Holy craftacular, Batman!

So ...

You know how The Champ is a fan of bats, right?

*Long, meandering, beside-the-point story alert*

Well, we were out late one night ... well past bedtime ... for a holiday event that almost ensures the kids will fall asleep in the car on the way home and you'll have to carry them up to their beds ...

and hope their teeth won't disintegrate from a night without dentifrice.

*Check. Check. Check ... and Check.*

Of course, Jed is already snoring by the time I'm done making sure the kids are tucked in ... I think I'll go downstairs and surf the interwebs for a while.

... also, I seem to recall feeding time for the dog and cat has been overlooked.

So I head downstairs ... Stopping dead in my tracks at the fourth-step from the bottom.

Because in the living room, FLYING AT ME, is a bat.

Now, I know bats are pretty small and harmless when they're all folded up and hanging upside down in a bat lair, cleverly cut into the side of a mountain by some Hollywood film crew ...

In my house. Where my bed and computer are. The thing was a menacing giant.

Now, I did what any self-respecting, bat-loving, can-do-anything woman would do in a situation like this: I crouched as low to the floor as humanly possible, crawled back up the stairs, closed the doors to the kids' rooms and woke my husband from a sound sleep.

"There's a bat in the house."

"I know. You're parents gave it to him last summer. It came with a ball and glove."

"No. The winged creature kind."

He woke up, went downstairs and commenced to wonder what he was going to do about this predicament. ...

While I sat at the top of the stairs and waited. ...

I heard the opening and closing of doors as he went on a room-to-room check.

"Did he come back your way?"

"Nope. Nothing up here but us chickens."

He was removing picture frames from the walls and banging sheet rock. He went to the Christmas tree and gave it a shake. Nothing.

Then I heard the unmistakable sound of a muffled curse.

"B@$7&%#"

"Did you find him?"

"He went out the door. He's gone now."

"How do you know it's a him?"

"Bad sonar, but won't ask for directions."


*****


OK ... So that's pretty much where the inspiration for this week's craftacular project comes from ... that and the need to have a simple handmade thing-a-ma-jig to put under the tree for the kidlets.

So I put the idea "soft and comfy pillow" together with "winged, rat-like harbinger of terror."

I predict sweet dreams!

WHAT YOU NEED

* A 9' circular pillow form or polyfill.
* Brown fur-like fabric (I cut two 10-inch circles).
* 1/2 yard of Black pleather material (leftover from the bat costume).
* A few triangles of white craft felt.
* A black, fleece remnant (cut into two triangles for ears, and a little mushroom for nose).
* Saftey eyes.
* A 4" piece of ribbon.

UNNECESSARY BUT HELPFUL

* A sewing machine

NOT HELPFUL BUT INSPIRATIONAL

* A live model

WHAT YOU DO

CUT OUT ALL YOUR PIECES

* Cut two circles of brown fabric for the body.

* Cut two bat wings out of pleather. Flip over and use them to cut two more.
make them the same length as the body.

* Cut two, large triangles out of fleece and fold into smaller triangles.

* Cut mushroom shape out of fleece for nose; and cut triangles out of white felt.

ASSEMBLE THE PARTS

* Cut tiny slits for eyes in the front side of the body fabric and insert safety eyes; secure the backs. Next sew on nose and teeth. I sewed around the entire nose, but secured the teeth only at the top.

* Flip wings so the outsides face in, and pin them together. Sewing around three sides of each wing. Turn right-side out through the end opening. Use a pencil to poke any tight spots out.

* Take the ear triagles and sew around the edge, leaving room to turn it right side out.

* Being careful to put the ears at the top of the face, turn the body circles right side in and sandwich the fabric over the wings, Ears and ribbon loop (also pointing inward). Pin around the outside.

* Sew around the whole thing, making sure to secure the appendages and leave enough room to insert the stuffing or pillow form.

* Turn right side out.

* Insert stuffing or pillow form.

