Dear Ben,

I’m not sure when your wee body with gigantic melon (it’s like an orange on a toothpick) was taken over by aliens, but I am freely admitting that you’re scaring me these days. Deep down in there, you’re the same wonderful child I’ve always adored, but lately, I’m sad to admit that I’ve revisited my visions of selling you to the gypsies (EVEN AT A LOSS).

I suppose that I’m sick of being told to bow to the Alter of My Wrongness for most anything that comes out of my mouth, and I think this might just be a prequel for your teenage days when you realize just what an idiot I am, and feel the need to tell me all about it frequently. As in every 2-3 minutes. Approximately.

But by the time you’re a teenager, I assume you’ll huffily declare how WRONG I am AND THEN GO TO YOUR ROOM AND SHUT THE DOOR, and I’m somewhat looking forward to this. Because now, you just follow me around telling me just how much more you know than I do WITHOUT INTERRUPTION OR LEAVING THE ROOM.

You’re a neat kid, really, you are, and you constantly shock and amaze me. Were it not for the 4th degree tears your bowling ball shaped head caused me (you’re too young for me to ever tell you WHAT exactly that means) and the fact that when you met me for the first time you screamed bloody murder, I would continually question your maternity and wonder if maybe MY sweet and docile mild-mannered child had been left in the care of someone who’d birthed the daemon spawn that was you as a baby (and young child, if I must elaborate).

But oddly shaped heads seem to run in my family (although my own head is quite lovely shaped THANKYOUVERYMUCH), and every now and again (especially as you pull all of the green peppers out of a taco JUST LIKE I DO), it dawns on me that you really are my child.

But for all of the annoying shit you do (the list is far too long for me to assemble without having a nervous breakdown), occasionally the sun will peak through the storm clouds and who you are underneath your layers of know-it-all-ness shines through.

Your relationship with your brother is a prime example. I am the youngest in my family, and despite my repeated pleas for a BETTER brother or sister for me to boss around, my mother dryly informed me that when I was born “smoking a cigar and barking out orders” (her exact words), she went ahead and got spayed. I’m frankly amazed she didn’t remove her entire uterus JUST IN CASE.

My own brother hated me passionately until my husband was fooled into marrying me, and as this is the only basis for comparison of older-younger sibling relations go, I was suitably underwhelmed when I imagined your reaction to your live, in the flesh brother. Your Daver and I did everything we could think of to prepare you for your brother’s arrival: we dutifully took you to a sibling class at the hospital, we bought you your very own doll to practice on, we bought you a book about where babies actually come from, we baked you a “Ben’s Having A Brother Cake” when we found out Alex too had a penis.

Your grandfather swears, however, that the reason that you like your brother so incredibly much is because “Alex” “bought” you a lightsaber and “brought” it to the hospital to give you when you met him for the first time.

I’m so incredibly fortunate that you and he have been inseparable ever since. You wear your multitude of Big Brother T-Shirts with much pride, and you’re always tickled whenever Alex comes to visit you at school.

It’s honestly the relationship I’ve always wished I had with my own brother, and I am proud that you have chosen to love your brother rather than resent him (I cannot possible take an ounce of credit for this. It was and always will be your own choice). I have never heard you say a mean, sullen, or resentful thing about him in his whole life, which is pretty miraculous considering what an asshole he used to be.

Each and every part of how my adulthood has shaped up has been due primarily to you. While this sounds like I’m placing the burden squarely upon your wee shoulders, I assure you that it couldn’t be farther from the truth. When you were born, I could only focus upon what was in front of me in the moment, and I promise you that although you had to go about the business of learning about the world, I was doing it right along side you (to be fair, I did know how to both feed myself AND walk, which were things that you had to master, so mayhap I was ahead of the game, if only slightly).

Wherever we’ve gone, and whatever we’ve learned, we’ve done it together, kid. Well before there was The Daver or Alex along side us, there was you and me against the world. And despite all of your bullshit these days (you are by far, the most intense person I’ve had the pleasure to meet) that flows so freely from your somewhat toothless mouth, I’ll never forget it. And maybe someday, when you’re older, I’ll explain it all to you, because you don’t know a damn thing about the life we had (which may be a better thing than not).

