My Son, the Philosopher

I had my second OB appointment yesterday, and Dr. Awesome perused my file and proclaimed, "You're perfect." Aw, you flatter me, Dr. Awesome. Good bloodwork, good blood pressure (whew), good baby heartbeat, good weight gain (if there is such a thing) at one pound after the nice nurse subtracted one because I was wearing boots. And! He told me that if I come back in five weeks instead of four, we can do my "big ultrasound." So on January 20 at around 10 a.m., barring baby stubbornness or unforeseen events, we will find out if we're having a John or a Jane. And no, those are not the names. It's hard to believe that my next appointment will mark the almost-halfway point of this pregnancy. Makes me feel, comparatively and in retrospect, like I gestated Alex for about two and a half years. This is flying by!

Speaking of the funny 4-year-old, he told us last night that, while he realizes that God gets to choose whether the baby is a boy or a girl, he certainly hopes God was listening when he put in his request for a baby sister. Why a sister? I asked out of curiosity. "Because," he told me matter-of-factly, "Girls are cute."

Less cute, more heart-wrenching was the conversation we had a week or so ago when I was putting him to bed. He went through his whole how-much-I-love-you routine, starting with "I love you ten million" (we never know what units he's using) and going all the way to "I love you up to the sky and around the world and past Heaven." Then, unexpectedly, he said, "I'll even love you when you die." He thought about it for a minute and added, "But that's going to be a looooooong long long time away, right?" After reassuring as best I could on such a landmine-dotted topic, he seemed not a bit soothed. "Why does life have to be like that?" he asked, frustrated.

I think he used to ask easier questions.

He has come up with his own surprisingly accurate theory on the logistics of childbirth. When the baby runs out of room in my tummy, he said, it will start looking around for the door. The doctor at the hospital helps the baby open the door, because, duh, babies don't know how to turn knobs.

The Joys of Being Neurotic

I’m brainstorming. It’s a sight to behold, let me tell you. Notes are scattered in front of me, scribbled on Post-Its of varying sizes, looking important and schizophrenic. Monday 10:45, says one ... I didn’t do anything yesterday at 10:45, so I’m hoping it’s old. I doodle my name a lot, it seems, in all its incarnations. I doodle the baby’s potential names, especially ones I know I’ll never have the guts to saddle the kid with for real. Christmas shopping. One of these Post-Its has names and abbreviations of what I can only imagine were intended to be gift ideas, but I can’t imagine why I would be buying my 4-year-old nephew a Psk CXp bd. I need to get better with my shorthand. Mostly there are random numbers with dollar signs that make me the appropriate degree of nervous: 895 minus 654 equals 241 and even though I don’t know what that 241 is, it seems ominous, right? S: 866.25 with an exclamation point next to it! VBC 715 with a question mark? Baby care, afterschool care, yack! It’s important, too, not something you can just close your eyes and point to and hope for the best ...

I’m a planner. Not because I’m so all-fired organized (Post-Its everywhere attest) but because I worry if I don’t have a plan in place. I worry if I do have a plan in place, but less, and for different reasons. The having of the plan is A-Number-One-Important; the plan can be tweaked and adjusted, reframed and repositioned, but its bones don’t change and that brings me some measure of comfort. Right now there is no plan. Or actually there are several completely separate potential plans, with corollaries, and I’m stuck at the crux of where all the paths branch off, staring down one after the other with panicked indecision. Wishing someone would push me down one, any one, so I can claim PLAN IN PLACE, NO TAKE-BACKS and go on about my business.

So while I wait for something to click, for a decision to make itself (hasn’t happened in my 31 years of life but that’s not going to stop me from waiting), I’m going to throw myself into the things that are fairly controllable and don’t require much in the way of choice. Beginning the slow process of clearing out the office in preparation to transform it into the nursery. Reading about what’s happening inside my body from week to week. Boosting Alex’s burgeoning big brother ego. Working. Freelancing to fill in the holes because my goodness formula has gotten more expensive in the past four years! Hanging with people who make me laugh. Reading mindless fiction (confession: I’m halfway through my second reading of New Moon, yes I am, don't judge me). Writing mindless nonfiction, so that I’ll remember this time in my life, years down the line, when the decisions have all been made and paid and become woven into the fabric of How It Is.

Stop taunting me with your secrets, future.

Help, I'm Addicted to Sleep!

