Monday, monday...

I like this left of center picture... (If you want me, you can find me left of center....)

He's a gorgeous boy and I love him so...

It's HIM not me...

So BP worriedly tells me he thinks something is wrong with baby i. She's constantly "squinched up" with her legs to her chest holding on to her feet. She did this all night - he's so worried - Is she gassy? Is something bothering her back? Constipated? Etc. A light bulb went off in my head - it's him - not me (at least this time) who is utterly neurotic. She's discovered her feet for Pete's sake! That's all there is to that. If suddenly you saw two parts of your body you'd never seen or had access to before and you were prone to shove things in your mouth it'd be a field day, no?

I told my mom about it this morning and she said, "Well - he wasn't around with F when he was little so he's going through this all for the first time. Just like your father, when you all were kids he wasn't around and now... etc. etc."

... Huh? Where was he when F was a baby? Why did I feel like he was there every waking minute? I won't dwell on it - it's just kind of funny. We're all revisionists I suppose.

----

Yesterday was M's funeral. We were talking when BP got home about how our perspectives have changed. Instead of this making us think of our own mortality, we both thought of our children and thought of M's parents. It used to be when things like this happened, we'd reflect on friendships and the whole melodrama of growing up and all the hardships we face. It's so different now... Once you have children you labor to make them happy - to make them engaged in life or at the very least content. It doesn't feel like it always, but it's not about you anymore. I couldn't help feeling more pain on M's parents behalf than on M's. How must it feel to have your child succumb to sadness? To have them one day decide it's time to die and to be powerless against that sadness in the same way you're powerless against a terminal illness. And if M had children, would things have been different? One of many questions unanswerable.

Thinking about books and stuff.

Last night I finished a book that I struggled to read - mainly because I'm too tired to read. But also because I didn't immediately get into it. Books that don't get me right out of the gate rarely stand a chance... this was one of those that took so long to ramp up but once it did... POW. As it happens, the author has another book, We need to talk about Kevin, which transfixed me. Her writing is so haunting, fluid & gorgeous. The book is The Post-Birthday World and my initial problem with it was this: it starts out as one of those "Groundhog Day" type books where the action happens the same way twice but told slightly differently. Well, ultimately it breaks from this and is about how a choice or non-choice impacts this woman's marriage. It's a tough one, but worth it. It made me think.

Going through some of BP's things with him to find pictures or mementos of Matt, whose funeral is tomorrow, we found a lot of my old letters to him. Geez, was I a windbag through our early relationship! (Not now, of course... tra, la, la...) As we were reading them, he remarked how I was always writing letters of apology to him and yes, for the most part, I was begging forgiveness, explaining myself, and asking for his patience. It's humbling to look back on us and see in print how much I put him through, how much he went through just 'cause he loved me. I'm grateful for his tenacity and so much more. He was meant for me - no one else could or would love me in this way.

.. Baby i went off meds altogether & seemed to be struggling again. She's back on them and seems to be struggling again. I wish her GI appt wasn't in July. I don't think we'll make it until then. I know there's more to her than this crankiness and sleepiness and moodiness. When she has those moments of feeling "right" she's so delicious and sweet and serene I can't even stand it. I hate this for her... I won't stop until she's figured out. (Now that's slightly funny - when do we ever figure another person out? Okay, so I'll rephrase... I won't stop until she seems okay.)

I'll be glad when April is in the rear-view mirror.

Just pictures!

I had to get baby i in her baby I shirt!

... this is so funny ... all three of them checking hockey stats!

It never fails!

One month before paying off the car and in the midst of considering quitting my job, my transmission blows.

$3,000.

This sucks.

What if it turns out my Mommy Intuition is wrong?

