Merry Half-Christmas

This blog is being brough to you by my very new computer, purchased in a hasty click last week while I watched the last 20 minutes of my old computer’s battery die like a kind of horrible NYE ball drop. Dammit.

That’s the kind of holiday season we’ve been having around here. I ordered the wrong photos for our Christmas card. We got our tree two weeks late because of child illness and rain (and the post-rain mud put a little damper on things). Said late tree is crooked, and so about 1/3 of the ornaments are not on it. And at least half of our decorations for the house are still in boxes. The most festive part of our home is the outside–and that is because Ned/Thor/Gunnar put effort in to put up lights.

We’re celebrating a half Christmas.

Some years are like this, I know. The year Max was born, I told my friends and family that I would not be making Christmas cookies that year. There were some long faces. But what can you do? I got to the point this season where I wanted to just cancel putting up a tree.  I was missing the spirit. I looked at all the elfing I had to do and all I saw was work.

I partially blame Thanksgiving. It came too late. But this still doesn’t make me want to start the holiday season on Labor Day. I mean, c’mon. There were just too many deadlines and not enough time. Even though I cut back and even though I did most of my shopping online. The boys kept getting sick. It seemed like any moment I was able to stop and look around, all I wished I could do was take a nap.

I wonder if my mother felt this way. I know we never baked Christmas cookies together. She worked a crazy amount over the holiday season (she was the breadwinner) and didn’t have the time. She would stay up until 2:00 a.m. on Christmas Even to get the presents wrapped and if we were hosting, cleaning the house getting ready for company the next day. I wonder if she only put out half the decorations and skipped sending cards.

More than anything, I miss that luxury of being able to enjoy the holiday. To watch a Christmas movie all the way through, or spend an entire day shopping for gifts, or even being able to attend a church service. (We live in the country. Our church has one service at 8:00 p.m. on Christmas Eve … it’ll be a few years before they’ll stay up for that one.)

So now the sick little man Max is in bed, feverish but still I think, sweet as pie as he falls asleep under his new moon nightlight. And little bug Andrew is protesting in his crib that Christmas is over. I think, in the end, we try and re-create our own childhood memories of Christmas. And often fail. But to them, it was perfect. This was an awesome day.

 

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The Frazzled Mom

This is not just an apt illustration of what a frazzled mom looks like. I’m not playing with metaphor here, I’m playing with reality. This is my actual hair people, after a long day of boys, wrestling, corralling and wrangling.

Seriously. These kids have destroyed my hair. Not only is it a mangled, frizzy mess at the end of the day, but I now constantly fight a halo of smaller, newly-grown hairs to replace the ones I’ve lost. Lost because my very long, ungroomed, undyed hair is completely unkempt in not a clip, not a ponytail, but a bun. Every day it ends up this way.

I need help.

And I’ve not even started in on my eyebrows. Or the bags under my eyes. Or the fact that my eyes have experience two brand-new, out-of-the box sets of contacts this week, because I am too tired to remember to put them IN THE SOLUTION at night after I pluck them out of my eyes, and I wake up to dry, shriveled little contact shells.

I digress. It’s a mom thing. And here I am. I have become the mom I swore I wouldn’t become. You know the mom: The one that wears yoga pants outside at least once a day (bus, trash, mail, whatevs). The mom that is featured on makeover shows because she let herself go. The mom who wears the same two pairs of shorts and four shirts every single week because she just cannot bear to go out and buy more fat clothes and keeps ignoring the ones her pre-baby body fit in to. The mom who is trying to keep up with a one-year-old, a four-year-old with a disability, and work and house and no family and no friends nearby to help, and if the baby wakes up at 6:00 a.m. every freaking morning, what time is said mom supposed to get up to work out?

Some days I wish they could do that thing in sci fi shows, where they take away your sleep. And then you can have 24 hours every day in which to get things done. Because you don’t need to sleep. You just keep going and going … but then, the world of magic kicks in and you realize you’ve created an evil twin version of yourself, but hulkier, and possibly with greenish skin, who’s gonna break some glass and bust some heads and … wait. That was totally an episode of Angel.

Again, digression. Lack of sleep. Sleep! I love sleep. Lately, when Andrew is napping and Max and I are in the playroom, I find sleep just throws a sack over my head and carries me away for ten minutes. Or an hour. It’s blissful. Until I wake up. And find that Max has done something horrible. Like throw an entire bin full of dried beans under the couch.