FATIGUE. It’s starting to give me a bad rap. OK, so I’m sort of notorious for my tendency to take long naps whenever possible, but four hours at a stretch midafternoon after a night of twelve? Kind of absurd, even for me. Yesterday I turned over birthday party detail to Steven because I simply could not face two hours at McWane Center. There’s like seventy-five floors of hands-on activity! It would have KILLED ME DEAD. I was supposed to be catching up on freelance work while they were gone. I napped. Don’t tell Steven. This morning I woke up to pouring rain and the prospect of Monday after a five-day break. Didn’t help that when I went to wake Alex up he asked if it was Friday. I summoned all the faux chipper I could muster and said no, honey, it’s Monday, and you get to tell your friends all about your Thanksgiving, won’t that be FUN? (To which he huffed with bitterness far beyond his years, “No it won’t be FUN. I hate Mondays.”)

Of course, when you’re 4 you’re generally easily distracted by shiny things. He was surprised into grudging delight by the sight of our lit-up Christmas tree (“I forgot our tree was decorated!” he bubbled), and was nudged the rest of the way into a good mood by getting to pour the syrup on his waffle allllll by himself. (I need to scrub the counter when I get home.)

Little one is 11 weeks in utero today, showing no signs of laying off the nausea-making or the exhaustion-mongering even though THAT’S THE RULE, KID, 12 WEEKS AND MOMMY GETS TO FEEL GOOD AGAIN, READ THE HANDBOOK. I look forward to having more energy, to not feeling like a trip to the Dollar Store to buy wrapping paper for the birthday child’s present is going to do me right the hell in. I’ll still probably take two-hour naps when I can because, hey, once this baby shows up I won’t get to do that nearly as much as I’d like to. I’m banking sleep, it’s logical! But hopefully I will soon, again, be able to manage my time like a normal person and not make up an errand for the exclusive purpose of justifying re-pajama’ing and returning to blissful unconsciousness the second I get home.

Maybe we should’ve kept the Mattress O’ Torture.

Is the world ready for Alex the Big Brother?

This week BB graduates from embryo to fetus. I know, how exciting! I finally was able to find the heartbeat with the home Doppler I’ve been ordered to send back for the sake of my sanity and that of those bound to listen to my fretting, and I heard that sound with mine own ears. It’s incredible.

Steven and I had occasion to see a 3-week-old Saturday night. He stared at the sleeping baby for all of five seconds and then said, “OK, now I’m scared. I forgot how little they are.” And I kind of did too. My “baby” has been too big to comfortably pick up for two years now (not that that stops him from diving into my arms occasionally, heedless of my protesting back), and long gone are the days when I had to hold my breath while trimming impossibly tiny fingernails. I’d even forgotten the way they grip your finger with a whole, minuscule and perfect hand, and how their skin is so soft and new it’s almost translucent. (Unless you’re Alex, who had cradle cap on his head and eczema on his legs, but a damn soft belly to make up for it.) I’m sure there’s a host of baby goodness I’m going to rediscover come June.



Alex wants to teach the baby how to walk, and how to hop on one leg. Right away, I believe he plans to do this. I don’t want to poke a hole in his enthusiasm, so we’ll just let things play out as they will. I just learned that my 3-year-old niece Emily is asking how long her new baby brother will be staying with them, and I find that adorably pitiful. My nephew Jack, to my knowledge, still hasn’t stopped asking when baby Nicholas is going back to the hospital, and baby Nicholas is 18 months old now. It’s got to be disheartening, to be so little and to helplessly ride out the cosmic shift of your family as you’ve known it. I think, considering my intense aversion to change, it’s a good thing I was the youngest.

Alex has started declining to hold my hand in parking lots, citing the argument “I’m almost a big brother.” He will hold my hand if I tell him that he needs to keep me safe, as he seems to believe I’m sort of a bumbling idiot who relies on his constant guidance and protection for my very survival, and he says that he will always hold his baby sister’s hand or “actually, I’ll carry her” while crossing streets. (He, like his dad and more than half the general population that has some stake in it, is convinced we’re having a girl.) But I like that he’s practicing his new role. It’s never too early to prepare for a major life change. I don’t know that from experience, as I tend to watch the change coming with a mixture of dumb awe and passive denial, but that’s rarely worked in my favor so I gotta assume Alex’s way is more effective. He even has a plan for the birth. “While you’re in the hospital getting the baby out of your tummy, Daddy and I will stay here and wrap presents.” So far he’s set aside several toys he deems “baby toys,” two chewed-up pacifiers, and three sets of too-small pajamas to bestow on his sibling.

I hope the spirit of generosity holds.

This picture has nothing whatsoever to do with this post, but it makes me laugh.

My Baby Looks Like a Gummy Bear

Yesterday I went to Dollar General and bought a stuffed horse head on a stick, heavy-duty aluminum foil, and a pregnancy test. I do wonder if I’m the only one ever to have done so.

