Category Archives: Feels like home

It might be wrong

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It’s considered poor taste in our society to gloat about success, to allow repeated surfacing of a good-luck inspired grin, to trumpet joy. We seem more comfortable when people say they’re “fine” or “hanging in there” or when they shrug off their day as better than a stick in the eye.

And collectively we seem to have a superstitious sense that tooting our happiness horn will make it all come crashing down. The spectre of the jinx often keeps us mum about satisfaction.

But I can’t hold back, dear readers. Things are just going really well over here at The Naptime Looney Bin.

You know this blog as a repository for the snarky, the sneering, the angry rant of a woman barely hanging on. My days are often bumpy: four parts joy, fourteen parts status quo, and seventy parts hanging on by the skin of my teeth.

But for this moment—this lull in the roller coaster I’ve come to accept as normal—most moments are quite pleasant.

Though it will change, Peanut is being a remarkable little creature. Kind to his brother, polite to me, reasoned in his debate, logical in his requests. Funny. Creative. Spirited. Dare I say: himself.

Though it will change, Butter is silly and adorable and interested in everything, which makes him quite fun to be around. This morning he even signed to me that pulling Mommy’s hair hurts and that biting Mommy’s face hurts. Yes, dear boy, it does. Glad all the repetition is having effect.

We’re moved into the new house and it’s amazingly wonderful. We all seem happier and calmer in more space. I’m nervous about coming school changes that spurred the change of address, but I’m not panicked as I once was. We chose the best possible public school for Peanut. And if it works, we’re set. And if it doesn’t, we have clearly identified options and changes and whatnot.

And aside from the temperamental groove we’re in, big and (semi)permanent changes are afoot. My clever and delightful nieces are home. They’ve moved 3,000 miles and are nearby. I watch them now with that casual easiness borne of the knowledge that I’ll see them next week, too. No need to memorize their faces, their voices, their interests. They’re here. That alone would have set my mood for the year. I have two perfect boys and two perfect girls and their every joy is my only real job.

.

But there’s more. I have located a babysitter, whom I will pay a bit of my retirement savings each week to gently and thoughtfully play with my boys for two hours twice a week so I can get some work done. I will edit a project this week. I will edit my book next month. I will finish my journal submission next month. I will submit it all for publication by June and move on to other projects that have been boring holes in my brain and soul for a year. The worms of creative and intellectual projects eating me alive will get to wiggle their way out.

It feels that for a moment the tide is out. I can see the waves, see the shore, see the intersection of the two. I can gaze off toward the horizon without a white-knuckled fear of the undertow. I can absorb the ebbs and flows without feeling bodily pounded by surf. I can hear and taste and feel the water and salt and air and sunshine.

I can breathe, y’all. And when everything changes and the tide comes back in, I hope I remember how to be this way. Because I’m spending my days practicing this feeling. This joy, this calm, this near-constant tiny grin. And this breath.

I wish you all moments like this. And not in tiny blips. I wish from now until any realistic milestone of your choice that you can watch the ocean and just be. Come on over and stand with me. We’ll watch together.

It’s….Velcro Baby!

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Oh, dear sweet one.

I know you’re hot. I can feel it radiating off you before I even gather you, sweaty, from your nap. I would take that fever from you and wear it for a week if I could make you feel better for an hour.

I know you’re miserable. I can tell my the way you ball up inside if your feet touch the ground for even a moment. I will keep you with me as long as you need me to, even if I have to ice my biceps later.

I know you hate medicine. I can tell the way you gag when you see the dispenser syringe thingie. I would do anything to make love and milk and good intentions fix this illness, baby, but sometimes we need to bow to the bludgeoning power of Western meds. Because I won’t let big bad germs get you.

I know you want mama. I can tell the way you haven’t left my hip for four days. If I could just zipper you on while you need that, I would. Until then we’ll use slings and arms and wraps. No, of course not backpacks. I know better than that, butterbean.

I know you’ll be too big soon to be a Velcro Baby when you’re sick. Soon I’ll be replaced by movies, then books, then someone else. When you’re sick. When you’re not sick, too.

I hope you won’t ever get sick again. I hope you won’t ever get too sick. I hope you won’t ever completely lose the need for Mama when you’re feeling crummy.

