Today you’ve officially ended your first turn around the sun. Good for you! That wasn’t so hard, was it?
Every time I think of you two being “one” and your time on this rock measured in the length of years, I just choke up. I know deep down that the next twelve years will sneak by me as fast as the last twelve months did and all I’ll be able to say is, well, heck. That was fast, wasn’t it?
I wonder sometimes how it all looks from your perspective, this being born thing, this growing up business. For months you were tucked safely away inside me, then one day, BLAM! You were thrust into the blaring light of day amidst screaming and crying and adoration and elation. And then swept up in this constant rhythm of doing, first breathing, eating, pooing, sleeping, crying then cooing, smiling, laughing, rolling over, holding your bottle, sitting up, and then babbling, crawling, eating finger foods, standing, using a cup, climbing, talking. It’s all happened so fast, it seems to me. But probably not to you. Nor will the next 12 years. They’ll feel like a lifetime to you and you will do so much in those years. And it will be a breath, a blink, to me.
Guys, I really don’t even know what I’m trying to say here. All I know is that last night, nearly all day yesterday, I cried at the thought of this day. I know, I know, you’re probably wondering what’s wrong with your mother, and I don’t have a simple answer for that. Everyone tells me it’s normal for mothers to cry when their babies have a birthday. I guess it’s just part of being a mom.
I want you to know that the tears don’t mean anything bad, though. Nothing is wrong. Everything, in fact, is just as it ought to be. You’re here. We all survived the first year of your twindom, and I’m sorry but there were days during those first months of your life when I just didn’t know how we were going to make it. But we did, and here you are – growing, doing, becoming the people you were born to be, right in front of my very eyes. At least, when I can get the tears out of them I can see that. And that is as it should be. I wouldn’t, couldn’t ask for anything else.
Except maybe this.
As you continue to grow and explore this crazy rock on which we dwell, never forget that no matter what you do or who you become, I love you. You won’t always be my babies. In fact, you’re almost not that now. But you will always be the center of my everything, my hope for humanity projected forward into time.
This is likely my last pregnancy entry, as I’m going to be induced in a couple of hours.
I am feeling quite an eclectic mix of things right now. Scared, yeah. Excited too. Like I’m about to walk off a cliff, too.
I’m not focused on the pain as much as the unknowns. I know it will hurt. I have no idea how much or how I’ll tolerate it. Hopefully I’ll tolerate it just fine with a few pharmaceuticals.
My biggest fear is how the boys are doing and how’ they’ll do during the process. I pray that they tolerate it well and that their bodies are developed enough to have a good start to life.
I am very excited hold them in my arms.
I am a little sad that this very, very sacred time of carrying life inside me is coming to a close now.
Do you know how many drafts of unfinished blog posts I have sitting in my wordpress dash? Three hundred fourty eleven. Truth be told, I don’t even know, but it’s a lot. I’ve had a lot to say, but as yet have been unable to say it. Therefore, a bullets post.
Dude, you have no idea how busy I’ve been, what with the show, the holidays, a crazy amount of work to finish by year’s end and all that parenting stuff. You probably do know, but you may not know what an added layer of insanity the show was. I’m talking about being up every night until 1am or so practicing my guitar through headphones so I could possibly not suck after not playing for so long. The sleep deprivation reminded me of how much I need sleep to not just be an asshole to everyone. Up until 1am is not so bad until you remember your kids are up at 7am every day, NO MATTER WHAT, unless it’s today and they’re up at 6 for no god damned reason. And I know – we are lucky that our kids sleep like this. The question is, are we stupid for playing a show when we have no time to play our guitars?
Stupid or not, here we come.
I don’t know what that means in terms of us playing future shows. Don’t read into it.
…
Do you see that picture above? Those monsters are my sons, Doot and Bing. They will be a year old on the 22nd of this month. I cringe when I think of it. They are SO BIG (\0/).
Every day I whisper quietly into their soft hair, “Can you stay my baby just a little while longer? Please?” I try not to say it audibly most of the time because I don’t want them to grow up with a complex. I don’t *really* want a 35 year old Doot and/or Bing living with me or off me. Okay, that’s a lie. I secretly dream of having my kids live with me forever and that at least one of them will get some girl pregnant in high school so I can marvel at a grandbaby while I can still walk without a cane. I’m actually not even sure if I’m kidding about that.
That’s fucked up.
Doot has 8 teeth. Bing has 2 and a half.
They eat EVERYTHING. They are great eaters. Messy as shit though.
This post is so ”eh” right now I’m going blind.
Fuck it, I’m posting it anyway.
It was nice to see you again. Thanks for reading.
Oh, and a little PS bullet, that has nothing to do with this post.
