“Can you say ’sherpa?’”

Jack is 10 months old today.

And climbing.

He started it yesterday. There is a table between the couch and the wall that he is fascinated by… mostly because we put things out of his reach there. All the things he loves most to eat/destroy/mangle– Robby’s old beer coasters, paper napkins, my fountain pen, a pair of Tiki men salt & pepper shakers “borrowed” from Trader Vics… Jack’s figured out that if he climbs into the magazine rack he has enough height to see all the treasures that rest on the table.

And reach for them.

My “Jacky– No!” is met with a foxish little look over his right shoulder. I swear he’s sizing me up. The second “No!” is accompanied with me swooping up the little trumpet vine and putting him back on the floor near his toys.

We do this a lot.

I can hear some of my ChildFree friends thinking, “Just move the stupid rack” but that’s not really the point, is it? Besides, he’s also figured out that if he pushes his Peek-a-Block eating Hippo toy near the ottoman he can reach the little wooden hutch’s top that holds Daddy’s box of cigars.

He also claps now. Thankfully, for my sanity, he hasn’t combined the climbing with the clapping because the clapping is just insanely cute and warrants us yelling, “Yay Jack!” when he does it. Waving bye-bye is old hat now– he regularly waves at us while playing and eating and occasionally when drifting off towards sleep.

It still feels like yesterday we were on the island that was my bed in the hospital marveling at the tiniest creature. I can’t wrap my mind around the time that has flown by.

Good owl!

[Insert devilish laughter] It’s here. It’s finally here. My beautiful British cover-ed Harry Potter book six.

Now to get Rob to quit his job so we can start reading it.

Maybe I’ll just peek at it….

Mom wouldn’t invite Harry Potter to her reception so I’m still waiting.

While everyone else this weekend (seemingly the whole freakin’ rest of the world) is reading Harry Potter’s latest escapades I am still waiting to get my hands on my nice British copy.

Not that I haven’t been busy. My mother got married this weekend. Which is a little weird because you don’t much ever expect to attend your parent’s wedding. They’re supposed to get that out of the way before you are born so that you don’t have to worry about what to wear. It disrupts the cycle of things.

A lot of family was there and a good smattering of old, old friends– the faces that are at the big events in our lives. The faces that are, for the most part, welcomed sights to see. Still, my mother’s family is at that wretched age where the youngest grandchild has now graduated from high school leaving few happy events in our near future– the next few decades will probably bring more funerals then weddings and births and it makes me sad. I want Jacky to know all these people. I want him to grow up hearing the stories that I did.

The food at the wedding was fabulous– my boss catered it and part of me wishes she’d quit and cook full time because she’s really good at it even while most of me is glad that she is my boss and that she hasn’t jumped ship to play in the kitchen… and the cake was divine. Yummy and fluffy and raspberry. The cake maker did my wedding cake and I’ve dreamed about it for the last 10 years.

Everyone commented on how pretty my mother looked and I have to agree– she was dressed very simple and without much fuss or bother. The wedding was very much like her in it’s simplicity. We tramped out into a middle of a row of grapes and she was married in the span of about 5 minutes. Jack gabbled a little bit. He likes a silent crowd. Over us the skies were darker and darker but the rain held off till we’d found shelter again.

A few people asked me how I was feeling about the whole thing. I don’t think I know myself. It’s a small club, in my world, of people who have attended the marriages of one of their parents… it’s a little uncharted. It’s nice that Mom is happy. It’s a big change of things. And change– even the obviously good changes like Jack– are still an adjustment. Ask me in a year. Maybe then I’ll know.

I’ve been thinking about my niece Keegan and her recent comment that my house smells good and our ensuing conversation about how everyone’s house has a smell. Some are good. Some are weird. Some stink. I’m glad to know that she likes the way our house smells. She’s 11 and brutually honest. She’d tell me if it was stinky. Or weird. The thing is you can’t always put your finger on it– it just strikes you as good or weird or stinky. The rythym of our family is unique, too. Adding to or taking away from the family upsets the balance. You can’t explain it. Mom added to it this weekend. We’ll see how it goes.

Bookish

The sixth Harry Potter book is coming out this weekend. Which means, of course, that I won’t have mine for at least 7 days.