I don’t know what to do to break this cycle. It’s a sun up, sun down kind of job, motherhood. And I don’t know if any good solutions exist to help me out of this, short of hiring a nanny. Or a maybe a house cleaner. (Let’s face it, I’m too embarrassed by the state of my house when it IS dirty to have a stranger come over and clean up my mess and make it not dirty.)

I think we just have to ride the wave. And not forget to call the salon ….

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A Day in the Life of Mom

A few weeks ago, I was calmly eating a stack of pancakes with warm maple syrup, enjoying my second cup of coffee as I peered out the window to an icy, icy day. It actually was quite beautiful. There is something peaceful about seeing the trees all frozen, much like a morning of fully-blanketed snow.

This quiet morning was the antithesis of my previous day, which made me laugh in hindsight, because I’m sure there are people who wonder what the life of a working-stay-at-home-mom (WSAHM) looks like. Here we go:

It’s 11:00 p.m. on Thursday night, and I’m in bed with my husband, Ned, aka Ned/Thor/Gunnar, aka NTG. This is early for me, but I’m not pumping tonight, and I’m exhausted from both kids waking up in the middle of the night the previous evening. And I have a giant proof to work on in the morning.

To ensure at least five hours of sleep, we’ve put the baby to bed rather late (around 10:00 p.m.) and nursed him twice in two hours. That oughtta do it.

At three thirty in the morning, I hear my eldest son, Max, begin to stir in his room. Thirty seconds later he’s in the hallway crying. NTG is up and out of bed, in his underwear, and I’m dragging myself out from under the covers. This is how it works, always. My brain wakes up and my bladder, which is processing about 100 to 120 ounces of water per day (breastfeeding momma), screams “I GOTTA GO!” So I go.

I get into the hallway and Max is lying in the doorway of his bathroom, NTG hovering over him going, “I dunno what’s wrong.” When Max sees me, he gets up. I pick him up and immediately am hit by the wall of smell: puke. I call to NTG, “Ned, he smells like vomit.” This also, is how it works: the kid wants mommy, so daddy has to go on puke patrol. Ned checks Max’s room and his bed, but there’s nothing.

So I get Max changed and calmed down and back to bed by 4:00 a.m. NTG cannot go back to sleep, so he camps out in the spare bedroom with his Droid. I, like most moms of young children, am asleep in seconds.

And then the baby wakes at five fifteen. I linger ’til five thirty, and then I spend the next half hour changing and nursing. I fall back into bed, and am re-awakened by the sound of Max getting up, seeing everyone else is asleep, and scurrying downstairs to make trouble. When I check the clock, it’s not quite eight.

So I drag myself out of bed and to the spare room to wake Ned, who I know has a conference call at 8:30 a.m. (Yeah, yeah, I’m Wife of the Year.) I go downstairs to check on Max, who still smells faintly of vomit, and try to get him to drink some water as I stumble around a full sink of dishes trying to make coffee.

And then, I feed the cat.

Max loses it. It’s his newest threenager move: he freaks whenever I’m feeding Andrew cereal, or the cat his breakfast/lunch/dinner. Terrible really, I totally don’t get it. I deal with that hot mess for about ten minutes until NTG comes downstairs to take over, and I go up and get the baby up. Again. I make a note while I’m in the bathroom to refill the soap dispenser.

Once Andy is settled into chewing a blue elephant rattle, I get to work stripping Max’s bed and throwing in a load of clothes. I, of course, have a load of dry laundry yet to be folded sitting in a basket, as well as a full dry load of diapers in the dryer. The morning starts to blur. NTG showers. I draw a bath for Max, finish folding all the laundry. NTG leaves for work and recaps the nights events saying, “I don’t know what that was.” In my head I say, It was puke. Just because you didn’t find it, doesn’t mean it didn’t happen. The only thing in the world that smells like puke is puke! I go downstairs to gather up Max and give him a bath. The baby starts to fuss that he’s done for the morning and I leave Max to play while I nurse Andy to sleep. I swap out the washer for the dryer and throw in another load. Max is dried and dressed and refusing to have his nails trimmed. I turn off the light in the bathroom and make a mental note to refill the soap dispenser. I decide to take a shower when my stomach begins to urgently insist I do something about my no-breakfast. It’s ten thirty in the morning.

So I go downstairs to grab a cereal bar, and Max follows me, ready to eat. So I give him juice and water and dry cereal, and pray he keeps it down. Max follows me back upstairs when we’re done eating. I turn on the shower. He protests that I’m running water. I explain I have to get clean too. He’s not buying it.

