Two years ago today you completed us.

Two months you waited until you decided to grow.

Two sparkly blue eyes which are flecked with gold.

Two dimpled hands that hold my cheeks as you kiss my nose.

Two chubby legs that carry you away from me. And bring you back. For now.

Two syllables to say my name. “Ma. Ma.”

Two tragic minutes in time-out when you hit.

Two older brothers to get you into trouble and maybe even get you out of it.

Two parents, one of whom gave you blonde hair and the other who made it curly. Who love you. To the moon. To the sun. And back. And again.

Two.

You are perfectly two.

I am not a morning person.

This is perhaps an understatement.

But I get up early to beat the child-rush and to quietly come to grips with consciousness, and after 15 minutes and a cup of coffee I’m good. Sometimes I even like being up.

I sit at the table (coffee in hand) and watch the deck get brighter as the sun comes up. And the daylight brings the birds to the feeders. And if I’m really lucky, Evan will creep down the stairs and crawl up on my lap and watch with me.

“Mom,” he’ll whisper, “there’s a mother red-bellied woodpecker.” Except he says, “muddah wed-bellied woodpeckew,” and part of me hopes he never corrects his pronunciation.

Evan is my bird boy.

With Jensen, it’s football. We sit and watch football for hours and may not even speak a word and we are content. Together. I used to do the same with my dad. I didn’t even understand the game. But I sat next to Dad and watched him watch and I was satisfied. The memory still makes me smile.

I don’t know what Caleb will be. But I know that we will share something that will make us both happy to the center of our beings.

And if whatever he is requires me to get up early, so be it. I will do it.

Because that is love.

While you’ll have to wait until next month to see our actual Christmas card, it is my great pleasure to share with you now our 2009 Christmas Card Reject Photos. Enjoy.

Caleb's immediate reaction upon seeing the camera was to throw himself on the floor and start screaming. This was shockingly similar to Jeff's reaction when I told him it was time to take the pictures.

Red-eye from the camera flash? Or photographic evidence of demonic possession? I think the answer is obvious.

In my fictional world, this is Jensen being really excited to have his picture taken. More likely, he was this happy because I promised him candy when we were done. Seriously, isn't Christmas all about bribery? If you don't pull out "If you're not good, Santa won't bring you a cool present" at least once in the next month, you're a better parent than I. You're probably a better parent than I am, anyway.

My fantasy continues: "Yes!" he shouts. "I love posing for pictures! And I have the awesomest parents in the world! And they definitely don't yell at me during Christmas picture-taking!"

Reality check. "You want me to smile?" he asks, truly perplexed. "As if."

My minimum expectation is that the kids actually look at the camera. Which is apparently asking too much.

Okay, seriously. Look at the camera. No! Look! Dammit. (And so the swearing begins.)

Right. While nose-picking is very festive and all, could you maybe not? I'll give you candy if you don't pick your nose. And puppies! I promise.

There are no words that adequately describe this child. None.

Temporarily ignoring this look of anguish, I must explain that I have no idea why two-thirds of our children are not wearing shirts for their Christmas pictures. But, let's be honest: Christmas would be a whole lot more fun if we were ALL half-naked. Am I right?

All I can say is that this one came dangerously close to making the final cut. Best. Christmas card. Ever.*

Shortly after this last shot, Jeff and I indulged in our now-traditional Christmas Card Picture Stiff Drink while the kids withdrew to their bedrooms to flip through the yellow pages for therapists and to plot their revenge for this annual torture session.  This is the stuff memories are made of. God, I love the holidays.

———————–

I’ve been out of the workforce for a few years. I have a college degree or  two and have some strong experience in my field. But if I were to try to piece together a marketable resume today, I’d be in trouble. Because “2004-Present: Butt-wiper” isn’t going to get me too many interviews.

I’m going to start calling myself a Human Waste Manager. Or maybe a Waste Behavior Specialist. Because dealing with toilet-training issues takes up a good portion of my day, and I may as well adopt a title that reflects that.

Take yesterday evening, for instance.  Poor little Evan was having a great time playing outside. Such a great time, as a matter of fact, that he forgot to come inside to go to the bathroom. He made a valiant last-minute dash, but alas… was too late. I heard a heart-rending cry of disappointment from the garage, and raced to find a puddle on the floor and a devastated little boy with soggy shorts. I went into crisis-management mode, trying to simultaneously comfort Evan, make sure he didn’t track pee into the house, and barricade the puddle so that nobody else ran into the garage and slipped in the mess. (Such a talent may or may not translate well into the workplace.)