Pregnancy test, you ask? YES, I say. I realize that I’ve taken sixteen, give or take, since early September, that they’ve all been varying shades of positive, and that all the logic and reason I’m able to muster these days (not to mention friends and spouse and People Who Make Sense) tell me “You’re pregnant, weirdo. Stop testing.” But yesterday was my first appointment, and the morning hours found me utterly at loose ends, and it was just a dollar anyway for a little piece of peace of mind. It was blazingly positive, if you’re wondering. If I didn’t know better, I’d say that stick was taunting me. Jerk.

Part of my anxiety was rooted in the fact that I did something ill-advised for those of us who are generally sweepingly anxious as a rule. I rented a home fetal doppler and tried (in vain) to find Baby’s heartbeat myself. I found mine about five thousand times over until I began cursing its reliability, which is pretty self-defeatist, in retrospect. But I didn’t find BB’s, and that scared me but good. Because, you see, it is VERY difficult to find the heartbeat before 10 weeks anyway, and I started trying at 8 weeks. Why? Just to freak myself out, maybe. Maybe life had been altogether too free of gut-wrenching worry for my taste. Who knows what motivates an incurable neurotic?

So thus was my state of mind going into the doctor’s appointment yesterday. I didn’t know what to expect. I have a new OB since Alex, and a new practice and a new hospital. My old doctor was stingy with ultrasounds. I only got one, and it was at 20 weeks. I did have a nurse friend who snuck me in for a quick peek at 10 weeks, so I knew Alex was IN there at least. With BB, yesterday, all I knew was that all pregnancy tests the world over insist the same thing, but that I was not going to be satisfied until I saw or heard for myself that there was a beating heart or three. So when they called me back and took me and Steven into an ultrasound room, I had to stop myself from throwing my arms around the nurse. No need to scare anyone. And it happened fast, the transition from dark uncertainty to crushing relief. It happened the second the nurse turned the monitor in our direction and I sat up on my elbows and saw our baby. Moving, no less, and looking much like a little gummy bear with stubby arms and legs. Blurry here, but you get the idea. But the best part? The crazy-fast flutter in the middle, the heartbeat, strong and vital, 180 beats per minute.



“Wow,” said Steven, my man of few words, and that just about summed it up for me, too.

Last night, after Alex was in bed and we were sitting on the couch trying to find something watchable on TV, Steven took another look at the sonogram pictures. “It’s weird to know what this is going to grow into,” he said. “That it’ll be funny and crazy and we’ll laugh at it and yell at it...”

“And love it,” I thought but didn’t say because it would’ve sounded cheesy. Then again, future tense doesn't apply here; the love switch has already been flipped. I sensed it before I saw that flutter on the screen; I knew it after.

Gender Bender

Alex had a dream that the baby is a boy and a girl. Honestly, I’m not sure if he meant twins or a hermaphrodite. Either way I’m kind of hoping he doesn’t have the gift of precognition. No twins in any direction in either of our families, so we’re probably safe there...

Oh, gender. That’s The question of the second pregnancy, it seems. I’m sure I got it a few times with Alex, but not nearly so much. Now people just assume that I’m jonesing for a girl. And yes, having a girl would be nice, assuming I could figure out how to change Girl Diapers, and what to do with hair, once she grew some. (Alex was cue-ball bald until he was 2, and I’m pretty sure Girl Bosche would be too. I was, and my mother used to tease the few strands she could gather up into an Alfalfa ‘do and stick a barrette on it.) I’m not good with hair. My own, and presumably anyone else’s. I mean, look at my poor son’s hair and tell me I’m wrong.

Hair aside, I will also fall just as hopelessly in love with a boy, if that's what God sees fit to give me. If having Alex has taught me anything besides NEVER BE SURPRISED, it's taught me that kids are not their gender. I had it all wrong the first time, knowing nothing of boys and expecting the stereotypical factory standard. Alex is anything BUT the factory standard. And I’d be willing to bet girls don’t fit into their societal gender roles so neatly either. My nieces certainly represent two opposite ends of the spectrum. Anyway, I have a name in mind for either case, and don’t even ask me to tell you because I won’t. It’s hard enough to settle on a name between two people, without factoring in others’ bad connotations. If I’m dead-set on naming my next son Rufus, I don’t need to know that the bully in someone’s kindergarten class was named Rufus. (It’s not Rufus.)

When you think about all that could go wrong, all that went right to set this little life in motion, whether it’s a he baby or a she baby becomes utterly irrelevant. Right now I just want to hear that little whoosh-whoosh heartbeat and know that HE or SHE, or he and she, or he/she, if Alex’s dream comes to pass, is healthy in there, swimming around and growing all the right things and thoroughly enjoying wearing me down this first trimester.

