Posts from — December 2009

Last night we attempted to set up a Skype call between my mother-in-law and Noah so that she could read him a bedtime story, something she frequently does. Because we are currently painting L’s study (I know, it’s a sickness, really, the room painting) the desktop was unplugged, and since I have been meaning to download Skype onto my laptop for my week long trip to San Antonio next week (sidenote: I am going to be halfway across the country universe from Rosie for SEVEN WHOLE DAYS and I can’t think about it without scooping her up and smothering her chapped cheeks with kisses until she smacks me in the face and the pain of leaving subsides for a nanosecond. I cannot even imagine how I’m going to exist without her for that long. GAH. GAH. OMG. OK. Moving on…) I set it up and we dialed her up, but weird space/time continuum things kept happening with the video. She’d be talking normally, but her face would be moving in slow motion, and then it would freeze, and then the picture would continue normally, but the action would be 30 seconds behind real time.  It was bizarre.  We fooled around with our settings, and she messed with hers, eventually just deciding to read the book in stilted fragments with promises to work on technical difficulties for next time.

Later that night I was sitting in bed noodling around on the net when I got an incoming Skype call from her again, and thinking that she was working on some of the bugs from the first time, I answered.  This time the video wasn’t even attempting to show, and I also couldn’t hear her.  And then a chat popped up:

[12/21/09 10:46:35 PM] GSE: i don’t know how to do it
[12/21/09 10:46:46 PM] racher: boo
[12/21/09 10:46:53 PM] racher: is it your end or mine?
[12/21/09 10:46:57 PM] GSE: i think mine
[12/21/09 10:47:03 PM] racher: hmm
[12/21/09 10:47:09 PM] GSE: it says my microphone is low
[12/21/09 10:47:20 PM] racher: when we get the study fixed we can try again on that computer
[12/21/09 10:47:34 PM] racher: even though it might be your issue
[12/21/09 10:49:07 PM] GSE: it says i don’t have the microphone plugged in
[12/21/09 10:49:19 PM] racher: can you hear me?
[12/21/09 10:49:24 PM] GSE: yes
[12/21/09 10:49:37 PM] GSE: hmmm

At this point, I stop chatting and start talking….to my computer screen, which is typing back to me. It is all very sci-fi and weird.

[12/21/09 10:49:46 PM] GSE: where is the microphone?

(I mess around with my computer, trying to tell where mine is, wondering aloud still if it is her issue or my issue)

[12/21/09 10:49:53 PM] GSE: mine
[12/21/09 10:52:23 PM] GSE: yes
[12/21/09 10:52:30 PM] GSE: no

I am awkwardly conversing with my laptop-in-law, asking random questions and trying to troubleshoot when she says,

[12/21/09 10:52:39 PM] GSE: you look funny

Now things have entered a whole new level of ridiculous because I am talking to a computer in my lap in my pajamas and it is typing responses back to me, AND insulting me. As my mother-in-law.

“Well, you look like your profile picture,” I say back, tilting the camera away from my face.

[12/21/09 10:52:59 PM] GSE: you mean GSE’s profile picture

Oh, GAME ON. “What do you mean GSE’s profile picture? Is this not GSE? Who is this?”

[12/21/09 10:53:03 PM] GSE: hahahahaha
[12/21/09 10:53:12 PM] GSE: who do you think it is…..

“Brother-in-law?”

[12/21/09 10:53:15 PM] GSE: mwhahahaha
[12/21/09 10:53:22 PM] GSE: duh

“Father-in-law?”

[12/21/09 10:55:06 PM] GSE: yes

“Really?”

[12/21/09 10:55:13 PM] GSE: hahaha
[12/21/09 10:55:13 PM] GSE: no

“Well, the only one left down there is Cyrus the dog.”

[12/21/09 10:55:22 PM] GSE: how did you know!
[12/21/09 10:55:30 PM] GSE: they taught me how to type

“Wow. Well done. Good dog.”

[12/21/09 10:55:43 PM] GSE: you really don’t know who this is?
[12/21/09 10:55:58 PM] GSE: who has GSE’s computer
[12/21/09 10:56:00 PM] GSE: ?

At this point I realize it has been my sister the whole time. Upstairs. Above my head. Watching me awkwardly video chat and telling me I looked funny.

[12/21/09 10:56:05 PM] GSE: hahahahhaha
[12/21/09 10:56:21 PM] GSE: THE CALL IS COMING FROM INSIDE THE HOUSE

“Jerk.”

[CALL DISCONNECTED]

_______________________________________

I’ve tried to be better about updating my Flickr site a little more regularly.  Go take a looksee when you get a chance. Much obliged.

January 2009

December 2009*

*Would you freakin’ look at that kid? Cuteness at hull breach levels, GEEZ.

Noah and I are in the car alone, a rare occurrence.

N: Mom, I’m just wishing I could see you little.

R: Do you mean you wish you could see me when I was a kid?

N: Yeah. I don’t really know what you looked like.

R: You’ve seen pictures, haven’t you?  I looked like I do now, only smaller. And with different hair.  Actually, no, forget it - I looked exactly like this but smaller.

N: Oh. But, Mom, I wish I could see you now little.

R: Mmmmm, do you mean you wish I was the kid me right now so you could see what that was like?

N: Yeah.

R: That would be cool, huh?  I wonder if we would be friends.

N: I would be your friend.

R:  You would be my friend if I was four and a half?

N: Yeah! You would be funny!

R: I’m not sure I’d be as funny as you are. You’re pretty funny.

