Fenced In

This is a boring post, unless you're just here to see pictures of my backyard. :)

Last weekend we put a temporary fence up around our backyard, a fact which is causing me some sadness...I liked my yard the way it was, liked the little bit of wildness to it...


Monkey doesn't listen, doesn't stop when I ask him to, doesn't understand about streets and traffic. And this summer they are tearing up our street in front, widening it and such. Traffic in our alley will be heavier because people will all be parking in their garages. There will be lots of opportunities for danger to befall an unruly two-year-old with a general tendency toward monkey-business.

So we put up a cheap fence, just enough to keep the kids a bit contained. I'm hopeful that I'll be able to get some flowers to grow around the gate and maybe I'll actually like it when I can read a book while the kids hang out in the sandbox or whatever. Anyway, here are pictures of the building process...

Here they are digging holes for the gate, and I'm looking down at them from the back deck.

Here's Monkey helping Papa with the string.
Jabber drew up some blueprints for the construction project, and he is consulting them on the stairs.

Monkey runs some stakes to Granny along the string.

And here are the boys after their baths last night, showing off the new backyard where they got nice and dirty.

Mood Enhancer

I used to color with crayons all the time. In college, David and I exchanged letters and pictures we drew with crayons (back when people exchanged most of their correspondence via paper and stamps and such...), and David even wrote me a poem that compared me to a box of crayons. (The big kind, with lots of colors...it was cute. He wrote it in crayon on the back of a packet of poetry from a class of his...)
I played around a lot with crayons and watercolor paints--decorating most of my apartments with my own cheaply procured artwork...crayons on freezer paper and such.

I can still remember the first time Jabber drew with crayons; I was kind of crazily thrilled by it, to be honest. I remember watching him stand there with a crayon in his fist, standing there barely able to pull himself up on that blue foot locker that served as our coffee table. I remember watching him select a certain color, draw on a certain part of the page, and I thought, "Oh my god, my child just made an artistic choice. He just looked at the page and made a choice and created art."

I know, it's not really all that magical. He picked up a crayon and scribbled with it. But watching him make the connection in his mind between moving his hand and making colors appear on the page...and deciding between different colors and making those choices...it was just an amazing reminder that he was this whole person--an individual with his own will, his own ability to create beauty. It was so cool!

So tonight the Monkey, Jabberwock, and I all spent about an hour coloring. We spend a lot of time drawing, a process which is sort of stressful at times for Jabber, as he is a perfectionist. But coloring in pictures from a coloring book--how can you go wrong?

All of my stress from the day is gone. Crayon therapy.




Here are the space pictures Jabber and I colored, and below are the boys coloring and cutting out their pictures.

jabber jabbers

Me: Good morning Jabber! How did you sleep?
J: Good…
Me: Awesome! Did you have any good dreams?
J: Noooo…I didn’t have any dreams at all.
Me: Oh, yeah?
J: Yeah, ‘cause you know. Sleep just snuck up on me. And when sleep sneaks up on you, you don’t dream.
Me: Oh, really?
J: Yeah, because sleep, you know. It wants to sneak up on you. And if you dreamed, then you would know you were sleeping. So that’s not really all that sneaky.

surprise!

5:45 a.m.: alarm sounds. Elissa struggles out of bed and hits snooze.

5:46 a.m.: Elissa has figured out that today is Friday and that yes, on Fridays she has a meeting at 7:30, which means she has to leave the house before 7:00 to get the kids to daycare.

5:47 a.m.: Elissa does complicated math problem in her head to determine how many snoozes she can afford before she will be late for the meeting, like usual. Goes back to sleep.

6:20 a.m.: Elissa leaves Monkey sleeping in the bed and stumbles in for shower and dressing.

6:45 a.m.: Elissa is finished getting ready for work and nagging the Jabberwock to get ready. Jabber is lying on bedroom floor, still in pajamas, driving a small toy car around on the rug and insisting that he "IS getting dressed!" and "IS NOT playing!"

6:50 a.m.: Elissa gathers clothes and diaper and goes in to wake the Monkey.

6:55 a.m.: Elissa takes Monkey's temperature.

7:00 a.m.: Elissa calls in to work. Surprise! Sick day. Elissa panics about lesson plans.

--

So you know? Normally there is a very good possibility that I would give him a good dose of Tylenol, call David at work and let him know that the sooner he can get off work and pick up the boys the better, and bring him to daycare anyway. But with this whole swine flu business that has us cleaning our doorknobs and wash wash washing our hands, I guess I just feel like I should keep him home. He has a bad cough, a snotty nose, and a fever, and now he has the Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles on the television.

And I have a chance to update my blog? ha.

Thanks Grammy and Papa!

