Slumber party time

4 15 year old young men, video games, sugar, chips, mob mentality and nerf guns. Overnight.

What was I thinking?

Day after

Mr. Cynic quote of the week after dinner at the hibachi restaurant:

"I had fire thrown in my face!  Did you have fire thrown in YOUR face?! No, you didn't.  I had fire thrown in my face!" 

Happy Birthday, kiddo.

15 on 15

Mr. Cynic, my first born, arrived on April 28, 1995 at 12:41PM at Mt. Auburn Hospital in Cambridge, MA.  His arrival was nearly as eventful as the rollercoaster pregnancy that saw my weight drop from 98 pounds to 78 pounds with biweekly IVs -up to 4-5 bags worth of fluids and nutrients- during the first 5 months; and then ballooned up to 147 pounds largely because of the 16 ounces of water I had to drink per hour for the last 2 months just to keep my Braxton-Hicks and then some contractions 7 mins apart rather than 2 minutes apart.  Anytime it dropped down to 2 minutes apart necessitated another trip to the hospital for monitoring, and you got it, more fluids. We thought he was going to arrive too early, but he bungee jumped his way into the world with the umbilical cord figure-eighted around his neck and under one shoulder, 9 days late.

He is still rather all about numbers and facts.

Here are fifteen facts of my fifteen year old:

1.  When he was 4 years old, he became the grocery store budgeting calculator.  He added every item price we picked up into the budget allowed, until we shopped, essentially to the penny, with enough left over that he could have a candy from near the cash register. 

2. He makes lollipops last longer than any lollipop maker ever intended, longer than humanly imaginably.  He should be in the Guiness Book of World Records for longest lollipop last.  The old owl in the Tootsie Pop commercials ain't got nothin' on him.

3. He is a very empathetic and compassionate person, but you would probably not realize this through his liberal use of deadpan expressions and sarcasm. As a toddler, he was the kid at the park, who, when someone else fell, ran over to pat them on the back, ask if they were okay and kiss their boo-boo.  He has been known to give his last dollar to a homeless person on many occasions.

4.  He is an absolutely beautiful, though slight and skinny young man. Yes, I know I am biased, but there is a load of objective evidence to support this foregone conclusion.

5. He sings in the shower.  About two years ago, the soprano became a bass literally overnight, and I wondered, who is that man in the shower whose singing vibrates the house?

6.  He is a genius LARPer. And has been since he was kissing boo-boos way back when.  He can show up at any gathering of kids, now teens, and the next thing I see, the entire group is on some covert mission, embattled with giant aliens, or whatever else has popped into his head.  Parents everywhere are amazed at his ability to involve even the most generally reluctant of personalities.  This happens spontaneously.

7. He writes songs.  The lyrics are heavy on broken hearts and bloody ends, but they are quite well-written. He also writes books, big on the lone wolf personality with some kind of science fiction powers, and again, big on blood and guts and clean-bladed decapitations. But they are well written, and I'm glad he's working out that aspect of himself on paper, while remaining a somewhat gentle soul in life.

8. He took up playing bass in September, with the intent of starting a band he has been devising for a couple of years. His bass teacher says he is a very quick study. 

9.  He took flute in elementary and quit when his asthma got harder to deal with, especially for parades. Music appreciation is a big part of his life.

10.  His 10th year was a medical doozy, including 3 major emergency hospital visits for  getting asthma, Lyme's Disease Bacterial Spinal Menengitis, and the discovery that he was largely blind in one eye due to a retinal tear that required immediate corrective surgery to prevent it worsening.  "The Big E?  What Big E?"  (looking at an eye chart with the other eye covered)


11. He's very funny in a very dry way. 

12. He's very smart, but still has plenty to learn. He's a self-motivated, planning type of student. 

13. He has a special way with Toots who absolutely adores him.  Actually he has a pretty easy way with kids of all ages and though he can act like a know-it-all, at times, generally finds it very easy to get along with everyone. Mostly. Unless he disagrees on a matter of principle.