So... the gastro-pediatrician took baby i off of Axid and put her on Prevacid. She suggested we try prune juice to help with the constipation. All of this meant to hold us over until her lower G.I. Well... we put it to the test yesterday. We gave her Prevacid in the a.m. & prune juice in the afternoon. She spent the day clinging to me like a koala bear & I her eucalyptus tree and whining and crying. Oh, and spitting up/puking. She tried very hard NOT to drink the prune juice... she'd let it fill her mouth and then when it overflowed it would just drain right back out, down her face and all over her shirt (and me). (Man, is that stuff THICK!) She was beside herself all day. Girlfriend is not going to do well when she's sick. That stuff I said to the gastro-ped about my "Mommy's intuition" has me thinking... what if I'm wrong? She had her worst day ever after seeing the best we could find right now. What's the common denominator? Is it the medicine (Axid) that makes her sick/grouchy in the first place and nothing is really wrong? Should I just leave the poor thing alone? Am I the common denominator? Is our infamous over-parenting the common denominator? Today I'm giving this a shot - doing nothing, giving her nothing, not looking for signs of something. Clearly my intuition that something is "wrong" hasn't entirely left... but I'm wondering now if what's "wrong" is that I think something is "wrong" and I'm treating her for that and making things "wrong" in the process. Oh boy, this motherhood thing is fun.

So we had the day from Prevacid with baby i yesterday and a despondent F who was just strung-out tired. He wept through his bath b/c he had so many sores the water "hurt." He counted and he has 45 boo-boos and they all are "killing him." He wept through my cutting his fingernails after bath because his right hand, according to him, was not long & didn't need to be cut. It was his left hand that was long. I wasn't even going to try to reason with him on this one. I just clipped and he cried. And as he was falling asleep (at the wee hour of 7) he gave BP the "my life is terrible" speech... "I had a bad day. I have 45 boo boos. I lost my bouncey ball. I got a bad note home from school. Mommy cut both of my hands' fingernails and they didn't need it." Etc. Etc. I walked in to BP giving F a "Control your own destiny!" speech. I think it was a little heavy-handed (when all F really needed was to just fall the heck asleep), but it did give me reason to smile. We were trainwrecks last night of the first order.

And now entirely off-topic but also among the macabre...

It's so gross and cliche that the VT murderer was just a reclusive weirdo with no real motive other than to act out his internal pain at such a hopelessly high cost. It makes me plain sick. When you're going to turn the gun on yourself in the first place, belly up to the bar and do it FIRST. My heart hurts awfully for those families and friends of the victims who lost something so definitively irreplaceable for someone so decisively sick. A friend of mine works with someone who lost their son on Monday at VT in this, the end of his senior year. Thinking of that, I feel gutted. This guy doesn't deserve to go down in infamy. I don't want to see his "creative writing" or hear about his "stalking" and alarming behaviors. I don't care about him one whit. I think others should turn their back on this dissection of this maniac as well. Find out how to prevent this from happening again? I'm all for it! Understand this guy? No thanks. But it does raise the question, why are all of these incidents remarked on with, "Oh yeah - that guy was unhinged!" or "Surprised? No way. The only thing surprising is that he didn't snap sooner." or my favorite, "I contacted the cops twice he had me so concerned. They said they couldn't do anything to him for being weird." Ugh. Ugh. Moan. (And here I reveal my one discrimination - people who raise that inner red flag. I hate them. I know they're not stable. Read "Protecting the Gift" - I beg you - and you'll know why!)

Finally, watching the Oprah two-day special on the "backlash" from Don Imus I felt I was in a parallel universe. One where I'm meant to be enlightened by the likes of Common (who was honestly verbose & composed) and Russell Simmons (who has such a strange lisp BP asked if he'd had a stroke) and to find meaning and "poetry" in hip-hop & to understand why it is a rappers' right to say the things the rest aren't meant to say & that are not meant the way Don Imus took license. Sure, there's some poetry in there sometimes and sure, Imus had no business saying what he did. I get that; I don't use that language myself (and heaven help the child of mine who does). But, for once can we address why anyone is using anyone in the entertainment world or the media as their moral compass? And for crying out LOUD can we stop repeating these slurs over and over by anyone with a byline or a microphone when they take place? Wagging my finger and saying, "Parents... arrange your children so that when these words are flung at them they won't fall down." This way when rappers, talk show hosts, Don Imus, Mel Gibson, et al get verbal diarrhea they can understand this kind of shit can roll right off.

