funny boy

yesterday we did the Royal Oak Spooktacular. We have been working up to this for weeks since I bought a lion costume for my son to wear and he immediately despised it. So the next 2 weeks were spent talking about the lion, practicing to be a lion and even playing lion with the lion hand puppet. Well it worked, and the conversations about getting candy. He decided he would wear it yesterday. It was great, we walked to all the stores in town, said tick-teet and tank oooo after each deposit into the bucket. Then we sat down and took a rest on one of the benches and the fun began. Mommy Candy, mommy candy now. So I gave him a choclate covered pretzel to eat and he gobbled it up, mommy more candy, more candy more candy now. To which I replied, you can have more after you take 3 bites of your bagel nd one bite of peanut butter to which he replied, NO, more candy now. I kept saying the sam script, to his escalating requests for candy, and finally I said. If you eat your bagel, you can have one more bite of candy, then the candy is going nigh nigh until tomorrow. he protested and he never got the other candy, because he never ate anything else. Then we went to bed. When we go up to bed, the ritual begins, mommy and baby walk u the stairs, he calls out Da-deeee, come upstairs, go nigh nigh. Then da-dee follows, we all get in bed and he says mommy boobs. This is hilarious! then I let him nurse. Usually he falls asleep in 15 minutes or so. After checking for Da- dee about 3-4 times. tomake sure she has not slinked out of the room when he was busy nursing. So, tonigh, same ritual and all of a sudden, he looks up and says, luna, luna.... Goonie. Me and Steph look at each other and start Cracking up. Goonie is Lunas nickname, today we realized that he knows the dogs "other" names. That was incredible. We just kept laughing and laughing and then he liked that, so he repeated goonie about 20 times, while nursing so it was more like... glomnie. these are the things I really want to remember when he is older. I want to be able to tell him all of these funny stories. he has a funny sense of humor. Today at the dinner table, he farted, then steph said, something stinks, did you doop? He says no, duck. Which steph has taught him to say when he farts, because she says it sounds like a duck in his butt.Aaaanyway, so he says duck, I then say, did you fart, he says yes, i farted! Smiles, and starts pushing really hard and he farts again, I crack up! out loud so loud that he starts laughing really loud and we are both just cracking up and I cant stop laughing at him. This is where it begins..... This is how people get the idea that farting is funny... it's times like these.

profound

my son is hilarious-he is now repeating every single thing I say and when he is not sure what a word is, he just garbles up the words and I think to myself, hmmmm this is what he is hearing. interesting. He loves to repeat everything we say to each other, my wife and I, so we are bing more careful about our language and our inflection.
He totally knows when we re being snipy and he will show physical signs of it, like swattin the dogs, banging on the table or kicking a toy. sometimes I think to myself, this is so obvious, Why do most parents think their kids are being difficult when they ae just mimicking what they are hearing and seeing, it is all so unfair.

He is putting 3-5 words together at a time and his favorite phrase right now, is Mommy Hup me. Which can mean, mommy help me or mommy pick me up depending on his body language. it is very cute but at the same time, it sounds really pitiful. Mommy help me.... I just say, of course I will help you honey what do you need.

I love this kid. I totally adore his entire little person. Someday, when he is a grown man, I want him to know that all the silly kid things he did were actually some of the richest experiences I had ever had in my lifetime. It's amazing how watching a child first discovering how a flash light works can be so very satisfying and tear jerking at the same time. If I had to use one word to describe this experience I am having with him, it would be Profound!

Growing up

I am ready to wean my son. I have finally gotten to the point that some days, it pisses me off that I have to still nurse. That's not good. I feel agitated at times by the way he yanks up my shirt and dives into my breast. Well it's just starting to feel a bit weird to me. So, we are going to try to have my wife take him to the grandparents for a weekend and hope that my absence will not be a negative, and that being over there will be a distraction. Truth is, there is no real guideline on when to do it or how to do it. Everything I have read says, you will know when it is time, the child can self- wean but some never do, and you just need to make the decision and be consistent. Well, thanks, that helps! I am constantly struggling with the need for me to have my body back and the need for him to have the comforting cuddling and nursing he has known since he took his first breath. I just don't know when it won't be difficult for him and I know that it is starting to get difficult for me. I want to enjoy my child, I don't want to feel agitated when he goes to bed and wants to paw at me, stroke my belly and nurse until my nipple is halfway down his throat. I am not kidding...... and nobody EVER shared any of this with me. I wonder why? I am not sure if I would have REALLY listened anyway but a little foreshadowing would have been nice. So I am looking for some herbs to dry up the breastmilk and we will begin the process in a couple of weeks.

