Voices in my head

My love and I were sitting on our bed with the baby yesterday, just watching him play with the pillows and making sure he didn't dive head first onto the floor, when he took one of the pillows, folded it in half and proudly proclaimed "A book!". Then, opening up his newly made book and he said "The end" and closed it again. The cuteness, it slayed. Upon later reflection, I find myself amazed at the imagination and associative leap that particular moment entailed.

The daily grind of wrangling a toddler sometimes makes it hard to remember that you've got a little person in your care who has their own likes, loves, desires, sense of humor and ideas of how the universe should run. I value the moments like the above not only because of the humor and love they engender in all of us, but because they also remind me to stop and just soak in all the wonder and joy present in every moment I spend with our son.

I like to listen to music while I work, especially if I'm doing some sort of manual labor or repetitive task.

Last night, while preparing the boy's supper, I had Dig Up Her Bones playing and was bopping around the kitchen while arranging food on his plate. Cue the boy wandering in with my love; he takes a moment to listen to the music and then starts doing this odd little headbanging dance. If I hadn't been streaming music from my phone at the time, I totally would have tried for a video capture.

My little horror punk rocker. ♥

Years ago, my mother and I were driving home from an appointment. It was December and it had been snowing for several hours and there was about a foot of snow on the ground. We were driving on Rt. 2 and right before we got to the Waltham St. exit, we hit a patch of black ice and spun out. Long story short, we came within a hair's breadth of being in a head-on with a tractor trailer truck. After we realized we weren't actually going to die that night, and we were safely away from further near death experiences, my mom did something which seemed odd to me at the time. She just sat there, with this blank expression on her face. I knew she was just as full of adrenalin as I was at that moment, but she still just sat there and wouldn't speak.

Flash forward to today, this morning, in fact. The baby and I were making our daily trip to daycare and as we were pulling out of our street, I almost t-boned a police car - there was a truck pulled over on the side of the road blocking my view and even though I had carefully checked as best I could and thought that I was clear, it appears that I failed my awareness check. Long story short here too, everyone was okay, the policeman yelled at the truck driver for parking in an absolutely moronic place and then reassured me that he was okay and that I wasn't a) at fault and b) in any trouble. I had pulled over to the side of the road, right after almost hitting the cruiser and after making sure I wasn't going to be ticketed, I just sat there, adrenalin coursing through my veins, and just stared at the baby in the rear view mirror while he contentedly looked at some raindrops on the window next to him. I imagine that if the baby ever remembers this moment, he'll be puzzled over the blank look that I'm sure was on my face.

Through the jumble of my thoughts, the one constant thread was that my son could have been seriously injured somehow and I would have ultimately felt responsible for it since I was driving and in charge of his safety. I once commented to my mom about how odd her reaction was to me on that night, oh so many years ago, especially since it stood in such stark contrast to my need to be moving, to bleed off the excess of the fight or flight response. She had just given me this look which I couldn't begin to fathom until today. I really hate the argument of "you aren't a parent, you wouldn't understand." but I'm finding that sometimes that does happen to be the case. I couldn't understand my mother's reaction until I was in a similar situation.

It's funny to me how being a parent is seems to be this odd learning experience about love, fear, sorrow and patience. Every day brings a new challenge for my love and I, new sets of fond memories and new sets of worries for the future as we realize that our son is growing up faster and faster. Through it all, we're managing not to lose our minds and also finding just how much love you can be filled with, and I think it is that love that causes moments like the one I had this morning. The very thought of that love being altered or absent from my life scared me so deeply that I almost shut down when I had a moment to reflect upon it.

Man, this parenting thing is a scary trip, sometimes.

Somebody has learned to climb.

Wait, I don't know as I've conveyed the true terror I'm feeling at the moment. Let me try again.

SOMEBODY HAS LEARNED TO CLIMB!!!!!1!!!OMGWTFBBQ!!!

I was minding my own business this morning, taking a quick moment to check my email while the baby contentedly played on the floor with one of his toys. Or so I thought.

One of the warning signs that something you probably don't want happening is going on, is the absence of sound. I don't mean that sound disappears and the only noise you hear is the rushing of blood through your body. No, the absence I'm talking about is more akin to a feeling of anticipation - like the whole world is holding it's breath and watching whatever deviltry your most precious bundle of joy is about to perpetrate. This feeling is almost always coupled with a lack of noise coming from said bundle of joy, as they are so focused, they forget to babble, bang a block on a table, scream in fury as they cat once again moves just our of reach, etc. So yeah, absence of sound.

