Still Going
Four Generations of the Orneriest Folks in the Known World
Devon and Jamie Matt
Justin and Katie , Debbie & Jerry , Sue , Denise , Kim and Josh and Jon
Hanford and Norma , Aunt Joyce, George and Margaret, Marsha and David, Mark and Little Mark and Carrie
so this is how you get a word in edgewise, Mark....
Home Again, Home Again
Well, Josh is back from he second weekend at Camp Grandma and Grandpa D's in W. Laf. I'm getting better at this, but it still feels so odd. Twenty minutes after I drop him off and am on the road, and twenty minutes after I get home, I'm a little on edge... I think right after I kissed Jon hello, I went to the storage box where the Doppelganger/Fake Josh was kept, and
took him/it directly into Josh's crib...so that when I woke up
around three to do my habitual nightly wandering, that I would not freak out when there was no little person in the crib. Jon smiled at me fondly, shook his head and took me into his arms. He was delighted with quiet, "us-time", and if I'm being honest, I needed to be unattached SOOOOOO badly. Dull Surprise, Josh is going through another growth spurt. (I know, I know -- when 
ISN'T he going through another growth spurt). These are always the signals of the really rough patches...in one of my endless forays into useless trivia (-- kind of a carry-over from my many years of teen-age insomnia...I'm pretty sure I know something odd about everything... but I just know I'm totally going to freeze up when I get to that final round of Jeopardy ), I thought I read that growing pains really and truly can hurt...It would make sense, Josh is fussier, much crankier about sleeping, and constantly nursing during a "spurt" (and the books said that was also a good way to naturally ease pain in babies) and for a day and a half-prior to the Grandma Weekend, I felt utterly cornered and raw. Half of me wanted to snuggle and half of me just wanted to find the most isolated mountain peak in Tibet and never be touched again. It's kind of jarring to Jon, who has gotten used to much snuggling and head-rubbing in the days before Josh (again, I am completely convinced Jon was a big ol' cat in another life)...and when I get to this stage, I can barely even stand being held by him...after a couple of hours without Josh hooked up to the Mommy Keg, my hackles go down and I relax, and then I remember how good snuggling is. In an odd way, I suppose that I will shortly be wistful even for the never-ending nursing jags. Josh is learning to be mobile, and God help me when it's official. The last several days, he's begun this inchworm bit (and yes, Danny Kaye is singing softly in my head everytime I watch Josh master his new moves), where he will hitch up his hips and try to scoo
t a few inches ahead. He can do baby push-ups and those inchworm-moves, but hasn't yet connected the two. He has, however perfected his "backstroke" to the point where he scared the crap out of G.Aunt Helen the other day. Apparently, Josh was lying on the floor in their living room, where Helen and Harry usually watch and play with him. She stepped out of the room to grab something off of a nearby table, and came back into the living room to find that Josh had disappeared. After a moment of near heart-failure, she heard a noise under an armchair, and saw two happy legs kicking out from underneath it. Josh was utterly fascinated with whatever was under the armchair, and Helen calmed herself out of the rafters. I know, I should be horrified, 
but at this time, knowing he can't get far yet, I think it's pretty funny...even so, I'm going to regret my amusement all too soon. He's strong and he's fast, and because I am still overwhelmed by it all (and, if I'm honest, I've kind of been stalling on the whole process)...I haven't proofed the house yet. I am contemplating a Child-Proof-My-House-Party, but I really am trying to get myself into gear. My biggest fears right now are the laptop and the desktop...the two things we use the most, and what I'm certain will be the first casualties when Josh begins his ramblings. Both are in the living room, and I haven't figured out a way to protect them...I mean, we can take the keyboard off the desktop when it isn't in use...and maybe pack the laptop away all the time, but we'd be in rough straits if anything happened to those. (Any suggestions on this matter would be appreciated, seriously.) Helen and Harry have Josh until 7:30, and Jon's pulling overtime tonight, so I have an hour and a half left to myself. I think I will do something really dramatic and hurl myself into the tub to de-scuzzify myself, and then I will see what I can beat a path through....
