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.