14. He has a strong moral fiber, and wants to right all the wrongs of world and domestic politics.

15. He is my son, the one who made me a mother, and when I first held him in my arms,  though I knew nothing, and was going to learn it by him, everything, and I really do mean everything, suddenly made perfect sense.

And one more for luck:

16.  He is his brother's archnemesis, while conversely, his greatest defender. You better not mess with Captain Comic when Mr. Cynic is around.

Mr. Cynic at bass lesson via cellphone

Busy weekend, not much sleep

I'm not complaining, but this state of mind is leaving me rather cotton-stuffed between the ears.  So not much to say.  I have things I'm thinking of and a big week ahead, so possibly I will post better in the coming days.  Wednesday should have a big one. 

I was so tired, I found myself blubbering this Sunday about how on Wednesday, "the child who made me a mother turns 15."  As I said it, and as I blubbered, in my head I was thinking, "where on Earth is this coming from?"  and laughing at myself for it.  And then I remembered, "Oh yea, I didn't sleep at all last night!  It's sleep deprivation!"

I have a lot of experience in this department.

Last night's dinner conversation

And it begins:

Capt. Comic: Mom? What's POT?!


My MIL: It's something you cook in.

Capt. Comic:  No, not that kind! The OTHER kind!

Mr. Cynic (my 15yo in 5 days): Marijuana.

Me (humorously, I hope): That better be all you know!

Mr. Cynic (eye roll): It's a smokable illegal substance that makes you high.

My MIL: Except it's legal in California.

Mr. Cynic and me, in unison: Only for medical purposes.

Me to Capt. Comic: and don't do it, because it'll make you stupid. Stoners are stupid (lame imitation of a stoner including 'whoa, duuuude').

Shea: What's a STONER?!

Toots, quietly at the other end of the table:  sto-neh?!

Mr. Cynic: Someone who smokes pot.

Me: Like skaterboyz.

Capt. Comic: What's a skaterboy?

Mr. Cynic: Remember when I had long hair? Like that, but with a skicap.

Capt. Comic: What's a skicap?

Honey, motions with his hands as if he has ski poles at the dinner table: It's what you wear when you ski to keep your head warm.

(And it continues while the light slowly crests over the horizon of his mind until, eureka! We seem to strike gold)

Capt. Comic: OOOOOOOOOOOOooooooooohhhhhhh.......

Squirrel!

Cheeky little bugger, isn't he?  I took this through my slider, from about a three feet away.

Where was my terrifying to rodents terrier?

Probably sleeping on the couch, on the pillow she has taken over but not yet chewed to smithereens.

Happy Earth Day, btw.  I'm actually quite thrilled to see the little rodent so comfortable on my deck table. 

I doubt Honey feels the same way.  He skeeves easily when it comes to where he eats and any possibility of contamination. Not that he's OCD or anything.  He's just a little quirky about his food.

The Universe works in mysterious ways

Sooo, I will kvetch no more - this week anyway - as after my last two days of considering every option and feeling like I had none left, suddenly:

a friend offered to barter my tutoring her 13 year old daughter for watching my 2 year old daughter on writers' group days. 

aaaand!

drumroll, please.....

Honey's cousin needs some of Honey's professional expertise on a public speaking gig in Colorado in a couple of weeks.  And he offered to let me tag along, too.  I will go to his public speaking gig, but largely, I am going to blissfully sit in my hotel room, without any interruptions and edit the bejeez out of my manuscript on Honey's laptop!!!

and Grandma offered to watch the kids for that weekend. 


I hope I didn't die, because this sure feels like heaven.

Rolling with it

So yesterday's post was a bit of a rant about how things just seem to not be going my way and I have to take a little more charge in order for me to show up on the family priority list.  Today, is another thwarted day for creativity, but I shall try to make the best of it.

Since I won't be able to write effectively, I am making a public list of want to dos for the day.

