There Is No "Mommy", only "Zul"

The river is high, the dam is full, and the next several days should be pretty darn wet, but everyone is safe. Last night, instead of just taunting us by the side of the road, the river decided to submerge a few places, and Jon came home rather spooked, but safe. Until I lived on top of a river, I never realized what a palpable smirk it could have. I still spend a great deal of time worrying about Josh and the river, but we've been very firm about telling him that the river is pretty to look at, but that he should never get near it. I've been telling him there are snapping turtles and snakes in it...which is true, but there's also a wicked current right beneath our bank. The good news is that in a few weeks, a natural, very high, very thorny hedge will re-emerge between our house and the banks, and that tends to be an effective deterrent. Josh's vocabulary has been expanding again, and while I know we have been flippant around Josh, I know for a fact that we've never offered to "throw him to the snapping turtles"... a phrase he used on his father just the other day when Jon was tickling him...Josh pursed his lips and then spread them into a wry grin -- the way he does when he thinks he's pulling one over on us. Josh is very serious about snapping turtles...and anytime he sees the river, he tells us that there are snapping turtles in the river with a solemn nod that belies his years. "Oh, okay. " We respond. "Good to know." I need him to be very cautious about the river, but I don't want him freaked out about it...especially, as his room is closest to the river, and his window looks out on it, the last thing I need is for Josh to develop any massive phobias regarding it.

Josh is still sleeping with us...which means we are usually not sleeping much. I tried last week to get him back in his room one night, and he came into our room the next day with a head cold and great gallons of snot -- Honest to God, where does he store all of that stuff? I hate to say it, but we may need to wait for slightly warmer weather to switch him back -- his room always seems about five or six degrees cooler than the rest of the house (probably due to its proximity to the river)...and when we ratchet up the thermostat to accommodate, we end up broiling in every other room in the house. In the summer, this is the best room to be in...In the Uber-Moist springs we have, it's not that wonderful...I don't know why it doesn't seem to be such an issue in winter.

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One of my dear friends in the Writers' Group is encouraging me to take up crocheting...I have tried this before, with laughable results...I was, without a doubt, incredibly gifted at making yarn snakes -- these puffy, droopy ropes of yarn...however, I could never make the yarn come together in a single flat piece...I'm having much better luck this time around. I'm trying to make a blanket...it isn't the loveliest thing in the world but it's slowly coming together, and perhaps it will be useful somewhere along the line. My initial plan was to give it to Carrie, just in time for her "September Sprog"...if it turns out well...(if it does not, well, I shall burn it and scatter the ashes and no one will ever know how horribly wrong it went -- Moo Ha Ha ha!)...at any rate, I have accomplished more this time around than at any prior attempt.

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We've had to reschedule Josh's sleepovers at Camp Marsha and Dave for about two months now...every weekend we "snow checked" until the next, and then had to "snow check" again, and again...for now we've just decided to chill out and try again in April...theoretically, Mother Nature will have picked up a case of Motrin and gotten her act together by that point (and perhaps I will as well). For the first few times especially, it was really difficult for me...and as a consequence, I made things really difficult for everyone else...there haven't been rabid coyotes who growled and snapped as much as I did. At one point, I just got so completely ticked at the situation that I packed Josh into the car and made a run for it on one day when the snow had stopped and the road seemed clear. I wasn't ten minutes from home when the snow started falling in earnest, covering the road, and making it unsafe for me to pull off until I reached the second town between home and Z--- (the first town's parking lots looked worse than the roads). I had been cooped up for a few weeks due to the weather issues, and I just needed out. You know it was bad out when you have a two-year old in the back calling out, "Be careful, Mommy!" every few seconds. So, I turned around and slowly crept back home. (Jon was not happy with me, Tim was not happy with me...Rhonda may not have been happy with me either, but I think she at least knew where I was coming from.) The next week, I made it all the way to Z---, and the roads were clear and dry, until I got out to tank up the car at the midway point of the drive....then the temperature dropped about fifteen degrees, the wind ratcheted up, and suddenly there were huge flakes of horizontal snow...so it was another case of home again, home again...and just as well...as I pulled into our driveway, the weather let loose, and just dumped blizzard on us...I would easily say that we had at least eight inches of snow...and Jon made it home....but it took him nearly three hours of driving (he called it three hours of "controlled skid")...I spent hours calling my relatives and checking in with Jon's relatives to make sure all of our "little ducks" were safely in for the night. My dad ended up skidding into a ditch to avoid an accident in front of him, but was okay, one of my silly brothers decided to get a hair cut in the middle of a Level Two warning, but he made back safe and sound...and Irene, the one person we were SURE was safe (as she had tests at a Z--- hospital, and had told us she would stay there if the weather went south) careened into Harry and Helen's driveway around six. I was livid, and as ticked as Jon had been that I had been out in the mess the prior week, he had nothing on me when I was discussing the matter with Irene. She's what, 76? 77? and she acts like she's sixteen -- it's impulsive behavior like that that makes all of us forget she's supposed to be a grandmother...and truly, truly, I often feel that she's genuinely younger than I am. I think she caught it on all sides that day, just as I had the week before...and I at least got her to promise that if she was going to pull that stunt again that she had to call me or Harry and Helen before she started out so that we would know whether we would have to send out the calvary after a certain time. My point (as I was finally able to get through to her) was that no one even knew she was on the road, and therefore, no one would even have known to search for her if there had been a problem between here and Z--- because we thought she was safely tucked in at the hospital and not on the road in blizzard conditions, in a car with recurring maintenance issues.

