The Ritual

"Are you ready?" the P-Dawg inquires every night at eleven.

"No! I'm still brushing my teeth!" I tell him through a mouthful of foam. He stops in the doorway, adjusts the drawstring on an ancient pair of hospital issue scrubs-turned-pajamas, and waits.

When we have both completed our nightly hygiene routines, activated the security system, and dimmed the lights, it is finally time. Hand-in-hand, we make our way down the upstairs hallway to perform the ritual that has been bookending our days for the past six and a half years . . .

The Checking of the Kids.

We enter the V-meister's lair first. She is nearly always lying flat on her back and so still that I'm compelled to lean in close enough to let our molecules mingle. A pink flashlight and a copy of The Grapes of Math rest on her warm, narrow chest. For kicks, the P-Dawg takes one gravid little hand by the wrist and lifts it high into the air, then lets it drop like a weight onto the mattress. V-meister could sleep through the apocalypse. I brush tendrils of sweaty hair away from her forehead as I kiss it.

We close the door and cross the hall.

Some nights we find J-dog slumbering on the floor, some nights on his mattress with derrier in the air. And sometimes he's kneeling at the side of the bed with his face planted in Dr. Seuss's Dictionary. There is a never ending procession of items to be removed from underneath his sheets: a Twilight Turtle, a walkie-talkie, a city of Legos, an armada of matchbox cars. The P-Dawg whispers subliminal messages into his ear. "You will poop on the potty . . . you will not wake up before seven o'clock." I kiss his forehead and he flinches, swatting at my greedy love.

We close the door gently and pad off to bed. At least for one more night, everyone is safe and accounted for. Our day's work is done.

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When my brothers and I would return home from college for the holidays, our mother never failed to state how good it was having us all together under one roof. I could never understand this. What difference did it make where we were sleeping?

Oh, I get it now. And even though I still think it's creepy, Lord help me I am starting to identify with the old lady in the childrens' book Love You Forever.

You know, the one who would sneak into her grown son's house at night to watch him sleep?


The V-meister, three months old. We could
not figure out why, the first night we brought
her home from the hospital, stuck a pacifier in
her mouth, swaddled her burritolike and set
her down in the middle of a vast expanse of crib,
she would not fall asleep.

Comfort and Joy

My favorite childhood Christmas decoration was a pair of mice - a mother and her baby - which my mom always displayed on the top of the toilet commode for the few weeks leading up to Christmas.

I'm not sure why I loved those little rodents so, or why they were perpetually relegated to the bathroom. I seem to recall that they reminded me of characters in my favorite Lithuanian childrens' book series, and I must have admired the minuscule candy canes and holly berries that adorned their necks. Every year the setting of the mice atop the commode was, for me, the highlight of the family's Christmas decorating tradition.

I revisited the mice statuettes recently when sorting through ornaments at my parents' house. They were much less interesting than I'd remembered them - The velvet tufts of fur were threadbare in places, one mouse's ear was missing, and the paint on the holly berries around the other one's neck was chipped to reveal a plain old Styrofoam craft ball underneath. It was hard to believe those two tattered little mice had once represented for me the very pinnacle of comfort and joy.

Last night I hauled out all our Christmas decorations (except the tree and banister garland - those go up next weekend), put on some holiday music, and while the P-Dawg made us a dinner of steak with roasted asparagus and mashed potatoes and the children played quietly afoot, I busted my decorating moves.

I put the time honored garland up on the fireplace, spending a healthy chunk of time positioning fake holly berries equidistantly from one another:



I fashioned a string of wire lights and two bendable berry garlands into a nest, and placed it at the foot of my fireplace:



I hung the festive, but migraine inducing jingle bells on the front doorknob:



Then I painstakingly set up the nativity scene, triangulating the three kings and the shepherd with his flock around the holy family in a tasteful and aesthetically pleasing manner:



Fifteen minutes and one visit from the little J-dog later, the statues looked like this:



Which is only right.

