I am a sucker for unshed tears.
"Do you know what Clay said to me on the day we had to say goodbye?" he asked me, apropos of nothing, on Sunday morning.
No, I had to admit that I did not. (But I would have bet that it included the word "awesome," because the two of them had adopted that word as the essence of big-kidness and used it amusingly out of context all the time.)
"He said I would be his best friend forever."
And that's where I died a little, because he got choked up like an adult who's trying not to cry, and Those Eyes got all glisteny and wet and he turned his face away so I wouldn't see the tears in case his ducts couldn't reabsorb them before they fell.
Not to mention the fact that it reminded me of Tod and Copper from The Fox and the Hound, which was a movie that utterly destroyed me when I was little and I still can't think about without feeling achy in the heart.
Tod - er, I mean Clay - is coming over Saturday.
Good idea or opening an old wound? I really don't know, but for at least two hours they can be "awesomest buddies" again and do all those 5-year-old boy things that they've been doing with new friends instead of each other ever since school sent them down separate paths. I would accuse myself of attaching a sentimentality to it that's beyond their years, but then again ... teary eyes.
Miss Katherine is a chubby angel, still scheming every day to derail my efforts to get anything at all done but doing so in such a charming way that I have to succumb.
Plus she just won't abide all eyes not being on her at all times, a little conceit born of having the two men in her life fawning all over her every second, and who could blame her?
She's growing so fast, all I can think is how I should be memorizing all of it: The deer-in-headlights stare, the unruly hands that occasionally act of their own accord and smack her in her own face, the wispy trying-to-be-hair coming in on top of the soft, mostly bare scalp. Squishable thighs, kissable cheeks, bobbly head when she's tired.
There. I think I got it.
And if memory fails me, there's always the 1,027 pictures on my iPhone.
Tuesday, September 21, 2010
Friday, September 10, 2010
Cheese!
I love Tired Alex.
OK, so I love all facets of Alex, even Grumpy Alex who pouts and Early-Onset-Teenage Alex who stomps and slams doors. Chatty Alex, who won't stop talking for a single minute for all the world. Delirious Alex, who spouts incoherencies and flings his body around the living room until he inevitably smacks head-first into a wall and instantly becomes Grumpy Alex.
But Tired Alex has a special place in my heart because he's the one who's not too big to cuddle with his mama. He says sweet things like "I'll put you in my dream and the whole world will be made out of cheese and we can eat however much we want." He melts into my arms while I sing the alphabet song, which is the only song he's requested at bedtime for going on a million years. He's soft and warm and unconcerned with that recently born goal of being "just like Daddy."
Wait, he's "Dad" now. Much to his displeasure. ("I'm too young to be "Dad," he insists.)
I'm still "Mommy" most of the time, except when "Dad" is around. Then it's much more crucial to play the Big Kid role, and I become "Mom," and that's fine with me because it's just part of the growing up he's so busy doing most of the time.
Except, that is, when he's tired.
Katherine will be three months old next week, can you believe it? I can't. The birth is still so clear in my mind I can almost FEEL it if I try ... which I don't, very often, because wow. That was some serious pain.
They say (I listen to They more often that perhaps I should) that three months marks the peak of crying. If that's true, then we were truly blessed. She has days where she's a little more, shall we say, vocal? than others, and they seem to have been occurring one on top of the other for the past week or so. And yet she still sleeps like a rock through the night and is usually quickly consoled by a bottle or a pacifier or a well-timed shift in position.
Some days I'm frustrated. Some days, like today, I'm just exhausted. But it never seems to be too much, and I've yet to regret a single moment spent with her. This weekend is going to be chock-full of work I didn't do today because today she was fussy and today I was utterly wiped out. But even that's OK with me, because working from home was a decision I made, and stand by, and am determined to see through even when it's not as easy as one might imagine. Is anything, ever?
My sleep habits are still fraught. I have the best almost-three-month-old sleeper in the world and yet since her birth I've lost my own formerly unparalleled ability to zone out at any time and under any circumstance. Now, for instance, my body says "sleep," but my brain says, "do."
I guess that's better than last night, when I got home from a wonderful girls' night and my brain said "sleep" but my body said "eat." Thank God Steven had ordered pizza for dinner.
