Posts from — December 2008

Last night I was home alone with the kids (sidenote: still feel like a poseur saying “the kids”) right around dinner time.  And while I do feel like I am starting to be fairly competent at the whole caring for two offspring simultaneously thing, it does still make me feel sort of like a browser window with one too many tabs open.  Noah was “playing volleyball” with a Kroger balloon, a game which I’m pretty sure is going to result one day in the house collapsing around me into a pile of rubble, and Rosie was….wait for it….SLEEPING.  God, I love that kid.

I had laundry going and had spent the past hour sorting through Noah’s toys with him in his room to try to cull the mounds of plastic crap that had accumulated in the three months that I was too large to bend over and chuck them in the trash. It was time for dinner however, and I made myself step away from the ninja men and airplane kazoos and get in the kitchen to nuke the Chef Boyardee.

There are a few things that will make any baby, no matter how sound a sleeper, wake up and wail with the fury of an angry hornet’s nest.  One is the sound of your zipper coming down as you prepare to relieve a very full bladder.  Another is the sound of the keys on your computer as you attempt to post a blog.  And yet another is the sound of your foot entering the kitchen as you try to prepare food for yourself or any siblings the baby might have.  I had just popped the top off the can of ravioli when Rosie snapped awake and asked if I’d please come pick her up.  Only it sounded more like YEEEEEEEAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAHHHHHHWAAAAAAAAHHHH!

I knew she was hungry, but so was Noah, and feeding Rosie first would mean making Noah wait 20 minutes at least, whereas Noah would only have to wait the 1:45 suggested cooking time for his processed meat and sauce.  So I decided to forge bravely ahead with my food preparations.

A baby’s wails can make even the sanest person consider jamming pencils into their eye sockets, and when the baby in question happens to be your baby, it multiplies your frenzy by AT LEAST eleventy six.  On top of the wailing, there was the whole house-shaking balloon volleyball thing happening, and I was running around all crazy-like trying to make the World’s Fastest and Also Possibly Least Nutritious Dinner of All Time.  Ravioli was splattered, milk was spilled (Rosie did not get the “no use crying over it” memo HARDEE HAR HAR), and then the phone started ringing. The whole scene was chaos wrapped in pandemonium served with a side of mayhem and bedlam.  I could feel my circuits melting as my mind was yelling BLEEARRGGHHHH and just as I was slinging Noah’s plate onto the table while trying to answer the phone with my toes and close the fridge with my ass -

Silence.

And I looked over at the couch where Rosie had been howling with all her tightly fisted baby might and saw Noah leaning over her, stroking her cheek and saying “It’s okay baby.  I’m right here.  If you feel me, that means I’m right here baby.  Your big brother is right here.”  And Rosie was staring with wide eyed wonderment at his face, silent and calm and pacified.  And Noah looked up at me and said, “I fixed it, Mama.”

And he had.

And so we all sat down and ate our dinner.