Let This Be Your Mantra.

Sometimes I dole out wisdom as if it was so much free hard candy at the reception desk of life.

For example, Walker was pretty crabby this morning ... flailing, fussing, and being generally unpleasant. I was changing his diaper and getting him clothed for what promised to be a fantasmic day at daycare. Socks, shoes, shirt, the works. And he was not having any of it, he was windmilling his arms around and more than once he would really pop himself square in the head. I found myself saying something to him that I think, really, are words for all of us to live by—

"Stop hitting yourself in the head. It will not improve your mood."

Good News.

I have one favorite moment from the whirlwind trip Walker and I took to Massachusetts this past weekend. And that's saying a lot, because there were plenty of great moments. Like? Well, like ...

Sitting with Walker in front of my Mom's fireplace and watching him try to wrap his mind around fire while having a bottle. He'd drink a little from his bottle then stop and rock forward on his butt to look at the fire. Drink from the bottle. Look at the fire. Bottle. Fire. Bottle. Fire.

Stopping at this great organic farmstand and café in Westminster, Vermont Saturday morning to enjoy a warm banana muffin and soak in the atmosphere—taking in all the neighborhood folks streaming in, enjoying the comfortable chit-chat between owner and customer, and watching a certain baby who shall remain nameless shamelessly beaming at every passer by.

Driving back to Vermont with Walker napping in the back, a piping hot coffee next to me, listening to a CD compilation that included "It's Not Unusual" by Tom Jones. And the sun was shining.

Sitting with Walker in the backseat of my Pathfinder at a rest area just an hour from home. Cozy in my big Michelin Man coat with him wrapped up in a blanket, feeding him a bottle, kissing his forehead, looking out at the cold, cold, snowy rolling hills. Feeling safe. Feeling at home.

And all of this doesn't even touch on the great visiting we did, all of the people we haven't seen in months - months! - and were able to catch up with and laugh with, nor does it describe some great homemade tomato soup I wolfed down Saturday night. Nope.

THIS is the one:

At our first visiting stop on Saturday, we got to hang out with my great friend Kate, her husband (and our friend) Angus, and daughter Aenea. Aenea is a beautiful girl. Beautiful. She is also a complete nut. A human pinball. A little electric life force that ricochets off every surface and comes insanely close to whacking her head on just about anything with a hard fixed corner. I can't count the number of times I had to look away. Almost reminded me of riding in an NYC cab (don't look straight ahead, look out the side window—THE SIDE WINDOW). Anyway.

She's also, at 2-1/2, apparently quite focused on personal private parts. When I was changing Walker's diaper .... with Aenea having a view that was almost unseemly, she asked "Where's his vagina?" I'm not practiced at this line of questioning but Kate didn't even blink, "He's a boy. Boys don't have vaginas. He has a penis." "Oh." came the response. Fair enough.

After a little while, some lunch, an aborted nap, and a weak attempt at a tantrum, Aenea came into the room with a clearly unhappy Angus ushering her in. I won't get into the details but suffice it to say that there had been a disastrous diaper incident and one messy little girl was standing in front of us. Which required her being put into the tub. Immediately.

As she emerged from her bath and lay squirming on the couch so Kate could get her dressed, she exclaimed with the kind of enthusiasm you just don't get much of these days—

"MY VAGINA IS CLEAN!"

Kate, without missing a beat replied, "That is good news."

Good news, indeed.

But What Does It Mean?

Last night I had what might be my best dream ever. Jon and I were pursuing some sort of nameless, faceless bad guys through our house. Although it wasn't necessarily our house, but it was. You know how dreams work. It was a 2-story farmhouse but it was all white inside. And it was in Maine. We lived in it, but not anymore. We were in the midst of moving. But let's not get bogged down in the details.

