Christmas Eve Brunch

On our road trip to Sun Valley on Christmas Eve, we stopped at AJ's restaurant in Mountain Home, just across from the truck stop, for brunch with Clara and Louis' Great-Gramma Nina, Gramma Diana, and Great-Aunt Lainer (whose real name is Elaine). Also Grandpa Dale.

Right when we stepped through the entrance, we saw them in the restaurant's back room, where the Rotary Club usually meets. The hostess had put them at a long table. Aunt Lainer, grinning maniacally, waggled her hand at us. Gramma Diana hunched her shoulders forward and pursed her lips with delight. Great-Gramma Nina went the other direction, leaning back, smiling widely and pushing her palms against her thighs.

Grandpa Dale, sipping a bloody Mary, was more reserved, though no less excited to see us.

Gramma Diana got Louis right away. He had just awoken from a nap in the car and was feeling pretty good. He was excited about all the kisses, the smell of Gramma Diana's perfume, and the sounds of the women's voices. Also the way the light reflected off Aunt Lainer's gold-rimmed glasses.

Clara grinned sheepishly as the women cooed and kissed Louis. It was silly the way they were hee-hawing over him and nibbling his cheeks, but it unexpectedly made her feel good, too. She climbed onto a chair next to Simon and sat back on her new pink cowboy boots with the star cut-outs, graciously accepting the giant styrofoam cup of hot cocoa with whipped cream the waitress handed her.

Aunt Lainer, who had flown in from Washington for Christmas, couldn't get over Louis' sheep-skinned-lined hat with ear flaps. Lainer, who is a supervisor in a factory that makes utilitarian office furniture, claimed to have one just like it. Louis gave Lainer some drool-filled smiles and stuffed a fist into his mouth. She had a giant crimp in her gray-blond hair from a ponytail she'd recently worn. She screeched with laughter at something Gramma Diana said and Louis started to cry, his lips quivering as though his feelings had been hurt. I reassured Lainer that he was getting teeth and this was probably what upset him, but she said her gravelly smoker's laugh often makes babies cry.

The food came, piles of starch and protein that were all the same color, but all delicious.

Clara wanted my attention, but I was chit-chatting with Gramma Diana. She climbed up onto my lap, and positioned herself so she was facing me, and cradled my face with her hands. She made my face stay directly in front of hers, and whenever I started to speak to Gramma Diana, she kissed me on the lips with a hashbrown-greasy mouth.

It was lonely at her end of the table. Grandpa Dale was cradling Louis and taking him on a walk around the room while he drowsed and sucked on his binkie. She had finished the plate I made her by splitting my own in half and arranging the scrambled eggs and cut-up sausage on a little side plate the waitress had given me. The talking women formed a warm nexus, and there was joy there.

After a minute she slid to the ground and started fingering Great-Gramma Nina's maroon cardigan. The cardigan had leaves embroidered all over it, and Great-Gramma named them for Clara: beech, oak, maple. Great-Gramma Nina grew up in a hollow in West Virginia called "Butt Holler." I am not kidding. It was named for a family whose last name was "Butt." Great-Gramma says growing up there no one ever thought twice about the name.

I mentioned to Great-Gramma how nice I thought she looked. She is on Weight Watchers, and, being an extremely disciplined and focused person, is only about fifteen pounds from her goal weight. She is also only nine stamps short of earning the last Rachel Ray dish in the Albertson's Grocery Store Rachel Ray promotion.

At that point, Aunt Lainer leaned over to Gramma Diana and bestowed upon her the highest compliment paid by women to each other in our family: "You look like you've lost weight."

"Oh, Lainer, you old sweet thing," Gramma Diana said, giving her a side-hug.

Aunt Lainer told how, the night before, she and the other two women had stood at the piano and sang Christmas carols in three-part harmony ("People kind of dispersed at that point," Lainer would later admit). Egged on by me, she and Gramma Diana and Great-Gramma Nina started to hum and would have broken into "Silent Night" right there in AJ's but for a rare feeling of constraint, possibly brought on by the presence other diners.

Grandpa Dale guffawed at the women's singing and, pretending to motion to the waitress, said, "We better get another round of Bloody Mary's."

After a minute, Clara started dancing for Gramma Diana. Clara sometimes wanders our house singing "Johanna" from Sweeney Todd, but replacing the name "Johanna" with "Diana." Gramma Diana likes ketchup on her hashbrowns, too, and there's a cat named Felix that lives at her house in Boise. (Although the last time we saw Felix he was part bald from a nasty case of ring-worm and so couldn't be petted or even touched)

Grandpa Dale sat back down with Louis, who was now wide awake. He walked his long, brown, callused farmer's fingers up Louis' legs and tummy until Louis chortled with glee. Then he gave him back to Lainer, and Louis was content to lie in her arms, comfortable and warm and fascinated by her glasses. Lainer looked content, too, the way some women do when holding babies, as though they're remembering babies from long ago, or maybe just reveling in the warm, soft baby heft, because they don't, very often, get to hold one anymore.

An Underwhelming Santa

Thursday was Santa day at Clara's daycare, and I found myself vying with Santa Claus himself for a parking space. He and I passed each other two or three times as we criss-crossed the streets near the daycare. He was in-costume, and his enormous, curling beard rested on the steering wheel of his Chevy Cavalier (one of the daycare administrators later expressed relief over his new set of wheels. Apparently he used to drive an orange Nova).

I grimaced as I finally succumbed to the "bad" parking space, an ambiguously available nearby curb that seemed to invite fender-benders. Parents streamed down the sidewalk. A mom in black, knee-high stiletto boots and a coat that belted at the waist led a little girl dressed to the nines in red and green. A dad carried a tiny baby wearing polished black loafers. I'd totally forgotten about Santa's visit, but it probably wouldn't have mattered anyway. We'd already told Clara that Santa was made-up.

Still, she sensed the excitement as we got out of the car. She was, unfortunately, dressed entirely in pink. As for me, I'd simply hopped into the car in a trusty pair of black sweats and an oversized T-shirt that read, "I lost my shirt at Simon's bar mitzvah so I had to wear this one home" (yes, I own a T-shirt from my husband's 1994, Las Vegas-themed bar mitzvah). My hair, a newly minted boxed shade of "ancient sunrise," stuck up all over the place. I thought, when I cut it short, that it would be easier to style, little knowing that "styling" would require sticking my head under the faucet every damn morning. I took a deep breath and hoped Santa wouldn't judge.

The daycare center director, who is nearly six feet tall, met us at the door dressed as an elf with a sleigh bell at the end of her pointy hat.
"I think I passed Santa looking for a space," I told her.
"Oh dear, is he having trouble parking his sleigh?" she said.

The main room inside was packed with daycare workers, parents, and kids. Clara wended her way through the legs to sit near her class. Everyone was singing "Jingle Bells," and "Feliz Navidad" in anticipation of Santa's entrance. Clara doesn't know these songs, but she gamely lip-synced along (though what she might have been lip-syncing is anyone's guess). The kids were excited but the grown-ups were really excited, and I could tell Clara found this confusing. A few of the grown-ups seemed almost a little feverish, as if they were about to be raptured. People clapped and hooted as Santa entered, and Clara nodded, grinned, and whacked together her stuffed dog Floppy and her princess-themed sippy cup.

"Ho-ho-ho!" Santa shouted, and then he hacked and hawked into his hand. "A little too much fuzz from the beard," he said. Santa and cats: they both hawk up fur balls now and again.

The director and teachers decided that the babies should be the first to sit on Santa's lap. Santa settled himself into the red-colored throne the preschool teacher had fixed up for him, and a set of parents handed him their baby boy.

The baby looked to be about ten months old, and the parents had carefully parted his hair on the side and swept it over like John F Kennedy's. As soon as the kid's little diapered-bottom hit Santa's lap, he stuck out his arms and gasped as though he'd just come over the top of a Six Flags roller coaster. Then he held his breath for a minute, and his cheeks popped out and his face turned bright red. Then he screamed. The parents all giggled diabolically. The daycare administrator twittered as she passed around her iPhone with a photo of the kid's beet-red, tear-streaked face.

I had to leave before it was Clara's turn to sit on Santa's lap, but when I picked her up later that afternoon, I asked her what she'd asked him for.

Her eyes widened, and she whispered, "A candycane!"

"You did?" I replied, surprised. My kid really, really does not know what Santa is all about.

"Yes, and then he gave me one," she said, shaking her head in astonishment.

"Is that all you asked him for?" I said.

"N-o-o-o-o. I also asked him to sing me a song. And... he... did!!"

"Wow," I said, trying to imagine what Santa might have thought of her. He probably thought she came from an extremely disadvantaged home, little knowing that Hanukkah Harry has been sending us packages since the day after Thanksgiving.

The next day Clara was talking about Santa, and Simon asked Clara where she thought Santa lived.

"In an old person's home," she replied.

Clara and Louis

On Monday, during rest time, Clara kept getting up to use the potty. It was all a ruse, I knew. She was tired of "reading" books to her babies in her bedroom; tired of lolling about on the floor and singing; tired of banging her feet against her bedroom door. She hasn't actually napped during rest time for about eight months. Nonetheless I need time for myself (or time for myself and Louis), so I still make her go to her room for a few hours after lunch each day.

I saw her tiptoeing across the upstairs landing to go to the potty for the third or fourth time, wearing a t-shirt and nothing else. There's only so much a person can pee and poop, I thought. After a moment, I heaved myself out of the chair where I was breastfeeding Louis. Holding him in the crook of my arm, I went upstairs to the bathroom. She was standing in front of her potty, peering down into it dubiously.

"Mom, my poop has a whisk," she said, pointing.

"A whisk?"

"Yep, a whisk, like a cat has."

"A whisker?"

"Yep. My poop has a whisker."