And to lighten things up - taking F to see Blades of Glory and hearing him use the term "sex addicts" was a true highlight (or is it low point?). Didn't I tell you being a mom is fun? To quote Carmine Jr from last Sunday's Sopranos, "The sacred and the propane..."

Sad day yesterday...

I couldn't believe the news out of Blacksburg. We heard just as we were headed into baby i's gastroenterologist appointment. Stunning & deeply saddening. I wonder if our rabid media can take the attention of Al Sharpton and Don Imus now and focus on getting guns out of the hands of lunatics & helping repair a torn university - and a broken country... Even the Blacksburg police - authorized to carry loaded weapons - couldn't do anything to stop what happened yesterday. I'd gladly give away my right to bear arms. I don't want that right anyway. I imagine it sounds idealistic to wish for a gun-free nation. Times like this make everything so senseless - why not allow wishes that belie common sense into the fray, too?

April is always a weirdly tragic month, ever notice that?

It seems trivial to talk about much else this entry except to say this: Life is impossibly short.

Ah what a week in television.

I watch too much TV. No, seriously - too much TV. What else am I supposed to do? Last night both chil'ren were in bed asleep by 7:45 & BP is out of town. (Like how I inserted that as though if he were home he wouldn't smack dab on alternate couch hogging the remote.) Enough with the excuses - you don't like when adults haven't fostered more respectable hobbies, to hell with you.

So anyways...

Sopranos! Welcome back. Yes, I was initially angry with you for leaving for so long but then I figured you were weaning me and that's good. Let's start with a request... nay, a plea. For the love of all that is holy, please STOP showing Tony & Carm in bed together in any way, shape or form. I've already admitted my weird sloppy old-man crush on Tony Soprano but I didn't mean to imply I EVER want to see him "ahem" engaged. And the thought of Carm going down on him for his birthday. Well, it's just too much.

Okay... now... Where was Christo'fuh? Even in his 2-second appearance (Happy Birthday! -- click --), he got a laugh. Blam... the season was off to a great start. If you don't think Tony is at heart cruel, think again. Instead of just ax-ing Bobby on the way to meet the (who were those people?) French Canadians in the bar (??), he is going to take Bobby on a long torturous ride of another kind. Fact is, after the brawl which Bobby instigated you can't help thinking if he's THAT stupid he deserves whatever Tony's got to give. Bobby knows he's so fucked. When he picked up his kid Nica (is it just me or does this child's name change?) by the water - the shot was magical. He might as well wear a toe tag.

I started to read the reviews and then thought - screw it. I do wish Imus hadn't gone on that racial tear (??) - I always like hearing his recaps & such.

Bobby, playing Monopoly with the family:
"You Sopranos! You always take it too far."

and Janice...

"Fuck the Parker Brothers."

America's Next Top Model. I'm guessing this is how a crack addiction feels... you really truly love crack. Crack makes you happy and does this delicious crawl through your veins that just feels right... But your friends and neighbors would be appalled to know you loved it & even your alcoholic boss would get all "I can't believe you do crack" on you. Oh, that show... Last night was a real coo for me. As I said, kids were in bed before 8. Just me on the couch with some cherry turnovers (!!!) and rain going on in the background. Dionne brings the F-bombs, Brittany brings the horrendous hair, Tyra brings the weird headband and 1/2 shirt posing as a dress (??) and Jael brings her Kurt Cobain/Courtney Love fused accent and "free-spirit" disposition. (Side note - don't you just love it when someone prats on and on and on and on about being a "free spirit?" Gag.) It's redundant to ask this, but can't you just hear Jael sing, "Why are there so many songs about rainbows?" Natasha seriously might win this thing by virtue of just simply not knowing what the fuck is going on... ("They decided I didn't miss my baby as much as they did." Sigh!) I'm gonna go with Brittany winning this thing & that isn't because I think she should (remotely) and it isn't because her hair is at all better looking now that the weave has been cut out (god, it SO isn't)... nor is it because she looks like a Phyllis who drinks 40s and lives in a pink ranch house with pelicans on the garage door perpetually smoking her Newport. Mainly it's because if they pick Dionne she's too much like Dannielle. Renee too much like Joannie. Jaslene too much like... hmm... have their been any former drag queens on it before? Jael - too much like a jacked up Scarlett Johannson.