He showered (an adventure in itself), and we decided to bathe Caleb while we were at it. I stripped him down and the little punk, who is a few days shy of 20 months old, waddled over to the toilet, lifted the seat, and did his best to imitate his big brothers. He made it abundantly clear that he wanted to use the toilet. My heart sank.

I hate potty-training. Hate it. It is the hardest parental task I have ever undertaken. I would have a million Sex Talks with my kids, would breastfeed indefinitely, would change diapers for the next 25 years… all before I would willingly undertake this last potty-training.

But I can’t really justify not potty-training the poor kid so we got out Caleb’s brand-new potty chair. (In our home, each child gets his own new potty chair. Because after teaching a little boy directional pee control, those chairs qualify as weapons of mass destruction and really should be incinerated so as not to pose a genuine threat to public health and national security.) He sat on it for a while and looked cute and then Jeff plopped him in the tub. Where Caleb immediately peed. Of course. (He probably drank a fair amount of contaminated bath water, too, but I left Jeff in charge and didn’t witness it.)

To summarize: Evan, who is potty-trained, peed all over the garage. Caleb, who is not potty-trained, seems like maybe he wants to be. It took a good 45 minutes to deal with the implications of their bathroom adventures last night. I perform some variation on this waste control at least a couple of times a day (don’t forget last week’s Case of the Mysterious Footprints), and probably will for several more years. Several more years of making sure all the pee and poop winds up in the correct place. Several more years of cleaning up all the stuff that doesn’t make it into the right place. Several more years of decontaminating the biohazardous bathroom where all their pee-related crimes against humanity occur. (I just threw up a little in my mouth.)

Along with being a master of preschool arts and crafts and my so-so (but improving) Guitar Hero skills, this is what I have to recommend me for a  job. It seems a little underwhelming. Something tells me I’m better off just staying unemployed.

“Mo-ommm! Caleb pooped!” Jensen hollered from the other room.

Of course. It all came clear. The trail of little brown footprints I had just discovered across the living room carpet made total sense. Total disgusting sense. I thought they were a little far apart. Caleb must have been taking really big steps. Triple-jumping or something. Whatever. There was a diaper to change and I needed to get him before he walked on every square inch of floor in the house.

I prepared myself for a leaky diaper, and was confused when I found no leak. No dirty feet. Nothing. The diaper was completely intact. Something was wrong.

Enter Evan. Shocking, isn’t it?

Evan (crying dramatically): “There’s poop on my feet!!!”
Me (surprisingly unimpressed): “Of course there is. Why do you have poop on your feet?”
Evan (wailing): “It’s Caleb’s!!! Caleb’s poop is on my feet!”
Me: “How did you get Caleb’s poop on your feet?”
Evan: “I don’t know!”
Me: “Did you touch him?”
Evan: “Noooo!”
Me: “Did he touch you?
Evan: “Noooo!”
Me: “Quit jumping around. So you got Caleb’s poop on your feet and you have no idea how?”
Evan: “I think it was magic.”

And that was it. That is all I know about how how this happened. So we washed his feet. I scrubbed approximately 6327 poop-prints from the carpet. And the mystery remains. The only bright spot is my hope that Caleb’s Magical Poop will make potty training easier.

Some little lies are excusable, right? Because God knows, as a parent, I tell a few of them.

Like this week. Jensen and Evan (the older two boys) went to stay at my mom and dad’s house. It was their version of “vacation,” and seemed especially important since I had to cancel our other vacation earlier this month. So away they went, for a week, where my parents did more fun things with them than those kids have ever done in their entire lives cumulatively. I was completely expecting them to never want to come home.

But on Thursday night, Jensen finally wanted to talk to me on the phone (he’d been having too much fun to talk to me before this). And he talked. And he talked. Then he said, a bit too casually, “So… how are things going there?” Which was secret code for, “I miss you.” But because he’s eight and impending coolness rules his demeanor, he can’t be openly affectionate with me anymore. Anyway, I got the idea. It was sweet.

Then he said, “I’ll bet Caleb misses me a lot. Is he looking around for me? Does he ask for me?”

Jensen’s veiled homesickness broke my heart, just a little. And I lied, because I didn’t want to break his heart. “Yeah,” I said, “he’s kind of looking around for you. I think he misses you.”

