Little dictator at 13 months.

(Written yesterday, on his 13th month birthday, but I lacked the time to post it.)

In the last month, dear one, you have gone from my little prince to my little dictator. Your temper burns so hot--you're testing your new fire-breathing skills, tiny dragon. Each time you hear the word "no," it means a meltdown of varying proportions: sometimes a foot stomp or two, often throwing something, other times jello-pudding body, sometimes jello body into full floor sprawl, and when you're really fired up, a face-down sprawl with wailing and flailing.

Clearly you are so bright and advanced that you've begun training for the famed twos at age one.

Of course, it's not all tantrums. You grow more confident each day--climbing up stairs, climbing down stairs, walking so fast and with such agility it could fairly be deemed running, "talking" with new consonants showing up randomly ("doodoo," funnily enough, is a favorite this week, as well as "yep-pa-tup-pa-ba") and a new word wrapped prettily up for my birthday ("YESHHH") though you haven't repeated it since, and pointing things out to us and deeming them "THAT!".

"That!" "That!" "That!" I hear it all day. I try to help. Is that a bird? Do you see the tree? Is it the breeze ruffling the leaves? Oh, wow! A PLANE!

You go from interest to interest--how does this work? Can I put it inside something else? Can I take it apart? Can I bang it against something else, or this other thing, or this other other thing? Can I sneak it into the recycling bin when no one is looking (we've lost many a part of various toys this way).

The way to channel all your energy--the best way? the only way?--is to get you outside of the house. And, let me add, safely away from traffic, because a park is too small if you can see the roadway from the middle of it, as you next head straight for all the cars. Keeping all that fire-breathing practice temporarily at bay means taking you somewhere that I don't have to say "no" every five minutes for your safety.

But little dragon--fire and all--still you are my sweetest sweetheart. Though it smacks somewhat of separation anxiety, oh how you love your mama. How you curl into me and breathe easy. How you fit into my arms, differently at 20+ pounds than you did at 6.6 pounds, but no less well: just now there is more dangle of legs, more arm to wrap around my neck.

The eve of a year: necessary mourning before the joy.

You will never again be so small. Of course that's always been true, every day, but big milestones tend to drive the truth home. Tomorrow you'll be a year, and older, and older, and I can't stop you or slow time. I just have to let it all happen, let the youness of you unfold, let Waika unfurl and fling further and further into the world. A year ago from this moment (12:50am on 4/2), you still fit inside me--but only just. Already you were dreaming bigger, needing more room to maneuver.

I don't want to hold you back from the world, not even an inch, but that doesn't mean this night, this passage to tomorrow, this journey through your last moments of being not-one, is easy. Is less precious.

11 months and the theme is danger.

The house has been hit by you, Hurricane Waika, and what a path of detritus you have left in your wake. And are still leaving. On the kitchen floor, an orange flower-shaped ring; a teddy bear; a bell; one shoe. On the livng from floor, three kinds of electronic toys turned on for probably the last week; my deodorant from the upstairs master bath; a xylophone; three distinct musical shakers; a drum; a watering can half as big as you that you dragged around the house the other day; two gnawed-on cardboard coasters; and three gnawed-on board books. And that’s just from this morning. I put everything away last night.

What don’t you do now, little boy. In the last week alone, you mastered walking so well that now you sometimes run. You stand without assistance. You go up stairs confidently. All this has meant that the promised testing of boundaries is well underway. We get to try and fail and fail again at setting boundaries, at maintaining boundaries, at striking the balance between respecting your curiosity and bodily integrity (when we have to physically restrain you) and keeping you from harm. 

It is complete chaos—and/or/but I love it. I always wanted a child not like me—no hilahila, extroverted, ready for the new, spirited and unafraid.

Well, I got you, my darling, and you’re very much in the stage of do first, think later. Or maybe that’s not exactly it—for I can often see the wheels turning: what is this, what does it do, it must be cool because Papa or Mama said “no,” so how do I get it, and then what handful of things shall I do with it when they are not looking?

Oh, how I love you, my little boy-o, but in order to deal with this morning, this month, I also need more coffee--or a few martinis, or a vacation, or a staycation to just turn off the mother and turn on a frivolous earlier draft of myself who could sit around all morning reading Murakami if she wanted to. I write these things as you call “mamamamamammamamamama” and bang your head against my chair. Sigh.

Eleven and a half months, beautiful boy, and this month has become dangerous. It has become about showing me how much I can’t and won’t always be there to catch you. 