That’s okay. At this rate it’ll take me about 2 months to get through it.

I hope the books hold up enough for Jack to like them someday.

More than that, I really, really hope that Jack will like to read and that it won’t all be from computer screens but actual books that he holds and lugs around. There are a lot of friends I want him to meet– Almanzo and all his amazing meals, the Cricket that lives in Times Square, Winnie-the-Pooh, and Roald Dahl’s quirky children.

Jack’s introduced me to so much that I owe him them at least.

That’s it! Everybody out of the pool!

Another benchmark of being somebody’s mother and father– Today Jack pooed in his pool. The good news is that I think that there is real potential for a children’s song there… (“Poo-ed in the pool! Poo-ed in the pool!” is a catchy little chorus starter.) The bad news is that Mommy has one heck of a gag reflex and it’s just gross anyway.

The little brown vapor trail tipped us off and then Jack’s sudden inclination to crawl away from said vapor trail. In the end the pooy swimmie diaper was extracted from baby’s pooy bottom, the toys were scrubbed, the pool was drained (my vinca flowers are flourishing!) and scrubbed and then Lysoled and scrubbed and then drained and refilled.

Baby got a shower with Mommy.

It’s all just a harbinger for things to come– puke and poo and diahrrea and other bodily fluids. Blah. And yet I can’t complain. We’ve been lucky up till now. Not even a true poo blow out.

And, like I typed before, my vincas look amazing.

Reach for the sky!

Big, big Jack Occurrence today.

He and I were playing on the floor with his addictive little alphabet Peek-a-Blocks (thank you Fischer Price Company!). Jack was being especially silly this morning– very mischevious and elflike. He likes to smash down the towers that I build (for him to smash down)… he’ll wait till they are worth it– if I only build them 3 blocks high he’ll ignore it. If it manages to get four or five blocks high he’ll attempt to feign disinterest — an attempt that is thwarted by his constant need to check on the progress of the building. That’s what we were concentrating on when he surprised me by gingerly holding my trouser leg and standing up all by his little clever self.

Time freezes usually when it’s something bad– that horrible moment when all the hope that the situation will reverse itself seeps out of you and the inevitable thing happens. Today the opposite was true. For a magical moment he and I were locked in looking at each other and holding our breaths. His chubby little wrists went out into the air for balance but he already’d had it. He hadn’t even tugged on the trouser fabric. And there he stood– gingerly poised with slightly bent knees and the biggest grin sliding across his face.

I like best that this first time he didn’t fall but lowered himself back down again and– on terra firma again– squealed happily while I clapped and cheered.

I don’t think I’ve ever seen a light so bright as the bulb that went on over my boy’s head today. I know this is the harbringer of him walking and running away from me to other things and I know that too soon nothing will be safe in the house and there will be skinned knees and crocodile tears. But I hope that I remember this morning and our shared wow moment.

Of course. He hasn’t done it since. There are towers to smash. Cheerios to eat.

Yankee Doodle Boy

Jack’s first Independence Day has been filled with a steady rain. It rained this morning at the cottage. It rained on and off on the ride home. It’s raining now back in our little nest.

It’s okay. It’s not all that Fourthy feeling when we have to go to bed for work tomorrow. Most of the area fireworks were shot off over the weekend when people could stay up late enough to enjoy them.

In times past we’ve enjoyed fantastic displays of pyrotechnic euphoria put on by Robby or up north Neighbor Nat. (The latter whom had the annoying habit of narrating his to the point where his restless, bug eaten crowd would threaten him harm if he didn’t give us what we wanted– more show and less talk.) Lately our Independence Day fireworks have been much less explosive and dazzling…. we’re all getting old enough that the old thrill of playing with fire has ebbed and none of us are independently wealthy as to be able to plow through the really good fountains and roman candles in successive fashion. Besides…who has time to drive to other states where you can by the good ones anymore? The ones that send projectiles into the night sky and leave charred remains on the dock.