I can only hope and pray WITH EVERY FIBER OF MY BEING that the rest of Six is marked by more sun shining through the storm clouds, because it’s honestly driving me a bit batty (okay, BATTIER than normal. Fine).

Let’s just try to get through this with all of our limbs intact, mmkay?

Love,

Mommy

This Sunday, after attending Ben’s annual Open House at his Crunchy School, I demanded sweetly requested that The Daver take us out to one of my favorite haunts for a lunch/dinner (linner?). After much protesting, he agreed, and off we went.

Afterwards, in my quest to win the title of Most Annoying Wife ever, by rudely taking away valuable video game time, I insisted that we pop over to Target to grab some baby yogurt for the week.

As we walked in, Ben grabbed his kid’s cup and declared that he was going to throw it away inside, which was fine by me. Less crap in the car for me to throw out = happy Aunt Becky.

When we finally located a garbage can, Ben pulled the sticky straw from the cup and declared that he wanted to take it home to reuse it. Now, over the past couple of years, we at Casa de la Sausage have made quite the effort to become more Green, and I am all for any small thing we can do to accomplish that goal.

But I draw the line at bringing home straws, not because I don’t see the good in reusing them, but because a) we don’t use those straws at home, so he’s not saving anything by doing so and b) the last time he did that, the straw was left sitting on the kitchen floor for me to throw away.

(truth be told, he wanted the straw so that he could PLAY with it, which wouldn’t have bugged me in the slightest if he didn’t want to save every sticky gross thing he comes across.)

So when I rudely insisted that he toss the straw away with the rest of his sugar-drenched cup, he balked at it. I argued and he finally relented and angrily threw the straw into the garbage. It was then when he uttered the words that afforded him the Longest and Most Drawn Out Lecture From The Daver:

“FINE, Mom, if you want to KILL the EARTH!”

The words were dripping with such snot and disdain that a teenager may have been able to do it no better.

Ben: 1, Parents: 0.

———–

Although most of my house is fairly well baby-proofed, occasionally, we will construct a makeshift gate at the edge of the couch to keep the Beast That Is Alex out of his favorite places, namely the dog dish, the cat door and his personal favorite, the toilet.

The area that he is sometimes contained in doesn’t allow us to put up a usable gate, so we usually just shove two laundry baskets in the space and call it a day. Often he will howl at this injustice, but usually he is pretty content to play in this room.

Yesterday, because I have a bladder approximately the size and shape of a Froot Loop, I ran to the bathroom for the 47th time that hour and left him in his toy filled prison, but peed with the door open so that I could listen and make sure he wasn’t trying to dismember one of the cats.

As soon as I let that flow go, I heard a strange noise: it was the noise that a sliding plastic laundry basket makes on a wooden floor. After I did my business (that’s the dumbest phrase, isn’t it?), I came back out to see the most satisfied baby on the planet.

He had hoisted his considerable weight onto the basket and pushed it out of the way, and now he sat on the kitchen floor looking like I’d just handed him a wet nurse AND a new Corvette.

Alex: 1, Parents: 0

——————

If you want me, I’ll be in my walk-in closet popping Valium for the next 18 or so years.

I fell into parenting in the same way I’ve fallen into everything else in my life: an opportunity presented itself to me, I made a choice, and have reaped the consequences ever since. I don’t pretend to be Type-A enough to have a five year plan unless it involves the phrase “Don’t Die” as it’s sole criteria, and this is fine by me.

Alex was a deliberately executed child, although the circumstances surrounding his conception were, of course, up in the air (the whole marriage thing didn’t matter to me as much as it did to The Daver), but even after having had one child, I was in no way prepared for having another.

I’ve always expected to write off the first year of a child’s life as not having much real joy in it, between the colic, the sleepless nights, and the formidable task of having to learn all about a new person without so much as a guidebook to consult. It seems easier to me to have the defeatist “everything about this is going to suck” attitude than to try to piss rainbows and sunshine about it and be disappointed when things don’t work out exactly as planned.