Examples: you have a scratch on your left foot from an overexcited Nahe greeting; a gash on your right brow from falling (from a sitting position!!) off the edge of the picnic blanket onto the stone path at Wayfarer’s Chapel. 

Example: on a morning that Papa woke to shower and Mama only half-woke, you stretched and yawned awake where you lay between us, then calmly, casually, rolled over and off the bed. 

Example: until recently you would let go of something or other and land flat on your back at least once a day.

Example: another day, you were in the living room or the dining room or the pantry or the tupperware drawer up to your elbows in clean spoons from the dishwasher—that is, I swear you were nowhere near the oven—so how is it that I hear you yelp when touching the one hot part of the preheating oven? I had been chopping sweet potatoes, and all of a sudden you were discovering “hot.” That the world contains the possibility of pain. You were not burned, just startled. It was over in a second: you cried out and then you were in my arms, and then your hands were under cold water and then we were sitting on the floor in the kitchen, nursing away the scare.

Example: Last saturday was your friend Lexi’s party in Palos Verdes. Her parents rented a mobile pizza oven, the birthday cake was delicious, the decorations tasteful and yet precious. Here you had your first taste of “escargot.” You picked up a garden snail while Mama and several other parents nearby weren’t watching. Papa had already started saying “nonono” and trying to move around crowds of people conversing to get to you—but then it was in your mouth. Let’s just pause there: EWWWWWWWWWWWW. Papa fished it out. Really glad he did that because it would have kind of killed me to pull that out of your mouth. Ew ew ew. Snails and slugs and slippery suches are mama’s kryptonite. Are you going to be that kind of little boy? Really??

Example: today, wherein Mama felt like winner of The Worst Mother Ever award for sure. First, during an important and emotional discussion with Bachan, I realized it was a bit quiet, saw that I had forgotten to secure the child's gate to the second floor, and flew upstairs to find that you had climbed not only the entire first flight of stairs but half of the second. This took no more than two to three minutes. You are really good at going up stairs, but I can't even look the possibility in the eye of what would have happened had you changed your mind and decided to head down again. Later I was trying to get a quick shower in while letting you wander between the master bed and bath, and you were happily throwing toys in the shower at me, and then all of a sudden I had a boy in my shower, head-first, fully clothed, soaking diaper. I had a boy in my shower, red in the face from wailing.

This accounting is not meant to reveal me as the worst mother ever or make any readers call CPS. Because for every instance I describe above, there are a corresponding five times that I managed to be there, that my mama spidey senses kicked in, that I caught you before you fell, I prevented a hurt, I kept you from harm. Example: the time I was meal planning and flew across the living room just in time to catch you mid-roll off the couch--you didn't even wake from your nap. Example: how little time it takes me to round a playground in order to sit you at the top of the slide and catch you at the bottom. Example: I hold your hand and walk a great distance this way but know when you've lost your balance because something changes in the rhythm of your gait, in the grip of your hands. Example. Example. Example.

Let's just put it this way: It is best not to look parenting in the eye before you begin . . . you might be terrified away from the whole enterprise. The way it changes everything else. Like last spring, holding him so new and becoming alert to my own mortality. The strangeness of hoping that someday he will be in the world and I will not, because that will mean we kept him safe. Such strangeness that both comforts and crumples my heart.

Happy Ten Months, Joy Boy.

For whatever reason, coming home to Los Angeles has messed with your internal clock worse than did the whole time "home" in Hawai'i. It really was more than we could hope for, how easily you slid into a different time zone, different homes, and so many different arms, all eager to hold you. Such a disruption of our usual routines; naptimes and bedtimes and like-clockwork twice-daily disco-nap car rides all askew. You took all in stride--ready, it seemed, at every moment to be delighted. Our joy boy.

But now, coming home to this home, fitting back into this life, it seems to pain you. You've been having the crossest spell, and part of me--the part given to romantic notions--chalks it up to feeling your roots being hyperextended. You knew your grandparents, remembered and loved all three of them, from the newborn time, from the couple brief visits that followed, from all that FaceTime. You really knew. You went into their embraces like you'd been doing it daily. You went into the ocean's arms as readily--easily, eagerly, without fear--more than once despite the fact that the water was cold and the sky growing dusky. Despite the fact that it was your first time in anything bigger than a bathtub or a womb.