Monday (first doctor’s appointment) can’t come soon enough. 

Call me Mommie Dearest.

Nothing like a good dose of guilt to kick off a Monday morning! Now, granted, one might’ve expected me, as the adult in the equation, to exhibit a little bit more grace in this scenario. I blame a restless night, and the shameless pilfering of my last ten minutes of snoozing. My last ten minutes of snoozing are sacrosanct, even if you’re 4 and rumple-headed and sort of cute when you’re cranky.

But seriously? When one requests a smiley face on one’s Pop-Tart “Not because I want it to be special but because I want it to be happy,” mind you, and one’s mom dutifully places raisin eyes and a raisin nose and a raisin mouth onto one's toaster pastry, one should just suck it up when the raisins fall off. It’s not a national disaster, it’s not cause for sniveling and seething anger and waterworks, and how the hell did one plan to eat the Pop-Tart anyway without disrupting the raisin art at some point during the process?!

I let him have his little snit-fit while I finished putting on my makeup and drying my hair, and then I kissed him goodbye, told him to have a good day, and walked out the door. I was about to pull out of the carport when he yanked the door open and yelled after me, weeping freely, “I don’t want you to goooooooo!” So I stopped, opened the car door and held my arms out so he could nestle his snotty, tear-streaked face into my shirt, and asked him what, exactly, the problem was. “We didn’t apologize!” he said, and he wasn’t wrong, although technically I didn’t really see what I’d done to apologize for ... faulty raisin-face engineering?  So I said “I’m sorry we didn’t have a very good morning,” which should pass muster unless you’re very picky, and he said, “I’m sorry I been sick,” which was sooooo not the point, and I took him back inside, blew his nose, and bade Steven good luck.

Alex watched me back out of the driveway, waving mournfully as if I were off to the battlefields instead of off to a day of correcting spelling and grammar. “Have a good day; I love you,” I called to him as I put the car into Drive. He was bawling afresh as he yelled back, “I [sob] love [sob] you [sob] toooooooo!!!!” The heartbroken wail followed me down the street.

So, Monday: 1, Julie: 0. The day can only get better. 

Where Babies Come From

Nothing will get a bunch of veteran moms talking like a spirited discussion of labor and childbirth. These conversations are best when they happen in the presence of a scared first-timer who’s mere days away from having her own story to tell. The veterans seldom notice when the mother-to-be in their midst begins to shift uncomfortably, breaks out into a cold sweat, or turns slightly green. It’s not that no one wants to hear about your epidural-gone-wrong, or your emergency C-section, or your God-help-me tearing. It’s just that when a woman with a belly the size of a bowling ball is present, and maybe just coming to terms with the fact that this child she’s been so proudly growing all these months is going to have to come out somehow, it might be prudent to stick to the good stuff. The epidural that worked backward and succeeded only in numbing you from the midsection UP paled next to the inexpressible joy you felt when you (got the feeling back in your arms and) held your little one for the first time. That recovering from your C was easier than one might imagine, and for many women quite preferable to the alternative. That the God-help-me tear ... healed.

So I won’t tell any newbies about throwing up in a Best Buy bag because the pre-epidural drugs didn’t agree with me and Steven is resourceful. Or about passing out AS they were putting a needle into my spine. Or about pushing for two and a half hours before finally having Alex pried from me with oversize salad tongs. I won’t tell them about the fact that those tongs broke his tiny little newborn clavicle, and that the break was supposed to heal cleanly and instead left a huge calcium deposit BUMP on his collarbone that seems to be growing as he does. That on the second day in the hospital I collapsed into sobs because he wouldn’t eat and I was so sure they weren’t going to let me take him home because of what an unfit mother I was that I begged the nurse to bring me some formula and show me how to bottle feed. That I felt like a big jerk because of that.  

Nah, nobody needs to hear the horror stories. Least of all me. Because, while I’ve done it once before, I’m no expert and I am a worrier. So as far as I’m concerned, this one is going to show up on my doorstep, all snuggled in a blanket in a basket with a refresher list of instructions attached. I’m not too old to believe in the stork.  

I'll always call Skittles Nickels.

Say what you will, it’s darn funny when a little kid mispronounces something or mangles grammar. When it’s your own kid, it’s darn funny and darn cute. And I don’t say this lightly, as I’m not permitted to because I am a Pseudo-Professional and Occasionally Proud Grammarian and a decent pronunciator (Hush, peanut gallery). Who is prone to sentence fragments. For effect. And sometimes laziness.

That dog on the Peanuts cartoons? Snoofy.

The stuff a bee gets from a flower? Connectar.

The place you stay when you’re on vacation? Hootel.

