Lured In

Alex embraced a new hobby this past summer.  This one fits right into his overall 60 year old white man vibe of classic rock, bowling, and what appears to be moderate to severe psoriasis.  Actually, the doctor told us the disgusting rash he developed on both legs was most likely folliculitis aggravated by too much hot tubbing one weekend- yet another 60 year old white man pursuit.

It's fishing.  His best friend Matthew got him into it because Matthew's grandma lives by a stocked lake in a bougier part of Lake County.  I've seen random kids fishing in the smaller ponds of our own non-bougie area, but all they ever seem to catch are Miller Lite bottles and the occasional patch of folliculitis.  Actually, it's nice where I live- we are minutes away from a plethora of beaches. I always tell my kids how lucky we are to live here.  When I was growing up, we went to the beach maybe once a summer, and it involved crossing over to the dark side (Indiana).  Here, we can have impromptu beach days whenever we'd like!  Are the beach sands white and pristine?  Well of course not, they're brown and have to be raked for goose poop.  Is the water crystal clear?  It can be a little murky.  But do we have a great time soaking up the rays and floating our cares away?  Sometimes!

When I was a kid, we'd also drive long distances to fish.  Well, my dad would fish, my mom would watch him fish, and my sister and I would wonder aloud if there was any endeavor more excruciating than fishing.  Honestly, it seemed like he never caught a thing.  But that can't possibly be true or why we would go so often?  Was it a punishment of some sort?  Was taking your kids to the Kankakee River the 1987 equivalent of telling kids today "no screen time?"  You were screwing around and you broke the door off the TV console. You're in big trouble, young lady.  Go get my worms.

Perhaps my dad would have had better luck at Matthew's grandma's abundantly stocked lake.  It certainly could have been a quicker punishment.  If I'd have grown up around these parts, we could have been at the lake within minutes.   Dad could catch a handful of blue gills, toss them back in as to illustrate the futility of life, and then get us home all before my mother could even piece together where we'd gone and what the heck had happened to the TV stand.

But isn't that the irony of parenthood.  An activity I loathed as a child came back into my life this past year in the form of a skinny 12 year old boy and his tackle box of ambition.  Between myself, Matthew's mom, and Jack's mom, we managed to divvy up the role of Unlicensed Young Boy Fishing Uber into manageable nuggets. It truly takes a village, and that village is full of moms with camping chairs, Elin Hildebrand novels, and terse smiles for the grizzled old fishing guys who always have some sage advice for the kids.  They might recommend Lily Lake right after sunrise.  They might say something helpful about the amount of pepperoni the boys are using as bait.  They may or may not question why Alex keeps physically getting into the lake and if he knows he has a hook stuck through his finger.

As Alex collected fishing wisdom and supplies, he'd ask to go more and more.  Oftentimes, my village nowhere to be found, it was just me and him.  Once I dropped him off at Bangs Lake while I went to run errands, and that felt like a low in my parenting career.  I couldn't just sit with him and keep him company while he fished?  I couldn't watch like my mom did?  Not to mention the grizzled fishing guys seemed especially grizzled that morning.  That was sure a lot of beer in their cooler for 9 am.

One morning, Alex talked me into renting a boat at Independence Grove.  He had just purchased a huge nylon net the day before at Bass Pro Shop, and he was desperate to use it.  We had to get into deeper waters in order to potentially need the net, deeper than Alex could reasonably wade into from the pier.  Proving just how much I loved this annoying kid, we headed out early, purchased worms at the Ace Hardware (pepperoni would not do for the kind of catch Alex had in mind), and headed to the boat rental pavilion on the lake.  Alex did all the talking, selecting the size of boat we would need and telling the college kid behind the counter that we would take a motor, too.  "The works, my good man," Alex basically said, sliding my credit card across the counter while I wondered if using a boat motor was hard.  I did not really know my way around boats, not to mention boat MOTORS.  Actually, Alex and I as a pair were not especially good with boats at all.  We had just a couple weeks ago had to be rescued from the middle of Devil's Lake during a boy scout canoeing trip gone wrong.  The part that went wrong was that neither of us was strong enough to row back to shore.  Plus I'd lost my hat in the breeze, so I was pissy.