=====================================================June 19, 2005 Well, Josh is now officially 17 pounds, 8 oz., and 28 inches long. According to Tim, and several others, there are two year olds that aren't as big (long) as Josh. Josh has become quite adept at rolling back and forth...and will play around on his stomach for about twenty minutes or so, but the biggest change is that Josh can now sit up right...his balance is still off (as is my speed...the poor little fellow conked his head a couple of times when he overbalanced one way, and I had erred and tried to spot him on the other side. He pouted, and yelped his displeasure, and then went back to more pressing things), so the majority of the time, I am putting the Boppy pillow to good use, as it rings around him and supports him as he sits up, and then he can play with one of his gyms, and I can fold towels beside him. He leans in and "kisses" the smiley-faces...he kicks, he bats...he drools. He is pickier about what will make him laugh now...some things, like a little razzie around the ears or belly are givens, but he's now developed a polite, reserved smile -- as though he knows a smile is expected, "but really, dear Mummy, you simply must come up with some original material." He all but pats me on the head and offers a cookie. And then, he chews on his feet. I'm trying very hard to break myself of the habit of watching television...the books keep saying my routines will become Josh's routines, and while I haven't really been able to focus much on what I've been watching in the last several months, I've never been able to break myself of the need for background noise (a carryover from being from such a large family, I guess). I'm getting better. The television is still on, but it's tuned into the "screensaver" XM Radio channels...the screen goes black after a few minutes, and Josh and I sing and dance to the the kids songs until around two...ideally, he naps, and then we hit it from there... We (Jon and I) have been addicted to the Kenny Curtis Animal Farm on XMKids, and one of the audio characters in the "petting zoo" is a paranoid llama named Lorenzo , who has the catchphrase "Don't Touch the Llama!!! There is NO Touching of the Llama", and we've incorporated that into our daily conversations. (Yes, Suz, the llama has a father named "Fernando" who tells everyone they look mah-vel-ous! Could Billy Crystal sue a llama for borrowing his shtick? I hope not. I'd never be able to watch Princess Bride again if he did) "Don't Touch the Llama" and "Llama-toucher!" are now our most-loved phrases, and Jon is doing bad things to his co-workers' brains by keeping those phrases in play on a near constant basis. Of course, my imagination is no help, as I view Jon rising to his full height and pointing a long long finger at one of the more persistant & difficult clients like a scene out of a Vincent Price movie in my head, with a storm raging outside the windows, and scary music, and Jon intoning in this deep and fearsome voice, "YOU!!! LLAMA-TOUCHER!!!!!" *with thunder shaking the room, crescendo of scary music, red lighting flashing on the walls* (perhaps one of the many folks who has changed his address twenty times in the last week, and honestly can't figure out why his checks haven't caught up with him yet-- Really, Jon says this happens all the time...of course, I may be misinterpreting, as he usually says it around a handful of Advil and Rolaids, and my deciphering skills are a bit rusty.)
More (actually interesting stories) to come...
Hives! Or a Bad Case of the Allah Forbids...
(In case anyone is unhappy with my title this time around, it is a reference to the old Arabian fantasies, like THIEF OF BAGDAD, as in the infamous, "Allah Forbid, you have a daughter!" Or son, or goldfish, or small piece of Tupperware, etc!!! I mean no disrespect to anyone, I've just always found this phrase pretty darned funny, and I have tossed it at my siblings and my friends, just because I could...and they happily tossed it back to me...of course, now that I actually have HAD the progeny, they are even happier, and tend to laugh at me even more than usual. Of course, it is our actual contention that on slow days, God's Tivo-ing some of our more inept attempts at this parenthood thing and showing them around to the angellic hosts at the heavenly sock hops. "Those silly kids. I'm going to have to double the normal allottment of guardian angels on that little boy just to get him to puberty. No, really...can we get someone on that right away? Oh, yeah, watch this...this is my favorite part, where she's feeding him cereal, and gets it into his ear...See? The look on his face right there cracks me up everytime.")