But another part of me realizes it is just a lot of change to expect a ten-month-old to handle well. (Hell, it was a lot to expect a 32-year-old to handle well, too.) This practical part of me sees your recent moodiness as a sort of social hangover, if you will.

Either way, it has meant that especially now that you are walking, you are literally step-for-step with me all day. In the kitchen while I prep our meals, you crawl in your crooked-fast way, all the way murmuring "mamamamamamamama" till you reach me, then pull yourself to a stand like a vine up my legs, entwining your arms tight and forcing your head between them. "Mamamamamamamamamama" becomes more insistent, more plaintive, until I give up on chopping, on boiling, on rushing to finish anything and sit humbly on the kitchen floor, rest willingly in this moment, allowing you to jungle-gym yourself upon me, to rub your head against my neck, to take my hand until we are both crawling or walking a lap of the first floor. Along the way, you find something more interesting and eventually I finish making our breakfast or lunch, but it has been a good lesson in being present and having realistic expectations of the day. I used to be a master multitasker--my To Do Lists were prioritized, had subpoints, and were colorcoded for maximum efficiency. Now I have a list in my iPhone with items months overdue, and I just can't be bothered. Not even to always get paid or pay my bills, it's terrible. I just take my antidepressant daily, feed us and Nahe twice, take you and Nahe for an afternoon stroll, get us to some sort of outing (a class, the library, the play gym, a walk along the water), and if I can edge in there a shower or a bath for you, that day has been a colossal win. [ED. NOTE: It has been ten months, people. This is what I can just now manage. Let this be your reminder for birth control.]

But getting back to my point, Waika ... you've been especially disturbed these few days home. You who I've deemed my joy boy, you've been unusually and therefore noticeably fussy, cranky, whiny. I can be sitting right by you, and all of a sudden it's not enough, you must be in my arms. You've not slept through the night since we returned--waking so fully that you stand and rage from the bars of your crib at midnight, or 4 am, or 11pm, or all of the above. I relent and relent and relent, bringing you to bed with us where you proceed to bite down so hard while nursing you leave toothmarks in my nipples. You toss and flip and fuss and kick and sweat profusely until finally you find sleep--more often than not with your butt in the air, your torso horizontal across the bed, and your head in my armpit. I teeter on the edge of the bed unwilling to move for all it took to get you settled, and also because something needs to blockade you from the bed's edge--and a pillow no longer cuts it.

Tonight it is just after 11 that you wake along in your crib in the dark and rise to protest it. I hope for a few minutes that you will settle back down, but in the strange night-vision glow of the monitor I see you standing, squinting at the light seeping in from the door, hear you begin to squall louder and louder. I sigh and head upstairs, fumbling in the dark for you. In my arms, you quiet, nestling your head into my neck. In mere minutes, your breathing again is regular, the rise and fall of your back against my hand rhythmic and slow. Your breath is warm against my skin, sour-sweet and milky. Your hair is damp with sweat, but to me you smell wonderful. You are calmed, and I could probably put you back down in your crib, but for now I sway and sway, cherishing the smallness of you, which slips daily through my fingers like sand. I cradle your sweaty head close, even though it makes you stir a little. Our heartbeats and breaths align. Ten months, my baby boy. You have now been out in the world for longer than you were inside me. You are so long and sturdy and strong and your feet so big that it's hard to recall you at 6 lbs, 6 oz, and less when you dropped some of your birth weight that first week and we were so worried that you weren't getting enough milk. But though the ways in which you could once be contained within me are long gone, still we click together like a puzzle. Your legs lock about my waist, your crown into my collarbone, the lei of your arms so sweetly encircles my neck.

I could put you down so that we both could get some sleep, but instead I hold you. I am present. I sway, I sit, I rock, and I cherish.

Because my friend Shaun posted this Raymond Chandler quote about revision that went something like throw up every morning, clean up every afternoon, only I am skipping the clean up part because I have a 9-month-old, not time.

10am.