I trust I don't need to go into detail here. I explained to Clara that our bodies can sometimes excrete something that resembles a long, straight fiber, and no, I don't know why that is. Then I disposed of her poop and cleaned her potty. I helped her wash her hands and sent her back to her room.

Twenty minutes later, she was back in the bathroom.

When I went up to see what she was up to, again with Louis in the crook of my arm, a long sheaf of toilet paper rolled out the bathroom door to greet me like a carpet for tiny visiting dignitaries. Clara had the sink water running, and was standing on her little stool to reach the faucet. She had filled up a plastic sandwich container we got for our wedding ages ago--she uses it as a bath toy now--with water and was dipping fistfuls of toilet paper into it and using the sodden paper to "wash" the counter. She had stuffed a bunch of toilet paper down the unstoppered drain so the water would accumulate in the basin. The soap dish was sunk to the bottom of the basin, and the soap had disintegrated into fragrant, white slime.

"Okay," I said. "That's enough." I grabbed a hand towel with my free hand and started mopping.

"Nooo!" she squealed. "Mom! I'm-I'm-I'm washing! And you can't take that!" She frantically grabbed at the sandwich container as I dumped the water out of it. Louis watched her, smiling faintly and sighing. Here was a person, only a little less tiny than he, that could walk and talk and command the attention of an entire room with the flip of her hair (whereas he can only command the attention of a room with the ferocity of his baby gas). At two and a half months, Louis can't always focus his eyes on Clara when she's, for example, streaking past him wearing a pink tutu and long, hot pink evening gloves, or twirling on the couch for "couch ballet." When she's right next to him,though,putting stacks of beaded bracelets on his chubby arms and legs or adorning his head with flowery hairpieces, he gives her the choicest of smiles. He does occasionally get irritated with her but, interestingly, not when she's calling him "Doodles" or "Dee-dee" at close range in a high-pitched voice, or forcing a binkie into his mouth. And not, either, when she pushes his cheeks together with her hands and says, "Say 'chubby cheeks,' Louis." No, the only time he gets irritated with her is when he wants his milk. And then it's not just her, but the entire universe, that's wrong.

"Back to your room," I ordered Clara. "Go!"

But five minutes later, just when I had settled back into my chair, my arm sporting a red mark where Louis had fervently sucked while I mopped up water, I heard the toilet seat slam.

I found Clara standing on it, fishing for her toothbrush on the shelf above. She got it just as I grabbed her with my free arm. In her other fist she clutched her Thomas Train training toothpaste. She wriggled free from me and thundered down the hall to her room.

"What are you doing?" I shouted, striding after her.

"I have to brush my teeth!" she shouted back, trying to shut her door on me. A stuffed dog and a purple sea turtle prevented her door from slamming it. I had to wade through the ball of blankets and the sea of books on her bedroom floor to get to her. I wrested the toothbrush and toothpaste from her as Louis watched, vaguely interested, from my arm, his head gently waggling back and forth as Clara and I grappled.

"Noooooo!" Clara screamed. "I need that! I need that! I-I have bad breath!"

The Birth of Louis Oliver

DISCLAIMER: This blog post is about a baby being born, and so it necessarily contains some information about childbirth. Don’t get me wrong, it’s not gory or anything, but if you are at all squeamish or sort of freaked out by childbirth, you probably shouldn’t read it. As my husband says, reading it is, in some ways, “kind of like revisiting eight-grade biology class.”




When you read about birth, or watch movies about birth, it seems like labor always begins when the mom’s water breaks. When you actually have a kid, you discover this only happens about 20 percent of the time. When Clara was born, for example, the nurse delivering her had to break my water.

When Louis Oliver was born, on August 26, my water did break first, and it happened pretty much like the movies. I was sleeping, then I was suddenly standing in the bathroom, half-awake, soaking the rug in front of the bathtub.

I got Simon up, and we both lamented the fact that it was 2 am, a scant few hours after we’d gone to bed. I called the on-call doctor, who said, “Come in when it starts to hurt.” Then I ran a hot bath and had some chocolate. Simon stood in the bathroom doorway for a moment, his eyes bleary. Then he suddenly switched into high gear and went frantically about the house making sure we had everything in our hospital bag.

I hoped labor wouldn’t start for several hours, but my lower abdomen felt heavy and restless. I wasn’t surprised when the discomfort started to coalesce into contractions about ten minutes after I got into the bath.

Simon got Clara up, wrapped her in her favorite blanket and held her against his shoulder. Any wishes we might have had about her staying asleep during the transfer to the neighbors’ house were instantly dashed. Clara is not a sleeper under the best of circumstances. She was delighted to be awake at such a grown-up hour, and launched into her favorite game—“pretend mewling cat that licks its paws”—before her eyes were even properly open. While Simon carried her across the lawn to the neighbors’, she chattered about the night and the “rain” (the sprinkler system was running).

I had to go through the emergency room at the hospital because the main entrance was closed. The emergency-room technicians made me ride in a wheelchair to Triage while Simon parked the car. The nurse who pushed the chair told me this was owing to the fact that someone in labor could just squirt out a kid in one of the long passageways between Emergency and Triage and then the hospital would be in a real pickle.

Sitting in the wheelchair was faintly unpleasant. I could feel Louis’ head somewhere down in my nether regions, hanging like a ripe cantaloupe.

In Triage, they strapped me to the abdominal monitor so they could measure my contractions. For the first ten minutes, everything was fine. Then I felt a surge from the top of my stomach. I stared hard at the ceiling. It was one of those institutional false ceilings, ubiquitous across corporate and medical America. It looked like it was made of cork, with tiny ventilation holes punched through it. I focused intently on one of the pinholes. It suddenly seemed like a lemony-yellow watercolor stain bled slowly out of it. Little black stars sparkled around the periphery of my sight. Then, as I inhaled sharply, the lemony-yellow color got sucked back into the pinhole’s darkness.

“Wow! That was a huge contraction!” Simon said, looking at the contraction monitor.

“I think I’m gonna barf,” I said. We called the nurse, who detached me from the monitoring system so I could shuffle across the hall to the bathroom and empty my guts.

When I got back, the nurse checked my cervix, pronounced me ready for Labor and Delivery, and asked if I wanted an epidural. Friends, there was only one answer to that question: YES.

In a moment, the nurse came to my bedside in Triage with another wheelchair. This time I couldn’t really sit in it. Instead, I used my triceps to carry my weight, hovering just above the seat and puffing through the contractions like a freight train. In my memory, I see the nurse frantically running with me to Labor and Delivery, pushing the chair so hard that we take the corners on two wheels.

In reality, I’m sure her pace was much more sedate.

When we got to Labor and Delivery, we learned the person delivering and administering the epidural would not arrive for several more minutes.

As Simon and the nurse helped me into a bed, I tried to steel myself for each contraction. You might ask, “Didn’t you do this before?” Yes, as my rancher-father would say, I am a “two-calf heifer.” On top of which I didn’t have any pain medication when I gave birth to Clara. This time around I felt peculiarly unprepared to give birth, worn out from chasing a toddler in an extremely-swollen state, psychically exhausted, and disenchanted with the whole idea of a “medication-free” birth.

Waiting for the nurse-anesthetist, I tried to “surf” the waves of pain. But that only made me think of that Hawaiian surfer who got her arm bitten off by a shark in the early 2000’s. How painful must that have been? Then I tried to imagine my cervix opening, while thinking “Open, open, open.” This was something my mother did when she gave birth to me and my siblings. But the exercise only reminded me of a story from my childhood, Ali Baba and the Forty Thieves. A greedy man in the story can’t remember the pass phrase to open a special cave full of treasure. The pass phrase is “Open sesame,” but the man, who must remember the phrase to leave the cave before murderous robbers find him there, keeps shouting things like, “Open wheat!” and “Open barley!” and “Open rye!” (At this point in the story my siblings and I used to frantically shout, "It's 'Open sesame!! Open sesame!!'" ) Alas, the robbers catch the greedy man in the cave and whack him into four pieces. Gruesome, very gruesome. Not something to think about while laboring.

At last, the nurse-anesthetist arrived to administer the epidural. She was a dour-looking woman who recited the long epidural disclaimer in a fatalistic tone. With her stocky body and matter-of-fact way of speaking, she reminded me of a long-haul trucker. Stuck on a freeway outside Fargo during a freak blizzard in July. With no friends, food or radio contact.

Finally she was done giving the spinal block and left.

Quickly the labor pain abated and my outlook improved considerably. I could even doze a little between contractions.

My OB came in around seven, fresh off a vacation to Red Fish Lake up North (My OB almost never takes vacations, delivers over 98 percent of his own patients.) He and a nurse put my legs into these weird…well, leg-holders, for want of a better word. They didn’t look like stirrups to me, but that’s what they kept calling them. I could feel my legs a bit—a tingling sensation—but I couldn’t move them at all.

“Okay, when I say, I want you to pick up her leg and push her knee to her chest,” the nurse told Simon. “I’ll get the other one. When we’re done with the contraction, put the leg back into the stirrup. If you drop it, it’ll hit the doctor or go off the side of the bed and take your wife with it.”

She glanced up at Simon as she spoke. She must have noticed the look on his face, because she added, “I’ve never actually seen it done, but it could happen, which is why I have to warn you.”

The nurse acted like she’d delivered babies for about a million years. Her hands did things automatically—positioned monitors, pressed buttons on the side of my bed, hung an IV bag—while she chatted amicably with the OB and other nurses.

“How are you?” my OB asked me.

“This epidural is great. I feel like I’m in the Caribbean,” I replied, hearing the slur in my speech.

“Mmmmm….I’ve never heard it described that way.”

