Why You Should Travel With 500 Extra Wipes

So after the Sea Shore we unpacked and repacked. We got into the car to drive to Wisconsin for Alyssa's (Dada's cousin) wedding. You slept in the sun in the back of the car and Dada and I drank mochas in the front. Until you woke and vomited a large amount of egg salad and canned peaches all over your outfit, your winter coat, your large stuffed dog, your small stuffed cat, your car seat, our car seat, and other items I'm not even remembering. Luckily, there was a rest stop 1.5 miles away. I stood you on a shelf in the rest station bathroom and you sobbed (vomit still covering your hands, your face, your front) while I opened our wheeled luggage and dug for clean clothes. There is nothing in the world sadder than a sobbing naked toddler in a rest stop bathroom. Well, OK, that's hyperbole, but it was sad.

Meanwhile, Dada was in a cleaning closet on his knees, using a hose and a swath of paper towels to wash the vomit off your clothes. The maintenance man sat on his swivel chair (in front of his desk in the closet) and would occasionally make a remark ("well, you're not the first folks to wander in here with this kinda situation") or to offer latex gloves. He wore an olive green work suit and a John Deere hat and offered us a yellow trash bag to protect your clean clothes from the vomit we couldn't wash out of the car seat. He was God. Seriously.

I can see that if I describe all of the events of the weekend, this post will become a novel. Other highlights of the weekend included washing explosive diarrhea from your pajamas (twice), drying your apple juice soaked jeans on a hand dryer in the women's bathroom in Perkins, and realizing (as we left the hotel) that the mysterious stains on one of our pillows (one of the pillows at the HEAD of our bed) were poop stains. Not my poop. Not Dada's poop. Your poop.

I know. I'm being such a whiner. There were good times too! You had a blast with your cousin Nora. You raced down the hotel corridors together and practiced simultaneous pool jumps together. You choreographed intricate dances together (as evidenced by the last post) and whined about various food products together. The wedding itself (or what I saw of it--you and I spent half of the wedding in the church basement contemplating a racially dishonest mural of Jesus and the other half in the wedding party's idling Limo Bus admiring various knobs, cup holders, and cushions) was lovely. Alyssa and Jake were lovely. Dada and I got to slow dance at the reception while Grandma Judy napped on the hotel bed next to your Pack and Play. Then (also at the reception) I had a Manhattan and was SHOCKED to learn that your father was not familiar with dance moves such as 1. the running man, 2. the Roger Rabbit, and 3. the lawn mower. Luckily, he is totally familiar with those moves now.

The events were lovely and the people were lovely---it's just that our little family, especially you, well, we were exhausted. We are glad to be home. Today you found three acorn caps and I found three molars, poking their way through your gums. I wish the daffodils would do the same.

(Not through your gums. Through the GROUND).

Love,
Ma

French Film

Dear Thiz,

Here's what you should do in 20 years:

1. Get yourself a glass of red wine. I, for example, am currently drinking Sin Zin.

2. Put some music on your stereo. Or your i-pad or i-phone. Or i-lab. Or just blink your eyes a few times to turn on the speaker embedded in your ear lobe.

3. The music should be something wordless and French. I recommend the first song on the Amelie soundtrack entitled J'y suis jamais alle. (I'm too lazy to figure out how to add accent marks. Or to figure out what the title means. I assume it's something sweet and a little quirky. Maybe the bad translation is "Happy You in Sunshine Bloom" or "Carousel Strangers.")

4. Sip the wine, listen to the music, and watch the video below. If you have the capacity to turn the video to black and white (via the thorn embedded into your retina) you should do so.

Sea Shore

You loved the beach. And why wouldn't you? Sand and shells and water. Running and running and running, barefoot and practically naked, people you love running just behind you, laughing enough so you always know they're there. What's not to love?

You ate your oatmeal on a deck overlooking the Atlantic and spent the early evening hours scurrying around the outdoor courtyard restaurants where we ate dinner. You hugged your aunt Agnes every chance you got. You slept in a closet in our bedroom (coat hangers moved out of reach). You frantically tried to escape the Bearer of Sunscreen, usually via a screaming, half-naked, tippy-toed run through the apartment. You failed to nap in bed with Daddy and I. Instead, as we tried to sleep, you would say, in a tiny-curious-mouse-voice, "poop?" And then "Poop?" And then "POOP!!!" You wore a T-shirt and ruffle-butt swim bottoms and a floppy, tropical-fruit bedecked hat during the day, hair damp and skin gritty from the sun. In the evenings, you wore a clean T-shirt and capri pants and sandals, hair wet with comb-lines, skin smooth and soft. You crumbled play-doh and sorted sea-shells and named two tiny Panda bears "Tit" and "Tat." (Tit was the girl and Tat was the boy. Duh.) You gave a lecture to a German couple on the beach and waded through warm, low-tide pools. You were terrified of the waves and then curious about the waves. You permitted us to bury your feet in the sand and you ate as many blueberries as your current caregiver would permit.