Oh boy - I went on a tear with that one... That's what a 4 am wake up will do and three cups of coffee... Gotta take this time where you can get it.

So - in closing... The Tudors. Do I like the show or do I just feel I should like the show? When the camera pans to Anne Boleyn - I felt the foreboding interest I've always had in the story but I'm not sure I can take much more of Jonathan Reese Witherspoon or whats-his-name's silly pursed lips face. Seriously when he challenges King of France (who looks suspiciously like a New England fraternity boy even in cloaks and huge gold baubles) to the wrestling match I don't see how they could've let that scene pass through the editing room. I'm picturing a bunch of people gathered around the editing tables going, "I give up. There is no footage with him not making trout face. Anyone have any pictures of Henry? Maybe he's supposed to look like he's just come from an uptown surgeon on his lunch break." He's just too FIERCE looking. I'm Henry viii and I'm FIERCE. Look at me... I'm FIERCE. See how I walk? FIERCE! Hear me talk? FIERCE! Even when I'm just a filler in a scene? FIERCE! Just sitting alone wondering about peace treaties... FIERCE! Hey... we get it. He's FIERCE. He could take a lesson from Tony Soprano... Tone makes you forget he's fierce & that's the draw. He's not all overwrought Dixie Carter in Designing Women (and come to think of it everything else she's been in) - so'thern, so'thern, so'thern... As Gah-wad as mah' witniss I'm sah so'thern.

Kids are good. Baby i learned to stick her tongue out in response to you sticking your tongue out and it's quite adorable and fascinating. She just sort of splays it out of her mouth and hangs it there unsure how far or for how long she has to hold it. In usual F fashion he was very sweet and complimentary, "She has a cute little tongue... she's so smart to learn this..." (Oh he's beyond cheesy cute.) F got his report card yesterday and it was his best one of 2nd grade. He didn't understand why he didn't get a "4" in Science & Health since he has perfect attendance... I said, "I think this means health class, F, not your physical health." Life is fun with an airhead child... he's a trip. And ever-obsessed with perfect attendance, he told me Charlie from his class last year got perfect attendance. He called him "Bad Charlie" and I didn't remember Charlie being even slightly "bad" but F assured me he was. I couldn't resist, I said, "Maybe since Charlie was so bad his parents wouldn't let him stay home with them even when he was sick." F's eyes kind of widened but then he got in on the joke. I think I did make him wonder if perfect attendance is such a great thing after all.

I joined the ranks of Moms feeding her children too soon...

But boy is she cute. She doesn't really care about the eating, per se, but she loves being level with us at the table and can't get enough of the silly choo-choo train noises that accompany the feeding. It doesn't appear to remotely make her less hungry... so when they say it's empty calories, they really mean EMPTY! Of course, one doesn't come a pudgy ballerina without the intake:

This picture just makes me smile. I love the little belly over the tu-tu. It flies in the face of the primadonna! This outfit was a gift from Nana and we needed photos in it before she outgrew it.

I've got to snap out of my mood as of late. I hate being so out of control. I hate not having a definitive answer from within... should I work? Shouldn't I? Is everything okay for everyone during any given day and if not - what can I do to make it so? Is it my responsibility to make it so? How can I release this? Anti-anxiety meds? Could I be a stay-at-home Mom... but what then? If I leave the workplace, could I return? What am I compromising for a job that brings NO JOY? What's going on beneath the beautiful blonde head of my boy? When he looks sad, is he? Do I worry too much?

Of course I do. Of course I worry too much... To add to my neuroticism I shall now go and worry too much about worrying too much. To all the parents who make it seem effortless I raise and wave my cushy & unmanicured middle finger.