1. Remove the insane piles of clothes in my room by finishing the switch of summer clothes and actually putting last week's laundry in the appropriate drawers.  Grandma is home today, so I can leave Toots with her and disappear for my own sake and sanity in this endeavor.

2. I think 1 is about enough, but maybe I will sneak the current book I am reading up there with me for breaks in the above and

3.  Maybe I'll sneak in a little journaling, too.  The binding on that thing is getting creakier than a haunted house door hinge. And maybe in doing that, for tomorrow, I'll have freed up enough brain space to actually accomplish an edit or two.

Out of balance again

I talk a good game about letting go of what I can’t control, making time for me and for creativity, but the fact of the matter is that for a while now, I haven’t been writing what I need to write: big edits on my manuscript.

I’m getting very frustrated with not having any independent time. Most days look like this for me:

6-9am get everyone up and off to school and work and exercise classes.

9-12ish: Toddler duty sans my live-in mother-in-law while she goes out for her own things most mornings. And that’s fine, because it is important to her to keep fit. While on toddler duty, I can usually focus enough to write a short blog post and garden, thank goodness for gardening. A couple of days a week, do load after load of laundry. Family of six, you know.

12-2ish: maybe Toots goes down for nap on the early side, but typically it’s later now, and she is wound up and I have been trying to feed her, myself and get her down for a nap while she alternately squeals and clings or runs around like a maniac, getting into everything, and my mother-in-law arrives back home and sits at her computer to play Farmville and the like. Sometimes we talk well, sometimes she has to get something off her chest after spending the morning out with her sister and friends, and that’s usually when I really start to feel frustrated because I have been here, unable to work on what I really want to focus on: the manuscript, and Toots is out of whack and won’t logically take her nap the way she should. Because her nap is all about me you know. ;)

2pm: Eldest , Mr. Cynic arrives home from high school, checks in, walks dog, maybe unloads dishwasher then goes to hang out around the neighborhood. It’s a good neighborhood, he has good friends here. Maybe Toots is down for her nap or we’re still struggling to get her to take one, but I’ve largely given up by then and am just trying to tune her out, hoping she’ll do like one of the boys did when they were her age, and she’ll wear herself out, pass out on the floor with her butt up in the air. This is not how she works. I don’t know why I persist in putting hope into this fallacy. More Farmville from the neighboring computer. Or Grandma lies down with Toots on the guest bed, because Toots needs to hold someone’s belly while sucking two fingers on her other hand, in order to fall asleep, which she still heartily resists. Or maybe I give up, and take the lay down with Toots duty.

I’m exhausted by now, unfocussed, can’t think straight, and usually can find some housework to do, etc.

3:15pm: Captain Comic, my 11 year old son with Asperger’s Syndrome comes home and starts buzzing around the house, has to be micromanaged to wash his hands and get a snack, check in about school day, and then he gets 30 minutes of videogames if it’s a good day. He is typically a constant stream of noise. All writing is completely out the window by now. And my evening is filled with lessons that start at 5:00 for boys, getting dinner together, which is an a la carte challenge with differing dietary needs and wants across the board from basic pickiness, to vegetarian, to soy and lactose intolerance, to ‘I’m so sick of pasta with red sauce’ to just griping to gripe about it.


So by evening, I am completely tapped out. And then micromanaging re: homework, shower, bedtime rituals, etc.

--------------------------
A while back I was invited to join a children’s authors writer’s group that meets on two Tuesdays a month during midday. We write and critique, Usually focussing on one or two people’s work per session. This was a godsend. I asked my mother-in-law if she would watch Toots on those days. It worked for a while, but now she has a particular class that meets during my critique time. And I’m SOL.

So as of this morning, while the discussion has occurred between Honey and me in the past, I have made the decision, that I don’t care what it costs, because it’s either going to be financial support or logistical family support, I need to write. I am getting on the horn with daycare centers and plunking my daughter into strangers hands a couple of days a week.

It’s that or I go completely and utterly, frustratingly insane. And my book will never get finished and sold.