To be fair, adding on the motor was probably a good idea.  Getting back into a boat so soon after the boy scout rescue probably wasn't.  But after snapping on a couple life jackets and getting a quick tutorial on the motor (and being heavily reminded that their emergency phone number was in the boat and we could call in case of any issues), off we went towards the middle of the lake.

Over an hour went by with no activity.  Alex would fiddle with the worms and lures, casting in and reeling all to no avail.  I tried to relax on my soaking wet bench seat while simultaneously yelling at Alex to sit down, be careful, stop rocking the boat, stop dicking around with the motor, don't eat chips with the hands that touched the worms, etc.  Once in a while, he got some promising tugs on his line, but when he'd pull in, the bait would be gone and so would the fish.  Grizzled fishing men called out to us from the shore.  Had we caught anything yet?  Alex, still optimistic but increasingly aware that our boat time was almost up, would call back no.  No, no fish yet.  He looked longingly at his new nylon net, at his gigantic blue box of various lines, lures, bobbers, whatnot.  He gazed into the calm waters of the lake and made a wish.

Then, something amazing happened.  Something that got my heart pumping and made me feel differently than I'd ever felt before.  Something that Alex will remember for the rest of his life. There was a jerk on his fishing line, and Alex started to reel in.  "Oh my God, it's a big one," he said, suddenly the most alert he'd ever been in his whole wide awake life.  He fought with the fishing pole, trying to pull in his catch.  For a moment, I rehearsed in my head how I would make Alex feel better when we discovered it was a dead badger or something.  But then, I saw it.  It was the biggest fish I'd ever seen up close, and it was there on his line, wriggling madly right beneath the surface of the water.

"GET THE NET!" Alex yelled.

The next ten seconds were a blur of activity.  Alex tried to maintain control of his fishing pole while I shot up and grabbed the net.  The beast of a fish was pulled up and scooped into the net, and somehow we got it aboard, into the boat, which was rocking so wildly that I'm shocked we didn't flip over.  We dumped the fish onto the floor of the boat where it flopped crazily in all it's wet, slimy glory.  Alex fumbled trying to pick it up, and I screamed nonsensical, ultimately unhelpful directions.  Eventually strong arming the lake monster into a good grip, Alex shrieked at me to get out my phone- which I luckily had handy with the emergency boat number pre-dialed.  I exited out of the dial mode, switched to camera, and snapped a picture.  Proof of dominance.  Proof of joy.  Alex smiling hugely, so proud of his great big catch (Northern Pike, he'd inform me later), the happiness radiating off of him in tangible waves.  I felt like a mirror of my son, my pulse racing from the excitement, and together we laughed and waved back at the fishermen on the shore who had been cheering on us the whole time.

Then, without much fanfare and only one quick last look, Alex dumped the fish back into the water and said, "Ok, we can go return the boat."

Heading home, classic rock blaring through the car speakers, Alex and I relived the moment while he texted Matthew and Jack the picture of his big catch.  I was still coming down from the high of the moment, a fishing expedition unlike any other that I'd ever been on.  It sure didn't feel like a punishment that day.  It was a new core memory with my son, a story we would both retell all summer.  He'll probably tell it to his own kids when he gets older and takes them out onto the lake.  Of course, his kids will probably hate fishing.  I'm sure that's the way it goes.  "Fishing is fun," he might insist.  "Heck, even your grandma Jackie used to like it!"

Time Traveling The Easy Way

And in a flash, it's six years later.  I'm 44 years old, slathering enough retinol on my face each night to burn off the most amount of skin cell layers I can until I'm in danger of showing bone.  There's some hair dye involved, and my contact lenses are multi-focals.  That means that my eyes are more focalled than they were before, from near to intermediate to kind of far to way back in time to a less cruel decade.  Chris is doing fine, or at least that's what he likes to tell me in between back pain winces and handfuls of ibuprofen.  He's a reassuring sort, that Chris B.  Somebody has to be in a marriage. I'll flip out over the day to day snags and snarls along with the litany of things that could completely go wrong at any given moment and Chris, Chris will give a half shrug and go about his evening.

