02.29.08
Promises Promises
Okay! Alright! It’s not like you really have to twist my arm, because I want to put up pictures. Pictures of Anna, pictures of Gabe, pictures of Gabe and Anna together, pictures of the new puppy, pictures of the old puppy, pictures of the cat, pictures pictures pictures.
I’m getting around to it. I promise to get pictures up sometime this weekend. Here’s the thing. I upload the pictures to my home computer and then upload them again to Photobucket. However, when I’m at work, the Photobucket website (and Flickr and a bunch of other picture hosts) is blocked. So when I want to post pictures, after uploading them (twice) I have to start a post to get the pictures to the old blog. This can take as much as an hour if I have a lot of pictures to do. So you can see how, after getting the post started, my allowed computer time is usually expired. Someone’s crying or someone’s wanting juice or laundry needs to be folded or bottles have to be washed or email has to be replied to or there are errands to run or the dog needs to be bathed because she discovered the fun of mud or my carpet needs to be steam cleaned or the sun decided to set three hours early and jesus where did the day go?
To my ear, these sound like excuses, but it’s the reality of my day to day life. But this weekend, I promise promise promise to get at least one picture up on the blog. Pinky swear.
02.27.08
The Motherhood Bit
The Plague, it hath arrived. If it was a noxious, odious form of bodily fluid, it emanated from my family in the last couple days. Gabe has so far, knock on whatever-material-my-desk-is, avoided the guck. He complained of a hurty tummy on Monday when I started to feel bad myself, so when I revisited my breakfast (or shall I say, it revisited me), I left work and raced to pick up the kids before Gabe could get sick at daycare and infect the whole place. Let me just say that while being sick sucks monkey butt, being sick Mama is so much worse. Not that I wouldn’t want to be a Mama, because that’s just ludicrous, but there are so many more layers of suckitude to the Plight of the Sick Mama. There’s the whole not wanting to infect not-yet-sickened children. Also, as a Sick Mama, one cannot just lay on in one position under a warm soft blanket with the remote and a mountain of pillows without having to move to retrieve juice from the fridge, or transform that stupid robot back into a fighter jet, or for the love of all that is holy actually FEED the uninfected children. Cooking was out of the question, and it’s a good thing that one of the kid’s food is simply mix with water and be done with the preparation of it, even if cleanup is a tad more tedious, what with the hand washing of the bottles. But it pained me to even fix a peanut butter and jelly sandwich for Gabe, not because I didn’t want him to eat, but because I didn’t want to be the one to have to fix it. Also, when I’m sick, I want someone to make me food if I can stand to eat it, not to have it the other way around. I want someone to bring me some 7up because my tummy hurts. I want someone to take my temperature and put cool washcloths on my head and generally cluck and coo over my state of being.
Where was Mike in all this, you ask?
Well, at first, when he got home from work that day, he seemed fine. He said he was going upstairs to clean up and he’d be down in awhile, which I took to mean he’d come take the kids off my hands so I could resume being a lump on a pickle with nary a thought in my head. Two hours later, he’d not emerged, so I trudged up the stairs only to find him in bed under the covers and whining about his temperature. At first, I felt, besides the urge to puke or just collapse from the exhausting task of actually climbing stairs, serious annoyed beyond belief pissiness that he would, of course, start whining about not feeling well when I really needed him to help me, when I never ask for his help and for once, I felt bad enough to admit I’m not the all-powerful being I pretend to be and that I actually needed his help and here he was lounging around upstairs in bed all snug by himself while I was left wrangling an off-the-wall toddler and a weeks old baby all while puking my guts out. But after a couple hours with the near constant sound of the flushing toilet, I knew that he wasn’t just being Sissy Man Pouty McSickcakes and that he had the crud, too. Then I felt bad about being mad earlier and we tag teamed it as best we could, ping ponging Gabe back and forth between us to try to keep him entertained while Anna mercifully slept on.