Ok, so I'm coming across like a total paranoid, but I can't help it. There is highway right in front of us filled with speeding semi-trucks, a riverbank just behind us with nasty, fast undercurrents, and -- since there wasn't a real cold snap -- nasty, horrible, awful ticks everywhere in between. Uhhhhh, I can't even look the word "tick" up in the dictionary. I went to get the mail today, felt something brushing my leg, and looked down, and Dear God!!! If I had had a chainsaw on me, I'd be down a leg, and would have been delighted to go through the rest of my life as "Stumpy Stickrath". I got it off before it decided to make our relationship a little more formal, but OhMaGawd!!! I am fifteen different types of cringe-y just thinking about it. Now, those of you that know me well are fully aware that I can go from calm and quiet to "Ye Gods!! Mode" in the space of a Hollywood marriage when it comes to ticks. I am paralyzed by the stupid things the way some people are paralyzed and altogether durfy around bees. I like bees. Bees are cute. Bees have a purpose. As far as I can tell, the only purpose a tick has is to give me the Flying HeebeeJeebees, and while that might be amusing from a distance, up close and personal, it lacks a heck of a lot of fun. I get nauseated, dizzy, and am unable to control my hands well. I sprayed the yard with bug-stuff (for some reason, our side of the road seems to have more bugs than Harry and Helen's side...but my theory on that is that a bug wouldn't dare walk on Helen's grass with dirty feet...and their lawn is amazing...I swear they come out in the morning with tweezers and a magnifying glass to make sure each blade of grass is straight -- yes, Dad, I stole that one from you...but it's still a cute line) As for the highway thing, well, I was not helped the other day when Grandma Irene (in a bonding moment) mentioned that Tim (Jon's dad) had dashed directly into the path of an oncoming eighteen-wheeler when he had learned to walk, and barely made it by the skin of his teeth, and shortly after, the "tan" of his hide. "Watch him." My mom says. "Watch him." Oh, I intend to...but he's already learning the inchworm move -- he knows to get those hips up and moving, but he hasn't quite figured out the front part yet -- and he is SO determined! Though, as that was the very first thing we learned about him, I shouldn't be surprised. I just pray that he will listen, and have Jon's common sense. I've already been talking to everybody about putting up a fence by our house, but with my luck, he will have inherited my love of climbing up and out. When I was twelve, I thought it would be fun to jump out of my second story bedroom window...well, actually, I dropped onto the roof of the basement stairs, and jumped off of that, so I only actually jumped one story down, I guess...but Mom wasn't overly amused with me, even though I had done a rather fabulous tuck and roll on landing, and only knocked the wind out of me. Years before this escapade, I personally led my brothers and sisters out onto the porch roof from the second story windows, where we would run and dance and jump and bounce along the edge of the roof. Our revels came to an abrupt end, however, when Mom and Dad, noticing a suspicious ATTACK OF SILENCE from the five heathens upstairs, came charging up to see WHAT EXACTLY WAS GOING ON!!! We were lectured. We felt shame. We came in, holding our heads down and waited for them to chill out and go downstairs again. We calmly waited for a few hours, knowing that the daylight and sunshine had led to our discovery, and realizing with equal clarity that if we went out onto the porch roof when it was DARK, then they just couldn't see us...and there would technically be no proof that we were out on the roof if we would just be quiet. Ah...well...silly us, we didn't realize the roof itself would turn snitch on us. We had not taken into account that a hot, sunshine-y day would melt the black tar that held the shingles in place. We had not taken into account that said tar would show incriminating foot prints that would be the exact size and shape of five pairs of little feet...or that said stupid tar would not only stick to our five pairs of little feet when we crept back into the windowsill, but to the carpet in the hallway, and our bedroom floors, and the lovely, clean sheets mom had just placed on our beds that very day...Ahem, well...um, yes, anyhow...
It doesn't help me to recall either that my earliest memory (roughly age four) was climbing pine trees in the forest behind Mom's old duplex. I'd come home sap-sticky, and pine-scented, with needles in my hair, and pieces of bark stuck to my cheerfully scraped skin. I had one particular branch in my tree that I would perch upon, roughly fifteen or twenty feet from the ground, where I would survey my scrap of forest with the pride of a Lord of the Realm. I could and did climb everything, but this tree, and this branch were MINE. I don't remember any time I wasn't climbing trees, and it just became accepted. Then, one day, I climbed exactly one branch higher in my tree than usual. One, lousy branch. And then I looked down. Suddenly, I was trapped. I couldn't find my way back down to my usual branch and it's normal, perfect safety. I couldn't go higher and try to work my way around to a different branch. I was trapped, and howling for somebody, anybody, to come save me. I was coated in sap and bark bits, and there were these massive soldier ants that were not helping the situation either. As it happened, our neighbor, a little girl about my age, had the sense to get her mother, who -- God love her, climbed the tree with her eight-months-of-hugely-pregnant belly, and managed to pry my death grip from the tree (it was quickly relocated to her neck), and somehow, she got us both out of the tree in one piece (of course, thanks to the sap, we were actually sticking together like "one piece", but that's a given). The very next day, I made my way up to that very same branch again, and gloried in the new vision of my realm. It was perfect.
Again, I keep hoping that Josh will inherit his father's calm...and most importantly, his common sense...Lord knows, common sense and I have only nodded at each other in passing...but after hearing some of the stories of Jon's childhood, I wonder... Apparently, at one point, he managed to get his baby walker ramped off of his parent's stoop, over three steps, and landed safely on all wheels, and was charging up the driveway and to the road before they could catch him. Now they did...but again, the first thing we learned about Josh was that he was determined...and he seems to have gotten it already in equal doses from both of us....