Look at this amazing book my parents made for the kids. It has the cool eyeball pocket on the outside that holds a magnifying glass, and then inside are pages and pages of pictures with Papa Duck hiding in them, Where's Waldo? style. (Some of them are really super hard, and I'm not actually completely convinced that Papa Duck is really in them...)

Anyway, the boys love these books! And Monkey loves his magnifying glass, as you can see!

conversations with the Jabberwock

Here's Jabber checking his compass on a recent hike through the woods. It's very important to him that we do not get lost, so he checks the compass quite frequently. He also very much dresses himself, right down to the dapper little hat and scarf.

The Jabberwock and I have been having quite a few deep conversations lately. Let's see, there was the moment just before sleep when he demanded to know about how the little daddy cells get into the place where the mama cells are to make a baby. "But how do the cells get OUT of Daddy and INTO you???"

Um. Yeah.

Or this morning he got mad at me--really passionately furious, actually--when I explained to him why he couldn't have a step-dad. And then there was the one in which he informed me that he is actually part feline.

Jabber: Mom, did you know that I'm half human and half puma?

Me: Um, wow. No you did not tell me that.

Jabber: Well, I am. You know every morning I just feel myself, and...there's fur growing all over my chest.

Me: Wow! That's amazing!

Jabber: Yeah, and there are like, black spots on my sides and stuff.

Me: So are you a puma during the day or during the night?

Jabber: *snarls like a crazy wild cat and slashes at me with his sharp claws*

---

Edit:

Moments ago we had this exchange, which just really seemed to fit my theme of the day:

Me: Boys, you're being awfully loud. Those are not really inside voices.

El: Well, they would be if we lived in outer space!

night in review

Photo-of-the-day is from Easter...our hike at the nearby nature area.

So I'm nursing the monkey child and then it's time for bed. We just went for a walk, shot at airplanes (pew! pew!) and trucks, snuggled on the porch swing, ogled street sweepers, chased squirrels, and drew with sidewalk chalk.

That was after we struggled and argued and had meltdowns because brother and Daddy went grocery shopping (certain financial ruin in 3....2....) (not really--I'm sure he'll do just fine...)

Yeah. my night in review, haha. Now I'm off to read Where the Wild Things Are and hope for a speedy dispatch to dreamland for the wee one.

Will I be able to edit tonight?

two tiny updates...

...on my two huge boys.

1. Monkey has apparently perfected what David has referred to as my signature look. "What? What look are you talking about?" I asked him.

"You know. When you lift up one eyebrow and accompany it with that look. The one that says wtf-ever!"

So. A mother feels a special sort of pride and terror when told that her two-year-old has mastered her own unique brand of smart-assery. Yay?

2. Jabber is obsessed with shooting things. "MOM!" he yelled just moments ago. "I JUST SHOT BOTH YOUR LEGS OFF, YOU KNOW!" A pause, and then, "NOW I SHOT YOUR GLASSES OFF, TOO, SO YOU CAN'T SEE WHO'S DOING IT!"

Also, yesterday at daycare he apparently got into quite a scuffle with one of the other children over whether guns have a trigger (demonstrated with a finger motion) or a "Ka-chocka!" (demonstrated by operating something like a pump action shotgun, maybe?)

*is ridiculously ignorant about guns, relative to the rest of this family*

3. In other wild thing news, in the last two days I have seen a coyote and a moose crossing the road in front of lovely daycare provider's home. They were both headed in the same direction--toward her backyard. Wooo, spring!

baby steps

I thought maybe I could handle a photo post.

I really am doing a lot of writing lately, just not here...

Eventually I'll tell you all how I'm doing on my third novel (finishing third draft this week, btw)...when I'm sure it doesn't suck completely.

But for now. Here is my picture of the day, taken on Easter, in our dining room, as the boys were watching for signs of spring in the backyard and eating their candy corn by the double handful.

oh hai!

So I was all set to write this story about how difficult it is to start up something that you stop doing...it was an embarrassing story about me and the gym I once belonged to.

But now I've decided to break the blog silence with a goofy photo instead.

This photograph is titled: "Ooh, Baby is Maaad! GRRROwllll!"


It's even funnier when you can see Monkey staring at this photo on my laptop screen, shouting, "Oh, no! Baby is mad!" and then making his little baby mad faces and noises quite convincingly.

Okay, so I'll maybe post a little more often. 'Cause next time I'll probably be forced to tell the embarrassing story.

MINE NUMMIES!

It turns out that two-year-olds are excessively concerned about possession. Not of the demonic type, though I do sometimes wonder as he throws himself into a thrashing heap of screaming, writhing tantrum.

No, Monkey is mostly worried about ownership--specifically, what is, “MINE.” Sometimes he just wanders about the house, listing off his belongings.

“My car. My table. My froggie. My crayons.” He peacefully pats each item as he walks past.

“My monster truck.”

