Mom Almighty

The scene: First thing in the morning. Gabe has woken up, come padding into my room, and climbed into bed next to me. We snuggle for a few minutes, then he becomes distracted, peels off the blanket, sticks his leg straight up in the air and begins examining it with some concern.

Me: "What's wrong with your leg, dude?"
Gabe: "There's a knee on it!"

1. While in car returning home from a weekend with the grandparents:
Ethan: "Mommy, guess what?"
Me: "What, baby?"
Ethan: "I just farted. Just for you!"
Me: "Umm... thanks, sweetie. But you really don't need to tell me about it."
Ethan: *continuing proudly* "That's right: bubbles of stink just came out of my butt! And you're going to smell them in a minute!"

2. At dinner, while Gabe and Ethan are fighting over a small red wooden top. There are two (a red one and a purple one) - they each received one in their Christmas stockings:
Ethan: "The red one is mine!"
Gabe: "Red one mine!"
Me: "Actually, the red one is Gabe's. The purple one is yours."
Gabe: "Purple one yours, Efan!"
Ethan: "No, I'm pretty sure the red one is mine."
Me: "No, see, I think the purple one is yours. Santa knew your favorite color is purple, so I'm pretty sure he gave you the purple one and he gave you the red one."
Ethan: *looks thoughtfully at the red one in his hand* "But this one has an Ethan-ness to it. The purple one has a Gabe-ness."

18

Created by OnePlusYou - Free Online Dating

The scene: dinnertime. Ethan, Gabe and I are sitting around the dinner table, surveying the fruits of my 1.5 hours of labor: a chicken and broccoli casserole. It came out perfectly, and I proudly dished heaping platefuls of it to myself and my progeny.

Me: "Okay, boys! Let's eat!"
Gabe: *grabs his fork, enthusiastically digs into casserole, scooping up big bite and eyeing it hungrily*
Ethan: *tilts his head, looks thoughtfully at casserole*
Gabe: *shoves fork full of chicken and broccoli into his gaping mouth with a smile*
Ethan: "What's in this?" *pokes at casserole with his fork*
Me: "It's casserole. It's really good. It's got lots of cheese. You love cheese."
Gabe: "Cheese!"
Me: "Yes! And it's got broccoli, which looks like trees. You know, like the dinosaurs - lots of them ate trees."
Gabe: "Trees!"
Ethan: *frowns at casserole* "I already know I hate it."
Me: "You haven't even tried it!"
Gabe: *chews bite of casserole, suddenly grimaces, spits entire bite back onto his plate* "No! No more!"
Ethan: "See? Gabe hates it too."
Me: "Hate it or not, you know the rule. You need to at least try it. I want to see you eat a bite."
Gabe: *shakes his head, still grimacing* "No! Sorry!"
Ethan: pushes plate away from him* "I can't eat this. I cannot, Mommy."
Gabe: *bursts into tears* "TOO YUCKY FOR ME!"
Me: "Hey! What's going on here? This is dinner! I didn't put strychnine in this, it's casserole! Eat it!"
Ethan: *looks solemnly at me* "I will die if you make me eat this."
Me: *gets up, walks to phone, picks it up, dials numbers*
My mother: *on other end of phone* "Hello?"
Me: "How did you do this? How did you cook for children? How did you survive this? How am I supposed to --"
My mother: *laughing uproariously*
Me: "ARE YOU LAUGHING AT ME?"
Gabe: *still crying* "No trees! No cheese! No more casserole for you!"
Ethan: "I hate this so much, I might have to launch a rocket at you."
Me: *into phone* "How can I get them to eat this casserole?"
My mother: *still giggling* "Good luck with that."

In other news, Ethan has finally chosen a battle cry. It's taken a few years, and he's tried various words and phrases ("SPOON!", "Aye carumba!", "Banzaii!"), but none of them quite fit the bill in his opinion. This evening, he settled on one. He loaded his Nerf rocket launcher, climbed to the top of the sofa, aimed directly at Gabe, shouted, "FOLLICLE!!!", and fired. And thus, a battle cry was born.

Today is Ethan's 6th birthday.

Ethan turns 6 today.

I have a 6-year-old.

...

My baby is 6 years old.

...

How did that happen? So fast... 6? Really? 6?

Holy hell.

Emergency Spare Back-up Prince Gabriel is exactly 2.5 years old today. Happy unbirthday, baby!

Quick! Somebody! Anybody! How do you remove melted candle wax from wall-to-wall carpet? And clothing?

Example of natural consequences #1: Gabe, seizing a moment of opportunity, began splashing happily in the bathroom sink and, without my knowledge, pumped a bunch of hand soap into the toothbrush cup. A little while later I brushed my teeth and rinsed my mouth out... with soap. I drank soap. I neglected my toddler for a few minutes, and my now-lavender-scented insides are paying the price.