So there.  I will make the balance, because it obviously won't happen any other way.

Norman Rockwell stopped by for a visit

On any other day, you would never see this.  Captain Comic and Toots usually keep their distance pretty well, and if they happen to wander into each other's personal space in any capacity, screams ensue.  It could be either one of them screaming. 


But this morning, I heard something unusual coming from the least populated room in the house, and found them like this, cuddled up, Capt. Comic reading a picture book to Toots, and both of them enjoying it calmly, together.  They both have been sick for about two weeks with a cold that seems to subside and rev back up again. 

I'm going to enjoy this picture perfect moment a moment longer, because, as soon as they feel better, I'll likely ne'er see it again.

Norman Rockwell does not live here. We do.

hhhhmmmm....a deux

I'm still feeling under the weather.  Throat and ears are iffy, but not too lousy.  Some days are more productive than others.  After errands galore yesterday, I ended up just lying down the rest of the day.

Today, I  didn't really feel like getting up and out to go co-lead the youth group at my UU church. But we had a really good communication lesson about active listening, and all the teens seemed to really get something out of it. 

And I was dubbed 'cool'. 

They like me, they really like me!  (just riffing Sally Fields's oscar speech)

And Mr. Cynic said, "Of all the moms I know, you're the easiest to get along with." Publicly.

*heart all aflutter*

I must be doing something right.  

I played The Violent Femmes for him on the way to and from church.  Music lesson in cool for the day.  I thought he would like them for the bass heavy leads, and had to discuss lyric content.  The kind of lyrics most parents would not likely proudly share wth their impressionable youth.  He got it. 

Today's plan

is to plant the phlox I bought yesterday.  They look lovely in the pots I purchased  strategically placed around the bushes and side of the house where I want them to be in the ground. 

But after last night's spontaneous girls' night out adventure loaded with laughs and friends, and making new friends and generally having a ball, after yesterday's relatively perfect day of lack of planning leading to gardening and then some, I may just lay back down in the chaisse lounge out back with a book and my red sox cap pulled low over my eyes, after I settle Toots down for her nap.

(please settle down for nap, Toots, please, oh please oh please?)

I think I need one, too.  I was up way past my bedtime.

Upside

Today started in a way that felt catastrophic - my internet connection was down.  So after trying to figure it out for a long time, I finally said:

Hey, I don't want to be doing this!  I said I was going to garden this morning!  By then it was elevenish.  So I gardened, late, but I got everything that needed getting into the ground into the ground. 

May the veggies grow!

Toots was a helper in the way a two year old can be:  by getting ahold of the hose, coming right up behind me and squirting me in an embarassing way.  No, I did not have that kind of accident, I swear, it was Toots with a garden hose, by the plot next to the rake.  No Colonel Mustard was on hand.

Then I laid in the sun, and she wandered the yard, then wandered up onto my lap in the chaisse lounge, and she was out with the warm sun and cool breeze to comfort her.

Never a more perfect moment existed.  Relaxed, a satisfaction of good work in the dirt, and a sleepy warm cozy kid on my lap, while reading a book in the backyard, dog asleep under me, and cat wandering over to check out what was going on. 

And then I brought miss sleepy into the house; Mr. Cynic came in from his bus; and just as I was telling him about the internet being down, up it came.  So I left Toots sleeping in his care, while he sat at the computer. I ran a variety of errands, alone, accomplished much more than I could have with anyone in tow, and I bought lots of phlox at the garden center so I will not have to mulch nearly so much in the springs to come.

So now I get to plant those tomorrow.

Life is good, don't forget to use sunscreen.

wishing ocean

I am wishing ocean
the weather is there
and then it is not
the summer glimpsed
then the wind picks up

the ocean the ocean
the summer breeze
the ocean the ocean
calls to me
the rain threatens
the temperature drops

please summer come
and all this teasing stop

the ocean calls
and I must swim
the ocean calls
and leads me in

the swirling waters break
around my ankles
and come together again
rise to my knees, my waist,
I dip my hands in

take a deep breath
and plunge wholly in,
holy in the water
fresh salt on my lips
the scent of the tide
as I break surface for air

the ocean ebbs
the ocean flows
and with it
all of my woes.

she takes me in,
and out I rise again.

i have a code in my node

Woe is me, and it's a small woe.

