metaphortunate son

In an effort to get our goldbricking, foot-dragging children to haul their butts up the stairs after dinner without whining every step of the way or demanding a horsey ride every single night, we have instituted a game called "Tickle on the Landing". The rules of this game are that, if you are on the ground floor, either of the two stair landings, or the upper floor outside of the bathroom, you are fair game for tickling.

Science is wonderful. Medicine is wonderful. Back in the late Cretaceous, there were two things you could do for a cough:

1. Codeine, which worked;
2. Everything else, which did not work.

And since you probably don't want to give codeine to a tiny child unless there's no other choice, when tiny us got coughs, we just suffered through it. And, though I am not a neglectful parent I swear, I thought those were still the options. So though Rocket has been coughing and coughing at night, and it is just awful to hear, it doesn't actually wake him up. And he doesn't seem to mind it during the day. So we hadn't taken him to the doctor. Until he got a fever.

And holy shit y'all, now you take your tiny child to the doctor and they send you home with a six month supply of albuterol and a little nebulizer. Protip: tell the child the face mask is an astronaut mask. Ten minutes and the wheeze is gone. Just fantastic.

1. If the Junebug ever gets comfortable enough with you to tease you, he will call you an eyeball. Or diaper cream. "Hi eyeball!" he will beam. "Hi, diaper cream!" He knows he is being silly and he loves it. I don't know where "diaper cream" comes from, other than that obviously it's a thing we use around the house. Now you might think that "eyeball" grows out of his toddler obsession with eyes. I remember one time L and I took him around the small local aquarium and he helpfully and loudly pointed out the eyes on every fish that had eyes (Spoiler: every single freaking fish in that aquarium had eyes.) That eye interest I think was because he had made the connection that eyes meant alive, as in, if he saw a drawing of a plane that had eyes, it meant that it was a character - "an alive plane" as he says - and a drawing of a plane without eyes is an inert vehicle. So fish that had eyes he knew were alive, and that was very important to him, and he needed to share that information a lot. But this eyeball thing is different. This he picked up at daycare. He came home upset one day and questioning elicited the fact that some kid had called him "one eyeball;" despite the fact that, as he shakily insisted to me, "I am NOT one eyeball." But they grow up so fast; he got over himself and made the weapon his own, and now you are an eyeball and so am I and so is everyone. Hi, eyeball!


2. One day during pickup, as usual, I was crankily chivvying the Junebug through the routine of pee and then are you done? Answer me in words. Are you done? Pull up your underwear. I said stand up. Pull up your underwear and your pants -

"If you don't stop saying that I will show you my butt!"

Then he turned around, bent over, and waggled his naked butt at me.

I lost it. Oh my god, I laughed until I had to sit down. Even though I knew you can't laugh at these things or they will never end. I couldn't help it. Dude. How many times do you think I've seen your naked butt? I still wipe your butt! I could probably draw your asshole from memory! I think the shock value has been lost. Incidentally, I love your tiny adorable butt to pieces, and possibly never more so than when you are waving it at me and cracking up at your own amusingness.


3. When Rocket is very tired and sitting on my lap he will just let his head fall forward into my sternum with a thump. And then of course he has to be hugged very tight and snuggled and have his head stroked. He used to do this all the time as a baby. Constantly. It hurt! Baby heads are big and solid and heavy! And yet….it was his way of asking for hugs. So I loved it. And I had not quite realized that he had stopped doing it. Until this past weekend, when his schedule was all messed up, and he was too tired to fall asleep, and I was holding him on my lap, and…thump. And I realized that it hadn't happened in a long time. So I hugged him very tight and snuggled him and stroked his little head. And I want to write it down before I forget it. Because he is leaving babyhood behind so fast, and I'm not sure it's going to happen again.

Rocket is so close to being a toddler. He's basically got standing down. He goes ahead with the controlled fall forward. But then he fails to put out a foot to catch himself so he just goes back down to hands and knees. And from there he crawls to wherever he's going.

I swear to god his ears smell like sweet alyssum. We have some in the backyard, I would know. I'm sure that fragrant earwax or whatever is going to turn out to be the symptom of some horrible disease, but in the meantime, the one bright spot of the teething midnight wakings is that when I cuddle him I get to smell his little head. Why are babies so delicious.

Rocket himself has chosen to cope with his teething via cannibalism. You laugh, but he has all eight needle-sharp little front teeth, bottom and top, already, and he opens his mouth like a shark and lets his entire ten pound head fall directly on your chin. Or arm. Or his brother's back. Ow.

He can say and/or sign: no, milk, more, water, all done, Mama, Dada, book, & ball.

The Junebug was so punchy tonight, I nearly killed him trying to get ready for bed, and then I had a stroke of what I will modestly describe as genius. After potty, he announced that he was a duck, instead of pulling his trousers up and moving on to handwashing and so forth; and, sick of arguing, I started quacking at him. Well, this was the funniest goddamn thing that had ever happened, and he started laughing too hard to fight me anymore, and as long as we communicated via quacking and hand gestures, it went smoothly from then.