But today, after prying the Wii controllers out of the hands of the Elder Sausages and interrupting their Saturday morning Sitting On Our Asses Routine, I packed all three of The Sausages into the Meat Wagon and led the way to a local bakery to select a cake for Alex’s first birthday party (March 30th for those local and expecting an invite, which should be arriving this week sometime).

After carefully selecting a cake that is quite reminiscent of our wedding cake (see, I have a Cake Fetish. I don’t like to eat it because I am insane, but I require fancy-assed cakes for most occasions), and paying the approximate cost of a down payment on a house for it, I was overtaken by an emotion that I couldn’t quite place.

Suddenly, I felt light and buoyant, like a rather chubby balloon floating in the breeze. I could hear the birds singing (no small feat in the dead of winter here) and smell the teeniest hint of spring on the air. Alex’s babbling became the most adorable thing I’d ever heard, and Ben’s incessant monologuing suddenly seemed the perfect backdrop for the day. Hell, even Dave’s Rank Ass became more tolerable to my delicate girlish sense of smell.

For the first time in several years, I felt completely at ease with myself and the world around me. Life seemed to be more for living and less for surviving.

It’s really a glorious feeling, and it shocks me to think that normal people probably walk around like this all day, every day and take it completely for granted.

Life is sweet, baby. Just sweet.

It seems as though over the past 11 months, we have created a monster. A 30 inch tall, 20+ pound monster, who drools, craps his pants (regularly!), and enjoys nothing more than tormenting his surroundings.

Now, even with the colic (and thanks in part to his sensory issues and subsequent autistic spectrum diagnosis) and dislike of human interaction, Ben was a remarkably easy toddler. Once he started trundling along and obsessing about either the planets or the pendulum on the grandfather clock, he was a fairly enjoyable guy.

Sure, he still wasn’t the kid you wanted to take out and do stuff with as he’d get overwhelmed in places like Target (the same way, I presume, that I feel about Best Buy) and fall apart, but as far as behavior issues went, Ben was easy-peasy (until aged 3, when all hell broke loose).

When Alex was born, and my glorious doctor was rooting around in my uterus for retained placenta (it sounds as fun as it felt), I swear on The Baby Jesus that had I not immediately thrust him to the boob, he’d have found a way to levitate there on his own (for comparison’s sake only, I will tell you that when I did the same with Ben, about 5 minutes old–although not only was the not-so-glorious doctor rooting around for placenta fragments, he was ALSO stitching up my 4th! degree! tears!– he not only raised his head away from my gigantic nipple, he arched his back and screamed so loudly I looked around to see what had poked him. Little did I know that this was to be The Way It Was for another year).

Alex is the same child who vibrates with pleasure upon being introduced to brand-new foods, like you were handing him the keys to a Lotus Elise, and eats as much (likely more, if I measured) than his 6 year old brother, AND enjoys the occasional snuggle.

Nope, no Aspy-ness there.

On the other hand, whereas Ben is a complete Follower (much to my dismay) and will do whatever it is that someone, anyone around him is doing (lemming much?), Alex wants things his way. Right now. Bitch.

Along with the mischief making of being 11 months old, I swear again on The Baby Jesus that he has started throwing tantrums. If I dare to give him water when he OBVIOUSLY WANTS JUICE (Mom, you ignorant slut!), he shrieks so loudly that my neighbors may actually be assuming that I’m practicing human sacrifice in my family room.

If, in the form of an “Alex, NO” I tell him gently that tearing magazines apart is not such a good way to spend the afternoon (Mom, you ignorant SLUT!), he screams bloody murder WITHOUT ME SO MUCH AS TOUCHING HIM.

(before you think ill of my child-proofing techniques, I promise that I don’t have much around at his level that he can get into–aside from the occasional dime, of course–and therefore be yelled at for touching. I got rid of my Ming Vases at a garage sale along with my sanity many years ago.)

It’s not as though I have issue with telling kids “No”–which, along with no longer using Red Ink on school papers, is the new wave of brat-making, erm parenting– I just don’t think that he needs to hear it every other word while he’s exploring the house and kicking up dust hyenas.

