"A beautiful one"

William is going to have some ice cream. I ask if he wants it in his new wooden bowl, like his macaroni and cheese. (I know starch and cheese, artificial flavors and dairy fat...not exactly my best dinner). 'I wan it in a cup' Ah, a cup. I LOVE to eat ice cream out of a coffee cup, so I'm all over this. I show him his new and adorably pint sized mug with a bunny head on it and he laughs "Nooooo...A BEAUTIFUL one!" A beautiful one? I show him all sorts of lovely cup and bowl options, from Japanese sauce bowls to cut glass candy dishes, but he still laughs back at me and demands a more beautiful cup, until finally, I offer up our most beautiful of all beautiful cups:

All I can say is - Thank you Target Halloween Clearance Table!

mmm mmm toes

toaster unattended

There was a fire in our neighborhood last week. A woman died, and her dog died. There were five helicopters hovering over our house but we didn't know what for. Every once in a while they turned on the spotlights and I thought they were looking for someone. I rushed through the house making sure everything was locked and turned on the lights in the back yard. It always makes me nervous to do that. Our living area is all big sliding windows and there is a part of me who expects to see someone lurking out in the yard, waiting. It wasn't until the 11:00 news that we saw the fire. I've been afraid of a house fire since I could see the pilot light of our wall heater from my childhood bed. I was afraid that if I went to sleep it would flare up and fire would consume the house. Thankfully this fear is not always lurking there on the surface like my stranger in the yard. The night of the neighborhood fire I couldn't sleep. I kept running possible escape plans through my head. Jacob sleeps next to us so we can just grab him. Do we stuff the cat in a pillow case or let him run for himself? One of us may have to grab the dog; she will be scared. William's room is next to ours, but the door to it is down the hall. Both of our rooms have sliding doors to the front yard. If fire is in the hall I'd have to go out our sliding door and break his open with the garden shovel. I should put shoes by the door just in case. William would be terrified of the breaking glass and the fire. I'd scoop him up fast and explain later. We live in the hills where there is a lot of brush. If the neighborhood was on fire could we stand in the middle of the street? There is a fire station right at the bottom of the hill. They put the fire out, the one that killed the woman and the dog, in 15 minutes. This is somewhat reassuring. I almost started a kitchen fire tonight making (and forgetting that I was making) toast. This is not so reassuring.



William got new shoes this evening. He's gone up a size and a half! The shoe store has a wall of every shoe imaginable. He picked the bigger version of the exact shoes he was wearing. I want to line up all of his past and present shoes and take a picture. Today is also Jacob's 4 month birthday. He even had his well-baby appointment today. The nurse gasped and cooed over his luscious thighs and Dr. said everything is perfect - unless, of course, his mother burns down the house. eesh.

Boy Lilliam!

This morning the light was a grayish white that filters in through a lazy marine layer. We have large windows in our kitchen and living area so the house seemed filled with this cool light as William walked past one of the windows leading a Mylar balloon that has deflated to the point where it eerily hovers about two feet off of the ground and seems to breathe in reaction to a passing breeze or body. He has an interesting relationship to balloons these days, filled with both fascination and dread. The other day he was startled by the balloon as it limped above his pint-sized table and chairs. He clung to my leg peeking out from behind me until adequately convinced that it was just his balloon. “Yeah, Just Ballooon” he repeated back with a nervous giggle, and stayed away from his table. So I was surprised to see him pulling that very balloon, spooky as it may be, along by its lavender ribbon as he walked across the room and through that cold light into the den where the balloon was left out of sight to commune with the television. I was also struck with the specific-ness of the moment. It was a moment only experienced in the company of a small child and it felt all at once sweet, surreal, kind of sad, a little magical and very fleeting.

