I'm getting pretty infatuated with this baby. It may be his plumpness, the chubby rolls on his limbs. It may his male pattern baldness, with an especially monkish fringe around the back. It may be his ever expanding array of sounds, a diverse repertoir that includes rusty weathervane, squeaky toy, car that won't start, and lonely dove cote. It may be his expression, flitting with incredulity and chagrin like an accountant whose numbers do not add up. Or that now he not only smiles but beams. Yesterday I tried snoozling his tummy to see if he would laugh. He didn't, but a look of distant bemusement played around the corners of his mouth and lit up his eyes, like it wasn't funny, exactly, but he appreciated that I thought it would be.
I think I'm like pretty near all mothers, when I go around marveling at my good fortune. Of all the babies in the world, I got the cutest one!
Along with this infatuation, I find myself entertaining anxious second-date concerns: does he like me as much as I like him? Does he think about me as much as I think about him? For him, is it all just about milk, or does he really like me for me?
Nevertheless in the past few weeks I have made three specific and chilling mistakes, all due to tiredness, I think. Ironically (as I need sleep all the time) these are the sorts of things that keep me awake at night.
1) I was nursing him on the couch. Someone came to the door. I set the baby down, positioning him carefully to make sure he couldn't roll off. I spotted and moved a power cord for the laptop, which was a potential strangulation hazard. Then, satisified that it was safe, I stepped out and accepted a package from the UPS man. It took a moment, because he had to walk to his truck and back. I waited on the porch. We chatted briefly. I stepped back inside and set the packages down. The baby was still on the couch where I left him, but as I neared him I saw that he was tangled in a parachute! A PLASTIC, white parachute belonging to one of Isaac's army guys. I hadn't seen it because it was white on a white couch. But plastic! Elias's little arm was moving in that spastic way of his, and had become tangled in the string. The crumpled plastic was beside him, not smothering him, but NEAR him!
2) I was getting ready to take Isaac to school, slightly late and rushing about. I had Isaac dressed and Elias dressed but needed to get myself dressed. Isaac was sitting on the bed, watching the baby who was safely — so I thought– in his co-sleeper. I was in the bathroom and heard Isaac calling me, "Mommy! Mommy! He's the king. He has a crown." I came back to see what he was talking about. "See his crown? He's the king!" I did see: Isaac had a SHOELACE AROUND THE BABY'S NECK. The baby was fine. Not strangled. But I nearly fainted. "Isaac!' I yelled. "NEVER put something around the baby's neck! He needs to breathe!" Isaac looked sheepish and concerned, and I wondered whether I should punish him. But how? What would fit the crime? It was of such a magnitude that a time-out would almost minimize it. It seemed that he saw the stricken, terrified look on my face and understood the gravity of what he had done. Tears flooded his eyes as he explained, "But he's the king…" (Hello? In what way does a shoelace around the neck resemble a crown, anyway?)
3) All along I've had the anxious concern that in my sleep-deprivation and in the hustle and bustle I would forget the baby someplace. You know, like those tragic people who leave the baby in the car and go inside for a full day of meetings, with horrible results. I feared that I would come home, stumble inside, make myself a cup of tea and fall asleep on the couch for three hours. And THEN remember that I left the baby in the car. Well, yesterday I got a small taste of this. I arrived at Isaac's school to pick him up. And I wasn't actually all that tired! I mean, chronically, yes, and we had a horrible night two nights before, but the previous night had been half-way decent. I stepped out of the car and locked it. Beside my car another car was idling, with a pregnant lady behind the wheel reading a magazine. The idling sound of her car made me stop to wonder, did I leave my car on? I unlocked it, looked inside, checked the ignition. No, it wasn't on. I locked it again and walked away across the parking lot. Then someone honked. I stopped. Is she honking at me? Is my car actually ON after all? I stood there for a moment trying to decide, but then figured that she (the pregnant lady) just bumped the horn by mistake. I walked to the door of the school. And as I was opening the door, I realized that I didn't have the heavy, bulky, unwieldy car seat in my hands! The baby! Asleep back in the car! I rushed back and found him where I had left him. Cozy, safe, not at all traumatized by two minutes unattended. But the whole thing chilled me to the marrow. I still live with the fear that someone… perhaps the pregnant lady… will confront me about it. How DARE you leave your baby in the car?? And how horrible and pathetic to have to explain, "I well… I … forgot him there for a second!" (It reminds me of this headline I saw online yesterday, "Mom Says Vodka in Baby Bottle was Honest Mistake.") Driving to school through a snow storm this morning, I was suddenly taken with dread that I had left him back on the curb. I said, as casually as possible, "How's the baby back there? Is he asleep?" Isaac answered me as he usually does, "Yeah, he's sleeping, cute little guy!" PHEW. Today I have been going from place to place muttering to myself like a crazy person. "Do NOT forget the baby. Do NOT forget the baby."
