I can't help but find it wildly funny when my three year old son makes comments that are completely repeats of things he hears from adults. Often, he says something serious (well, serious to him), and I have to run away because his comments cause me to burst out laughing.
"Kyra, You need to CHANGE YOUR ATTITUDE!"
**(INSERT PARENTAL LAUGHTER HERE)**
"Why are you laughing, mom? It's NOT FUNNY." he says.
He tends to bust me. He's no fool, even when I try to cover up the laughter with snorting or a cough or something.
On top of making me laugh, he tends to finish off the conversation by saying something like,
"FOR GOODNESS SAKES."These moments are just an example of the little things I want to always remember about being a mom and having little children. These little moments, little tidbits of life are the things make it all worth it. Yay for motherhood. It's' quite an adventure.
Okay, the verdict is in - I've made my decision on this topic:
Boys REALLY ARE different than girls. No, really, they REALLY ARE. Really.
I didn't believe it until I had one of my own. There is a mischievous look in this baby boy's eyes that my baby girl NEVER had. He opens things, climbs on things and attempts to tip over things that were previously never opened, climbed on, or tipped previously in our household. If we are in the back yard and I bend down to pull a weed or two, I often look up to see a baby halfway down the driveway, crawling toward the street, squealing with glee because there are loud fast moving cars in that direction.
Kyra never thought or cared about CARS. She never crawled down the DRIVEWAY.
I'm not imagining this, darn it. This fella is programmed differently. He even loves breasts more than Kyra ever did. See? The male fascination and bedazzlement with boobs starts at birth! He loves them! He cannot resist them!
Anyway. Check these out:
For some reason I predict trips to the ER and broken bones in the years to come.
Since Niko's birth in June, I've been so busy simply trying to make sure the children and I have changed out of our pajamas by noon, and then proceed to get through the day without allowing myself to end up napping face down on the kitchen floor (while Kyra feeds toilet bowl cleaner to her baby brother or glues puzzle pieces to his head), that I've neglected to write about THE NEW BABY.
A friend who also gave birth to her second baby shortly before I did recently told me over the phone that on many, many mornings, as she is awakened by one of her children at what feels to her to be an hour that is much much much too early, she'd "pay ANY amount of money to a person who would babysit her children so that she can just go back to sleep (for the love of God.)". Well, she didn't actually say "for the love of God", but I know she was thinking it.
I nodded understandingly on the other end of the phone, agreeing wholeheartedly - for there have been way way WAY too many foggy days for me over the last five months. And as I put the little ones to bed at night I'm surprised my kids had even been fed a proper meal that day, for their mother is walking around like a drooling zombie. And driving around, too. Which is an even scarier thought.
And they tell us to fear drunks on the road. Fear sleep-deprived mothers, people. Fear them.
But somehow, we manage to get by, with happy, healthy children to boot. And by God, my family has never missed one meal. Not even come close. Because above all things, I love food more than I am proud to admit. And I am married to a food snob who pretty much denies himself any earthly pleasures excluding daily fine dining and imported beverages named "Saison", "Trappist" or end with "weisen". The baby might be sitting in a stinking diaper and Kyra may not have combed her hair or brushed her teeth in a few days, but you can bet your bippy we're all well fed around here.
Now, back to the baby:
Remember when we used to call him Skeletor? Back when we first discovered he had a weewee?
Anyone?
Anyone?
Well, let me say this. Skeletor is anything but bony.
In fact, I've often wanted to gnaw on his squishy thighs. I just squeeze them and squeeze them. Then squeeze them some more. Sometimes I'm not sure how he actually manages to bend his lil' baby legs at the knee because his lil' baby kneecaps are surrounded by some seriously thick inches of lil' baby whale blubber which would seem to cause some resistance to the process of bending.