There is a state, in Alex World, called Ohidaho.

Many Alexisms have, sadly, self-corrected. Wha’ happeen (what happened?). Issat NEWiss (what’s that noise?). Nersh (nose). I have bleed. The endlessly entertaining phase when the consonant cluster “CR” came out “CL” (therefore cricket=clicket, Christmas=Clistmas, and crack=clack. Steven was meaner than I, and often asked the poor kid to say “Chris Kringle crossed the creek.”).

Still, we have “I sleeped good,” “Are you so proud at me?” and “It happened for a long time ago,” among many other gems. I don’t correct him, because I know soon enough he’ll correct himself and it’ll make me sad.

Until then, whenever I need a pick-me-up, I watch the infamous Issat NEWiss video. If you know me (or even select friends of mine) you’ve probably seen it a few dozen times. I’m a little biased, but it’s good for a smile and a maternal pang. What I wouldn’t give to kiss that baldish head again. Click me.

Hanging up Halloween

Halloween is over, and what do we have to show for it? Two fast-rotting Jack-o'-lanterns, a bucket full of pregnant-lady's kryptonite, and a child who I swear against all scientific probability is still on last night's sugar rush. There was more buildup this year, which may be a sign of the times, in a world where Christmas decorations start sneaking into the periphery before the heat of summer has fully faded, and because of the buildup, the overness of Halloween has that weird hollow feel. It's like the day after your birthday when you're little. So now I guess we focus on Thanksgiving? Not me. I'm going day by day. Tomorrow Baby Bosche will be 7 weeks solid, working each day toward looking less like a tiny reptile (Why does he have a TAIL??? Alex demanded, wide-eyed, when I showed him a picture of what BB looks like right now). Day by day.

So Halloween started with visits to every single proprietor of costumes in the metro area in search of a Batman costume in Small. It would seem that only Small-size people are interested in Batman costumes, which is why every size but was available everywhere we went. (I ended up ordering his online.) Then we did Boo at the Zoo, where thousands of pint-size creatures packed in for games with penny prizes, trick-or-treating, a standard carousel ride (they used to run it backward for Boo, but we overheard the operator guy telling someone that it was malfunctioning that way), and a "haunted" train ride. Alex reassured himself by repeating "It's not real, Mommy," every time we saw a creepy thing in the woods, until a little girl behind us, improbably named Betsy, informed him haughtily that "Even if it's not real, it's still cool!"


Then, my mother decided to spend her birthday night in Hell, so we took Alex and his cousin Jack to the carnival at my old elementary school.


OK, so it used to be a Halloween carnival, now it's just a carnival. I don't know what that was about. The school (smaller than I remember, of course, but it smelled the same!) was packed out. I'm not prone to claustrophobia, but after a fifteen-minute wait in line for the haunted house, I was gearing up to fight my way through a group of giggly braces-clad Pizitz dance teamers and claw through solid cinderblock in a desperate search for fresh air and open space.

Then there was Alex's school parade and party. The parade was cute as always (and a little bittersweet, as it was our last, at least with this kid), and a little cruel. It's impossible not to laugh at the sight of a chubby little cowboy who dissolves into heartbroken wails when he glimpses his mommy on the bleachers, and that sounds horrible but it's CUTE. Don't judge me.

And finally, FINALLY, Halloween night. After an exceptionally rough day, Alex and I both sick to varying degrees and tired in equal measure, I wasn't at all sure it was going to be a successful trick-or-treat outing. But we packed him into layers under his Batman duds and set off into the streets, where we quickly discovered an interesting fact about our new neighborhood. Evidently Halloween night here is a sort of block party with no open-container restrictions. Parents and grandparents holding glasses of wine and cups of spirited homemade concoctions and beers in coozies tailed hyper costumed kids from door to door in a scene that was oddly all-American, fantastically fall, and straight-up fun. Alex made friends with a tiny decked-out Bama player, whose helmet came in handy when he took a header off someone's brick porch steps. Alex wound down about the same time my new lack of stamina began demanding a break, so we packed it in until next year.

Oh yeah, Steven did a great job on our Batman Jack-o'-lantern this year, and valiantly tried to salvage Scooby Doo. In the end the mangled Scooby face was covered by a place mat and a standard-issue Jack-o'-lantern face carved on the opposite side of the pumpkin. They're awesome, and they're making me sick. (BB doesn't seem to appreciate the scent of slightly charred pumpkin.)

The Baby Torch

We keep passing it back and forth, me, my sister, and my sister-in-law. Cathy (SIL) went first, bringing us my beautiful niece, Elizabeth Grace. It took maybe a week from the time we saw the first pictures of her for me to decide that if they could do it, we could (or something a little more seasoned-sounding) and voila, Alex was conceived. I was already pregnant here, and I knew it but hadn’t told anyone. Note the dazed expression. The smile says “Pretty babyyyyyyy,” the eyes say, “Holy *$!#% I’m growing one of these?!”


