Jog for Life

Happy belated Birthday to my Grandpa!
A local pregnancy center had their 5k this past weekend, and there was a one mile walk as well as some kid races. We did the walk and my preschooler did a race (about the length of a kid soccer field). I realize that there's a Mandalorian reference here but I was not up for drawing a Mandalorian helmet. Maybe I'll do a bonus scene one day but it's unlikely. My toddler was happy to be held for the full mile walk and specifically wanted to be on my right side (I tried changing him to my left side and he scooted across my front to get back to the right) so needless to say, my right arm was super sore the next day. 

Text:
L: That lady brought her jogging stroller.
M: This is the Walk.
L: You can Walk for Life and/or Run for Life, but there is no Jog for Life.

Have a Little Faith

 

I thought of this when I heard the phrase and capitalized a letter. 

Explanation: "Have a little faith" is a phrase meaning you should have confidence, at least a little. However, Faith is also a female name, so if you need someone to babysit your kid and she's named Faith you can use this comic interaction as a template. 

Text:
U: I don't know if I'm up for babysitting.
D: It'll be fine - have a little Faith.
F: Yay!

Mailbox Stroll

 

This is one that I thought up with Robin in mind but it took so long to actually draw that I changed it to Ori. You can tell by the crown color - Robin is gold while Ori is silver. We have one of those mail grids in the center of the street rather than mailboxes at each house (or even in a group). So it is an endeavor to go get the mail. And there are usually leaves and sticks to investigate on the way. I've learned to not be in a rush and just take the half hour for a two minute stroll. 

Explanation: "But" is a conjunction that a sentence hinges on; "butt" is your rear and where a baby wears their diaper.

Text:
L: We need to go for a walk to the mailbox - butt first, let's change your diaper.

Retweet

 

I'm not on the Twitter/X so is it still called retweeting? I have the same name as a celebrity so my ability to get accounts with my name is rather limited and I haven't tried to enter that particular sphere. Also did I draw a chick who should be cheeping rather than tweeting? Maybe. Maybe it's a baby tweety bird that just happens to be yellow and orange. It could happen. HAH I should have looked up what a baby mockingbird looks like, they would be retweeting since they like mimicry so much. 

Explanation: Birds are often characterized as saying "tweet" so a natural progression from that would be to "retweet." 

Text:
Title: Some kids are born leaders - others, however...
Baby Bird: Retweet! Retweet!

Sleep Sack Physics

 

Both of my kids have/had the ability to walk around nearly unimpeded by their sleep sacks (the toddler doesn't wear one anymore but she did for about two years). A sleep sack is like a nightgown that's sealed at the bottom, or a sleeping bag with armholes. They're very nice for when your kid is too small to keep a blanket on and you don't want them waking up cold at night. I don't understand how my kid walks around in one - it shouldn't work, per my mind, but it does. My daughter would walk from her room to our room in the morning like no problem here, just strutting along. Maybe this skill will help them in life somehow...

Text:
M: How did he do that - he's in a sleep sack?!?
L: He doesn't let things like physics stop him. 

First Word

 

Any day now I'm sure Ori will say his first dinosaur name. Robin, who's nearly 3, has been learning dinosaur names and it's super cute to hear her say 'patasaurus or pterodactyl or really any of them. She's at the stage where she points at literally everything (it seems) and asks "this one?" meaning "what is this called?" and so I've been trying to get her to say all the dinosaur names as we have numerous dinosaurs about the house (books, figurines, magnets, ...).

Explanation: Most kids have "dada" as their first D word, and also usually their first word. 

Text:
O: D-d-d-
P: Is he going to say-
O: Diplodocus!

Super Babies

 

A wild Oriole appears! I believe this is another one that I wrote for Robin but it hung out in my to-be-drawn folder for long enough to be applicable to Ori rather than her. I imagine this is a group of moms meeting up after getting their babies from Sunday morning nursery. 

