Family Portrait

I used to wake up at five a.m. and write my guts out. This morning I woke up at five a.m. and itched to write, so here I am. The cursor is doing that blinking thing and there's an awful lot of white space to fill.

Crap, I'll just jump right in knowing it's not going to be perfect, and I don't have time to make it perfect, because my job and my family take all my time. That and sleeping and reading Game of Thrones and Quiet: The Power of Introverts in a World That Can't Stop Talking.

The Kid is five years old now, going on six. He is not laid back. He is high strung. Change is hard for him. He has reddish-brown hair and freckles and bruises all over his legs because he randomly falls down. It's like watching the out takes at the end of the movie, the blooper roll, where the actor is standing there one minute and falls on his back the next, and the crew laughs. The Old Man and I are laughing all the time. The Kid asks insightful questions like, "Who is the boss in this house?" and "When do I get root beer with dinner? Is there a system, or are you just saying no tonight for no reason?"

I gotta say too that I totally deserve how happy he makes me. I really do. He and I go to the movies together and watch The Avengers and Cars 2. I love the movies because all the truths are universal and black and white and there's heroes and villians and no regular people who just screw up because they're human. There's no giving anyone the benefit of the doubt in movies - you might as well just shoot them with a laser and get it over with.

I used to call her The Baby, but she is now two years old. I'll call her Chica I suppose until a better term pops up. Remember from the story two years ago how I looked in her little baby one day old eyes and saw that she totally forgave me for being a messy human who desperately needed someone to give her the benefit of the doubt. Chica is incredible. She is assertive. She is wickedly funny. She is laid back. When I go to work and she is sitting on The Old Man's lap, watching Little Einsteins, she lazily waves goodbye to me with one hand, kind of a ghetto sideways wave and says "Bye Mom," never taking her eyes off Leo. I think, in fact, that she has a crush on Leo, the little red-headed ringleader, from Little Einsteins. She's kind of obsessed. She's also got the reddish-brown hair, but no freckles yet on her olive skin. She has something against shoes and socks. Her favorite outfit is a black t-shirt and a hot pink taffeta skirt fringed in bright yellow. I think she rocks.

The Old Man is still my better half, and I have to say that I absolutely deserve him too. He is patient and gives messy humans the benefit of the doubt as a default of his personality. He's not a morning person but he jumps out of bed to sit with Chica and let her play with his fingernails as she drinks juice from her sippy cup and watches cartoons. He comes home from work Sunday afternoons and sprawls on the living room floor to take a nap and lets The Kid and Chica sit on his back like a sofa. Every once in a while Chica swats at his head to make sure he's really not sleeping. I've given up suggesting he take a nap upstairs because I realized he likes the torture. The Kid has two loose teeth, so The Old Man spent yesterday morning at the bank getting shiny new one dollar coins so we can play tooth fairy the correct way. I was just going to give The Kid some nickels from the change jar. See? My better half.

There's a little pocket of magic where I live, and I'm probably the lynchpin of it all maybe, or maybe I'm just lucky. When I come home from work the first thing I do is take off my underwear because it's constricting, and then change into shorts and a t-shirt, and I get to play dodgeball and have water fights.

All I will say about work is that it's annoying right now and takes up way too much of my time, but one thing about having this particular family is that they force me to remember what is real, and what is just fluff.

Bedtime

dark, quiet, peaceful
i watched them
my four year old
putting my baby to sleep
they held hands
he smiled

a neon sign was above their heads
green and pink
blinking the message
"Duh, this is life's most important thing. Right here. Duh."
with a neon arrow pointing down
to my kids

she reached up to his nose
hooked a finger in his nostril
and yanked
he said ouch
she smiled
giggled a sleepy laugh
they're fighting already

Animal Cruelty

When it looks hopeless
'cause my back's in screaming pain
and I'm running on three hours of sleep
and The Baby's screaming
and The Kid's whining
and the neighborhood dogs bark

little shits,
all I can imagine is
beatiful
quiet
dead
dogs
strewn about the neighborhood

it takes the Trite Cake
when I say
that what fixes it all
is reading to The Kid
about how the little boy
shot the Nightmare In His Closet
and yelled at it to stop crying
and dragged it to bed with him
to shut it up.

And The Kid's tears clear up
and he smiles.

That's all it takes
to save the neighborhood dogs
from a silenced .22.

How To Wrestle a Baby

I was told that with a baby and a toddler and a full-time job I would be in "survival-mode" for the first year, at least. I shouldn't expect to get much accomplished at work, or at home for that matter.

The Happiest Baby on the Block author Dr. Karp says that babies are increasingly fussy from age two weeks to six weeks, and then the crying spells go away by three months. Today is Baby Girl's 6 week birthday. Ever heard sharp nails on a chalkboard, a cat mating, an emergency alert system over the T.V? A wailing baby is like all those in one sound. It's like someone has a screwdriver and is tightening my nerves with each cry, tighter, tighter, until every muscle is clenched.

I'm generally a positive person. I must admit I want to slip into survival mode around 7:00 pm, when I'm trying to calm my three year old to get him to bed at the peak of the baby wailing hours.

The thing about survival mode is that it's all about defense, about cutting everything else out - all joy, laughter, hobbies, thoughts - and lowering my head and plowing through. It's about doing the bare minimum just to make it to the end. That's not my style. I'm an overachiever. Plus, I have The Old Man. It's two against two now, but we're bigger than they are. We go on the offense. For everything.