I proceed to get “ready” for the day and crack open my laptop to check my e-mail. It’s now 11:30 a.m. Nothing urgent, so I enjoy a segment of The View and have a serious discussion with Max about why screaming in the room next to where his brother is sleeping isn’t a good idea.

I get downstairs to sit at my desk, which is in a gated-off part of our finished basement, and actually start working. I make one phone call and turn on the monitor. The baby is awake. *sigh* I trudge back upstairs to change his diaper, and end up changing his outfit because he’s leaked a bit, swap out clothes from the washer to the dryer, curse that I still haven’t remembered to fill the soap dispenser, and mentally decide to not take both boys out for a quick grocery run and make NTG do it instead. I get back downstairs to my office and as soon as I walk into the playroom, I can tell Max has pooped.

So all the way back upstairs to change a diaper (we cloth diaper, so trudging upstairs to our diapering station is a must.) I make another mental note to fetch the liquid soap from under the kitchen sink and refill the damn soap dispenser. Why is my stomach rumbling? It’s lunch time. I’ve not gotten a lick of work done. I decide to write this blog instead, because if I don’t, it’ll be 5:00 p.m. and I’ll be ready for a nap and a glass of wine. Or both.

I somehow get through lunch, another nap for the baby, a dozen emails regarding the font size of my latest book project, Max having a good twenty-minute door slamming fest, starting rice for dinner (cashew chicken, yum), getting the baby up from the nap, two more diaper changes and waiting for NTG to finally get home.

But he doesn’t get home. It’s the worst time of day, really, the witching hour for babies. By 6:00 p.m., I’m prepping food for Max, cereal for the baby, and prepping the meal for NTG and I so when he gets home, all I have to do is cook. In French they call this preparatory cooking mise en place. I call it the calm before the storm.

Max manages to keep himself busy enough while I feed Andrew cereal mixed with formula (because I didn’t pump last night, so I don’t have enough breastmilk to mix in). He doesn’t mind. We’re a little more than halfway through the feeding when Max climbs into my lap to whine about said feeding of his little brother. And … he smells. *sigh* Where is your father? So I quickly finish up the baby, wipe his face, carry the baby upstairs to his crib, come back downstairs and carry Max upstairs (’cause he’s still not over that whole Mommy-carry-me-I-still-want-to-be-the-baby thing). As I’m changing Max, Andy is crying. Max has leaked a little from his diaper, so I decide to just put pjs on him. Andy’s revving up. Where the eff is your father? I get Max set, and he wants me to carry him back downstairs. I call to Andy, “Mommy’ll be right back,” as if that will placate my non-speaking infant, get Max to the kitchen table and his dinner, tell him, “Mommy’ll be right back,” as I climb back upstairs to a now-screaming baby who just. Wants. To. Sleep.

Ned/Thor/Gunnar walks in the door just as I’m getting Andy to latch on.

I finally get to my proof once both children are sleeping. I finish writing this blog at 12:44 p.m.

And people wonder, what we moms do all day at home. I hope I was able to clear that up. We forget to fill soap dispensers.

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Halloween Love

I love Halloween. The planning, the decorations, the costumes. The candy. In our household, we go for all things witches (me) and pirates (Ned). The Maximillion hasn’t quite hit a theme yet, even though this was his third Halloween.

Max’s first Halloween, he was a monkey. I found a suit in a catalog and couldn’t resist it. Since he was not yet two months old, I bought the smallest size they had, which was listed as 6 – 18 months. It was so huge, he probably could have worn it for his second Halloween. It also was covered in this synthetic fur, and thank god I put a onesie on under it, because when I took him out of it he and I were covered in brown fibers; his sweaty (Florida Halloween, people) hands were clenching fists of it. That Halloween ended in a shower.

But darn it, that kid was so stinkin’ cute. I think part of the fun was Ned and I giggling hysterically while we were dressing him, ’cause of course he was just cruising along with it; and dressing him in this silly/cute costume left us drunk with power.

The next Halloween, he was a cowboy. My mom bought him a button down shirt that reminded me of the boys in Oklahoma, so I searched the Internet for cowboy boots and a hat. Two days before Halloween, I couldn’t find the hat, and my practice runs to get my now 14-month-old into cowboy boots was a mess. The night of trick-or-treat it was 85 degrees and humid as hell (again, Florida Halloween). Max wasn’t walking much on his own, so I carried him to a dozen houses, the last of which was a neighbor who gave Max a sucker. We arrived home sweaty and sticky with blue-flavored drool. Yeah, that Halloween ended in another shower.