What have we done in the six years since I've given up blogging?  Well let's see.  There was a pandemic; that was kind of awful.  Millions of people died and, even worse, my kids couldn't go to school.  Emily started kindergarten on a goddamn laptop, playing Barbies just out of sight from her harried teacher's camera view.  Just so everyone knows, I take credit for everything she learned that year.  I taught her to read, I babysat her assignments, and guided her through online programs while she curled up next to me on the sofa and I stroked her hair.  It was a strange, divisive time, one that may require revisiting on a different blog post if I keep this up.  We wore masks outside like ding dongs, but some people refused to wear masks at all, also like ding dongs.

Completely realistic AI rendering of me

I had my first mammogram followed by my first biopsy followed by my first foray into anti-anxiety drugs.  Turning 40 was no joke.  One day I'm 115 pounds and feeling pretty vibrant as a 30 something year old, and then overnight I'm staring down the barrel of my own mortality and edging in on 140.  Oh yeah, the biopsy came back fine.  But every year, I go and it's something else.  A scary phone call followed by an expensive ultrasound I'll choose to pay off monthly for the next three years. Some mysterious, eye catching cysts.  Fun!  In between, I notice that my hair is thinner than I'd like and sometimes I wake up at 3 am feeling like someone poured tepid water from old soup into my bed.  That's not pee, in case you're wondering.  That's pre-menopausal night sweats, and they're gross.  But ain't nobody changing the sheets at 3 am; sometimes I don't even bother to change my pajamas.  I just roll over and will myself dry.

Maybe I'm putting too much out there right now.  It's been a long time since I've blogged; I've forgotten how to hold back.

I'm still driving the black minivan.  It's a 2016 and it's going strong except for its many, mostly cosmetic problems.  The parking lot designers at Goodwill put a pretty low barrier right by the drop off lane and I was so frustrated by the fact that I crunched into the barrier and completely dented my car that I almost didn't let them have my bag of old clothes.  That would have taught them a lesson!  The sliding doors don't really open and close on their own anymore, parts of the interior keep snapping off like Lego accessories, and there's a persistent layer of sand over the floor.  I don't know, I think it makes us look like carefree beach goers, not dirty, negligent assholes.

I'm working consistently part time.  The kids are off at school (in session since we've moved on from COVID and have gone back to completely disregarding headaches and swollen lymph nodes), and so I find myself with a desire to fill my days.  I keep waiting for Chris to tell me that I need to work full time, especially on days when he's working from home and I'm laying on the couch taking an only partially deserved nap.  But, I think if he did broach the topic and tell me to go make a little more money, I'd probably explode.  Do you know how much I do around here?  Without my constant attention, this house and everything in it would burn to the ground.  My employment status is something that I've made a shaky peace with over the years.  I am very, very lucky that Chris makes enough to support us and that I'm able to focus on our family as much as I am. What a gift it has been to lead this life.  But do I occasionally feel like a loser who can only handle 20 hours of work per week and basically just goes to hang out with my coworkers and maybe get some Chic-Fil-A?  Yes.  But just occasionally.  Luckiest loser alive!

Are you wondering about my children?  The whole reason I started this blog?  Well, they're getting pretty big!  Andy's a freshman, and I just couldn't be prouder of him.  When you're pregnant and they tell you it's a boy, your mind flashes forward and Andy is everything you hope your son will be.  No pressure, right?  Then there's Alex, who is not that child you picture when you're pregnant but is so surprising and unique in all the right, but sometimes questionable, ways.  He always makes me laugh and he has a heart of gold, even if you have to scratch around for it sometimes.  My sweet Emily is nine now, not at all a toddling baby like when we left this blog six years ago.  She is fashionable and smart and makes my heart swell.  Not like I have a medical condition, but like I'm in love.  And I am!  She can be bitchy and moody and impatient and all the things that I know I was at that age, but she is the love of my life.  Tied with everyone else in my life that is.

I've missed blogging.  I've missed having a place to keep my memories and observations.  More to come, maybe.  

Crazy Day Ever!

I've lost the desire to blog.  I'm compelled to keep writing so that Emily has as many stories about herself to one day read as the boys do, but whenever I sit down to write, I just don't have it in me.  It's not that I've run out of material, per se, because children- all children- are endless fountains of humor and amusement.  It's just that it's started to feel repetitive.  This mommy blog thing is so played out.  The couple of mom bloggers I follow online generally follow the same sort of formula.  Kids are annoying, and we also drink wine.  I'm in the trenches with an army of beautiful morons.  Or it's a humble brag of winning at motherhood. That kind of thing.

