the (eerie) ties that bind

a chronology of freakiness:

item 1: in one of the 45-minute naps that passed for a good-night’s sleep, courtesy of  eamon and The Fever That Ate 2009, i dreamt that i was taking care of a young mairin when a skeevy creepoid tried to wrest her from my loving arms. KIDNAPPER! i yelled and hugged her to my chest, trying to run but finding my dream-legs leaden and unmoving. skeevy creepoid dude made another move for her. RAPE! i screamed, and tried even harder to get away. i woke from the dream just as mairin herself, sleeping in the next room, started crying out “mommy, mommy, MOMEEE!” heart pounding, i stumbled out of bed and went to her. she was sitting up in her bed and when i sat down next to her she threw her arms around my neck and would not let go. i reassured her that everything was OK and i would see her in the morning. she kissed my cheek, whispered okay, mom, snuggled back under her covers and drifted back to sleep.

item 2: mairin and leo were playing at their new game in our adjoining front yards: each holds one end of leo’s jump rope and then, keeping the rope stretched to its full length between them, they run around squealing with delight. they have done this a lot over the last few weeks, and they both love it. i have never thought anything of it, except to think that they are too cute when they play together. so i’m holding eamon, watching them play at their game, and suddenly think oh my god mairin is going to hurt herself. and that instant — THAT INSTANT — she tripped and fell. since her hands were busy she didn’t really break her fall with them very well, and so she smacked face-almost-first into the concrete. she lifted her face to me and she was covered in blood from the nose down. i passed off eamon to leo’s mom, grabbed mairin and dashed into the house to rinse her mouth, test her teeth, reassure her she was fine, try to convince her to let me put ice against her rapidly swelling lip, and miss the piece of gravel ground into her gum (never fear, shannon found it as soon as i would let anybody else touch her).

item 3: mairin is walking around the house. i think to myself wow, she’s doing so well with the potty training. WAIT! maybe she needs to go to the bathroom! at which exact moment in time she turns to me, crotch in hand, and says mom, i need to go potty. please give me some privacy.

so there it is. eamon may be the one who refuses to literally detach from me, but apparently some spooky part of me isn’t letting go of mairin. either that, or massive sleep deprivation has launched us into a new astral plane.

you’d think i’d have more to show for it

given that i have lain awake most nights this last week, clever-sounding one-liners running through my head, you might think i’d have written a post or a dozen by now.

the problem with writing ideas born from sleep-deprivation is that by the faint and dull yet somehow buzzing light of morning they have lost their brilliance.

so forget my wit. (wit? what wit? oh, your humor is too cruel.) here’s a snippet from our real life, instead.

m: mommy, where is daddy?

c: on a bike ride.

m: with his friends?

c: no, tonight he went by himself.

m: oh. on his bike?

c: yes, sweetie.

m: mommy, i want to be a daddy.

c: [...!...] really?

m: yiss. when i grow up i want to be a daddy.

c: oh. how come?

m: daddies have bikes.

[note: insert your own version of the long and tortured conversation between shannon and carole when carole recounts this conversation to shannon and shannon tells mairin that mommies can have bikes too. who was the better feminist -- carole for letting mairin want to be a daddy and so not foisting gender roles upon her but also losing the opportunity to tell her that girls can have bikes? or shannon, for helping mairin see that girls can have what boys have but also reinforcing the notion that mairin could be a mommy if that's what she wants? i think we're waiting to finish the argument until at least one of us has had a decent night's sleep.]

long overdue family-ramble

gus is the laughin’-est kid i ever have seen. he sees mairin, he laughs. he sees his dad, he laughs. (he sees me, he lunges for my breasts, but that’s a whole ‘nother issue.) you blow on his face, he laughs. he wakes up in the morning laughing. and blowing raspberries. which makes him laugh. the kid is amazing. perfect in every way.

mairin is going to be the death of all of us. she has turned into the world’s most loving toddler and smothers everybody with affection. and i do mean smother: she will jump on top of eamon, wrap her chubby arms around his neck, and croon “i love you beebee, beebee-noni-eemon i love you.” i tell her to be gentle. she turns on me with a glare: “i am being gentle, mommy.” and then i am pronounced “gabba-mommy” which sometimes seems to be a step down from “noni-mommy,” but which still comes complete with hug so i think it’s okay.

mairin and eamon are now sharing a room, with mairin bribed out of her crib and into her big-girl bed with the promise of a sticker every morning that she gets up after spending the night in the bed. “mairin’s big-girl sticker chart” has the place of prominence in our entryway, and she has earned herself two stickers in two nights. not too shabby, little girl. of course, she did wake up at 2:24 this morning crying for blueberries, which woke the entire family.

which ruined the first good night’s sleep any of us has had in a week. eamon has decided that while being 6 months is pretty cool, and sitting up and rolling over and chewing his toes are great ways to while away the hours, he would prefer, thank you very much, to spend his days eating like a real  infant: on the breast, every two hours, day or night. especially night. by last sunday i was so frazzled that there was talk of me abandoning the whole stupid family idea and striking out on my own, somewhere, anywhere, without children, so help me god. i’m better now, thanks for asking.

which is partly thanks to shannon, who ordered me A WHOLE BOX OF JENI’S ICE CREAM for my birthday, and so now has renewed status as THE BEST PARTNER EVER (a status he lost due to my sleep deprivation, see above). the box came yesterday, and i had the grace to share my belgian milk chocolate with mairin, leo and leo’s mama while we all sat outside enjoying the late afternoon sunshine.

tomorrow i am taking the day off work to test-drive a new decade. i started out loving my 30s but they got kind of questionable for a while there and they’ve ended with a deafening thud. i’m really forward to the fresh start.

i blame facebook

for our recent quiet. i joined it because a local social group was using it for invitations, and suddenly it’s this puzzling and slightly frightening and potentially entirely engrossing new electronic toy.

[are you done laughing at me yet? no? okay.]

[how 'bout now? alright then.]

okay, not quite “new,” but to me it is. yes, i know i’m one of the last people in the world to join facebook, or at least it feels that way — hell, even my dad’s on facebook, although i think he’s a bit of a deer in the headlights.

anyway, that’s my explanation for why the blog has fallen silent with a crashing thud.

but the fact is, i like writing a bit more than facebook encourages, and i have a feeling that as soon as the novelty wears off and we figure out where facebook fits in our e-lives, i’ll be back.

meantime, tiny eamon ain’t so tiny no more: his six-month checkup was glowing, he’s sitting up (well, mostly — he still pitches forward alarmingly sometimes), and his sister can’t stop hugging and kissing him. neither can carole and i, for that matter.

now if he’d only sleep through the night, or even half of it…