Maternal aphasia: Month 5

Happy 5 months Abe! In less than half a year you've turned us into your devoted mama and daddy, and your big brother into a quivering puddle of sweetness who cannot resist grabbing and nuzzling your little hands and feet at every opportunity (and by that I mean, EVERY opportunity). There is nothing sweeter than your smile, than your head slumped in sleep against my chest, than the weight of you when I lift you up after nursing and I feel how very solid you are. You would be a very hard act to follow and the feeling in my heart these days is, enough babies. Hard to know if my ovaries are on board with that plan.

Happy July, Jonah! You are almost 43 months old. Congratulations. Now would you, could you, PLEASE lighten up? It seems that every morning has to start with you whining that you don't want to go pee. And then it's a downward spiral to power struggles over cleaning up your infinite cars, which you repeatedly roll in every direction in the living room. Admit it: It's not play, it's passive aggression. I can absolutely understand why the subtitle of the book Your Three Year Old is: Friend or Enemy? For the record, Jonah, I am sick of taking your toys away when you misbehave. I am tired of telling you to be a good listener. And I am fed up with myself whenever I just yell at you instead of trying to find some magical third way to get you to do what you need to be doing. A wise mama of many more children than I have recently let me in on her coping technique when things are not getting done: She has a mental filter, and in every situation, she applies it, asking herself whether the behavior of the child in question is really worth getting angry over, or not. If not, she moves on and doesn't engage. I need to practice...

Maternal aphasia: Month 4.5

Stop!!!!!! Time is passing way too quickly and I can't update this blog weekly. Let's try for bi-weekly, or semi-monthly, or, as I used to note in the database I used to check in periodicals at the IMF library, "24TY."

I'm on borrowed time - it's 11:15 pm and I was out late at a rock show last night (the second I've attended since Abe was born, and maybe the last for a while, since the morning after is always brutal) - but today was, despite the 100+ degree temp, one of the best with the two kids in a long time. We just hunkered down and enjoyed being with each other today. Jonah and I made an aquarium mural, and then he decided we should hang the paper on his bedroom wall and pretend it was a movie that we all sat on his bed to watch. He was concerned that Abe would be afraid of the shark. Then Jonah played the "pouring game," which involves him at the kitchen sink with all manner of vessels, pouring water between them and using tools like a ladle and a funnel to make it more fun (and instructive).

Abe is an amazing creature. Both kids have had a summer cold for about 4 days, and despite this, my little one soldiers on, not nearly as fussy as he could be. He is scooting and rolling around and never stays where we leave him for very long. He sometimes speaks in a low, guttural growl that I remember from Jonah at this stage. Yet he's an excellent listener when you talk to him. Tonight I was folding a fitted sheet while he was lying on our bed looking up at me. He was interested in the way I kept disappearing and reappearing from behind the sheet. And I told him that I was doing one of the things in life that is the most frustrating, and that I hoped that his biggest frustration in life would be trying to fold a fitted sheet properly. He listened, eyes gleaming, smirking a little. I felt as though I were in the presence of a confidant. It was a lovely thing.