(Sorry, of course, for the terrible picture.)

It’s bad enough that Soren knows how to unlock iPhones. He knows how to get to the iPod and play music. Don’t get me wrong — it’s cute to see him walking around the house with an iPhone (he gets to play with Ben’s old one) and then the music comes on and he starts shaking his butt and doing this new thing he does, which is kind of a modified version of part of the chicken dance only totally not lame. This kid loves music almost as much as he loves blackberries, which, holy crap, is a lot.

Now he turns on the tv. Like today, Ben took the afternoon off work so we could go to the Rockies game (we do guys’ night out, which is every Tuesday game and this was the one odd day game of the season). The game started at 1:10 and, as of 1:00, Soren was still napping and hadn’t had lunch, so we ended up skipping the game, which of course the Rockies won in moderately dramatic fashion at the last minute. But whatever. Today is a shining example of how when you have a baby, you have to be flexible. If you’re not flexible with a baby, well, I guess you’re the opposite of flexible, which I suppose would be rigid and straight miserable. So you know, when you want to go to the game but your kid is napping, sometimes you just roll with it and watch the game at home.

After the game ended, I turned off the tv because I don’t want to be all tv all the time up in this hizzouse. Five minutes later, dude climbed on the ottoman, turned on the tv, and was sitting there in front of the thing like he was at his desk in his office, watching the hell out of SportsCenter. I mean, shit, dedicated SportsCenter watching, awkward white-people dancing, disdain for mushrooms and in some cases tomatoes — this little guy is like me in ways that blow my mind more often than I’m even going to admit. But shit, dude, you don’t get to turn on the tv. So we work on “no” and he goes off to herd his magnets into and out of various containers (he’s really into six smiley-face magnets, a strainer, a salad spinner, and a large metal bowl the original purpose of which I’m not really going to tell you but if you know we had a home birth you can probably figure it out). We also, in this instance, bring in the big guns, which involves unplugging the tv just in case he tries again.

I think we’re still not really sure what we’re doing with Soren and stuff like tv. We let him watch an episode of Yo Gabba Gabba every once in a while. (For some reason, I’ve taken an unwavering, hard-line position against every other kids’ show.) We let him watch sports. This is really me. I watch sports, so if sports are on and Soren is around, he can watch sports if he wants. Most of the time, he doesn’t pay that much attention to it. Ben and I do the rest of our tv watching after Soren goes to bed. I mean, I’m certainly not going to expose him to shit like The First 48 until he’s at least 2. (Just kidding.)

The iPhone situation is hard, too. I don’t mind him playing around with it and listening to music, but I don’t want him to become one of those kids who’s always playing video games and has the personality of an unmanned spacecraft. And anyway, it’s not like we can afford to be getting him an iPad or shit like that. And don’t even get me started on DVD players in the car or those carts at King Soopers that play movies for kids while their parents are shopping. That stuff makes my raging hippie emerge. I’d rather live off-the-grid in a lean-to in Montana than have my kid watch DVDs in the car, not that we ever drive more than 5 miles at a time but still.

I was pretty stir crazy after not getting to the game (I worked from home today) so, to do something fun and get out of the house, we went out for Mexican food and margaritas. Wooooo! I had the ultimate dream combo of Mexican food: a guacamole tostada, a black bean burrito, and a crispy chile relleno (1/2 of this is in the fridge for tomorrow because holy crap they give you a lot of food). Does everybody have an ultimate dream combo of Mexican food? If you don’t, you probably should. It’s good for what ails you, let me tell you.

[No new music because, believe it or not, I'm still listening to the Weekend in Space playlist; for variety, I have it on shuffle today. That Toomy Disco song just about kills me.]