museum of unnatural history

Our foursome is staying at Robin Hill whilst the folks are Beverly Hillbillyin’ it up. This has been pretty funny and has done a number on my psyche for various reasons. I’ll try to illustrate it for future generations.

Annie sleeps in Grandma’s closet. This is a comical sentence on its own. Annie loves Grandma, but is also infatuated with her and her shoes. The fact that Grandma’s closet is large enough to hold a pack-n-play, or six or seven, just adds to the comedy. However, Annie requested that I remove a couple of “pointy boot monsters” surrounding her bed last night (they really were kind of scary looking).

Yesterday Ben was off work to keep the kids so I could go to a doc appointment. The red truck is in the shop so I drove DooDad’s honknormously huge FISHUNTmobile. I will not be surprised, nor disappointed, when such a vehicle is outlawed. These are the items I found while I was searching for a pen in the truck of John Wayne and Cary Grant’s lovechild:

• cologne
• Red Man
• binoculars
• Post-Its
• duck call
• Tide pen
• dental floss
• a homemade first aid kit housed in a tackle box
• a sack of keys that would put any custodian in cardiac arrest
• more breath fresheners and antacids than a toddler could carry in their sticky paws

And this was just in the console. He has a tool box in the bed of his truck that I plan to dig through before this vacation is over. I’m just fascinated by this rare sort of a man. Fascinated and hopelessly in love with him. Even now as a semi-adult I find myself holding my breath around him, like I’m in the presence of a holy man or maybe a criminal. Either one or both, I am as loyal to him as the best of the best dogs.

Every day that I’m in this new house that feels like a very old house something grabs me. Two days ago it was this tin trolley that I think Jackson gave us. It’s an adorable replica of the Powell & Market Sts. and Bay & Taylor Sts. trolley with people standing and sitting. The wheels make this zzzzrrring sound that takes me back to a time that I never want to forget. It reminds me to not hastily sell everything at a garage sale. And to thank my glorious mother for not doing so.

What a sneaky saintly soul my mother is. Nearly every door in this house is from an ancestor’s homestead or something equally special. Abe has been sleeping in DooDad’s office behind a Reeves Law Firm door. His bed sits below a framed relic of DooDad and his mom at his uncle Wayne’s home (I think) in Gilbert. Next to that photo is DooDad with Jessica at a similar spot in Gilbert, and underneath the two photos is a map of the Buffalo River. Amidst all the taxidermy (hooded merganser, wild turkey, black bear rug and whitetail buck) is a history that I’ll never know enough about, nor will I appreciate it the way I want to. But thanks to these two parents on whom we frequently blame our faults, Jess and I will be able to run our hands over our unnaturally natural history and, as we grow older (gulp), invisibly shake our heads when our well-meaning children scoff at us for hanging on to that stinky blue bear and the moldy first pacifier.

before I forget

As of 30 months, Susanna Ruby says some really funny stuff.  I keep forgetting to write them in her book, so I’ll add them here as I remember (God help me).

Oklahoma = “Homahoma”

“What are you duning? Where are you goning?”

“Mama, I wanna tell you sumfin. When I wake up we’ll eat sugar and candy, go swimming poo, ribber. Ok?” She said this practically every time I put her to bed this summer.

“I butter go get Bama.”

Marshmallow = “Farphnewwo”

“Twinkle twinkle little star … like a flashlight in the car”

Cupcake = “Pupcake”

Forehead = “Farthead”

Shit = “Shick”

Dammit = “Oh my dammick”

“I know you I walked with you once upon a drain” (Sleeping Beauty song)

“That not supposed to be happen.”

“Mommy can I hold you a minute?”

Chocolate = “Twockwick”

now there are four

It’s really amazing to me that Ben and I started out just five years ago and now we have two sweet babies. And they are so sweet. Annie kisses Abe with no prompting when she leaves the room. Abe is patient and calm. I realize they’re very young and we could be rudely awakened someday with typical behavior, but I want to appreciate our good fortune while we have it.

Abe arrived Friday, May 1, after some medicinal encouragement at Willow Creek. Six minutes and three big pushes and we got a handsome six pound, ten ounce boy. He shares a birthday with two cousins, Zach and Caden, and it’s also the anniversary of Momoo and Dado. Ben and Jessica barely made it to help me deliver him, but luckily they had chosen a nearby restaurant when I kicked them out of the room 30 minutes prior to his arrival. Lindsey Seale delivered him and we had the best nurses/staff ever. I really enjoyed my labor/delivery with Annie, but this was like being in a hotel. I really miss someone bringing in my food then promptly taking it away, then getting a visit from the narcotics fairy. Ah.

