Sam hikes Dreamy Draw

I have a 40lb parasite strapped to my back and we're trudging through the countless trails at Dreamy Draw.  It's hot.  "You horse, I'm cowboy.  Ye-haw!"  Fine, I'll do it.  Whinny, whinny, neigh, neigh, clippity, clippity clop.  Satisfied, he settles into his pack and keeps his eye on the trail for snakes.  I tell him they're everywhere and it's up to him to keep us safe.
At the top of one lower crest he wants to hike himself.  I manage to safely lower the tubby tot to the ground and the feeling of floating almost takes my breath away.

Being carried is a lot of work, so after a snack and a long drink from his canteen,  he's ready to adventure on his own two feet.  He takes gravity by the hand and they skip off down the path as I'm yelling at them to slow down!  Sam quickly realizes the mountain needs some rearranging and starts to throw any and all rocks.  At one point he presses into the side of the hill and with all his might attempts to the move it, all of it.  Funnily enough, it doesn't budge, so he goes back to picking up huge stones and tossing them aside.  Breathing heavily, grunting, growling, the rocks are quivering in fear.  "I'm da man!  Nothin break me down.  Gas in the tank.  Money, bank.  I'm da man!  Rawwrrr!"

Thoughts on Sammy- now that he's two

Zander must have a knack for pinning the personality or the specific blessing of our children while they still live hidden in the womb.  One evening, on the bench swing, zander was mulling over our unborn Sammy.  "Who will he be to us?  Our hearts are already full with Ender (our heart) and Cora (our joy).  What more could God give?" 

That's it.  God could give more.  More of everything. More peace, more strength, more hair (on his back).   Our cup will runneth over with Sam.  Even though he comes last, he will be betwixt the two extremes, as a strong joint, connecting the trio together.

We got really excited for Sam to come at that point.

All has come to pass and more, of course :) 

Sammy D

"And now it's time for a handsome little bookend"

Sam is the kind of sugar pie I made as a child.  Dragging tin pans out to the mud and whipping up batches of delicious servings of goopy concoctions all afternoon.  Confections of grit and grass mixed in with the muddy slop added texture and pizazz.  Sam is your imagination incarnate of the dirty days of childhood.  I revel in his stink and filth.  His vagabond ways have me charmed.  You can hear him chirping and grunting as he investigates and takes apart the backyard.  If I remember, I quickly run out there to pick up Gunther's poop before Sam inspects that for quality control.  Frantically, I'm scooping, I hear him coming with heavy, excited breathing.  Faster I move, raking the poop onto the poop pan.  I see him out of the corner of my eye with a big grin shoving his cheeks in lumps of dough under his eyes.  He gets close enough to proudly show me that he can help too.  In both hands are two of Gunther's turds which he matter of factly plops onto the collection of poop.  Nodding with satisfaction I see him scan the ground for more.  "Uh, thank you Sam, no more all done, goodbye!  Go away."  I throw a ball.  "fetch Sam, fetch the ball!"  He toddles off down the walk after the bouncing distraction. 

It's Sam.  There are rumors within our pack that he might go rogue.  There are signs that are getting harder and harder to ignore.  The past full moon cycle, his hair sprung out from his head a whole inch and no two hairs agreed with another about which way to grow.  After the moon waned to a crescent, his hair settled.  But then there is the screaming for deli meat, the clawing at his high chair, the relentless sniffing across the floor for fallen food.  His bond with the German Shepherd is tightening.  They share the same obsession for the garden hose.  The other night, Gunther was using a blankie during his "rest time".  The lines between boy and dog are beginning to blur. 
Then it happened one quiet morning.  Gunther or Sam couldn't give us a straight answer.  No witnesses, just the carnage of the aftermath. 
Have you ever seen the juices of a caterpillar undergoing it's transformation into it's flying self?  I haven't.  Then I did.  The iodine colored pulp that dissolves the caterpillar into a soup with bits of muscle and organ chunks was smeared across Sam's once "world's most kissable lips".  The dried bits of the chrysalis were scattered at his feet.  I gagged. 

The other night all the kids were playing in their bedroom, when Ender comes stumbling down the hallway wailing at the top of his lungs and holding his arm.
"Oh what did Cora do?" I ask.
"Sam, mom!  It was Sam!  He bit me!"  shrieked Ender.
Not a second later, I hear desperate screaming coming from the back bedroom.  I go in to find Cora cornered, her jammie pants half way up and Sam beating her over the head with a bamboo stick. She's trapped, desperate, panicking, not even trying to defend herself, or cover her head. 
Sam is enjoying the raucous he raised.  With both big kids crying, he's quite satisfied and toddles off to find something else to do. 