I hope I won’t ever forget the heft and heat and helplessness of Velcro Baby.

Un-invitation

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For your amusement, I present this year’s holiday gathering invitation. Feel free to appropriate.

Holiday Apathy Festival of Meh
We’re having our first annual Holiday Apathy Gathering and you’re invited. But don’t let that unnerve you.

In this season of exceedingly high expectations, pressure, and stress, we’d like to nurture an afternoon of minimal effort. So we’re offering you several hours of eating snacks from bags and talking. Or not. Your call.

We won’t cook or clean or decorate. You don’t have to bring anything or plan anything. We don’t even expect you to shower.

If you know some bagged or boxed snack that gives you joy this time of year, you can bring it. But we don’t expect you to.

If you feel the need to prepare food to share, that’s on you. We don’t expect others to share our apathy, so we’ll be pleased to have you even if you’re one of those compulsive, homemade-pie-crust making types. Do what feels right for you. Everybody else wants a piece of you this season and we just want to see you get through intact. We’ll take you as you are. Unwashed, crafty, witty, slovenly, or passionately pro-holiday.

We offer you this December afternoon as a way to say, “Hey, we’re glad you’re alive. But we don’t want to bake any more this year and we’re tired of hiding all our crap just to have people over.”

Join us in our minimal efforts, won’t you?

Sincerely,
Most of the Naptime Family.
Peanut doesn’t want anyone to come, which we honor by placing it in the official record.

Busy, busy, busy

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It’s Peanut’s half birthday, so we’re making half cupcakes (tinfoil folded into each well in the tin) and half wrapping a half present (a toy that got lost or broken gets replaced on half birthday).

And Peanut is going around writing his half name. “Pear,” it turns out, is exactly half of Peanut. Or so he has declared.

See what I learn while inventing reasons to bake and serve chocolate in a month with no holidays except a long-distance uncle’s birthday?

Georgia, Georgia, Georgia.

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While we’ve been away…
Five days in lands far from home
Two fifteen-hour travel days
Four airports, eight hours spend therein
Two tarmac hours, all in intense heat
Ninety-four degree average over the whole trip
Three packages of baked tofu and a pound of organic hummus, plus four lollipops, four brownies, one cookie, two ice creams, and seven cups of juice for Peanut
One ear infection and two new teeth for Butter
Two movie days in one week for Peanut
Twenty dearly loved relatives
One splendid B&B
Very little sleep for Mama
And absolutely no writing at naptime.

How about you?

Dearest Butter:

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Want to know how we can tell that you are loved?

Every sling and wrap that you ride in is covered in food stains. We don’t put you down, Butter bean, because you don’t like it. And we’re too selfish to put our hunger second to your comfort. That’s why the pesto on your blanket and the marinara on your Moby and the CheeseBoard crumbs on your Hotsling. You had beans and rice nestled in your neck when you were three hours old because Mama needed a burrito after 47 hours of labor but wouldn’t put you down even for a minute.

Your brother declared today that he’s tired of Mom and Dad being with you, and that he wants you to be just his. So he has plans to move to a house where it’s just the two of you. And even though he refuses to feed or clothe or wipe me, he said he will dress you and wipe your bottom and feed you candy sometimes. And, “if he looks like he’s going to die I’ll feed him something with protein, like a sandwich with almond butter.”

Mama invented something for you. Because the sounds you hear all day—chewing, typing, and occasional yelling—aren’t on the white noise machines available for purchase, she made a loop of the noises that help you sleep. She recorded tortas de aceite and blogging and cursing at your brother to play near your sleeping places. So you feel all comfy. You’re welcome.

You’ve actually had a few baths. Tonight you even had your first experience with Dr. Bronner’s soap-like substance. Don’t know why. You’re not dirty (except for the aforementioned burrito, but Mama dug those beans out of your neck weeks ago when she was in search of a snack). But you are just over the moon for warm water, so we bathe you. More often than we thought we could cram into our crowded weeks.

Tonight you went to bed with chocolate on your head. Not from mama, which is a first. No, tonight you had a small, four-year-old sized chocolatey lip print on your balding melon.

That’s how we know.

Deep Peanutty Thoughts

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Tonight before bedtime stories:

P: Who’s going to die first, me or baby?

M:  Don’t know, P.  We don’t know when anybody is going to die.