I posted that thing and suddenly the Junebug has become a hug monster. He is ASKING FOR HUGS. He is spontaneously giving hugs and kisses! I don't know what's happening, but it's wonderful.

Rocket knows words!

- He makes the sign for "milk", and he uses it both for nursing and for cow milk
- He makes the sign for "more"
- Yesterday, he held up a book and said "buh"

Communication!!!

Last week was a hard week. Traffic gets worse as it gets later, and it takes us longer to get home, so I've arranged my schedule so that I only need to pick the kids up lateish from daycare one day a week. Except that last week, for various reasons, it was four days. So we were getting home late, having a long exhausting commute, eating dinner late, going to bed late, still getting up early. And one late afternoon, having already picked up Rocket and carrying him on my front, and my backpack with all his gear and milk and so on on my back, I was trudging up the stairs on my way to get the Junebug. And I love the Junebug, I do. But I got passed by one of his little classmates' mothers, and I saw little A. beyond the glass doors jumping up and down and waving at her mother, and just for a second, I had this momentary passionate wish that I were on my way to pick up a kid who was going to be happy to see me. Instead of what the Junebug does, which is see me, shriek, and run away, sometimes hiding.

It's not that he doesn't like me - I swear. It's honestly for a very good reason, which is that the last thing of the day is outdoor free play, which he adores, and he loves his daycare, and whenever I pick him up he is busy playing legos or digging sand or playing doggie with his friends or something like that. And I am there to interrupt his game, take him away from his friends, make him use the potty and then make him go commute. So he's not happy to see me.

It's also just his personality, though. He's always been this way. Remember "oh no! Why are all these smooches happening to the baby?" Then we had Rocket, and I was shocked to discover that some babies kiss you back! Rocket loves snuggles and kisses! The Junebug would rather eat a bug! That is just the way he is, and I do a lot of gritting my teeth and remembering that I need to love my kid for who he is, not who I want him to be, and accepting that he expresses affection with headbutts and asking us to pretend to be "stingrazors" with him. (Stingrays. But I must admit that his version is cooler.)

FUCK, though, this week my mom is here, and she is not at all on board with this accepting people for who they are. She thinks the lack of hugs is my fault, because apparently I haven't taught him how to show affection. I.e. I say "You don't have to hug if you don't want to." And I thought that she was coming to spend time with the kids? But she hasn't volunteered to keep either of them home from daycare with her any days, and finally Mr. E and I said why doesn't the Junebug stay with her tomorrow and they can go to the zoo, but this afternoon she was saying that if he doesn't like her anymore (i.e., won't accept hugs) maybe she shouldn't. So, fuck, I don't know. How much of this is her sulking because the Junebug doesn't hug, and how much of this is because we suggested it and there's her thing where she would donate both her kidneys plus her liver to me as long as I don't ask but if I ask for anything then I'm being difficult and she doesn't want to do it.

Fuuuuuuck. Hey, guess what? Rocket has his first sign! Guess what it is?

Yeah, he shakes his head "no". Way to live up to the stereotype, kid. Still. Exciting!

1) Is someone trying to put something in your mouth? Stop them. They’re not the boss of your mouth. Grab whatever it is, especially if it’s greasy, drippy or sticky.

2) Huh, that looks okay. All right, open mouth. Shove it in there.

3) DO NOT SWALLOW. That’s what they want you to do. Just shove it all in there. Be like the noble hamster. You don’t know what a hamster is, but somewhere in your soul is hamster ambition. Maybe you were a hamster in a past life. You are hamsterous. Is there more food? There is! Find it all. Shove it all in your mouth.

4) Now look vaguely worried and periodically make little retching motions. Do not, under any circumstances, swallow. Keep packing in the food.

5) If you run out of room in your mouth, tuck the food in between your chins for safekeeping.

6) If you run out of room in your chins, hide it in your pants. Knock it onto the floor. Just make sure your parents can’t find it, at least until they step on it barefoot.

7) DO NOT SWALLOW. Occasionally, if you feel your parents are becoming complacent, barf up a half a cup of milk or so. Do NOT allow any of the food to escape. Be the hamster you want to see in the world.

8) When your parents finally freak out and dig three pieces of bacon and half a strawberry out of your mouth, on the changing table, fifteen minutes later, cry and cry. Those were your slimy, half-decomposed pieces of bacon! You might have swallowed them later, if you felt like it! You’ve been robbed! Those cheating parents.

Update: OH MY GOD.

So the idea here is that you don't feed the kid when it cries in the night. BUT, you're not gonna leave your kid to cry from hunger either. So the scheme is, you figure out when it usually wakes in the night, and then you set an alarm & go and feed them an hour BEFORE that time. Then hunger doesn't wake them. If you mistimed it & the kid isn't hungry, you try again in an hour, cause it's important to get to the kid before it wakes up on its own.

This worked great with the Junebug.

