His little legs wade through the tall grass,
like bright green waves,
each step threatens to pull him down.
He fights through it and reaches up for my hand with his sticky fingers.
It is a rare moment that he will allow me to help him.
Mr. Independent
The knee-high boy toddles down the quiet road, pulled forward by his own stumbling momentum. He is a splash of color against a grey day, like a cardinal, in his bright red sweatshirt. It drapes from his little body and hangs beyond his finger-tips; a hand-me-down still two sizes too big and too nice not to wear.
I capture the Red Flash and roll up his sleeves, one by one, while he loudly protests, obviously aware of the social distancing imperative. He wriggles free and stops a few steps ahead of me to bend down and pat the asphalt road with both hands. Finding it hard, unmoving and unmovable, he pops back up, pushing off of the ground from the tripod position.
We walk side by side for a few steps.
“Do you want to hold Mama’s hand?” I ask in third person and offer my hand.
He shakes his head back and forth fast enough to give flight to the shaggy mop of his hair, it takes on a life of its own, a light brown feathered being, with spread wings. The creature settles back into place and the boy zooms ahead a few tiny steps and looks back with a laugh and stumbles.
Of course, I am behind him where I will always be ready if he falls to scoop him up and dust off his bottom and set him right back up to do it all over again.
COVID-19 is not slowing us down today.
When Daddy Comes Home
The rumble of the garage door opening distracts Mr. Baby from his important work stacking plastic rings on a post. His little ears and eyes perk up like daffodils after a Spring rain.
“Dada, dada, dada,” he begins to chant, increasing in volume and force as he bounces up and down.
He toddles over and throws his body into my lap with a demand to be carried to the garage door. Obviously, the mommy taxi can take him where he wants to go faster than his chubby legs can travel.
At this point, I am chopped liver and accept my new designation. It has been a long few days on our own. I carry the tiny tyrant to wait by the garage door and set him down on the rug.
Unfortunately, the entire process takes too long for Mr. Baby and his patience is wearing thin. He flexes into a tripod position and pushes off of the ground and up to stand. He bangs his fists against the door. He hears the movement of a suitcase, the shuffling of feet and the slam of a car door.
At last, the door knob turns and Mr. Baby’s father appears, travelworn and weary, but glad to be home.
“Hey guys, I missed you.”
He brings his bags inside, pushes his suitcase out of the way and kneels to hug Mr. Baby.
Mr. Baby holds his arms out and then pivots to chase the rolling suitcase. He laughs as he makes off with it down the hallway and leaves his father, open armed and crestfallen.
Suddenly, Mr. Baby is back without the suitcase and running into daddy’s arms.
Somedays, we have to laugh to keep from crying as parenthood continues to surprise, delight, crush and challenge us. Today is one of these days that we can just laugh.
But what about a little brother?
For two days straight, rain fell without stopping from a dark, grey sky. We couldn’t even get out to splash in puddles or go for a walk through the neighborhood because of the constant rain. By the third day, we had to get out. The saying, come hell or high water, finally made sense. We. Had. To. Get. Out.
An obvious destination was the grocery store as we were getting low on milk and puffs, but running through the pouring rain with Mr. Baby on one hip just to get through the parking lot did not appeal to any part of me. I had to find a location with covered parking or a spot close enough to the door to run through the raindrops and limit the drenching.
We ended up at the Humane Society with front row parking and a few seconds long jog to the door.
I told Mr. Baby, “Its just like the zoo, but we can take these animals home.”
He was more interested in the way our umbrella turned the wet, grey sky into a beautiful, dry red with the push of a button as we left the car for the shelter’s door.
We cautiously strolled past cages of barking, snarling, cowering, shivering and apathetic dogs that were sausage shaped, bony, three legged, one eyed, and scruffy. All of the animals shared one trait in common, they were ready for their furever homes. Unfortunately, with no creature catching our attention to melt our hearts and to start the adoption application, we headed back towards the door.
Rain pounded the parking lot, hitting so hard that the water bounced up from the ground as though it was falling upside down. That’s a definite no, I thought, and redirected our tour towards a stack of cages behind a glass wall filled with scroungy cats.
And there in the bottom corner of the stack was the heart-melter, the animal just waiting to join our family, the pet we never knew we needed, a huge, white guinea pig.
“Excuse me,” I asked an older woman with a volunteer tag around her neck. “Could you help us with this guinea pig?”
“We have guinea pigs?” she drawled in the typical, slow Tennessee accent.
Much to her surprise, she followed where Mr. Baby’s finger pointed and peered through the glass.
“Well, look there, it is a guinea pig. Go sit in one of the viewing rooms and I’ll bring him into see you.”
What a serendipitous day this was shaping up to be, we were going to be guinea pig owners. My mind leapt to the supplies that the animal would need and where it would sleep, followed by a concern with how my husband would feel about our new roommate.
“We have to be gentle with the guinea pig, ok?” I coached Mr. Baby while we waited for the volunteer.
He didn’t agree or disagree, rather, he just looked inside of my purse and started pawing through it in search of snacks.