“NO! That’s MY MONSTER TRUCK!” Jabber pushes, shoves, body slams. There is wailing; there are tears. This scene is replayed many times throughout the day, as the toddler and preschooler negotiate ownership of all of the toys and such a million times. It turns out five-year-olds are just as concerned about these things.

Along with this is Monkey’s demand to “SHARE!” which is just a variation on, “GIVE IT TO ME! IT’S MINE!”

Which brings me to the topic of my breasts.

What? You didn’t catch the segue?

So I find myself nursing a two-year-old. All right. I support this. I have been saying since Monkey was born that I’d like to nurse him until he was two, which is a few months longer than his big brother nursed. Jabber gave it up cold turkey at 20 months, after I had something going on for three nights in a row and missed his bedtime session, which was basically all he was interested in at the time. On the third day, he solemnly patted my breasts and said, “Nummies gone bye-bye,” and after that, he wasn’t interested.

Not so with the Monk. Even after I went to Florida for five days, he is still going strong. He’s pretty flexible about nursing if I am not around; he stays overnight with the grandparents without a problem and never asks for it once. However, if I’m around, if I’m sitting down, he wants to nurse. About half the time he crawls up in my lap, showers me with kisses, and then just tips over on my lap and smiles at me sweetly, patting my shirt lightly and asking, “I have nummies pleeeeeeease?” He’s adorable and irresistible, and I have no problem nursing him.

Sometimes he’s downright heart-melting in his nursing bliss, such as several nights ago when David and I were going to bed, and he woke up halfway and made this seriously happy sighing sound. “Ahhh, nummies,” he whispered, followed by a couple of happy sleepy little chuckles. There was nothing to feel but love as I crawled into bed beside him and snuggled.

Other times, it’s not so cute, to be perfectly honest. Back to possession, demonic and otherwise, the two of us have yet to come to agreement about who owns the nummies. My reaction to his terrorist demands of “MINE NUMMIES NOW!” accompanied by shirt-tugging and tantrumming is to shut off supply indefinitely. My heart is hard. I do not negotiate.

“You are being a bully,” I say. “The nummies are closed.”

His reaction to the sudden cut-off is pretty consistent to that of any addict: he cries, he shakes, he begs, he bargains. He tries to sneak a quick slurp as I wash my hair over the tub. He promises to change.

“I be nice nummies,” he says, crawling up into my lap.

“These are Mama’s nummies,” I say.

“No. Mine.” His jaw is set in stubborn baby persistence.

“These are Mama’s nummies. But I may be persuaded to let you share them from time to time, if you are very polite and respectful of them, and if you agree to let go and leave me be the first time I ask. Also, I require you to keep your feet out of my mouth. And no pinching.”

He listens carefully to my conditions, lying across my lap with his hand just barely touching the hem of my shirt. “Okay,” he says, nodding solemnly. “I share.”

“All right then.” We begin to nurse, both of us on our best behavior, gazing adoringly into each other’s eyes. It is wonderful nursing a toddler!

Monkey detaches, just a little, just enough to speak. “Mine nummies,” he says softly, and then closes his eyes and gets back to business.

In the Kitchen with Elissa

So last night I was standing in the kitchen, and I had a sort of introspective moment. Ordinarily, those moments are not so great because they involve me making a realization about myself, like that I’m essentially lazy, or self-centered, or that quite possibly that last time I lost my temper with Jabber was the time that will mess him up irrevocably.

But this realization was about cooking.

I always say that I can’t cook. It’s true, I don’t cook. I don't usually tell people that when David is going to be gone from the home during a mealtime, he sometimes leaves a meal ready for me to heat up. That sometimes means always. That he also gives me detailed instructions about the heating.

(To be fair, David likes giving detailed instructions. He’s very helpful like that.)

It’s also true that cooking meat is difficult for me. For one thing, I won’t eat or let the kids eat ground meat (ground beef primarily, but I really can’t eat too much of any kind of ground meat), so there goes the primary source of meat from my childhood. Hamburger in everything, you know? But I just can’t eat it, not thinking about how it’s all ground up and who knows what is in it. I cooked a pound of ground beef once, it must be ten years ago now, and I looked at it, cooking in the pan, and just knew I wasn’t going to eat that ever again. I dumped it out in the garbage, and I don’t think I’ve eaten it since, at least, not on purpose. I won’t get into the e.coli chapter in Fast Food Nation that made me vow to keep the kids away from it until they are older and more…I don’t know, durable.

But still, when we lived in Oregon, I often cooked. I had a vegetarian cookbook, and I made soups, side dishes, full meals. I often substituted ingredients because we were poor and only had a few staples in our kitchen most of the time, but I cooked a lot.