So what do people think when they read *my* blog?  I've become hyper aware of that question over the past year, which is partially why I haven't written.  What do they think about ME?  That question becomes more nuanced when you whittle down your audience.  To family, to current friends, to former friends.  To those who are quicker to judge, perhaps, and who don't really like me that much to begin with.  Oh, there's Jackie with her stupid blog again.  We get it.  The kids are funny.  Whatevs.

Also, now that the boys especially are getting older, writing about them feels like stealing.  It feels like I'm sawing off a chunk of their soul and tacking it up on display.  They see the world, but they don't always want the world to see them.  "Don't put that on Facebook," they might warn if I take a compromising picture of them in their ratty pajamas with ice cream smeared on their nose.  "I won't," I say.  There's always Instagram. 

Yes, they are my kids.  I created them, they are essentially my property.  I get to catalog their adventures however I see fit because my name is stamped all over them with the copyright logo. But sometimes I think of writing a less than flattering tale about them which would absolutely KILL with my top four readers, and then I stop.  Because Andy would be pissed if the world had access to some of his darkest moments of deepest shame.  And I can't say that I blame him.  I'll choose to respect that notion, even if it hasn't been expressly stated.

I think I will suspend the blog for now, and make a new year's resolution to find a new avenue for writing.  One that's not focused on my children.  But, what should that look like?  Sometimes I dare myself to write a novel. Go ahead, you lazy coward, just do it.   Maybe I should start with a single short story.  Or a haiku.  It's been so long since I've written anything fictional, and I'm disappointed that that used to be something I wanted to do with my life, and now it's not anything. 

I title this last post "Crazy Day Ever!" because it was the post I started to write, which is something Emily says all the time whenever things go slightly awry.  If she discovers her shirt is on backwards, she'll look down, chuckle and mutter, "Crazy day ever."  She is easily charmed and amused by small things, a sweet little princess whose most entertaining moments I may just have to try my best to remember and retell one day.  And, so, that is where I'll leave you. 

Cast Away!

Would you believe Alex broke his arm again?  It's six weeks later, and he just traded in his awkwardly angled cast for a spiffy new brace, the kind that bowlers wear.  I will not be taking Alex bowling any time soon, of course, for fear of resnapping his arm bones.  "That's the biggest complication we see with these type of breaks," Alex's doctor has said many times.  "It takes a year for the bones to fully strengthen and straighten.  Rebreaking is a major concern."  His doctor relayed the same story twice, giving me the uneasy impression that he's only had one other patient besides Alex.  Another young boy broke both his radius and ulna at the playground, same as Alex.  Six weeks after the cast coming off, he got smacked in the arm with a flying soccer ball.  Bam!  Forearm broken again!  Sucks to be that guy.

What fun!  An ambulance ride.

Everybody knows how Alex broke his arm.  Every stranger and semi-stranger who has seen Alex bumbling around town in his bright blue cast has asked him, "How did you break your arm?"  And Alex has replied with the same rehearsed, oft-repeated, condensed story.  He speaks with the sort of resigned exasperation of a mother who is tired of saying the same thing all day every day but still has to keep reminding their kids of something super basic, such as putting their dish in the sink.  "I was at the playground playing tag and somebody went to tag me so I stepped back and fell by the fireman pole straight down on my arm and broke it."

When Alex fell, Andy screamed, "Mommy!  Come quick!  Alex is really hurt!"  I ran over, looked down at his completely bent forearm and screamed something unintelligible and shrieky.  And Alex, looking down at his completely deformed limb, said rather calmly, "Oh no.  I think I broke it."  And the boy that had been reaching out to tag him by the five foot opening of the play structure slunk away into the shadows, vowing to never make eye contact with anybody surnamed Berger again.

Alex had two casts.  This second one gave him
a thumbs down.

