I made a slideshow for the Baby One. Clearly, it’s my first one, but I suspect I’ll b getting much better at it. Ha. Ha. Ha. Gotta go! Time for a bath– for the boys.

TCW 8 Months from Magic Mom on Vimeo.

My Snuggly Second Son,

All too soon you will grow up and come to realize that your letters are much fewer and further between than I ever intended them to be. What you may one day come to find out, should you have more than one child of your own, is that you will be far busier than you ever expected to be. At the end of the night, you may wish to do nothing more than curl up with your significant other and relax because you’ve just played 50 rounds of Cops and Robbers with your older son and fed, bathed, and pajama’d the baby. Oh wait! Maybe that’s just your mother. Or perhaps you will have a partner that might share the load of this work and you won’t feel quite as dog tired as I do now. Either way, you’ll come to find out that you don’t have as much time to record all the wonderful things your children do as you once thought you would. At least, I hope that for you. I hope you will be able to experience the heart-breaking beauty of your child’s eyes. The soul-tickling joy of your baby’s laughter. One day may you be in the presence of a parent-child love and you will finally understand. You will understand that writing these letters is only a glimpse into just how much I love you- that I could never fully transcribe the kind of feeling this is. But, again, I’ll always try. . .

January 20th, 2009 was the day that you finally crawled. After weeks of thinking about it and days of attempting to, but falling on your tummy, you actually made it across your bedroom floor. You were determined to reach my glasses, if only to put them in your mouth. You hollered the whole way, wanting me to pick you up, but I could see the immense satisfaction you held when you made it to the other side. I realized, as I watched you locomote across the floor, that this is what love is: Watching you do something difficult, something I could easily help you get or gain, but knowing how proud of yourself you would be should you do it yourself. I don’t think I’ll ever claim to know or understand exactly what love is, but I know this must be some small part of it.

These last few months have been about watching you discover. Your influence over objects, your power in the world, your feet, your brother. You have begun to notice it all and now, it seems, you want to be a part of it. There is a butterfly that hangs above your changing table. Every day you pull on its wings. Never fails to amuse you. During dinner time, you have found that with enough oomph you can make your sippy cup fly through the air. This cracks you up. Call my name, “Mama,” and you know that you are instantly picked up. Watch your brother and you are sure that you will be laughing in short order. It has been a great pleasure to watch you become an active member of your family.

You were the cutest damn dinosaur Halloween has ever seen this past Candy-Hoarding Season. We went for a huge hay ride all throughout the horsey part of town, stopping at almost every house for candy. There was a lot of people and even more kids, but you stayed quiet and nursed contentedly in the back of the trailer for most of the ride. Towards the end, you had decided that you had enough and we packed up your sugar-shocked brother and headed home to count all of his loot.

The rest of the Holidays passed in a most relaxing manor, so rare for holidays with our family. You weren’t quite yet up to the task of opening presents, but you were most definitely dazzled by the lights and noise of several of the toys you had gotten. Like your brother, your grandparents definitely over-indulged you in masses of toys. A ball-tivity center, several music-playing, crib toys, small race cars in fun, bright colors, and lots of stuffed animals were just parts of your stash. For the last few weeks, it has been easy to distract you with one of your favorite toys: a baby basketball net. It cheers you on when you make a basket and you are particularly enchanted with the figure of a little baby on the backboard. I think you like him the best.

You may or may not be interested to know that you’ve outgrown your entire stash of cloth diapers! So many nights I worried my nails to nubs, concerned that you weren’t getting enough milk. Because of a breast reduction when I was 19, we had a rocky start to our nursing relationship. We have visited many lactation consultants and many doctors, but we’ve finally found the right combination of Domperidone and solid foods to make it work. And it really does work because it’s the only thing that’s guaranteed to calm a crying spell or put you to sleep. In fact, it’s the only thing that puts you to sleep and it’s what you do all. night. long. It’s a good thing I’m a pretty heavy sleeper. It brings me immense amounts of joy and relief to be able to bite your chunky thighs and breathe in the baby scent trapped in your neck rolls.

This is the new face you like to make. Along with it, you say, “Ohhh.” Just like you know exactly what I’m talking about. Even if you don’t, and I suspect you do not. But! It’s really cute and it makes me feel like you are paying attention to everything I say.

Yesterday, as my mom leaned in to give your a kiss hello, you made a smacking sound with you lips. “Mmmwah!” It sounded just like you were giving her a kiss back and until someone proves otherwise, I will believe that is exactly what you are doing. You were quite proud of the new noise you could make and all of the excitement that followed when you did it, and you spent much of last night Mmmwahing. I truly believe that you can feel all the love and good feelings that your family has when we’re around you. I also believe that you are giving it back to us because you know how good it feels. Here’s a secret: Your grandfather, Cookie, turns into a total mush-head around you.