Now we are home. 10 degrees when we woke up this morning. Snow on the ground and ice on the car. I am in a terrible mood. I want another week in Florida. I want air you can just walk into--no sweating or shivering--just pleasant air on the skin. I want more green, more flowers and outdoor patios, more silver tongue of the moon on unsettled ocean skin. But you--well, as much as you enjoyed the beach, you seem quite happy to be home too. And I will now sound like a Chicken Soup for the Soul book about the heartwarming lessons children teach us when we least expect it BUT--the truth is, what is in front of you is the only option you understand. I mean, you also understand the option of "the animal crackers hidden on top of the refrigerator" but you aren't plagued by a different version of life that runs parallel to you, you aren't plagued by "what-ifs" or "other possibilities." This morning you had oatmeal and canned peaches and your stuffed cat. Familiar toys. The promise of playing trains with Daddy once the coffee was made. And you were happy.

Adam and Eve always struck me as kind of a silly story. I mean, Eve wasn't supposed to eat the apple, sure, but who doesn't want KNOWLEDGE? All my life, I've been taught how important knowledge is. My parents are teachers, after all, and knowledge keeps history from repeating itself and helps us empathize and makes us better pool players (reflection!). But lately, Thiz, I have been feeling crushed under the weight of it. All this knowing there is to do. I love being in touch with friends on Facebook--but now I check in to see if they've had their babies or published their books or seen "Avatar" in 3D. And then there's the world and its tsunamis and bombings, famines and disease. And then family and immediate friends and colleagues. Jobs to research and parenting techniques to perfect. For the first time in my life, knowledge feels like sin, feels like a kind of darkness. But I am terrified of ignorance too. I want to be a good Mama. A published writer. I want to be well read and kick ass at the Cow quiz night (insert shout out to Emily and Dan here)--but fuck. The tremendousness of all there is to know makes me feel hopeless and impotent too.

For three days I didn't check my e-mail and didn't (really) watch the news. I read a few chapters in a book. Heard about Japan straight from Michael on the phone. I sat on the beach with you and watched water fill up the hole we were digging. I want to learn the way you do. The knowledge that's necessary, that helps me move forward. I want to formulate questions before Google feeds me a million answers, most of which I cannot possibly use.

Packing for Florida

The words are starting to come.

"Purple, bus, truck."

Maybe, like the rest of us, your motivation has been in hibernation mode.

"Fox, put, car."

This morning you pointed urgently to the top of Dada's closet and said "hot, hot." We rolled our eyes, as we are wont to do, and explained that the ceiling was not a heat source. Then I noticed all of Dada's baseball hats. Oh. Hat. Right.

Two days ago, Dada asked you to say "Ma" AND YOU SAID IT. Just like that. And oddly, oddly, I now kind of miss "Bup."

Most things are referred to as "da" or "dis" or "dat."

In 48 hours we will be on our way to Florida! In preparation, we started to sort through some of your springtime clothing this afternoon. Short-sleeved, flowered onesies, striped shorts, toddler sized khaki capris. As I was ooohing and aaaahing over the clothes in your bedroom, I heard a scratching sound coming from the hallway. I went out to investigate.

You were sticking a fork into an electrical outlet.

I almost peed my pants. Seriously. Scooped you up into an "oh my god thank god oh my god" hug and didn't put you down for a long time.

The situation in Japan continues to worsen. Workers in Wisconsin have been denied the rights they deserve. The NY Times is no longer going to offer news for free. The world is becoming a flat screen that fits inside a purse. The shifts are physical, spiritual, intellectual, constant.
I wish the ordinary could protect us from the cataclysmic.

You will wake up from your nap. We will go to the doctor. You will cry. They will give you Tinkerbell stickers. The ground will continue to reveal itself. We will pack: a ladybug T-shirt, shoes that expose open patches of skin, JIF peanut butter on-the-go packs, monkey pajamas, a bib, a bowl, a spoon. We will try to manage the days as they come. Familiar objects that fit inside a suitcase.

Spring in Japan

Today it finally feels like maybe perhaps spring is beginning her slow inch towards us. Meaning: one of those winds that swirls, that seems to come from all directions at once, scarves constricting around necks and hair plastered across cheeks. Meaning: sun turning sheets of ice into puddles. Meaning: a down vest instead of a down coat by late afternoon.

In Japan, the details of spring are likely going unnoticed. On Friday an earthquake rocked the north eastern coast of Japan, creating a tsunami that sent a wall of water crashing over huge portions of the coast. The pictures of the wreckage are awful. Fishing boats collapsed on their sides, roads torn apart, factories consumed by fire. On Sunday 1,000 bodies washed up on shore in Miyagi prefecture. Just like that. 1,000 bodies.