My OB has a giant head with thick, dark hair that stands on end sometimes. His head is so big in proportion to his body that I sometimes think of him as mostly head, with a slender, effete body hurrying along behind.

He settled himself on a stool between my knees to catch the baby. I dozed off and on between pushing. It must have been an interesting-looking tableau: Me with my legs up in the birthing position, but drowsing a little as though I were on a beach somewhere with a Mai Tai in my hand. Simon and I asking the OB questions about his vacation when I wasn’t napping, the conversation peppered with kiddie-themed jokes (the OB has three young kids) and observations about the air, which was smoky from wildfires.

At times throughout my pushing phase, the OB stared off dreamily over my knees and I knew he was probably reminiscing about his vacation. That he was able to do this while seated directly in front of the gore of childbirth is a testament to his professionalism and experience. He’s probably caught thousands and thousands of babies in his career.

After awhile I started throwing up again and the nurse brought over some little throw-up bags. I filled one and casually handed it to Simon.

“Don’t worry. She’ll be handing you something far better in a couple minutes,” the OB told him. Simon gave the bag to a nurse to dispose of. The vomiting seemed to help push the baby down further, and it took only three more pushes for him to emerge.

The doctor didn’t have any trouble getting the baby’s head out, but he had to wrangle his little shoulders a bit. “Linebacker shoulders,” was what he called them.

The first thing I saw was a little head covered in black hair, then an impressively pink little body and chubby little arms. I found Simon’s eyes through the glare on his glasses and grinned.

Louis was confused and upset, and his forlorn cry nearly broke my heart. I wanted to hold him immediately, but the nurse wanted to towel him off a bit. Finally she gave him to me and I cuddled his slippery body close, trying to find in his features resemblance to me or Simon. But unlike Clara, who at first definitely looked like Simon’s side of the family, Louis looked like himself right from the get-go. He had lots of dark hair and a pretty little mouth. I remember thinking he was beautiful, and I must have said it out loud, too, because Simon said, “You can call him beautiful, even if he is a boy.”

I looked up and it seemed strange the doctor was still there, and the nurses. It seemed like it was just me and Louis in the whole universe. He had soft blond down on his arms and a patch of darker down on his upper back.

After awhile everyone left and it was just the three of us: Simon, me and Louis. At some point, Simon realized he was still holding my leg up--clutching it, really. He carefully put it back in the stirrup and took Louis for a bit, talked to him and kissed him. I thought how I couldn’t wait for Clara to come meet Louis, and the things she might say when she saw him for the first time.

Other brothers, swing-set speculation and scary books

I.

A few days ago, I decided to take Clara on a dry run of the baby's birth. I hoped it might help her conceptualize what was happening to my body and what was going to happen in our family in about three weeks. We went to the Treasure Valley Midwives Center first, because they have a big poster on the wall that shows a life-size, full-term baby en utero. Also, I was hoping someone would be in labor so we could hear some yelling and grunting, and I could explain to Clara the process of childbirth. Alas, no one was in the two birthing rooms.

Next we went to St. Luke's hospital, where I plan to deliver. In the car, I told Clara that Baby Brother would soon come out of my stomach, and she said, "Oh! Then I will get into your stomach."

"Please, no," I replied. "That would be really uncomfortable for both of us."

We took the elevator to the eighth floor, where the newborn nursery and labor recovery rooms are located. Clara is not a fan of elevators, but I wasn't about to walk up eight floors. To keep her mind off her fear, I held her in the elevator and encouraged her to count the floors. A woman asked her, "Are you having a brother or a sister?"

"It's a girl," Clara said matter-of-factly.

"It's a boy," I clarified.

There were only two newborns in the nursery: a sleepy little girl and a little boy who was not amused. I held Clara up to the window while she pressed her nose to the glass and talked baby talk to them: "Deedle, deedle, dee. Leetle, leetle, leetle babies."

After a moment or two, a dad showed up with his little girl and they stood in front of the nursery windows. A woman came into the nursery through a side entrance, accompanied by two nurses. They stood over the disgruntled baby boy and talked.

"Do you have a baby brother or sister in the nursery?" I asked the little girl. She pulled herself up on tiptoes to see through the glass.

"That's my baby brother," she said, pointing to the baby boy.

"Oh, Clara! It's another little girl with a baby brother!" I exclaimed.

"Put me down," Clara instructed, and I let her slide off my hip. She and the little girl, who said she was four, crouched by the wall and compared their shoes. Clara was wearing her dark blue Mary Jane Crocs with a big, rubber pink and white flower on each toe. The inside of each flower was a hard red plastic heart, cut to look like a jewel. The little girl, who was dressed to the nines in a glitter-embellished, hot pink, spaghetti-strapped tank top and white eyelet-trimmed skirt with some sort of petticoat underneath, pink-and-white bracelets and a touch of pink lipgloss, nevertheless wore simple pink flip-flops. Smart, very smart. I always say, never let your choice of shoe interfere with an already-busy outfit.

"I like mine better because they come on and off more easily," said the little girl, demonstrating with one flip-flop.

"I have some of those too," said Clara. "I have a baby brother in my mom's belly. I, I will take him out for you." Her eyes grew wide, and she made a scoop out of her hands and pretended to scoop baby brother out of my stomach to show the little girl.

"When was the baby born?" I asked her dad.

"Earlier this morning," he replied.

"And that's mom?" I asked, pointing to the woman standing with the nurses over the baby's bassinet.

"Yes."

The woman, like her daughter, had long blond hair. She was tall and slim, wearing an ankle-length turquoise jersey dress that cinched in at the waist, perfect make-up and lots of gold jewelry.

"Wow, she looks amazing for having just given birth!" I breathed. She looked amazing in general. I did not look like that after giving birth.

"I did not look like that after giving birth," I said to the dad. He roared with laughter.

"It was a different sort of scenario," he explained.

"Oh," I said. Feeling it was impolite to press further, I thought: Adoption? Surrogacy? Ne'er-do-well relative who accidentally got knocked up and can't be bothered to raise a kid right now? I burned with curiosity, but there are some things you just don't ask.

The woman and nurses were wheeling the baby in his bassinet out the door of the nursery, and the dad beckoned to the little girl. The little girl turned to go, tripped on her flip-flop, and fell to the floor. She hastily incorporated the fall into some sort of jungle dance move, springing to her hands and knees and pretending to be a tiger. Then she stood, dusted herself off and ran toward her dad. But before she got to him, she changed her mind and came running back to us.

"I have to tell you one more thing," she whispered to Clara. Clara's eyes widened again and sparkled, and a funny little smile played around the corners of her mouth. Clearly it was delicious to have someone who was both older and had fabulous blond hair come running to you to whisper a secret.

"He's my baby," the little girl whispered, without even a trace of bitchiness. It was simply a statement of clarification. The baby brother belonged to her and Clara shouldn't be confused about this. Clara nodded sagely and we walked back to the elevators.

II.


A few days later, Clara and I were playing on the playset out back, and she generously offered to take Baby Brother out of my belly. She had been running around without clothes in the backyard, in a state my girlfriends and I call, "naked and feral." She made the usual scoop with her small hands and pretended to shovel Baby Brother out of me and place him on the swing.

Then she wanted to swing next to him.

"What do you think Baby Brother will look like?" I asked her as I pushed her in the swing.

"He will look like a princess," she replied.

"Oh? And what does a princess look like?"

"He will have a long, pink skirt and a long, pink dress."

"And what else?"

"He will look like the Good Witch of the North."

"Like in The Wizard of Oz?"

"Yes."

"And what sorts of things do you think he'll like to do?" I asked.

"Ummmm...Play baseball."

"Won't that be sort of hard in his dress?"

"Yes," she sighed impatiently.

"Why will that be so hard?" I asked.

"Because his dress is so nice. And he will get it dirty."

III.

When she was much younger, like eighteen months or so, there wasn't much Clara was afraid of. Alone, she repeatedly went down the slide at the kiddie pool, the one that's shaped like a dragon with water squirting from his nose. One time she accidentally flipped around halfway down and came into the water backwards. She insisted on sleeping with her door closed and, when we'd inadvertently leave it open, she'd shout, "Hey! Shut the door!" She liked to shut herself in my closet with the lights off and pretend to be a cat.

Then, a few months ago, we started daycare part-time. Immediately her play was enriched. At home, I noticed her doing things we never did together. She pretended to be different farm animals, invented elaborate games involving couch cushion "mountains" and her collection of plastic knight figurines, engaged in deeply-felt pretend dialogue with her stuffed dog, Floppy.

At the same time, she started talking about monsters.

The first of her books to be relegated to the "objects of fear" pile was one called Goodnight Goon. It's a funny parody of Goodnight Moon that involves vampires, werewolves and all sorts of slimy creatures. The monsters, from my perspective at least, are not drawn to look scary. The book is supposed to be funny.

One night when her grandparents were visiting, Clara told them, "I scary of this book." So they brought it downstairs. In the context of the living room couches and throw pillows, wooden hutches full of china and knick-knacks and framed family photos--in other words, Grown-up Land-- the book seemed less offensive to her.

But the day her grandparents left, Clara told me the book needed to go.

"What do you mean?" I asked. "Do you mean we should throw it away?"

"Yes," she said firmly. Soon after, she was distracted by a puzzle she liked, and seemed to completely forget about the book. I casually placed it on a shelf. The shelf was just tall enough that she couldn't see the book (although it was still within her reach).

Awhile later I was doing some crafts at the kitchen table when I heard her muttering about, "This scary book" and rustling around in the cupboards. I didn't give it much thought until I went to empty the trash, and this is what I found:

I put the book away in a safe spot.