To my friend, Ms. Snarkier Than You over at Twitarded, OH MY GOD. I’m incredulously doped up on Twilight (the book). I made Alex (Mr. Wisermom) go out and buy me New Moon last night (which I haven’t seen yet, even though some innocent yet asshatish youngster told me the ending yesterday when she saw I was reading Twilight. Doh!) because I was getting too close to the end and, ugh, how can I be sagaless? As soon as I post this, I’m closing my office door and busting out New Moon. I need some “me” time.
And then the next thing you know, WOOSH. They’re graduating from college and you’re out your retirement fund.
I should really be calling this post a placeholder. It’s holding the place for a lot of things I need to tell you about. Like, the fact that the boys turned 9 months old. And then, about 15 minutes after we ordered their 9 month old commemorative plates and matching cup set, they turned 10 months old. And then they had their first Thanksgiving and their first bath in the big bath tub together. And then I cried because they are too adorable and too sweet to believe and I’m still not home with them every day like I should be and I know, and you know, kindergarten is right around the corner and what then? What THEN?
I know there are women out there who are okay with being working mothers. I salute them. I’m just not one of them. Meaning, I am a working mother. In fact, I am the sole provider working mother right now. But I’m not okay with it, other than the fact that it is what is and I have to be okay, in the most general of terms.
I also have to tell you about the band. Oh lord, the band. That’d be my band, whose name shall not be mentioned here because I’m having interweb crossover identity issues. I went back into private practice a few months ago (I’m an LCSW therapist type for kids, yo) and I just do not want people I work with finding this blog. We’re playing in 26 days (crap pants here) and this is the first time we’ve played in 8 years, almost to the day.
Before I became a mom, and before I became a therapist, I was a musician. I was very serious about it. I never had the kind of financial or commercial success I’d hoped for, but I did make all kinds of music with all sorts of fantastic people and it made my life better. And now I’m doing it again and it feels so strange and familiar and like I’m traveling back in time but yet not. Like straddling two decades when your straddler is a little out of alignment.
And that’s just the good stuff, but that’s what I’m trying to fill my head with these days. And yours too.
Doot (on the right) said “Da da” tonight, while lovingly combing Alex’s face with his little eight month old fingers. Yes, there were tears aplenty.
Meanwhile, Bing was hurling himself backwards on hands and knees on the same futon where we all lay and tell stories and sing songs every night before bed. He’s about to launch. Real crawling, the kind that involves purposeful movement, is nigh.
And yes, finally, they are starting to sleep all night. Doot has slept from 8pm – 6:30 am three nights in a row. Bing is only waking up once a night, around 12:30am, for a small bottle, then sleeping the rest of the way. This is HUGE folks. But then, you know that.
My mom says they look like they’re ready to take on the world here. If I do my part, here’s hoping they will be.
You’ve been on the outside for seven whole months now, which is nearly as long as you were on the inside. So if you think of it, from zygote to now you’ve probably gagoopled your size several times, not to mention your cute factor. To be honest, I’d really love to credit myself with your good looks, but I don’t know how anyone could buy it. I think I’ll attribute some to your father, some to the innate bias inherent in parenting, and some to science.
Your excellent dispositions, however? All me.
Okay, maybe not ALL me. But a lot me. Or so I like to tell your family, friends and assorted admirers.
As of this week I’ve started to work a little more often, a little harder, outside of the house making some money to keep us all in diapers and dog biscuits. I won’t kid around, it’s been a strange thing to spend fewer hours a day with you. The strangest thing being that I leave you in the morning, am gone for many hours, come home for dinner and baths and you are both different. You are more here. More you. Less mommy appendage.
In some ways this breaks me. In most ways, this is simply the coolest thing I have ever seen in my life.
People who see pictures of you ask me, “Are they total opposites in their personalities?” I don’t know why they’d ask such a thing.
To that I unilaterally answer No. What you are is individuals, close in temperament to myself and your father. I am hoping that since he and I have been compatible for oh, the last 22 years or so, that the two of you will get on similarly well, and perhaps with less bickering over guitar gear, but probably not.
Which brings me to some news. Your father and I have been asked to put the band back together for a special show celebrating the mid-90s music scene in New Brunswick. We, of course, jumped at the opportunity. Why? Because we are totally f*cking INSANE. Insane for sound, insanely eager for any opportunity to have our asses kicked (as your simultaneous appearance into our lives proves) and insanely committed to raising you both to never, ever forsake your dreams or those things that make you who you are.
Mom and Dad bring the rock, 10 years ago
I have done a little too much of that lately, but it’s about to change.
Unfortunately, that means you’ll be having more babysitting. The good news? It’ll probably be your grandparents who will likely let you stay up late and eat ice cream behind our backs. Good for them.