In conclusion the baby has rabies or teething molars.

*note: just mud, I repeat just mud.  Not caterpillar puss  :) 

I try to think.  Walk the trails I've been wearing down since childhood.  But it feels like someone came by and smoothed my brain across like warm butter.

Exhibit C

 

This might be the guy with the butter knife.
I am dumb in love.
Its hard to reason beyond the tip of his nose.  Or dream about anything other than that chin.
But, perhaps he has only whisked me away to another landscape of my mind that is unbroken, slick.  The butter knife is now carving knife, etching new pathways with in me.  We are pioneers breaking new ground.

I have abandoned temporarily the parts that have been conquered.  I can't stay.  There is more to be discovered.  Of course I'll be back.  I need to vote in this upcoming election, but ask me about politics now?  Forget it.  You'll get a blank stare because I won't be there.

Disclaimer:  Can a person parent and have careers, opinions, and complete sentences come out of their mouth at the same time? Can they do something productive with their lives other than their children? Of course! By all means, break free, it behooves everyone involved.  All I am saying is that this little guy is really convincing ya know?  

I think this is how it went......

God looked and saw a very pathetic girl.  Her eyes tended to roll backward and inward instead of out and up like the other little girls at school.  Her legs were sturdy and fast, but ran to no where.  At the tip of her nose was always a book titled Escape. 

"Hmm." thought He.

He called out into the great light of stars and planets and soon three sages appeared at His feet.

"I have a very humble mission for you.  You will go and teach one of my wayward daughters about Me and how much I love her.  You will find her on the outskirts, easily recognizable as the stubborn ass.  You might even find her donning a tail and little hairy ears.  Draw her back in again.  There is no fame and glory in this quest for you or her.  Nevertheless, go and bring her back to me."

With a great sigh the three sages departed.  One, Two, Three they came.

I'm not entirely confident they are taking their job seriously anymore.....

Precious Poppy

We were having such a hard time keeping Cora from stealing Sam's pacifiers which she refers to as "poppies".  When the house went quiet, I knew beyond a shadow of a doubt she had located the forbidden fruit and was defiling it in her germ filled mouth some where in secret.  She burrows under blankets, pillows, or just behind her crazy fray of hair to hide. One time I found her perfectly coiled in my little suitcase, lid closed.  The blanket hide out is the best though.  She throws it over her head and leaves the rest of her naked self out to air dry. Its quite startling.

Cora can be such a bear.  Naturally, she loves stories about them.

Once upon a time, there was a little girl named Cora.

"No, I'm a big girl!" Oh, yes yes, of course.

Once upon a time there was a big girl named Cora.  She was a very fortunate girl.  She had so many poppies; one in every color of the rainbow.  Except she did not have blue.  Her baby brother had one poppy in the whole wide world to call his own and it just happened to be blue.  Cora wanted that poppy and she stopped at nothing to get it.
One day she sneaked into his sun filled room while he was napping and soothing himself away on that gloriously blue poppy.  She tip toed over to his bed and quick popped it out of this mouth.  His precious bottom lip puckered and quivered and then the loudest and saddest wail bellowed from his baby lungs.  A moment later, down the hall way, came a low growl and a fierce snarl.  Cora froze.  The terrible noise came closer and closer, until Cora saw a great big paw creep across the threshold to Sam's room.

**(I know this can sound traumatizing, but I'm paying close attention to my human test subjects and noting if there is any impending psychological damage..  Of course, I won't get my longitudinal results until they are all grown up and any unforeseen consequences have already and irrevocably occurred.    :) 

The beast was a dreadful bear who introduced himself as "the guardian of baby brothers and their poppies"

At this point Cora and I get into an argument about what happens next.  I say that the bear gives her a stern warning not to take Sam's pacifiers anymore, or else.....!  She is adamant that "character Cora" takes out her sword and kills the bear.  Swipe, swipe! "I kill you bear!"

Suffice it to say, I think the story has worked.  She no longer steals his poppies for sucking. She still looks at them hungrily though.  If the temptation is too great, she will grab for it and say "here you go!" or "let me wash it for you", just so she can have a moment with it alone in her hands.

