Somehow we ended up celebrating Cinco de Mayo at a Mardi Gras-themed party with a bunch of Canadians. I’ve learned a lot from Linda and Curt – our Canadian neighbors and good friends – on the ways of our neighbors to the North: Yes, they do say “eh” and “aboot”. They have a horribly frustrating and antiquated health care system up there. They love to shop here in the good ‘ol USofA. They say, “X, Y, Zed.” And they’re a really fun, friendly bunch of people. I’m thinking of becoming a Canuck – I do love ice hockey after all (a little known fact about me). So, despite all this knowledge I’m still unclear as to why they had a Mardi Gras party – complete with plastic beads (minus the nudity), Zydeco playing on the stereo and 60 POUNDS of Crawfish flown in for the occasion! We, the Martins, felt honored to be the American representatives at the Canadian Mardi Gras Cinco de Mayo festivities!

Pre-crawfish-cracking, we took Matthew to get his haircut on Saturday afternoon. We thought that maybe sitting on Daddy’s lap, watching in the mirror would be a therapeutic way to go through this – his least favorite – of activities. Wrong. So very wrong. Despite being pleasant, quick, and gentle, Matthew still acted as if the woman cutting his hair was slowly torturing him with a rusty chainsaw. We got about half a haircut (well, a trim) and had to give up. Matthew is terrified that his ears will get cut. After some analyzing, Mike and I have pinpointed the reason for this phobia and we believe we’ve come up with a good cure.

So, Matthew suffers from a little – or big – something called, “The Martin Ears.” He’s well-endowed in the aural category. We don’t think that he’s ever actually suffered any ear trauma or pain but he lives in fear that they will be somehow mutilated during a haircut. They are largish targets, so the idea we came up with is some form of ear protective gear: i.e. fold his ears up into two Dixie cups and then just cut around the cup. So, instead of a Bowl Cut, I suppose it would be a Cup Cut. We’ll have to give it a try otherwise we’re looking at a very shaggy, long-haired boy, a seriously emotionally scarred boy or we’ll just have to cut his hair when he’s asleep. We may go for option three and book the therapists in advance.

Zachary is a genius. It’s the truth. At only 12 months, one week, and two days old, he’s fluent in Baby Sign Language. OK, so we may not understand all of his gestures, but he’s definitely trying to tell us something. He’s very good at signing for ‘milk’ now and does the sign for ‘more’ (which is really basically him clapping), and he’ll blow you a kiss (usually a juicy one – he practically pulls his tongue out of his mouth in the process). But lately, he’s gotten so into trying to communicate that he looks like a little baseball coach throwing signs and gestures on baby super-speed. It’s hard to keep up with this child. He’s just so advanced!