Mr. Baby was thrilled when the guinea pig was delivered. He squealed in the animal’s face and poked its nose, then he raised both hands in a maneuver that he usually reserved to smash oranges. I scooped the terrified creature up into my hands, and in that instant, I knew he wasn’t ready for a guinea pig.
Thou Shalt Not Nap
The noise was unbearable, worse than nails on a chalkboard or the chirping of a dying smoke alarm.
Each time I started to relax, the houseguest took in another mouthful of air with a frighteningly loud, snorting snore.
It equally startled my soul and unborn child; I felt both curl up and hide within me, waiting for a more peaceful time to unfurl.
My nap was over before it began as was the houseguest’s welcome.
Baby Love and Rejection
Time and time again, the cat hurts the only person who really likes her. Sure, her solo admirer sometimes pets her a little too hard, and one time he fell over on top of her in his effort to show his undying love. He means well, but she is unforgiving and damaged and persists in hissing and running from him.
Yesterday, the sweet boy was in the living room, behind a baby gate when the cat decided to taunt him from the other side. I watched from a beanbag chair nearby, feeling a false sense of security, thanks to the gate. They are safe from each other, I mused, as the cat laid down against the white, metal bars letting her full tail rest on our side of the gate. Every so often, she flicked her tail as she purred and cleaned her thick fur.
It was too much to resist, that big, juicy tail moving like a beautiful, wild creature independent from the lazy, mean cat. The boy toddled over to the gate, grabbed her tail with one hand and then reached through the bars to pet her fat tummy. In an instant, she was furious at the violation of her space, she hissed and swatted at his hand with all of the evil she could muster. There was an audible thwap as her furry paw connected with his hand.
Bad Cat 1: Baby Boy 0
She definitely set him up for a swat or worse, depending on her foul mood. Fortunately, the boy was left unharmed but confused and upset that his furry friend didn’t want to play, like ever. It was his first rejection and it hurt me to watch.
As I tried to help him understand what happened, he lost interest and turned to knock over a stack of blocks and chase his ball, already over it. Meanwhile, his poor mama was left to stew on the future when there will be real pain, rejections and undying, unrequited love and just how in the world to make it all ok.
The Poke of the Sticky Finger
The little boy sat on my lap, comparing the difference between my belly button and a button on the back of the chair. He delighted in pointing from one button to the other, over and over. Surely, he was learning something from this so I let him continue with his button business. Plus, it was too early to redirect him into something more constructive or active.
From button to button he obsessed until he missed the button on the chair, located just over my shoulder, and poked his grubby finger into my eye.
I shrieked from the surprise of having a tiny finger suddenly jammed into my eye and the actual pain of the contact. His hand was clammy and sticky from drool and who-knows-what else with a sweaty hand smell. Freshly cut grass or rain in the summer or hot cookies in the oven all have specific yet hard to describe smells, I believe the smell of a sticky, sweaty baby hand is the same. You just know when you smell it and to be honest, it’s a little gross.
My beloved son recoiled back as though bitten by a cat, an all-too-familiar experience, shocked and scared. Temporarily, he froze with finger in midair to assess the situation. Mommy would live, although likely with only one eye. A possibility which he found acceptable and continued poking at the buttons. Meanwhile, I mused over life with limited vision and at the very least the eye infection that was soon to follow.
Perhaps the thing that shocked me the most was that I wasn’t even mad at the assault on my eyeball or that I would likely wake up with my eye crusted shut and need to go to the doctor’s office for a horrible prescription eye drop that would sting with each drop. Certainly, I didn’t love what happened, but it was another day in the life of baby raising and for better or worse, I was in it for the long haul. There was no room for anger in our busy schedule of playing, napping, eating and repeating.
Snailed It.
We sit at the table staring at each other; me sipping coffee from a mug, the boy drinking from a sippy cup of milk. He finished his bowl of oatmeal fruit mush in lightning speed and wears the remnants on his sleeve, his idea of a more convenient napkin than anything I can provide.
Don’t worry, mama, he says with his eyes as he wipes his mouth again. I’ve got this handled.
Drool and milk escape the clumsy swipe of his sleeve and dribble from his chin into the cotton collar of his freshly laundered shirt. One of the many benefits of being his caretaker is dressing him however I like, and usually, it is in something that makes me laugh. Today, his shirt was a cute little blue number with a smiling snail on it that declared, “Snailed It!”
The boy holds the plastic cup up to his forehead in a wishful attempt to become more unicorn-like, turns it upside down, and then moves it to the top of his head with a grin.
“Are you done?” I ask as the last drops of milk drip onto his recently trimmed hair and down his forehead.
I answer my own question, as I do through most of the day, “Yes, you are done,” and confiscate the cup in a quick grab that results in an unhappy squeal and a glare that speaks for itself.
“Did that fill up your tummy?” I ask, hoping to avoid the tears and screaming that could come post-squeal.
Instead of a blank stare, tears or yelling, he takes one hand and pats his chubby belly with a full five-toothed smile.
I gasp, I didn’t teach him that.
“Where is your tummy?”
I am curious if he will repeat his actions and gasp again when he takes both hands and pats his chubby belly like a happy Buddha.
“That’s right, but who taught you that?” I pepper him with questions that make him laugh and hold his arms up for release from his chair.