Little beetles on their backs.  With wiggly limbs and smiles that quicken across their perfectly plump cheeks.  I don't know who they will be exactly, so I'll just safely put them in the category of 'AWESOME'  Yet, as people who love babies, we throw our love blindly into the future.  Hopefully, as it hurls headlong into the unknown, the path it carves will be the one we always follow.  In the future, as a mom and aunt, I will find my love face to face with these grown up cherubs.  I trust God to get us all there.

These two.  Basically twins.  Born three weeks shy of each other.  They are lounging on, what I believe to be a blanket intended for my older brother, my mom's first born who only experienced the woes of this world for a couple of days, then left to go help God find me the best sycamores to climb when I meet up with him.  I'm only assuming, but I think I have a pretty good hunch this was one of his heavenly priorities. 

This makes my heart settle in nice and cozy seeing them, all of the stinkers really, make use of their uncle's blanket.

It just comes with the Territory

A week before Sam was due, Ender contracted pink eye.  Lovely.  He was more than happy to share it with his sister.  If only they could share their toys and space so easily, we would have accomplished Miss America's dream of world peace within these walls.
Thankfully, it was plenty of time to medicate those angry eyeballs, so..... we could move on to the day of Sam's birth where Ender woke up with round two of pink eye, zander with flu like symptoms and me in early labor and a sore throat.  Stupendous.
Grandparents are the greatest.  I was worried no one would take our infested children so I could do the whole labor and delivery thing.  But, grandparents have guts and unconditional love.
With Ender and Cora gone,  I could focus on the contractions. By 11 that night we decided to head to the hospital for the heck of it, oh, and so zander could sleep.  He reasoned he already wanted to be there instead of me waking him up in the middle of the night because as it was he was not feeling well. 
We go through the annoying but I guess necessary steps it takes to get checked in through triage and eventually admitted to the hospital.  I get an epidural that works this time, have mercy!  so thats the heaven everyone is talking about!  The nurse seriously tucks Zander in for the night and he promptly passes out, leaving me to wonder.... was that my water that just broke? He misses a few scary moments of Sam seemingly disappearing, of needing oxygen, of being rotated this way and that, but I didn't mind a bit, not with an amazing nurse.  Nurses can be all you every need in life.
Around 6 am, I'm watching the planes land at Sky Harbor and its pretty much go time.  The doctor's and nurses scurry in and all that commotion wakes sleepy head in the corner.  Twenty mellow dramatic minutes later, we welcome Sammy boy into the blazing summer of this world.
Zander gets pink eye that night in the hospital.  I'm sick with swollen lymph nodes and my crotch hurts of course.  He takes medicine and is no good to me at that point.  Of course, Sam raises hell for me that night.  I've never been so tired before where I was hallucinating voices and getting a nice foot massage by a 1800s railroad worker.
You just got to keep going though.  We did and at the end of it all, and two weeks post partum, we rush Ender to the E.R. for a sudden attack of the croup.  But of course once again, I have to handle the situation because Zander has taken a sleeping aid.  Thankfully, those trusty grandparents I mentioned before come to the rescue. Zander's dad and Aunt Arica pick Zander up from home so he can switch with me at the hospital and I can be back at home with a hungry newborn.

I think things are settling down.  However, Zander's tendency for OCD -ism and neuroticism has been agitated and he's been fixating over the air flow and dust content in our house.
Because of that I have to open our vintage milk delivery door every time I run the dryer or bathroom vent, but I always forget.
In the middle of his air flow puzzle and the day after Ender's expensive ER visit,  he asks me to run the dryer.  I hit the ON button.  Ker-klump thump, clunk and maybe a snap crackle and pop was thrown in there too, but I'm not confident.   Then a dead dryer.  Aye caramba!  I'm thankful I married a problem solver.  I Just would have cursed the no good machine and bought a new one.  Zander gets to business.  I'm washing dishes as he's tinkering at the old clunker.   In helping him to diagnose the problem, I chime in "It sounded like a spoon getting caught in a garbage disposal"
"Um, well...come look and see then."
I go over to he machine and I see on the floor one of Cora's purple spoons on the floor.
"Huh, thats funny, "I think, "it doesn't seem chewed up.  In fact, its perfect"
"No, not there " he says "Look here"

As my realization comes into focus, my whole body tremors with disgust at the sight of a chewed up rat clogging the vent hole.  I proceed to surprise myself with a 5 minute long heebie jeebie dance paying tribute to all things putrid.   Dang!  Just when I was able to start eating spaghetti again.  Its taken me half a year to get over the first 45 minuets of the movie Seven.

And for as strong willed Ender is, he is equally tender hearted toward his little brother.