A King Without His Crown

We stood outside, watching our toddler race down the hill, trip and roll forward through the grass. The boy sat up with a confused look at ending up on the ground. Laughter burst from both of us, unstoppable and refreshing, on an otherwise bleak day.

Suddenly, Daddy Longlegs gasped and put his hand to his mouth.

Instinctively, I looked to Little Legs, happily rolling on his back in the grass, ensuring another complete outfit change. Certain that the boy was safe, I looked in question at his father.

“What is it?” I asked.

“My tooth, something is wrong with it. It’s actually my crown,” he mumbled.

I stood up on tiptoes to peer uninvited into his mouth. Since having my boys, there is nothing about the human body that bothers me, except for blood. The sight of it makes me woozy.

“I think it is loose.”

“Let me see,” I said.

He pulled his lip back like he was caught by a fishhook and wiggled the tooth in question with his tongue.

It was not only loose; it was no longer connected to anything in his mouth. A free-floating bit of resin impersonating Daddy Longlegs’ tooth came off onto his tongue.

“Oh God,” I said feeling queasy.

“It is bad?”

“Well, as you may already know, the crown is no longer connected to your tooth nub and you are going to swallow that very expensive crown if you don’t take it out and store it until you can get to the dentist.”

Daddy Longlegs thought about this information with a closed mouth to keep his little treasure in place.

“Do you know what the dentist who put this in told me to do if it came off?” he asked.

I felt concerned that the dentist gave him a back-up plan for the crown and wondered about the credentials of this so-called dentist.

“He told me to get some superglue and stick it right back in place.”

It was my turn to gasp.

The horror.

Then, instead of calling the so-called dentist for an emergency appointment, he situated his crown next to the bathroom sink, where it remains.

“It is where people keep their teeth,” he explained.

Or in this case, his tooth. We are in Tennessee, after all. 

Bad Pumpkin Man

It was time for the pumpkins to move out. There was already too much clutter with the endless Matchbox cars, blocks, train-tracks and bath toys that escaped the tub only to travel from room to room in Little Legs’ hands.

“We can feed the pumpkins to the deer,” I tried to convince Little Legs.

Securing his buy-in was essential to the plan.  

He had a complicated relationship with the pumpkins. He was happy to feed the deer, but less than thrilled to give up his art project which featured his finger painting in his favorite colors.   

“The animals will love the pumpkins, especially the one you decorated,” I continued to encourage him.

While he remained suspicious, he acquiesced to carry the smaller pumpkin to the woods outside of our house until he was tired.

“Drop,” he narrated as he released the orange weight to the ground with a thud.

“Perfect, now where should we leave this big one?”

He kept scaling the rocky platforms that edged the woods, higher and higher.

Little Legs stopped and royally surveyed the land, and his mother, below him.

“Here?” I asked.

He nodded and decreed with a pointed finger, “Deer eat.”

Two word phrases were still the beautiful sounds of fresh language development. I felt proud of the tiny conqueror as I dropped the pumpkin which landed with a heavier and more satisfying thud.

Together, we stared at the ball of orange, cushioned in a tangle of brown weeds. I briefly wondered how the deer would access the scrumptious flesh and seeds inside the hard shell when Daddy Longlegs joined us.

Aware of our mission and the missing step, he offered, “Let me help.”

He raised the pumpkin up over his head and smashed it down to the ground.

“Now the deer can get to it.”

Tears streamed down Little Legs’ cheeks as he let out a wail and cried, “Bwoke.”

He shuffled closer to the pumpkin, split into three pieces, revealing the juicy insides.

“Cwack.”

I tried to stop the laughter that bubbled up and out of my mouth and held my arms out to the boy.

“Oh, that bad pumpkin man.”   

Framed

We pulled away from the curb with Baby Brother napping in back and Little Legs begging for a snack.

“Bar? Coo? Nana?”

(Translation for the lay person. I would like a fruit and grain bar, a cookie or a banana.)  

It was a devastating blow for the child to learn that we did not have any of these things in the car. To be clear, it was meant to be a quick trip to pick up a picture that was just framed. And the boy was not starving, by any means.  

With Daddy Longlegs at the helm steering us towards home, he asked, “How did it turn out?”

“Oh, it looks great, but you won’t be happy,” I explained.

“What do you mean?” Daddy Longlegs took the bait.

“Well, I think they did it backwards. The matting might be on the wrong side.”

I dug into my purse so Daddy Longlegs wouldn’t see my laughing face.

“I couldn’t bear to break it to Brenda. She was so proud of her work.”

“Brenda? Who is Brenda? Do I need to turn around and go back?”

“You might, but not right now, obviously.”

Baby Brother woke up and started making the sweet wah, wah, wah noises that usually led to full on squalling within a few minutes, while Little Legs kicked at the back of Daddy Longlegs’ seat, chanting demands for various snacks.

“Brenda showed me another project that she just finished so I know she worked hard on this one.”

It was a hand drawn, black and white, cross-eyed dog that stared out in two different directions from an off-centered picture on the wall.  She pointed it out after she found my order, tucked away in a stack of other pictures wrapped in brown paper.

“That’s one of mine, too,” she said proudly through her mask.   

“You did a fine job.”

I nodded at the picture on the wall with my eyes and then looked back down at the picture on the counter.

“Thanks, Brenda.”  

And she really did a fine job, but I was not going to let Daddy Longlegs know that until we got home.

It was my way of keeping him on his toes, as though the boys didn’t do it enough. This was our relationship after two babies.

Exciting, glamorous, and sexy.

 

Two Ships

The couple stood in the kitchen, meeting for the first moment of synchronized quiet since they rolled out of bed. For the past few weeks, they had been like two ships passing in the night as they tag-teamed the needs of their newborn and toddler. The time they spent together was by default, in trips to the store or on the couch at night.

How was it possible to be in the same house and not manage to bump into one another until mid-afternoon? They were too tired to think too much on it and leaned against one another for literal support. They were both so tired from the night-long activities of their newborn son that if one moved too quickly, the other was sure to collapse. It was a very precarious situation.

Baby seats and wipes and swaddles were scattered through the house, along with all of the toys and other random things that were pulled out from closets and cupboards, carried around and then abandoned in the middle of the floor by the toddler. The toddler’s latest acquisition was a bottle of red finger paint that he had been struggling to open for most of the morning. Thankfully, he lacked the grip strength, for now, but it was only a dreaded matter of time before he was finger painting the house.

The couple was resigned to the chaos, too tired to fight back the wave of trains, books, pacifiers and matchbox cars that crept into every room and hallway, while he worked a full-time job and she tried to keep the boys happy and healthy, alive was more like it, most of the time.

Somehow, through the haze of their exhaustion, they managed to find each other.

They looked at one another and laughed. Delirious? Maybe, but words were not needed in that moment. They leaned forward to kiss, when suddenly, a Tonka trunk was launched into the air and landed squarely on the woman’s bare foot. It hit with a crash of metal and plastic connecting with skin and bone and tile, courtesy of the toddler who trailed after his mother into the kitchen, hopeful for a snack.

And the two ships separated, blown apart by a fuzz-headed whirlwind.

The baby started to cry, as if on cue, and the fuzz-headed whirlwind demanded to be picked up. The ships continued on their way and sailed off in opposite directions until their next chance meeting on a clear day of perfect circumstances.