He's right here beside me (I'm in a cafe with free wifi), sound asleep, safe and well. Good lord above, it's nerve-wracking.
I think I can safely say that it's overwhelming having two. AND the housework. I recently read this disturbing statistic: in 1965, the average housewife spent 10 hours a week caring for her children… and 35 hours a week doing housework! No wonder the entire gender had to revolt against this arrangement. 35 hours a week!!? I look at this and several possible explanations spring to mind: a) all the modern time-saving conveniences weren't invented yet; b) people weren't as terrified about abduction and child safety, and so "go out and play" was a viable option; c) people weren't as obsessed with the brain development of their children, especially birth to age three, and so felt okay just plopping them in a playpen rather than providing a brain-enriching environment every minute of the day; d) women actually cared about their houses 3.5 times more than they cared about their children. Can that be right?! I can't believe that. But I can say that the most common response to overwhelmedness of mothers that I know, working outside the home or in, is to lower housekeeping standards precipitously. You just can't CARE about it all that much, unless you have the money to have a housekeeper to care about it for you. If you care about it too much, you will go crazy.
The last couple weeks have been rough in that regard, although recently I've been coming up for air. I think it was the combination of a major holiday (the cooking and guests, all of which I enjoyed a great deal, but to the detriment of regular work), and the fact that Ben and I were both sick. The week before Thanksgiving, it seemed to me that every time I turned around, Ben was in a coma and I had two screaming kids on my hands. But he wasn't being lazy.. he actually WAS incapacitated. Then I got sick too and so we both were down for the count. The laundry loomed skyward. The living room became a perfect "Queer Eye for the Straight Guy" project. And between chasing down the high-energy Isaac, and feeding the non-stop breastfeeder, all I could do was look impassively at the carnage all around us.
I was thinking of posting a blog called "The Drudgery Report" but I never had the time.
When I get these little slivers of time, when somehow both are napping or Isaac is at school for the full day, I find that there are way too many things that leap to mind to do. It's like 20 people trying to rush out a door at the same time, and they are all yelling ideas: pay bills! do the dishes! do the laundry! answer e-mails! tidy up! Cook dinner! write thank-you notes! take a shower! eat a sandwich! sleep! And while I mull this over, standing there for a second, another shrill voice comes along yelling, "Hurry up! just choose something! time is running out! He's going to wake up!" It's stressful to always be in this position, so very behind the 8-ball.
I talked to a mom with a full-time job the other day and she said, "Do you just sit around and knit and do all these wonderful things?" I said, "Are you kidding? I'm like, I barely have time to go to the bathroom."
Isaac is getting better though, or maybe I am. Although he still seems to be mentally deranged about half the time, this is an improvement over ALL the time. He has his moods of course. Yesterday he was so disappointed about this crapiness of this Batman glider thing we bought at Target (it was a bribe to get him to let me try snow boots on him), which broke in his hands before he even played with it once, (Mattel: expect a sharply worded letter from me), he went into full air raid siren mode all the way home. But I could see his point there. In his place, if I loved Batman as much as he does, I would have been upset too. Maybe not screaming full-tilt for half an hour… but…
Later on last night he really messed with my head. He was standing there naked except for socks and Disney "Cars"-themed pull-ups. He was putting on huge red slippers in the shape of race cars, embodying Lightening McQueen, a character in Cars. (He persists in calling him "Lightening, The Queen" which goes a long way towards undermining the machismo…) And then, as he put his slippers on, he looked up at me with the most serious, sincere look on his face. "Is this a dream?" he asked. "No," I said quickly, "it's real." But for the rest of the night, and even on into today, I have lingering doubts.