Finally, I reluctantly draped my old frenemy, the button-eyed reindeer quilt, over the back of the family room couch.



The quilt, which begs that a crystal candy dish full of Werther's Originals be placed next to it, was a wedding gift from a distant relative, who had lovingly sewn it herself. It's cute, but not my style, and this year as I sorted through the boxes in our basement, I had decided to leave the quilt behind.

Except that after I had turned my back on the quilt in favor of a box of funky Crate and Barrel ornaments, I could feel those insipid little button eyes boring into me.


"Don't do it, bish."

And so I didn't. I brought the quilt upstairs and while the kids played with Legos in the corner, I draped it over the back of the couch.

After dinner, we retired to the family room to relax and admire my handiwork. J-dog and V-meister were miraculously well-behaved and no quarreling or couch diving occurred. If there had been a fire in the grate and snow falling softly outside the windows, we would have been a scene straight out of a Thomas Kincaid painting.

It took only a few moments for the kids to notice that the reindeer quilt was up.

"REINDEER BUTTON QUILT, YAY!!!!!", they squealed while holding hands and jumping up and down.

The joy was palpable.

There was couch diving.

An angel choir began singing Handel's Messiah, and the spirit of Christmas alighted on my shoulder in the shape of a small red bird.

I'll never be able to diss the beady-eyed reindeer quilt - it might as well be a threadbare pair of Christmas mice.

A Fairytale

Once upon a time, in a kingdom called, "Ohio," there lived a little girl named V-meister who wanted nothing so much as a goldfish and for all girls to dress up as princesses on her sixth birthday.

On the birthday morning, she woke up and . . . there was an empty aquarium on her dresser.

Later, her mama took her to Petc0, where she picked out two fish:


"Valentine and Clementine" (Someone is going to have to remind us to change that filter in a couple of weeks.)

The princess's second wish came true the next day, when her grandparents, two uncles, brother, cousin and closest friends gathered for a birthday feast at Chateau Rama.



It was the V-meister's heart's desire that her mother, Queen Rima de la Rama, wear her wedding gown to the ball.

The Queen negotiated down to an old bridesmaid's dress and a tiara:


Princess V-Meister and Queen Rima de la Rama

Queen Rima de la Rama was a "beta mom" who normally snubbed themed birthday parties that would require her to lift a finger and only spoil the children more, but the idea of a princess party was somehow appealing.

Even Grandma M. and Uncle M. came in all their finery:



While there were no bouncy castles, red carpets, or hired court jesters, the princesses did do a craft and played several party games.


It was a foam craft.


(Some princess identities have been protected.)

Queen Rima de la Rama's friend, the Duchess of V, (wearing a black turtleneck and jeans) regaled the assembled princesses with super scary L1thuanian fairy tales featuring nine-headed fire breathing dragons and an assortment of cats, foxes, and roosters:


She was the hit of the party.

Afterwards, it was time for refreshments. Some princesses announced that they do not like pizza, turkey roll-ups, hummus, carrots, grapes, pretzels, or chocolate cake with ice cream.

Queen Rima de la Rama suggested that those princesses drink water. Does she look like the sort of queen who makes grilled cheese sandwiches on demand?

Then there was much present opening, wand waving, shrieking, and prancing throughout the kingdom as the princesses oohhed and ahhhed over gifts and began burning off their sugar highs.





Throughout the proceedings, the little Prince J-Dog (who refused to wear his knightly helmet for any length of time), was quite a trooper.

. . .Until the assembled princesses began chasing him all over the kingdom and calling him names, at which point he flipped out and had to be redirected.

He cannot be held accountable for his actions.



After the princesses partook of a delicious C0stc0 cake and some ice cream, they beat the living crap out of a pinata and stuffed their little pink polyester princess purses full of party spoils.

And they lived happily ever after, forever and ever,

THE END.