On that note, I'm going to bed. To sleep, or to think, or to overthink, or to worry, or to brood, I never know. No matter what, though, somewhere in the space that separates the waking world from the sleeping one, I'm hanging out with Alex, eating stuff made out of cheese.
OK, so I love all facets of Alex, even Grumpy Alex who pouts and Early-Onset-Teenage Alex who stomps and slams doors. Chatty Alex, who won't stop talking for a single minute for all the world. Delirious Alex, who spouts incoherencies and flings his body around the living room until he inevitably smacks head-first into a wall and instantly becomes Grumpy Alex.
But Tired Alex has a special place in my heart because he's the one who's not too big to cuddle with his mama. He says sweet things like "I'll put you in my dream and the whole world will be made out of cheese and we can eat however much we want." He melts into my arms while I sing the alphabet song, which is the only song he's requested at bedtime for going on a million years. He's soft and warm and unconcerned with that recently born goal of being "just like Daddy."
Wait, he's "Dad" now. Much to his displeasure. ("I'm too young to be "Dad," he insists.)
I'm still "Mommy" most of the time, except when "Dad" is around. Then it's much more crucial to play the Big Kid role, and I become "Mom," and that's fine with me because it's just part of the growing up he's so busy doing most of the time.
Except, that is, when he's tired.
Katherine will be three months old next week, can you believe it? I can't. The birth is still so clear in my mind I can almost FEEL it if I try ... which I don't, very often, because wow. That was some serious pain.
They say (I listen to They more often that perhaps I should) that three months marks the peak of crying. If that's true, then we were truly blessed. She has days where she's a little more, shall we say, vocal? than others, and they seem to have been occurring one on top of the other for the past week or so. And yet she still sleeps like a rock through the night and is usually quickly consoled by a bottle or a pacifier or a well-timed shift in position.
Some days I'm frustrated. Some days, like today, I'm just exhausted. But it never seems to be too much, and I've yet to regret a single moment spent with her. This weekend is going to be chock-full of work I didn't do today because today she was fussy and today I was utterly wiped out. But even that's OK with me, because working from home was a decision I made, and stand by, and am determined to see through even when it's not as easy as one might imagine. Is anything, ever?
My sleep habits are still fraught. I have the best almost-three-month-old sleeper in the world and yet since her birth I've lost my own formerly unparalleled ability to zone out at any time and under any circumstance. Now, for instance, my body says "sleep," but my brain says, "do."
I guess that's better than last night, when I got home from a wonderful girls' night and my brain said "sleep" but my body said "eat." Thank God Steven had ordered pizza for dinner.
On that note, I'm going to bed. To sleep, or to think, or to overthink, or to worry, or to brood, I never know. No matter what, though, somewhere in the space that separates the waking world from the sleeping one, I'm hanging out with Alex, eating stuff made out of cheese.
Friday, September 3, 2010
It's never too late to nest.
My bedside fan is making a death rattle. This is not good.
Bad enough that the man I married is cold-natured and ill-equipped to handle my preference of keeping the thermostat at a comfortable 68 degrees. After eight-plus years of marriage he's gotten used to it, or maybe he just doesn't fight it anymore because he has witnessed my heat-induced wrath on many an occasion.
Lucky for me, Alex tended toward my constitution as a baby and is still much more likely to complain of being hot than cold.
But alas, Katherine. Her little hands and feet (arguably little, and comparatively little, though people keep exclaiming over them like she's a puppy and they're trying to estimate what her full-grown stature will be) can turn icy a second after being brought in from the 5,002-degree temperatures of our Alabama summer. And because I birthed her and she's incapable (as yet) of engaging in the hot/cold war that has been ongoing since Steven first came to realize that I wasn't going to budge on the comfort factor, I've surrendered to it.
Rather than, say, dressing her in fleece-lined diapers, mittens, hats, and socks.
Still, this fan needs to reconsider committing suicide at this point in time, or I will be breaking out the infant-size long johns, throwing Steven a Snuggie, and having my way with the thermostat.
I hesitate to make the mistake I made a few posts ago and blather on about these smooth waters we're currently drifting. And maybe I will just leave it there, or risk the karmic counterbalance.
Alex is loving school, and Katherine is sitting in a Bumbo, cheekily pleased with herself.
The work is holding steady, and it's been a while since I felt like setting the dogs loose and reporting them to animal control or shipping Alex off to boot camp or donating Katherine to my BFF to raise in a fleeting moment of perceived incompetence.