The next day, I was upstairs folding laundry when I heard Clara chatting with Floppy about, "this bad, scary John Pig." Sure enough, when Simon later went to throw something away, he found, John Pig's Halloween in the trash. The book is about a piglet named John who's too frightened to go trick-or-treating with his friends. He stays home, and a kitten witch crashes into the jack O' lanterns on his front porch, comes inside and teaches him how to make all sorts of scrumptious Halloween treats, like persimmon-plum pie and pumpkin mousse. Then the kitten witch invites a bunch of her friends over--all lovable monsters with gross-looking spiders hanging off them--for a Halloween party. John Pig and everyone else end up having a blast.

Clara used to love the book.

The Wicked Witch of the West from Clara's Emerald City play set has since joined the offending books, and I have an inkling that a set of Groucho Marx glasses with wiggling eyebrows and a set of wind-up, chomping teeth from last Halloween will soon be added to the "scary" pile.

Vignettes

I.

Tonight after dinner, Clara made Simon and I a picnic in her play kitchen with her plastic food. It was a very carb-heavy picnic. We had donuts, cookies and several slices of plastic bread. Then she requested we sing "Take Me Out to the Ballgame," two or three times in a row. The upper octaves of that song are nearly always out of reach for me.

Eventually, Clara said, "Ok, just Daddy sing it."

"I want to sing something else," Simon said.

"Don't you want me to sing 'Bobby Magee'?" I asked Clara. It's a rare day when she says 'yes' to Bobby Magee. Usually when I wallow into it, she starts to cry in distress. My voice tends to strain a bit, and I do have a tendency to sing through my nose on the high notes. The effect can be startlingly submarine, like the sounds a pod of whales conversing in the depths of the ocean might make. But I do so love to sing that song, and it's the only one I know that remains within my approximately five-note range.

"No!" Clara said, looking at me with alarm.

"Busted flat in Baton Rouge, waitin' for a train, and I was feelin' oh as faded as my jeans," I began, hoping she was bluffing. Or hoping maybe she would suddenly perceive the true, colorful, shall we say "distinctive" quality of my voice and, entranced, let me finish the dang song.

"No! No! Not this! Mickey Mouse!" she said. Anything, anything to shut me up.

"If you're going to sing 'Bobby Magee,' I may as well sing 'Sittin' on the Dock of the Bay,'" Simon said. But he finally ended up singing, "Home on the Range" for her. I was politely asked not to join in.

I pulled up my maternity shirt partway to feel the air on my skin, and the baby started kicking around. Clara put her little hands on my belly and felt him move a few times. Then she started playing with a musical card my mom got me for Mother's Day, one that she'd immediately claimed for her own and dragged to the basement playroom. The card urges moms everywhere to take a break from housewifery and put their feet up. When you open the card, there's a picture of a lady relaxing on her bed while Etta James belts out, "At Last."

Clara sang along softly with the card, but instead of singing, "At Laaaaaaaaaast," she sang, "A Laaaaaammmmmb."

Then she put the card close to my belly so the baby could hear it. She pretended to read the card, saying, "Baby brother will be born in the sand in the river. And there will be crocs."

"There will be crocodiles?" Simon clarified.

"There will be crocodiles and they will bite him."

"Oh, no!" we protested. "Although," I reconsidered. "He would be quite the tender morsel."

"The crocodile will open his mouth and baby brother will crawl inside! And he will eat him! Haha!" Clara said, and she flashed her pearly white baby teeth.

II.


Yesterday Clara and I went grocery shopping. She had three sample bites of watermelon. Then, while I was inspecting the bananas, she attempted to deconstruct the toothpick dispenser near the sample tray. It was a minor faux pas compared to our past experiences with the sample counter. I have seen her reach into the plastic dome covering the cheese samples and grab a whole handful of cheese cubes and stuff them in her mouth before I can say a peep. "Sample" is apparently not yet in her lexicon.

She's just tall enough to reach the bottom of the fruit displays, and yesterday I caught her gratuitously kissing a plum. It occurred to me that she often sees me holding fruit close to my lips at the store. Really I'm sniffing it to check for ripeness, but I could see how, from her perspective, it might look as though I were kissing it. Of course, yesterday I felt obliged to buy the plum she'd mauled, which was fine, because she gobbled it up as soon as I had paid for it.

At the end of our shopping, we used the restroom. As we were leaving, a whole bevy of women came in, and Clara asked, "Are these ladies going to go pee?"

"Probably," I answered. "Everyone pees."

As if to clarify that this was indeed true, Clara squatted and ducked her head under the nearest stall, which was, unfortunately, occupied. The lady in there didn't say anything, so I hope she didn't notice the little girl with blue eyes and braids staring up at her while she indulged in a nice, relaxing bathroom break.

III.

Lately I've been having a lot of shortness of breath. No doubt it's because the baby is growing and pushing up against my windpipe. Usually the shortness of breath occurs when I'm excited. Like, if there's a big plate of delicious food in front of me, I'll start panting and wheezing and Simon has to talk me down, remind me to breathe, the food's not going anywhere, I can take breaks, etc.

A few weeks ago the shortness of breath happened while we were getting ready to rent a paddleboat to float out on one of Boise's ponds. I have always, ALWAYS wanted to go on a paddleboat, but never had the chance. While we were getting out of our car in the parking lot, I saw a large family also getting out of their car and heading towards the paddleboat rental office. It suddenly seemed like I had to get there first because, what if they took all the paddleboats?

"There are probably thirty paddleboats here, each one of which seats three people, and we are the only two groups of people going to rent paddleboats," Simon pointed out as I hurriedly waddled, red-faced, down the sidewalk with Clara on my hip.

I beat the other family to the rental office, but realized just as I got there I had to pee something fierce. The nearest bathroom was across the park. I broke out in a sweat. As I huffed and gasped towards the distant cinderblock bathroom, dragging Clara by the hand through flocks of lounging geese and ducks, Simon tried to keep apace and murmured soothing things like, "There are enough paddleboats for everybody. We will all get a chance to ride the paddleboat."

Last night I had a very different kind of shortness of breath. It started when I was lying in bed, thinking of Clara sitting across from me at lunch yesterday, with her long, curly hair tucked behind her ears. She'd dexterously wielded her fork through mounds of gourmet macaroni and cheese and broccoli. We'd been at a restaurant, and a little boy at a nearby table had stood up on his chair and pretended to shoot her with his index finger. She'd smiled at him cheekily, and would have shot him back, except just then his mother said, "Lincoln, sit down on your bottom. Little girls do not like to be shot at."

As I lay in bed thinking about all this last night, my chest got really tight. It was because of something indefinable in the way she had looked, the way she ate. She was ravenous for the food, ravenous to look at the people around us, interested in what they were eating and what they were doing, what they were talking about, excited to be drinking water from a glass instead of a sippy cup.

A lot of the time, from day to day, she'll ask me endless streams of questions about how things work and why people do what they do. Sometimes I feel like it'll drive me crazy. At lunch yesterday, though, she hadn't said anything, just drank up everything with her eyes and started to confidently grasp at her own conclusions. I felt sad because I knew she would need me less and less as time went on. Her curiosity would eventually lead her to places I couldn't go.

Thinking about this in my bed last night, I started to lose my breath again, and had to call Simon upstairs.

Unable to articulate what I really felt just then, I said, "She likes you better than me! She doesn't like me anymore! I can't keep up and do fun things anymore because I'm so big and pregnant! And soon I'll have a new baby and things will change forever!"

"She doesn't like me better," Simon said. "Whenever you're at work or gone shopping, she talks about you constantly."

"I feel like I'm losing her. I'm losing my baby!"

"She's two-and-a-half. She's not a baby anymore," Simon said.

"She can't even sit on my lap anymore," I said. "It's like, when you have a kid, your heart is outside you, running around, playing in the sandbox, on the swings. And now, we're going to have ANOTHER kid?!? So now, what, I'll have TWO hearts running around outside me??!! How am I going to do it? I feel like I'm going to split in half!!"

"I don't know how it all works, but I think we'll figure it out. It's going to be fine," Simon said.

After Simon left, I comforted myself with the thought that other people do it--other people have two kids, and it works out alright.

Floppy the stuffed dog: mascot of revolt

When I picked Clara up from daycare today, there were small hints of an impending storm. Throwing aside a tiny play aluminum pot, she came at me like a hurricane of lime-striped leggings and pigtails tied with sparkling pink jelly-bands. Her eyes, I noticed as I picked her up for a hug and a kiss, matched her Crocs: they were bright pink with exhaustion. She moaned as she buried her face in my neck. She shuddered wordlessly--a kind of tearless, inner weeping she employs when she wants to portray to me how rotten and unjust the world is even though I just saw her having a blast with the other kids in the play kitchenette and I know she got to do all sorts of fun things today at school.

"Do you want to climb into the car seat yourself, or would you like me to put you in?" I asked her as we left the building.

"Me do it!" she yelled, then instantly became absorbed in balancing on the concrete border of some raised flowerbeds along the sidewalk. She shot me a few coquettish looks; she was toying with my patience and she knew it. Finally, after giving her a few chances to get into the car on her own, I grabbed her and deposited her in her seat. "Me do it!" she howled. "Mommy, I want to do this!"

"Nope, you had your chance. We gotta go," I said. She wept the bitter tears of those who look back on their lives and see only regret and missed opportunities. However, her mood brightened considerably when we turned onto a main thoroughfare and passed a construction site with a bright orange porta-potty. Maybe there were new avenues of joy to be found in this lifetime.

"Mommy, I want to go potty in this potty," she said, pointing to the porta-potty.

"Sorry, no can do. But you can go potty when we get to the store," I replied.

"I want to go potty in this," she groused. I tried to think of an interesting way to explain why she couldn't, something that would sate her. Unfortunately, my lane was also merging and a white Volvo was lolly-gagging in my blind spot. Alas, my pregnancy brain cannot multitask. Clara started making a weird, high-pitched fake-crying sound. Startled, I glanced in the rearview mirror and saw she was baring her teeth at her reflection in the window.