I am blessed, unlike most of the rest of my immediate family, to not be generally affected by hayfevery pollen issues, except for the occasional burning eyes around pine pollen season.

Yet, between everyone else around me stuffing up, snuffling sneezing coughing, etc, we also acquired a cold, and now it has acquired me.

I won't whine, but I will say, stuffy sinus cavity is not a comfy feeling.

And Captain Comic did not go back to school today.  Poor kid, up coughing all night again. 

HHHHmmmm...I don't think that editing is going to happen as I had planned....This may be a turn on the TV, plug in videos type of day. 

School break has ended

You know how I know?  It's not because I suddenly have a quiet house in which to concentrate.

Nope.

It's because no one's alarm went off, Mr. Cynic missed his bus for the first time in his life; the coffee maker did not auto-brew as it does at 6:30am absolutely every morning; and Captain Comic and Toots had to be taken in to the doctor for their week old coughs and snufflies.  Pooor Captain Comic had been up coughing like a seal all night. 

Everyone is now properly medicated and life goes on....maybe tomorrow I can send Captain Comic back to school.  I sure hope so.  Love him.  Miss my 'me time'.

Boy, do I have a sinus headache starting, too...

movie review of a different kind

Last night, Syfy channel showed an original movie called Megapiranha.

First I would like to mention, as many others have already, just how much the station changing from Scifi to Syfy irritates the bejeez out of me.  I am, after all, an Enlish major, writer, and tutor at heart.  Just ignore my sentence fragments and run-ons here, because those are for expressive emphasis, you know.  It's my conversational style.

At the end of Megapiranha, after much laughter at the complete and utter ridiculosity of it, which includes casting Tiffany of 80's mall singer fame as the scientist who bioengineered the giant and growing bigger than a helicopter by the end of the movie piranha:

Mr Cynic proclaimed, "Oh good, I think I just used up a part of my memory I'll wish I still had later in life!'

This space was reserved for a movie review

I took the younger two of my children to see How To Train Your Dragon today.

I was going to review it here after I saw it, but considering I took a two year old Toots along, because she used to be such an enviably good baby, there will be no review.  The devil has taken her place.

About when I had chased her up and down the center aisle stairs multiple times (nicely, mind you, she just wanted an adventure, unless I thwarted it, then screams ensued), I knew we were done.

Here's how I knew:  A woman got right in my face and yelled, "I paid a lot of money to see this move!"  (We were at a matinee showing - the cheap seats) 

So I looked her in the eye and declared, "So did I."

Then she said she would call the authorities.  I thought, real nice lady, there's 10 minutes left.  We came to the matinee because I had the toddler with me.

The good news is Captain Comic really enjoyed the movie, and stayed in his seat the whole time.  Now that is an accomplishment, especially considering I left him in there on his own.

Pollen, anyone?

Spring has not only sprung, it has exploded in yellow green clouds of pine pollen and coated my entire town in a layer that if it were gold dust, we'd all be millionaires just from dusting off our cars and cashing the stuff in.

Lucy's snout, for instance,  is usually all black.  I finally got as good shot of her looking at the camera.  This dog is either in full sniff and dig mode, running circuits around the yard, or flat out asleep.  She is very difficult to photograph. 

Those wisteria buds I posted a few days ago have begun to bloom, and the scent of them in the air is truly heaven.

Late yesterday afternoon was a hot one.  94 in the shade hot, but there was a delightful breeze.  Unfortunately, it blew pollen everywhere, too...especially in my eyes, which are allergic to the stuff and burned.  I was good and didn't cave to the temptation to rub them, which turns them into fiery water faucets.  Seriously, they pour cartoon waterfalls if I rub them with this pollen in the air, on my hands, and everywhere else. 