Tonight I have discovered 3 things:

1) if the kid refuses to eat all night, you wake yourself up every hour all night, wake the kid up, then feel like an exhausted asshole as it cries itself back to sleep.

2) Rocket does not need to eat in the night NEARLY as much as he has been claiming.

3) Holy shit. I guess he really HADN'T been sleeping as well as he could have. He's just peacefully down. Jesus, maybe he might have slept through the night weeks ago if we'd moved him to the crib.

Thinking about this because my body has decided to let me know that we are ready! To try for another baby! In other words, this is your periodic reminder that the natural wisdom of the body is frequently an enormous load of horseshit. No more babies. Rocket is my last baby. And yes I am sad about that, but sad in that way that anything you do or have for the last time always has a bit of a breath from the grave. It’s me I’m mourning, and the narrowing of possibilities in my life, not hypothetical future babies. Because I love my guys but they are enough. I’m good.

However, one thing I am truly savoring about my last baby is something I did not know enough to know was a special joy of the baby phase when I had it with the Junebug. See, when the Junebug was a tiny baby I wanted to kiss him basically just all the time. He was always covered in lipstick. But, see, what I didn’t know is that that urge to kiss him all the time, it wouldn’t be going away. It’s still there.

From something Mr. E’s mom said once, it may not go away when he’s in his thirties, either.

But people who are nearly three, they don’t want to be kissed all the time. There are logs to climb and songs to yell and trucks to push around and scooters to ride and racecars to vroom and who’s got time to stand around and be kissed all the time? Hell no. So - while I cannot precisely say that I am enjoying every moment - at midnight, 3 am, and 5 am you will hear me murmuring in a soothing voice that this is exactly why nobody likes babies, you tiny jerk - I can say that I am delighting in every moment that I kiss Rocket’s fat little cheeks or soft little belly or tiny toes or delicate little fingers or squishy little elbows, and he beams all over his face or even breaks into laughter of joy. Me kissing him is the highlight of his whole day. Oh man, if I zerbert his face, it is the funniest and funnest thing that has ever happened to a baby. I want to kiss him all the time, and he wants to be kissed all the time, and for this brief brief moment, I hug him and kiss him, and we are one in our delight.

ETA: and now, possibly mastitis. FML

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Last Sunday night. A week ago. Mr. E and I were lying next to each other, in bed, during one of the five minute breaks between Rocket's inexplicable bouts of screaming.

I stared blankly at the ceiling. "Today…has not been a good day."

Long pause.

"No," Mr. E agreed. Long pause. "Too much explosive feces."

At which point I lost it, because, yes. Any day that you can sum up with "Too much explosive feces" is not a good day. We both spent that day repeatedly cleaning shit off the toddler, the floor, the underpants, the trousers, the tub, the bucket…what is clean? You soak the underpants in the bucket, but then you have to wash the bucket, and the gloves, and then you have to clean the floor, but did you get all the floor? Do you need to clean the stairs? Did you accidentally walk through it before noticing, and do you have time to clean your slippers downstairs while the toddler is upstairs with the bleach which is out because you were using it? I asked Mr. E "What counts as clean?" and he said "I don't know, it's been too long since I've seen it."

Also Rocket has been having an enormous developmental spurt. Suddenly he can roll over from his front to his back! In both directions! He has learned to blow a zerbert with no substrate! He has discovered his feet, and grabs them all the time! He grabs rattles with both hands, and can get them in his mouth 9 times out of 10! Today, he threw his rattle - twice! Like two feet away! It's incredibly exciting! This has all happened this week, he wasn't doing any of this ten days ago!

…and, of course, one of the things that happens with developmental spurts is that it really gives them a hard time sleeping. So, inexplicable bouts of screaming. And finally I just gave up and decided to give in to terrorism. The tiny asshole sleeps in our bed now. I give up. My shoulder is stiff in the morning, but fuck it: we have all slept. And he's probably not going to die. At least, less likely than that I would drive us all into a truck if I didn't start getting more sleep than I had been. It would probably even have been accidental.

But, so, luckily no one else got the stomach issue till I did on Friday night. No, really. That is luck. I didn't have to miss any work, and I didn't have to clean up shit while feeling terrible. You really want to trade off, with illnesses.

And the cherry on the top of the whole shit-and-magical-wonder-of-childhood-developmental-miracle sundae that has been this week, was also last Sunday night, when I was making my zombie-like way up the stairs, after a day of cleaning up shit, and turned the corner to find: the Junebug. Standing in front of me. Beaming, and announcing, "Mama, I climbed out of my crib by myself!"

("The curse is come upon me, cried the Lady of Shalott.")

Seriously, I nearly broke down crying. As I type, he is meant to be napping, and I have put him back in his bed three times. We are meant to be going to a neighborhood get-together in the afternoon, and if he doesn't nap, he's going to be a beast. I guess we'd better go get him a real bed next weekend.

ETA: It's not a sundae, right? It's a parfait. Because it has layers. Layers of shit, amazing miracles of growth and development, work, frustration, adorableness, and stomach pain.