I have fond memories of sitting in a lawn chair with a cold coke watching the mad scramble of 8 or so grown men and a boy or two huddled around a fuse on the end of the dock and then the mad mad dash of the group running, singlefile, of course, towards land as the fool firecracker either exploded into brilliant bursts of colored flame or fizzled fickley out. (That was fun, too as it bore the drama of, “Do we go back out there?” “Is it still lit?” “Will it still explode?”) Then the singlefile trip back out again to light (or relight) the next fuse.

This year Robby, Lady (my mother-in-law), and I tramped out to the end of the dock to the platform with chairs and beverages to watch the Lake fireworks. From our vantage point we had decent explosions at 2 o’clock, 11 o’clock, 10 minutes to 11 o’clock, and 8 o’clock as different families sent theirs off into the dark sky. The beauty of the Lake is the accoustics. We’d send up a hearty cheer for the really good ones knowing that our voices would be carried to the pyrotechnitions of our admiration. We were joined by Neighbor Nat and his Mom who took up with us in lighting box after box of sparklers while we watched the other displays. By the end of the last carton we had to sit in the still night dodging the swarms of moths till the bright spots faded from our eyes enough to let us walk the narrow dock again to shore.

I love sparklers. I really, really do. Maybe because, when I was a little girl, we viewed most of my Dad’s fireworks from behind the relative safety of the back screen door. The danger element of lit fuses and Chinese made explosives was never lost on us… though it got crowded and hot standing with my sister and mother while Dad set them off gingerly in the backyard. For some reason we were allowed sparklers without too much regimentation… I clearly remember Mom teaching us to quickly wave our sparklers to spell out our names before the smoke trail cleared. And one year when we lit as many as we could that we’d stuck in the grass like birthday candles. (My father made us make sure we’d collected the withered charred remains at the end lest he nick the mower blades.) The smell of the sulphur always makes me think of the house I grew up in and the fireflies in July when we were lighting firecrackers. My sister’s birthday is on the fifth of July and it surprises me now that my memories of sparklers and fireworks aren’t more tied in with that but her birthdays are very seperate as though they were a month apart from those nights.

Jack slept through his first display of patriotic night fire. Just as well. You can’t hold an infant and a sparkler at the same time. Apparently it’s frowned upon. And, in any event, my Dad must have been proud– my son was not only behind a screen door but removed from the nearest fuse by at least an 8 of a mile.

Life in the fast lane

It’s such a blur sometimes, isn’t it? I think about summers when I was under 10 and how they were excrutiatingly long and now they just zip zip on by.

And not just summers. This whole year has been a blink. I still think that life needs a pause button once in a while. Just to catch your breath. Smell a rose or something.

Jack had a bath today in in his little pool. He’s got quite the exhibitionist streak in him… he was quite delighted to splash nakedly in the backyard. I was soaked by the end of it– catching most of his splashes. He sits up so easily now. And catching the zippy little submarine is old hat.

It makes my heart ache. He’s growing so fast. We developed a roll of film from the diaper bag camera. Most of the time we use our nifty digital/camcorder to get Jack’s good side(s) but for those moments I don’t have it with me there is the trusty old film camera tucked in the front pocket. The film spans back to mid November… reminding us how quickly Jack has shot up from a blobby baby to his little sturdy self. Amazing.

How do I count the days? In smelly diapers (and believe me, this kid can poo) or baby food jars? Every other week I trek to the store and come home with what seems like months and months of tiny jars of food only to suddenly have a bare cupboard again days later.

Still– for all this change that makes me so unsettled there are rewards. Tonight after Robby’d spooned a ridiculous amount of strained veggies and ham and fruit into our baby bird and his diaper had been changed, pjammas donned…. there came our favorite half hour of cuddling Jack and reading his night time story in the dim light that peeks around the curtains in his room. Outside it’s still the same street with the same evening noises and the same infernal ice-cream truck (sick bastard made me run after him once and I’ve never forgiven him) bleating out a few bars of “Music Box Dancer”… but upstairs, in the Monkey Room it becomes an enchanted place. Even the puppy ventures upstairs to sit in the hallway outside the door. It’s not the story we read (though there have been some great night time tales) or the pjammas we’ve picked or the fruit de jour… What it is is Jack’s little arms reaching out to be held and snuggled and rocked to sleep.

A rose is a rose is a rose.