* Close up the opening.


AND THERE IT IS ...

A flightless rodent you're kids CAN cuddle.



*In case you're wondering ... I put the ribbon loop at the bottom so he can hang upsidedown when he's taking a nap.

Anyone interested in taking bets on when we'll all go back to journaling with pen and paper?

That's a semi-serious question. I'm not really the betting sort.

Lately I've been really dreading the internet. Sure, everyone having a voice they can raise to the wilderness is liberating and can be illuminating, yet the immediacy and seeming intractability of the medium has made me weary of where it's all leading us.

It's not that we feel anonymous or impervious that bothers me. It's that there's no real gatekeeper other than a Darwinian survival of the fittest. If it resonates it rises, period.

I suppose in many ways all we are is a mass of cells mixed with water and electrical impulses attached to opinions. We can ask questions. We can cite study. We can judge any number of scenarios without doing either. I suppose it doesn't matter. We all think we have integrity. We all think we are on the side that is righteous.

But what will my opinion matter now or in a thousand years? Probably little.

Perhaps there's real cause for alarm, or perhaps I've just reached the point in historical progressive maturity in which I pine for the good-ol'-days of cassette tapes and Tri-X film ... of driving to work without the distraction of the potential for contstant contact. ... just as my parents wished for the return of wingtips and high-fidelity and the art of letter writing.

Most of all, I wonder what it will be like in the world when my children pine for simpler times. I just can't imagine.

The 'selfly' hour

For some reason, one I've never thought to question before now, I seem to take an abundant amount of photographs at 7 o'clock.

I never considered the timing, despite having noted it, I think because it seemed a matter of convenience. I usually start to wake up a little before 7, and despite all the things I could and should be doing ... rousing the kids, getting a shower, making breakfast, packing lunches ... I tend to grab my camera.

I sneak in on the kids if they're still asleep ...

Maybe it's the light that draws me to the hour. Maybe it's the quiet.

There's also the getting-home-from-work, time-to-myself factor. When able, I go for walks at 7 p.m. Seven seems like the perfect hour for contemplative selfly things.

Down time.

Of course, it's just a coincidence that both of my children were born in the first quarter of the nighttime Seven hour ... in December of 2003 and again in June of 2007.

Then again, the coincidence could be the reason I love that time of day the best.

Exceptions

Yesterday was probably as perfect as it gets for a person like me. The gray weather turned out to be nothing more than the threat of gale-force precipitation playing out in brief intervals of gentle rain. It was the kind of rain that doesn't seem to matter if you get caught in it since it never reaches a person's core.

Of course you never know such is the case on days like these until you risk getting soaked to the soul.

We were risking it ...

I had the address of a gallery I'd wanted to visit in Hudson. It was having an exhibition of two photographers -- Judith Barrett and Moira Black -- each showing family photographs.

Filled with woodfired pizza and bribed with the promise of ice cream, the kids were sitting tall on our shoulders. They were reaching up for the branches of trees trying to liberate the water balanced on leaves as we counted addresses to our destination ... five blocks away.

The man at the gallery seemed happy to see us, unsure as he was that anyone would brave the weather on a Sunday.

I looked at every photograph as he told me a little something about the photographers. He was an exceptionally nice man.

Family photographs, in a gallery anyway, usually mean intimate moments that are raw, dirt smeared and just mildly awkward. There's often a reality that pushes beyond incidental smiles. I can't help but be drawn to them.

My kids, also dirt-smeared and awkward, were on their best jumping up-and-down behavior.

Turns out Annabel's jumping-up-and-down was more purposeful than her brother's. She had to use The Facility. The man showed her to a door with a red circle and slash tacked one of its panels. "Do you know what this means?" he asked. "Ladies?" she guessed.

It means "do not enter," or "off limits," I laugh. "In this case, it means he's making an exception for you."

That's me in their presence: Frazzled. Always a mother. Always feeling watched. Always feeling worried, sometimes needlessly.