There’s not enough sleep in the world, but thank god there is enough coffee. I’m on my second cup today already. The night before last, still not finished with my work deadline, I scrambled for bed like the opposing lip of a quicksand pit and eked out three pale hours before I had to wake to nurse a crying babe, throw on whatever clothes were on the floor by the bed, and get D. to work by 8:30am. When Waika wanted to share a nap later that morning—fell sweetly into snoozing at the breast—I steeled my heart and carried him to his crib so I could rush through more of the deadline. I finally finished it last night around 1am, and this time sleep reached for and held me like a long-lost lover—that kind of yearning. But then it was a babe whimpering, and a shower needing to be had, and coffee that wouldn’t make itself, and a husband who had to be at work by 8am on this of all days.  Waika did not offer a co-nap today—I’m a big boy, mom, I want to sleep alone—and I am so sad I couldn’t take in the proffered sweet napiness yesterday. Very sad. Waika went down into the crib grumbly at 9:40am, batted at the toy mirror, padded around a little bit, pulled himself up a few times and yelled just to show how NOT tired he was, and was deep in sleep on his tummy and tucked-under knees—as if he’d been crawling and simply paused for a quick nap—by 9:48am.

Obviously, I am stupidly not taking the most-known, sage advice for new parents and napping when he naps. No. I am sitting at the dining room table with my journal and my Mac and a hot mug of coffee.

The day is spread before me like a large patchwork quilt of possibility. I could make us a vegetable omelette for breakfast or we could eat some fruit and cottage cheese. We could hit open gym at Gymboree or go to SBBFS class or, hell, go play at IKEA. I could do the laundry or clean the bathrooms or replant my plants or bathe the dog or the baby or both. I could set up more playdates for us. We could go to the library, the park, the beach. We could play iTunes or ukulele, we could sing and dance, we could make paintings from food-colored water or food. I could (should!) pay bills or prepare our taxes or start packing for Hawaii. I absolutely SHOULD call my therapist and make fucking sure to see her before I head into the fray of home and all that tangled love. Together, we could read another book.

It is such a different realm of possibilities than a year ago, or two, or five.

One year ago, I would have been walking the dog and my very pregnant self down the hill of Brisbane, perhaps for groceries and the treat of a salted-caramel hot chocolate. I would’ve been packing our boxes and preparing to uproot our lives to southern California. I would’ve been stressing out about finding a new doctor to deliver me in April, a new hospital, birthing classes, a doula. I would have been going nearly blind with my long-postponed nesting, that fevered need to make Waika’s nursery.

Two years ago, I would’ve been editing with a good mixture of blogging, Facebooking, and surreptitious googling about fertility-boosting measures. I would’ve been walking the dog around where we’d recently moved to Redwood City, which I called "RedCity" to make it sound cooler than it was, to dam up the longing for Brooklyn and all of my New Yorkers. I would’ve been pretty much clinically depressed—wearing pajamas in public, writing bad poetry, the whole bit--feeling like I was sitting around waiting for the next chapter of life to begin, for we had moved to California partially to afford to make a family, but now the little one that would make us a family refused to form a self. 

Five years ago was January 2007, and I have such mamabrain that I can’t remember where and who I was—especially because that time was pre-iPhoto and pre-May in the Bay. Let’s see, I had left New York in December 2005, my heart aching for a first pregnancy ended and profound friendships left behind. I spent 2006 totally depressed in Pacifica--ed. note: I guess I spend a lot of time depressed--which was not quite as “sunny California” as it sounds; I mean, when it was nice, it was gorgeous, but that happened once a year—and that year, the once happened the day we went to view the neighborhood and decided to live there. (FAIL.) By 2007, we had relocated to Burlingame, and I was stretching my legs into it, the first northern California stint—calming myself down into suburban living, resigning myself to that feeling of reduced relevance and importance that comes of moving from New York city to anywhere when you are still in your twenties. I was not quite 27, I was engaged but not yet married, and I was about to start blogging. 

I used to think I knew myself and that there was some static quality to me that could be known, but recalling any of this is like a trip to a non-English-speaking country. I need a passport, I need a clue.

I could go on and on along this odyssey of memory lane, but Waika’s already been down almost an hour. My minutes are numbered so obviously I should throw up all over the Internet and then get to making that omelette.

10:42am. 

Pocahontas, patronage of the arts, and twuuuuuu wuuuv.

Friends, I have a story for you today. It is set in New York city, circa 2002. I am fresh out of college, editing 9-to-5 for a nonprofit that barely covers my rent and bills. But I am also an aspiring novelist. And, more importantly, I am 22. Recap: I am 22, broke, and living in New York city. This is a recipe for one of two things: a rags-to-riches story or enormous, unfathomable debt.

(In my case, it was a bit of both, but that’s another story.)

Wifeys, circa 2008ish.

