'Tis himself

Sometimes I look over and I see my husband for who he is. I mean I really give him a long look-see and have a long think about that man.  It's easy to lose focus on the particulars as we're whirling on this carousel of snack packing and stuffed monkey fetching, pirouetting around the same square footage of floor space all day. I will be the first to tell you that I never thought I would get so caught up in this madness, so much that I get to the end of the day and I hear Loverpants swishing mouthwash in the bathroom and I think, Did I look him in the eye today?  Or did we carry on like comic book characters, our thoughts pinned to the air in thought bubbles, as we bent over and picked rattles off the floor and packed a school lunch for the girl grabbing one of our knees and asking for another temporary tattoo...

When I take a long look at my husband, I see glints of John 1.0, the college dude with the Nalgene carabinered to his adidas pants, walking his inimitable slow jaunt, headed somewhere with purpose but in no hurry to get there.  I hear his latenight laughter or his hoarse senior RA yell at his freshmen residents.  I can smell the faint scent of chlorine on his hoodie and the ample plate of fries he will eat at lunch in Brooks Dining Hall.

I have not forgotten who he was and moreover I have not forgotten who we were, but these days I have to work to remember that we are more than co-pilots.  We have history.  We used to eat whole disgusting trays of Country Fair nachos at 2 a.m. and walk up a brisk 1/2 mile hill laughing the entire way.  Now we say things like, "Wow, that's a medium tinkle!" and we wish we had lo-jack for Blue Eyed Baby who pulls more disappearing acts before bedtime than Houdini.

*** Sitting across from Baby Girl this afternoon at Mickey D's, she eating a small fries, drinking a berry smoothie. Little Man asleep in the stroller.

"Where's John?" asks Baby Girl.  {She bandies about his first name because she knows it.}

"At work."

"Oh."

"Do you know what Daddy's job is?"

"No."

"He's a therapist."

"Why?"

"Well, that's just what he does.  He helps people...

...

...Do you know what job you want when you grow up?"

"I'm going to become a daddy," she said.

Kid you not.

Mini Van/Mega Fun

I've had several friends purchase mini-vans over the few months and with every purchase came a decree. E-mails circulated with subject lines that rang of "The Swagger Wagon in our driveway? I don't know anything about it." I expect more of these e-mails in the years to come. It's just the chapter they're writing right now, wee little mouths and car seat totals expanding incrementally. My friends have come to grips with what this says about them, but I've only awakened to it all...

Because when you drive a mini-van, when you purchase or lease an honest to goodness space-pod on four wheels, you are reluctantly saying I SURRENDER. I surrender to the fact that what I transport is more important than my vanity. You might also be saying I can no longer masquerade as anything else. I can be a businessperson, a postal worker, a Jenny Craig model, a balloon animal artist, a diamond miner, or a carney. But first and foremost, I drive a mini-van. Orange slices and juiceboxes and whole weekends on the soccer sidelines? Yo. That's MY m.o.

I'm not there yet. But I am comfortable with a small orchard of raisins on the floor of my vehicle, because you can't fight every battle and a box of the Sun-Maid goodness is the perfect peace offering. And my li'l SUV is bigger than my kitchen at home, anyways, so it feels appropos.

***

Baby Girl drew this picture of me. Do you see the resemblance? Uncanny, really....

4 month marker

Four months marked the time in which Baby Girl ceased observing the nightly witching hour from 7-9 p.m. "Okay, you bumbling parents," said she, "You seem to have suffered enough. I will decline your bribes of hot pink Vespas, but will concede to this early evening siesta of which you speak so highly." Imagine the ecstasy that Loverpants and I enjoyed as newbie parents. Watching the sleeping cherub doze while we ate macaroni dinner that had not taken on the consistency of something you would buy in the $.25 vending machine at KMart, but which was still PIPING HOT! In a queer twist of fate, Little Man, who has, up until now, slept in intervals of 5 and 6 hours at night, has passed the 4 month mark and has decreed that he will now wake up every 2-3 hours with a voracious hunger and a diaper that feels like a frat boy's wifebeater after a day of sand volleyball in the sun. This has resulted in his mother being so beatdown that even the magic of Mary Kay cosmetics cannot touch these puffy undereye bags full of soot and ash. Seriously.

But who am I, this blithe, whiny parent? I'm only a combined total of 33 months deep into the throes of parenthood. What about in twelve years when my kids bring home friends that ask why our house is so small, and what it's like to have a Chinese dad. What about when my kids give me their essays to proofread and I write whole new essays in the margin because I am my father's daughter? And then the alliance of Little Man/Baby Girl will inevitably join forces with Lovey Loverpants -- who will still look like he is in undergrad when both of our children are taking driver's ed -- and the triumvirate will spend whole weekends doing awesome things that I am not invited to do, because I have to take the mini-van for a tune-up and probably re-write their essays on Great British Imperialism for which they will resent me, wholeheartedly.

Yeah, so anyway, did I tell you that while my children are still portable and not full of vitriol toward me, we went to an awesome farm with splendid pumpkins and playgrounds and possibly CIDER DONUTS???