Boys vs. girls

It’s happening already, that inevitable boy/girl division that I’d somehow thought the enlightened 2005 birth set would rise above. I saw it in action at a bowling birthday party this weekend. Five girls bowled in one lane, five boys in the other. All five girls lost interest in the game at some point and defected, choosing instead to hold hands in a giggling chain and weave haphazardly among tables and people and other obstacles. The same one stepped on my foot four times. I overlooked it because she’s been one of my favorites since Alex’s crew was in the baby room (a chubby girl with rosy, freckled cheeks and curly red hair—and her name is Sunny, come ON, how cute is that?). Seemingly ignorant of the girls’ apathy about the competition, the boys continued to work together to beat them. It was a valiant effort, I’ll have to say, and admirable that they really didn’t care, after a while, about whose turn it was or whether or not their meandering communal 7-pounder managed to find its target (thank God for bumpers).

They’re not so far gone that they’re not still friends, thank goodness. That would break my heart. I watched Alex try to encourage sweet shy Anna to bowl even though her big teary terrified eyes and her death grip on her mother said that she had no intention of being convinced. I watched the five girls form a circle around the birthday boy and take turns hugging him. (I’m pretty sure he only pretended to be put out.) And on the way out with little Ruby and her mom, Alex said, “Great job bowling, Ruby!” and she giggled and if I didn’t know better I’d say she actually blushed. (This is the one whose mother told me that she recently said, “That boy Alex in my class, sometimes he looks at me. And I like it!” and then ran away in embarrassment.)

Yikes, they’re growing up fast. There’s some bitter in the sweet, but it makes me proud to see my boy’s good-hearted nature in action. I love that he thanked the birthday boy’s mother for inviting him without my reminding him, and that he told his friends “Good job” after every turn, even if he kept returning to me and telling me how harrrrrrrrd it was to wait for his own. I love that when we were leaving and he said, “Boys are tougher than girls” and I explained to him exactly why that is fallacious logic, he relented and told me that people are “the same tough. Even though sometimes boys are ... taller.”

Lastly and randomly, I love this snippet from Ms. Donna’s 4K last Friday, just because it makes me snort:

Alex: “Lucy spent a long time making her picture beautiful, and then Patton came over and told her it looked damn.”
Me: “He said what?”
Alex: “He said ... He said it didn’t look beautiful.”
Me: “No, it’s ok, what did you say he said?”
Alex: “He used a grown-up word.”
Me: “He said it looked...”
Alex, solemnly: “He said it looked damn.”

My kid, the cutter

Alex is on his way to becoming that kid who, in elementary school, cut off the tip of his nose with scissors and damned generations to follow in the VH school system to using nothing but the blunt-nosed kind forevermore. It sounds like an urban legend, but I swear, it happened! Right? The part about the nose tip falling into a pile of dried beans the class was using for math purposes is still up for debate.

Alex’s nose is intact, thank God, and he didn’t do any real damage, but yesterday he came home flaunting an accident report pinned to his school bag and a Band-Aid on his thumb. “We were using plastic knives to spread marshmallow cream onto apple slices” the note read (and here I’ll add an editorial ‘ew’). “Alex cut his finger while ‘sawing’ on his apple with the plastic knife.” Translation from the soft-centered language spoken by sweet 4K teachers the world over: “Your kid was using his plastic knife for unsanctioned purposes. Don’t blame us.” I asked him why he was sawing on the apple instead of spreading (ew) marshmallow cream. He looked at me like I’m quite dense. “There was peel on the apple. I couldn’t eat that!”

It wasn’t long after when I noticed a perfectly straight-edged hole in one of the knees of his jeans. The third time I said “Alex, did you cut that with scissors?” I got a reluctant but earnest “Well yes I did, but I don’t know why I would've done something like that!” This makes me wonder about the brand new pair of khakis that came home recently with a gaping hole in BOTH knees, and while he insists (vehemently) that he most certainly did not take scissors to those pants, and in fact finds the very idea quite offensive—I have to wonder.

If he doesn’t start making better choices when it comes to common utility tools, he’ll eventually be the 40-year-old man who cuts his steak with a rubber-coated spoon and clips coupons with his teeth.

Baby Girl is doing great. Strong and loud heartbeat of 157 bpm, measuring right on track, not yet forcing my blood pressure into the danger zone the way Fetal Alex did. I’ve gained quite a bit less weight than I'd imagined, considering my newfound appreciation for Snickers ice cream bars and Limited Edition Publix Premium Strawberry Shortcake ice cream. And hot biscuits with I Can’t Believe It’s Not Butter and strawberry jam. Mmm...

Food for Thought

How the Octopus Got Eight Hands
by Alexander Kirk Bosche

This is how the octopus got eight hands. It wished in the magic sea for eight hands because it found a lot of beautiful things. Then it picked up all the beautiful stuff and then they carried them to build their house, and the star was to poke the hole.

The End.