Afterward, as we made our way back to the car and the quest to deliver on the promise of treats, I asked my husband what he thought of the photographs.

"I can't really say," he treaded lightly around my question. "I don't have the emotional connection to their families that I have to ours."

Photographs, especially family ones, aren't his cup of contemporary navel gazing.

"I can't really compare."

I don't think I was asking for comparisons though I know there are some to be made.

One photographer yells "LOOK AT ME!" while the other whispers *lookatme.* Intimate moments, perhaps, or perhaps they are instants created with a hold-it-just-a-moment-longer request. It's up to us to interpret what it all means, if anything, through the lens of our own lives.

Warm wishes

May your hair be manageable and your holidays static free.

But if your hair should be unruly, just remember ...

Your cat loves you anyway.

Random Ramblings Thursday

Whilst driving home from work yesterday I was forced to realize a truth that is only surprising to me: I am middle-aged.

Oh, this little pest had been flying around for a while. I swatted at it from time to time with the gestating and bearing of children at an age when most of my friends were getting ready to put their own kids in middle school; and some *shudder* high school and college.

Everyone else can see the lines in my face and the silver in my hair, growing coarser by the year. I unappologetically soften them in Photoshop.

I thought of myself as a late bloomer; “A Girl On Her Way,” to quote the title of a Maia Sharp song, and the reason for this inarguable wisdom.

An interview with Sharp was airing on National Public Radio as I steered my Civic home … (which is another key sign, I’ve learned, that a woman has reached a certain age. I came to this understanding after a attending gathering of women, wherein the husband of the host found himself shuffling cars in the driveway and had returned from his chore announcing that he’d been able to hear an NPR story in its entirety behind the wheels of seven different Hondas).

But I digress.

Sharp was telling me (and thousands of other listeners) that a girl on her way has only has so long before she becomes a woman who never arrived.

And there I was, slack jawed, a woman who never arrived: a woman, alone, in a car, listening to NPR.

The progression of this transformation became clear as the song portion played behind my thoughts.

For a time you tread water waiting for your first “real” job.

You get your first promotion.

Then a second.

Maybe you are named to the post of leadership before you turn 30, like I was.

And then maybe you get laid off.

Financial cuts.

Maybe they tell you how horrible you left things (even if you inherited someone else's mess) as a parting gift.

Maybe you spend some time thinking you are unemployable.

And sooner than not you are employed again.

This time you are grateful.

Fearful.

Unwilling to take chances.

You stagnate.

You try new things anyway.

You can't help yourself. You have ideas that lead you onward if not upward.

And for a time you are on your way again.

Things are looking up.

But nothing really catches on.

And then one day a song comes on the radio.

And you look into the corner of the rearview mirror you have angled toward your face.

Damn vanity.

And you see the truth.

And you finally swat dead that fly that was buzzing around you.

Turns out, it’s not as painful as you thought it would be.

You tell yourself: If you had only sought to arrive, you might have missed out on all the sights along the way.

Hell, it might even be true.

A different perspective

I recently had cause to use an old flash card, and later as I was downloading pictures I found a few of the kids that I'd never processed from just about a year ago.

There was one of Silas, at home, looking none-too-happy on a vintage tractor that once belonged to me (or probably more accurately my older sister) and now takes up a parking place at our house.

And there were a few in Vermont at a place we stopped for brunch before making our way to my aunt's house. Annabel was wearing her dance leotard and ladybug boots. She wanted a fruit plate with cottage cheese.

I snapped a picture as the waitress poured me a coffee.

Strange these little snapshots from the past.

I wonder how they were overlooked in the first place; then I wonder about all the moments that weren't overlooked.

And it brings me here, to this place, where I've dumped words and pictures for years thinking I was amassing some important archive of our lives.

But I end up thinking: "How much of this SHOULD be overlooked?"