“Did Daddy teach you that?” my questions fall on deaf ears.
The boy is ready to leave the table and resume playing with his jumble of cars and trucks in the makeshift miniature parking lot of the living room and gives me no further information.
Later, after his father, grandparents and anyone else I can think of deny all knowledge of the tummy trick, I have to accept that that the boy is a sponge who is constantly observing and synthesizing input. He is becoming his own person which astounds my simple brain and humbles my heart.
Every single day I am amazed by this little person, but on this day, he really snailed it.
Fluffhead
Baby boy was becoming unrecognizable under a shaggy mop of fluffy hair. Light brown wisps covered his ears and dipped into his eyes. Hair fell onto his neck and swooped out into bizarre cowlicks that will plague him for the rest of his life. Naturally, I thought it was adorable, while others repeated the same annoying comment, “That boy needs a haircut.”
However, it wasn’t until his vision started to be affected that I awoke to the reality that he looked like a ragamuffin, a generally clean but unkept child. I saw him squinting, instead of tossing his hair to the side, as he tried to see the world through a veil of brown. He was willing to accept the situation, limited sight and all. Not knowing enough to try to change things, he just tried to make the best of it by peering through his locks like looking through a knothole in a fence to find out the grass really was greener on the other side. Suddenly, I felt like an irresponsible parent (enter a good amount of mom guilt) for allowing my baby to become a shaggy, visually impaired version of his former self.
I considered taking him to the hairdresser, but the fear of an inexperienced or impatient stylist poking one of his eyes out or snipping off the tip of his ear threw me into a paralyzed state of panic, and on his hair grew.
He doesn’t sit still for more than a few seconds before wriggling away unless Puffs are involved, then he transforms into a calm and patient boy, as long as there is a steady delivery of Puffs to his mouth. Puffs, for the uninformed reader, are just that, puffs of flavored cereal sized bites that quickly dissolve in the mouth or hand, wherever there might be a few drops of moisture.
Shortly after I realized what I was doing to my baby by doing nothing at all, I took the tiny bull by the horns and decided to trim his hair with a pair of dull kitchen scissors, a bad idea, and the aid of Puffs, good idea.
It ended with screaming and a perfectly straight set of bangs over half of his forehead. As for the other half, let’s just say it didn’t make the cut. The swoops were snipped off as quickly and carefully as possible and his ears and neck became visible once more. Perhaps best of all, neither eye was gouged and not a single drop of blood was shed. Yet, for all of my good intentions, he now looks an eensy-weensy bit crazy with modern art for a hairdo and an unhealthy fear of scissors.
I suppose he can add the experience in with a long yet-to-be written list of childhood traumas. We all have them, regardless of our parents/caregivers good, or mostly good, intentions. One of my former coworkers imparted the sage parenting wisdom before my maternity leave, “No matter what you do or don’t do, you’re going to screw them up somehow, you just don’t know how yet.”
And strangely enough, remembering her words provide comfort in this brave and still-new world of motherhood.
More, Please.
I hear metal clash onto the hard, kitchen floor and the sound of a hundred small pieces hit and scatter like a flash hail storm, fast and furious. It is a unique set of sounds that only the cat’s dish would make if it was dropped a few inches from the ground. As the cat is not in a regular practice of flipping her dish, coupled with the fact that she is watching me fold towels through sleepy eyes, the culprit is obvious.
Dropping the laundry, I run into the kitchen with my heart pounding. Stories about negligent mothers’ race through my mind as narrated by the voice of my own anxiety inducing mother.
“It only takes a second for an accident to happen,” I hear her say.
I imagine his great escape took place quickly; the latch not being secured, it was easy for him to pull himself up on the bars, flip the handle and swing out on the door to a few minutes of unchecked freedom. He had observed his environment through the bars long enough to know exactly what to do first.
Operation: Cat Food.
And there he is, the guilty party, sitting with his little legs crisscrossed in a position formerly known as Indian style, with his back to me. Fortunately, at 29 inches tall it is easy to see over the top of his shaggy head when either sitting or standing. He splashes in the water dish with one hand and spreads the kibble, steadily swelling with moisture and disintegrating, around him. It appears that he is one step away from laying back and making a cat food angel in the mess with his arms and legs, the kind we used to make as kids in the cold Indiana snow.
Hearing me approach, he looks over his shoulder and laughs, pleased with himself and newfound playthings.
“Ahem,” I clear my throat, “what are you doing, mister?” I ask and wait for a response as though it will be anything other than a long stream of dadadada.
He moves a foreign object with his tongue as he chews on something else with his gums.
“What are you eating?” my concern returning as the situation continues to evolve.
“Spit it out,” I demand and hold my hand out. “You cannot eat cat food, it isn’t meant for human babies,” I try to reason with him.
Naturally, his mouth clamps down, and sensing that he might be forced to surrender his tasty treat, he works to chew it more quickly and takes a hard swallow.
He points his chubby finger at the upturned dish and then at me; I think he wants us to share until he takes another piece and pops it into his mouth with a most naughty smile.
Clearly, babies and toddlers are not for the faint of heart.
