The 100th person asked us this weekend if we named Dash after the character in The Incredibles. I never know if I should be insulted by that question (do I seem like the kind of person who would name their kid after a cartoon? If we had another would I name him Spongebob?) Or should I just assume that the asker lives in a world where it's perfectly normal to name your kid Care Bear? For the record, we named him after Dashiell Hammet, the author of The Maltese Falcon and The Thin Man, among others. He (Hammett) had a 30-year affair with the playwright Lillian Hellman, and I read once that she called him Dash and I nearly passed out from the romance of it. Luckily I married someone whose taste in baby names runs parallel to mine and voila: Dash.
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We've been doing quite a lot of discipling lately. Dash is an aggressive and headstrong little fucker and he has been testing limits like it's his job lately (the other day he actually spit at Josh across the table at a restaurant. and thank God for him we were in public because I don't know what I would have done to him had there been no witnesses.) But the point of my story is that whenever Dash hits or smacks or bites he has to sit in his chair. I don't say "time out," but effectively that's what it is. So, we were in the car the other day and Dash's toy umbrella fell over and smacked him in the leg. "Mommy," says Dash, "My umbrella hit me. Umbrella has to sit in da chair." And that is another reason why we continue to allow him to live in the house with us despite his lack of civility.
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When we were in San Diego Dash slept in a Pack 'n Play at the foot of our bed. One night at about 3am he woke up screaming for Mommy. I just kinda slid down the bed, plucked him out of the Pack 'n Play and put him down between Josh and me. We all three slept another 5 or so hours and it was just lovely. Josh didn't tell me until the next day that what the baby was actually screaming was, "Mommy! Da bear!" What could possibly lead him to believe there was a bear in our room at 3am you ask? Why it was my insane, cartoonish snoring. That's right. I frightened my own child. Thank God I already have a husband, yo. Because I have a feeling that shit would not fly in today's world of dating.
3 comments:
yr so funny! I love Dash- Did I already tell you it was on my list..It was my hub's dog in UK as a boy and could not name offspring that- but we both love it!
It IS kinda funny that my kid's fake name (after the cartoon character) is your kid's real name (but not a cartoon character). Not making fun, just a funny.
We are also getting the spitting right now, that one makes me sooo mad!
Yes, everyone says to us, "Oh, you named her after the van???", about our little girl Sienna...NO! Her father is an artist with red hair, I have brown, so we figured there was a good chance of sienna- and we liked it... Just like the middle name Iree, we made that one up... My oldest daughter has the middle name Renee after the Talk Talk song... So, geesh... What of it, huh??? :)
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