Sheesh...drama, drama, drama. And it just continued and continued, and by golly, wasn't I just doing my darnedest to escalate it. Josh and I simply could not get through to each other...there were a lot of time outs (for both of us) and too much frustration -- both of us with high doses of cabin fever and no let up in the weather...Josh never stopped asking to go out, but the temperature never seemed safe enough, and he was fighting a pretty bad cold. Poor Jon had been trying to beat a path through his overtime, and came home to a lot of loud evenings.


Josh had his 27/28 week baby checkup... In my brilliance, I scheduled his doctor's appointment an hour before his nap time...Dumb, dumb, and dumb. Once again, Josh had lost his glasses, and once again I found them...this time with my left foot...the lenses popped out like bubbles, but a screw snapped in half in one of the frames, and I couldn't for the life of me get it out to fix it. (I don't have his exact stats for you right now, but he's in the 90 percentile on height and 75th on weight.) He wanted nothing to do with the nurses, he wanted nothing to do with the N.P.... he was ticked, and thrashed and kicked and screamed...and barely held still long enough for the poor Nurse Practitioner to inform me that he had a minor ear infection that none of us had picked up on (well, that would explain some of his behavior), and once again I felt like a total heel. I didn't feel better when she told me she just happened to notice that he had been batting at his ear a little. I never saw it...I fuss over the least minor change if he's feverish...I can tell from his eyes when he's sick...but those signs hadn't been there. His outer ear was a little red, but he'd been on a screaming jag in the office --it was an inner ear issue, and wouldn't have come to light if she hadn't been able to have him in on just that day. There was a delay in getting his pink stuff...roughly a two hour delay, so an increasingly weirded out and exhausted Josh and I made a gallant charge down Dr. Ron's to see if the girls there could pull a miracle out of their hats...or at least a half-broken screw out of a pair of glass frames. This time, Josh could not get enough of trying on every frame in the place, and God love their hearts, they were able to set those frames to right. We made another dash uptown, and after an additional thirty minute wait, wherein poor, agitated Josh ended up upside down with the back of his head on my ankles and his knees on my knees ... and oddly enough he was calming down...I swear there is a reset button on the back of his head...and for some reason, he relaxes when he gets himself upside down. We finally made it home and after only the briefest (albeit loud) protest, he finally collapsed.... (He got a weeks worth of pink stuff and, thankfully, liked it, and would later take it only if he could hold the spoon and give it to himself.)

Carrie and Little Mark, and Auntie Suzing came home for visit, and any concerns that I might have had that Little Mark wouldn't want to play with Josh were negated the moment they saw each other. They became immediate members of the Josh-Mark mutual admiration society and played and ran and charged around like they had been together forever. When Josh jumped from the coffee table into Mom's lap, she commented on how high Josh could jump...well, that was a mistake. Little Mark climbed up onto the coffee table with hands on hips and firm foot stomps to emphasize his statement that He was the one who jumped high!! -- and proved it by nearly jumping onto Mom's head(and really, we all knew that was going to happen). Mark led, and Josh scampered after, trilling high giggles through the house. He and Mark kept referring to each other as "The Baby"...Mark called Josh that because he is still in diapers (yes, folks, we get to go through that joy this summer), and Josh called Mark "The Baby" because when Mark got upset, he fussed and pulled out all of the waterworks. It was very cute.

Easter was pleasant...Jon made a decision to stay home and hunt for Josh's glasses...which were once again MIA for about a week...and truth be told, he needed a breather... He hadn't had a day to himself in over five months, and he really just needed to recoup, so I gave him the option. Going stag (or stag-lite with Josh in tow) didn't seem to amuse some of the cast and crew, but it was absolutely necessary, and honestly, Jon was so much more relaxed and cute and chipper when I came home that night, that he and I are seriously considering that all future Easters will be Official Jon Holidays. Josh and I had a blast...he played with Little Mark, I got to tease my brothers and my baby sister, and it was like old times...I think it was a lot of fun all around. The only real issue I had all day was a substantial inability to follow the clock properly...at eight p.m., my body and brain were telling me it was 6 p.m., but as I hit the first 3rd of my journey back home, it suddenly felt like it was 11:30 p.m. I was greeted at the door by a sweet-eyed, bouncy Jon, who snagged the boy from my arms, and had him changed and snuggled close and asleep again by the time I got Josh's stuff out of the car five minutes later. We locked the door on the outside world and snuggled on the couch together, watching our worn out little boy sleep. Nice...very nice indeed.