Ha. Caleb didn’t miss his brothers one single bit. He was living in the best parent-child ratio he’s ever known, and he loved every minute of it. He was just fine with not having older boys around to compete for our attention or to push him around. He did not miss them.

But on the ride home today, they all just kept looking at each other. They all laughed at each other. And now we’re home and they all just disappeared together. I haven’t heard a word out of them. They’re all happy… together. Weird.

So maybe, completely unintentionally, I really didn’t tell a lie.

Interestingly, even in the midst of my personal drama, my kids just keep on keepin’ on. They are kids. They are boys. There are three of them. I am their mother. And, despite my deepest darkest fears, none of that has changed in the last two weeks.

In that light, I wrote a list. Cause toddlers really don’t care if my legs are shaky. Enjoy.

Ten Things Which Are Hazardous to A Toddler’s Health*

1. Steak knives. Especially when held in a death grip by the blade. Even more so when running.
2. Dirty diapers
3. Dishwasher detergent
4. Kitchen chairs. Most dangerous after one has learned to climb upon them and stand upright, but has not yet learned to control the effects of gravity.
5. Ktichen table. See #4.
6. Tile floor. See #4 and #5.
7. Blender
8. Magic markers. This is one is not as obvious as some of the others. But said markers become dangerous when one’s father discovers that one has scribbled all over the wall with one, particularly a red one.
9. Electrical outlets
10. Any possession prized by one’s older brothers. Caution: this one is especially lethal.

_____________

 *But with which, interestingly, my own personal toddler has attempted to cause himself bodily harm in the past seven days.**

**Please do not remove him from my custody.***

***Note: I have not included “staples” on this list. This indicates that I am learning. The lack of staples in his possession is not, however,  due to lack of effort on his part. This indicates that he is not learning. This is why I am the parent.

Caleb foraging for dinner. Apparently I should have included "trash can" somewhere on this list.

Yesterday was like Monday, except it was Tuesday.

To put it all in perspective, my Monday was especially heinous because Jeff had to go back to work after a week of vacation. And then, because it was just a Bad Day that felt like Monday, I had another Monday the very next day. That meant I had two double-plus-sucky Mondays in a row. Sometimes life isn’t fair.

But, back to yesterday. The Monday-that-was-really-Tuesday. By 5:00 (in the evening) I still hadn’t brushed my teeth. If, by the way, you’re a stay-at-home-parent who doesn’t sometimes not brush his or her teeth, do not feel obligated to tell me this in the comments because I already feel like enough of a loser. Anyway. No toothbrushing. Partially due to lack of opportunity, and largely due to bad attitude.

But at five, I got religion and decided to brush. Sadly, though, my 17-month-old is obsessed with toothbrushes and snagged mine before I could stop him. This is the same kid who has had bright green mucous oozing from every orifice and a rattling cough for about 12 days now. This is the kid who, while playing with his blocks yesterday, had an 11-inch string of snot hanging from his nose to the floor. This is the same kid who sneezed up some alarming ectoplasm all over his afternoon snack an hour earlier.

So my snotty kid grabbed my toothbrush and promptly stuck it in his mouth and I could not wrestle it away from him. He had a pretty serious relationship with that thing. By the time I got it away from him, it was dripping and I didn’t have another toothbrush so I just shrugged my shoulders and ran it under some hot water and brushed away. Gross, yes, but it seemed like the lesser of two evils and actually fit the rest of my day pretty well.

But then. Then the day turned around entirely. Jeff came home from work early.

This meant I did not have to scrape together a scrumptious dinner of leftovers for three starving boys by myself. This meant I did not have to wrestle all of them to a Cub Scout meeting alone. This meant I did not have to dig deep and find the stamina to get them all clean and into bed without a partner.

And, mostly, this meant that I got to watch Jeff’s face when I told him that right after our oozing and coughing son molested my toothbrush, he grabbed Jeff’s and did the exact same thing to it. That his tootbrush actually had mucous hanging from it.  His reaction was predictably priceless.

My petty misery? Yes, she loves company.

There was a time, long (long) ago, when I had one child. Jeff would go away for days, weeks, even months at a time (depending on where he was doing his anesthesia rotation), and he would leave us to fend for ourselves. Jensen and I spent endless hours together playing and talking and eating and whatever else we did to pass the time. And I was solely responsible for all domestic chores. There were times, during those years, when I thought I had it pretty bad.