P:  I hope we die at the same time.

M:  Why?

P:  Because I really like Butter Babe.

M:  So you don’t want be alive after Butter dies and you don’t want him to die first and leave you without him?

P:  Yeah. And I just don’t want to know he dies.

M: Wow, Peanut. That’s a really important idea you thought about.

Holy F—ing Long Maternal Cry Later (After He Wasn’t Looking), Batman! So sweet that you love your baby brother.  So not going to be that completely pure ever again. And thanks (not) for the reminder of our collective mortality, dude!

Major, major announcements

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1. I have settled on a cyber nickname for the new child. I have known Peanut as Peanut since he was conceived, and can’t change his nickname or cybername now. I adore all the ideas behind Hazelnut, especially our dear TKW, the originator of said tasty moniker. But I have met him and decided, he’s not Hazelnut.

He’s Butter. With all the connotations of rich, delicious, heavy, butterball-y, and even Linda-Richmond-sketch-y. Fact is, he makes everything that much better. What isn’t better with real Butter? Really. So we now have Peanut and Butter.

2.My mother was right.

This is a major announcement, for I have been fighting saying that since the day I turned 17 months. But she was. In the midst of all the Peanut turmoil, the bad behavior and tantrums and general out-of-control, are-you-serious, stop-this-parenting-ride-I want-to-get-off  bullsh-t (I have witnesses, including my mother in law and my local friends, all of whom have ben gape-mouthed at his behavior), she has maintained this argument: Logic isn’t working, yelling isn’t working. When all else fails, cry.

So I tried  it tonight. He was testing me and I just started crying. I said it was so hard when he didn’t nap (yeah, first time in almost two years. shoot me now.) because I got so tired and it made me sad to be so tired. It was a staged reading of the things he should have been saying, but he bought the act. He kissed me and told me he was sorry I felt sad and that he wished I felt better. And then I really lost it. I really cried, telling him I was sorry things were so hard for him and that I wanted us to have fun and not yell at each other. He said he wished it was just Mom and Peanut and Butter and nobody else. That he wished everyone else would stop coming to the house. I cried harder, telling him understand he wants things back to the way things were when I was the only adult telling him what to do, but that I needed help because my body is just too hurt to be doing everything I usually do. I told him soon it would just be the three of us, and he kissed  me and told me to take as long as I want.

My mom was right. P doesn’t need yelling or games or techniques. He needs to feel like he’s helping. And tonight he did.

the little things

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things I deeply appreciate this week:

babies who laugh in their sleep
babies who sometimes *do* sleep
people who cook me food
people who wash my dishes
people who do my laundry
Netflix
peri bottles
central heating
indoor plumbing
rocking chairs
helpful four-year-olds
kellymom.com
sunshine
ibuprofen
experience
fresh sheets
understanding clients
co-sleepers
thoughtful friends
intense four-year-olds who are trying their best
rechargeable toy batteries
Moses baskets

things I could really do without right now:
grouchy people
people who snap at me
nighttime flop sweats
The Part About The Crimes
advice to let a two-week old cry instead of “over” nursing
intense four-year olds who need to test limits
leaf blowers

and so it goes…

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TKW posted a delightful cookie recipe on her bloggety blog. And I read it, during the newborn’s reliable morning nap while the bigger kid was at school and thought, you know what seems like some massive self loving right now? Homemade cookies.

So I looked over the recipe. “No problem. I even have eggs. I boiled some yesterday, but…oh crap. I boiled some yesterday and they’re still on the stove. Gross. Wasteful and gross and now fuck the cookies I’m taking a shower.”

And with that, delicious newborn work up and tried to eat his Moses basket and I relented to the reality that is my world for a while. But I’m making those cookies this afternoon, with bigger kid the baking partner from my dreams, while grandma cuddles the little “if it ain’t made of warm, human flesh, I won’t sleep on it” smartest dude in the house.

Know what? I didn’t even cry. Not at losing the “baking in peace” moment or the hardboiled protein or the shower. Didn’t even think of crying.

Look at me, all bright-side of things and silver lining-ish and perspective-y. Must be the hormones.