I made the turn and said, "We can't go potty in the orange potty because it's out in the sun all day, so the inside's really, really hot. And it's very stinky."

"Oh, needs a shower," Clara muttered. Then she erupted into a series of sharp, high-pitched meows. Her impression of an indignant cat.

We pulled into the store. Clara had been cuddling her stuffed dog, Floppy, in the crook of her arm since leaving daycare, so I asked if she wanted to bring him in. She didn't, but she did want to snap him into her car seat and bundle him in a blanket and fiddle interminably with his ears.

"He's the best baby I ever seen and he gettin' bigger," she said, smoothing his ears back.

I asked her again as we finally left the car if she was sure she didn't want to bring Floppy into the store. She said no.

Just inside the sliding doors, all hell broke loose. Because guess what? Clara really had wanted to bring Floppy into the store.

While we were dithering about Floppy, a little boy took the last grocery cart with a red car attached to the front. We waited a moment for another, which unfortunately also gave Clara time to arpeggio up to the highest, loudest shriek of her sobs. I was determined to ignore her crying, get in the store, get the few items we needed, and get out.

"Honey, I gave you a choice about bringing Floppy into the store while we were at the car, remember? And you said, 'No,'" I said.

"Let's go get Floppy!" she vibratto-ed.

"No, Honey. We parked way, way out in the parking lot. Mommy is tired and I don't want to go back for Floppy. We're only going to be in here for a minute. Hey, look, there's a red car cart! Here, let me put you in."

Sobbing, inconsolable sobbing. My experience thus far with Clara crying in a store is that she soon stops after we get going down an aisle, both because she is emotionally labile and also interested in what's going on around her. But today her cries only intensified. As we rounded the deli counter, an elderly lady said, "Oh, Sweetie, what's the matter? Why you cryin' poor Baby Girl?"

"I want my Floppy!" Clara sobbed from where I'd strapped her inside the red plastic car.

"Oh, is Floppy a stuffed animal?" the elderly lady asked me.

"Stuffed dog," I replied. "We had to leave him in the car."

"Oh, poor baby," said the lady. She followed us into produce. I chalked it up to the effect of Clara's pigtails and big, blue, tear-filled eyes, and so didn't get too irritated with the lady.

But then we were bottle-necked next to the bananas by an unusually large, roving herd of after-work shoppers.

Clara was still sobbing. People began to watch.

"She misses her stuffed dog, Floppy," the elderly lady explained to our spectators. "They had to leave him in the car" After a dramatic pause, presumably to let the effect of her words sink in, she continued: "I say go get Floppy!"

There were murmurs of agreement from the other shoppers: "Yeah, go get Floppy!" People nodded and looked at me expectantly.

"If you don't shut up and stop inciting the mob against me, I'm going to punt you over that pyramid of apples," I told the elderly lady. Just kidding. I didn't say anything. I just blushed really hard and swallowed. Then I parked the cart, unstrapped Clara from the plastic car attachment and put her on my hip. I wiped her tears with my fingers and walked away. She had stopped crying by the time we rounded the corner into frozen foods.



It bears mentioning that Floppy has many roles besides that of insurrectionist. He is also a potty tester, bravely sitting on a potty before Clara to make sure there's no tomfoolery (automatic flushers, super-loud suction systems, rotating hygienic plastic wrap). And this morning he briefly served as a pregnancy surrogate. Clara performed a cesarean of sorts, pretending to scoop "baby brudder" from my stomach with cupped hands (small fingernails sporting chipped polish in the hue "Verve.") She gave "baby brudder" several kisses and carefully deposited him into the outstretched, supine body of Floppy.

Oh, Floppy, if only you could carry this baby for me.

Fishes

I was walking down the hall at the local Y a few weeks ago when I saw a glass display case filled with art projects the preschool students had done. One was called a “fish print.” It was an imprint of a fish: the scales and fins were delicately rendered in red paint on white paper.

“How the HECK did a preschool kid do that?” I wondered, suddenly awash with jealousy at some grubby-faced three-year-old. There could be only one way they did it, I determined. The preschool teacher bought a fish at the store, had the kid paint one side of it and pressed it onto a piece of white construction paper.

It was the perfect idea for Simon’s birthday present. While Simon is not particularly fond of fish per se--unless they’re for eating--he does like colorful art. And this sort of thing was something Clara could help with, and would probably even enjoy. She likes fish, as a concept and as a food.

I envisioned two or three bright fish prints, tastefully framed and hung above the desk in his home office. I started thinking about what kind of fish I could use. The imprint in the hall at the Y looked as though it had been done with a larger fish, like a CATFISH, or a big TROUT, or maybe a SALMON. I imagined myself giving Clara a huge salmon, dripping with red paint, to smack against a big, white canvas. It occurred to me that the splatters of red paint flying away from the imaginary canvas--spraying the side of the fridge, say, and the tile floor--would necessarily be engorged with smelly fish oil and scales.

No matter. Good art does not always preclude stinkiness. And babies and kitchens can be cleaned.

As I thought about it more, I realized a whole one of those bigger fish might be rather expensive, and if I bought one for the fish print, I would probably feel obliged to cook it for dinner after. I imagined Clara and me trying to wash green and blue paint off the fish, me trying to explain to Simon the weird colorfulness of his dinner without spilling the beans.

It would need to be a cheap fish. Something we could throw away after.

The next time Clara and I went grocery shopping, I stopped by the seafood case and peered inside. There was the usual array of wilted, anemic aquatic life you’ll see in a typical southern Idaho supermarket: rubbery-looking scallops, floppy fillets of Dover Sole on ice, octopus tentacles desperately clutching sprigs of parsley like bridesmaids in an ill-advised wedding. Everything arranged to look as though it was plucked from the sea five minutes before.

But there, near the back, was a pile of small fish, their scales and fins and eyes intact. The sign next to them said, “Smelt.”

“That doesn’t bode well for their odor,” I muttered.

“Mommy, I want this one,” said Clara, standing on tippy-toes, nose pressed against the glass, pointing to a whole lobster.

“I have no idea how I might even cook that,” I told her. My culinary expertise runs to tuna melts and roasted vegetables. Lobster is something Gwyneth Paltrow cooks. This lobster was dead, or at least cryogenically frozen, but I remember reading somewhere that the best lobster is cooked alive, in a giant pot of boiling water. And they scream in pain as they die (although I also read somewhere that Gwyneth has an ingenius way of snapping their little necks, pre-pot, to spare them suffering. Gwyneth Paltrow: patron saint of lobster.)

I bought two Smelt for two dollars. Cheap enough to trash them after the art project.

A few mornings later, I unwrapped the Smelt on the kitchen table. Clara looked at them, dumbfounded. A whole fish in the store was one thing. A fish lying inert on our table in the morning sun was quite another.

“Those are fishes. Two fishes,” she said. She ventured a finger forward to poke one. The fish’s flesh was sort of like a Memory Foam mattress. The small indent where Clara pressed her index finger stayed for several minutes.

“Yuck,” she said, recoiling. “This is yucky.”

“Oh, it’s just fishes!” I said breezily, waving the air with my hand. Wilbur sat on his haunches, watching vigilantly, the pool of drool at his feet growing steadily.





I swabbed the side of one Smelt with green paint and pressed it onto a yellow piece of construction paper.

“Look,” I said. “We pet it and push it onto the paper-- good fishy, nice fishy-- and then we pick it up and…..voila! It leaves a print of its body on the paper.”

Clara was less impressed with the print the fish made than with the act of painting the fish itself and comforting it as she pressed it into the paper.




“It’s okay, fishy, I will give you strokes,” she whispered to each of the fish, gently petting their fins. “This is the ‘Mommy’ fish and this is the ‘Baby’ fish,” she said, pointing to each one.

When we were finished, I quickly re-wrapped the fish and tossed them into the garbage before Wilbur could get his hopes up. I gave Clara an infinitesimally small dot of Soft Scrub on each of her palms and helped her rub her hands together under the tap.

I thought I’d probably just store the prints in my jewelry drawer until I could frame them. My jewelry drawer is at the top of my chest of drawers and right next to the drawer where I keep all my maternity underwear (I’m about six-and-a-half months pregnant at this point).

Storing the fish prints in the jewelry drawer was not the best of ideas.

“For the love!” I shouted the next day when I opened my maternity underwear drawer. “Did something die in here besides my hopes to ever be a size eight again?”

It was the fish prints in the neighboring jewelry drawer, leeching their fishy goodness through the copious cotton folds of my ginormous panties. It was as though I’d replaced the lavender satchels at the bottom of the underwear drawer with Moby Dick, two days dead.

I put the prints out in the garage until I could find the time to go buy frames for them. To be continued…

Mama Cat Yoga

When I'm not pregnant, I like to practice Ashtanga yoga. Sometimes, even while pregnant, if I'm feeling particularly energetic, I like to practice some Ashtanga. (Ashtanga is a more athletic type of yoga, where you breathe through your nose while you move into and out of poses.) Some people do Ashtanga all the way through their pregnancy. In my opinion, those people are CRAZY. In my pregnant state, I can't do very much Ashtanga because some of the major poses give me heartburn. Also, as my belly grows bigger and bigger, it is increasingly hard to stand on one leg and put the other ankle up behind my head, my hands gently touching in prayer at my heart center. Just kidding. (I can't do that pose even when I'm not pregnant.)

There is another reason why I don't practice Ashtanga yoga very much in my present state: the only conceivable way to complete the poses at home without interruption is to pretend to be a cat while doing them.