Gabe, to his very adorable four year old credit, was an absolute angel. He dutifully napped when I asked him to the first afternoon dealing with this. And he slept long. He picked out movies to watch with me while I barely parented from the couch. He tried to quiet Anna if she fussed a little. He asked for juice only 30 times a minute instead of 100. In other words, he understood neither of his parents felt well and he tried to be a good boy for us. There was a scary moment when I stirred from my own coma nap and couldn’t see where Gabe was, nor could I hear him. With Herculean effort, I hoisted my upper body into a sitting position and looked frantically around the room and listened for his footfalls if he was upstairs without supervision. Only after my eyes focused a little did I see two feet sticking out from beneath Anna’s bouncy chair. He’d laid underneath her seat to watch a movie and that’s where he decided to take his nap. It was so cute I thought it was worth my effort to try and get up to cover him with a blanket. He didn’t stir.
Anna has been immune to the nasty just as much as Gabe has been, assuming Gabe isn’t going to come down with it now. This little sojourn back into being at home during the day reminded me how precious this stage of infanthood is, and I’ve realized that even in just a week back at work, I’m missing out on her so much. She’s starting to stay awake for longer stretches of time, and her clucks and coos are just so cute I can’t stand it. I don’t want to miss a single one of them. She hoots like a pigeon which sounds weird unless you hear her do it. She has a warble at the back of her throat and she combines that with a sigh that sounds just like a pigeon. Or an owl. I’ve been calling her Hedwig.
When she’s hungry and she’s sitting in her bouncy chair waiting for me to get her bottle, she stomps her feet and churns her fists. It’s cute except it’s the state of being right before Nuclear Bottle Meltdown and I have seconds to shove a bottle in her mouth. Does anyone remember (or would any of you be willing to admit it if you do remember?) those WWF wrestlers The Bushwhackers, back before the World Wildlife Foundation won the right to the WWF monniker? Remember they’d walk in a determined stomp and swing their fists up over their heads instead of by their sides? That’s totally how she stomps and swings her arms. My little Bushwhacker. She’ll kick your ass. Except she adds a totally harmless pigeon coo to it and that negates any ferocity she might’ve conveyed with the stomping/fist pumping bit. It’s just so cute I want to get out a fork and eat her deliciousness up!
Holding her in my arms during one of her awake periods, she just stares at me, slack-jawed and astonished that her eyes could bring her such images. She’s smiling now and then, mostly in her sleep, which makes me think she’s just farting and the relief bleeds through to her facial muscles. But sometimes, she smiles at me, and when she does, the gravity of being a mother bowls me over with its power to play my emotional strings. It’s big, the motherhood bit. It lights up my world in hues and tones that leave me slack-jawed and astonished at what my body accomplished in growing and expelling children. In those moments, knowing my kids can bring me to my knees with one word or facial expression, a touch of the flu seems completely harmless in comparison.
02.22.08
Kissing Babies Causes Zombiedom
Sleeeeeeeeep. Sleeeeeeeeep.
Oh how I miss thee.
When Gabe was a baby, he’d fall asleep around 8 or so in the evening and stay asleep until about midnight or so. He’d get up for a bottle and be back to sleep in half an hour, then up again at 3 for another half an hour feeding sesh, then back to sleep until it was time for me to leave for work.
Anna, on the other hand, falls asleep around dinner time (which is somewhat nice because I can usually eat in peace, if you count fifteen demands for milk refills and a frapillion questions as well as a distinct lack of understanding of the phrase, “Eat your dinner,” as peaceful) and wakes up between 9 and 10 for a bedtime bottle that mysteriously doesn’t render her sleepy again. She’ll coo and cluck at me until 11 or midnight and then she’ll fall asleep for a five hour stretch of time. For me, having gotten used to falling asleep with Gabe around 9:30 while I was pregnant, that witching hour is awful bleary. There have been a few muttered “shut its” and “for the love of God sleep alreadys” and much to my very own shame, a couple of wig outs in which the words, “goddammit, sleep child!” were whispered vehemently.