Example of natural consequences #2: A pile of paperwork was sitting on my desk. Receipts, greeting cards, CD cover art, what-have-you. I know my desk should be more organized. It's not. I've been meaning to put these things away for a while. I haven't. Gabe walked up to the desk and began, slowly and methodically, picking up every single item and tossing it onto the floor. I watched him for a moment before asking, "Gabe, is that really necessary?". He stopped, looked at me rather innocently, and responded, "Yes. Sorry." before returning to his work as a missionary for the forces of chaos. And now my pile of paperwork is even less organized than it was before.

My first memory of my friend Kimberlee: watching her clomp cheerfully into the lab library wearing an up-to-there miniskirt, a pair of black leather boots, and an effervescent smile. My first thought was: "Ooh! I'm about to meet the Happiest Little Dominatrix!". I was giddy with anticipation. She did not disappoint.

There is a quote in the book Talk Before Sleep by Elizabeth Berg. I've dog-eared the page on which the quote appears, because I take it off the shelf from time to time and re-read the one quote. It's only a sentence long, but the reason this quote moves me is because it is an eloquently-worded description of the trait I love most in my friend Kimberlee. It goes: "She was capable of a scary kind of honesty I was ready for, although until that moment, I hadn't realized how much I'd been needing to meet someone I might be able to say everything to."

Happy birthday, my beautiful, generous, compassionate, brilliant, perfectly imperfect dear friend changnut. Not a day goes by that I do not stop what I am doing at some point to consider how lucky and blessed and grateful I am for your existence, let alone your friendship. I love you.

Always listen to kadnkadnk, for she is always right.

That is all.

It's probably not very surprising that the boys have had trouble sleeping for the past couple of months. With all the changes in their lives and family structure, of course they're going to toss and turn a bit, have insecurities and nightmares, need extra snuggles in the wee hours. Completely understandable. But, from my point of view, it's exhausting as all get-out. Getting up a scrillion times a night when one of them calls - I thought I'd wiped my hands clean of that practice years ago when I Ferberized the crap out of them. My point is: the sleeping. It is a Problem.

I recently hit my local Bed, Bath and Beyond Human Endurance to re-stock some of the things I'd lost during asset division - specifically, winter bed linens. I got some nice fleece blankets for the boys' beds, some jersey sheets, and I picked up a couple of cold-weather comforters. I remember standing in the store laughing at the name of them - Wamsutta's Perfect Comforter, joking, "If this comforter was really perfect, it'd cause my kid to fall soundly asleep as soon as I tossed it over him and would keep him asleep until I chose to remove it." (Gabe had already escaped my clutches several times by that point, intent on returning to the aisle of bathroom supplies in order to collect every. single. soap. dish. in the store, so you have to imagine I made this joke with a certain tone of snarky desperation.) Anyway, into the cart went the Perfect Comforters (along with a few soap dishes that somehow found their way in - Gabe continues to maintain his innocence, the scamp.)

With the weather turning colder, yesterday I replaced the kids' warm-weather bedding with the cold-weather stuff, which means last night was the first night they both slept under their new Perfect Comforters. I tucked them in, said goodnight, and (lo and behold) didn't hear a peep out of them until they woke up this morning a little after 7. Not a peep. For the first time in months, both the boys slept soundly - without waking up a single time. Not even once. NOT ONCE! They didn't even change positions - I checked. They didn't even move all night!

Ergo, these really are The Perfect Comforters (tm).

Which means I now pray to Wamsutta, the Goddess Of Sleep. Oh, most kind and benevolent Wamsutta, I am but your humble servant. Whatever thou ask of me, I shall do with devotion and enthusiasm.

Realized I never actually wrote my intended ( Story Of The Camping Trip. )

( Authorities respond to distress call at Casa Crisis... )

QOTD from Emergency Backup Prince Gabe:

"Oh hai, Mommy! Crackerz pleez give to me kthx!"

I swear upon everything holy he said it exactly that way. My toddler is a lolcat.

The Official First Head Cold of the Season has hit us all over here at Casa Contagion. The thrills! The chills! The headache! The used tissues all over the floor because apparently it only takes one weekend away at Daddy's to forget the location of all the household trash buckets!

Eating soup, drinking tea, trying not to think.

Today, for the first time since two years ago when I left the area, I visited Wild & Woolly in Lexington. I'm not in the market for anything at the moment, I just wanted to poke around - it's been so long since I've been in a LYS that I was beginning to suffer withdrawal. It was a risk, I know, taking Gabe in there with me. But, true to form, he just smiled at everyone and said "ooh!" at the appropriate times when I showed him new and luscious yarns. It was both a relief and a disappointment to note that the place hasn't changed at all: same well-rounded, extensive and luxurious yarn and pattern offerings, same unwelcoming off-putting staff. You wouldn't think knitters could be that unfriendly - I guess they must concentrate them all right there in that one store. Or it may be that they're not really that bad, and I'm just unfairly comparing them to my LYS of choice below the Mason-Dixon line - Knit Happens in Alexandria, VA. Quite possibly the most friendly and hospitable knitters in the world, there. I swear they move half their stock just by friendliness alone. "Sure, I've already spent $150," you will think, "But they're so charming! And they gave my son a cookie and let him touch the cashmere! Surely I can reward the good-natured hospitality by purchasing the supplies for *yet another* project I'll never have the time to start, let alone complete." And voila, you walk out of there several hundred dollars poorer.