This Halloween Max was a biker. Oma bought him a no-foolin’, toddler-size leather jacket when he was just a year and we’ve been waiting for him to fit into it. My aunt found him this crazy, mowhawk skull winter hat, and I found him some a@#$-kickin’ shoes at the resale store. (Seriously, he loved those. Couldn’t get him outta them.)

There are moments as a mom when you fall in love with your kids again, and this night was one of ’em. We only got one “trick or treat!” out of him, but he ran up and down the street like a trooper, all tucked up in our 40-degree Halloween night, rockin his superstar outfit. He had little boys handing him candy, he tried to bite a few all wrapped up, he ate Pez from a pumpkin dispenser like he’d been doin’ it all his life.

We got him home, chilled, while he played with a glow light someone had handed out, and stomped around the kitchen in his tough-guy shoes. I thought, “Oh, I love him so much it’s impossible to not smother him in kisses.” Really, I don’t know if it’s a mother/son thing, but sometimes at random moments … clomping around the hardwood floors and waving a glow light, having fits of laughter … my heart just feels like it’s going to explode. I want that joyful face to fill every moment of every day.

To top off our night, it finally was time for candy, and I gave him his first Reece’s peanut butter cup, he took one bite, giggled … and shoved the rest in his mouth.

Now, if only we could get his momma to stop shoving pb cups into her mouth!

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Toddler Vs. Hormones

Women are no strangers to the hormonal changes: we go through them monthly, when we’re pregnant, even through menopause. Lately it’s been a roller coaster around here; I’ve ditched the birth control in hopes of having another baby (eek!), and thus turned into an estrogen monster.

My body doesn’t do well with medication. Rather, just as little goes a long way and I tend to react pretty strongly when I stop taking said meds. Same goes for birth control … it’s like my body has saved up all of the vicious PMS symptoms that the pill tends to ease and the moment my ovaries get the all clear, its hormone’s-a-ragin’.

Mix that up with a toddler and … yeah, I’m saying it: here comes t-r-o-u-b-l-e.

Case in point: I take Max to storytime at the library nearly every week. Twice now we’ve had to either leave early, or not go in at all due to his determination (re: tantrums). This past Monday, we get in the room fine and he is content to play with the lock and the handle of the door to the children’s room. Until we shut it. The entire class is treated to a cacophony of his cries for a few moments until I pick him up and distract him with the window blinds.

We then try to sit down and sing a rousing rendition of “Open Shut Them,” but to no avail. Max is on his back in the middle of the room, still crying. The librarian says, “Oh Maxwell, what is wrong now?” And I reply, “He’s still mad about the door.”

I do get him up and not crying. Go me, I am Supermom.

And then he sees the fire extinguisher.

Photo courtesy of Kenn W. Kiser.

Here’s the thing that drives me crazy about every children’s library: When they offer classes for babies, toddlers and the like, why on earth are the rooms in which the classes meet not baby proofed? There always are open closets, cabinets without latches, outlets without covers and darn it, fire alarms and extinguishers a mere three feet from the floor. I mean, duh.

So there’s my Max, going after the hose of the fire extinguisher, and every time I grab him, he lets out a protest yell. I finally stand in front of the object of his affection to stop him, and he yells, grabs my leg, and tries to bite me through my jeans.

Now I’m sure the other moms and kids have had enough of his antics, but I am beyond pissed. I give him the futile, “Don’t bite mommy!” grab him, the diaper bag and make our exit. He of course, is protesting leaving now, and I’m angrily whispering, “I can’t take you anywhere!” I’m fairly certain the librarians overheard me.

The thing that kills me more than the embarrassment of Max’s behavior is the embarrassment of my behavior. I’m the adult. I should know better. And it’s the failure that whatever I did—reprimand, soothe, deny—went completely ignored by my son. Why is it when our children misbehave does it seem that everyone else’s children listen and respond to their parents?

I don’t know if there is an answer to this, since my mom polling indicates that all moms have been there. In the meantime, I wonder how long we’ll stay away from the library this time ….

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Mommy Bodies

It is 6:45 p.m., the night before my cousin’s wedding. We are getting ready to attend the rehearsal dinner at 7:30 p.m., and I already have tried on and rejected two outfit options for the night, for legitimate reasons. I look a polka-dot and/or flower-stitched stuffed sausage in either outfit. Dammit.

No kids, this is not a picture of me.