I'll explain:

At nearly two-and-a-half, Clara has hit a developmental stage rich in imaginative play. She'll run around the playroom pretending to be Dorothy from the Wizard of Oz. In the bath, she'll be a fish or a swimmer stuck at sea, gulping air, wagging her head back and forth and desperately thrashing about to survive pretend killer waves. She even pretends to be me sometimes, scrubbing out the kitchen sink (standing on a chair to reach it), and muttering about "germies."

Mostly though, Clara pretends to be a "baby kitty." She has herds of imaginary cats she talks to during nap-time. She often prefers to make a "cat nest" from her blankets rather than lying under them, and sometimes she even drops to all fours on the city sidewalk and starts meowing.

From me, Clara demands a certain collusion in her kitty reality. Well, she doesn't quite demand it, but if I participate in her version of reality, I can complete whichever tasks I wish with minimal interruption. Which is why I often find myself crouching on the floor, folding laundry with my "paws," and mewling intermittently (Mama cats don't have opposable thumbs, therefore I must weld my fingers together and manipulate towels, underwear and T-shirts with my wrists. And I must put the clean, unfolded laundry down on the carpet because, what cat do you know can fold laundry while standing on her hind legs?)

And yesterday I found myself at the top of my yoga mat, chanting not the "Ohmmmmmmm" to the opening Ashtanga mantra, but a "Mee-oooowww." "Meow" does lend itself to that kind of chanting, I have to confess, because it's rich in vowels.

Grumpy Cat

One day last week, I decided Clara and I would make a collage. We used a People magazine and Family Circle. Clara only found two pictures that she really liked. The first was a little dog licking its chops. The picture came from a dog food ad. The second was a cat from a People feature about unusual animals. The cat's name is Grumpy Cat, and she is an internet sensation. She also illustrates perfectly my mood of the last week or so. The disgruntled expression. The eyes that are not amused. The puffy cheeks and jowls (apparently Grumpy Cat is also Chubby Cat. At least I have an excuse: I'm pregnant.)





At the park on Wednesday, Clara wanted me to give her underdogs. I've been doing the underdogs throughout my pregnancy: grasping the back of Clara's kiddie swing, thundering across the beauty bark, heaving her little body skyward. I move much slower and jerkier than the swing, and when I release it at the top of the arc, it is always with my last wheezing, pain-wrought harrumph, a moan sent heaven-ward, the final plea for deliverance.

But on Wednesday, at five and a half months pregnant, I decided I just couldn't do it anymore. My belly has popped in the last couple weeks. On top of which, Wilbur ran off at the dog park last Sunday and chasing him strained some of the round ligaments in my groin.

Even just looking at the swings, I could feel my face scowling in pain and annoyance.

"Mommy, pleeeeassseee do under-doggie," Clara begged after I told her I couldn't.

"I can't, my belly hurts. The baby in my belly is getting too big," I said. "But I will just push you."

Clara thought about this. "Okay, Mommy. I will take the baby out your belly. You...he... just wait patiently. Awight? He be patient. Then do underdogs! Then okay, okay! I put him back in." She cupped her palms as if she were holding a tiny baby and pretended to kiss him.

"If only it were that simple," I sighed.

Due to my exhausted state, I only planned for us to stay at the park for a half hour or so. But when I tried to put Clara back into her carseat, she burst into tears. It was a gloriously beautiful day outside.

"Okay," I said, feeling the acid solution of mother guilt wash over me. "Do you want to see a duck pond?"

We walked to the pond behind Camel's Back hill. Clara crouched on the bank, dipping her toes in the water.






"Hey, duck! Here, duckie! I have a bone for you!" she called. Understandably, no ducks appeared.





On the way back to our car, Clara took a detour up a sandbank. She came barreling down, lost her balance and fell on her face. She wasn't hurt; she stood up and smiled at me, her teeth and lips coated with sand.

"Spit," I instructed, handing her her sippy cup to rinse out her mouth.

Back on the trail, she walked a few dozen yards and then crouched in the dirt. Her legs and skirt were filthy, and little crescents of mud outlined the corners of her mouth.

"Mommy, my lips are tired," she moaned.

"I think maybe your legs are tired and your lips are dirty," I suggested.

"Mommy, I need huggie."

"Okay, I will carry you to the next shade, okay?"

I wiped her mouth and gave her a drink. She rested in my arms, limp and sweaty. Her sippie cup made strange wheezing sounds while she drank noisily from it, and she sighed with extra gusto, as if she had just crossed the Sahara.

My hips hurt. My arms were tired. To keep myself moving, I pretended I was a pregnant homesteader, out on the prairie, pushing the plow because my husband had lockjaw and Pa was feeling poorly, too. If I could just make it to the end of the row, there would be a big cool jug of water, sweetened with molasses. (Though in retrospect, that sounds kind of gross.)


************************************

My grumpiness hit new lows yesterday, when I could not even muster the energy to speak much in the car on the way to work. My pregnant body buzzing with hormones, I hadn't been able to fall asleep until about 1:30 the night before. And then Clara woke at 3:40 am, hollering because she couldn't find her sippie cup in the tangle of blankets on her bed. I'd gone in to soothe her and find her sippie cup, but it eluded me, too. So I had to go downstairs and wash one. It wasn't the one she wanted, and she was so distressed and disoriented with sleep I finally went back down and found the one she was asking for.

"Mommy, why not talking?" Clara asked from her carseat. "Mommy, talk to Clara!"

"I'm sorry, Clara. Mommy is feeling really, really tired today. And when I feel really, really tired, it makes me grumpy. And when I'm grumpy, I don't like to talk. But it's not your fault. I just feel tired because growing a baby in my tummy is hard work."

"Oh, Mommy. Just need a Band-aid."

"A Band-aid? But where shall I put it?"

"Ummmm...on your belly!" And she smiled winsomely.

Things That Keep Me Awake At Night (Besides Wilbur's Farts)

On Friday, I sat on the toilet seat with Clara clamped firmly between my knees, struggling to coax her hair into braids. She discovered that, with her armpits hooked around my quads, she could lift her feet up and pedal the air. This meant the flaccid, relaxin hormone-devastated regions of my inner thighs had to suddenly clench to keep her from falling. There had to be a better way. I started rapid-firing questions at her (toddlers can't simultaneously make mischief and answer questions).

"Hey, what friends did you play with this week? Did you play with Miles? What about Hendrix?"

"Yes. And Daddy. And Hazel and Florida."

"You mean Flora."

"Yes, and also Florida."

"Florida is not a person. It's the place where Grammy and Popi live."

"Me and Florida color together. And we play play-doh."

"Those are things you did with Flora. Hey, did you know Flora and Hazel are sisters? What does it mean to be a sister, do you think?"

"Ummmmm....same mommy, two different mans."



Now, where did she get that? Was it just the random firing of toddler neurons? With a baby on the way, Simon and I have been trying to help her understand the abstract concept of family, but, "two different mans"? It could be she knows some blended families, or half-siblings, in daycare. Or maybe they taught a lesson about different kinds of families in daycare?

"Is there something I should know?" Simon asked with me mock suspicion.

Clara's statement does show a measure of progress with respect to the concept of sibling-hood. Over the months, her understanding has evolved from complete ignorance and/or denial (blank stares), to anthropomorphism ("There's a baby kitty in your tummy, Mommy") to the anger stage of grief: "I don't want a baby brudder!!"

Marriage is another area where Clara's understanding of family seems to be evolving.

On Saturday, as I was making breakfast, I heard a sound behind me. I turned and there was Simon, draped from head to toe in the big golden, velour blanket we keep on our bed. It completely swathed his head, and his be-spectacled face stared out at me regretfully. Behind him came Clara, tiny and impertinent in Dora the Explorer jammies, employing the swagger she uses when she's being ridiculously bossy.

"Daddy is getting married," she told me matter-of-factly.

"Who is he marrying?" I asked.

"Ummmmmm....me!"

Simon went on to tell me that it had all begun when Clara wrapped herself in the blanket upstairs, and said she was going to get married to Daddy.

"You can't marry me, because I'm your daddy," said Simon.

"Um, I will marry Mommy!" she replied.

"You can't marry Mommy because she's your mommy. If you decide to get married someday, it's best to marry someone not in your family. That's how marriage works," Simon explained.

Where did Clara learn the concept of marriage? Was it from watching Shrek? I suppose marriage has been in the news a lot lately, and the adults around her have been talking a lot about it. Or maybe she picked up the concept because the kids at daycare pretend to get married during playtime or something? I remember doing that with my older sister growing up (she always made me be the groom. During summertime, when we harvested corn from the garden, I scotch-taped corn silk to my chin to make it look like a beard).



***************************


Lately, when I think about having another baby in the house, I hear the bells of doom. Not because of the sleep deprivation or copious quantities of poop I will be dealing with every day, but because my first "baby," my toddler, is pretty certain that I belong to her alone.

Tonight at dinner, while I was attempting to exchange some remarks with Simon, Clara said, "No, Mommy! No talking."

"But I want to talk," I replied. "I'm talking with Daddy right now."

"No! No talking. Only listening to Clara."

"Okay, so I'll listen. Okay, I'm listening. Aren't you going to tell me a story or something?"

"No. Mommy tells me a story."

So I told her a story about a mommy bunny that has TWO babies, one older baby girl bunny (like Clara), and a newborn baby brother bunny (like the one currently in my stomach). The story was all about how the older baby girl helps the mommy bunny with the baby brother, and together they take him to the doctor and the park and love him and everybody is all one big happy family.

During my telling, she watched me suspiciously. Who was this baby bunny boy-child? And he was going to the same doctor as her and looking at the same fish in the fish tank in the doctor's waiting room? And he would even get a sticker after, too?! Unbelievable. Usurper.