But wait. Before Alex was, Jack was. My sister, Kelly, was pregnant with my nephew John Vincent almost exactly one month before Alex came to be dividing cells. So I got a sneak peek at What Life Would Be Like With a Newborn. (Disregard my tired eyes and puffy face in this pic; motherhood was a month in the offing and I was holding a living, snuffling dose of reality.)


THEN we got Alexander Kirk, courtesy me.


THEN we got Emily Marie, courtesy Cathy (round two).


THEN we got Nicholas Matthew, courtesy Kelly (round two).


THEN Cathy went all kinds of out of order and got pregnant with Charles William, whose birth we’re all eagerly anticipating as I type.

THEN Kelly again, trying to boot me out of the lineup altogether, announced HER round three contribution, who is due four days (count ‘em, FOUR DAYS) before my round two offering to The Family Pot of Babies.

Add it up and you’ve got lots of Christmas and birthday presents to buy. But you’ve also got funny cousins,


sweet hugs,


and sisters with whom to share the moments when you want to put them all up for adoption.



Cathy, can’t wait to add Charlie to the mix.

My Little Superhero (and Inexplicable Bob)

In four years of life, we’ve come full circle in the Halloween costume department. When Alex was 1, he was Batman. He was a bald, big-eyed, banana-eating Batman with super-pinchable cheeks. No, really.



When he was 2, he wanted to be a big bear. I remember his assertion that he would be a big bear, and my gentle nudges in another (any other) direction. I couldn’t conceive of the logistics, you see. Big bear would require heavy, furry costume, far from ideal in Alabama, where October 31 temperatures can remain mulishly in the mid-70s. Besides, big bear costumes I found online were both expensive and impractical—be a big bear after you’re securely potty trained, I told him. Those suits don’t have emergency zippers.

So he was Bob the Builder. How we came up with that I really have no idea. Alex has never watched Bob the Builder, and has always seemed bored by the premise. I can’t really blame him; whose idea of entertainment is watching others engage in manual labor? He was a cute Bob, though. He got to wear the “Toddler Two” sign in his school parade, and was just bursting with pride.

On the second lap around the gym Steven was beckoned by Ms. Margaret to come and rescue our hysterical Bob.

When he was 3, he was Superman. Ideal because Superman doesn’t wear a mask, and neither did Alex. “It hurts my nooooooooose!” he complained about all masks no matter how innocuous-looking. He was a proud, face-baring Superman in a sea of Batmans. (Batmen?)


This year, in a retro fashion nod to Halloweens 2006 and 2008, he is Batman, once again. But not just any Batman. He is The Dark Knight. Plastic mask and long cape and body suit and all. Crazy blond curls have replaced the bald head and the mask hides the big eyes, but he still won't turn down a banana.



He's still my baby.

Is it bad form to call your kid a smart@$$?

Alex is very into opposites lately. He's mastered a long list that he repeats with teeth-grinding frequency. Yesterday, just to see what he'd say (because seriously, half the fun of having these little people is poking around in their minds and being entertained by what you find in there ... unless that's somehow developmentally questionable, in which case, just kidding)...just to see what he'd say, I said, "What's the opposite of Alex?" He didn't miss a beat. "Mommy." I don't know if that's true, but I found it really funny. Then again, I'm easily amused. Ask Steven, who often looks surprised when a halfhearted one-liner gets a dose of uproarious laughter. (He thinks I married him because he's funny. I think he married me because I think he's funny.)

I actually think Alex and I are more alike than we are different. Take that, kiddo. But oil and water or oil and oil, something is keeping us from mixing harmoniously of late. I'm pregnant. Did I mention? And pregnant people reserve the God-given right to be unpleasant, cranky, easily antagonized. Zaxby's forgot to put my lite vinaigrette in the bag with my Zalad tonight and I thought briefly about several different, equally disproportionate plans of revenge. In the end, I ate my Zalad with Wish-Bone balsamic vinaigrette from our fridge and obstinately did not enjoy one single bite. Take that, Zaxby's.

"Let's push our reset buttons," I suggested to Alex after an unsuccessful shoe-shopping endeavor this morning left us both crabby and annoyed with each other.

"Well Mommy," he said sanctimoniously (before having a child of my own I would've said a 4-year-old is not capable of sanctimony, but boy, would I have been wrong). "I think you need to push your reset button. You're the one who's mad."