It had been a long while since I thought about those one-child days. But then last weekend Jeff took Jensen and Evan camping, leaving Caleb and me behind. I’m not at all averse to camping. This was a Cub Scout adventure though and camping with, like, 52 free-range and very smelly eight-year-olds sounds rather akin to torture. (Oh, as an aside, somehow Jensen’s toothbrush landed in the latrine. The kid has a problem, apparently.) So we stayed home, just Caleb and me, and I had some time to remember when Jensen and I were on our own. And I realized that the single best part about family life may actually be when everyone else is gone. Because that solitude that I used to think was rough? Sometime in the past seven years, it has morphed into a little piece of heaven.

Heaven: for 26 hours, the house was picked up and clean and quiet and peaceful. For 26 hours Caleb was completely content because he had no competition for my attention. For 26 hours there were no dirty dishes on the counters and no stinky unflushed toilets and no dirty laundry in the middle of the kitchen (I know, I don’t get it either) and the lights were all turned off and nobody told me they didn’t like dinner and I didn’t have to tell anyone to turn the tv down and there weren’t dirty shoeprints on the floor. For 26 hours no one undermined my every move.

And then, Jeff came home.

Hee.

I’m a girl. Sure, I like sports. (Just this weekend I watched golf, baseball, NASCAR, and some NBA.) And beer. And I freely admit to having a 17-year-old boy’s sense of humor. But still: girl, with girl sensibilities.

And I’m the lone girl around here. Mostly this isn’t an issue. I mean, sometimes when I get the Hanna Andersson catalog I wish I had a daughter. That’s usually as much as I think about it. But this past long, rainy weekend we were all cooped up indoors together and I had many occasions to reflect on the sheer boyishness of my housemates. The juvenile testosterone was so thick that it practically dripped off the walls.

For starters, I realized that we have a lock on the scatalogical humor. The boys fart. A lot. And when they’re not farting, they’re killing each other by pretending to fart. Want to render a four-year-old helpless with laughter? Ask him to pull your finger (or, more accurately, have his dad do this). Or belch. Even the baby knows how to fake-belch, which he finds hysterical. Oh, or they tell pee jokes. Or poop jokes. All. very. funny. Especially for 48 hours on end, with breaks only for sleep. (What’s funnier than a good poop joke at dinner? Oh, I know! A poop-puke combination joke!)

And (unfortunately) the smells don’t end there. The kids aren’t old enough to make our house smell like a locker room yet but they just smell… funky. Little boys smell like puppies. (Do little girls smell this way too? I wouldn’t know. Pretty sure I didn’t.) But then there’s something else. Something about sweat and an aversion to soap and perhaps an unhealthy disdain for toilet paper. (Oh, don’t judge. You know your kids are the same way.) A long weekend in a closed-up house with these kids and… we needed a good airing-out by Monday morning.

Oh, and then there are the battles. The play battles that are just for fun until somebody actually makes contact, and then it’s game on until somebody bleeds. Somebody is constantly jumping on/off/over the furniture in battle. I’d venture to say that someone in our house is airborne about 68% of the time. And if someone isn’t in the air, he’s crying because he had a bad landing or his brother just totally nailed him. Our house is like one gigantic mixed martial arts cage.

If it’s a really good brawl, somebody gets knocked in the testicles. Balls. Nuts. Nachos. Jewels. There are eight of them under this roof, and the boys are obsessed with them. I swear somebody is constantly adjusting himself or scratching himself or saying “Ow! My nachos!” or snickering when I ask Jeff if he got any nuts at the store. I have no doubt this ball-banter will continue until they’re old enough to realize that they should be embarrassed. And then I will not want to know what they’re doing with them, so all things considered I’m okay with these discussions.

Shall we talk about Bionicles? Legos? Hot Wheels? (All of which, by the way, hurt like royal hell when you step on them barefoot.) Cleaning the bathroom (gag)? The staggering volume of milk and food these kids consume? (The oldest eats twice as much as I do. Easily. I buy four gallons of milk at a time now. How many will I buy in eight years?) Playing ball in the house? Knocking holes in the wall? (That actually happened this weekend.) I have no argument about whether this is nature or nuture, something essential to the Y chromosome or how we’ve raised them or societal roles. A combination, most likely. All I know for sure about it is how things are around here.

Gah. Boys. They’re weird. I think today I’ll wear pink. Pink everything. It’s a pink day. I need it.