Breathe them and weep

This morning at around 2:45, I started to get a little anxious.
Why yes, we were up! After spending the last few days crashing by midnight (a complete waste of a luxury hotel, say I), there was some unspoken force that kept us up last night long after the babes were bedded.
It was, perhaps (or of course) the visceral memories of that exact time of this exact day, four years ago.

Four years ago.

Those words are so strange to utter, as it always feels more brutally recent than that.

So there we were, watching some James Bond movie; attracted to the cable like media-deprived moths to a spotlight. There has been a spotty -at best- wifi signal, so we have had to resort to other methods of entertainment. I was inanely interested in the movie - I say this because I never really watched many James Bond movies before. But the combination of not being able to sleep, not being able to stay awake without distraction, and having stayed at a house two doors down the beach from Pierce Brosnan a few years back when our children met on the beach in Hawaii and played...I guess this made it interesting enough to stay up until 4am to watch it.
After the satisfactory typified Bond ending (actually, way before the ending, just as three am passed), my heart was racing and my throat was tight. I remembered some little peach-colored pills that a friend had given me. "Take only half", she had said, "calms you right down."
I knew at least six people who had taken this stuff on a regular basis, so what was the big deal, right? If I can get to sleep, isn't it worth it?
I got up at 12:40 pm.
Oh yes I did.
I mean sure this was after falling asleep around 5 am, being woken up by my little rooster at 6am (and 7, 7:30, 7:52, 8:15, 8:38, 8:54, 9:19, 9:31, etc, etc ,etc...) and putting pillows over my head so I could sleep, but still. No more peach pills for me; if needed, I'll stick with my usual checking out standby of slightly too much wine.

So, this is mother's day 2008.
This is what it feels like to be a mother who has and a mother who has lost. This is what it feels like to be a mother who has lost so much - her child, her brain, her way - and has found her way back to a place in which she can breathe.
A place where less time is spent with my memory, frozen in time forever...gasping little fish-mouthed boy...I couldn't save...I deserve not this title of 'mother'....my children not deserving me for their pathetic and fearful leader...some time, but less.

More time is spent hugging the tangible children...holding them close...breathing in their little kid scent...wishing I hadn't yelled...wishing I had kissed them more today while they were awake to notice...wishing simply...that they will grow up.

Taking advantage of his articulation for the purpose of my own selfish gleeful entertainment.

Shhhh....am working on a secret project....
My samples came in the mail today.

Not only is mail delivery damn exciting on our little mountain, but it seemed like a good opportunity for learning a new word.

Always trying to improve our little guy's vocabulary. Now he can get a job at Home Depoo and hang out with the guys.

The whole two birds/one stone thing.

He was warned about the BLOGGING of this...

When HE sleeps in:

• He had a deadline; had to work all night. End of discussion.
• I get up, tell the school-aged one to get dressed.
• I go downstairs to make her breakfast.
• Bubbles joins us for breakfast after a diaper change
• Supergirl gets detangler sprayed in her hair while she eats
• Then brushes
• Then out the door
• Backpack, lunch, baby
• Strap baby into carseat for quick ride to school
• Drop off Supergirl
• Come back home, more breakfast, playing, careful to keep Bubbles from jumping on Daddy's head.
• Daddy gets up around 11:00 and
• Pisses Mama off by getting immediately in the shower (even if I have been playing for 4 hours and waiting for a shower break).

When I sleep in:

• I have to work that day; I have to teach and dance and sing for hours, (nobody cares)
• Bubbles has been chewing on me nursing since 6am, could I please get some sleeeeeeeeeeeep?
• Whining that sentiment from under the pillow may get the Daddy up, but without fail, he gets up LOUDLY and GRUMPILY,
• Yells at Supergirl for choosing the wrong outfit, the wrong length of sleeves, the wrong shoes...
• Makes the fatal error of asking her what she wants for breakfast instead of just preparing it..
• Yells at Supergirl for not telling him quickly enough what she wants to eat.
• Leaves Bubbles upstairs to jump on my head,
• Yells at Bubbles to STOP JUMPING ON MAMA'S HEAD. (not effectively)
• Daddy TAKES Supergirl to school while leaving Bubbles home upstairs with me, with the gate out of the bedroom WIDE OPEN while I am 'sleeping in'...
• And when he comes home, he does not even stop to see how the Bubbles is faring (you know, while it is his Mama's turn to 'sleep in') but instead goes directly to his office next door,
• Which is where he can be found when Mama fully wakes up and realizes that she has been (kind of) sleeping in a house that is completely unsecured and in which HER TWO YEAR OLD has been awake and completely unsupervised .
• Mama then screams about how THIS SUCKS and HE (her husband, not 2 yr old)SUCKS and HE IS SELFISH.
• And the next day, the Daddy sleeps in.
• And for the rest of the week, the Daddy sleeps in.

