Blue Suede Shoes

34 Weeks

Our hearts are aching for our dear gentle, generous, and amazingly thoughtful nanny who has lost her chosen partner in life. His transition came suddenly and left many with a gapping whole in their guts. We hope they can find peace. While, of course, Ren does not understand why his favorite playmate hasn't been around, he's adapted fantastically to meeting a new caretaker—a fun, present, and vibrant woman who is young enough to be our daughter. 

Even though Ren has proved his flexibility time and time again (he's Fonzie, he's cool) we are ever grateful that he's curious and trusting enough to open his little arms to new people. As I passed him over to a new sitter for the first time, I also hand over my fears and tell myself to have faith that most people take childrearing seriously. We have many preferences when it comes to how Ren is raised. Our nanny knows them all and then some. You don't want to overwhelm the interim person. There's no room for micromanagement in triage. "You can do anything as long as you keep him safe. If he isn't injured or bleeding when I get home, I'll consider this a success." I realized in that moment how incredibly vulnerable we are. All of us. The ripple effect one life can have on another. The situation that lead to this situation. Strangers helping strangers. Sure we pay the folks who watch Ren, but $11 an hour ain't going to incentivize a person to take a bullet. I think a major part of parenting feels like Russian Roulette. You can only pray the people you entrust to have the same gun-law politics. 

As we dropped off Stand-in Nanny, she pops in the backseat to kiss Ren goodbye. "See you next semester. It was nice to meet you, Little Man." Ren looks a bit sad then smiles. We giggle at his charm. I swear if Ren could have pounded a juke box in that moment, music would have played.

Nine Inch Nails

33 Weeks

"You bite them. Sounds gross but it works. They're thin."

"Wait until he's asleep. Sneak in and do it."

"Yeah. Good luck with that..."

Once a year, our office resembles the backstage of a live 72-hour, 100-man chainsaw juggling act. Lots of men and women with emergency missions. If we aren't present, some one's gonna get hurt. We are the folks behind a three-day Commencement and Reunion celebration for Bard College. It's a lot of fun and a great reminder of all it takes to make a good mind. I just happen to be one of the masses of soldiers assigned to keeping the saws in the air and in comparison to many, my tasks were easy this year. However, because of the show, I didn't get to see Ren much this week except when he first woke in the morning. Now... Ren—the everything that is Ren—has grow exponentially. I know, I know... I'm continuously shocked at how fast he grows, but the milestones were flooding in so quickly, I started to get concerned that we haven't saved enough for his own college education in these past seven months. At this rate, he will start applying to his first choices before the new year.

Ren is now officially cracking jokes. Crawling. (Well, doing what Greg calls, "reaching for the phone after he's been shot." I was told it's also named the "army crawl.") Ren has three teeth showing. Thanks to his fantastic nanny, all he wants to do is sit on your lap and go, "DOOOWWWNNNN" and "UUUUPPPP" by leaning back to the point of a headstand and then pulling up to jump enthusiastically on your lap. If anyone else is in the room while he does this, he makes sure they are watching and claps approvingly. Ren can turn on and off the light switch to the ceiling fan and he knows the shell game. We are booking him for Vegas next week. I hope he isn't troubled by the mittens taped around his wrists. I can't keep him still long enough to trim his nails and he's going to accidentally pierce the dog with the next tug of ear.

After Mother's Day

32 Weeks

Greg pulled a tick out of my back at 1am. Ren woke up screaming moments before so Greg put him back down while I discovered the source of my discomfort. Tiny, creepy thing that caused a fire-pinch-burning all the way down to my toes. We saved it.

A few days later, Greg gave me another beautiful card with amazingly inspiring words written inside for our five year wedding anniversary. Earlier in the day, I took a lunch break, Googled and discovered 'wood' to be the theme of a five year celebration. Wracking my brain out loud, a colleague overheard and suggested I hit a sidewalk sale in town. Within an hour, I side walked into some very loud and very beautiful outdoor chimes. They have wood in them. Perfect.

In the afternoon, after work, I picked up a romantic pizza and drove home. As I turned our street corner, I simultaneously spotted Greg and Ren playing in the yard and tried to keep from vomiting. The two were not related.

That evening, it was quiet.