Then we had Jabber, and I went back to work, and there it began. I didn’t get home from work until 5:30, and before I could even get my coat off, the baby would be reaching for me hungrily, with his little baby bird mouth opened wide. We’d settle into our perch on the couch, and there we would stay…both of us exhausted and hungry and a bit cranky.

So David had to cook.

And essentially that’s the reason he continues to cook: I work late, and the kids are hungry much sooner.

But last night I realized what my real problem is. It’s not that I’m a bad cook; it’s that I’m a bad meal planner. I look at the cupboards, and I truly can’t figure out what to make out of it all. I can sometimes think of one part of the meal, but then I’m at a loss as to what to do for the rest of it, or how any of it would go together.

Like a couple nights ago, when I went grocery shopping, the store bakery had these enormous loaves of garlic bread on sale, so I bought a loaf and set it on the counter. While David was asking me what I we should have for dinner, all I could think was, “Well, we should eat the garlic bread because it was probably not fresh to begin with, so…garlic bread. Goes with spaghetti. But we only have alfredo sauce made. And Jabber won’t eat that. Because it’s cheese. And he’ll only eat orange cheese, that’s not melted. Unless it’s on pizza, when white cheese, melted is okay. And Monkey won’t eat noodles at all. What kind of a kid won’t eat noodles, for crying out loud. Why the hell do my kids have to eat the complete opposite, anyway?”

And at this point, I think I wandered out of the kitchen. It was just too much for me.

David, on the other hand, turned on the oven and stuck the garlic bread in, a plan forming around in the back of his mind. He threw some chicken into a pan, melted some cheese, steamed some broccoli, tossed some chickpeas, and made us grilled chicken sandwiches on garlic toast with two side dishes.

I’m not completely helpless, though. I mean, sooner or later I would have poured us each a bowl of cereal.

Where's that Instruction Manual Again?

A big topic lately in my interactions with Jabber has been about being proud of himself or happy with himself without having to compare himself to someone else. For example, it’s okay to really think you have a cool toy race car. It is not okay to point out, with an air of irritating superiority, all of the things that are cooler about your race car than your brother’s race car.

It is okay to express how much you love Daddy and be so happy about that. It is not necessary to discuss how your love for Daddy is so much more than your love for Mama.

Obviously this is a life-long lesson--how many of us can ever truly master the idea? We had a little talk (very little) about how sometimes people are tempted to make themselves feel better or more important by making someone else feel lower or less important. Jabber and his little Cute Girl friend at Daycare are so mean to each other like this, and then it trickles down to the Monkey as well. I just hear that snotty little tone of voice, that, “Oh yeah? Well I have even more than you because I got some from my Grandma, and my Grandma is even better than yours…” It goes on and on. And I hate hearing it.

“So can you try it, next time you feel happy or proud of yourself, then? Can you try to just think about how you feel, instead of trying to make someone else feel worse?”

Jabber nods, seriously, and says, “I bet I can do it better than Cute Girl can!”

Uh-huh. I don’t know, maybe I’m wrong to even want to get rid of this tendency. Is this just…competitive spirit or something? Is it necessary to compare yourself to others in order to be your best? To really achieve something? I don’t work like that, maybe, but I do remember David talking about how, when he ran track in high school, how he wished that there had been someone to really challenge him, someone who would run nearly as fast as him or faster than him so that he would have pushed himself to beat that person. Maybe if I had had a sibling closer in age, I’d have learned to compete more?

Oh, and my other lovely parenting issue of the day: how do you get a TWO-YEAR-OLD to stop biting his nails? I mean, gross. Monkey came up to me today, proudly showing me how he can bite off his nails and spit them on the carpet. Nobody does that in my house, and I find it really gross. I really cannot handle him having this habit. I just cut all of his fingernails as short as I could, but he looked so damn proud of himself with his sharp little teeth.

He’s always been a biter…maybe I need to get him some chew toys or something.

Happy New Year!

I went to save a new document for this blog entry, and I realized that I had the date wrong--I had written January 1, 2008. It always takes a while to adjust, to move on from the old year.

New Year’s Eve has never been a hugely important celebration in my family history; I sort of remember a couple of times during my childhood where my parents got together with my aunt and uncle and played cards or something. My cousin and I, and maybe some other kids? would be left in the basement to watch movies or play. I don’t remember what we watched, though I have some vague memories of something having to do with Marky Mark???

I don’t really know if we stayed up until midnight or not. It just wasn’t that big of a deal.

I do remember the New Year’s that I spent in Saltillo, Mexico, my last year of college, during the semester I was student teaching. My friend Al and I got involved in this bus trip to Mexico with a church youth group. Al’s friends’ dad was the pastor for this church, and her friends went on the trip, too. We were the translators, we read these passages from a Bible in Spanish while the youth group put on a play, and I designed the sets for this traveling play.