Which is all true.

I can Haz a gigGles

more cat pictures

Waiting.

In a daze I spend a portion of the day; hazey daze.
How can my arms ache with emptiness still when I have such a hefty boy to carry around?
How can my hands feel idle when there are noses and butts to be wiped?
Why do my tears fall when they are landing on the fuzzy head beneath my chin?
How can I dream of the boy I do not have, when the one I do sleeps pressed into me, sick and snotty and breathing heavily?
I can't wait for them to go to sleep/watch a video/go to school....so I can be alone to navigate the fog.
(go away so I can mourn my loss, my loneliness and emptiness; go away so I can mourn the child that is not you. It makes no more sense when written than when it is reality.)

The senses are overwhelmed. Everything is just a little too intense. I attribute this to the tsunami-style waves of emotions under which I am constantly ducking. Let it wash over.
One single emotion can rarely come to the surface. They all remain swirling, muddy, inaccessible.

This is not new, this sense of suspension. I am becoming more familiar with it each year.
It is not unlike the original aftermath. The months right after giving up my child to death; after handing over his still warm but lifeless body to a stranger.

Some wise soul said to me that that is how it would be. For a while. The impenetrable fog. There is no way to fight it. So I didn't. I couldn't.
Sitting amidst its swirling confusion, the damp coldness - it was easier that way. If I couldn't navigate through it, perhaps I could sit and wait for a window in which to find my way out.
I still believe this is one way to avoid killing oneself after such a loss. The true impact of such a loss is too much for anyone to process at once. It comes in doses. It comes forever.
This seems cruel, but I have come to accept it (you know, because I have so many choices about that).
The doses come in bolus form at first. Then more of a time-release thing (you never know when it will release though), and eventually I imagine (or I hope) they will come in some more predictable fashion. As they are beginning to now -near his birthday, his death day - I can see that.

So now here I sit, the poster mama for bad parenting, hating myself for wanting everyone to just go away.
Waiting for the fog to clear just a little bit, waiting to go away to the desert and soak in some hotsprings, waiting for Mofo Day to just be over, waiting for 'me' to come back.

Time Lapse Fire Drill

This morning I was helping the first graders write postcards to their families from their virtual-by-way-of-study Australian adventures, and the fire alarm went off.
I was pretty sure it was not a scheduled drill, because first of all Mrs. H usually tells the adults in the room (including me!) if there is one planned, and second, she literally jumped out of her outdated hair-do when the extremely horribly very loud alarm went off right behind the two of us.
The littles were amazing. They stopped. They quieted. They stood and walked slowly. They lined up and filed out. We all walked excitedly but in orderly fashion (sshh!! SSHHH!!!) to the nearby field.
After we were standing and sitting in a quiet and orderly line for about five minutes, we saw the principal approach the teachers, and holyshit was she pissed!
Seems one of the children on the lower campus (all grades over K-1 are on the lower campus) pulled the fire alarm. OMFG YES IT IS TRUE! It was a prank. Apparently the first time it had happened 'accidentally' in almost ten years. Have I mentioned? This is a small mountain school.

This caused quite a stir. The children wanted to know who had done such a bad bad thing! (We didn't yet know, but the perp was soon to be revealed.)
Why would they do that? (many possible answers there; we reserved comment in favor of sharing the story of 'The Boy Who Cried Wolf'.)
We talked about the reasons why that was not a good trick to play.
One child told an elaborate story about how the fire department could not get to another house where someone's birthday cake had caught on fire and everyone perished while eating flaming cake or something thereof.
Point taken.
How would the principal know which child had pulled such a brazen stunt?
The teacher explained that there was dye on the handle of the fire alarm, and when it was pulled, the dye or ink would stain the person's hand and they would not be able to wash it off.
This tripped them out!
Would it ever come off? What color was it? What would the principal do? Would it ever come off?? Would it EVER COME OFF???

Suddenly, Amelia shouted,
"QUICK! EVERYONE! Look at your hands NOW! QUICK! CHECK YOUR HANDS!!!"


(Ummm...because...you never know where you might have been for the last ten minutes.)

Art By Children

Art By Children, Installment #1.

And this begins my new weekly whenever I feel like it FEATURE of Art By Children. If you would like to join in the ABC posting, please link in the comments section.