In short, I'm happy. Let it slide this time, karma.
Happy notwithstanding, I'm also as neurotic as ever.
Now that I'm home a lot I have started to notice everything about my house. Everything. Everything. And there are a trillion little annoyances (and a few big ones) to distract me from work, feeding the baby, or putting deodorant on both sides (heh).
The guest bathroom has become the bane of my mornings because every single time I open the door it looks for all the world like the Colgate factory exploded in there. How does he get toothpaste on the ceiling, I beg of you? He's like three feet tall!
So today, in an effort to keep crazy at bay, I cleaned the house and rearranged the living room and dining area, and it felt amazing. Tomorrow we are going to look at a cheap-but-not-cheap-looking couch that I think I can squeeze in enough extra work to afford. (My hatred for the couch we have now, which has been boiling in my blood for at least four years, is now a constant seething itch and if we don't get rid of it soon I'm just going to set fire the hell to it.)
This is Labor Day weekend and I am going to spend it laboring. I have big plans to buy a good mop and new dusting cloths and clean every surface of this house that sits still long enough, which means Katherine better not be sleeping when I get to the top of my game. Steven gets the outside, because, as noted above, I don't do heat.
I'll try to find some room for the mainstream brand of fun when I finish the kind that's its own reward.
Maybe I'll treat myself to a new fan.
Happy long weekend!
Bad enough that the man I married is cold-natured and ill-equipped to handle my preference of keeping the thermostat at a comfortable 68 degrees. After eight-plus years of marriage he's gotten used to it, or maybe he just doesn't fight it anymore because he has witnessed my heat-induced wrath on many an occasion.
Lucky for me, Alex tended toward my constitution as a baby and is still much more likely to complain of being hot than cold.
But alas, Katherine. Her little hands and feet (arguably little, and comparatively little, though people keep exclaiming over them like she's a puppy and they're trying to estimate what her full-grown stature will be) can turn icy a second after being brought in from the 5,002-degree temperatures of our Alabama summer. And because I birthed her and she's incapable (as yet) of engaging in the hot/cold war that has been ongoing since Steven first came to realize that I wasn't going to budge on the comfort factor, I've surrendered to it.
Rather than, say, dressing her in fleece-lined diapers, mittens, hats, and socks.
Still, this fan needs to reconsider committing suicide at this point in time, or I will be breaking out the infant-size long johns, throwing Steven a Snuggie, and having my way with the thermostat.
I hesitate to make the mistake I made a few posts ago and blather on about these smooth waters we're currently drifting. And maybe I will just leave it there, or risk the karmic counterbalance.
Alex is loving school, and Katherine is sitting in a Bumbo, cheekily pleased with herself.
The work is holding steady, and it's been a while since I felt like setting the dogs loose and reporting them to animal control or shipping Alex off to boot camp or donating Katherine to my BFF to raise in a fleeting moment of perceived incompetence.
In short, I'm happy. Let it slide this time, karma.
Happy notwithstanding, I'm also as neurotic as ever.
Now that I'm home a lot I have started to notice everything about my house. Everything. Everything. And there are a trillion little annoyances (and a few big ones) to distract me from work, feeding the baby, or putting deodorant on both sides (heh).
The guest bathroom has become the bane of my mornings because every single time I open the door it looks for all the world like the Colgate factory exploded in there. How does he get toothpaste on the ceiling, I beg of you? He's like three feet tall!
So today, in an effort to keep crazy at bay, I cleaned the house and rearranged the living room and dining area, and it felt amazing. Tomorrow we are going to look at a cheap-but-not-cheap-looking couch that I think I can squeeze in enough extra work to afford. (My hatred for the couch we have now, which has been boiling in my blood for at least four years, is now a constant seething itch and if we don't get rid of it soon I'm just going to set fire the hell to it.)
This is Labor Day weekend and I am going to spend it laboring. I have big plans to buy a good mop and new dusting cloths and clean every surface of this house that sits still long enough, which means Katherine better not be sleeping when I get to the top of my game. Steven gets the outside, because, as noted above, I don't do heat.
I'll try to find some room for the mainstream brand of fun when I finish the kind that's its own reward.
Maybe I'll treat myself to a new fan.
Happy long weekend!
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