Sometimes pointing out to an admittedly temporarily irrational person that she's mad is exactly the wrong thing to do. "I'm not mad," I told him.

"Yes you are."

"No, I'm not."

"Yes you are."

"NO I'M NOT. I think I would know!"

When it hit me that I'd fallen into this trap and that not only had he baited me but that he was winning, I quickly pointed the car toward the nearest McDonald's, where I sought French-fried solace and he hit his reset button, took off his shoes, and disappeared into the germ-infested reaches of the indoor Play Place.

Tonight during his prayer he asked God to help me be more patient tomorrow. Amen.

The Best Part of Being a Kid or a Dog

My first baby was a five-pound ball of reddish-gold fur and tough-as-nails attitude. He liked to chew on his teddy bear (and occasionally do other things to it, but we don’t need to go there) and attack bare feet with sharp little teeth. I distinctly remember bursting into tears one day upon having the epiphany that my dog Jack was a lemon. He was aggressive, stubborn, uncontrollable, and just plain mean. I think Steven laughed at me. “Have you ever met a vicious golden retriever?” he asked. “He’ll outgrow it.”

And, well, he did. He’s now a buck six, give or take, still stubborn as all get-out, prone to seizures and skin inflammation, terrified of the vacuum cleaner, and pretty much the most harmlessly endearing beast this side of Eeyore. So he’s still kind of a lemon, but we love him.

Then we added his sister to our family. Charlotte, her name was going to be (but it quickly proved too dainty for her, with her odd mix of rough-and-tumble playfulness and tail-thumping joy). Charlie she became. Chuck, more often than not. She’s a pleaser, a sweet and loving and submissive little thing with a penchant for unattended socks and ... Steven. (He hung the moon and maybe set the Earth turning, her worshipful brown eyes say whenever they land on him.)

And then one day we brought Alex home.

I set the carrier on the floor and let Jack and Charlie examine our new addition. There was prolonged sniffing and tentative toe-tasting, there was a moment of utter confusion when the new human made a noise, and then? Then they were over it. Jack turned to me for a treat, Charlie retreated to the corner with the best vantage point from which to gaze longingly at Steven, and they had accepted their new reality.

Kids do it too. Alex was sad for all of a day when we moved from the only house he’d ever known. There were a few requests to go and visit the old house, there was one bed-wetting incident that I’m pretty sure was related to the change, and then ... He was over it. New reality, accepted.

Wouldn’t it be nice if major life changes were as easy to swallow when you’re both a grown-up and a human? Kids and dogs have the secret, I think. They take stock of the important things, and, once they’ve ascertained that those are in order, the rest falls into place. Jack: New baby, smells good, where’s my treat? Charlie: New baby, tasty toes, where’s my man? Alex: New house, Mommy and Daddy and Jack and Charlie are here, Spider-Man sheets are on the bed, I’m going to play in my new backyard.

Love. Once it's inventoried, all is right with the world.

When we bring the next baby home, I plan to put him down on the floor in his carrier, let Jack and Charlie sniff and tentatively taste to their hearts’ content, and then give them treats. I plan to pull Alex into my lap, cover him with kisses and attention, and hope that he’s still young enough to get the message.

Grains of Salt

The best pre-baby-having advice I ever got was Do What Works. For us, that meant that Alex slept in his carrier on the floor of the bathroom with the fan on for the first two months of life. How we stumbled upon this magical formula for FIVE CONSECUTIVE HOURS OF SLEEP I don’t know (it resulted from a desperate act of sleep deprivation, no doubt, i.e. “I dunno what to do anymore, just put him in the bathroom!”) but try telling new parents that it’s wrong to put the baby on the bathroom floor in his car seat despite the priceless benefits ... You won’t get far. We encountered a problem in Week 3 when we went to the beach with our Texas family and the otherwise magnificent house we were renting had an ant problem. Even a sleep-starved half-crazy-with-anxiety first-time mom can’t abide the thought of ants crawling on her newborn (regardless of whether or not he would’ve slept through it, and I have a sneaking suspicion he would have).

The rules of having a newborn are pretty basic. Keep it safe, keep it fed, keep it clean. That doesn’t factor in the arbitrary MUSTs you’ll get from every direction, from (usually) well-meaning been-there-done-that moms: Pacifiers are a necessity. (Or, conversely, pacifiers are E-VILLE.) Breastfeed or risk raising a halfwit. Swaddle, for God’s sake, SWADDLE! And my personal fave: Sleep when the baby sleeps. (If you’ve ever had raging anxiety-induced insomnia and a newborn who is a noisy sleeper, you’ll know that’s simply not an option.)

