The Unforgivable Curse

And then, sometimes, he's not so cute.

TheBoy and I were playing "Trouble" this morning when, lucky Mommy that I am, I landed on him and sent his little blue man home. He made his pouty face. And then, he came out with the one word you do not say in our house: It starts with a "B." It rhymes with "witch." It's a favorite of Barbara Bush and the women from "Dynasty."

I'll leave it to Judybat to explain why this is, at least in the little green house, the worst thing our darling little almost-4-year-old man could possibly say to either of us. Suffice it to say, once I picked my jaw up off the floor, we had a long talk about why certain words may seem funny but are not. And when he said it again a few minutes later, the game -- and Mommy -- went away. Next stop: Azkaban.

Priorities

A recent coversation, Part I

JudyBat: I have my most special boy and my most special girl right here. What's better than that?
TheBoy: Buzz Lightyear.
JB: What?
TB: An action figure toy with buttons to press. Is that better than a boy and a girl?
JB: Well, not to me.

A recent coversation, Part II

AnnaRay: I am grateful for this yummy food we have to eat and for our family being together to eat it and for our good health and our good friends and neighbors.
JB: I am grateful for electricity and for water that comes right out of the tap, hot or cold, that's safe to drink and that we live in a house with heat. What are you grateful for, little man?
TB: Sugar.
JB: What about the nice warm house we live in?
TB: That's not sugar.

Wasting my time

Twice in my life, I've taken three-month breaks from the daily grind. Twice, I've entered my family leave convinced I would use the time to do something wonderful and productive, like turning one of the brilliant ideas I've been playing with into the Great American Novel or, at the very least, catching up on my reading.

Twice, I've discovered that my brain apparently stops working when I leave the office.

The first time I had a long, uninterrupted period of free time was when TheBoy was born. I did get some reading done during that stint, but it was the trashy, Patricia Cornwell, don't-make-me-think kind. This time around, I've managed to get not quite halfway through an 800-page biography of the Beatles. And writing? Ha. You've seen how productive -- cough, cough -- Judybat and I have been here since TheGirl was born.

So how the heck am I passing the time, besides doing my every three hour duty as the nipple mom? Mostly by raiding the SciFi section at our friendly neighborhood video store. I've gone through all four "Alien" movies -- skipping "Alien vs. Predator" for obvious reasons -- "V for Vendetta," the Matrix trilogy, 2001, 2010, several Star Trek and Star Wars films -- including one of the more recent trilogy, but don't ask me why. I revisited "Dark City" and "Blade Runner," and for the umpteenth time found myself asleep before the final showdown. Blasphemy, I know.

I'm not sure why I have the brain for science fiction right now and nothing else. Clearly, I need to go back to work soon. Because one of these days, there's going to be nothing left on the shelf except "Starship Troopers." And I don't think a responsible parent would expose their newborn to that kind of garbage.

The mouths of babes

TheBoy has a friend who brings out the worst in him, and I'm baffled at how to respond.

He's a sweet kid, this friend, a little older and a little wilder but cute and kind and generous at heart. Yet anytime TheBoy plays with him, our darling little preschooler who likes to paint his toenails and cuddle up with No Kitty starts talking about shooting people, starts pushing and hitting, starts whining and screaming.

A true story: We took TheBoy and this friend to our local children's museum this week. It's your typical layout: A pit full of tiny bits of recycled tires for digging, a grocery store complete with ringing cash registers, grocery carts and hundreds of plastic food items, a kid-sized nursery with several baby dolls and a kid-sized pirate ship looming down over everything else.

The boys had a good time in the dig pit. They wandered around the nursery like happy little lambs. So it was a bit of a shock when, suddenly, TheFriend ran from the nursery to the pirate ship with two baby dolls tucked in his arms. He was yelling something:

"Let's kill the babies!"

Next thing you know, the kids are up in the pirate ship, launching dolls at passers by below. When I finally dragged them out of the place, I noticed dismembered babies at every exhibit: The dig pit, the nursery, the pirate ship, the grocery store. My darling boy is a serial killer.

We love this kid's parents. We also like the kid, or at least we do when he's not doing things such as disdaining Candy Land as "a girl's game," or telling TheBoy he can be "SpiderGirl," or plotting his next round of faux infanticide. What's a responsible, peace-loving, gender-role eschewing parent to do? Can a 4-year-old really be a bad influence? Even more troubling: What if my kid is the one doing the influencing?