Your father has been in the hospital for the month of January to help himself become a better father. This means that your grandparents (Cookie and Granny) have been coming over in the evenings to help out with dinner and bath time. The bath has just become an extension of the play room. The entire family piles in the bathroom to watch you and your brother play in the tub. Between fits of giggles, I manage to clean your near-bald head and scrub your delicious neck rolls. The Bug’s bath toys are a joyful diversion while I manage to clean up your brother. It’s a special time and I can see how much love you have for each other. So consumed, you brother is, with making you laugh.

If there was one person who might possibly be more proud of your accomplishments than I am, it would be your brother. He positively rejoices when you achieve anything new. Crawling? He was your cheerleader every step of the way. He’s currently showing you how standing up and walking is done so that you’ll be shortly ready to enter a marathon. You should be aware that I am not ready for you to walk just yet. I’ve only just barely gotten over the fact that my! baby! is! crawling!

See? He completely adores you. As does your mama.
I love you, sweet boy.
Mama
xx

The house smells empty. It’s the cloying perfume from the last person who sat in the big, squashy chair in the living room. It’s last night’s dinner, growing older and more rancid in the garbage. The emptiness is what is left here (me, the kids) and what is gone (Him). I see these next few steps as utterly insurmountable, but completely necessary. For Him to stay here, he would grow sicker each day, be less and less present, become less of the man I know that he is. He needs to be at the hospital. I know this, but it doesn’t make it any easier now that he’s gone.

If the calendar is to be believed, and I’m still not sure that it’s not lying to me and playing a practical joke, but another year is gone. I am older (I found my first, gray hair yesterday!), my children are getting bigger, my life is feeling fuller and more complete. Each New Year, I feel like I’m missing something because I don’t quite have the same compulsion to create resolutions that I’ll never keep up with anyway. I take a fairly unsatisfactory inventory of my life each night– it’s another thing I must do to keep myself sane– but this year is somehow different. I’m feeling like I need to remember the good –the thoroughly divine and delicious– in my life and have gratitude for all that I am blessed with.

Deciding to participate in Schmutzie’s Grace in Small Things was an easy choice. Now that I’m committing myself, however, I’m sure I’ll feel overwhelmed, uh, tomorrow. I’m still doing it because I think it’s a fantastically wonderful idea, especially for me. Especially right now. I was really hoping to be able to start this adventure on January 1st, but even though it no longer technically is the 1st I haven’t yet gone to sleep so it feels like the 1st. I hope each and every one of you had a wonderful New Year’s celebration, whether you were partying it up or at home reading a book (like me!). I hope that this new year is filled with love and laughter, hope and light. May you be abundantly blessed in all that you touch.

1/365

• My sweet, peaceful, sleeping boys
• Places that are willing to help people (and their families) by knowing how to treat addiction.
• That my mother cooked dinner for me and the Older One tonight. Let’s hear it for not having to do the dishes!
• Crisp, cool nights when I can sit on the back patio (on my computer, of course) and surf the interwebs whilst not either freezing my patootie off or sweating my face off.
• Generic ibuprofen to relieve my TOOTH ACHE! Blast! At least the ibuprofen gets rid of it.

“I don’t feel good,” he said as he crumpled to the floor, attempting to find comfort. His white undershirt, now soaked with sweat, was sticking to his body. Droplets of the same were trickling down his forehead, presumably stinging his eyes. The hollow, dark spaces beneath his eyes giving away the pain he was probably feeling. Earlier in the week he had doubled up on his methadone dosage, meaning that it was now Sunday and he had missed his Saturday dose and wouldn’t be going to the clinic for another two days. The extreme nausea and insufferable diarrhea would be setting in by now, the beastly, deep, aching bone pain would be coming soon. It’s the kind of thing that I now tell myself I won’t ever have to deal with again, but I say so with the kind of knowing that makes my stomach knot into terrible, twisted pieces. I can’t ever say with any certainty that I won’t be in that predicament. I can only know that the next twenty-four hours are safe. I’ve armed myself with all the tools and spiritual principles that will allow me a one day reprieve. If I don’t do what I can now, who knows what will happen next. (File that one under Obvious Foreshadowing.)

I must be careful with the way I respond to him. I don’t want to set off the kind of hysteria that will surely end with a needle in his vein, but I am scared. Besides methadone, there is only one thing that will keep this kind of sickness at bay. And that was when God decided to answer the first of several times that day. I looked down at my feet, trying to regain some sense of right, and that was when I saw the spike. It was half filled with the amber liquid of destruction, more specifically, my destruction. This was not something I was expecting to see on the floor of my bedroom while holding my tiny son in my arms. This is not the family I have. I live in a nice house, we drive nice cars, my child goes to a good school. This is not the way things are supposed to be anymore.

And I was filled with a blind kind of rage that I have never before had when seeing a needle filled with my death of choice. Whenever I have made the decision to pick up again, I am usually filled with some kind of relief that subtly overpowers the fear I have of what a crushing disappointment I am. Seeing the needle that will inevitably bring this relief always fills me the a warm, dreamy, euphoric recall of the Good Times. (What little there were of those.) Not this time. I am angry beyond words. How could you do this to me? To him? To us? We have become respectable. We are believable, good people. That will destroy everything.