I am now desperately trying to squeeze on a full-body piece of shapewear, in an attempt to smooth out my insanely puffy midsection, which to my eyes now resembles my first trimester of pregnancy. At the same time, I am trying not to sink into a full-on hormonal meltdown.

The post-baby mommy body varies for woman to woman. For me, it has fluctuated. I have Eh, I Don’t Care days, or I’m Getting Better, Allllmost Fit Into Those Jeans days. Sometimes it’s Dammit, Shouldn’t of Had The Cake nights or Why I Am I Still So Fat mornings in front of the mirror. At any rate, I am like most post-baby moms: Way too hard on myself about shaping up my body.

My blog has often taken on the confessionary tone of a lock-and-key diary when it comes to my mommy body, and exercise, and those still-hanging-on baby pounds. And frankly, it’s exhausting. Some weeks are awesome, I have time on my hands to yoga, or curse at Bob Harper while doing a workout DVD. Some weeks I want to eat Oreos. Or consume nothing but ice tea and lettuce all day.

But darn it, I wish I could find some acceptance of my body.

The issue with squeezing into black Lycra before putting on a rehearsal dinner dress is that the act is so damn embarrassing. I want to look hot again. And get a few cat calls. Max is almost two. Isn’t it too late to use the baby excuse for being overweight?

So as I laid my head down Thursday night, I sent a little something into the Universe, so I at least could continue walking around with my head held higher, no matter what type of water retention tricks my body was planning for the next day.

That morning, while easing into my first cup of coffee, I saw this segment on GMA.

Turns out, there is a movement out there to help us learn to accept our mommy bodies. Although the piece does focus a bit on the celeb angle (I didn’t have a “celebrity body” before Max, I’m not aiming for one now), it does teach an important lesson: Kids became the priority. Life changes. Time is precious. Being healthy is more important than a beach body. And that’s okay.

To check out CT Working Moms and their goddess gallery that inspired this story, visit http://ctworkingmoms.com/goddess-gallery/

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The Curse of the Forgetful Mom

Mommy brain. It’s officially here.

In my house, on a daily basis, I ask the question: “Where is my phone?” To which my husband replies, “Have you seen my glasses?”

It’s a family joke. Lately, with moving across several states, setting up a house, getting ready for the holidays, traveling to Ohio, and generally settling in, apparently my brain has too many things to keep track of. Not to mention the usual day-to-day tasks like caring for a very active 16-month-old, working and trying to find time to write a new blog.

This forgetful mom though, has gone beyond constantly misplacing my cell phone. I’m forgetting orange juice at the grocery store, my new phone number, why I walked from the basement up to the master bedroom. The list goes on.

The cell phone, however, still is a problem. My mom and I were getting ready to drive to my sister’s house on New Year’s Day, and I had just finished a phone call with Ned, who was driving back to Virginia, and I promised to keep my often-wayward phone in my pocket, so I’d get his call when he arrived home that night.

After a few minutes at my sister’s, it began to snow. We take Max outside, who is just squealing and running in the snow, and I immediately get my purse so I can take a picture with my phone and send it to Ned. And … my phone is not in my purse. I put it there right after I hung up with my husband, and yet ….

So I use my mother’s phone to call said husband and leave him a message to call me on her phone; which results in a later comical call where I spend a few moment’s explaining to Ned that he is indeed speaking to his wife, not his mother-in-law.

It gets to be bedtime, so we pack up. I put my mom’s phone back into my purse, to find that my phone has wiggled its way between the lining and the side of the bag. AHA! I’m not forgetful after all! Apparently though, I’m losing my eyesight.

I climb into the passenger seat of the car and say, “Wait, the camera! My purse!” My brother in law, also named Max, is heading out the front door with said purse, which does not in fact, contain a camera.

It takes me a few minutes after Max is snuggled into bed when my brain clicks and I say, “It’s in the diaper bag!” Phew. Good day. Lost phone disaster inadvertently averted, and lost camera disaster inadvertently corrected.

And then I realize … I haven’t lost my forgetfulness after all.

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Time for the No-Sex Talk

You knew this was coming. This topic applies to any mom, no matter how far into the fourth trimester you may be: Living with an 11-month-old baby or only three weeks into it, the no-sex is part of your life.

I scoff now, at those mythical stories we all heard, of the women who did the ultimate no-no, had sex prior to that six-week mark, not waiting until that follow up appointment when the doctor yells “All clear!” from behind the paper sheet. Those naughty girls ended up pregnant mere moments after giving birth.

