A Summer Day

It's a lovely summer day. Sun and blue skies. Birds chirping. The distant tinkle of the ice cream truck. I mean really, the whole nine yards. Even lovelier is the fact that we seem to have settled into a summer routine. FINALLY. Today, for instance, you woke around 6:45am (having forgotten to wake at 5am to eat. Woo-hoo!). I brought you into the bed with us and you stood and groped and rolled around on us for another 30 minutes. You love to play with the elastic waistbands of our undergarments and to repeatedly pat us while making cave-woman grunting noises. This is one of my favorite times of day: the deep shadowed quality of the room, the smell of our bodies and your body, pale and tender flashes of skin. Sometimes now you'll actually pause for a second or two in your tumbling frenzy and curl against me and let me touch the soft skin just under your jawbone. I call this your coma zone because when I stroke your skin there your jaw unhinges slightly and you get this faraway look in your eyes and your breathing slows and deepens.

Anyway, after you tire of the bed, Daddy takes you downstairs and I get dressed and head to Blue Monday where I write or plan my classes or stare listlessly out the window. Today I was working on an essay about loneliness. At least, I think that it's about loneliness--it might actually be about something very different.

I return home around 10am and wait for you to wake up from your first nap. Then all of us head out for a walk. Today we went to the library. Sometimes we stop for mochas or for a little swing time in the park.

After we walk, we lunch. Today I accidentally gave you Amy's Organic Macaroni and Cheese rather than Amy's Organic SOY Macaroni and (fake) Cheese. Whoops. I was wondering why you were shoveling handfuls of the stuff into your mouth as quickly as possible so I tasted it, thought briefly about what an incredible job folks are doing with soy products these days, and then realized it was cheese. Which we're not supposed to give you until you turn one. Because apparently, on September 3, 2010, the Lactose Tolerance Fairy will come and sprinkle you with Lactose Tolerance powder so that we can safely begin to feed you dairy.

Clearly today is a day of tangents.

Anyway, after lunch Daddy goes and works at the St. Olaf library. Sometimes I call him on his cell phone and I feel like he is a secret ops guy because he whispers so quietly into the receiver. While he studies, you nap. Usually for about an hour.

At 4ish we are all reunited again. Today I will spend some time getting pizza toppings in order. At 5 we will go to the Cow for beer or wine and a relaxing game of Try Not to Let Thisbe Eat Popcorn Kernels, Bottle Caps, or Other Bar Detritus.

We will bring you home and I will read you "Goodnight Moon" and "Open the Barn Door"--an unfortunately named "Peek and See" book that features little doors that you can open and shut with farm animals hiding behind them. You might say "duck." More likely you will begin to nose at my bosom. I will feed you and put you in your crib.

Daddy and I will momentarily contemplate "getting some work done" or "reading something highly educational" but then will give up and pour ourselves some wine (mine in a wine glass, his in a mug) and we will watch some senseless television and listen to the sounds you make readying yourself for sleep that come to us, crackly and breathless, over the monitor.