Text:
L: If your kids were superheroes, what would their names be?
A: Super Pooper - she can't be contained!
B: Clog Buster - who you gonna call?!

Upside Down Smile

 

So my little one is a fairly happy baby so this comic is depicting him smiling, just (Star Wars music) from a different point of view. To have an upside-down smile would be a frown, but if the person is upside-down then the upside-downs cancel out? If you are upside-down and frowning, would that be a smile? So many angles to take with this.

Text:
S2: He's smiling upside down!
S1: That's called frowning.
O: coo

ABC Book

 So we have this baby book and it's literally just A B C - no words or numbers to muddle up the message. There is a cartoony animal on each page, but it's not an animal that starts with the letter on said page - they seemed to have been picked at random. We also have a 1 2 3 book, but it actually counts up to 10. But the first three numbers are on the cover, meaning that the first page starts with 4. 

Update: I have made an Instagram page! But I'm still going to posting my comics here. I have changed my template size to be Instagram-friendly, so my new comics will be in the right format and will get posted over there as well as here. This should happen in a few weeks - I would like to finish out my already-created comics here, but I might mix in some Instagram-sized ones to see how they look over there. I'm also switching to using my kids' nicknames instead of real names, so you'll see Robin (gold crown) and Ori (silver crown) now in my comments. 

Text:
M: Does he have the ABC book?
L: You mean an alphabet book?
M: No, this one is just three pages. 
O: *holding baby book*

Things I Am Not Bold Enough to Try Part 1

 

Will this be a new series, like my I Don't Know How to Respond in This Type of Situation series? Maybe, if I think of more ideas that I'm not bold enough to try. I believe I've mentioned Throckmorton in a previous comic, but the name is from a school textbook talking about "your cousin Throckmorton, a skateboarder." It's just a very bold name. I jokingly mentioned naming my son Throckmorton and my brother had the proper response of "he'll be skateboarding by six months." 

Explanation: I just want to know how someone would respond if I told them my kid's name was one of the ones I jokingly picked out (like Luigi or Vashti).

Text:
Title: Things I am not bold enough to try
A: Your son is so cute - what's his name?
L: Throckmorton. 

Train Wreck on Horizon

 

So I get that it's helpful to know what's coming up, but please remember that parenting (at any level but especially an infant) is hard and you should let people enjoy where they are instead of bringing up how it's going to get worse. We know it's going to get worse - that's just how life works until we get to glory. Try to focus on how things will get better - help the sleep-deprived parents see the positive rather than the negative. 

Text:
L: I'm glad he's sleeping for four-hour stretches at night.
N: Well, just wait till - 
L: NO! I am enjoying this moment - do not draw my attention to the train wreck on the horizon.

Clamping Champ

Introducing our new little one! Yep, he has inspired his first comic. I'm quite tired so there's nothing more to add here.

Explanation: It's a joke about breastfeeding. 

Text:
Title: Motherhood
M: Is he eating like a champ?
L: Yep, like a clamp.

Baby Heelys

 

You may stand corrected, but those toddlers won't (be able to stand if they have wheels in their shoes). So Heelys are a type of shoe (sneaker) that have like a roller-skate wheel hidden in the heel and you can pop it out and scoot along like a cool kid. The official Heelys site has a size chart which says the smallest they go is 12Y which per a little research is a preschooler size (my toddler is a 7 so that means the smallest Heelys is nearly twice the length of her current shoes). I think it is wise of them to not make the shoes in smaller sizes. 

Also this comic is channeling a little from a character in an excellent show who had great ways to say when something was a bad idea ("that idea just made a bad idea feel a whole lot better about itself")("that idea just gave a bad idea the will to live"). 

Text:
A: I cannot think of a worse idea.
B: Baby HeelysⓇ.
A: I stand corrected.

Crawling and Stairs

We are trying to get our little one to safely traverse the stairs, and it is a struggle. She wants to go fast. She wants to walk down the stairs. That is not a good combo. Seeing how she does all the little things makes me think of how else one could do them incorrectly, hence this comic mentioning crawling feet first up the stairs. I don't even know how or if that would work - gravity would very much be against you. Have fun explaining that one to the paramedic. 