For a crying baby, we do the five "S's" from Dr. Karp: Swaddling, Shushing, Stomach, Sucking, Swinging. Roll that baby up tight, swing her up and down on her stomach, pop a pacifier in there. She's out like a light. Bring it.

Warfare with a three year old is trickier. He could be a great lawyer. He's great with the questions and stories, also known as procrastination, right around bedtime. Even more powerful now that The Old Man and I can't tag-team him. It's verbal sparring.

Brush your teeth. My favorite color is blue. Brush your teeth. Oh really, you saw a red-kneed tarantula at school yesterday? Fascinating. Brush your teeth. Thank you for saying my shirt is pretty. That's nice of you. Brush your teeth.

We haven't lost a battle yet, though right before bed it often feels hopeless. The Old Man and I even played poker and made out a little - with tongue - the other night. We managed to stay awake until eleven o'clock.

In the words of the Captain of the Axiom from Wall-E, "I don't want to survive. I want to live."

Level Playing Field: A Pantoum

every day always I am too little
except when Dad makes snowballs
wet snow and wood chips - our battleground -
under the slides and swingsets

except when Dad makes snowballs
the smalls do what the bigs say
under the slides and swingsets
in snowball fights I get to kill Dad dead

the smalls do what the bigs say
we have to follow the rules
in snowball fights I get to kill Dad dead
and he rolls and falls and screams and I pounce

we have to follow the rules
no rules in war
and he rolls and falls and screams and I pounce
he's the small and I'm the big

no rules in war
wet snow and wood chips - our battleground -
he's the small and i'm the big
every day always I am too little

Scrapbooking is good???

This may be the only time I ever say anything nice about scrapbooking.

We are cleaning and reorganizing to fit the next little monkey in the house, and I had the idea that maybe I could rip some pictures out of photo albums, put them in envelopes, and save some space.

But I found the scrapbook - a very amateur attempt unlike those scrapbooker gurus I know - I made of The Kid's first six months. I'm preggers so I'm predisposed to tears anyway, but by the end of the album I was crying.

The page that sent me over the edge:

Four photos. The Old Man holds The Baby Kid in each. The Old Man looks tired, depressed. I had written "Daddy Loves You!!" in the middle. With two exclamation points. As if by pasting evidence that The Old Man held The Kid during this time, and by writing that line, I could make it true.

Of course The Old Man loves The Kid. But for the first year, The Old Man was grumpy, withdrawn. Not happy. I'm desperate that this pattern isn't repeated with the new one. I don't have the emotional armory to prop The Old Man up, plus The Kid, plus the New One. I want The Old Man to be happy with me, to show his excitement. I don't want to wait a year for The Old Man to be happy again.

Being the take-charge kind of gal I am, I've already talked a lot to The Old Man about this. He is aware of what might happen, and is right there along with me, going to try everything to make sure it doesn't happen again.

Needless to say, I couldn't rip a single picture out of anywhere. Maybe I'll make space by giving my old ballet slippers and karate uniforms to charity...

Stop Cavorting!!!!

My box-like maternity clothes make me look like a box. And my sweater is depositing linty-lintiness all over my brown pants.

And The Kid woke up at 5:00 am. Came downstairs after my shower and saw him standing completely naked in the kitchen (it is 5 degrees outside). The Old Man has been working long hours at night and was still sleeping. The Kid wanted to eat his oatmeal naked. I never thought I would have to say things like "You'll freeze your butt off if you eat your oatmeal naked!" I wrestled him into his clothes while the car was warming up and got out the door 10 minutes late.

This is one of those days where if I were a wolf I would have my teeth bared and pick up my young by the scruff of their necks and throw them back in the den. "Stop cavorting at 5:00 am. Enough with the cavorting!!"

Demon Spawn

"Mommy," he says,
and smiles with his perfect
three-year-old teeth.
His breath smells like apples.

While he has me captured
arrested
prisoner of his sweet
apple breath

He sticks his thumb
up my nose
and cackles
like demon spawn.

Mountain Drive

Went for a drive with The Kid to Rocky Mountain National Park today. Admission was free because they're trying to boost local tourism. Aside from a screaming tantrum on Trail Ridge Road that scared the hell out of the marmots, we had a pleasant time. The Old Man works weekends, so he didn't come.

This is the view of Long's Peak from Highway 7, very close to my old district, where I used to work when I was a game warden. It reminded me how much fun it was to work outside half the time, and how much I miss the freedom of driving around in the mountains.

Here's Long's Peak. I heard from a crazy friend who hiked it that you have to start the hike at 2:00 or 3:00 am just to finish before the thunderstorms hit.

The last time I drove from Allenspark to Lyons I was in my work truck, pregnant. I'd have had my

shotgun

rifle

ticket book

statute books

zip ties

tool box

seizure tags

extra five gallons of gas

ATV ramps and

a winch.

I was probably coming home from a bear call. It might have been one of those nights when I was exhausted and almost falling asleep at the wheel. I was probably wondering how I would have a baby and be a game warden at the same time.

Driving through the mountains today reminded me of who I am, how hard I worked for my career goals, and made me miss the rather kick-ass wildlife law enforcement career.

The Kid in his carseat talked to himself about

excavators

big mountains

go that way now

and always about

Going On Bear Hunts.

Items littered the backseat in a radius around The Kid:

wet little socks soaked from the river

muddy shoes

crumbs from a bacon egg and cheese McMuffin

empty water bottles

inside out sweater

a pink sippy cup with tooth grooves on the lid

crumbs from Gold Fish Crackers and

a small blue blanket with gnawed edges.

I wouldn't trade the toddler gear for all the game warden gear in the world.