The entire trip was about the craziest experience of my life, and I’m sure much of the events will make their way in one way or another into my fiction at some point; it was such a bizarre journey.

But part of our experience involved a New Year’s Eve church service in this beautiful little church where we were staying (which equals sleeping on cement floors with temps in the low thirties at night and a shower the next day from an unheated cistern on the roof). We presented our play and the locals presented us with these amazing musical performances and dancing and just this wondrous service that made us wonder what, in truth, we could possibly bring to the amazing community they had.

On our walk back around the compound just moments after the New Year began (and Al, A. and I went on a little longer walk around the block-type area), the night was just one constant explosion as the neighbors threw fireworks into the street and shot their guns into the air (one hopes). It was certainly exciting, if a little unnerving, and I wrapped myself in my warm, new serape and thought about how different my life could potentially be.

Everything in its Place

I’m organized, I swear!

This picture is proof for all the world that all of our new toys have a home.

Sadly, the home is in a corner of my dining room, taking up the space that, before children, was well-occupied by my own personal library. My books, and those of David, have been slowly but surely forced up onto higher shelves or even forced to move on to other accommodations entirely.

But here you can see: There is a bin for the Matchbox cars, a bin for non-Matchbox things with wheels, a bin for things without wheels, a bin for precious things that want to be kept separate, a bin for “Bad Guys,” a bin for art supplies.

There is a drawer for completed art projects, a drawer for eighteen different varieties of paper and forty-seven activity and/or coloring books. A drawer for Jabber’s treasures and a drawer for Monkey’s treasures.

There is a drawer set aside for playing cards.

There is another drawer which holds only purses, satchels, and other finery.

There are two bins of Little People. (Amy, I asked them if they would rather call their Little People “Chuckies,” as per your suggestion/plan for worldwide name change. They were enthusiastic about a name change; however, Jabber preferred the name “Robin Gobbins,” while Monkey was quite insistent that they should only be referred to as “Pee-Poo.”)

There is a toolbox for all tools and flashlights, including chainsaws, of which they have two.

There are bags, too, and hooks to hang them: for the train set, for the Legos, for the Knight Costume…

And of course, there are books.

So this moment, in this photo, there is a place for everything, and everything is in its place. It will probably never happen again.

Dear Diary Blog-a-Rama

Ah, vacation. Where I get a little glimpse into just how much I can actually get done when I don’t have to spend like sixty hours of each week working. Speaking of which…the two bags full of papers that must be graded this week glare at me from the corner of the couch. “It’s Tuesday,” they say. They have a pretty menacing aura about them, to be honest.

Writing. TDBB is novel #2, and I just passed the 25 K mark yesterday evening. Or maybe it was early this morning. When I don’t have to get to work in the morning, I can stay up until my late night creative streak wanes. I’ve always been a night person. Anyway, in the loosest of senses, TDBB is about two girls who go on a road trip after graduating from high school, and at 23 K, I finally got them to leave for the road trip. I am enjoying my characters and their overall journey, but I was a little curious if they were ever going to actually go on this mythical road trip.

I still have no clue if what I’m writing is YA or adult fiction or what, but I think I’m aiming closer to the 90-100 K mark, so it’s all sort of slow and steady. They are in the Badlands right now, and one of my main characters just pulled a gun on some creepy guys. David had fun filling me in on all the details I might need for that scene.

Writing my secret santa story was a fun detour from the seriousness of TDBB. My prompt was that I had to write fantasy (I don’t think I’ve ever honestly finished a story that was fantasy, at least not since elementary school…although I’ve read a fair amount of fantasy, I haven’t really ever written it.) The other requirements were that it needed to have a strong male character, and there wasn’t supposed to be any romance. That’s sort of an anti-requirement, actually. I had no clue what to write about.

So I started writing about a seventh grade boy named Drew who was a faerie going through puberty. Except that he doesn’t know he’s a faerie. And he has zits that explode all over bullies, turning them into enormous green tadpoles. All in all, pretty silly. As usual, I have a terrible time writing an actual SHORT story. Everything I write seems to want to expand into its own book. I read the story, called “When Puberty Hits,” to my seventh grade homebase, and they laughed at it and asked me when I was going to write the next chapter. And so I have a middle-grade fantasy novel in the works.

And, as though I need more unfinished works-in-progress, I can’t stop working on another little idea, also fantasy, strangely enough. This one takes place in Duluth (or at least, one of the universes resembles Duluth) and has seagulls who can talk. Sort of.

Somewhere in the middle of all this, I need to get my new iPod working, figure out my internet challenges, and find something to cook the kids for lunch. It sure would help if I had actually gone grocery shopping last night as I was supposed to, but I did have fun seeing M and L at the Irish Pub! I can’t help it that my car didn’t want to stop at the grocery store on the way home!

A moment ago.