Text:
L: Feet first when crawling down the stairs!
M: Feet first when crawling up the stairs is advanced.

Dry Baby Wipes

 

Why do we have paper towels in the diaper bag? Well, they are useful for drying up messes. Like when your kid drinks too much of your DD frozen hot chocolate and pukes it out on a cramped airplane flight. The flight attendant gave us a whole stack and I stuffed the extras in the bag for next time and thankfully there hasn't been a next time. Also, I'm more careful with what she eats when traveling (especially when traveling).

Text:
M: The wipes in that pocket are dry as a bone.
L: Those are paper towels.
L2: *silently judging*

Solid Choking Hazard

Unpopular opinion here: I don't like the bubbles in bubble tea (boba). I like getting drinks from bubble tea places and I say "no pearls" because the drinks are tasty and I don't want to chew my drink. Unless it's frozen fruit in the drink, because that's tasty. But I'm really particular about texture, and tapioca pearls do not make my mouth happy. 

I'm quite happy with how my bubble tea drink turned out in this comic. It took a few tries. 

Text:
J: Can Lucy have boba?
L: No! That's a solid choking hazard.
J: It's not a solid, it's a gummy liquid.

Surrender to Sleep

So apparently "giving no quarter" is forbidden under international humanitarian law, but I feel like toddlers disregard international (or just basic) humanitarian law. Giving no quarter originally meant that you were not going to house (quarter) any prisoners i.e. means you're going to kill all of your opponents. But there's a modern American take on it which just means you're going to treat someone unkindly and I feel that's the more appropriate meaning for this comic. 

We often request our little one to surrender to sleep as she valiantly fights it off. Little one, you will be in SUCH a better mood if you take a little nap. I feel like that's true for adults as well - sleep helps improve your mood when you're getting cranky, no matter your age.

Text:
L: Please surrender to sleep.
L2: *I give no quarter!*

Busy at the Moment

I find it humorous to say a quote with a different tone than the actor. It really changes the feel. Yes, this a quote from Pirates of the Caribbean. Alas, my little one has been getting insistent during meal prep that she wants the food NOW and we are like, it's raw. You can't have it raw. The food will be ready in a short amount of time but for you that will be like forever since you want instant gratification. But such is life. It is surprising what she will eat when she is just too hungry - I have given her some veggies that she normally rejects and she'll chow down during meal prep time. Or she'll try something (arugula), make a face and dig the offending item out of her mouth to give back to me, then request said item again when she sees me eating it, and repeat. 

Text:
L: Darling, to quote Captain Barbossa: *spoken softly* "I'm a little busy at the moment."
L2: WHAAAAAAAAaaaAA

Thresholds

So true. Kids are like that. On a related note, I recently posted on a social media "The Bible says 'foolishness is bound in the heart of a child,' but I didn't realize the level or quantity of poor choices before being shown by my Lucy Darling." She is being told "No" many times a day now (via phrases like "we don't bite Mom" or "no summersaulting on the stairs") and she indeed has a low threshold for that. And she also took several tumbles outside today and had abrasions on her knees but didn't even cry or act bothered about it. So yes, very different thresholds. 

Text:
A: How can she smack her head and not care, but you tell her "no" and she melts?
M: She has a high threshold for pain, and a low threshold for emotions. 

Cheese Mustache

 Very much a true story. I was and am proud of my play on words. This happened after our darling had some mac and cheese (rather messily but that's how it works with kiddos) and had not been cleaned up yet (she resists that part quite strongly). 

Explanation: Cheese is mature milk, like you have milk and you wait and somehow eventually it turns into cheese. I think there's a specific way you have to have it wait so you don't just get moldy sour milk. 

Text:
M: WHAT is on her FACE?!?
L: Cheese mustache.
M: What?
L: It's like a milk mustache, but more mature.