On Saturday we will fly to Florida and you will get your first glimpse of the ocean. We will walk along the beach and look for shells and kelp and sand crabs.

Your uncle Michael is in Japan. He is far away from the disaster, in a city called Ogaki, hundreds of miles from the site of the tsunami. He didn't even feel the tremors.

But now there are problems with the nuclear power plants. In the paper they used the word "meltdown." Bits of radiation have made it as far as Tokyo.

Uncle John visited yesterday and as we sat on the couch, watching the season finale of "The Bachelor," he said, "I don't even know what all this means, how radiation travels, what it looks like."

Then on "The Bachelor" we watched the women, one in black and one in white, travel in separate limosines through South Africa. We watched the one with brown hair dip her toes in the resort pool while she thought about her future. We watched the blond say, "I need to know you're in it for the long haul."

You wore your blue corduroy overalls to lunch. You ate alfredo pasta and I ate a salad with Thousand Island dressing. Grandma drank decaf. She wants to bring her baby home but knows she's not allowed to do that anymore, knows Uncle Michael gets to choose how to protect himself.

Today it finally feels like spring is beginning her slow inch toward us. Meaning: proper burials for the dead. Meaning: contained radiation. Meaning: boats rebalanced on their keels, soldered roads, flames finally extinguished.

A Mama By Any Other Name

Every day, it becomes a little clearer that your unwillingness to communicate using language is due, not to a rare deformity below your tongue (I imagine a small toadstool), but to your obstinate nature.

Luckily, I am patient, understanding, and unwilling to wage silly battles around your linguistic development. Luckily, I am super chill about language. "Dude," I say to myself in my internal snowboarder voice, "the words will come when she's ready. Let her set the pace. Relax. [insert bong toke here]. For now, just think about ripping into that new powder."

It's too bad that snowboarder-voice often gets crushed by hypochondriac-wedding-planner-voice who says "Your child will grow to be a troubled loser who communicates only with stuffed cats. Also, she's dirty and why does your house look like crap?"

I love you, sweetest girl, but I have a sneaking suspicion that our relationship may not always be rose petals and swans and sweet new powder. And that's OK.

I thought having a baby meant that someone would call me Mama. It turns out I don't get to choose the way my child loves me.

(Or it turns out I finally have a reason to have another baby.)

Trees, Walking

Auntie Martha and Significant Other (aka "Signe") Sam are visiting and you are overwhelmed with joy. You brought them your entire library of books to read this morning, one by one, and Dada reports that as you walked across the room in front of them, you'd tilt your head to the side and give a faux laugh every now and again, just to remind them of the fun they must surely be having in your presence.

While you slept yesterday we ate sushi and Tagalongs and discussed Sam's proposal to produce a Marlowe play about gay King Edward in the studio space at the Guthrie. At dinner we filled tortillas with chicken and black beans and cheese and tomato and salsa and heard about Martha's interview with the head of LVC, how she gave him a run for his money with her questions about the Lutheran tradition of social service.

I'm teaching The Gospel of Mark and the graphic novel Marked in my composition course right now and so today I posted on Facebook my favorite line from the Gospel: "I can see people, but they look like trees, walking." The line is spoken by a blind man when Jesus has healed him only partially. Jesus spits on the man's eyes and then asks the man if he can see. The man responds with the tree line. Then Jesus covers the man's eyes with his hands again and the man's sight is fully restored.

I like this passage not only because I think it contains the most poetic line in a Gospel that's rife with dull, dry reportage on events, but also because it's the one time (that I know of, and I'm no Biblical scholar), that Jesus heals someone half-way. The rest of the time, it's either all or nothing, you're either blind/leprous/hemorrhaging/seizing/possessed or you're all better, full of new life both externally and internally. I feel half-cured today. Half-blind, half-faithed, half-hearted. The world is still shadowed with filmy gray snow. I feel betrayed by people I trusted. I love that there is a moment that describes this state-of-being in the Bible, that I can live in that moment today with hope that things will get better.

For instance. When I brought you into your room today for your nap, you danced. That's the first thing you do now, every time I bring you into your room. You run to the center of your pink elephant rug and quickly lift your feet up and down in one place--your version of dancing. Today you also practiced falling down. Dance, dance, dance, fall backward onto your butt. Dance, dance, dance, fall backward. Then you fiddled with the humidifier knob and fiddled with the space heater knob and fiddled with the stereo that sits on the bottom shelf of your bookcase. While I read "Spot Goes to the Beach" you tried to take the child-proof lid off a bottle of liquid Benadryl so my reading was accompanied by the click, click, click of the top not coming off and the click, click, click of your refusal to accept that particular outcome.