I never really had my finger on the pulse of anything that's drawn readers ... what makes me think my own kids will one day find any of this interesting?

I don't know. Maybe I'm just tired and anxious about the move.

Writing such trivial points as the world goes to hell in a handbasket ... Iraq, Iran, Pakistan ... putting a green film over my icon on twitter seems hardly a solution.

Perhaps writing every day, while a good excercise in persistence, hasn't been good for my perspective.

I feel alone.

In a vast universe.

I know I'm probably not quitting this monster I've made any more than I'd walk away from my flesh and blood children. But I'm in need of a new point of view. I need some perspective. Because for as much as I was present when these pictures were taken, I'm beginning to understand that I was absent a reason to make them.

Bucking trends

It's been a while since I've taken up a call from the mavens of the interwebs, the virtual community of which I've found myself at times adoring and feeling oddly estranged, but her bad mother's recent manifesto -- followed by some other posts about what we feed our kids ... how we introduce them to the world ... or how others perceive us as we traverse the sometimes tragic path parenthood leads us down -- has my head spinning.

I can't help but think that while I agree with most of what has been articulated, any lable we put on it will subtly miss its mark, or worse; set up an entirely new layer of ways to compare ourselves to each other, when maybe we should be trying NOT to compare.

We can call ourselves Bad parents with the smugness of knowing we aren't; and as such try and snatch the word back from the media that we think has sold us some bill of goods we didn't need. A collection of To Do Lists that suggests the only way we will be Good parents is to follow their reporting on their Attachment Parenting protagonists hell-bent on turning the universe of parentbots into breast-feeding, baby-wearing hovercrafts who never even wrapped their babies butts in cloth diapers because the water to wash them is wasteful. Instead they dangled their little dewdrops over the composting toilet.

Meanwhile, we sit rapt and judgemental while the station break allows us to drool over the latest eco-friendly brain-food toys waiting for the gleaming white-toothed and visibly pregnant broadcaster to return and tease the next story about the hip parents in our neighborhoods currently enrolling their infants in Mandarin lessons at the Montessori school where they also practice violin and tai-chi.

Of course, we could switch the channel and hear from the Ferberists who would like to reintroduce the scientific proof that formula is nutritionally superior to breast milk, and that mothers who leave the home really don't love their children, or perhaps if they don't leave the home they are traders to their gender. They might be pushing the agenda that we should all be enrolling our kids in public school, lest we unwittingly flush society down the crapper.

Then there's the conundrum of fear. Should we be letting our kids have more freedom or less? Is junior too fat? Are they spending too much time in front of the television. Is school too demanding? Not demanding enough? Are they usurping our authority?

Good parents will know, infallably, what to do. They will be the deciders. Of course the BAD parents we're talking about were never REALLY bad, they were just judged.

The gyst is that in realizing the impossibility of adhering to all these influences we must accept that there are just too many books to live by and what seems intolerable to me isn't tolerated by you. So we should do our best, what speaks to us, and accept our collection of quirks under the moniker of "bad," put it on our chest and wear it proudly.

Bad is the new good.

... but I just can't get behind that either.

It's just another slogan. Another option to confound us.

Mothers have been the scapegoats since Eve. Freud cemented the notion in modern psychology, and every damn Disney film of mass appeal has done away with us to acheive a better arc. We pit ourselves against one another, we wallow in our own insecurities and then we blame media for making us feel demoralized and disappointed when our expectations of ourselves are not met. Then we chastise each other for giving us a "smack down."

And with so much time to fill, the media can hit every damn one of us (if we let them) just because it has to fill air time. And let's not forget the market, because they pretty something up and sell it to your friends and all of a sudden you HAVE to have it. But even if we fall for all of this hook, line and sinker we have to admit, if we're going to be honest, it's not their fault. It's ours.

We all are horrible. We are all amazing. We are all human and we always have been.