Me: Hey guys, how about, before we pull out all the Little People shit, I mean stuff, how about if we pick up some more of this other shit, I mean stuff.

Jabber: Okay. (sits in same position, playing with other shit. I mean stuff.)

Me: Like this wooden knife. Where's the little pink basket of food that this goes with?

Jabber: I don't know. (sits there, playing. hasn't looked up from toy.)

Me: Well, is it in the fort? Is it in your ear? Is it up in your room? Someone had it out, and I'm just wondering where the rest of it is, so I can put it away.

Jabber: I DON'T KNOW where it is.

Me: I know. I don't either. Will you help me look for it, please?

Jabber: I can't look for it. I don't know where it is. (has not looked up yet from the toy.)

Me: Well, I don't know where it is, either. That's why it's called looking. Searching. Seeking. The basket of fake food is hiding. It is awaiting discovery. Make a treasure map. I don't care. But will you please help me look for it?

Jabber: But I wanted to take out the Little People! (collapses in a sullen heap of fake crying)

Holiday Down-Sizing

We’re having a discussion about taking down the Christmas tree so that we can roll up the old living room rug and replace it with the beautiful new living room rug David’s parents bought us.

“Jabber,” I say, trying out my latest tactic--playing up the “responsible big brother helper-type person” role, “would you like to use your new vacuum cleaner on the old rug before we roll it up?” My parents bought each of our children a small vacuum cleaner for Christmas, a sort of “for the love of God, will somebody clean something in that house?” move, I guess. So far I love it.

“Sure!” he says, full of enthusiasm for the job. “I will!”

Monkey very helpfully delivers “The Big Boss,” which is how we’re referring to the rug sweeper, versus “The Little Boss,” which is how we indicate the Dustbuster. I cringe as the handle very nearly misses several breakable entities around the house.

“Great! Now that Daddy took the Christmas tree down, we can get started."

“Wait.” Jabber fixes me with a serious look.

He stands up beside his spot at the table as though he is answering a question for an old-fashioned school-teacher. “What will you be doing to my Fort?” he asks.

The Fort has taken over the living room in the past few weeks. It started as the old play pen (that I’m not sure has ever, in the course of two boys, been successfully utilized in its intended manner) tipped on its side in front of the fireplace. In this capacity, it serves two purposes: with a couple of blankets draped over it and some pillows inside, it is a comfy little cubby for one or two boys to enjoy some quiet time, and also: it keeps the Monkey out of the fireplace.

Beneath the fort, an old yoga mat cut to fit covers the mess of the hearth, with the bricks that come loose under Monkey’s inquisitive fingers. A crate of books and a little table made out of a spool complete the little play area.

Except lately. It started with the addition of a sort of antechamber or perhaps just a mudroom. An old suitcase, tipped on its side, added a functional door. The rocking chair, along with the procuring of another old bed comforter, provided a separate wing for entertaining each other with feats of Monster Truck daring and other such amusements.

Two dining room chairs also occasionally sneak into the construction, forming "tunnels" with a private deck for each boy. On several occasions we have eaten dinner in shifts in order to preserve this fine architecture.

“You’re not going to take it apart, are you, Mom?” asks Jabber now, still standing earnestly beside his chair.

“Just a little down-sizing.”

“Down-sizing? What’s that?”

“Sizing down, basically,” offers David.

“It sounds like getting smaller!” says Jabber, his voice gaining volume. “I don’t like that sound! It sounds like you mean you’re going to take it apart! Are you taking my Fort apart???”

“Think of it as streamlining,” I say.

“WHAT DOES THAT EVEN MEAN?” he shouts.

“Narrowing down your Fort to the bulk of peak efficiency.”

“MY FORT DOESN’T HAVE A PEAK EFFICIENCY! YOU’RE GOING TO TAKE IT APART!!!!”

“Well, only temporarily. A little post-holiday down-sizing.”

“A-HA! So you ARE going to take it apart!”

And he storms off to throw his little body in front of the bulldozers.

I'm Late! I'm Late! For a Very Important Date!

I'm one of those people who really doesn't like to be running late all the time. Really really. Like, it stresses me out terribly to have several things scheduled close enough together so that there is a slight chance I might not be able to make it exactly on time. Prior to having children, I was able to deal with this okay, and I usually arrived a few minutes early for most events, just as I liked it.



I know, everybody knows those people, that family, who are always late. Doesn't matter what time they say they will be somewhere, you can count on them showing up a half an hour later, an hour later, whatever. It becomes a kind of joke; if they actually show up on time somewhere it's a monumental event. People start telling them a time that is earlier than usual in hopes that they will maybe arrive by the real time. I have always vowed never to be those people.