The doctor removed Alex's cast this past Monday, unceremoniously concluding Alex's treatment.  There is no follow up visit, which I find odd, since doctors love scheduling follow up visits.  It's their way of saying, "Shall we deal with this another time?"  Instead, "Let me see if I can get a brace for him," were the doctor's last words to us right before he disappeared down the hallway, reminding me of the young boy who tagged Alex right into six weeks of broke arm misery.  Their retreats were clouded by similar sentiments.  It's not my fault, but it sure doesn't look good. Alex's arm does not look good.  It's skinny and weak looking, obviously, from the casting, but it's also crooked.  Like, noticeably, freakishly crooked.  The doctor warned it would take a year to fully straighten out after such a bad break, but he didn't warn that my initial reaction to gazing at my young son's creepy, bowed out arm would be to swallow back my own vomit and avert my eyes.

The nurse gave us the wrist brace, and now I am imagining Alex growing up from within the confines of the brace, since he is terrified of taking it off.  Tonight I'm going to at least make him keep it off after his bath and throughout the night. But even good-natured Alex feels morose looking down at his hideous arm.  The black brace is soothing to him.  Anything could be under that brace!  Even a completely normal, perfectly straight arm!

Alex with his new brace, which
conceals his not so awesome arm.

I'm hoping Alex eases into using his bent matchstick arm with the same positivity that he adapted into having a broken arm in the first place.  Truly, I was much more upset by the break than the victim himself, as I saw all of our lofty summer plans vanish into the sky like smoke from an extinguished fire.  Last week, Alex and I were at the library when another stranger inquired about the arm.  Alex rattled off his summary of how he broke it, and the lady replied, "Well, that's a good way to ruin the summer, huh?"  To which Alex replied, rather snappily, "No.  I'm having a great summer!"  And finally, after so many weeks of lamenting his fate- our fate- I realized that he was right.  It was a great summer!  With a waterproof cast, we still went swimming.  We went to the zoo and strawberry picking, to parks, a baseball game, Great America, and the arcade, and to see fireworks, movies, and a magician.  We saw friends and played games and discovered new favorites- barbecued ribs, Radio Flyer wagon rides around the neighborhood, gas station slushees, the movies "Click" and (no pun intended) "Cast Away," tank tops instead of T-shirts, new stuffed animals from well-wishing friends, different things having to do with Pokemon.  He didn't have to play baseball anymore since his arm was broken- a silver lining for Alex, yay!  So was the summer ruined because of a radius and ulna snapped like strands of uncooked spaghetti?  No!  Not really.

And Alex will get through the rest of his recovery with that same can do spirit, I hope- despite the current state of nightmare arm.  I tried to summon a bit of that spirit as I opened the first of Alex's hospital bills, but I've always had more of an unleashed negativity thing going on.  Perhaps what I need in my life is a good Radio Flyer wagon ride, or an unhealthy interest in Pokemon.  Maybe a little more gratitude, the reminder that bones do heal, and we're all so very lucky.  So just put me on the payment plan, doc.  Automatic deduction, because I'm busy with my kid, looking right into his smiling face while trying to keep my eyes off his grossly misshapen forearm.

Chip Off The Old Block!

"I'm going to win!  I'm going to win!"  Emily raced alongside me in the rain, giggling and threatening to beat me to the entrance of the library.  I was holding her backpack, my purse, the bag of library books, and her pink puppy.  We were neck and neck in our fake race, and then her feet tangled up in their unstrapped shoes.  Down she went, hitting her face on the concrete steps.  The howl was immediate and terrible, and I knew what I would see before even dropping to my knees and looking.  A mouthful of brilliant red blood.  Shattered, jagged front teeth.  A shaking little girl, in pain and scared.

Oh my God.  Oh my God.  I juggled all of the things, including Emily, wiping blood from her face to the front of her jacket while digging through the backpack- no wait, my purse- looking for my phone, which would not turn on or work right, which did not contain the programmed number of the dentist, which did not have sufficient Wi-Fi to search the internet for said dentist number.  Emily stood beside me, screaming.  I told her it was going to be okay, but I could not look at her for more than an instant, the sight of her injury too grisly for me to behold.  I found the dentist number and jabbed at my screen with uncooperative fingers.  "It's an emergency," I told the receptionist.  "My daughter just fell and broke her teeth.  Please take us now!"