N: Well, I can make some funny faces. See, like this! (sticks tongue out, rolls eyes)

R:  Totally hilarious.

(pause)

N: But Mom, do you know what I really want to know about you little?

R: What’s that, buddy?

N: Could you run fast?

R: Like the wind, buddy.  I was so fast, you wouldn’t even believe it.

N: I thought you were gonna say that.

Lately Rosie’s vocabulary has started to take off like a rocket, which has been nothing but great for our relationship and how we are able to communicate with each other.  A few days ago she had been fussing off and on for about ten minutes and following me around clinging to my legs when finally I stopped and looked at her and said, “Listen, baby girl.  If you want me to pick you up, this fussing isn’t going to cut it.  You need to say ‘Up.’”  And she looked right at me, swung her arms above her head and clear as a bell said “UP.”

Now that’s what I’m she’s talking about.

Her walking has accelerated, too. In fact, it’s not so much a walk as it is a quick-stumble-toddle-run. L says “it’s like everywhere she goes is down a hill.”  Which is true.  Rarely does she seem bothered by a spill (which is good, seeing as how they are frequent), and all stools and ottomans have been stored away due to Rosie’s irrepressible urge to swing a leg up and hoist herself up to precarious heights. The word ‘fearless’ has been tossed around a few times, which makes me simultaneously proud and terrified for the future.  But then, that’s pretty much a sum up parenting as a whole.

At her Mecca.

The house is a perpetual sty, littered with plastic toys and raisins, and any attempts to clean while Rosie is awake are comical mishaps of the floor-to-shelf-right-back-to-floor variety. Every object she chooses to play with/bang the floor with/make out with is awarded great devotion for the time it is allotted and then once she is done she discards said object with great gusto, flinging it away as if to say “I have no need of you anymore.  BEGONE.”  Which is probably why Noah has taken to affectionately calling her “Rosie Mess.”

Amid the detritus.

Zest for life. ZEST. That’s what this girl has, and she’s got it in spades. She’s a kick in the pants.  She’ll keep you on your toes. She makes you laugh from your belly.  She lives life with energy and exuberance and zeal and a light so bright that it almost hurts my eyes to look at it.

Shine on, shining girl.  Shine on.

L is done with his semester, which is about ten different kinds of awesome, and I am now waiting patiently for the part where life suddenly becomes perfect and easy and bags of money fall out of the sky.  I’m pretty sure it’s going to happen tomorrow.  Right now though, even with another functioning parent in the house there is just a shit-ton to do and not enough hours in the day in which to do it.  This seems to stem from the fact that someone around here has let a few (hundred) things slide since August, and everything is an utter and complete mess.  She will most likely be fired, or at the very least be given a steep cut in pay.

One of the days I actually accomplished something around here was last week when Noah had the Mystery Fever. (High enough to miss school, no other symptoms, did not seem to impede normal house-vibrating activity.) He lounged on my bed watching Christmas movies and/or YouTube videos of submarines while I folded and put away the stacks and stacks of clothes that had accumulated over several weeks where apparently I was regarding drawers as merely clothes storage “suggestions.”  Not only did I have just about every article of clothing that I own to put away, both kids had a teetering heap or two. And in addition to all that was a nefarious pile of clothes that I had been diligently avoiding at all costs: the mound of Clothes Which Have Been Outgrown.  In a house with two kids under the age of five, that mound grows like bacteria on a warm petri dish.

The issue of too-small clothes was not a hard one when Noah was smaller.  I took them and laid them aside and boxed them up in cardboard boxes labeled with Sharpie marker.  Newborn. Six to nine months. Two-tee.  It was a no-brainer, the fact that these clothes would be carefully stored away.  One, because I planned on having more kids, and two, because I had some sort of swami-predicted like feeling that I would be the mother of boys and only boys. So saving those blue shirts and truck-printed pjs seemed wise.  Now as I look at the hangers of tiny infant dresses and long-outgrown bloomers I feel a hesitancy about what to do. Save two sets of baby clothing?  Who has the room? We only have two huge closets! And a barely filled attic! And…oh. Well I guess we do have the room for a few boxes of onesies.

So why are they still taking up space on my floor and on my dressers, gathering dust?

I was pondering this as Noah lay engrossed in some aquatic adventure on the bed.  Just consign the clothes and buy new ones later!  I thought.  No! Save everything!  No! Carefully pack away the best pieces and donate the rest! No! Consign! No! Donate! No! Save! Consign! Save! Do nothing! Have some cookies!

And then it hit me with an OOF.  It wasn’t about the clothes.  It was about the kid.

That kid, that imaginary kid that exists or doesn’t exist in my future.  That kid who would wear these carefully folded sleepers and knit hats.  That kid who would be a girl. Or a boy. Or who wouldn’t be at all.

Do I want more kids?

I thought I did.  I always imagined I would have three kids.  I have a brother and a sister, L has a brother and a sister.  Somehow that was what family looked like to me in my head.  L and me and our three (or four? or five?) kids and a bustling, happy, busy household.  And those sky-fallen bags of cash. In fact, when I would envision our family as “only” a two kid family, it seemed melancholy.  Like we would be lonely.  Missing someone. Incomplete.

Right now I can’t conjure up that feeling.  I think about our family in the future and I can see us as a family of four, and for the first time it doesn’t feel wrong.  And while that’s not a decision about anything, it’s certainly different than I ever felt before, and that’s definitely given me pause.  What if we’re all already here?  What if we’re not waiting on anyone else to fill those miniature garments?  What if I don’t have any more kids?  What if?

Do I want more kids?

This room may be a clothes-strewn mess for a long time yet.