Too much information

Let's talk about my breasts. I've been doing it so much recently that it's become habit. I talk about breastfeeding with my pregnant friends. I talk about it with my wanna-be pregnant friends. I talk about it nonstop with my friends who have just had babies.

Mostly, I complain about how difficult and stressful this supposedly easy and natural act turned out to be. Sure, the kid has turned into a chubby-cheeked little beast over the past month or so. The process has gone from more than an hour -- breaks for weeping included -- to a tidy 45 minutes. The -- feel free to cringe here -- cracks have almost healed. And yes, I'm a tad less anxious about making sure I feed her precisely three hours after the last time lips met nips. But this basic act of providing food to my newborn still causes immense angst. I've stopped worrying that I'm starving TheGirl.

Instead, I worry that I won't have enough milk to feed her when I go back to work. I panic daily over whether my poor, sore chest is producing enough -- am I down today? Am I up? Will I ever be able to feed my kid without using this silicone nipple shield they gave me in the hospital? Is something I ate causing my darling daughter to fart everytime I stick her on the breast?

The scary thing: My issues are nothing compared to other women I've met. This week, I attended a breastfeeding support group and sat feeling pretty good about my lot while, in one example, the mother of a three-month old boy talked about having to buy milk from other women because she is still not producing enough.

I am still waiting for that wonderful, ray-of-sunshine-through-the-clouds moment when breastfeeding stops being the fundamental, constant worry of my life and starts becoming a joyous, easy bonding experience with my child. At the moment, this is my job, my to-be-paid-later 24/7 occupation. Honestly, it's harder than that thing for which I get paid.

A letter to my friend, Andrew, who is thinking about moving to Portland, but worries about the weather

A friend of mine, let's call him Bob, was driving one evening when a drunk driver crashed headlong into his car. No one was injured, but Bob's car was totalled. He loved that car, but he need to replace it fast, because he was living in North Carolina, where it's illegal not to own a car. The replacement car he bought he did not love so much. It was not fun to drive. It was not fun to look at. One day, his wife turned to Bob, a practicing Buddhist, and said, "Don't you just hate that car?" Bob replied, "It helps me with my practice."

I thought of Bob's response as I rode my bike toward the river this afternoon on my way home. The day had started out gray, but by the time I left work, the clouds had parted and blue skies were peeking through. The water was placid and the light had that magical late-afternoon, winter-in-the-Northern-hemisphere quality that made everything look like a fairy tale filmed in high definition. The streets were wet from yesterday's rain, so it still felt like Portland, and I couldn't help feeling the light was all the sweeter for being reflected in the wet pavement.

"Why is it raining," The Boy will ask me sometimes, and I answer, "Because it's winter in Portland." Every morning I wake up, expecting rain, and when I look out the window to see that none is falling, it's like opening a present to find the perfect gift. If I lived somewhere else, would I call it a gift every time the sun forces its will on the sky, muscling its way through the clouds? Would summertime, with its endless dry days make me feel free like a kid again?

So move to Portland, Andrew. It will help you with your practice.

Delayed reaction

TheBoy cannot stop peeing. Every half hour or so over the past week, with a nice 11-hour break during his evening nap, he pipes up in that little boy voice with, 'I need to go to the baaaaaathroom."

Frequent urination is one of those things that sets my mommy's heart racing, mostly because a good friend's son was diagnosed with juvenile diabetes off just such a symptom. So like any panic-stricken parent, I rushed him to the doctor today to get his urine tested.

The results: Completely, totally normal. So, um, what the heck?

Our doctor, by the way, is marvelous, absolutely worth the 20 minute wait it invariably takes to get in to see her. She's also my age, which only makes me feel slightly incompetent when I stop to think about how comforting and together I find her. She also has three kids of her own. And, she explained today, two of them went through the same peeing constantly phase when their younger siblings were born. What can we do about this? Try not to make a big deal out of it and assume it will go away, which is pretty much the Dr. Spock/Dr. Spears answer to everything.

I guess there are worse ways for him to show his stress, discomfort and general discombobulation over the recent upheaval to his world. And at least when he pees, it's in the toilet.

How about three years of mourning?

I don't mean any disrespect toward Gerald Ford, but doesn't giving him a national day of mourning seem awfully disrespectful during a time of war? When do the 3,000 service men and women who have died serving our country in Iraq get their day of mourning?

I guess ordering the federal government to close today was easier for our current president than cutting his vacation short to show up for his predecessor's memorial ceremony on Saturday.