Emily was trembling when I picked her up.  Back to the car, I ran us and our bags and our bloody baby wipes and a bottle of water I had managed to unscrew and assist her in sipping.  I strapped Emily in to her car seat, my hollow reassurances filling the air. She quieted as I started the car and got us going, her eyes staring straight ahead, empty and dulled.

It's just teeth, I told myself.  She's fine.  It's no big deal.  It's nothing.  She's healthy.  It's just teeth.

But I remember my own just teeth, from twenty years ago.  I was much older than Emily, alone at the public pool when I smashed my face into the bottom of the deep end and chipped my front incisor.  Instant hysteria.  By the time I collected myself and walked home, I was a sobbing mess.  I yelled for my dad to wake up, as he had been sleeping after working the night shift.  "LOOK!  My tooth!"  I told him, and he stared at me for what seemed like an eternity through tired, worn eyes.  He did not say anything other than "Huh" as he examined my newly busted face, and I was suddenly awash with a horrific fear.  This is just how my face was going to look now.  Nobody was going to take me to get this tooth fixed.  I was fourteen years old.  I had my whole life ahead of me to live with a jagged, ugly smile.   Now I would never have a boyfriend!

"Call MOM!" I screamed at my father, his lack of action frightening.  "Call the other adult in this house!  PLEASE."

Emily and I made it to the dentist, my little girl walking into the lobby on unsteady feet shod shamefully in shoes with loosened straps.  The receptionist was calm when she greeted us, failing to acknowledge the urgency.  We were seated in a room after a few minutes, and the dental hygienist was also infuriatingly calm.  "I'm not sure what the dentist is going to do," she murmured.  "Sometimes we just leave them.  When you called, we thought the situation was a lot worse."

"Well, I mean, I know it's just teeth," I replied, squeezing my hands together.  "But we can't just leave them.  THREE of them are broken!  Her smile!  Her beautiful smile.  She's only two!  She's not going to lose these teeth for at least three years.  Heck, my almost six year old still hasn't lost any teeth and he falls straight down on his face literally once a week."

"I understand," she said.  "Let's just see what the dentist says.  Perhaps we've talked enough."

The dentist swooped in a few minutes later, a white blaze of straight toothed glory and lab coated confidence.  There was talk of bonding, of tooth repair, of making things right where they were now so horribly wrong.  To my dismay yet understanding, they asked us to leave and come back tomorrow for a full appointment.  I agreed, making the dentist promise that she would not close up shop in the middle of the night, taking all of her dental tools and associates with her.  I asked to see the office's financials.  I may have forced her to do a pinky swear.  My daughter's teeth.  We needed them fixed.

Baby's first dental appointment.
Not the way I pictured it.

We got back into the car, where Emily immediately stuck her thumb into her mouth for a quick suck.  "Ow," she moaned, pulling it back out.  "It hurts!  My owwie teeth hurt my thumb!  Oh no."  My heart ached for my sweet little baby, needing comfort now more than ever and not able to get it from her favorite source.

We spent the next twenty four hours in a state of waiting, with popsicles and cuddling and promises.  I did a thorough reliving of my own tooth bonding experience, of the many years of dental strife that followed.  And I found myself thinking, not for the first time, that parenthood is simply a retelling of one's own childhood, with different twists, turns, and perspectives.  A reinvention, perhaps.  I have been through most of these traumas before, in earlier chapters, this tooth disaster plus all of the others.  Things turned out somewhat okay for me.  I am trying to make them turn out somewhat better for my children.  I am trying to reconcile the relationship from childhood to parenting, constantly.

The next day, Emily's teeth were fixed.  I was so proud of Emily, laying there in the chair and following directions perfectly from the dentist.  Open your mouth.  Bite down.  Stay still.  She went through the whole procedure better than me at fourteen, and my heart swelled with too much love and protection.  "No apples," the dentist told me as we were paying, our ordeal having come to its relief.  "Don't let her have anything too hard."  And I nodded along and thought to myself, no submarine sandwiches from The Patio Restaurant in Tinley Park.  Because that's what knocked out my own bonding, years after the pool incident.  Of course, something will knock out Emily's bonding too, most likely, before she fully loses these baby teeth.  It won't be a submarine sandwich, probably.  But it will be something like it, and it will make a sort of parallel sense.

It's Not Your Birthday!