This is a piece by Bubbles, age 2.
He calls it a sculpture.
This is from his morning impressionist phase.

Viewer Discretion Advised:

"Hippo gets friendly with Elephant who prefers Dinosaur"

What did your toddler do today?

My Baby Sleeps With a Plunger (Guy)

Bubbles doesn't sleep with anything soft or fuzzy to which he is particularly or consistently attached. Unlike his sister, who still sleeps with her beloved 'bway' (fleece homemade blankie that was a baby gift for her), Bubbles' demands for bedtime companions are spontaneous. He will occasionally insist that his stuffed dinosaur accompany him to bed, or a special book that he likes.

That is, until Plunger Guy was discovered.

Plunger Guy was given to us by the septic/ rooter guy who became way too familiar with our personal shit waste material over the course of three visits in just two months. We live in the mountains, the system is ooooold. Let's leave it at that for now, shall we?

So on the third visit, Rooter Man was becoming friendly with Bubbles, who would enthusiastically go out to greet him based solely on the fact that he drove a large and noisy truck. Before he left, he handed Bubbles the funniest promotional gift-slash-'action figure'-slash-doll I have ever seen. And Bubbles fell in love with him.

Plunger Guy was quickly introduced to the cast of characters who would either become his best friends or his worst demise (dinosaurs are fickle that way, you know), and although at first he was attacked repeatedly by T-Rex and hippo, he ascended to alpha-toy at record speed.

Plunger Guy must go everywhere with us, a tricky and disastrous situation, as peril of losing him lurks within each outing. Plunger Guy has to go in the tub, eat dinner, and now must also sleep with Bubbles.

Which wouldn't be so bad, except for the fact that Plunger Guy is a little bit creepy. Besides the fact that he is holding a plunger and grinning smugly, he is winking.

Yes, winking.

I present to you, Plunger Guy:

What? Too blurry? Well, I told you it was hard to get him away from Bubbles. Okay, let me go yank it out of his hand for a second. Plug your ears.

Better?

See? The winking? Disturbing, yes?

For the record, when PG first joined our family, I tried to call him Toilet Guy. But my husband has a problem with reality scatology and all things poop-related (such as, poop goes in there) and he first cringed and then, (when I didn't get the far too subtle message) he loudly protested about calling him Toilet Guy. So I sadly demoted the doll to Plunger Guy, rejecting Dh's (lame) suggestion of 'Rooter Man' (booooring).

I was describing both this argument and the doll to my curious and insightful brother, the one who thinks outside the box (you know who you are), and he (I suppose out of free-association more than anything else) suggested that I tell dh that we should call him 'Ass-r*pe Guy'. I said something like, "Ummm, no." But it was asstastically good for a laugh.

Especially the next morning, when the first *ping* I got in G-chat was asking me how Ass-r*pe Guy had slept that night.

(It was funny IRL.)

Also for the record, I do know how to spell 'Ass-r*pe' correctly. But I am not that much of a google whore.

The Funniest Thing You Have Seen Today

Would love to detail my recent drinking adventures, but am still drunk have had to maintain bouts of parenting in-between.
(heh)
Am typing every chance I get. And I end up with precisely approximately one point three minutes at a time and a lot of dreck in the end.
But I have some great stories! I had high hopes for sharing them all this weekend.



While I work on that, here is the best one:

Care to caption that? Offers being taken.

PLUGGED IN!

I have been thinking about this a lot.

I read to my children far too much; it is time they learned to read their own damn books.
I clean my childrens' room far too much; this week they will be cleaning their own room every day.
I play with my children. They need to learn to use their imaginations!
I cook for my children. They are lazy little royalty who barely know how to scramble their own eggs. This week I will put fresh batteries in the smoke detector and hand them my breakfast menu request.
I drive them everywere. Birthday parties, lessons, the beach, the park, the store, school, etc. What a crock! They don't even help pay for the gas!
I wipe their butts. Don't get me started.
I hear endless hours of whining for doling out the wrong (gasp!) color bowl, the wrong flavor lollipop, the wrong texture of sandwich.
When the complaining begins, I remind them what a blog is for and why they should leave mama alone before she locks them in a box.

I spend so much time with my children, that I fear someday they will be all grown up and I will realize that I spent hardly any time at all on the computer, googling how to keep them alive and happy.

Also, my children want so much attention from me, that I have encouraged them to start their own blogs. Once they do this and are on their own computers blogging all of the time, they will realize that I give them way too much attention and they will beg me to leave them alone so they can blog.



We are not followers.