Psychologists talk about individuation, where kids slowly form a separate identity from their parents. When I think about that word, I picture cheerleaders singing "IN-DI-VI-DU-ATE, C'mon!!" to the tune of "CE-LE-BRATE GOOD TIMES, C'mon!!" Cheerleaders, because individuation seems like kind of a hard thing to do. Maybe that's why it takes eighteen years or so.

Wait, am I the one who's supposed to help Clara individuate? The same way I'm responsible for teaching her about not picking her nose and being kind to people and saying "please" and "thank-you"? Am I remiss in my individuation teaching and now she's way behind and that's why she's so attached to me??

Or is she attached because she's two-and-a-quarter? And what's wrong with being attached? I love her.

These are the things that keep me awake at night. At the end of the day, I suppose all I can do is my best.

Toys

Sometimes Clara plays with her Cinderella Legos. Today, she had Cinderella's white horse drive Cinderella in her carriage up one of the play table's legs and to the Calico Critters house. Then she had Cinderella get out of the carriage and onto the horse's back. The horse galloped into the Calico Critter's house and magically leaped onto the second floor. Then Daddy Dog came out to scold her.

"Cinderelli," Clara made Daddy Dog say in a gruff voice. "There are too many horses in this ballroom!" (There is no Prince Charming in Clara's version of Cinderella, only Daddy. It's really Daddy who swings Cinderella around the ballroom and tells her how pretty she looks in her dress. Aside from his apparent disdain of livestock on the dance floor, Cinderella's Daddy also makes her feel really safe.)



"Cinderelli, let's go to the ball in the carriage," said Baby Kitty in a high, squeaky voice, appearing from around back of the Calico Critters house. The problem was Daddy Dog wanted to ride in the carriage, too. Clara turned to me for help. We managed to fit all three into the carriage, as long as Daddy Dog didn't mind riding with his face crushed into the seat beside Baby Kitty.



The ball, which took place on top of Clara's child-sized foam armchair, was apparently a family affair. Mother Rabbit appeared from somewhere, wearing her best mauve dress and starched polka-dotted apron. Baby Kitty's cradle was on-site, so she could take a nap. Also, her potty, in case of emergency. Instead of dancing, everyone ate delicious golden apples made from yellow Play-doh.



**********************

On Monday, I went to the gym. Clara played in the gym's childcare center while I worked out. When I went to retrieve her, she wrapped her arms around my neck and said, "Mommy, there's a piece of cheese in my pants."

"Wha--? Silly girl!" I said, swinging her up to my hip. She was wearing flowered leggings. One of the legs was rolled up to her thigh. The daycare provider told me the kids had been rolling up their pants' legs because it was so warm in the room that day.

Clara squirmed and I put her back down to gather her belongings. She tugged on my pants. "Mommy, there's a piece of cheese in my pants! MOMMY! THERE IS A PIECE OF CHEESE IN MY PANTS!"

"Okay, okay," I said, wiggling my fingers between her rolled-up legging and skin. And sure enough, wedged halfway up her thigh was a partially-eaten cheese stick, the frayed plastic wrapper no doubt poking her sensitive baby skin. The cheese was warm and greasy.

"Huh," I said, remembering that I'd given her a cheese stick as a snack that morning. "I thought she ate that."

The childcare staff looked on silently.

Immediately Clara grabbed the cheese stick and would have popped it into her mouth had my quick mother reflexes not intervened. Can you imagine what the childcare staff would have thought if I'd let her gobble it up?


*****************************


When I got home from work early Saturday afternoon, Clara jumped into my arms for some kisses. Then she climbed into her booster seat.

"How 'bout some lunch, Mom?" she said. She was wearing a dress trimmed with hot pink tulle. The dress was a bit small for her and you could see the bottom of her diaper. Her hair was extra curly because it was raining outside.

"Okay, How about some pancakes with yogurt and strawberries?" I said.

"YES. Dog and kitty pancakes."

"Or how about some pancakes that are shaped like the round moon? Ooooooo, moon pancakes!" Trying to sell it to her, I waved my arms a little and waggled back and forth like a hippie woman dancing on a moon-washed night. She looked at me blankly.

"Noooo. Just dog and kitty pancakes."

The hard thing about dog and kitty pancakes is flipping them. You always lose a leg or two (the pancakes do, I mean). Today was no exception. I tried flipping the cat by jerking the frying pan up in the air and lost the top half of her head and her ears. Luckily, Clara didn't seem to notice.




************************



For dinner Saturday, we had tomato soup from scratch, potato salad and grilled cheese. Clara wanted to help make the potato salad, so I gave her a hard-boiled egg to peel. She took it from me gingerly, cupping it in her hands.

"This egg is different. You can whack this egg. In fact, we want you to whack it so we can take the peel off."

She whacked it against the top of the stove. It cracked open. Exhilarated, she whacked it again. And again.

"Okay, you can stop whacking it now," said Simon.

She tried to peel it, but was frustrated by the tough membrane just under the peel.

"Mommy, help me with this."

"Okay, I'll get you started."

"No, Mommy do this."

I peeled the egg.

"Mommy, I want to eat this. This egg for me!"

"But we want to put this egg in the potato salad."

"No! This my egg!"

I gave it to her because I had extra. She squeezed it too hard and the hard, round yolk came shooting out and rolled across the floor. Wilbur obliged us by gobbling it up. Clara doesn't like the yellow part, anyway.

Breakfast Conversation

This morning, as I was making myself Cream of Wheat, Clara pulled herself up onto a dining room chair. As usual, it was not a graceful display of skill. There was grunting, lots of mouth-breathing, and chubby little toddler legs furiously pedaling the air.

When she got to standing, she found one of my library books, called Vacant Possession. Fortuitously for her, her tray of oil crayons--the one she got from her friend Evie for her birthday--was at hand. She carefully selected a blue crayon, long since denuded of its wrapper and covered with something grubby. Probably yogurt. She was poised to color the back of the library book when I finally intervened.

"Hey, hey, hey! We don't color on library books! You know that. Hey, aren't you hungry? Don't you want some Cheerios? Maybe we should put the book down and eat some breakfast."

She looked at me with wide, matter-of-fact eyes. "Ummmmm...I will look at it twenty minutes, okay? Just twenty minutes." She busily opened the book, her belly puffed out with importance. "This is Isabelle reading a book," she narrated, to no one in particular. The book was upside-down. "Chapter one and fourteen."

She muttered and hummed for a few minutes and then, realizing the book had no pictures of kitties or dogs or rabbits or butterflies or little boys and girls playing hopscotch--that in fact the book had absolutely no pictures at all--she put it down and sighed heavily.

"Mommy, where's my Cheerios? I need my Cheerios." She moaned and then, as I rifled through the cupboards for her special bowl and spoon, she summoned some tears. She didn't see fit to halt the lamenting of her Cheerios-less lot on life until Cheerios and milk were poured to the correct levels in her bowl, her blue spoon was laid next to the bowl, and the sippy cup was positioned at eleven o'clock.

I sat down next to her, stirring brown sugar into my Cream of Wheat.

"Mommy, what are you mixin'?" she asked cheerfully.

"Cream of Wheat. See?"

"Oh. Now I mixin'"

"Are you mixing your Cheerios?"

"No. I mixin' cream." She accidentally splashed some milk on her foot and Wilbur, ever the opportunist, quickly licked it off. She giggled. "Now Wilbur licks my other foot," she instructed. The world, whatever its injustices, must always remain symmetrical.

"Maybe if we put a Cheerio on it," I suggested, against my better judgement. Her little toes wiggled in anticipation, but Wilbur amazingly abstained from gobbling the Cheerio I balanced on the top of her foot. Finally, shooting me a wary look, he darted his tongue out and got it. Clara shrieked with laughter.

She wanted to do it again, of course. I said no. There were more tears. After a minute, she came to terms with bitter reality and, between bites of Cheerios, started singing softly.

"Hangin' on the tray, hangin' on the tray...my spoon is hangin' on the tray....Mama Bear and Daddy Bear and Baby Bear all sit down to eat."

"What are they eating?"

"Goldilocks and Tigger with Fox."

"Oh, crickey. It sounds like we've got two or three books all rolled into one. Maybe four books. We've got Goldilocks Has Chicken Pox, Goldilocks and the Three Bears, Winnie the Pooh and Fox in Sox."

"Mommy, read this to me."

"We'll read after breakfast, okay?"

"Mommy, why this dog have tears on his two faces?"

"Why does Wilbur have two tears on his face?"

"Yes."

"Those aren't tears. Wilbur has allergies and sometimes his eyes fill up with water. Then the water drains down his face."

"Wilbur sad. Wilbur sad cuz his mommy give him kisses." She blows him some kisses.

"Oh, you mean Wilbur is sad and so to make him feel better his Mommy blows him some kisses. That's very nice. Are you Wilbur's mommy?"

"Yes."

Play-time

Tonight after dinner we all went downstairs to play. Clara came and looped her arms around my neck. I gave her a bunch of kisses on her plump little cheeks.

"I don't want tisses and stuff," she said, wriggling away from me. Her hair was soft and windblown and she was wearing one of her favorite shirts: a long-sleeved purple number that has two racehorses on it. Near the bottom of the shirt, a lady wearing a big hat with a purple mesh bow watches the horses from the stands. Since Clara met two real horses at the foothills dog park yesterday, the shirt has special significance. The handy mesh bow on the spectator's hat was used at dinner to stash away unwanted black beans.

Downstairs in the playroom, Clara found a syringe we used to use to administer Tylenol to her when she was an infant and that we've since given to her to "feed" her stuffed animals with. She came at my face with it.

"Mommy, I'm going to get your boogers," she said. After a brief hesitation, I let her stick the syringe a little ways up one of my nostrils. I felt it was only fair, considering I mine the depths of her nose with Kleenex pretty much every day. "Yuck, that's stinky," she said, extracting the syringe and tossing it to the side.