But what moment isn’t fleeting? Especially in a house with a 2 year old and a baby? Jacob rolled from his tummy to his back the other day and all I could think is that I’m not paying attention. I must not be. How can he be rolling over already? Have I missed something in the bustle of getting everyone dressed and out of the house in the morning or fed, washed and into bed at night? Jacob is so easy going (at this moment at least) that I worry that he is neglected because of it. Everything is a negotiation with William, a negotiation on the verge of elation or devastation. This is not a bad thing; I'm fascinated by the complex little person he's becoming, but it is all-encompacing and exhausting. Jacob just seems happy to be here, and like anything more is cake. He sleeps like I never imagined a baby could sleep. He eats like a champ (like a 16 pound champ) and smiles and laughs at the slightest attention. When I’m changing his top and I’m pulling his arms out of his sleeves or trying to put them in he gets all giggly and excited like it’s a fantastic game. It lights up my morning, until I worry that this poor little guys is so desperate for play that he thinks that changing his shirt is the most fun around. It’s not true. He is not neglected or lacking in play time. But I still worry. Everything is just going so fast that I feel like one of those game show contestants in that glass box with one minute to pick up as many dollars I can. There's this loud frantic music blasting and the bills are being whipped around like a tornado and it’s not even money but time or bits of my life - something like that – and I’m only going to end up with a couple sweaty handfuls, some new wrinkles and an unshakable memory of a little boy walking a fading balloon.

But before I become this crazy old lady I have to relay one of the cutest daily Q&As I have with William. When he gets out of the bath or shower I wrap him up as a towel burrito and put him up on his stool in front of the mirror. I rub him in the towel fast and tickely and ask "Who is this boy?" and he will reply with glee "BOY LILLIAM!" and we will repeat this faster and more frenzied until it turns into a crazed tickeling with William squealing "boy lilliam! boy lilliam!" And then he is dry and warm and ready for lotion and pjs. fun fun fun.

Moving over

I have officially moved - digitally that is. I still feel kind of silly about the whole thing, like I’m leaving my patent-pink Dear Diary complete with bright and shiny and useless little lock conspicuously on the kitchen counter for someone to find and read all of my very deep and meaningful thoughts and see in a flash that I am very cool and worthy of all sorts of praise and friendship. Ah, the complex workings of my pre-adolescent mind.

Anyway, there wasn't much to move. I started a journal here: http://williamloganland.spaces.live.com/ logging my late pregnancy, anticipating my first homebirth and second baby, and the first two weeks of his life. Then life kicked in, William, my two and a half year old, started learning to use the toilet, Jacob started waking up to the world and I went back to work, Jacob in tow.

Jacob is now two and a half months old and a whopping 14+ pounds and William does most of his pottying in the toilet. It’s exciting times over here for sure – My Life in Poop.

And speaking of poop...Jacob pooped all over me yesterday at work. He was on my lap, my lap that was wearing the ONLY jeans that fit me, the jeans that are sadly early maternity jeans, when I heard the tell tale gurgling and instantly felt a warmth on my thighs and heard a literal splashing onto the ground. This mythic saffron poop managed to hit both of my inner thighs, the seat of my chair, a wheel of my chair and then form a puddle that seeped into the seam between two of the concrete blocks making up the floor. And then, as I was standing hunched over, my flabby belly peeking out from under my supposed ‘post-partum tummy concealing’ nursing cami, trying frantically to wipe poop slime off of my legs with my expensive lanolin treated diaper wipes and Jacob cooed and kicked and spread poop all over his fancy designer bassinet and the puddle on the floor congealed, two very nicely dressed women close to my own age came in and asked excitedly, hands to cheeks: “Oooh...is that your baby?”

Supposing that I toss any hope of professionalism out the door at first sound of poop splashing to the ground, how do I at least retain a wee bit of human dignity in a momment like that? Having the distance of twenty four hours, I see that it was so not a big deal. Babies poop and moms clean it up - at home, at work and on the go. But at that moment in the flush of a poop panic, facing my peers who seemed so much more together, in the place where I am supposed to be together and even kind of in charge or at least pretend to be, I felt like a complete mess.

Mess or not, this is the new place to check out what's going on.