Mendolonium

If you look in my drafts folder on wordpress I’ve got seventeen unfinished blog posts.  In my head, I probably have another three dozen more posts rattling around.  But alas, I only have two hands, and they are almost always full of baby these days.   Life is very, very full.  Sometimes more than full – overflowing – with constant childcare, minor crises like ear infections, obligations to work at Thomas’ new school, getting the house re-roofed, my rheumatoid arthritis acting up.  I am living in a demilitarized zone of exhaustion and excitement.  But it is, for the most part, a happy chaos.  I most love the days we spend at home doing what is normal for us – keeping the kids outside until darkness falls and then herding them inside for a quick bath and bed, baking a spectacular dessert just because, blasting 80s music and having a family dance party.  And through it all the kids keep growing like the proverbial weeds and making us laugh.

Thomas continues to ask questions that challenge me on a daily basis.  This week as we walked home from school a police car drove past and I was peppered with a barrage of inquiries, “Do police officers ever break the law?”  “Who arrests a police officer?”  “Do police officers have to follow the law or can they do what they want because the other police are their friends?”

Theodore’s love affair with all things vehicular continues with unbridled passion.  The one mile walk to and from Thomas’ school is along a busy four lane boulevard and, for Theo, it is a walk of awesomeness.  He still manages to shout with glee every time he sees a Honda, which here in Southern California is about every fourth car.  He is very good at identifying cars and other pedestrians smile at the little boy yelling  “Mazda”, “Nissan!”, “Old Lexus!”  Earlier this week I caught Theo looking out of our front window calling wistfully “Porsche…Porsche, come here Porsche?   Porsche a cool car.  Me have a Porsche when I grow up.”  He carries around a bucket of toy cars all day long and I find tiny cars stashed under his pillow.  It’s fun to see him so obsessed with something.

Anna is flying through her infant milestones at breakneck speed.  She sits up on her own perfectly now – but not long before she lunges forward and pushes up trying to crawl.  This past weekend she learned to scoot backwards and today I watched as she delighted in scooting backwards through the living room, into the entry, and beyond until she backed into the front door and could go no further.  She is an expressive baby; chattering on for hours, screaming in fury when she backs herself under the couch, crying with loud shrieks when Jeff dares torture her by attempting to convince her to take a bottle (so far Anna is winning  that fight and absolutely refuses the bottle).  She’s also, for about the past 10 days, refused to sleep in the evenings.  Instead of going to sleep at 8:00 or 9:00 pm and staying asleep, mostly in our  arms – but asleep – she is now waking up from a “nap” at 10:00 pm and then gleefully trying to play with us until 1:00 am or so.  She is, of course, ridiculously cute and laughs easily during these late nights – as if she knows she has to be charming to get us to put up with this sleep bullshit.   After three children, I am quite aware that this is a developmental phase and that it (hopefully) won’t be long before she’s back sleeping at night (not through the night, but at least sleeping).  And you know what, insanely, I’ll bet that when she does I’ll miss our 10:30 pm runs to Target together, her midnight baths in the kitchen sink, and our late night dances.

The blog posts will just have to keep.  I am too busy partying with my baby.

This entry was posted on Thursday, May 10th, 2012 at 4:39 am and is filed under Anna, The Family Mendolo, Theodore, Thomas. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. Both comments and pings are currently closed.