And remember when I feared that Skeletor was going to be Lucifer because he was nearly born on 6-6-06? Oh. Oh my. He's far from it. No Spawn of Satan here, folks. Rather, he's a sweet handsome jolly flirting charmer who seems to have some sort of magnetic force or power over women (and men) in the grocery store, library, or sidewalk - people who are complete strangers to us but can not RESIST the urge to reach their arms out toward him and ask, "CanIholdhim? Can I? Can I? Can I?" and then smooch him all up on his neck and on his soft lil' chubby baby cheeks.
Then they usually laugh at the sight of his fingers and toes.
With fingers like mini-water balloons and four dimples on each hand that seem to say, "There's knuckles under here, somewhere!", to me, his hands represent all that is baby. And although he is a boy, from the moment he was born, I thought that there was something graceful and feminine about his hands. They are chubby, yet rather intelligent hands.
The feet! Oh, the feet. They are NOT "Flat Bottom, Yet Meant For Walking" feet. Instead, they are "Round As They Are Wide, Put In Your Mouth And Chew On!" feet. And after a friend's father grabbed Niko's feet and tore his little Old Navy socks off while scolding me the momma by saying, "These toes need to be free! Get this baby's feet OUT of confinement!", we let the Little Piggies play out in open air as much as possible and as the temperature permits.
His eyes are not those of a young person, or those with someone who has a blank slate for a brain. He came into this world with big blue windows to the world that seemed to already know what was going on. His eyes look with the innocent curiosity of a baby, but at the same time also seem to say, "It's okay mom, I know. Now let me suck on your fingers. I'm teething."
At five months old weighing in at twenty(!) pounds, he seems to be taking after his mother in the category of being a BIG PERSON. After telling him what a handsome young lad he is, most people's second introductory comment about Niko is, "HE'S A BIG BOY!"
What else would we have expected? We're of German/Dutch descent. Sometimes I wonder if some ancestor mated with a Wookie.
My mother is 6' 1". We're big boned, folk, you might say. Hopefully going though life being a "big boy" will be a bit easier than my own experience of being a "big girl". (Think Anna Nicole Smith, but not as stupid, slutty, or busty. And I don't spend as much time on my hair.) Being a head taller than everyone in Kindergarten class and having men in a bar announce to your chest, "HOLY SHIT, YOU'RE TALL!" might not be as much of a problem for him as it was for me.
And by the way, short men: Please. You don't need to tell me in a bar how tall I am. Trust me. I KNOW. And I've got 20 or so years of frustrating jeans-shopping trips to prove it.
"My goodness, he's strong a strong baby!" everyone has told me, including the nurses at the hospital.
Lil' Hercules, we call him.
"He'll probably be a football player." People have said.
"Or a violin player," I think to myself...
. . . . .
A fly on the wall at one of my family's Thanksgiving gatherings could tell you - not only are we shockingly large people, but we are loud people that don't know when to shut up. At first we thought Kyra would take after Jeremy. As a baby, she mostly looked around quietly, wide-eyed, soaking it all up like a sponge as she appeared to be taking notes and doing research for the big moment when she planned to make her grand entrance as a person.
But not Niko. He's already found his voice. Shortly after he arrived, and many times since, my mother has proclaimed that "He's going to be the biggest blabbermouth of us all!" Oh, shit.
Blabbermouth? Possibly. Or, a tall, wise-eyed, dark-haired, kissable singer who plays the violin.
Before I was pregnant with Niko, when it was just us and Kyra, like many other parents (I assume), we began to consider a second child in large part so that our beloved daughter would have a sibling. A playmate.
And as I grew more and more pregnant, I remember thinking that above all things to be excited about upon baby number two's arrival, I was most excited to see my children play together. I couldn't wait to witness them interact. The thought of it just filled me with glee.
Recently, as we were playing on the living room floor, Kyra hugged her baby brother and said to me, "I just love Niko, momma. I'm so happy he was in your belly and popped out at the hospital."
"Kyra, I'm so happy that you love him, and I'm glad he popped out too."
I just wonder if he popped too fast when he popped, cause DAMN, my tail bone has been killing me lately.