Emily was laying on the floor at my feet, body curled into a fetal ball, thumb dangling out of the corner of her lips like a half smoked, forgotten cigarette.  "Happy birthday to you," she crooned softly to herself.  "Happy birthday to you.  Happy birthday dear Emmy.  Happy birthday to you."

"It is not your birthday, Emily," I stated above her as I scraped her entire, uneaten lunch into the trash. The sentence was barely out of my mouth before she protested.  "No, it IS my birthday!"

We had been going back and forth for days.  Everyday was her birthday.  Everyday, she asked about her party, when her cousins and papas were coming over, and when she'd get her presents and cake.  When bedtime arrived and the day had closed without the spectacle of said cake, party, and presents, I believe she turned in her crib, hugged her stuffed puppy tight, and said, "Ok.  So TOMORROW must be my birthday."  In the morning, if she was asked how old she was, she'd confidently answer, "I three."  

"No, you are not three.  You are two."

"NO.  I three!"  Tears, instantly, on that beautiful, sweet little face.  "It's my birthday.  I not two anymore, I three."  Where are my damn balloons?

This May baby- late May baby- has many more non-birthday days until she reaches the big 0-3.  Long days filled with singing "Happy Birthday" tunelessly to herself on the cold kitchen floor, of wondering about the start of her imagined party, of waiting for gifts and cake that simply do not materialize.  As I looked down at her sweet face staring up at mine, crinkled in denial of my proclamation, I wondered if I should go fetch the library book I had checked out for her the day before.  It was called, "When Is My Birthday?"  Spoiler alert.  It's not today.  But, no.  Perhaps it was best to just move past the B word entirely.  

She'd been to a couple birthday parties in the last month, most notably her older cousin's (big party) and younger cousin's (even bigger party).  A couple of her classmates at preschool have also celebrated their birthdays.  Surely, Emily has felt that she has waited patiently for her turn to feel special and to be on the receiving end of an infinite pile of slickly packaged presents and an entire cake addressed specifically with her name on it.  "Today must definitely be the day," she likely thinks each morning as we swap out her ten pound wet diaper for a dry one with an air of optimism.  But, of course, she is wrong.

What do you tell a three year old about patience and selflessness?  Wait.  I mean, what do you tell a two year old?  Dammit, Emily, you've even got me partially fooled.  Here's the problem, Emily, and it's a lesson of grace that most of us don't fully comprehend until we are much older, if ever.  Other people will have parties or honors that you simply may not have, but the joy that you have in celebrating with them should not be tempered by the question of when you are going to get yours.  Perhaps, when your birthday rolls around FINALLY in May, you might have a party, or you might not.  There might be a mountain of presents, or there might not.  I'll probably get you a cake.  But hey.  Maybe not.  All birthdays are not created equal, as individual lives which may veer off down different roads aren't either.  But regarding the cake- let's just see how Mommy's feeling.

Yikes.  Perhaps that came out heavier than I intended.  

I looked down at my daughter curled into a knot on the floor, singing Happy Birthday to herself and I put down the plate I'd just cleaned off.  What triumphs await these kids of mine- what heartaches?  It's too much to sift through, sometimes- the possibilities both full and hollow.  What are we to do with these sweet little kids too tiny to understand the intricacies of magnanimity?  Sometimes I just follow my heart.  I scooped up my darling Emily, ignored the fact that she'd dismissed her healthy lunch with an insulting smirk, and found a Little Debbie cake for us in the pantry.  I did not sing Happy Birthday as we ate it together.  I did not say the B word.  But yeah, Emily definitely received my slightly confusing message in between bites of chocolate.  Happy Today, Emily.  Happy Today.  Now excuse me while I go find something to wrap.

Footsy Wootsy Bang Bangs!

"Come on, Emily!"  I yelled from the stairs.  "Time to put your socky wocky ding dongs on your footsy wootsy bang bangs!"

Perhaps these sound like words uttered by a complete lunatic.  Somebody who is playing with only half a deck- a stay at home mother who has been speaking nonstop baby talk for the past seven and a half years and has lost her ever-loving mind.  Or- at the very least- had every vital piece of adult information ever learned replaced surely and methodically with the entire screenplay of Moana, the names of all of Caillou's goofy friends, where to find a library story time at any given moment, and desperate parenting hacks that often fail.