And no matter what we do, whether we accept any particular mantle - bad or good - our children will all blame us for each decision we made, no matter what it was. Sometimes they will be justified. My hope is that if we truly were good parents, our kids will forgive us when they've matured enough to realize it.

Like my mother before me, I am a human being doing the best I can at any given moment of the day. Some days I fare better than others.

So. ...

Good?

Bad?

*shugs shoulders*

I don't even know what that means in the wide world of parenting these days.

My guess is I shouldn't judge.

But not judging doesn't mean I can't disagree.

Or does it?

Just breathe ... just breathe

headstand spotter, originally uploaded by toyfoto.

Yesterday was a super shitty, stress-filled bitch of a day.

The day before it was worse.

The cumulative effect of which, was that I spiked a headache that became a crown of tension wrapped around my skull.

When I arrived home from work the house was in an uproar. Cookies that dad was making had dried cranberries.

No one is happy. Mama, least of all.

Fighting was everywhere. From every angle. No one can disengage.

"I'm making these cookies the way I want to and you'll try it or you'll have none."

"She's got to learn," he says, "that things don't always go her way."

"Like it or lump it," he told her.

She didn't understand. Neither did I really. How hard is it to hold out some batter to be cooked plain?

But I did understand it was his kitchen. His rule. To go against it wouldn't be in anyone's best interest.

She told me her tummy hurt.

I told her it was a likely result of tension she was holding from being upset, just like my headache.

I told her yoga might help.

So she and I rolled out our mats and started doing the Alphabet with Marcia Wenig.

She told me, during Moo and Meow, she wasn't feeling any better.

I told her to breathe. Just breathe.

By the time we got to V - for volcano - we were both feeling better.

By Z, it was time for dinner.

And later, she even tried the dessert.

There was calm.

She picked around the cranberries, and declared it ...

"Not so good."

But she didn't make a face.

When she asked for a popsicle.

He gave it to her.

Nobody really won.

Nobody really lost.

But we were able to make peace.

How to make the perfect cup of coffee ...

even more perfect.




Coffee-talk amongst yourselves.

An empty room

The Champ’s room is empty save for a trundle bed bought for a handful of dollars at a yard sale and a corner dresser filled with clothes he’s still months away from fitting.

A beige towel – remaindered and untouched from the last overnight guest - lays folded on the chest’s blonde-colored top. It serves as a rough terry mattress for a smattering of keepsake toys with which he’s never played.

The corner boudoir – more extension of hallway than bedroom – has been a concern since the moment the ultrasound technician detected his wand with hers.

Thus he’s never spent a night in his room. He rarely spends the night in his crib.

His clothes – the ones that do fit him - are straining a cheap chest of drawers pushed into the back of my closet. The ones he’s outgrown make their way to a bag tucked in beside it, presumably to be left, like an orphan, on the steps of a charity in a moment of eyes-closed-shut resolve.

My husband wonders if we’ll have to wait until he goes to college before we get our room back. His jokes have sharp teeth that he wraps in humor to dull the effect on my soft flesh.

I refuse to talk about it.

I don’t want to give voice to all that I am thinking.

... That we are showing a kind of deep seated favoritism to our boy as we shuffled our girl off a room of her own when she was barely a year old.

... That he is my last child, and losing his baby-ness with each passing day.

... That things are progressing in the other house - the house that is not the home we brought them into but the one in which they will grow up - and that means more change.

... And that he will finally have a room that rivals his sister’s.

I don’t want to be reminded that my babies are growing up even though the fact of it confronts me each day at breakfast. Each day they get taller and taller, able to reach previously unattainable objects as they perch on tippy-toes.

Such happiness I feel in their accomplishment, and yet a somber tone sounds in my head '... soon they won't need me.'

The day is coming when we will have our room back. When we look at each other and have to figure out how to be alone again. How to just be us.

I don’t want think about that day if it means it will be missing the equivalent of the children’s weight in joy.

Word

classing up our toys, originally uploaded by toyfoto.