So there I was, minding my own business, when I realize that I should turn around and attend the boy. Imagine my surprise, when there he is, sitting on the couch just happy as a clam with our PS3 controller in hand. He looked at me, I voiced the obligatory and rather impotent "Hey!" and began to move to his side. I believe he recognized my intent to take away his hard won treasure because he immediately abandoned the PS3 controller, dove on the DVD remote and started pushing ever button under the sun, trying to either overload the DVD player and cause it to explode, or maybe just make it play Baby Mozart. It was really hard to say.

After the mandatory showing of his War Face and protestations of the fascist regime headed by mommy and daddy, we went back to our regularly scheduled day. Well, to be honest, only he did. Now my brain is constantly on the lookout for him trying to climb the curtains or the book cases, or maybe just levitating up to the ceiling using only the power of his evil genius brain. Our world will never be the same.

I think I'm going to need to pick up an acrylic juggling sphere. I just spent a good 20 minutes entertaining the baby with my rusty contact juggling skills, and while it was really awesome to see how pleased he was by this, I was so nervous that I'd bash him in the head with the solid metal sphere I use. There were a few close calls when he actively grabbed my arm or hand, but I managed to maintain control of the sphere, so yay. But yeah, the acrylic balls may be just as head bashy, but I feel that something lighter than what I use now will make things feel much less perilous to me, anyway.

I should also look into getting smaller sized spheres for the little guy as the idea of teaching him how to contact juggle when he is a bit older is just too tempting.

Doing ball crunches while having a baby trying to climb on you makes for some interesting times, I have to say.

In other news, I got to do yard work for the first time in almost a year, it seems. I find it odd that I look on this as a treat, since I really do kind of hate doing yard work. Of course, the fact that I was out of the house, not watching the baby, and getting to enjoy the weather may have had something to do with it.

Had a mostly 'down' weekend and it took me a bit to figure out the why, considering the 'up' the week started on. Due to this, I didn't manage to accomplish anything I had set out to do, which makes me sad, as I really need to get the taxes done and it really would be nice if I could get the yard work done before the evil vine starts it's bid for domination again.

I ended up resorting to something resembling a metaphysical hard reset on my mental server and that seems to have mitigated the issue, so maybe I'll be able to get taxes done this week by working on them every night after the baby goes to bed. Whee!

I swear, I know I wasn't ever this busy before he was born, and really, I'm still not stupidly busy, so much as feeling the constraints of rationing my free time. Still, I miss being able to just randomly poke at things what need poking at and not have to worry about keeping an eye on "Mr. I'm'a gunna put that sharp/choking hazard/poisonous/generally inimical to life/dangerous thing in my mouth" too.

I'm out.

This working from home/daycare thing? It is killing me today.

I need to win the lottery so I can actually enjoy my time with the baby during the work day. Of course, if I won the lottery, I suspect both my love will both rock the stay at home dance, so it wouldn't just be me enjoying the daytimes with the baby.

Dreams of becoming filthy rich aside, maybe I'll just hope my prayers of a 2 hour nap happening are answered.

I wonder if there is a local support group for stay at home fathers who also work from home. I think some sympathetic ears from folks in the same situation would do wonders for my current feelings of frustration.

Meh.

/whine

Somebody got their first round of immunization shots today and is now largely inconsolable. I wish there was something more we could do other than hold the baby and radiate love - those tragic cries are killing me.

I know this will pass and that I'm being a bit irrational, but at the moment, I'm feeling like the worst parent ever because I can't magically make things better.

Day 11 of the experiment our new life, as it were, and we're all still alive, although with a colicky baby, this has been a near thing. Not helping things is that our lil' one is either a vampire or just likes the night life. Whichever the case, the baby is typically most wakeful between 11 pm and 6 am. If any of you out there have any shred of human decency any favors owed you by the powers that be and feel like blowing them to preserve what little remains of our mental health, I'll give you my first born love you forever.

This is all not to say that things have sucked big donkey balls 24/7 - there have been a few low points, what with the lack of sleep, learning what all of his cries mean, and the diapers (DEAR GOD THE DIAPERS!!!), but all I have to do is see those little eyes gaze up at me while holding the baby in my arms and my heart absolutely melts.

I'd still like to get 8 hours of sleep a night, though. The idea of going back to work today is making me a sad panda. Thank god I'm only doing 20 hour weeks for the next two.