She grabbed a puzzle and whacked Wilbur over the head with it.

"Hey, that's not nice," said Simon. "Better tell Wilbur you're sorry."

"I don't want to be sorry," she replied, looking up at me petulantly through her bangs. Finally, faced with the threat of going to bed early, she sullenly told Wilbur she was sorry. He gazed boredly back at her. Then she began to rummage through the bin that holds all her plastic toy food and cooking utensils for her kitchen.

"Where's my pancake? Mommy, help me find my pancake. I'm going to flip it all around."

I found the top of a plastic hamburger bun and handed it to her. She briskly set to work in her play kitchen, arranging a tiny sieve on the range (which was piping hot, as evidenced by the decal that showed glowing coals under burner stripes). "Mmmmmmm, that's not right," she mused. "That's a bowl." She rummaged around some more and found a skillet to replace the sieve. Her jeans, embroidered with butterflies on the back pockets, were sagging because she'd been running around outside and playing in the dirt all afternoon, and at some point she'd gotten them wet, either in a puddle of rainwater or with the hose.

After the pancake was "done," she brought it to me in the sieve along with a tiny cup of water to be administered by her with a spoon. I pretended to eat the pancake.

"What about me? I want a pancake, too," said Simon.

Clara came to me and reached for the sieve. I protested wildly. Firmly she took it from me and gave it to Simon.

"Here you go, Daddy."

"But what about me? I'm still hungry for pancake!" I complained.

Looking sort of stressed out and exasperated, she pointed to a space on the carpet in front of me. "There it is, Mommy. There's your bowl with the pancake."

"Clearly she thinks I'll be mollified by a pretend pancake," I said to Simon. Daddy wins again.

Next Clara set to work pulling off the black hoodie I wore over my T-shirt. "I'm cold! I don't want to take it off!" I moaned.

"Yes, Mommy. You need to take this off."

She pulled it off my arms and gave me a conciliatory pat on the shoulder with her chubby toddler paw. Then she held up a cup and pretended to spoon-feed me: "Here, Mommy, have some soup," she whispered tenderly.

**********************

Today Clara lost her favorite stuffed dog just as we were getting ready to leave for the park. The stuffed dog was a birthday present from a friend, and came inside a big purse with a pink and white pattern vaguely reminiscent of a Louis Vuitton knock-off. That's right. Not just sort of like the real thing, but sort of like the one that's sort of like real thing. (Like most two-year-olds, Clara is oblivious to the dictates of fashion. She only noticed that it was pink and had a little stuffed dog inside.) The purse has long since been relegated to the toy box, but the dog, called simply, "Doggie," goes with us everywhere. It's replaced "Ugly Baby," the doll she used to haul around.

The dog originally had a battery pack inside his abdomen that made him bark and pant. Clara figured out how to get the battery pack out of its velcro-ed pouch in the dog's belly and started dragging the dog around by it. (The wires connecting the battery pack to the dog itself were long enough for her to designate them "Doggie's leash"). Watching her drag the dog around by its circuitry seemed sort of like watching a perpetual disembowelment.

Eventually, the wires pulled apart from wherever they were connected inside the battery pack. Clara was pretty upset that the dog no longer barked and panted, so I figured the only option was surgery. I opened the battery pack and Simon showed me where the wires should attach to a tiny circuit board. But, he said, they were probably originally welded or soldered on. I tried getting the wires to stay with masking tape and duct tape, to no avail. So I tried melting the wires to the circuit board by holding a match to them. The entire circuit board went up in flame. I didn't think silicon could burn like that.

After I threw away the wires and the partially melted battery pack box, I explained to Clara that Doggie had suddenly become really quiet and shy. In fact, he would probably never bark again, but we could still love him just the same. She was content with this explanation. I couldn't get the hole where the battery pack used to be to stay velcro-ed shut. Doggie started leaking fluff everywhere. Finally I sewed up the hole, but not before he'd lost most of his fluff.

So, Doggie is now very floppy and misshapen. I get him into the wash twice a week, but he's still usually crusty (milk and honey) and covered with dirty Band-aids, and his plastic nose is askew. Still, Clara felt she must have him with her when we went to the park. She wandered downstairs to the playroom, shouting, "Doggie, where are you? We goin' to the park now, awighty? Hey, Doggie, you're missin'!"

Finally she found him inside a tupperware container I use to store her tiny dollhouse furniture in. She'd wrapped him in a handkerchief and put him to bed there a half hour before. When she found him, she scooped him up and cradled him lovingly in her arms.

She said, "Don't worry, Doggie. I'm your Mommy, and all your dreams will come true."

Chocolate and jalapenos

Yesterday I dreamt a waitress in a fancy restaurant showed me the dessert walk-in fridge. She crouched, her traditional Bavarian dirndl skirt and corset bunching a little at the waist, to look on the walk-in's bottom shelf. "Well, it looks like we're out of the three-layer carrot cake with cream cheese frosting," she said regretfully. "Buuut," and she pulled out a tray of German chocolate cake (was this why she was in a Bavarian costume?) and also a tray of brownies. "What we can do is this..." she continued, and she put a square of brownie on top of a piece of German chocolate cake. They both instantly became warm and melty and delicious because she had the power to send microwaves through her fingers. Then she drizzled warm chocolate ganache over the top. In the dream, I said something I will never, ever say in real life: "Me like-y! Me love-y! Me want some more of-y!"

Then my pregnant stomach began growling and woke me up. It was morning, and Clara was rustling around next door. Wondering if we had anything decadent in the cupboard I could have for breakfast, I went to get her.

"Hi, Baby," I said, as she jumped off her bed and into my arms.

"I'm not a baby, Mommy," she said. This after months of insisting we call her just that.

Glory be! I thought. She's embraced the winds of change!

"I'm a cat."

Wrong direction.

She stuck out her tongue and licked my cheek.

"Honey," I said, grimacing."Please don't do that. There's all sorts of germies on my cheek." And on your tongue, I added to myself.

She took my face in her hands and examined it closely.

"Mommy has two polka-dots," she said, touching her baby index finger to the rosacea spots on my cheek. For my rosacea I apply a thin layer of a prescription drug called Metrogel to my face every night (That's right, Metrogel is not a hair pomade for people of indeterminate sexual orientation, but a topical ointment for people with, "adult acne"). It occurred to me that Clara now had some of last night's Metrogel on her tongue. But since the Metrogel apparently doesn't do jack for my rosacea, I was pretty sure it wouldn't strip her tongue of its taste buds or anything horrible like that, either.

"And an ouchie," Clara continued, pressing the mole by my mouth. Her inspection over, I took her downstairs and sat her down in her booster seat.

"Did you have any dreams last night?" I asked her, rummaging through the cupboard. Bananas Foster would have been an ideal breakfast, but what pregnant lady keeps a bottle of rum on hand?

"Yes. I dreamed about baby doggies and little, tiny baby kitties." Her voice got squeaky high when she talked about the little, tiny baby kitties, and she brought her hands together, making her fingers wiggle with anticipation. Like she was getting ready to eat something delicious.

"Did they have names?" I asked, pouring her a bowl of Trix.

"Ummmmmm....YES. Names are Flopsy, Mopsy and Cottontail."

"Oh, like in Peter Rabbit?"

"No. Just in my dream."

*************************************


This pregnancy, besides decadent desserts, I've been craving anything spicy. I put jalapenos on everything: pizza, scrambled eggs, ham sandwiches. Two nights ago I had jalapenos on a tuna melt. Then I went to a Mexican restaurant called The Matador with some friends. We had chips and hot salsa. And I had a bowl of chicken soup that our server called, "The spiciest thing on the menu." And how. It was so spicy I couldn't finish it.

That night I woke at two am. My belly clenched. It felt like flames were making a circuit of my stomach and intestines. This is what Johnny Cash meant when he wrote "Ring of Fire," I thought. I was up half the night, praying for deliverance from that bowl of spicy chicken soup.

In the morning I had to take Clara to daycare. As we walked up to the daycare's front door, a strange feeling came over me.

Please don't let this happen, I thought. But it was happening. I ran to the flowerbeds beside the daycare's driveway and dropped to one knee like a football player conceding ground. Stirred by the morning breeze, multi-colored pinwheels whirred cheerfully in the grass beside me. A stone garden bunny looked on with amusement.

Clara has never seen anyone throw up. She herself has only done it a couple times. A baby throwing up is not like an adult barfing. Clara always seems surprised when the detritus of her last few meals comes flying out her mouth. And there are no real sound effects with babies, just the gurgle of fluid leaving a vessel. As with most things, barfing gets much uglier as you become an adult. There's the pre-vomit sagging face, as the barfer anticipates the roiling stomach spasms to come. There's the guttural retching and the bowed torso, like an alien giving birth.

As cars whizzed by, I tried my best to be discreet about it.

Clara bent over next to me and spat gratuitously in the grass. She pretend-coughed and imitated my retches. Whatever...I thought. As long as she's not wandering in the street while I'm emptying my stomach.

My glasses slipped off my nose and fell into the pile of vomit.

Luckily, I had wipes on hand in my purse. Otherwise I might have had to spend the next several minutes viewing the world through puke-streaked lenses.

Thankfully, I don't think anyone from inside the daycare saw me hurl. I wondered, as I spoke with Clara's daycare provider, if I had flecks of tomato on my teeth from last night's salsa.

I called my OB afterwards just to apprise him of the situation and to reassure myself that I hadn't inadvertently marinated my gestating baby in a napalm-like slurry of chili pepper.

"Well," he said, after I told him of the situation, "I think now we can safely say you understand the boundary between enough spiciness and too much." In other words, I thought "We're not going to do this again, are we?"

Perhaps. But even as I write this, the idea of jalapeno-encrusted nachos makes my mouth water.