Plateau

You have slept in until 7:30 or beyond five out of seven days this week. On three afternoons, you took a two-hour nap. Your father and I don't know what to do with ourselves, really. On Thursday we were planning to go to the zoo. Dada came home from work early and we sat on the couch, waiting for you to wake up so we could visit the tapir. No dice. We planned for the same outing yesterday (thinking you could not POSSIBLY take another two-hour nap since you haven't, ever, in the history of your life, taken more than one two-hour nap in the course of a week). We sat on the couch, waiting to take you to see the gibbons. No dice.

You and I continue in what I hope will be the longest snot-marathons of our lives. You seem to be draining in a healthy way and your snot has subsided. Mine is still tinted a sickly green color. According to Mayo Clinic online, caffeine and alcohol do not help to cure sinusitis. In fact, these items are known to worsen ones symptoms. Which may be why you're getting better and I'm not.

We're facing another gray day today. Tis the season for puddles/ice/puddles/ice. When we go for a walk we dress you in wind pants, your pink boots, your too-small pink winter coat, your reindeer hat, and your black REI mittens. You have figured out how to run in the boots and you look hilarious doing so, a little clod of wayward marl, tumbling across the town home parking lot. You've also developed a propensity to scrape snow off the sides of snow banks with your mittens and you love to stomp your way through puddles. We cover blocks and blocks by moving from puddle to puddle, trying to avoid the dog poop that also appears in massive quantities as the snow melts (do people really think it disappears in the snow???).

Looking at photos and blog posts from a year ago, I am amazed at how rapidly you changed from week to week and month to month. Last year, over the course of three months, you went from not being able to sit upright to taking drunk-sailor steps across the living room. Now, the rate of your development seems slower and more opaque. At ECFE last fall, they passed out a chart that mapped child development. At 15 months there was a jaggedy, downhill line to symbolize a lot of "turning inward" and a struggle between dependence and independence. At 18 months, however, the line shoots smoothly upward into the great heavens of childhood genius. I very much admire this line, have been looking forward to its smoothness and incline for some time.

Now that we're there (you turned 18 months on Thursday! hurrah!), I feel a little disappointed. I know you've changed in the last three months, but not in remarkable, "don't they grow up before your very eyes!" kinds of ways. You know a few more words. A few. You're sleeping like a champ. You climb on things. Your manual dexterity is slightly improved. Your pointing vocabulary (i.e. images you can identify in books) has increased. But you haven't learned to whittle or sing American folk songs or put two words together into an itty-bitty sentence. I kind of feel like the line is a lie. That our line is a plateau, the barren horizon, the Midwestern field, all covered in snow.

Then again. Your favorite book right now is "Thisbe's Promise." Aunt Meghan and Uncle Nels bought this book for you after searching Amazon for products with the word "Thisbe" in the title. Surprisingly, it's not a bad book. It's about Thisbe and her Mama gazing out the window and remarking on things like hummingbirds and starfish and butterflies and whales. In the final image, Thisbe and her Mama are swimming with the whales and you like this image best. The catch is that the woman who wrote this book had a daughter named Thisbe who died of a slow, painful, degenerative disease. The reason Thisbe and her Mama are looking out the window is that Thisbe is "sick in bed." And at the end of the book, when Thisbe "feels better" and they "go for a walk" and "swim with the whales" well--well, I know what it means in a way that you don't. So I get tears in my eyes every time we read this book, because our sickness is snot, not malfunctioning nerves, and when the sun gets around to shining we really do get to go outside, and stretch our legs, and walk.

A plateau is a line you can walk upon. We'll take it.

Blah

You are at lap sit at the library with Dada and I am supposed to meet you in ten minutes, so this will be quick:

1. You know your right hand from your left. Or so it seems at the moment.

2. If someone asks where Mama is, you point to me. If asked to say Mama, you say "Bup."

3. Our first Montessori class yesterday, you clambered all over Allison, backing up into her lap to read stories, bringing her puzzles. You completely ignored me. You adored snack time. You sat on a little wooden chair at a little wooden table and got to pour water from a silver cream pitcher into a plastic shot glass. From time to time you would take a sip of the water and say "ahhhh."

4. I have had a cold for 12 days. You've been snotty for 16.

5. Due to some goings on at work and the snow and the cold and your end-of-sickness crabbiness, I've been feeling pretty depressed. So we went to the Citites this weekend and Grandma watched you while I cried a little and read a book and watched X-Files and bought a new black bathing suit with swaths of fabric over the belly to make me look more svelte.

6. We are going to Florida in 2.5 weeks! Bright light! Bright light!

7. Your father has been wonderful and supportive and lovely to both you and me. He is supremely patient and full of hugs even though he isn't feeling the greatest either.

I could write more but I'd rather walk over to the library and find you playing with a toy and Daddy watching. I'd rather pick you up in my own two arms and kiss your two dear snot-crusted cheeks. I love you, dear one.