I am holding the needle behind my back. As if to create some wall between it and my son. He will not be this. He will not see this. He will not be a child of this. I breathe and become right again. I begin to understand, to remember, the kind of monstrous sickness that eradicates any ability to differentiate between right and wrong. The kind of sickness that will justify bringing that in the house to help him feel better. I am no longer speaking to him. I am speaking to the beast that has woken up after months of hibernation and he’s starving. Whatever it is I decide to do now had better include feeding the beast or at least finding something to pacify him.

And it comes to me! There is always treatment! And he needs it! Taking methadone is like throwing a rawhide to the beast: it may not be a raw and bloody steak, but it’s good enough. I’m tired of good enough. It’s not really living. It’s like walking through life with a blanket wrapped around one’s brain- it dulls the sharp edges and nothing really gets through. It’s like sex with a condom. He tentatively agrees to go, but not for five more days. Five more days which feel like an eternity. And all we have to do is make it until Tuesday, which seems like forever. And what does he do until then? How is he going to make it?

The answer: He does whatever he has to do. He quiets the beast and then bitch slaps him back into his cave. He smothers that fanged creature with pillows of poison and clubs him for good measure. I would love to say that I’m not really sure how I made it through, but I know. The cherubic faces of my children, their eyes wide with innocence, were my foundation. Brick by brick I lay it down using the desire to keep life as normal as possible for them as cement. I will fight to the death of me, clawing my way with fingers broken and bloody, in an attempt to keep myself sane. That needle doesn’t sing the same siren’s song that used to lull me into stupidity. At least for the next twenty-four hours. Until I reload my gun, aiming directly for the beast’s head and blowing it to smithereens.

For a while, I left. I went to my parent’s house. The safe cocoon feels like my mother’s womb. That, or a plug where I can recharge. I also build my wall with my family’s love. God knows they may be crazy, but they only want the best for me and my children. I won’t be another victim of this disease. I won’t allow my children to become victims of this disease. We are more fighters in a war against it. We won’t stop until this disease lay bleeding at our feet. Now we have one more joining our army. Proud would be the wrong word. It’s more like inspired by his bravery, honored by his fight, and appreciative of his self-respect. It will be a difficult few weeks, but the results will be fantastic. I can’t wait to see what unfolds. Two more days.

The Baby One has always had a difficult time with Separation from The Mommy. I suppose if he could, he would still be floating around, all anti-gravity, in utero. But he’s not! He made his entrance into this world with much fanfare! And left us with very little time to prepare! I know, I was just looking at the pictures and we’re lucky my dad showed up at all. He may have been late, but at least he caught Baby One just after he was all clean and fresh. The Him also thought to rip the camera from my dad to capture Baby One’s First Nursing Experience. Little did we know then, how very attached Baby One would become to the boob.

Baby One requires a boob in the mouth pretty much anytime he is falling asleep. The difficult part is that he wants the boob to stay in his mouth the whole time he is asleep. When my hip becomes numb from inertia, I must roll both of us over to the other side. If I need to get up to, say, visit the restroom during these precious few slumbering hours, I must take the Baby One with me lest I return to a red, screaming, snotty infant. If at any point during the night my boob becomes dislodged from his mouth and/or some part of my body is not touching his, he wakes up and is certain to stay up until the boob and the body are both in his mouth and touching him, respectively. Needless to say this does not make for a particularly restful sleep, but it does make for Some Sleep and that is better than None Sleep.

Sure I value my sleep, but I’m finding more and more, though, that I need some time to putz around for myself. Usually, this time is spent creating masterful works of art making stuff. I like to create things for this kids: blocks, play-mats, soft books, clothes, crazy monsters of their own creation. Although, at this point, I’d settle for a book and a bath.

The other thing that Baby One needs to fall asleep is steady, rhythmic patting on his tush. Obviously, not so hard that it would be spanking. (nuh-uh) But it needs to be firm enough that it creates a sort of bouncing motion. Pat-Pat-Pat. It can be ten minutes of patting. It might be 27 minutes. One never knows. I do know that sometimes I’ll put myself to sleep with all the nursing and patting and shushing and I’ll wake up minutes later to find that I’m still Pat-Pat-Patting. He loves it. The Pat-Pat-Patting is akin to Valium. Pat-Pat-Pat aaaand Lights Out.

I;m not complaining all that much. I realize this time in his life in short and I want to pack it in with as many cuddles and hugs as I can get. Sooner than I’d like to admit, he’ll be giving me the brush off and pretending I’m his Crazy Aunt Virginia. Soon enough he’ll learn how to fall asleep on his own and he won’t quite need me in the same way. I mean, he surely won’t be rolling over at ten, saying, “Hey, Mom, can you pat my butt, so I can fall asleep?” Right? Riiight?