The story I am telling you today is the rags-to-riches one. It’s about how my dear, dear friend Laura (a.k.a. Wife and now Auntie Wife) loved, supported, and believed in me and my writing and would read every thing I ever wrote (even the shitty poems) and first call it brilliance, then provide detailed, thoughtful critique. It’s about the cafes we’ve sat in over the years “working on our writing,” which produced some pages but quite often also produced great Facebook updates and ridiculous Photoshopping of each other’s faces.  And it’s about how she would buy me brunches I couldn’t afford, crowning herself a Patroness of the Arts for feeding a starving artist. 

Fast-forward to Los Angeles, 2013. I am no longer fresh, period, and I am still working for the same nonprofit, which now covers rent, bills, and some brunches. I no longer call myself aspiring, I say I am a writer, but I allow this to fluctuate like seasons, like rainfall, kind of like the nap schedule of my nine-month-old. And I am almost 33.

Some of my best friends in the world are still in New York, among them Laura. Laura is now the Associate Artistic Director of a wild downtown theater company called Little Lord, which makes pastiche from and collages and larks and interpretive dances its way through classic theater, gender, race, sexuality … you name it, they’ve got a stranger, smarter, sexier way of looking at it than anyone else.

Little Lord is in the LAST FIFTEEN DAYS of raising funds to put on their new show: Pocahontas, and or America (read about the project-in-progress on LL's blog). With their track record as indication, this show will be enlightening and fun, hilarious and sobering—plus music! And dance!  And snacks!! In their own words, “Part historical pageant, part roadside attraction, Little Lord corrupts over 400 years of fact and fiction to grant America the founding myth we all deserve.”

Doesn’t that sound like something that deserves funding? I thought so, and because I'm in LA and the show is in NY, I can’t even go!    

Laura: making braids cool years before Katniss Everdeen did.

Please help Pocahontas get herstory rewritten. 

Donate now.

http://www.indiegogo.com/poca

Mama mornings.

This post is inspired by the twinned meditations of Woodbird and JenniEaton, who both recently allowed a glimpse of their mama mornings. I was moved and inspired by both and while nursing had grand visions of what could become: a series of essays! Nay, even a book! 

Luckily, my nine-month-old reminded me that I don't even manage to brush my teeth and hair every morning, or not wear yoga pants, or feed us three square meals--never mind plan anthologies. Yet. Start small. Begin somewhere. This is how a life is built, a block at a time. (One small, hot pink, dishwasher-safe, BPA-free block.) 

Anthologies safely unplanned, I still tag SuzanneFarrellSmith, RLK, Lorelle, and Liara (who doesn't maybe even have a blog), because I am nosy and I would love a glimpse into your mama mornings. Perhaps I will take notes on how others manage! 

So. My answer to Robin and Jenni, as you can imagine, was written in fits and starts. In fact, it is about 1/4 of what I actually wrote over the span of a few hours, via iPhone, notebook, and computer. It was written with the montage of Waika crawling everywhere, Waika crashing into the stereo and crying, Waika pulling out every book on my bottom shelf, Waika tearing up fall 2012 magazines (which I, nonetheless, haven't finished reading), playing with/ dancing with/ singing to/ feeding solids to/ changing quite a few poopy diapers off of/ nursing Waika a billion times, and--grand finale--Waika finishing the baby proofing of the living room for me by cracking a beautiful bowl that was a wedding gift, thus liberating the three small globes formerly in it.  In seconds, yes, he had whole worlds in his hands. 

There are so many excuses in the world.

There’s that I didn’t quit editing till 2:30am last night and Waika woke me at 6:30am. That it will happen again tonight.

There’s that being present for every moment that I can is about the most important thing I feel I can do.

There’s that he is just nine months and some weeks old, and separation anxiety is not only normal but heightened right now.

He will wean someday; this is just for right now.

And he naps longer next to me.

And he is not feeling well.

And …

And all these are true, but so is this: I enjoy lying useless in the couch next to him, lightly snoozing or checking my social networks via my phone, hearing the soft snuffle of his breath. Sometimes he lets go of the nipple only to nestle his cheek into the pillow of my breast. Such utter calm, his face. The tiny smile having found again, without waking, the beloved nipple. Sometimes an eyebrow arches, the lashes flutter, sometimes he pushes away hard at my chest and then struggles to move even closer. Of what do you dream, little one?

I like smelling his mamamilky breath, his sweat making his hair dry in strange styles. I like stroking the ruddy plump of his cheeks, the small shell of his ear. I like to be there when his eyes open. To witness him crossing back over from wherever he was to here.