Birth announcement

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Here’s the announcement a hypothetical mama might send:

The Naptime Writing Family blissfully welcome Hazelnut Nutella Naptime to the world! He made his entrance March 23 weighing 7 pounds 3 ounces and measuring 19 1/4 inches. Mom, Dad, Peanut, and Hazelnut are all doing well and can’t wait to get to know each other.

But here’s the announcement a hypothetical mama really wants to send:

The Naptime Writing Family joyously announce the arrival of Hazelnut Nutella Naptime! He reluctantly joined our family March 23 after 41-plus weeks of gestation and 47 hours of labor. His mama made it through 41 hours of unmedicated labor and arrived at 10 cm dilation just in time to pull a muscle in her back. She lost all ability to cope and sobbed for two hours about acquiescing to an epidural. Hazelnut’s ginormous melon was facing posterior and get stuck under mama’s skeletal structure, so five hours of pushing wasn’t enough to get him to join the air-breathing lot of us. Mama Nappy’s doc offered several unacceptable options and Hazelnut got forced into reality with heroic pushing and expert, though traumatic, vacuuming.

Unfortunately, that mode of birthing left mama in shambles, and she bursts into tears every time someone says, “well, at least he’s healthy” or “you’ll heal” because she knows that and really wishes you’d say something supportive instead of dismissive (unless you, too, are currently sporting more than two dozen stitches in your lower body, twenty pounds of active volcanic rock on your upper body, and have made it seven days on approximately 20 hours of sleep).

Mama and Hazelnut are resting at home, where Peanut is as sweet as can be to his baby brother, and as terrible as he can be to his parents. Hazelnut is perfectly delicious, opinionated, and ravenous. His doting family are surviving just on nips of his sweet breath and heavenly sounds and hoping things get a bit easier.

But we’re not holding our breath.

What in the heck…

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A quiet and lovely Sunday. Peanut behaving as though he’s a human again—some joy, some frustration, lots of questions, generous helping of silliness, and fundamental lack of adult logic—which is a lovely change from last week.

Went bowling early, for the local lanes are a-hopping Sunday morning when games are half price. Peanut decided that, between the light balls for kids, gutter bumpers to ensure he scores higher than his mama, and arcade games complete with tickets he can trade for prizes, the bowling alley must be the site of his birthday party. Sold. They handle the whole thing, including pizza, and all we need to provide is cake and ice cream. Even 39 weeks pregnant (or not, as time will tell), I can handle that.

Grandma’s 94th birthday today, too. It’s really, really tough to get old, but she sure does it with style and grace and a cheerfulness that belies how long her days and nights often are. Glad we’re back home where I can see her and be with her more often. Ditto the rest of the family.

So.

Restful, food-filled, cake-highlighted, bowling-accented Sunday. Good times.

Goes farther if you cheer

Wait! What was that?

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I just heard the sound of my own breathing. And it shocked me. I haven’t heard that sound since I regularly practiced yoga (and taught yoga) before Peanut was born. I rarely hear myself think, but tonight I heard deliciously calm air fill my nose, throat, and lungs, and then dance back out.

How delightful.

I swear to you…

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…this is true. I can’t make this stuff up.

After Peanut’s bath, Spouse helps him into his jammies. Except that P has been dying to wear his Hanukkah leotard and when they come out of the bedroom, they both beam because Spouse has helped my son into his pink leotard…backward. Effectively his first thong.

Peanut says, “I’m not sure if I want to wear my new leotard to bed. I want to add a bell to it so if I need Mommy and Daddy in the nighttime, I can ring the bell. It’s gonna be a really loud bell.”

Hmmm. Possibly worst idea ever. Maybe. If you include the tiny wedgie that will have him ringing the bell all night long.

Tis the season. In Berkeley.

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Know why I love living in Berkeley? Because everyone this morning around town is wishing each other a Happy Winter Solstice.

It is, after all, the next holiday. And an obvious one, since children all over town are up well before dawn because the damned planet is conspiring to remind us how completely in control physics is and parents are not. I’m hoping the solstice is soon because I want my sunrise back to sometime before lunch. Channukah’s almost over. Christmas is almost a week away. Next up? Solstice. And around here, it is another excuse to be nice to each other. It’s not L.A. or Boston at the CheeseBoard, I can tell you that. It’s friendly happy time. You’d think all these secular humanists actually treated people with respect despite their blatant heathen lifestyle.

Happy Winter Solstice!