Desperate Parenting Hack #384

If your child won't take her liquid antibiotic, perhaps the prescribed 6 milliliters of it will dissolve into the chocolate Twinkie she's been begging for.

How Desperate Parenting Hack #384 Actually Plays Out

"NO!  NO!  There's MEDICINE on my CAKE! NOOOO!"

"Amelia Jane!"  I yelled, waving the socky wocky ding dongs in the air.  "LET'S GO!"

And of course her name is not Amelia Jane, either.  Neither of those names is correct.  I had a neighbor once hear me call her that, and she asked, "Oh, is that Emily's full name?"  To which I had to reply, "No.  She's Emily Julianne.  I don't know why I call her Amelia Jane.  It's completely incorrect."

But I do call her Amelia Jane.  Maybe that's what I should have named her.  None of it makes any sense.

I know the baby talk and all of the nonsense that comes out of my mouth irritates Chris, but he also spends the majority of his day with adults even if most of those adults make him want to stab out his eyeballs in much the same fashion of how my children often make me feel.  He doesn't get overcome with the urge to baby talk like I do.  However, he's come around to footsy wootsy bang bang.  "You played the long con with that one," he said the other day.  I've been saying footsy wootsy bang bang for years, and now it's finally paying off, because nothing is as satisfyingly funny as when Emily hits her foot against something and innocently, casually mumbles, "Oh, my footsy bang bang."

She leaves out the wootsy part.  Perhaps that little bit is just one step too asinine for her.

Often, I put her socky wocky ding dongs on her footsy wootsy bang bangs and drive her off to preschool, which is something that many parents don't do with two year olds.  Two year old preschool is completely unnecessary.  Three year old preschool is probably completely unnecessary, too.  I mean, unless you add up all the social benefits of a little one meeting new friends and being around different adults and all the mental benefits for a mom to just go somewhere and scream into a pillow uninterrupted for two hours- except for all of THOSE benefits, it's completely superfluous.  Something we do for our tykes to mix it up a bit.  Because even though I KNOW where all of the library story times are- much like an addict can find a meeting whenever they need one- whenever we hit more than one story time per week, I start to feel like maybe I'm unraveling a bit.  Plus, at this point, on child three, I've heard all the stories.  I've read all the books.  I've done all the crafts.  Sure it's new for Emily, but not everything is just for Emily. 

Two year old preschool.  That's just for Emily.  Or so she would be led to believe.

We have our own language.

The other day, I picked her up from preschool only to be greeted by the teacher:  "You know, Emily is having such fun in class, but we just feel bad because we can't understand her a lot of the time.  Is she currently in speech?"

Inwardly, I groaned.  Here we go again, I thought, thinking back to every conversation I'd ever had with Andy and Alex's preschool teachers.  I mean, admittedly, both boys do have documented speech issues. You got me there.  But, come on.  Emily too?  She's a powerhouse of conversation.  She's only twenty-nine months old.  She's basically perfect.  And, let's not forget, this two year old preschool thing?  It's a BONUS for her little life.  This conversation we're having about her speech right here in front of all of the other moms?  An EXTRA in our lives. I will take the remarks about her speech under consideration.  But for now, she's fine, and where should I put my monthly tuition check?

"Hmm," I replied intelligently to the teacher.  "No, she's not in speech...."  It was at this time that Emily looked down at her new shoes.  The teacher smiled at her and said, "Emily is proud of her new shoes!"

Ah, yes, her new shoes.  The ones that we put on over her socky wocky ding dongs atop her-

"Footsy bang bangs!" Emily murmured, sticking her foot out, to which the teacher smugly shrugged as if to say, "See?  What the hell did she just say?"

It may not be a speech problem as much as a consequence of spending too much time with her nutty mother.  Her wacky Jackie.  Her mommy mommy bo bommy, banana fana.....

Yep.

But, they are only itty bitty once, for such a short time, and the pure joy I get from hearing Emily talk about her footsy bang bangs and her resistance to going down for nappy wappies- it's mine, and I will wrap myself in it for as long as I am able.  Like a socky wocky ding dong around the toesy woesies, I will be warmed by the beautiful craziness of our own easily decipherable secret language for as long as possible.

Now, would anyone care for a wicky woon?