But it’s all moot, because at the end of the day you’ll Do What Works. Some babies need that paci (and if yours does you might regret it until that glorious day when he can actually keep the damn thing in his mouth!) Some moms try to nurse but switch to formula when nursing begins to trigger uncontrollable weepy emotional upheavals. (Um, so I HEAR.) Some parents never get the hang of swaddling, or can’t get comfortable with turning their baby into a burrito. Some babies sleep only under a painfully specific set of circumstances, and woe be to anyone who deviates from the system even a millimeter. Those kids turn out fine, too. Those kids turn out ... Alex. 

Good Night(mare)s

I never thought I’d be a chart maker. Not that there’s anything inherently wrong with charts, I’m just not a charty kind of person. But Alex’s bedtime routine of late has been wearing a hole in my already-thin-because-I’m-pregnant-oh-yeah-that’s-it patience. It goes something like this.

7 p.m.: Shower (He’s a showerer now, can you believe it?? Well I can’t. This is the child who thinks water in the eyes is akin to battery acid in an open wound.)

7:30 p.m.: Wind-down show. Have you ever seen Miss Spider’s Sunny Patch Friends? Kristin Davis (Charlotte!) is the voice of Miss Spider, who is the adoptive mother of lots of “lil bugs” and says things like “everybuggy” and “spideriffic.” It’s awful, but it beats Caillou, the Whiny 4-Year-Old Canadian.

8 p.m.: Teeth brushing, book reading, song singing, tucking in. That’s when the fun begins.

8:20 p.m.: Alex gets up to turn on the hall light.

8:22 p.m.: Alex gets up to go potty.

8:26 p.m.: Alex gets up to ask for water.

8:33 p.m.: Alex gets up because he spilled that water but just a little bit and it was an accident!

8:37 p.m.: Alex gets up because “I forgot to tell you a question! Who made God?” (variations include “Why do dogs [sic] slaver?” and “When is it gonna be Friday?”)

8:40–9:32 p.m.: Alex gets up for a hug, to tell us about a broken toy, to beg for help finding his green blanky, to report that his radio has informed him that he has a new 106.9 The Evil. (It’s actually The Eagle.) Sometimes he gets up to ask me if he’s doing a good job going to bed.

9:45 p.m.: Mommy has HAD IT OH MY GOD CHILD JUST STAY IN BED AND GO TO SLEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEP.

9:50 p.m.: I feel bad. I go in to kiss him and tuck him in one. more. time.

See, it’s just out of control, and it leads to bad mornings because he’s cranky and I’m not a morning person and Steven is pressed for time and impatient and it’s just a bad scene, people.

So last night I made a chart. It’s called “Good Nights,” and do you see what I did there? I love a play on words! There are star stickers and days of the week and some nebulous reward at the end of a five-sticker stretch. Lord knows we may never get there. But, I’ve become a chart maker.

I blame Jo Frost. 

Hey, I know this!

The big fear with the first one is that you’ll fail. Fail at all of it: diaper changing, feeding, holding, consoling, being a mother. And you do, in a way. Diapers don’t stay clean. There is spit-up and there are days when the baby wants to eat more than the books say he should. Your muscles ache from stiff posture and frozen arms because if you move he’ll wake up. Sometimes you just can’t make him stop crying. And you can always name five or six women who seem to have it all together while you come apart.

It’s not failure but it’s not perfection and you think anything less is unacceptable. That’s how it is the first time.

By the second, and this is my sincerest hope because, well? By the second, you’ve unburdened yourself of a lot of that bull[stuff] (censored for delicate constitutions). Perfection is a myth you gave up that time you found your one-year-old toddling around the kitchen in the middle of the night sucking on a stick of butter after having broken the third refrigerator lock in a row. Or when he fell off the shopping cart you shouldn’t have let him hitch a ride on and you ran over him with it. Or when he repeated a word you didn’t know he heard you say. The myth of perfection goes the way of snuggly baby fantasies and memories of childbirth. By the second, you have reality firmly in hand.

I’m looking forward to growing this baby. I’m looking forward to feeling him/her move, to watching my belly swell, to the times when people rush to give up a seat or hold a door, and when old ladies in the grocery store stop me to offer unsolicited advice.

I’m also looking forward to holding him (stiff posture and frozen arms). To watching my big boy's face when he meets his sibling for the first time. To realizing for a second time—and much sooner than I realized it the first—that perfection is unattainable, nonexistent, and, frankly, kind of boring. That the good stuff is in the missteps. That when he shakes an entire container of baby powder all over his room and his person because I forgot to close it after the last diaper change, all I need is a vacuum and a camera.

I’ve been Mommy for a while now, and I’ve screwed up a lot. Still, I have a pretty fantastic kid despite (or because of?) those mistakes.