And then we had kids. Suddenly everything slowed down. This week alone, I was late for work every single day. Not LATE late, you understand, but late enough. Late enough so that I had to rush, to skip steps, to snap at the kids about a billion times (which just makes them move more slowly, but ack! what am I supposed to do?)



I do everything I can to facilitate a smooth morning. I pick out the kids' clothes the night before--hunting down little matching socks and clean underwear and onesies and lying them all neatly on the changing table for the next morning. I arrange the boots and snowpants and hats and mittens and lunches and backpacks all carefully by the door. I make lunch the night before, fill my water bottle, bring up the laundry from the basement. Every single thing is set to jump into it the moment we are awake. And still, we are continuously running late.



On Tuesday, I was ten minutes late. Yikes! I had a meeting at 7:30 that I totally didn't get to until almost 7:45! Everything had conspired against me--the road on the way to daycare was a sheet of pure ice (I do thank my lucky stars that I avoided the crash that happened moments after I got to work, however!), Monkey had one mitten go mysteriously AWOL, I got behind a school bus making its stops--anything that could possibly thwart me was there for the thwarting.



So Wednesday, I set the alarm ten minutes earlier. Everything seemed to be working; Jabber woke up without me needing to shake him and cajole him and drag him out of bed. Monkey stayed sleeping in my bed while I washed my hair and put on my make-up and got dressed in the bathroom. Every so often I called in to Jabber's room with a nice little, "How's it going in there, honey? Are you almost dressed?"



"Almost!" he called, each time. I trusted him.



After about ten minutes, I was showered, made up, and dressed. I was about ready to go in and dress the Monkey. I put the toothpaste on Jabber's toothbrush and poked my head in to his room to let him know he could brush at any time.



There he sat, on the edge of the bed, perfectly naked, with one sock in his hand, poised over the edge of one toe. He was lost in thought and looked as though he had been lost there for the last ten minutes. "I thought you were getting dressed!" I shouted. "You said you were almost ready to go!"



"Mom?" he said, looking up from his toe contemplation. "How do we really know about things? Like, really know?"



"WHAT THINGS? THE ONLY THING I KNOW IS THAT I AM GOING TO BE LATE FOR WORK IF WE DON'T LEAVE THE HOUSE IN SEVEN MINUTES! THAT MEANS TEETH BRUSHED, HAIR COMBED, CLOTHES ON, BOOTS ON, SNOW BRUSHED OFF THE CAR, BUCKLED IN CAR SEATS AND HEADING DOWN THE ROAD! WILL YOU PLEASE GET DRESSED NOW????"



I feel awful about that. I mean, he's obviously having some incredible epiphany about the nature of true knowledge, and I'm shoving a piece of gum in his mouth and snapping at him that we don't have time to brush teeth today.



And don't even get me started about the next morning, when I had everyone dressed and ready to go, and then Monkey took off all his clothing while I was out starting the van and scraping the ice of the windshield. Or how he screamed bloody murder while simultaneously thrashing and maintaining an unnatural stiffness to every limb while I tried to re-clothe him.



Late. Running late. Sorry I'm late. Hurry, we're late. Come on, we're going to be late. I feel like the white rabbit.

Oh my, my Boy is Five! Happy Birthday, my Sweet Jabber!

Jabber is five. FIVE. It's funny because since he started talking, since he started asking us questions, like, "Can I drink coffee?" or "When will I be able to..." do whatever, David and I have always said, "Maybe when you're five." It seemed like an eternity from where we were. And now it's, well, now. Ever since the moment he first looked up at me, newborn eyes blurry and watery, he has struck me as an old soul, and at five, he seems sometimes just like a little old man--a philosopher old man at that--trapped in the uncoordinated and constantly-changing body of a preschooler. He can be strong and mature; he can be calm and wise; he can melt down like a toddler into a shrieking mass of tears. He can be as sassy as they come. And the next moment he is so sincere and sweet I just about squeeze him to death. He's my boy, my Jabberwock, and I wish him a happy, happy birthday!

The day I went into labor was so...absurd. I had been struggling with this horridly itchy rash for two weeks (PUPPP), and I had been unable to sleep for more than about ten minutes at a time. I had tried everything, and still the itch. I also had carpal tunnel in both hands so that they were almost completely numb, my feet were so swollen I could only fit them into slippers, and my blood pressure was high enough to make my doctor put me on bed rest for the last week. That Friday night was the worst for the itching, and I had spent the entire night in the tepid oatmeal-filled bath, literally screaming at the top of my lungs, wailing, and begging for it to stop. My neighbors probably thought I was having the baby in my bathroom.

Saturday morning, David said, "We're going to the hospital to get this taken care of. Now." So we went into the birth center at about 8:00 that morning. I explained the issue like fifty times to as many doctors, residents, nurses, janitors, whatever. I lay in bed in one of the rooms watching cable, which at least was an improvement over the television at my house, where I had been stuck lying on the couch all week.