Perhaps yesterday's malaise was the result of a delayed reaction to news of the death of George Carlin last Sunday.

Now, I'm not what one would call a devotee of his nor could I honestly say I enjoyed his humor ... appreciated might be a better way of phrasing.

I appreciated the cleverness and quickness of wit. I appreciated the down in the dirt, lay it on the line tack it always took.

It made you think differently. Even for just a minute.

But as old as I am I wasn't old enough to really understand what he did when he - and others like him - stood up and swore up and down for free speech.

I know there are lots of people out there who think the way we use our words has changed the world we live in; made it a meaner more hateful place. They might be right. I don't know.

What I grew up being told, however, was words can't hurt you.

I think about this because I send my child to preschool - a place I've here and there referred to as "The Marilla Cuthbert Academy for Unspeakably Charming Children" for all its gentle molding of its young charges -- in the hopes of jumpstarting the work of making model citizens.

Making model citizens is a lofty goal, and one that people like me - parents who have gone through their entire adult lives wearing the same uniform -- T-shirts, casual sweaters and blue jeans (well excepting for that very brief window of time in the late 80s when *shudder* stone and acid wash BLACK jeans were all the rage) have rebelled against.

We have stalwartly refused to march to the beat of the professional drummer. "Be your own person." "You don't have to wear a suit and conform." "You don't have to play by some lousy, corporate hack's rules. YOU CAN BE SUCCESFUL AND BE YOURSELF."

Of course there are naysayers. There are those who ascribe to the school of thought that in order to achieve success one must dress for it; one must speak its language; one must put away childish things and act with mature refinement.

We shrugged our shoulders, made a kind of half-snort, half-meow sound and said: "make me."

Then we set out to make our own way in this world - which had now become a horrible place where crimes were recorded in times per second and no one gave up their seat on the bus to either the elderly or the pregnant. A place where parents were raising their kids in bubbles and the kids were coming out worse than before. ... That world. Who cares if it really doesn't exist? We think it does therefore it was created.

But I wonder ...

Have words lead to this?

I shake my head. I don't think so. I can't think so.

No. I don't think the world is any worse off because aint slipped into the dictonary. The world didn't stop turning when women left the home in droves, headed for the workforce. And it won't spin backward because I refuse to wear a business suit, or force my kid comb her hair and wear matching clothes. Giving my kids home haircuts isn't an act of abuse.

I don't care if my kid's arms are marker covered or if she's got splotches of popcicle on her shirt. We all choose our battles. And the crusty dirt between her toes is a rite of passage.

Yet, I worry.

Am I making a mistake by not making more of society's norms? To hover ... not to hover?

I've already felt the sounds of mild alarm raised in the eyebrows and clucked tongues in my direction; the doctors and teachers ... other mothers.

Carlin said it, and maybe it applies to me, too:

"People who say they don't care what people think are usually desperate to have people think they don't care what people think."

Since becoming a mother I have to admit there is really no longer a vast luxury in "not caring what people think," because there are people - Little People - who are depending on not only WHAT but also HOW we think.

And we all believe thoughts are shaped by what?

That's right, WORDS; Big words, little words, good words, bad words and even sounds that make no sense.

Of course Carlin, in addition to being a tweaker of notions, was proably best known for his ability to knit four-letter words into warm sweaters of intricate patterns.

Swearing is fun. It makes us feel powerful and in command. I don't want my kids to think that there are "bad" words. I don't even think I want them to think there are inappropriate words. Only that there are alternate words, which might make the message more readily received.

As satisfying as a good curse word is, too often used it becomes difficult for people - even willing people - to hear you above the din.
We must remember that the individual words should never be more imporatant than their collective meaning.

I think Carlin understood that.

I hope I can help my kids understand that.

As a parent, it just feels so odd to wonder: "What Would Carlin Say?"

I'm sure he'd say this was all full of shite. He'd leave off the e.