On the one hand, it’s pretty damn hysterical to see an 11 month old who cannot even walk (yet) get so angry about not getting what he wants AT THE PRECISE MOMENT HE SO DESIRES IT, but on the other, more practical hand, it bodes ill for my future AND my eardrums. Because, primarily, I am the Most Stubborn Human Being On The Face (27 years and counting!) on the planet, and it appears that he is about to try to usurp my title, flailing his chubby wrists at my plight.

It should be an interesting year decade ahead of us.

I suppose that there must come a time in every parents life when they look at their offspring and wonder not-so-secretly if they are intelligent enough to care for this young life until they leave the home (by DCFS or not). I’ve often mused that people who want to become parents should really take an IQ test prior to trying to make the babies.

Sighs.

(This coming from the person whose children BOTH had a deep and abiding love for Diet Coke and all of it’s battery acid goodness. Don’t hate the player, hate the game, people).

Well, my Moment of Truth (to borrow the phrase from that new lame TV show. Seriously, I had high hopes for the entertainment value of that show. Hopes that were immediately dashed.) came this Saturday morning, when Dave burst in, Alex in tow, interrupting my sleep and a fantastic dream in which I was sleeping on a bed of cake frosting AND EATING IT (my dreams are always bizarre as hell), and not-so-gently urged me awake.

“Alex swallowed a dime,” was the phrase The Daver used to nudge me awake.

“Mmmmm….pink frosting with sprinkles,” I replied, “Oooohhhh, how I love you.”

“Becky, wake up!” Dave pleaded, “Alex ate a dime.”

Well, if there is anything in the world that can rip me indelicately away from beautiful dreams of frosting mountains, that would probably be it.

Because I am non-alarmist AND a health care professional, I wasn’t too worried. I mean, I could have rushed him to the ER, had a full set of X-rays done, so the doctor could inform me that my son had ingested a dime, and that I would simply have to wait and make sure it passed. THEN, I would have gotten a lecture about proper childproofing, like my home was just riddled with loose change strewn about on the floor, and THEN he might tell me that I should probably remove the Lye and Rat Poison from it’s storage space on the kitchen floor, and THEN where will I be?

So, The Great Poop Watch of 2008 begins with a bang. I’ve threatened to make Dave stay home until the elusive dime is passed, rooting around in our son’s diaper like a dog, searching for gold (well, cadmium and nickel), as this did happen on HIS watch (which I remind him of approximately every 2.5 minutes), but I don’t think he’ll do it.

And have no fear, if that nasty dime doesn’t pass in a couple of days, I’ll take him to the doctor for X-rays and a lecture on proper childproofing habits (to be completely fair to us both, Ben never got into a damn thing in his life. He was–and still is– the least adventuresome child on the planet.).

The question is, what do I DO with this dime once it passes? Do I leave it in my wallet to gleefully give to the nastiest cashier that I encounter? Or do I just toss it in the garbage and figure that there isn’t much I would spend a dime on, after all, now that I’m not 5 or 6.

What would you do with a dime that had passed through your child’s digestive tract?

My darling second born son at the tender age of 9 months has fallen in love.

Not with one of the myriad of toys that he currently owns, and not even with one of the many animals who live with us (although the “dooo-gie” and “catty-cat” are close seconds to this), but with a book.

Now, it could be worse, he could be obsessed with one of the many boring computer books we have knocking around the house, but what cracks me up most about this is that when he first fell in love with it, I explained to him that there were 6 fingers on the hand of the book.

Rather than take the word “hand,” “book,” or even the very complicated “fingers” away from this, he now cries “thhhix” whenever he wants the book.

It’s going to be a loud 18 years.

Later that day, as he was rolling merrily along the floor, behaving like a human vacuum cleaner, I noticed that he was decidedly chewing on something. I figured it was likely a tasty bit of paper or a goldfish cracker, until I realized that he was gagging on it.

I swooped in, picked him up and peered into his mouth. He took this opportunity to regurgitate most of his lunch in a large splat onto the white (white!) carpeting, and it was then that I found the elusive culprit: a rabbit turd.

Now, back when I was eleventy-million months pregnant, Ben and I were perusing our local pet store after picking up some crickets for our gecko and while he tried to persuade me to buy him a scorpion (yeah, right. Over my dead and crusty body will I ever, EVER allow a scorpion to come into my home. You might say that I have a phobia.), I spotted her.