Apparently, one of the family stories involved my mother and my grandmother watching me from a window as the five of us kids charged around on the swingset in the backyard. Of course, I was the first to figure out a way to climb up onto the top support beam of the set...(hey, it was climbing...it was what I did) and my mother just looked at me and murmured, "She just has no fear." To which my grandmother replied, "Of course she doesn't. So, teach her well."
...Fear came with motherhood. My life has condensed into two people...without whom, I wouldn't dare to want to breathe. I feel focused, and oddly strong, but if anything happened to either of them...I have drifted through my entire life, patterning my soul's passage more on the bit of milkweed in late summer fields than a true and set goal. I never feared death before. I never worried about the idea of leaving something behind...My one philosophy in life is that somewhere, somehow, someone's looking out for me, and that it would all work out in the end, but somehow, I always felt beyond it...immortal. It was enough.With the first heartbeat of this little boy...and the worried, tired, loving looks of the man I am constantly falling in love with, I find that I fear the losing, the passing. I looked at my Dad the other day, and noticed for the first time the grey in his hair...that there are lines in my hands now, and that they look more and more like my mother's hands. That there seems to be a peculiar fragileness about the people I love the most. When did that happen?
It's a different kind of selfishness now. I want to keep it all safe. Mine. Forever.Josh knows no fear...and I am, somehow, supposed to teach him well...(but I think I will super glue his baby shoes to the floor when he learns to walk...just in case...)
I can quit anytime I want...
What do you mean, "Cut him off?!"
pretty colors...
Nah, Man. IssAlllGood. IssAlllGood.
Four Generations of the Orneriest Folks in the Known World
took him/it directly into Josh's crib...so that when I woke up
ISN'T he going through another growth spurt). These are always the signals of the really rough patches...in one of my endless forays into useless trivia (-- kind of a carry-over from my many years of teen-age insomnia...I'm pretty sure I know something odd about everything... but I just know I'm totally going to freeze up when I get to that final round of Jeopardy ), I thought I read that growing pains really and truly can hurt...It would make sense, Josh is fussier, much crankier about sleeping, and constantly nursing during a "spurt" (and the books said that was also a good way to naturally ease pain in babies) and for a day and a half-prior to the Grandma Weekend, I felt utterly cornered and raw. Half of me wanted to snuggle and half of me just wanted to find the most isolated mountain peak in Tibet and never be touched again. It's kind of jarring to Jon, who has gotten used to much snuggling and head-rubbing in the days before Josh (again, I am completely convinced Jon was a big ol' cat in another life)...and when I get to this stage, I can barely even stand being held by him...after a couple of hours without Josh hooked up to the Mommy Keg, my hackles go down and I relax, and then I remember how good snuggling is. In an odd way, I suppose that I will shortly be wistful even for the never-ending nursing jags. Josh is learning to be mobile, and God help me when it's official. The last several days, he's begun this inchworm bit (and yes, Danny Kaye is singing softly in my head everytime I watch Josh master his new moves), where he will hitch up his hips and try to scoo
t a few inches ahead. He can do baby push-ups and those inchworm-moves, but hasn't yet connected the two. He has, however perfected his "backstroke" to the point where he scared the crap out of G.Aunt Helen the other day. Apparently, Josh was lying on the floor in their living room, where Helen and Harry usually watch and play with him. She stepped out of the room to grab something off of a nearby table, and came back into the living room to find that Josh had disappeared. After a moment of near heart-failure, she heard a noise under an armchair, and saw two happy legs kicking out from underneath it. Josh was utterly fascinated with whatever was under the armchair, and Helen calmed herself out of the rafters. I know, I should be horrified, 
but at this time, knowing he can't get far yet, I think it's pretty funny...even so, I'm going to regret my amusement all too soon. He's strong and he's fast, and because I am still overwhelmed by it all (and, if I'm honest, I've kind of been stalling on the whole process)...I haven't proofed the house yet. I am contemplating a Child-Proof-My-House-Party, but I really am trying to get myself into gear. My biggest fears right now are the laptop and the desktop...the two things we use the most, and what I'm certain will be the first casualties when Josh begins his ramblings. Both are in the living room, and I haven't figured out a way to protect them...I mean, we can take the keyboard off the desktop when it isn't in use...and maybe pack the laptop away all the time, but we'd be in rough straits if anything happened to those. (Any suggestions on this matter would be appreciated, seriously.) Helen and Harry have Josh until 7:30, and Jon's pulling overtime tonight, so I have an hour and a half left to myself. I think I will do something really dramatic and hurl myself into the tub to de-scuzzify myself, and then I will see what I can beat a path through....