At this point, I feel inclined to include some kind of poignant hand wringing about how fast it’s all going, how much I already miss those tiny helpless newborns you used to be, how precious every second with you is and has been, how my love for you seems to outpace the expansion of the universe and can hardly be contained by human physiology or explained in human language.
Sure, I can go there.
But my darlings, it’s 5pm Friday and instead, I think I’d like to rush home for dinner and bath time, where I can be in it instead of just describing it.
May we spend the rest of our days together more inside the good feeling than outside, remembering how good it was.
Here’s why: When I picked up my son, Bing, because he was screaming his head off like he was in the final stages of starvation, and told him, “Don’t worry, I’m going to feed you,” and then, to soothe him, held him up in front of me and made the faces and noises he loves, and he THREW UP RIGHT INTO MY OPEN MOUTH, so that I tasted baby bile and regurgitated breast milk and it spilled all down the front of my shirt, I neither reciprocated and vomited into his mouth because the little fucker deserved it, nor did I throw him across the room and shriek in revulsion because I could not “man up” and swallow. No, my first thought was, “Shit, I forgot to burp him.” Then I imagined the scene from his perspective:
Bing’s shitty morning with the dumb giant
Okay, I’m on my back in my happy place and everything is pretty chill because I’m in a fresh diaper and wearing a clean shirt (the one with the boats on it), but something is wrong—you know that feeling? The wrong feeling? Like when someone drops your head the last inch to the mattress or you just know they’re gonna walk out of the room and leave you in the crib without your ugly doll? And then I figure out what’s causing it: the electric sun is not singing. Sing, sun, sing! I command. But there’s no response. I feel empty. I don’t cry often, but man, when the sun doesn’t sing even when you’ve got a clean diaper and a boat shirt on, you’ve run out of options. Time for the waterworks. I cry for a long, long time. Really long. Forever long. Hey, I’m crying over here? What does a guy have to do to get noticed? Service is miserable in this place. I consider crapping my pants, but that’s risky because sometimes it’s not stinky enough to create the kind of urgency I need at this juncture. Finally, my giant shows up with that obsequious smile of his—like I don’t know he was hiding out in the break room arguing politics with some douchebag on the innernuts—and transports me across the room to the comfy spot in the puffy place with the blanket. He puts the artificial boob in my mouth and I drink. Nothing like expressed breast milk to put things in perspective. I decide not to fire him. I really kind of like him. Maybe I’ll start calling him that gibberish “dadadadada” name he keeps blathering at me. Also, I’m not sure how easy giants are to come by. My other, Doot, and I have two of them, a male and a female. I know, it’s extravagant, but hey, we need them. We’ve even discussed trying to get a third. Or moving somewhere with better healthcare. I sent a letter to Nana requesting asylum in her house, but I’m afraid it may have been intercepted by one of the giants. They’re pretty wily for brutes that can’t babble properly.
While I’m in the puffy place on the blanket, I see Doot in one of the giant swings. He spots me and the artificial boob. He is pissed. It’s in the rules that we get as much boobz as we want and, to be honest, I’m worried about his consumption. He gets pretty squirrely when he doesn’t get his drink—sucks his thumb and whines. Frankly, it’s pathetic. Milkaholism affects the whole family. Anyway, Doot is thirsty. I can practically hear his tummy tiger growling. So I knows he’s scared, because the tiger might get big and eat him if he does not get his own fake boob. He screams: “WHAeAyA AgAiAvAeA AmAeA AsAoAmAeA AoAfA AtAhAaAtA AwAhAaAtA AyAoAuA’ArAeA AdArAiAnAkAiAnAgA AIA AnAeAeAdA AiAtA AbAeAfAoArAeA AmAyA AtAuAmAmAyA AdAeAcAiAdAeAsA AtAoA AeAaAtA AmAeA!”
In a blatant display of favoritism, the giant responds to Doot immediately. The artificial boob is yanked from my mouth the instant it is empty (and it was only a half booble) and I am shunted into the other giant swing while Doot is rescued and given his own fake boob. To think I was starting to like that giant. I’ll say “Mother, I love you best,” and present her with a rose and a sonnet before he gets one “dadadadadadadadada” out of me.
Then, sitting in the swing—I do some of my best thinking here—it occurs to me the giant has two hands. In fact, I’m sure I recall him holding boobles for us simultaneously. I could STILL. BE. DRINKING. I start screaming. I call the giant every bad thing I can think of: taco pits, stubble face, no boobs. I scream so loud the boob giant hears and calls up from whereever she is, probably out getting her boobs refilled, to tell the dumb one to feed me. He waits until Doot passes out (pathetic) and then comes to get me. He comes over cooing and making burbling noises, eyes wide with that goofy open mouth smile. He picks me up and it makes me so mad I get ill. So I puke into his mouth and instantly I feel better.