But now we’re home and reality will soon kick in. Jess is still here and I have lots of help from her and Mom and Ben, but soon it will be much different. I hope I can be the mama I want to be.

why is it…

that I only want to write when I’m full of rage or sadness or some other emotion I don’t want to feel? I guess it’s my brand of therapy. So I got canned last week. I expected it, but it still ain’t fun. And now I think I’m just now feeling the effects, along with the swelling and raging hormones of late pregnancy. Annie has started treating me like crap and I have come up with this really odd non-cussing form of swearing so at least if she repeats me she’s saying “goat balls” instead of something really bad. And maybe no one will pick up on what she’s saying if it’s that abstract. Our house is a total disaster that I cannot for the life of me catch up on. I washed ALL of Abe’s clothes I guess thinking he was going to come out the size of an 18 month old. Now there is nowhere to put them except back into the trash bags they were in to begin with. I can’t stand to be touched and that’s all anyone seems to want to do to me. Everything I eat immediately turns to gas, heartburn or pee. Lugnut has pinkeye. Crosby still has heartworms. Shady has a deviated septum. Someone please get me a beer.

a boy

This thing flailing around in my belly is a boy.  I can’t describe how excited I am to get to type that.  Of course we would have been happy with a sister for Annie, but to have one of each really is thrilling.  Ben and I haven’t been able to look at each other without grinning since we found out.  We were so anxious to get home to pick Annie up from “school” together even though she has no idea what’s going on.  I think I’ll just let her keep practicing on her dolls a bit longer.  Plus I still haven’t completely gotten over my guilt of adding to our family when I feel like we just got her.  Ah, motherhood.

sad

I guess when people are sad they just feel like blabbing about it.  Which is what I’m doing.  So I’m sad mainly because a very close friend’s dad is dying.  And he’s so wonderful.  He reminds me of my own dad with his tender way of relating to his kids/grandkids.  He is a true patriot and the perfect friend.  He could make someone on death row smile and be thankful just to be alive.  You meet him once and it’s like you can see his heart beating outside his chest, but really it’s more like dancing than beating.  He wakes up in the middle of the night missing his kids even if they’re in the same house so he’ll go lie down with them.  And sometimes he just starts out in their bed knowing he’ll end up there anyway.  He takes kids on trips to D.C. who would NEVER get to go ANYWHERE.  He welcomes visitors, cherishes stories and adores food.  He is someone to emulate and revere.  I’m crushed that he would ever have to feel any pain and that his family would have to watch it.  Knowing him, I can’t help but have the utmost hope that he isn’t dying at all … he’s just going through this terrible phase so he can be even more grateful for life and healthier when he gets through it.

truckin’

It’s been awhile.  Annie and I went to Connecticut to see her dear aunt Jess, uncle Adam, and cousins Franny and Henry.  She had such a big time with her cousins that she forgot to sleep while she was there.  Luckily for me she is back on her schedule.

We did have one mishap causing us to make an early Sun. a.m. trip to the Greenwich ER.  Annie’s first bed-jumping experience was not so successful.  She fell and got her ear hung on a radiator.  Three layers of stitches by an interesting Lebanese plastic surgeon seemed to not even bother her.  However, aunt Jess uttered the word “chocolate” and it was all over.  Annie couldn’t stop begging for it and they wouldn’t let us give it to her while she was horizontal.  That really was the saddest part.

We also got to stop in Kansas City to play with our Doolittle friends.  I got a glimpse of what it will be like with two and I’m still exhausted just thinking about it.  As a matter of fact, I think I’ll go to bed now.

in case i forget to tell you someday, annie…

Every time I pick you up at “school” your teachers tell me how sweet you are and easy and fun, too.  They also say you are very well adjusted.  So here is proof that you really are a good kid … as if anyone had to prove it.  But please stay this way.

mean girl

I’ve been a real sour grape today so I don’t know why I feel like writing, but maybe it will clean it all out of my head.

So I’m pregnant, which is wonderful, but I’m at that yucky phase where I simultaneously want to hurl and sleep.  That’s part of the problem since I sleep as if someone were watching me without blinking.  I guess good quality sleep will come back in my fifties?  Something to look forward to about getting older.

Another problem is all the crap.  Not feces, but just the crap.  Like friends who work hard and can’t make it and people who choose to hate other people for one reason they can’t get past and sick babies and lonely people and everything that’s made in China and CNN and all this crap that I wish I weren’t thinking about right before bed.  I’m sure you suspect this, but I could go on forever about the crap.  I don’t even want to really.  I just wish we could all take deep breaths and start over on some stuff.  Or that there were unlimited Ctrl/Command Zs for life.

i do…

…this is how Annie says “I love you.”  She says all kinds of words now, like “Blue’s Clues,” which we watched about 492 times today, and chair (cheeah) and knee (me) and deer and drink (nee).  Her favorite thing right now is the moon.  She goes through all her books looking for it, much like I google what I’m looking for.  She kisses the moon on her wall goodnight.  She’s only seen the real moon once, but it was before she was so excited about it so I’m anxious for darkness to get here earlier.  Everyone said this age is really fun and they’re right.  She is so interested and interesting.  I may have posted this observation earlier, but I’ve remembered so many vivid details from my own childhood while trying to create vivid memories, even if it’s the dish she uses, for my own baby.  And I know some of the details are from when I was very young.  So hopefully she’ll have good thoughts someday about the crazy things I do around here.