Medical facts currently governing my life:

1. Vitamins work better when chased down with that third cup of coffee of the morning.

2. Diet tip #1: Food has no calories when consumed standing up.

3. Diet tip #2: Food also has no calories when stolen off of someone else�s plate. It actually burns calories if the food is stolen without their knowledge.

4. When the weather is hot and humid, sitting and thinking about running is enough to constitute aerobic exercise.

5. If you don�t go to the doctor, you are not sick.

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Having a child is enough to turn you into a hypochondriac by proxy. AJ has had a cold combined with allergies, which has left him with a mild cough that doesn�t seem to want to move out. Combine this with news of whooping cough outbreaks in our general vicinity and we�re convinced AJ has the disease, despite the fact that he is exhibiting none of the symptoms.

Yesterday we discovered two weird bumps on his head and were convinced he had tumors until later in the day we had the following conversation:

AJ: I told the bee to go away.

Harriet: What bee?

AJ: The bee that came when I was sleeping and he went �buzz buzz� and he hurted me two times.

So AJ may have been stung by bees in his sleep and he neglected to mention it to us. If I�d been stung by bees in my sleep, you�d better believe that half the neighborhood would know about it. Weird kid.

Of course, he may just be internalizing the Laurie Berkner song playing incessantly as interstitial filler on assorted Nickelodeon channels. The link above refers to Berkner as �the Ani DiFranco of kids music.� I don�t think that�s even possible, although she is definitely one of the better purveyors of kids music out there. But she�s so goddamned perky on the Nick shorts that I want to throw things at the TV. AJ, however, wants to dance a jig. Or perhaps he wants to be stung by bees in his sleep.

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We spent a great afternoon with friends living in the vicinity of Andersonville, in one of those satellite neighborhoods that has a name I can never remember. Their daughter is nearly two and has a head of corkscrew curls and the smiliest chubby little face you could want to see on a toddler. She was amazingly willing to let AJ steal all her toys and refuse to share them. It was not one of his finest hours, although they did play quite nicely together for a while once AJ discovered that he could make her laugh by making funny faces. He was quite forlorn when he woke up this morning and found out we weren�t going back there, but perked up when he found that his fellow wild child and partner in crime at play class had returned from vacation. The two spent most of the class chasing each other around the perimeter of the gym and punching each other on the arm in the barest outline of a game of tag. I managed to torture AJ thoroughly by taking him to the toy store to buy clothes and not toys. He was amazingly accepting of this arrangement, particularly when he got to pick out his own underwear, which he insisted on wearing as soon as he got home. I hope this is a good sign. I fear it may just be a sign of a particularly unpleasant evening of laundry. Wish us luck.

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