We were running and gunning, Alias-style through the house. Chasing what I'm imagining now were cut-throat mercenaries dressed all in black. We were crouching around doorways, pressing ourselves thin up against walls, motioning to each other with our guns that it was "all clear". We snaked our way around the second floor and tiptoed, cat-like, down the creaky wooden stairs. We passed through the kitchen, carefully surveying every inch of the space. My gaze finally rested on the sink and I burst out with—

"Jesus Christ, what a mess!"

And put down my gun and started washing dishes.

Swear. To. God.

Daycare Smackdown.

I just got into work after concluding my morning routine, a 3-4 hour set of tasks so varied and hurried that I regularly refer to it as The Spin Cycle. Given variations like the inability to find clean clothes (for me or Walker) or unexpected poop explosions or barfing (um, Walker), most mornings go like this:

4:30-5:30 Walker wakes up. Jon wakes me up by shaking me and saying "You're up." Annoying.

5:30-6:00 Nice quiet time in bed, feeding Walker a bottle and watching Sammy rub herself against the bed like a grizzly bear. See if I can simultaneously hold Walker and his bottle and kick Sammy.

6:00-6:25 Up and out of bed. Walker hangs out in his bouncy seat flipping little plastic letters, wooden teddy bears, and chewing on his favorite toy ... a bumble bee liberated from his playmat that squeaks and jingles and looks vaguely like the guy in the bumble bee costume on The Simpsons. It's a European playmat, so the connection may be more direct than I even know. Wash bottles. Give Walker a shot at solid food. Clean up after solid food experiment. Add baby spoon and cup to enormous precarious tower of dirty dishes in sink. Block it out. Just block it out.

6:25-6:30 Shower

6:30-7:00 Get out of shower and get dressed. Wonder on a daily basis when I should cease being naked in front of my own son. Make bed. Pack my bag. Get bottles and whatever other assorted items needed for daycare into another bag. Pick out coat/hat/glove get-up for the day. Clean up co-sleeper. Put Walker's books away.

7:00 Bring everything out to the car. Start car. Turn heater on full blast. Turn defroster on.

7:00-7:15 Wipe Walker's face, hands, and feet as a little pick-me-up for the day. Change his diaper. Put clothes and shoes on for daycare. Apply one of a wide assortment of lotions to his face to combat the dry wind of the frozen tundra.

7:15-7:30 Put Walker in his carseat. Place assorted gates and barriers around the house to defend the house from the dogs. Have stern talk with dogs about not destroying the house. Accept that the vacant look in their eyes means exactly what I think it means and resign myself to sweeping up wood chips when I get home. God damn dogs.

7:30 Teeter outside with carseat in one hand and other arm stuck out for balance. Watch for falling snow and ice. Try to remember where the rock wall is ... or where the steps are for that matter. Wait for the day I fall on my ass just trying to get from the front door to my car. Think optimistically about February almost being over.

7:30-7:50 Take one of the most beautiful drives of my whole day. Past fields, cows, big red barns, horses with their blanket coats on eating their breakfast, babbling brooks, a little general store, a coffee shop, over a little bridge, past The Round Church. Listen to Morning Edition. Daydream.

7:50-8:00ish Get to daycare. Take Walker and bag o' stuff inside. Must take boots off before entering baby room ... step in piles of melted snow in stocking feet. Ugh. Most aggravating part of my morning. Lug carseat and bag-a-bottles inside. Take Walker out of his seat, get him set up with a book and some toys. Fill out his sheet (what time he woke up, when he last ate, when his diaper was changed last, how he's doing in general). Put bottles in fridge. Check his mailbox for daycare bills, newsletters, book orders, or -my favorite- art projects. Hang out on the floor chatting with him, the other babies, and the women who take care of all of them. Kiss him good-bye, tell him to have a great day and that I love him and that his Dad will pick him up later. Wave bye again at the door. Put boots back on. Peer back in window to see what he's doing. Almost without fail, he is sitting there people watching.

8:00ish-8:30ish Get on 89 N, head to South Burlington, stop at Starbucks, get extra hot latte, scarf as many free samples of pastries as I can without drawing too much attention to myself. Drive to work. Start computer. Put stuff down. Realize how pathetic it is that being at work is actually relaxing.

