.
.
My baby has become a boy, you guys.
Like full-on boy. I only catch the rounded cheek at certain angles now
and his smile is filling in with tic-tac teeth,
white and beautiful.
He is fighting naps like never before,
declaring them "Nap is all done? All done." even before they've begun.
As he struggles not to give in to the horrible monster of Rest he warbles to himself, "Ohhh Unny"
and it's so hard not to go in and relieve him of the discomfort.
I don't.
I can't: those scant minutes are sanity savers.
We go for long walks.
We read lots of books
and when mama is a fried egg at the end of the day, we sit quietly and eat.
He is preferring his Daddy in the morning, saying, "Bye Bye, Mama"
in hopes of hanging out solo with that tall handsome protector.
We are working hard on simple and important things for Orion like using our hands for kindness
and finding words for things that are frustrating.
He is in general such an affable kid and a good listener
but there are moments where I wonder
if the little glint in his eye means my day is about to get a little more...uphill.
A little less logical.
And so I breathe. And I make time to meditate.
Exercise, my beloved exercise?
Um....yeeeaahhhhhh.
To give you an idea of my ability to do everything I most wish right now:
I put a tamale in the microwave three days ago to heat up for lunch
and opened the door yesterday evening to heat up Orion's dinner:
Oh, hello cold uneaten scrumptious tamale!
I, lover of food like few you have seen have forgotten to eat.
I, lover of the tidy home have finally given over to the impish little piles of toys scattered in places they don't belong,
the errant baby sock in the cooking pots,
the unused Elmo potty under the dining room table
Schmilly's man-cave a parking lot for all wheeled things...
it was my postpartum pride that the house was not overrun
and now I am simply unwilling to attempt constant order.
It's exhausting. It's Sisyphusian.
Thanks to a sweep-and-mop Sunday night you could eat off of our floors,
but you might be doing that next to five kitten toys and a broken crayon.
The remnants of a leaf the wind blew in,
the kale Lil' Joe stole from the compost bowl this morning.
If you knew me in the flesh you'd hear the tenderness I feel as I go on about this season in our lives.
There is so much humor in this time,
so much exhaustion.
I already miss it
and I understand what it's doing inside of me,
not the details but the overall theme.
It's growing me
fertilizing the limited parts
to become fully realized,
breaking down all the resistance to be filled with light later.
I sometimes think I am in a bubble and everyone's lives are going on around me, around my boy and I
and though I hear the words they speak I don't know the language anymore.
I feel foreign.
I am tempted to say, "Ahhhhhlllll dun" when I finish anything.
Moments of wanting to knock on the clear divide between me and and the world, asking for someone to cut a window so I can feel more connected
and moments of snuggling in so tight I never want to go.
My world exists in Toddler Time
and though it's weird and lonely and so much work
my sunrise is in his first word of the day
and my sunset is his last story before bed
and I know it's blowing away before I've even begun to experience it so
I hold tight to the basics and breathe in the goodness of teaching a small boy how to
find his way in a world that grows bigger for him everyday.
xo,
Sunny