In the throes of the sleep deprivation, I don’t know if Gabe’s way was better than Anna’s with the smaller increments of sleep ending in short but more frequent wakings, or the marathon waking that leads to a big chunk of sleep. I think I was getting MORE sleep with Gabe, if not quite as restful because I got less REM sleep. But I can’t tell which I would prefer. That’s like asking someone if they prefer their coffee laced with arsenic or if they want decaf. The options aren’t all that appealing.
And how do I ask Mike not to kiss Anna goodbye in the morning? Oh, but I would love to, especially in my cranky morning haven’t-used-my-voice-yet croak so as to be more disturbing and therefore more threatening. I would rather be screamed at by a drill sergeant than a Joan Crawford talk-alike with smoker’s voice. It’s sweet, Mike’s kissing her goodbye, and yet it wakes her up every. single. time. Then, she realizes that she’s slept for 6 hours without stuffing her fuss-hole with a bottle and she must vocalize her woe. After futilely plugging her up with a binky for twenty minutes in the desperate hope she can’t tell the difference between an empty binky and a full bottle, I’ll finally drag my bleary butt out of bed and get moving, grumbling that because he kissed her at 5 a.m., I’m cheated out of the last half hour before my alarm goes off. Anna is no dummy. One suck and she wails at the tragically empty binky as if to say, “You’re my mother and you BETRAYED ME! How COULD YOU think I would be okay with sucking and no return on investment. Bottle me now, woman!” My tricks are wasted on her.
I blame Mike for kissing her, especially when he hasn’t shaved his face and his scruff means she whimpers pathetically from the confines of her swaddling until I release her arms, which long to be pinwheeled about in free abandon that isn’t conducive to her returning to sleep so I can sleep a little longer. But I can’t bring myself to ask him to just blow her a kiss. After all, I get to snuggle her during those most intimate moments when I’m pounding her back and trying to release her inner frat boy with a giant belch, and Mike just gets to hear her squeak and fart in my arms. Besides, kissing her is the Meaning of Life. Times two when we get to kiss her brother as well.
Needless to say, I’m a zombie, downing sludge at the office that’s supposed to pass for coffee and wondering if there is something to those caffeine colonics, because the rectum is supposed to absorb stimulants faster than anywhere else on your body. Not that I would consider one for myself. I can barely DRINK coffee, let alone consider its … um… other uses.
Speaking of zombies, I’m reading the archives of one of my newest blog crushes and she goes on for several entries about zombies because of this book. It’s not my usual reading fodder, but I thought I’d give it a try. Anyone read it? I figure it will at least help me figure out if my sleep deprivation is morphing me into something more dangerous than just an accountant with a propensity to fall asleep at my desk. Maybe it’ll disturb me enough that I’ll forego sleeping at my desk for fear of the nightmares. Although I do want to sleep at night, still. Maybe I could read it during Anna’s Wide-Eyed Blink Fest, come one come all to witness the spectacle that is the widest eyed baby in all the land, between the hours of 9 pm and 1 am. Lord knows I need something to keep me from dozing off and toppling over on top of the baby squirming in my arms.
Yeah, I’m missing those afternoon naps I could take while I was on leave, though if I’d have known they’d betray me in this manner, rendering me useless in the afternoon while my eyelids fight gravity, maybe I’d have turned up my nose at them in preparation for the battle. I’m getting desperate.
02.21.08
Working for a Living
I’ve officially been back to work now for four days, and I have to say, it’s not the end of the world that I felt it would be. Yes, it’s hard. YES! I miss my babies to the point of physical ache. And yes, it pisses me off that I get home and the hours between 6 and 9 pm aren’t spent snuggling with the chilluns but on more menial tasks such as dinner, dinner cleanup, bottle washing and formula making, and constant vigilance over puppy squatting. What’s even worse is that because Anna doesn’t mewl at my feet or heave herself into my shins the way my dogs do, I have felt MORE guilty in some moments about not snuggling with the dogs as much than I have felt about not snuggling with the baby and her brother. (And boy, who’da thought that 30 pounds of puppy heaved in any direction would be enough to topple a grown and overweight woman such as myself when my whirling dervish of a son who weighs the same cannot budge me even on his strongest day?)