So this morning Walker was in a pretty good mood after a brief nap on the way to daycare. I sat down with him, we looked at the snowflake mobile in the middle of the room (he loves mobiles). I was talking to one of the women about how beautiful it looks outside today (blue skies, snow clinging to every branch, every piece of barbed wire, everything). In the middle of this, one of the older boys started approaching Walker with a pointed finger. I don't know if he was fixin' to gouge Walker's eye out or what. I tried not to let it bother me. I know this stuff happens all the time, when I'm not there to intervene. He's told to leave Walker alone. 2 seconds later, the same kid toddles over and dope slaps (open hand, starfish-style, SMACK) another kid right in the forehead. The smacker got a stern talking to, the smackee didn't really care. The smacker then looked at Walker again, really eyeing him. Right then, Walker eyed him back. He jingled his little plastic trumpet with plastic doo-dads on it, stuck it in his mouth, and they continued to stare at each other. The smacker inched closer. Just then, right then, right as I was sitting there, Walker threw his plastic trumpet down and stared at the smacker.

I enthusiastically remarked, "Yeah! It's on!"

It's mornings like this that make me question my ability to set a good example for the boy.

A Big Box for Valentine's Day.

This past Sunday morning, the day before Valentine's Day, we were all in the kitchen, enjoying moments that were just overflowing with family-ness. We had just finished having blueberry pancakes, I was feeding Walker mashed banana, and the dogs were circling uncomfortably close to a certain baby who had mashed banana all over his face, hands, and bib. The house was in what is now a constant state of complete disarray. We are at the point where we think if we gathered all the stray dog fur from around the house and combined it with some glue we could make ourselves a cat. Anyway. Since returning to work I have trained myself long and hard to just ignore the state of the house as much as possible. Otherwise I end up going into extremely long and tedious monologues about how I can't deal with chaos and the house is ruining my life. The whole house situation has actually been one of the hardest lessons of new parenthood. To let the house go. Just let it go. It seems so obvious, but in practice it's a whole other ball of jacks. So I was feeling proud of myself that I was just letting life happen, that we had actually all had breakfast together (a hot breakfast, no less), that the house was appropriately chaotic and that we even had big plans to leave the house in a couple of hours to go check out an art gallery and have some hot chocolate.

Right around this time, Jon was surveying the kitchen. Looking at the stacks of stuff on the kitchen table, the piles of hats, gloves, and boots strewn around. His eye settled on our kitchen chairs where 2 out of 3 of them had jackets thrown on them. Most of them mine. And he piped up, out of the blue, with this gem:

"Do you think we can do something about these coats today?"

I put the spoon down with the mashed banana on it. Not only was his tone uncharacteristically bitchy but he had also used The Royal We, clearly meaning could I in all my laziness please put my damn coats away already. My jaw set itself askew. My teeth ground themselves down. I was silent, mostly because what I was thinking of saying would be so rude and then the more I thought about it, it started getting sort of funny. I narrowed my eyes at him, almost in disbelief and blinking un-comprehension but with a glimmer of punchiness.

He looked at me, started laughing, and revisited a Christmas request I had by asking, "Are you about to ask me for a Big Box of Zip It for Valentine's Day?" (for Christmas I had asked for a stocking full of Zip It, to be precise).

And I said, "Well. That's a lot more diplomatic than what I had in mind. I was thinking more along the lines of How About A Big Box of Shut The Fuck Up?"

And they say romance is dead.

She Will Break Your Heart.

Today is our dog Lula's 12th birthday. When I adopted her she was 4 or 5 months old. No one knew for sure when she had been born. And because I was terminally single I decided that her real birthday was probably somewhere in the ballpark of a Couples Only holiday that did nothing but throw my terminal-singlehood in my face. So it became Lula's birthday. This also had a nice side benefit of making her birthday easy to remember every year. For that reason alone we decided our other dog Sammy's birthday would be July 4th.

