Monday ...

It's been one of those Mondays so far. It started off innocently, and I even got a little play time outside with Wilder and his newest fascination, snails. Correction: putting snails on toy cars (I don't know what he thinks might happen, because I'm pretty sure a snail doesn't know a '57 Chevy replica from, say, a mushroom, but still, we persist in putting the critters on the cars and, I guess, waiting for the engine to start). But all too soon it was time for Jer to load the kids in the car for daycare. I went to grab Hunter, who was playing on his activity mat. And that's when things went south.

Some strange hiccup/sneeze thing happened and, within seconds, the kid had projectile emptied his entire stomach contents. Halfway through I snatched him up and he emptied half of it on me. Poor thing (him, not me).

So now he's had a bath (and I a change of clothes). I got him dried and lotioned and dressed and fed again. He started yawning so I laid him down for a nap. He crapped his pants. I undressed him, changed him again, resnapped him up. He crapped his pants again. Repeat. Back down to bed and now he's fast asleep and seems immune to my repeated entries to make sure all is still right in his world and his diaper.

Funny thing is, he never cried once. In fact, he mostly smiled. Much like Wilder was when he was little, and probably all little ones are to some extent, Hunter is a trooper. Not much rattles that kid.

And so, I take a page from my kids' manuals, and just write this morning off as the kind of thing that happens when you have the wee ones. Sure, you might get puked on, you might change four diapers in 45 minutes, and somewhere in between all that, you might give yourself a near-concussion on the kitchen cabinet door and have to lie on the floor clutching your head for a couple mintues, moaning (yes, I did). But when it's all said and done and that little Biggie Smalls who's fast asleep in his crib right now gives you one of his killer, heart-melting, gut-wrenchingly lovable smiles, well, hell ... who really gives a damn? I'd get puked on every day for those smiles.

Hunter turns 3 months; Wilder skinny-fies up a little

Hunter turned 3 months old this weekend. I remember reading somewhere once that babies really don't become fully gestationalized (word?) until they're 3 months old ... how it's almost like they need to spend another quarter of a year inside the womb, cooking, but instead emerge early from mama's oven. (Bear with me; I'm reading too many cooking-related books recently).

So anyway, it's not with any small amount of excitement that I look forward to the 3 month mark. There is something more "realized," for lack of a better word, about an infant that age. You can start to see a glimmer of his future facial features. He can grab at things. He's checking out his hands, feet, can hold his head up better. You can see that he's checking out the world and seeing the possibilities. Example: "There's that big brother of mine that keeps screaming 'happy baby!!!' in my face at high decibels. Look, he's holding a wiffle ball bat. Hmmm, if I learn to use my arms and legs better I can take that bat from him and crank him over the head with it."

You get my drift.

So it was with some alarm that, at 4:30 a.m. on the day of Hunter's 3-month mark, I woke up to his curdling screams -- and I do mean SCREAMS -- as he slept nestled right beside me. It was somewhat akin to the night I woke up to a cockroach crawling across my body. I mean, one minute sleeping, the next minute: "AGGGGGHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHH!" Jerry, who'd fallen asleep on the couch watching some movie about swords and war (those who know Jerry best have mental pictures in their heads now -- in fact, I swear this is not made up: I woke up the next morning and discovered the evidence in the living room of him dragging his sword, shield and arm bracers out to watch the movie with him. My husband = HUGE adorable DORK), came running back to the room.

We eventually got Hunter calmed down, chalked it up to being too warm and a bad dream, and drifted off back to sleep, all of us (on a side note, every single one of us, including Wilder, slept until almost 9:45 the next morning -- Jerry and I noted that that hasn't happened since before Wilder was born). But Hunter's newfound love of mood swings didn't end there. It wasn't a horrible weekend, but the calm, smiling boy we've come to know and love discovered that life can make you pretty damn grumpy sometimes. It was like he inherited a bit of my personality, because I = HUGE not-so-adorable GRUMP sometimes, especially when compared with my sunny-dispositioned better half.

Hunter was restless, didn't eat as much, fussed a ton, was obviously exhausted but would hardly sleep longer than 20 minutes, etc. We fretted a bit over this, and this fretting eventually led me to the 21st century parenting expertise that is Google. Har har. Anyway, I finally figured out what was bothering him last night when it hit me that his mouth had been leaking like a sieve all day.