Work is work, and while it’s not a joy to be getting up at 5:30 in the morning to get everyone ready and out the door by quarter to 7 so that I’m not late to work, the act of showing up to work has become remarkably routine again. Because I’m a good worker bee drone robot. ‘Scuse me while I wipe up the drool on my chin and deglaze my eyeballs to refocus on something besides the pretty lighted screen.
It’s no wonder my blogging has suffered. I love you guys, but I DON’T love that it requires more screen time to participate.
Last night, Gabe invented a new game that he calls Catch Me. I call it Don’t Take Your Eyes Off the Child For a Minute or When He Jumps You’ll Either Burst a Kidney Catching Him Badly or You’ll Miss Him Altogether and He’ll Cry. I swear, I need three more sets of eyeballs, divided between Puppy Piss Watch ‘08, Anna Puke-O-Rama Fest, also known as ‘Bleurgh” Watchgate and Campaign 4 Year Old Makeover Home Destruction Edition. Forget about being Super Mom/Wife v. 10.0 and keeping a clean house and remaining connected with the world around me. Barack who?
As I was driving home after picking up the kids yesterday, I was nearly drowned in a wave of emotion that I felt for them. I’d take a bullet for them, not that random gunfire is ever in my vicinity on a given day. Driving through my neighborhood, I was thinking about all the things I can’t do because I’m a responsible parent, including random road trips to Quebec because I’ve never been there, drinking a bottle of wine on the second Tuesday in March because it’s there and I’m feeling fruity, spending $300 on a pair of shoes because they’re sexay and I don’t care if they hurt my feet. But I don’t miss those things, really. I’m perfectly fine giving up things I once thought integral to my personality and self-image, though I do know that too much of that and I may end up disgruntled later for having lost too much of my identity to motherhood. I’d like to see Quebec someday, or maybe Montreal, but I want to see it with my kids so they can have the experience, too. I’m not much of a wine drinker, though I’m acquiring the taste a little more lately, as long as I’ve nowhere to drive and Gabe and Anna are either asleep already or are with the grandparents. I’ve never been a shoe hound or a clothes horse, though my recent purse purchase made me giddy for a couple days. Does that make me a purse pig? I can think of nothing better to do with my time than spend it on my kids, and the knowledge that I get to have these little creatures of wonder as a constant in my life for at least the next 18 years thrills me to the point where I get chills and also a little scared, because I’m bound to eff them up somehow. Sure, I get tired of the constant talking, the Mama, Mama, Mama, Mama diatribe that spews forth from the toddler years on, making me wish for a millisecond of silence just to take a breath. Plus, I’m not a freakin’ encyclopedia, so I don’t know how to explain where electricity comes from or what makes the weather get cold or warm. Thing is, I wouldn’t trade the fifty fabrillion questions a minute for anything in the world. I love the sound of Gabe’s voice, even if it does sometimes make me wish I had been born without ears. The smell of Anna’s head is my crack rock in the morning. It’s awesome to feel her hair after a bath, as soft as it is. Even Gabe’s stinky morning breath in my face is something I’ll attempt to hang onto for as long as possible because I know someday it won’t be there.
Cleaning up my messy desk after its 6 week dust gathering convention, I ran across some pictures the babysitter took of Gabe when he was just shy of a year old. He’d fallen asleep while riding a horse scooter, and his ankles and wrists still bear the baby fat. His face shows chubby where now, there’s only slender little boy face to peer at me from under my covers. There are still thigh rolls on him that are thoroughly chompable. So yeah, bottle washing and dinner making and formula concocting between 6 and 9 pm can suck it, though I see no alternative time in which to do that stuff. Plus, all this BPA business has me too scared to put the bottles in the dishwasher. First, I was going to go out and buy glass bottles, until I found out that what once came in a pack of 3 plastic ones for $12.99 now comes in a pack of 2 for the same price, so to replace all my bottles would be about $100. Hard to do when maternity leave pay meant my paychecks sucked, without even considering the fear that glass might break when a few months from now, Anna is holding them herself and decides to chuck one across the room. Then I found out that Dr. Browns, the bottles I SWEAR BY, are coming out with a polypropylene BPA free version next month, so I decided to just use my old ones for the first couple months until I could replace them with the safe plastic version. The concession meant that I only want to hand wash them, since the dishwasher heat is what breaks down the bad plastics and allows BPA to leach into the formula. Thus, the bottle washing nightly extravaganza. It was fine when I was home, because a half an hour out of a whole day didn’t seem to hurt that much. But that half hour cuts into three hours pretty widely.
