality time," but when I do see him, I am too overcome with chest-thumping love to get out his educational flashcards. Instead, I just want to let him eat popcorn until his gums bleed and watch "Cars" until the saline fluid in his eyeballs dries up. I press my cheek into his sweet-smelling pokey summer haircut and stop myself from mentally reviewing riparian law.

This morning he looked up and me and said Pfutz? That means something, but I don't know what. He has an honest-to-goodness word, and I don't know what it is. Up till now, I've been the only one who knows his words.

Look, I'll prove it: Batz means "I want to watch 101 Dalmations." Poose means, "Please feed me soup or some other savory canned delight." Lala, depending on the context, either means "I need a drink of water" or "I'd just love to participate in the shower I can tell you're about to take." Mamoh mean, believe it or not, "let's get out the educational animal flashcards and throw them on the floor until we find the picture of the clown fish who looks just like our friend, Nemo." I can also tell you, with manic animation, the etymology and linguistic roots of all of those words, but I've learned from experience that my expertise in Baby-ese is only interesting to me, Husband, and, on occasion, a Grandparent. And now there's an entire word that I can't connect to anything in my Baby's universe.

What if it means, "Mom, I think it's time to thank you for sacrificing the heel of your sexy fire-engine red shoe by shoving it in a revolving door to prevent me getting knocked over while I paused to pick up a cigarette butt?" I swore I wouldn't miss it when he said that to me.

The point is that while I'm wrapping my head around the difference between notice recording statutes and race-notice recording statutes, I'm missing what I consider to be an enormously important stage in my baby's development. When people ask me if I plan to put Charlie in daycare while I get a full-time legal job in New York, I'm tempted to dip into my vast Baby vocabulary and say nononoNoNoNoNO!