It was so hot, even Toots had to rest.  Usually when we are out back, and I'm gardening or puttering some other yard work, she is 'running, running, running awound in ciwcos!'  or doing so while singing a song.  You can see, we still have a lot of work to do to prep my vegetable beds as well as the lawn.  I'm off to a slower start this year, trying to listen to my still healing body.

Even with the pollen overkill, it was a lovely, lovely, afternoon. 

balancing on the head of a pin

1.  Want to edit my manuscript like crazy today.

2. Need to call Mr. Cynic at friend's sleepover and find out if it's time to pick him up, having overstayed his welcome.

3. Want to edit my manuscript like crazy.

4. Toots keeps coming over to hug and cuddle or is getting into trouble elsewhere in the house.

5.  Feel very inspired to work on this big redux on the manuscript.

6. Captain Comic keeps coming over, tapping me on the shoulder and asking to use the computer to work on his document.

7. Inspiration is jumping around, pinging off the walls internally to work on my massive manuscript edits.

8.  Grandma is home, too, not that that's bad, but it's another excuse for a lack of concentration.

9.  I really want to work on my manuscript.  A happy mom is an inspired writing mom.

10.  Laundry.  Summer clothes from attic.  94 degree forecast today. 

11. Can I work on my manuscript, pretty please?

12.  Gardening calling...or rather weeding to continue calling.

13. Pretty, pretty, pretty please, with whipped cream on top?

14. Who wants to go to the beach?

The Easter Bunny, three days late

The Easter Bunny brings my kids books.  Always has.  Oh sure they get candy, too.  But since it's now Wednesday, I will skip what plenty of others have already posted blogs about throughout the interwebz. 

However, briefly, I will mention the moment we found a stripped down to her diaper, sugarblitz Toots rolling around in a chocolate bunny puddle on the dining room carpet and smearing it all over her, too.  While singing something between Happy Birthday and Twinkle Twinkle, which she sings Ticko ticko I wonder where you are.

Now that's how most women want to eat chocolate.  Oh to express ourselves they way we truly feel about it, with two year old abandon!

Now back to our scheduled program:  Books.

Toots received a little board book, The Story of Easter.  Cute, but a little too glossed over for my taste. It works for a toddler.  She seems to like it well enough.


Captain Comic received Jeff Kinney's Diary of a Wimpy Kid: Rodrick Rules.  He read it before we got out the door to my church chorus rehearsal, which was before the early service, not our usual shift.  The best review of a book in my book is one that is essentially eaten in one bite, and with outloud laughter.  Here is his assessment:

It was Okay.  A lot of essential humor, and a good story where Rodrick tells Greg that if he ever snitches, he's going to spill Greg's secret about something really embarrassing that happened in the summer to the world. And one subplot I really liked in the book is when Greg and Rodrick are punished by having to write what they did wrong to each other and draw a picture of it.  My favorite drawing is when Rodrick makes his drawing that says on the top, 'I will not push Gregory' and it shows Rodrick pushing Greg off a cliff into the ocean where a hungry shark is waiting.  hahahahaha!

For the record, Okay must mean great, because he's read it several times since, too. *

Mr. Cynic received Terry Pratchett and Neil Gaiman's Good Omens. Nothing quite like a good romp through the Apocalypse for Easter, eh?


*I asked him if this seemed like the right thing to say and he confirmed. 

Confirmation of all my fears

Great writers' group this morning - afternoon.  We wrote, I was interrupted by kids a variety of ways (school vacation and toddler), and then we got hungry, ate lunch and discussed the first third of my novel, as I mentioned yesterday.

They confirmed all of my misgivings about the manuscript's current state, and now, boy do I have a lot of work to do.  But it's good, not the dread that my anticipation was giving me. 

I kind of wish I was done already...but I guess this is what they mean about 2nd draft work.  It's not just about picking through the first draft and the million and a half edits already done, but about the complete restructuring of the storytelling... focus description into action, rearrange parts, rethink what is important about characters ad how they serve the story...you know, the big stuff.