A large bunny was hopping merrily around a cage, desperately vying for my attention. I’ve always liked bunnies, and secretly lusted for one for, oh I don’t know, EVER, but every one I’ve ever seen is just languidly laying around a cage looking boring.

This one, however ugly she may be (and she is), was not boring. She was cute, and she liked me.

In a fit of pregnancy-induced insanity (and probably because my husband was too fearful of me to deny me), we adopted her (she had been dropped off by previous owners who didn’t want to care for her any longer).

Now, aside from knowing that they were fluffy and liked carrots, I had no idea what the hell owning a bunny was about. For instance, I had no idea that their pee smelled like death. Or that they would kick their litter and poo out of the cage when they jumped about. Had I known this, I might not have been so keen on adopting her.

But she’s cute as hell (in a really ugly way) and she loves me to pieces, so I don’t give her much grief for being a damned slob.

That said, when Alex was deciding to snack on a bit of “bunny chocolate,” I was horrified not that he had done this, or that she had kicked the poo piece out of her cage. I was mad simply because I had JUST vacuumed.

Ginger (not the name I would have chosen, but same as my darling cat Peekachoo, she came with it, and answers to it) says that she would very much like some treats, please, as you can see by her massive proportions (again, with the scale on a webpage, you may not get an accurate picture of her massiveness), WE DO NOT FEED HER ENOUGH.

Lastly, this is a photo of the aftermath of the “bunny chocolate” saga. A bath. With bubbles. And a baby that we call “Tons of Fun” and “Chubbs.”

You know, because he’s skinny.

In a drastic measure to realize a childhood dream, Daver had been petitioning for an air hockey table for about a year. I can’t complain about trying to realize childhood dreams, righting what once went wrong, or in my own case, buying my kids the crap my parents refused me. As my parents were hippies, their idea of “toys” consisted of those lovely wooden figures, you know, the ones that you buy in those specialty stores for about a million bucks?

Problem was, I’m not much of a wooden figure person. I longed not-so-secretly for Barbies (not allowed in my house under any circumstance), a Baby Pee-Pee, and most importantly a Power Wheels.

I am sad to report that although my not-so-subtle drip-drip method of acquisition (it’s likened to being pecked to death by an adorable chicken) never managed to work in this case.

So I plan to do what any mature and responsible parent would do, I’m going to buy my kids the one thing that I always wanted and never got (the Barbies and Baby Pee-Pee aren’t really appropriate for my boys, gender stratification and all): a Power Wheels. This is providing, of course, that they aren’t off the market by the time I’m IN the market for it.

Dave is aware of this impending expenditure, and would possibly complain were it not that the deck is now totally stacked in my favor. What on Earth (besides blow jobs) did I do to convince him, you ask?

I let him buy the fancy air hockey table he has been oogling.

It appears as though unfortunately even I am not immune the not-so-subtle drip-drip method.

When I was released this weekend from the purgatory that is getting my eyes examined (for some freakish reason, even though I have to do this yearly, my dread only intensifies with each year. No clue why), Dave and Ben took me over to “see something.” That “something” happened to be a half-priced air hockey table. Dave had used the fact that I love very little more than a good bargain (or a good humping) against me, damn him straight to hell!

There were three models sitting menacingly there, all at half off their sticker price, and Dave knew to start me on the cheapest, which was a full $60 cheaper than the next one up and looked it. It was ugly as fuck. No way is that going into our basement, I said, which happened to be his cue to point out the nicer model. I saw it and immediately agreed: the price was reasonable, the set up wasn’t too hideous, and it wasn’t nearly as HUGE as the highest price one.

I could hear a silent “fuck” pass over Daver’s eyes, as he then hastily backpedaled to point out all of the glaring problems with it. It didn’t have a score keeper computer (so.fucking.what?), it was smaller (good, GREAT!), and the legs looked weaker (there were no legs to be seen on the display).

Turns out, he’d been trying to sell me on option Number 3 and because my eyes were still fucked up from the exam, I hadn’t realized his angle until I had agreed to Option 2.