All day we sat there, in that hospital room, while they were tracking down a dermatologist because nobody knew what I had. (But I had figured it out on the internet and knew I had PUPPP, though they didn't really believe me or hadn't heard of it or whatever.)

So at 6:00 that evening (!!) a dermatologist finally came to see me...he was really nice, checked me over, said I had PUPPP, made me cry by empathizing with me about how bad it was to itch like that (waaaay worse than pain!), and gave me a prescription for a tube of cream and some prescription-strength antihistamines. We filled the scrips, I took the meds, smeared on the cream, and AT LAST I felt normal. It was like heaven. We went out to eat, and I could concentrate on something besides itching for once. We got home, and I was lying on the couch at 10 pm. I said, "David, I am going to sleep SO GOOD tonight, FINALLY." I got up off the couch, and my water broke. And we went back to the hospital.

Labor was amazing and all-consuming. I admit, I have never felt so close to giving up, so full of doubt and despair, as when I was struggling to push--over and over and over pushing with every atom of my self, and still he did not advance, did not progress. I felt damned to do eternal sit-ups in hell, without even the dignity of wearing pants. People's fingers and probably their whole hands groped around inside me and affirmed that I was a failure, even as they shouted encouragement to me.

Laboring, I was silent, withdrawn, and weary. I had not slept for three weeks. My energy was a dark, murky pool within me, and I was terrified to reach the bottom. I had no idea when it would leave me, leave us, stranded, wheeled off to the mercy of drugs and scalpels. Fear crowded me.

My stomach muscles were so tired and sore from all the pushing, and still the clock ticked on--one hour, then two.

A thought fluttered through me to sit out for a couple of rounds, catch my breath, but each time the contraction would build, and then it was just a blur of breath and prayer. Breathe. Breathe. Breathing and counting and pushing, with him stuck there, moving forward with each push but getting stuck and slipping back each time.

The doctor came in, checked, looked nonplussed, took her lunch break.

"I can't do it," I said, hating the whine in my voice. There were whispered conversations at the foot of my bed, which I couldn't hear, but which I was sure were criticisms.

David was praising me, crying at my side and cheering me on. "You're doing such a good job, my love. You're doing everything right." He ran excitedly back and forth from the foot of my bed to my head, lying on the pillow sucking at the oxygen mask. I knew he was lying. I was doing an awful job for sure; otherwise I would be done right now, holding a beautiful baby instead of lying her stupidly struggling to get my breath.

"Slow...slow...breathe..." intoned the nurse, my tough-love Coach Nurse, who was the one calling the shots in here, pushing me harder than I thought I could be pushed.

"Keep it up, Elissa! You're doing so great!" said my Cheerleader Nurse, holding my hand. Her eyes were the kindest, steadiest blue beacons in the world, and I gazed into them as I forced myself to slow my ragged breathing, to stop swallowing the air in large gulps.

Then there was a moment, something curled right in my back maybe; a burst of energy spurring me into pushing my limits--I felt the baby move beyond that awful spot, that hang-up he'd been banging his head against for hours. I pushed without thinking of that murky pool, without thinking of the next round, and the next, and the next. He moved.

David was hyperventilating at the sight of Jabber's head. "It has hair! Lots of it!" he cried, and Cheerleader Nurse handed him a box of tissues.

"Yes!" shouted Coach Nurse; finally, I was pleasing her. "You're doing it! NOW I'm impressed!" It meant more to me than all the attagirls so far, gave me the strength to keep going.

In the end the room seemed to explode with the sound of cheering and my heart beating blood in my ears and everyone moving around so fast, and then the most tremendously wonderful feeling of him moving, slipping, swimming out like a happy little trout, and David cried, "My love! We have a Jabberwock!" and the realization of his reality, my son, and I looked down over my now-deflated belly and saw him, reached down and touched his head as they suctioned him and moved him and his mouth was working and his little limbs waving erratically and finally sound came out, but I don't remember the sound he made as much as the sound of David crying in wonder.

And then he was born--with blissful breath he was born, and into my world a little boy emerged. A little boy with a perfect smile, ancient eyes, and this joyful grip on life. This love emerged, and it captured me.

They raced him over to the infant warmer, muttering about distress, this and that. They worked on him intently, listening, wrapping, and Coach Nurse looking worried, which worried me; I wanted him back, but the doctor reassured me that he was fine. "Elissa, she's looking concerned because she's doing her job, but I assure you, if he wasn't okay, I'd be over there instead of here with you. He's a fine, fine, healthy boy."

They brought him to me, and the rest is a blur...hours and now years spent gazing into his little face, learning to nurse, feeling the tiny weight of him tugging so heavily at my heart.

Happy Birthday, my little Elliot McCarthy!