Hands Free

Next week, after the J-dog completes his neverending Montessori orientation period, both my children will be in school together all morning.  In other words: the moment I've been anticipating for the past six years of my life has arrived.  This post isn't about me not knowing what to do with my time now that I finally have some to myself, or about how much I want a third child now that two are flitting about the periphery of my nest.

I am happy.

But it's increasingly difficult to remember now how their baby bodies felt: the V-meister spare and birdlike; the J-dog pillowsoft and round with a steady, humming core. I lay in bed this morning post dream, chasing the essence of their infantness as quickly as it receded in smoky wisps from my morningscape. There was an ache, as there always is, and then a quick surrender to the reality that I am best as mother of two.

I'm still occasionally startled by this fleeting, vicelike grip on my gut, a selfish longing for their baby selves. It's not another child that I want - just the J-dog and V-meister for a moment fresh and new, unsullied by the desperate, anxious imprint of a new mother and her constant longing to have two hands free.

I want, of course, to correct my naive babymothering mistakes. But also, just once again, to lift their soft, malleable, diaper-clad bodies into the air, little toes and feet ensconced in the pods of footed pajamas, to walk with them feeling warmth nuzzled in the crook of my neck, and to hold them there with full knowledge of the moment's brevity in time.

My Babylust is Fun Size

Do you know how cute a shoeless two-year old attempting a headstand looks?

Cute enough to cause a shriveled up 35 year-old mother of two who has sworn off having more children almost seriously reconsider her decision in a fit of babylust, that's what.

I've had minor ovarian twitches in the past, upon oogling other people's newborns and such, but never to the point where I was doing actual math in my head, like today during the little J-dog's Gymboree class. (July is a top-notch month, though, don't you think?)

Apparently, twenty adorable and exceptionally well-behaved two year olds toddling around barefoot and losing their shit for pure joy over a roomful of mechanically generated bubbles can totally do that to a person who may or may not be in the middle of her moon cycle, if you're picking up what I'm laying down.

But as strong as the urge was today, I know it is not a good idea for me to have more children. And I probably won't. Even though I'm pretty sure I could. I mean, I know how to do it, is what I'm saying.

I'm wondering, though: is there anyone out there reading who thought her family was complete and then decided to have a third child? Anyone, say, who had a VERY difficult time of it when her kids were babies and couldn't wait for the day when she finally had two hands free? And when that day was finally on the horizon, maybe found herself thinking that two hands aren't really all that and a bag of chips? Anyone out there who regrets a decision to have only two children? Found that the third time was the absolute charm? I await your wisdom.

Really, what I need is a mother of two teenagers, preferably one boy and one girl, to talk me off the ledge.

Rimarama, this is your Head Voice speaking. I can talk you off the ledge. How about: You're a b1tch on wheels when pregnant! And you're really not that good with teensie-weensie bobbly-headed wittle babies. You are prone to post-partum depression. And you have renegade boobies that routinely malfunction when called upon to act as vessels of infant nourishment. You should go back to work when the J-Dog starts school. Otherwise, I'm pretty sure you'll have a mid-life crisis and you totally suck at scrapbooking. Was there anything else?

Rimarama: Well, there is the almost ten pounds of baby weight I finally wrested off.

Head Voice: Word.

So then I came home with an enormous hankering for smoked oysters. Which I ate for lunch, atop two slices of gag-a-licious weight watchers bread (not recommended). Afterwards, I absolutely had to have a Fun Size Snicker's bar, but found that there was not much "fun" about it until I chased it up with three or four more, at which point it became a veritable Festival of Fun. For about ten seconds, and then it turned into a Guilt Garden.

But, it helped get my mind off babies.

This pikchur was taken when I was eight months along with the V-Meister:

"Are You Freakin' Kidding Me, Rimarama?"


P.S. Don't anybody go reading anything into this post. I am absolutely, unequivocally, hands-down, NOT pregnant.