Option 3 was only about $20 higher than Option 2, which is not a sum that makes me go “Woah, Nellie!” but what I didn’t like about it was that it was so fucking huge. When I said as much, Daver and Ben immediately insisted that it only looked that way because my eyes were still adjusting back to normal from the exam, and because I was hot, hungry, and tired, I finally agreed to Option 3.

Who am I to deny someone their childhood dream?

Turns out that I happen to have “Sucker” written on my forehead, with what a piss poor decision I agreed to.

When Daver dropped us off at home and went back for the table, he realized that there was no way in hell that he was going to fit it inside our truck (which is only midsized), and had to borrow our generous neighbors Suburban.

Once he got it home, he had to enlist the help of ANOTHER neighbor to get the damn thing inside (we live in the world’s best neighborhood. Seriously), and once he set it gleefully up and called me down to see it, I nearly swallowed my own fucking tongue.

We have a finished basement, and the fucking albatross takes up half of one of the rooms. HALF OF ONE OF THE ROOMS.

(I would put a picture here but you wouldn’t be able to see it’s massiveness to scale. One could easily surmise that our basement was teeny-tiny and that the air hockey table was just a normal size, but looked much bigger. This, my friends, couldn’t be farther from the truth).

Now, we hadn’t exactly decided WHAT to do with that half of the room, and although I’d repeatedly petitioned for a Cotton Candy machine to put there, sadly no one had agreed to it, which is why I stubbornly refused Dave’s suggestion of a bar to go there. Besides, when the basement is The Teenagers Lair, I’m assuming that a bar would be the last thing we’d need there.

And to be completely honest, it’s not that it’s so massive (it’s seriously as big or a little bigger than our dining room table, with it’s leaves in) or that it hulks at me menacingly when I go downstairs to do laundry, it’s that someday, when the novelty has worn completely off, it’s going to become a flat storage space. Or a train table. Or a place to sort your dime bag.

Then, eventually, I will have to devise some way of storing it that doesn’t involve putting it on the side of the road for someone else to take, lest I get killed by certain members of my family who, despite the overwhelming layers of dust, will INSIST that they DO play it! Regularly!

Maybe this is the time to tell Dave about the fully functional Hot Dog Cart I bought for our bedroom. I can tell him he’ll hardly notice it’s there, sleeping tenderly on his side of the bed.

…am I fucking up more?

The one who loves to write insanely complex lists?

Or the one, despite a recent cutting, who cannot help but rock a Bon Jovi hair cut?

You be the judge.

It’s got to be something in the genetics.

While retracting Alex’s foreskin (oh, God the search terms) and bemoaning my fate of a life spent cleaning teeny penises (penii?), I noticed something that I can only attribute to his father’s side of the family.

He laughed.

Laughed.

Kept laughing.

Alex laughed the entire time I was cleaning the schmutz off of his penis.

I’m pretty sure this wasn’t covered in my copy of What To Expect When You’re Expecting.

After much hemming and hawing, whining, pissing and moaning (and that’s just on my end) and several phone calls, it was decided.

Ben came home yesterday with his very own (rental) violin. It may not be the cello I was rooting for (because seriously, even after many years of not playing, I could still do it in my sleep), but he is more pleased with himself than I’ve ever seen him.

I suppose it’s fortunate, really, that I have such a background in stringed instruments, because I was able to help him muddle through some of his first assignments, while Daver, the maestro of the violin himself, was able to work somewhere that his eardrums remained intact, and not bleeding into the white carpet.

(Ass.)

Oh, don’t get me wrong, maybe I’m still wearing the Bitter Pants because I lost the battle of What Instrument Ben Plays, but I can’t help but wish he’d chosen something a little less, oh I don’t know HIGH PITCHED. A completely unexpected side effect of the squeaking of the the violin strings (E, A, D, G, for those luckily not in the know) is that the dog, who is normally firmly implanted on the couch (I am often able to forget that we have a dog at all, which was, not terribly shockingly, a qualification I had for getting a dog), sleeping through both day and night, only lumbering languidly off when someone goes into the kitchen to make food, howls relentlessly while it is played.

Without knowing it, he’s echoing my sentiments exactly.

It’s just too bad for the both of us, because like it or not, we’re going to have to get used to it.