** In any event we are off to Maine for a week of rest and relaxation. I'll tell you all about Silas' birthday party (or at least show you pictures) when we return.

Some days ...

automatic, originally uploaded by toyfoto.

Some days it seems as if this here rambling, online journal writes itself.

Not today, though.

Today feels uninspired.

What's worse, I suppose, is that this lack of inspiration is also causing me to have a bit of an unwanted epiphany about the value of keeping track of every little thing about what is just life; writing it down while attempting to embed artful flourishes into what otherwise is utterly banal.

Could it be the blues? The blahs?

I don't know. I can't really put my finger on it.

Writing through water

swirly swing, originally uploaded by toyfoto.

Words are coming in waves but not in any order that makes sense. Not that I can really write them, anyway.

You see, so much of my story really isn't mine to tell.

It is my custom, at least in my head, to rethink what is my intention with this place here in the ethos. The last few times I checked, it was my intent to leave something for my children to know the me I thought I was if I am not around to answer their questions.

It is a place for them to come and learn what I thought while they were dazzling me with their little beings.

It is a place to jot down all those little things I am apt to forget minutes after they happen. Like THIS little tidbit a reader in Philadelphia dug up today, and, through my sitemeter snooping, let me have a teary little stroll down memory lane.

For every thing I write here, as well you may gather, there are dozens of things I don't write. There are tons of experiences, outside of motherhood, just as a human being, that I don't discuss. In some cases it's not prudent, and in other cases it would be unkind.

I'm holding my breath a lot, these days. When I breathe it's with a gigantic sigh. So much is just the human predicament. All the things we as mortal beings are incapable of protecting ourselves against. All the things that can keep a person up into the wee hours of the morning replaying in their mind.

Maybe I'm tired. Maybe I've got nothing of importance to say. I don't know. What I do know is that it seems like everything I try to write sounds like it's trying to be written, and trying too hard.

But what's even more frightening is just thinking about it all leads me to another conclusion: that so much of what I've shared here already really isn't mine to give, either.



*sigh*

Sleepless nights

to sleep ..., originally uploaded by toyfoto.

I couldn't sleep last night. I tried. I went to bed early (for me) and closed my eyes. Nothing.

My legs felt gittery. I cracked my ankles and moved my feet back and forth. I shifted and turned, and grumbled to myself at the potential for this new symptom to be the often scoffed-at syndrome -- restless leg.

I got up and walked around. No help. Last week I was waking up from a dead sleep with crippling pain and leg cramps. Flex, point, flex, point, flex, point ... back to sleep.

The clock that had read 11 p.m. now blinked 1 a.m.

My legs eventually gave up their wakefulness and just before I was able to drift off, the itch of the rash roared. Up again for the forgotten Caladryl. The shock of cold as it dried woke me up again.

2 a.m. Annabel is standing in the hallway, silently looking at me. She lifts her arms. I put her in bed and we cuddle. She tells me I'm the "bestest mommy I ever had," and shushes me when I tell her I love
her too. "MOM," she chides, "You are waking me up from my dreams."

Lay back down, I tell myself. Soon there will be enough sleepless nights. There will be on the two hour feedings round the clock. There will be new learning curves for all of us. Get all the rest you can now.

I do as my mind instructs. I try to relax but the reflux takes it's turn. I get up and go to the kitchen for more TUMS; an empty ritual that doesn't work.

4 a.m.: with flexing feet, itchy torso and burning throat, I wonder if I will ever get sleep again.

Thing 2 has been quiet, and it occurs to me that aside from what I hope are pregnancy related symptoms, I've not really been noticing the pregancy. I wonder how often he's been fiddling around in there.

And just when I figure I'll be awake to greet the sun, he reminds me he's here and his got things to do, thank-you-very-much. "I just think I'll try tap dancing over here on your bladder, ma."

There's so much to think about; so much left to do. So little time, it seems. No time left for sleep.