One of my deepest fears

Today was hell.
I got to work and was catching up on email when I saw Micki's email asking me if I heard that there was a plane crash in nepal. I did not panic at first, even though I knew that Janice was on a trek at Everest and that she flew into the most precarious airport in the world. I assumed she was already there. She left on Monday. But, there was a minor doubt. So the first thing I did was to look for the name of the orphanage that they volunteered and sent an email to beverly to see if she could help me make sense of the news. I then looked at Janice's Blog and zoomed in on the plane and wrote down the name of the airline and the plane number. This plane is tiny, so the planes have numbers that are in view, they are prop planes. Just 20 people inside. I went to the Nepali times online and saw the story and expected to see some weird airline name and an odd plane number. To my horror. it was her airline and the same plane number that was showing on her blog. I immediately went to another place.
In my mind, i was somewhere,I was not in my body. I was out there, somewhere realizing that this could mean that Janice had died. I was devastated. I was at work and I suddenly began wailing and sobbing and screaming. I was in total shock, I just was in shock. There was no way to stop the crying, it had taken me over and was running my life, I could not be "appropriate" could not quiet my sadness for the sake of others, I was just experiencing raw emotion. My friend Trisha offered to call Steph, to have her come pick me up. When she answered the phone, Trisha said, Steph, can you come get Suzanne, Steph shouted, WHATS WRONG! WHATS WRONG! and then I took the phone, I told her that I believed that Janice was in a plane crash and that nobody survived. She began yelling and crying NO! NO! NO! OH MY GOD!, IS SHE DEAD? IS SHE DEAD, I just kept crying and saying I think so, I think so, I am not sure, I don't know. To told her to call my mom and I would be right home. Trisha drove me home and i have no idea how we even got home, I have no recollection of driving home. When we got home, the house was eerie, the baby had no idea why I was home and he was thrilled, mom was tearful and worried, Steph was stoic. We went upstairs to continue to do research, to see if we could figure anything out. If we could determine that she was not on the plane. I was sobbing, sobbing, sobbing, thinking she was really gone. Then Micki called and said that she saw the flight manifest on the airline web page and Janice and Christy were not on the manifest. At first I didn't believe it, i just wanted to hear her voice or touch her or hug her or hold her hand or something, something. Eventually I did realize that she was alive and she was not on the manifest and I needed to comeback to reality and start healing. I just basically for a few hours and kept re-reading the manifest. She was not on the manifest, she was not on the plane she is alive. At that point i shifted to the people who actually did perish in that plane crash. I could be their family, it could have been me grieving for the rest of the day. And the rest of my adult life. Instead, by some miracle I am allowed to continue on living the same life I had yesterday. I get to decide what things to get angry about, whether or not I want to eat sweets or eat something healthy, I get to see my son smile again. I am incredibly blessed!

The ironic part is that Janice is probably trekking in the mountains,having a blast, not even aware of what hell we went through today. No knowledge of our fears, our gripping at the hope that she was alive and the deep loss we were trying to get our head around.

For many reasons, this is day was just impossible. Losing someone i love without being able to talk to them or tell them I love them before they go is my biggest childhood core trigger. It rules my life. This was devastating, to think that I had lost Janice and had never had a chance in the past few weeks to tell her I loved her or how much I value her in my life.

Today I realized that the depth of love I have for my friends is amazing, it is pure, it is more than just friendship.
There is no word for it, it is far more than just friendship, it is far more than family it is not of this place.
It is from another plane of existence. The friends i have in my life, continually remind me how good, goodness can be. They teach me things, they learn from me, we all love together. We all celebrate together and at times, we all grieve together.

I will be forever grateful for the love ad kindness my friends have blanketed me with in my life. I will be forever in awe of the gifts they have brought to me.

Janice has brought me one of these gifts, without her knowledge, she has made an impact on my emotional healing, at the deepest level. Through this Brush with the Oh my god moment!, I have gained a deeper understanding of how I am built. My emotional pain that has been with me my entire life, had a moment of healing, a brief release of some of that pain.

Tonight I will be able to sleep a bit deeper, a bit longer and a bit more adult. My childhood pain has found a soothing balm for the moment. I will never forget this day.

2

My son is almost 2
In 5 days he will have lived for 2 entire years. Already I am missing his babyhood. I am rejoicing at his toddlerhood, but missing him as a baby. It is weird how this happens. I want him to progress and grow and learn and talk and live a happy and joyous life. But I also want to hold him and cuddle him and protect him. This is something I had no grasp of before I was a parent. I was always thinking, the purpose of having children is to help them become really good people and then send them out into the world. Well sometimes, I think about how safe he will be when he has sex, or if he will know when to stop drinking, when he has had too much or when someone he rode to a party with has had enough. There are so many things to teach him, to guide him, to show him. And yet, I feel like I have already shown him so much. The first 2 years are pretty much non-verbal. They are gestures and silent acknowledgement. They are mostly, simply love. In its purest form. No back talk, or rejection, just love. Gimme gimme gimme, I need I want I need. that is the sum of the first 2 years of his life. I find myself feeling overjoyed that he is progressing already to be a compassionate. sensitive and loving individual. I think that is just his nature. I believe in my heart that he is already the person I hoped he will be. What does the future hold for this delightful and magical 2 year old?