So I suppose I can suck it up and shell out the $ for glass, or I can ignore the reports because these bottles have already seen countless dishwasher cycles so what’s a few more, or I can suck it up and stick to the original plan, which means another 6 weeks or so of time-chomping bottle washing until the safe plastic ones come out. Or I could also switch brands and endure more Pukefest Gas Bloat from Anna, and I just want her to be more comfortable than that. Lovely choice, huh? I can make her tummy hurt by letting her bloat, or I can fill her body with chemicals that may increase her chance of breast cancer later in life; or I can get her bottles that pose the potential to make her bleed should one break near her. I’ll take I Wish I Could Breastfeed for $1000, Alex. No Deal, Howie. Why don’t YOU solve the puzzle on this one, Pat?
Well, one good thing that’s come out of my return to work. No time for TV, especially gameshows. Though I am thrilled the writer’s strike is over, because I miss my Grey’s. And I’m sorry, but Dexter? NOT MEANT for prime time TV on regular channels. It’s just not the same without all the f-bombs and really? Mother-lover isn’t an insult. I would hope everyone loves their mother. It’s a poor substitute for mofo. Because if loving your mother is a bad thing, I picked a bad time to have kids, didn’t I? And Dexter is just too good to be tampered with. STOP EFFING WITH DEXTER, CBS.
On that very random note, I think I’ll publish this mess of an entry.
02.18.08
Surprises
There are surprises around every corner in life. Some of them are totally good.
Surprise! Your husband brought you a puppy for Valentines Day! Which, yes, he did, and it’s a good surprise, despite the poor timing of house training a 10 week old black lab when I have a 6 week old baby and my return to work was imminent. She’s adorable, and affectionate, and kinda fat in that clumsy puppy paws-the-size-of-dinner-plates with the chubby belly that sways to and fro, tripping on her own feet kind of way. We’ve named her Calypso, after the Goddess of the Sea, because Mike gave her a bath the first night she was home with us, and she loved the water. So much so that she tried to jump into the tub with him later when he took his own bath. She’s also smart as a whip. She knows she’s not supposed to go to the bathroom in the house where I can see her. Oh, she’s still having incidents in the house, sure, but she hides from me to do it, now. Good thing our carpets were already shot to begin with. So in just a couple years, when Calypso is house trained and Anna and Gabe are better about not spilling their drinks or food on the carpet, we’ll be able to get new carpet and keep it nice. (Yeah, I know I’m deluded. But I’m emotional today so let me keep to my pleasant fiction.)
Another good surprise: the offer of the kids staying overnight with the grandparents so that Mike and I could spend some time together before I returned to work. I slept for seven hours straight and it felt like a sin.
Another good surprise: at a local farmer’s market, I found a vendor selling genuine designer label handbags at ridiculously low, even suspicious prices. It didn’t stop me from buying one, and it made me ridiculously happy to pay the ridiculously low price. We’re talking about returning next weekend. I may start stocking up, except for Mike’s protests. It’ll be hard to resist, even if I could be contributing to the fell-off-the-truck crime lifestyle of some wasted youth.
Or there are the bad surprises.
Surprise! Your alarm didn’t wake you up and you’re starting your day twenty minutes later than you expected!
Surprise! Your new dog pooped on the floor while you were in the shower, because your eyes were averted. Surprise! Disposing of the dog mess in the toilet clogged the blasted thing. She may only be ten weeks old, but dang, she’s got big piles. Surprise! The clogged toilet’s rising water didn’t stop just beneath the lip of the bowl like usual, so there’s poopy water soaking the bathroom floor!
Surprise! Your husband bogarted your cash from your wallet and now you have to pay your overdue work postage another day. Surprise! You have over 1200 emails to go through.