Yeah, right. We all know after pushing out a baby, or having to go through surgery to welcome our child into the world, there is no way in h-e-double hockey sticks we’re messing around with anything down there. Not for six weeks. Or eight weeks. Or whatever timeline our bodies take to heal.

My own story surprised me. We waited until the lame six-week mark, plus time for birth control pills to kick in, plus more time for me to be ready. And I still wasn’t ready. In the first few months after giving birth, the idea of sex didn’t even pass through my mind. And rightfully so, anyone else would say, my hours were filled with being Mom, and not being awake. But I’d see a sex scene in a movie or on television and just be repulsed by it, as if my body had trained my mind to tell me: Girl, you do not have time for that. That is a frivolous use of our resources. We are not entertaining any ideas of doing that!

But as much as I wanted to blame the dry spell on Max, I couldn’t. Eventually, we got past that first three-month phase. Past the waking up several times a night. Past the falling asleep on the couch in the morning while the baby played in his awesome underwater Baby Einstein gym. And the routine was still … crickets.

It had nothing to do with Ned. Or me really, there was no not being attracted to my partner. Just a big span of nothingness. Desire gone *poof*.

So like most modern moms, I turned to the Internet. Which had a handful of articles about how to get yourself in the mood, how to schedule time with your partner, and how important, deeply, deeply important, it was to get yourself back on that sexy horse.

But in reality, I think, the response most of us may have is, “Yeah but, I still don’t wanna.” In reality, I think that we don’t talk about this, not to each other, to our partners, nothing. Sex is a thing we’ve just stopped caring about, because all of our caring has gone to another little human being. And we’re mostly okay with it. In the words of Rock (Jake Ryan’s chin-up buddy) in Sixteen Candles, “There’s nothin’ there man … It’s not ugly. It’s just … void.”

It’s just void.

The lesson of the no-sex talk is that the void doesn’t last forever, and like most things I’ve discovered in this post-birth world, it is futile to beat myself up over the changes. My marriage won’t fail if I don’t enlist the Top Five Tips for Scheduling Sex. I will keep getting up going about the day, even with 20 extra pounds, which eventually has become 15 pounds. My world will not fall apart if I don’t make it to yoga every day. And my family certainly will benefit most when I just cut myself some much needed slack.

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Happy Mother’s Day

I’m days late, I know. It’s the curse of the new mom; I’m still on the hunt to finish buying Mother’s Day presents for my mother and mother-in-law. But I guess that makes me a bad daughter, not a bad mom.

My first-ever Mother’s Day was started with French toast, which I’m still thinking about (thanks, Ned), turned into a couple of naps and finished with chocolate. What more could a mom want?

I’ve been thinking about why it is that I love motherhood, because I am, I admit, one of those annoying women that really enjoy being a mom, about 99.9 percent of the time.

But some days there’s a living room to pick up and a kitchen floor to mop, but that has to wait until a manuscript is finished, and then I’m interrupted to answer the phone and in the spirit of multi-tasking I begin to make baby food that I’ve been meaning to get to for three days, and before I know it, there’s half a blender full of green beans on the counter, still steaming, which are abandoned to feed a hungry baby, who, it turns out, really rather just play in the high chair than eat, so I pluck him out to change a diaper instead, and immediately after getting naked he’s doing barrel rolls on the changing pad (someone must invent a diaper you can put on upside-down, or backwards), and I’m thinking, “Oh. My. God. When is my husband getting home?”

Yet once he arrives, I take one look at his face and see the headache all over it, and realize that the break I was hoping for to finish cleaning/mopping/editing/cooking isn’t going to happen.

But that’s only .01 percent of the days. The rest of the time, I’m completely in love. I love that Max has taught me that babies do indeed say, “Goo goo, ga ga.” I love the way he studies something, poking at it with his left index finger like he’s a microscopic probe, either a manufacturer’s tag on a stuffed animal, or your eyeball.

I love the way his entire body lights up when he sees Ned. It starts in his eyes and his smile, but then his little arms and legs start going a million miles a minute and I think he’s just gonna fly up to his daddy like a ‘lil airplane.

But my favorite part is putting him to bed. Not because he’s sleeping (and sometimes, he’s not), but because of the way he feels with his head on my shoulder; safe. And how I can feel, physically, how he’s slowly growing into a little boy as his limbs hang further and further down my torso and over my shoulder. And sometimes I feel sadness, putting him to bed, because I won’t get to see him again until morning.

Of course, then 6:01 a.m. comes like a bullet, and I wonder how long it will be until we can teach him the art of sleeping in.

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