The good thing about all this is that it signals the rebirth of my obsession with knitting. I put it down for a number of months when life went all sideways and upside-down, and had no interest in picking it up during the chaos. This will sound goopy, but I really feel like what we knit, by virtue of the amount of time and effort we put into it, gets infused with a bit of what we're going through at the time. I made a particular sweater at one point, and I'm extremely proud of it and it was extremely expensive to make, and I'll probably never wear it, because I cannot seem to forget that I was going through a very dark time while I was knitting it. When I started this recent needle embargo, I was working on Stephanie Japel's Cable-Down Raglan, and I was really liking the way it was turning out, and I didn't want it seasoned quite so liberally with Separation. Same with the baby blankets - which I still haven't finished, despite the fact that the babies are now five months old. They don't need that emotional baggage on top of them (literally). So it's really been just very recently that I've felt like I could pick it up again. And now I'm a knitting fiend! I forgot how very healthy the pointy death sticks are for my mental state. There is an LJ icon floating around somewhere that says "I knit so I don't kill people". I have to gank that next time I see it.

Anyway. I've picked up the Cable-Down Raglan and it's coming along nicely. I'm nearly halfway through the waist shaping now, and it's looking a bit small, but I think it will stretch a little with blocking, and I wanted it fitted anyway. So I'm going to push ahead and hope for the best. I'm going to shorten the sleeves to 1/2-length, though. As for the baby blankets... let's just say it's a good think the patterns I picked allow me to add length and width if need be, because as they stand, by the time I'm done with them, the babies will have outgrown them.

Tomorrow I am taking the boys on a Great Adventure.

After Ethan gets home from school, we are going to hop in the car, head north, and spend the entire weekend camping in New Hampshire. North Conway, specifically. (At this point I must point out, lest you be led to believe that a newly-single mom taking an ADHD kindergartener and a toddler camping is adventurous, that changnut will be coming along as well. With her 5-month-old twins. I bow to her adventurousness.)

I am so excited I'm jittery. The boys have never been camping, and I haven't been in well over a decade, but I was raised a camper and I can't wait to introduce the boys to the concept of cuddling under a blanket and eating marshmallows roasted over an open fire while looking up at a sky full of stars. Ethan, especially, is going to have the time of his life. And a handful of other adults will be in attendance, so the kids will have plenty of grown-ups to play with and learn from.

I know there are plenty of things to do in the area - we'll probably play it unstructured for the most part, exploring and hiking and collecting weird bugs. But if anyone familiar with that area has particular suggestions for activities or sights the kids might love, I'm all ears (has anyone been to the Mt. Washington Observatory Weather Discovery Center? Ethan might adore that). Except Story Land - I don't think we'll be doing Story Land, at least not this trip.

I can't wait!

My baby came home! Ethan got on the right school bus, and stayed on until he saw Gabe and me waiting for him at the bus stop, and then he got off the bus, and he came home! He didn't get lost! I can breathe again!

That. was a really long morning.

I'm so proud of him - he never ceases to amaze me, constantly handling so much more than I think he can. My baby went and got growed up... *sniff*

The came this morning and took my baby away on a big yellow bus. My baby, who I made from scratch, using just spare parts that were lying around in my body. My baby, who came out of me just like ten minutes ago.

Yep, that's right - Ethan went to kindergarten. On the school bus. For the very first time ever. This morning. He is officially Big.

Yesterday was his first day, but it was just a 45-minute orientation. Today is a half-day, as is tomorrow. Friday is his "stay day" (in which he stays at school from 9 until 3, whereas on the half days he gets out at 11:30), then Tuesday (kindergartners don't go to school on Mondays here) is his last half-day orientation, and then Wednesday is his first full day of really for real school. He'll be taking the bus every day - the bus stop is right at the corner, two houses up from us, so Gabe and I will walk him to and from the bus stop every day.

So the thing dominating my mind right now is the overwhelming and irrational and neurotic fear that he'll get lost on the bus, and he either won't get off at our stop, or he'll have already gotten off at some point seven stops ago, or he'll ride the bus all the way back to the bus yard because he's in his own little world. Yep, I am really really scared that I'm going to lose my baby. Not just because I love him so, but also because really, making another one is a huge energy sink - and who has that kind of time? Though it is of some comfort to know that I have an Emergency Spare Backup Gabe, just in case. I planned ahead, see.

Gabe, meanwhile, is having a blast this morning, playing with all the toys Ethan won't share with him when they're both home.

8/31/08 bedtime: Gabe's first full sentence! I was changing him into his pajamas and growing impatient with his exuberance. I yanked his little shorts up, he wiggled around and fell backwards, thunking his head on the floor. He stopped moving, looked around, got back up, and said to me, "Sorry me did dat."

*melt*