Well, the day calmed down after I got to work, and while I miss both Gabe and Anna terribly, and it was hard leaving Anna, or as Gabe calls her, the “tiny tiny creature,” when she still seems so small and fragile to me, I’m surviving. There were a couple tears, and I couldn’t keep them from falling when one of the first familiar faces asked how I was doing as I walked into the building this morning. But I’m making it. I’m shaking the cobwebs off my brain and remembering what it is that I do to get paid. While I would much rather be home with the kids for another few weeks (or permanently if I could get away with it), this isn’t as much an end to the world as I was dreading it to be.
But don’t think I won’t be rushing out at 5 in a hurry to get home to my little ones as soon as humanly possible. It’s a good thing it’s President’s Day and traffic is a little lighter than normal. That’ll shave a good ten more minutes off my drive. As difficult as it was to leave them with the babysitter, every minute counts.
02.12.08
Hi Ho, Hi Ho
Off to work I go. Next week. And I am not looking forward to it. Sure, we have a shiny new lobby after dealing with a big renovation. It’s all high tech and gadgety, and we have to have little cards to get in the door. Which reminds me. I have to find my key card.
But I don’t want to leave this:
Or this:
Or this:
Or what he does when he’s playing with her:
The reality is that I don’t have a choice. Without getting too political here, my company does not offer a very family friendly program for maternity/paternity leave, and they’re not required to. They offer what they do through the Family Medical Leave Act in conjunction with short term disability insurance. I have up to twelve weeks. Unfortunately, because of the terms of the short term disability, I can only afford to take six weeks. It’s actually in line with the plans of many other area companies’ maternity leave offerings, and it’s not a terrible plan.
Until you compare it to everyone else’s in the world.
Every other country in the world with a maternity leave law for employers is better than the United States and our laws, save three other countries, which are third world countries. Some super power we are, huh? It’s become a soapbox topic for me, and it has never felt more salty in my wounds than it has the last few days as the knowledge that I’ll be slinging numbers again instead of diapers and bottles by this time next week occurs to me more and more often.
I’m not ready to go back.
Anna still seems so small to me, so helpless. Too helpless to be farmed off to daycare where attentions are divided among more children. I love my babysitters and I feel they take fantastic care of Gabe, and I have no doubt they’ll take fantastic care of Anna. But I still don’t feel she’s ready to go there yet, and my desire to count beans again is minimal at best.
However, my hands are tied. Some of this is poor planning on the part of Mike and I. I take responsibility for that much. On the other hand, there could be improvements made in the laws surrounding the leave companies are required to give their new parent employees.
I look at Anna, snug in my arms in her sleeping glory, and I can’t help but lament that six weeks has passed in a blink, and that from here on out, I’ll be relegated to night watchman over her, with a mere three waking hours to spend with her each evening during the work week. Never before has the desire to take charge of my life and live on my terms been this strong in me. Nor have I ever felt quite so bound by my finances.
But enough woe. Too much woe, really. Especially when there’s crazy baby hair to talk about.
And baby noises, all the little gurgles and snorts and squeaks and contented owl hoots and purrs. Oh, and snores that sound like whispered secrets. Between the chubby cheekeys and the edible feetseys, and the chompable thigh rolls, I’m losing my ability to speak proper language and also, I’m getting very hungry. Right now, she’s dreaming, twitching in her sleep, and smiling. Oh wait, I know what that smile means. And those grunts in conjunction with those furrowed brows and that red spot on her forehead. It means Squeaky McWheezerton has struck yellow gold in the rounded butte region and Mama must go.
02.11.08
Insults and Injury
Look at me, saying I’m good to go and ready to write again and then I desert you all for a week. What kind of blogging friend am I? Not a very good one, apparently.
The flu has struck our house. And not that I would wish it on anyone ever, but it’s just insulting that I’m the first one to get it, when I already have to contend with healing my girly bits and the neverending period that comes after birthing a baby. Now I’m on pins and needles waiting to see if Gabe or Anna comes down with it. Somehow the thought of passing misery onto my kids just makes me mad at myself, though I know it’s not like I can help it.