In front of a baseball game on the television, I dozed and thought about why I was so sick. My eyes popped open. I looked at the clock and made Greg go to CVS to pick up a pregnancy test. It was 10pm. Happy Anniversary, honey. At midnight, we threw the negative results into the trash, regained all color back into our skin, and remembered the tick incident the weekend prior. I Googled and decided I needed to rush to the ER to thwart my new-found, flesh-eating, deadly, deathly, I-am-most-certainly-dying-unless-I-get-help-immediately virus.

I'm still awaiting test results and I'm still here. Life is good.

Mother's Day

31 Weeks

Greg suggested a local diner for breakfast and Ren sat in his first sticky restaurant high-chair. He did a neck roll each time a waiter carried a heavy tray over his head. He loved it.

Greg gave me a beautiful card with amazingly inspiring words written inside and we picked out a simple ring that will be made with Ren's birthstone. I'll wear it with pride on top of my wedding bands.

In the afternoon, I pulled weeds while Ren stared up at tree limbs through his toys. I planted some bulbs from a plant a sweet colleague gave me for my birthday. Greg cleaned up the yard.

It was quiet.

I thought about my mother and my son and the metaphors I buried into the soil around our home.

It was beautiful and perfect. Life is good.

Filling in the Not-So-Blanks

30 Weeks

We have an empty corner of the living room that's undecorated. There's no mistaking it for modern minimalism. Above a chair and a table is nothing but discolored patches and scratches while the rest of the room is painstakingly, perfectly arranged (even though Ren is starting to crawl—soon everything will be covered in manufactured clouds and bubble wrap). This sad, blank area also has large holes where we thought a floating shelf would look nice and substantial. It didn't. It looked like we nailed a coffee table next to the window to confuse everyone. Plus it hurt when you sat down and rammed your head into its side. Our anagram-abode is taking way too long to decorate. We run on no sleep and new-baby delirium. I'm amazed we have curtains that aren't old sheets taped to the glass. It's frustrating that upon entering our first family home your eye is drawn immediately to this lifeless corner. It's a key spot. It's where you'd hold court if our living room were on Game of Thrones.

Me being me, this under-appreciated wall has come to represent something incomplete in our lives. A missing piece that has no real meaning but a sense of... potential? It bothers me on a core level and therefore I bother Greg about it. The entire kitchen is a mid-century "natural-catastrophe-water-damage" inspiration with long patches of torn wallpaper, like a giant, old price tag you can't remove in once piece. This doesn't bother me, but the blank wall over the King's seat does.

Lately, Ren's growth is truly shocking Greg and I. Ren hasn't done anything out of character, rather he is becoming more of his character. Over night. This growth spurt kind of hit us on a new level: we aren't caretakers of a small, helpless creature that we are training to hold a fork. We are responsible for nurturing a thinking person—a fork holder who will go out into the world and make choices about what he wants to eat. Within a few days, Ren has gone from being an observer to an active participant. He joked with his father at the dinner table, creeped across the floor after a favorite toy, and handed me a book to read aloud. He's seven months old. SEVEN. MONTHS. What happens in seven years? Is he going to learn to vote?

I'd like to think Greg and I have something to do with how cool Ren is but at this point I honestly think we are just following the same instincts that keep us sane. Our inner voices told us to find some nurturing nature and gentle living—turns out, babies like that too. Within two years Greg and I have gone from a commercial loft next to the subway and an indoor garbage dump to a country cottage where daddy hand mows the lawn while mommy and Ren hang laundry in the afternoon sun.

I'm still shocked at our complete shift in life's direction and I'm ridiculously grateful for the "little things". They don't seem so small when you add up the sign posts that lead us to this place. It's an abstract appreciation that we can't explain and comes from a purely original beginning that goes back generations—the start of the universe actually. If we could trace our happiness we'd view its inception in the atoms of the stars. All of what it takes to complete one soul's puzzle. Where does it start? Where does it end? This is why they tell us to enjoy the journey. You'll never know the answer and you'll never know the first page or the last...  I'm starting to understand why I can't finish decorating the living room...

13,000 Words - 29 Weeks

Tell Me 'Bout the Good Ol' Days

28 Weeks

Papa-son haiku

You have a new audience

Bliss in matching smiles