So Walker loves Lula. He loves Sammy but he just loves Lula differently. She's a beautiful dog. I had been looking for a dog for awhile, I was single, living in L.A., and my apartment had almost been broken into in the middle of the night when I was there alone. The only thing that woke me up was the dog in the yard between my apartment and the house behind me, growling right at the gate underneath my window. I looked at a lot of dogs but when I saw Lula I just fell in love with her.

She's red-ish brown, a Rhodesian Ridgeback mix without The Ridge. She looks exactly like Santa's Little Helper from The Simpsons. She's sleek. She's the supermodel of the dog world—able to eat whatever she wants and never gain an ounce. Sammy, on the other hand, is so prone to unexpected weight gain that we call her Tubby. She's clumsy and stands too close and once she ate a pile of towels and it cost us lots and lots of money to get them out of her. They're just very different dogs.

Their reactions to brand new baby Walker were very telling. When we walked in the door, just the day after Father's Day, Sammy was right on the scene. Sniffing, investigating, and needing to be very close to the new human being we were carrying in what must've appeared to them to be an upholstered bucket. At the same time Lula grabbed her bone and ran around in circles, hoping to focus all the attention back on her.

Lula's been increasingly marginalized since I adopted her. First it was just her and I. She slept anywhere she wanted to sleep, even under the covers. We survived an earthquake together. I fed her all of my leftovers and she rode in the car with me wherever I went. Then we moved to Portland and Jon entered the picture. I knew he was the one for me when, on our first date, he got down on the ground and wrestled with her. A few years later came Sammy, a dog friend to keep her company. It's debatable how much Sammy's addition improved her life versus how much it shrank her piece of the attention pie. Now there's Walker.

When Lula click-clacks into the room, Walker's face just lights up. He beams at her. If she's close enough, he reaches his hand out to pet her fuzzy muzzle. He laughs at her, he smiles at her, he wants to touch her, see her, know where she is going and when she'll be coming back.

The other day I tried to point out to him that Sammy was really the dog who is loyal to him. "Sammy," I said, "is the one who guards you when you're sleeping. She's the one who comes to investigate when you're crying. She's loved you since Day 1." I went on, "Lula loves you too, but Sammy is the one who really cares about you. Look, I know you love Lula..." And then I said something to him that I didn't think I'd be saying quite so soon:

"... Walker, she's really beautiful. But she will break your heart."

Dude, That Sucks.

Everyone we know who has kids tried to tell us what parenthood would be like when Walker was still in my tummy and we had no idea how to even change a diaper. The most common remarks were "It changes your life", "Your life will never be the same", and "It's hard. But it's worth it."

Now almost 8 months after his arrival, I understand why people say these things. Because they don't know what else to say that says it any better. By "it's hard" I didn't understand that meant that some days you'd actually scream out loud because you were at your wit's end. Or that by "It changes your life" what people meant was "You-have-no-idea-how-much-this-will-change-your-life-really-no-idea-and-initially-you'll-panic-but-then-you'll-feel-so-happy-it'll-almost-make-you-sick.".

So the initial "life changing" statements seem bland when you're pregnant, you don't understand how much depth they represent or even how much truth. They're sort of underwhelming. Like when I was watching the news and there was a breaking news bulletin about a tragic plane crash. And whoever was standing next to me at the time commented, "Dude, that sucks." Yeah, it sure does. Over 100 people dead. Some entire families. Yup, that sucks alright. Big time.

Once, several months ago, Walker was smiling. Smiling was a new thing for him so therefore it was a new thing for us, too. He would even giggle if we forced it out of him by tickling him, kissing him, or hanging him upside down. After a round of particularly charming smiling, squealing, and laughing I looked at Jon, completely in the glow of new goofy parenthood, and said, "Wow, this is just like having a really awesome pet."

I don't think that's in danger of becoming a cliché any time soon.