So big stuff, here I come.  Right after this diaper change....

Psst!  Guess what else?  They liked it, too!

writerly crisis of faith

Almost two weeks ago, I gave the first thirty-three pages of my baby, er, children's novel manuscript to my critique group.  We meet tomorrow.  During school vacation.  At my house.  With my gang of mayhem and two other kids added to the mix. And the one person I know outside the group will not be there, so she returned my pages with her comments yesterday.

I've done a lot of work on those first thirty pages in the past 6ish years since I started writing this little tale.  They are the initial inspiration, and what I always felt really worked about the book.  The changes I had made were on the small side, grammar, tense, slight rearranging of things.  Now I feel like I have to move a thought bubble that wraps the first third of the novel very nicely and turn into a scene that will be the new opening of the book.  Not that that was her exact suggestion, but that's where my mind took it.

But I love my opening!  There's a great slow build to what happened to make this kid so upset in the opening lines.

I have had other readers who really loved the opening. I have four more readers to hear from tomorrow. 

How can my heart be simutaneously in my throat and in the bottom of my gut at the same time?  I feel like I have a big envelope to open, and it either has very very good news, or absolutely horrid news to bear.  Quite possibly both.  And once I open it, I will have to cut my big ball of dough in half, knead it, fold it over and over again into itself, pound on it, and hopefully, a beautiful loaf will emerge from the oven. 

I know, mixed metaphor central, but give me a break! 

Anticipation is a killer.

Big Bad A** 2 year old

Whoever took the daughter I spoke of yesterday and replaced her with the one that appeared this morning, I would like the old one back, please.


The word No and screams are her M.O.  today.

I remind myself this, too, shall pass.  But could it happen quickly, please?

At least my wisteria budding makes me happy. 

"I love you-you, too-too"

Two years ago today, I woke my husband in the middle of the night on a school night, and then we woke my mother-in-law, who was very excited, to tell her she needed to get the boys off to school in a few hours because we were on our way to the hospital.

A short while later, Toots made a slip-n-slide style entry into the world shortly before dawn.  I nearly dropped her on the floor before Honey and a nurse could swing me up onto the bed. 

Her eyes are brown, dark brown, like two drops of deep dark molten chocolate, yet they sparkle and twinkle with curiosity and mischief.

She still sucks two-fingers more often than not, and squeezes a handful of my belly as a comfort, where other kids have a favorite stuffed animal or blankie.  I can tell where she is in the house by the rhythmic sucking noise echoing off the living room cathedral ceiling, or from the corner of the office behind my desk. 

She talks a lot now. She was a very quiet baby for a very long time.  She was just taking it all in, assessing what was useful before she would speak.  She is very polite, using yes please, no thank you, excuse me please, and blesses you when you sneeze.

She is initially shy with people, but once she warms up she loves to do things that get a reaction from her new audience.  She flirts with Mr. Cynic's teenage friends. 

She loves her big brothers and will follow them around to be a part of whatever they are doing.  She and Captain Comic particularly enjoy jumping on the twampowine and digging up my garden patches when I'm not looking.  Mr. Cynic and she have a special language consisting of a raspberry-tongued greeting and giggles.

She loves clementines and chocolate, cheese and popcorn.  she says, "Mmmm, dass good!  Yes it is!"  when she tries something she likes.

I can't believe how much she has grown.  My boys' toddlerhoods seemed so much longer then.  I'm older now, and I am with her all day, and her toddlerhood has flown.  She astounds me everyday. 

She has a generally easygoing nature, calm, serene, even.  She is cautious, but loves a thrill ride, high on the swing, thrown into the air, down a slide, flips off my lap,  the faster the better, the higher the better, the steeper the drop the better.

Her smile can charm the most cynical. She melts the world with a glance from under her curly coppery mop. 

I'm the luckiest mom alive.  I love her, too-too.