Yep, teething. At 3 months. A dash to the pharmacy, we poured some Motrin down his throat, and 20 minutes later the poor fella finally slumped into a deep sleep on my chest. I think the teething has to do with the fact that he sits in his bouncy chair each night while Jerry, Wilder and I dine on any number of delicious things. That and Wilder running around the house screaming "ice cream," "sweeties," "cake," "snack" and "juice" all the time. Only imagine each one of those in bolded capital letters followed by many exclamation points and you get the idea of Wilder's general attitude toward food. It'd make me wanna subconsciously push out a chomper or two too.

That's about all in Hunter news. In Wilder's world, he continues to love the pool. He probably gets in it at least twice a day on Saturdays and Sundays. He's learning to use a kickboard and is very comfortable in the water, even with me now. (For awhile, it was like he thought Jerry was a dolphin and I was some poor flailing cat thrown into the deep end, all evidence to the contrary.)

Whether it's because of all this swimming or because he's growing up or both, he's really thinned out over the last couple weeks. He was running around this morning in his shorts with no shirt on and I could see his little ribs. Incidentally, I was seeing those ribs in between flashes of orange material as he hurled the shirt he was intending to be wearing over and over at my head while giggling maniacally. Ahh, boys.

Anyway, it's morning and my coffee cup is empty and work beckons. Bahhhh, work.

xo, k.

Cute little brain-eaters they are

They appear out of nowhere -- three or four of them. Walking slowly and stiff-legged toward me, slack-jawed, eyes emotionless and round, almost buggy. The clothes they wear are tatty, often dirty with lord knows what. Sometimes their pale arms are extended, fingers grabbing thin air, as if to say: "You ... I want to eat your face, make my way to your gooey brains." They drool at the thought. I plot my exit -- grab the boys and make a run for the door, to the car, load everyone in, lock the doors and slam the car into drive. We all breathe a sigh of relief and start talking about afternoon snacks of sweeties, fishies, crackers. Maybe a little juice. Just some sugar to calm our jaggedy nerves.

After all, we've just escaped the soggy, clammy, death-grip grasp of the 10-month-plus zombie set.

Summertime summertime

I started back to work last week and the transition has gone surprisingly well. I almost cried as I left daycare the first day, and again when I pulled into the parking lot at work, but I managed to blink back the tears both times.

I wanted to do this post about how much my 12 weeks with Hunter meant to me, but I'm finding that being a mama to more than one boy and working nearly full time is a real time sucker. Well, that and we've been in the pool a lot. Yes, let's see ... blog? Swim? Blog? Float in the sun? Screw the blog!

I kid, I kid ... I'll try to do better, but in the meantime, here are some recent photos. And, for the record, my 12 weeks of maternity leave was for the most part heavenly. The second time around I stressed less and enjoyed it MUCH more.

One vodka tonic is not enough

So Jerry and I were just discussing how we haven't built up our two-kids callous yet and all that entails. The noise, the whines, the cries, the fusses, -- times two, of course -- the two baths, two bodies to clothe and feed and keep alive. At day's end, we're at our wit's end; we know in time it will get better. Like everything else we've gotten used to over the last two and a half years -- the having our bodies treated like jungle gyms, the deafening decibel levels at octaves that damn near pour blood forth from the ears, the endless diapers, the number of times one little boy can say "ice cream," with every possible inflection, in an hour -- this too shall pass.

This. Too. Shall. Pass.

It's just been a particularly rough day. Hunter fussed all day, wasn't happy unless I was not only holding him, but doing some heretofore unseen combination of walking, jiggling, swaying and cooing/shushing into his year. I only got it right about 3 percent of the day. Wouldn't fall asleep without a boob in his mouth. Wouldn't stay asleep without a boob in his mouth. And then Wilder ... well, Wilder was just Wilder as he is right now. Having total meltdowns over ice cream and then shocking the hell out of us at dinner by actually trying creamed spinach (but only after I implored "please? puuuullllllleeeeeaaazzzze?" as many times as he d "ice cream" earlier in the day).

Well, anyway, that's why this post is titled what it is. I've had my daily allotted alcohol intake, and I feel like I could use a couple more.

On that note, now my tiny -month-old Genghis Khan calls. But, that said, it's moments like those pictured below that make this whole parenting/slowly going gray one little-boy-moment at a time thing worth it:

I just really liked the motion in this shot, even if the crop is off.

W and Papa enjoy time in the pool.
The pool makes living in Texas in summertime a WHOLE. LOT. BETTER.

Behold! Mister Happy!

I think this photos personifies Hunter's laid-back charm perfectly. He's getting an incredibly adorable repertoire of facial expressions that seemed designed to charm the ladies.

On that note ... I'm off to tuck in children and collapse onto a soft surface. xo, k.