Passing the time

Girlchild is moving around a lot these days, but the bumps still aren't strong enough to feel from the outside. Plus, she seems to stop whenever a hand is put over the source of her poking. Stubborn like her brother? And maybe her mama—I hear nasty rumors sometimes that I'm pig-headed. I hope Alex gets to feel her soon; he's been claiming since she was about the size of a peanut that he can feel her head when he touches my tummy. I never had the heart to tell him no, my dear, that's just Mommy's gut. The movements are so reassuring, though, and that's what I remember from before. Having that frequent, multiple-times-daily physical reassurance that she's OK in there helps me in my efforts to make my old frenemy Anxiety shut it, already.

Steven put up the crib this weekend, of his own accord and without my having to lift a finger. And he kept the cursing to a bare minimum, even though there was an impromptu trip to Lowe's in the middle of the project and the drawer that's supposed to slide into the bottom of the frame flat refuses to be slid. If baby came home tomorrow we'd be 74% ready for her, at least physically. Which means that, roughly twenty-seven years from now, when I finally give birth, we should be all set.

So now begins the interminable wait. The long stretch of no concrete milestones, with the finish line still too far distant to make out without binoculars. We are over the hump though, more than halfway there, and I still get to sleep a lot. A lot a lot. I guess now there's nothing to do but enjoy my sleep and my Only and my spit-up-free existence, to occasionally panic when all's too still for too long in my belly, to play the eating-for-two card, to bask in the rosy, rewritten memories of what having a newborn is really like. And occasionally to get all mushy when I encounter a rack of tiny, flowered sundresses, knowing full well that anything but sleepers and onesies is impractical in the beginning but not caring one iota. This is fantasy time. Gimme it.

I adore my husband, but I do hope he'll refrain from making this creepy face this time. Note the frozen semblance of what might be a smile in some improbable parallel universe, with the underlying visible effort to avoid puking on my head. (It's shocking, when there's suddenly a baby in the room.)

Motherhood should grade on a curve.

I suppose it’s natural, if neurotic, as a mother, to watch other mothers and do a quick mental assessment of how you hold up. It’s born of insecurity, that tendency, and at least for me was a way to make sure that, while I wasn’t doing everything perfectly, at least I wasn’t the mom who forgot her kid’s coat in sub-60 temps. Ok, fine, I was her once, but in my defense, it was way colder at the pumpkin patch than it was when we left the house and if you stayed in direct sunlight it was almost possible not to shiver. And, if I'm going to be confessional: I’m the one who forgot to replace his summer backup clothes at daycare with winter ones, who perpetually neglected to bring snacks along on day trips to the zoo, who quite frequently imposed the five-second rule of food on the floor. Sometimes I forgot to replenish his daytime diaper stash, and he’d come home in a borrowed Disney Princess Huggie. Once, when he was just sitting up, he toppled off my bed because I was too busy making a video of him sitting up on my bed to catch him. I know I’ve mentioned on here the baby powder incident. A friend of mine recently told me about her daughter’s similar adventures with an economy-size tub of Vaseline that she got her hands on after climbing out of her crib at a shockingly early age. Once out and thoroughly greased up, baby decided to try getting back into the crib, which proved impossible because she was too slippery. My friend felt guilty for not knowing her kid was capable of such mayhem; I felt stupid for not closing the baby powder. It’s a comedy of errors, this parenthood thing, and I finally understand that even the ones who make it look effortless (I’m lookin’ at YOU, Cathy) struggle sometimes. Cuz ain’t none of us perfect.

Hopefully the second time around I’ll get less caught up in those involuntary comparisons. I will try, as they used to remind us during tests in school, to keep my eyes on my own work. Maybe this time I’ll be the mom with one of those magically bottomless diaper bags that can produce a wet wipe in five seconds flat, or crayons and coloring pages for restaurant entertainment, or a spillproof cup of Goldfish or Cheerios at just the right moment during a long errand run. I’ll have Band-Aids and hand sanitizer on my person at all times, several changes of season-appropriate clothes, and spare pacifiers in every corner because I swear to God those things have legs.

More likely I’ll forget a lot of stuff, a lot of the time. I’ll leave the baby powder container open because of sleep deprivation or laziness. At least once during her life I’m bound to dress her in direct opposition to the weather. I will—because sometimes it’s just funny—at some point laugh when she trips over air and slides down the hall on her knees, or walks into a wall because she's in that bizarre toddler fog and they're straight-up blind in those moments. And she’ll be ok. Just like Alex has always been ok, just like we are all ok, more or less, despite (or because of) parents who are human and as such make all kinds of mistakes along the way. Kids really are elastic, in mind, body, and spirit.

I also realize, sort of against my will, that these are the easy mistakes. For Alex, tweenhood, teen years, and beyond are right around the corner, harboring all kinds of as-yet-untold horrors. I'm bound to long for the days when my biggest missteps were forgetting to pack a snack or to remind him to brush his teeth. Golden simplicity. These are the days that one day will be the good old days.

Alex, you are my heart. I apologize in advance for all the screwing up I’ve yet to do.