Anyway, once the plague has vacated, there’ll be blogging again, including pictures (Kelli). I have thoughts to get out, particularly since it’s my last week of maternity leave. Boo hiss!
02.04.08
Spitter Sputter
Whew! Tttthhhhbbbbbtttthhhhtttthhh! Bluuurrrrghhhh!!!!11!!1 *Gasp* Breathe!
Okay. Coming up for air now. Deep breath. Aaahhhh. That’s better.
So how are you all? I missed everyone! What’d I miss?
Gabe’s party went off pretty much without a hitch, although without family members pitching in a hand to help set out food and hold Anna while I helped Gabe open his gifts and pretty much lend me six arms and a couple extra brain cells for ideas for everything, I would have been the first suburban mom in history to have melted down under the pressure of a birthday party for a four year old.
Four. He’s four. NO FAIR!
And someone left a comment on one of the posts about Anna asking whether or not Gabe looks huge now because she was so tiny. SO TRUE! Gabe’s been on the small side his whole life (except that part where he powered through my girly bits to come into this world with a record breaking head circumference and a healthy 8 pound birth weight), hovering around the 25th percentile for both height and weight. His cousin, who is seven months older, is stockier and taller, and generally just a more solid boy. Picking him up is enough to make the kidneys mewl a little bit in protest. Go from picking up the cousin to picking up Gabe, and Gabe feels as if he’s filled with helium. He’s my little balloon boy.
Not true now that I see Anna and how small Gabe once was compared to now. He’s ginormous! And he’s swelled with pride over being a big brother, too. He’s protective of Anna, making sure that I have her when we go anywhere. “You got my baby sister, Mom? Okay. Just checking.” I so don’t have to worry about accidentally forgetting her.
Speaking of, does anyone else have that fear, either now or in the past? I was so afraid with Gabe that I would leave him sitting in his pumpkin seat in the basket of a grocery cart while I drove away with a trunk full of formula and diapers just because I was so not used to having this little pink and wriggling accessory to take everywhere. Of course, I got used to having him next to me, so now, I automatically scan my surroundings for his little towhead and listen for the fifteen words per second that fly from his mouth. But that fear has returned with a ferocity because not only am I not used to having TWO to remember to take with me, I’m distracted by getting the first one into his coat and buckled into his car seat. And he’s so chatty! I’m answering the 3257893217563237th “Why” question in a row and my thoughts are on why Lightning McQueen got lost and what name is the Peterbilt, and why’s he have batteries to haul around, and not on the fact that I left Anna in her pumpkin seat on the kitchen floor and I really should go back and get her before going to my tenth trip to the store for milk. She’s the silent type, too, so unless I hear her faint squeaks over the four year old motor mouth, I haven’t much hope that she’ll remind me if I momentarily misplace her. It’s a good thing I have proud brother Gabe to ask if I’ve got her. Because he might save me some humiliation and a boat load of guilt some random Thursday at Target.
I’m terrible. Although I haven’t left her behind anywhere yet. But GAWD, I’m so afraid I will.
Speaking of the motor mouth, I asked him why he asks us so many questions, why he says, “Why” so much. He furrowed his brow in his future teenager scowl and said in a very duh voice, “I just like to talk to someone, Mom.”
Oh. Well, okay! Mike reminds me that his whys are a good thing, that they’re a mark of a curious little boy who wants to learn about his surroundings. He wants to know what’s going on. He pays attention to nuances I can’t believe he gets at his young age. It makes me proud, though it also sometimes makes me want to scratch my eardrums to stop the bleeding when he’s asked his frillionth question of the day. Although I don’t have any room to bitch because my report cards from second grade on contained one consistency. In the notes section, the teacher always wrote, “Talks too much.” How could I possibly get so annoyed with Gabe when I did it to my parents?
Oh yeah. Because they cursed me with that fervent wish of every parent, that they hope we have kids just like ourselves someday. Well, Mom… Dad… I do. It came true. And I wouldn’t change it for anything. No matter why.
