Photos of me I wish my child had not taken

Yesterday I took a high-intensity water aerobics class, which was probably not the best decision considering this morning I awoke exhausted, with deeply sore muscles and the knowledge that there would be little rest for me throughout the day.

At about 10 a.m. Louis took his customary morning nap and Clara said, "Mom, let's go snuggle in the big bed."

So unexpected and wonderful was this statement, it was a little like stumbling across a cistern of cool spring water deep in the Saharan desert.  I allowed my heart to hope, however briefly, that she might fall asleep so I could, too.

I should have remembered that, unless allowed to, for example, go without sleep for several nights and cross the country two or three times on a plane, or perhaps run the toddler equivalent of twelve miles, do fourteen puzzles and color a whole coloring book, all in the space of two hours, Clara doesn't usually nap during the morning, and she doesn't really "snuggle" either.  Snuggling connotes a comfortable cohabitation of space with another person, a sharing of body heat.  Clara does not want to cuddle with me so much as she wants to climb back inside my body.  When we're lying together, she rearranges my limbs, butts her head into my neck and sometimes even squishes her face into mine, all to maximize the surface area of my skin that touches hers.

The other thing she does when we're meant to be snuggling that's really, really irritating, is she continuously rearranges things: the blankets, the pillow, my hair. Ever since she was tiny, she's been a super busy kid.  It's cute when she's building forts down in the playroom or making five-course meals of plastic Bok Choy, apples and chocolate chip cookies in her play kitchen.  It's not fun when you're lying next to her, your muscles weeping for rest.

I once complained about her constant rearranging to Simon and he told me that she was behaving like me, trying to continuously arrange and fix everything instead of just living in the moment.  Perfectionism.  It wasn't such a problem for me until it showed up in my child.  It's like she's extricating my worst side, and then putting it on display for me.

"Mom," she whispered after we settled in and I pulled my thick comforter over the top of us.  "We are cats in a winter storm."  She yanked at the comforter so it went askew on my body and my legs stuck out the side.  She pulled the pillow out from under my head.

"Mom, let's make a nest, a nice comfy warm nest for us to sleep in.  We are cats, Mom, we are hibernating cats."

"Hey, I got an idea.  Let's see how long you can go without moving." I said.  She froze on her back, her front hands curled in front of her, close to her chest, her mouth agape and teeth bared.  She even held her breath. I imagined she was trying to approximate what she thought a sleeping baby kitty might look like, and I was loathe to tell her the pose looked more like a T-Rex.

"One-Mississippi, Two-Mississippi, Three-" I began.

"Hey, Mom, I got an idea.  I will be the baby cat and you be the mama cat and it is snowing outside."

"That was pretty good," I said.  "Last time you only lasted for one second."

"Mom, why did you close your eyes?  It's wake-up time, Mom."

"You just said a minute ago we were hibernating."

"We are hibernating, not sleeping, Mom."

"Mmmmpf," I said, and she went suddenly quiet.  I could tell, from her mutterings and grappling sounds, that she'd found my phone and was flipping through the photos.  Good.  Maybe she'd let me doze for a few minutes.

Suddenly the room lit up in a brilliant light.  I could feel it burning my retinas through my closed eyelids.  That's it, I thought, I've had an aneurism.  The kids have finally done me in.  The kids and high-intensity water aerobics.

I opened my eyes and Clara had my phone and was grinning gleefully.  "I got you, Mom! It's wake-up time!"

I took the phone from her and examined the photo:

It's not so bad.  I'm not a fan of the nostril shot, but at least my lips are closed.  It's a better photo than the one she took of me a few weeks ago, standing at the stove cooking, my butt a broad, shapeless red plain in the fleece Guitar Hero pants my mom got my husband for Christmas six years ago.

And it's a million times better than this gem, which Clara took of me at five am one December morning as I was stretching, and which I refer to as the, "chinless wonder shot.":

The Dynamic of Two

"Mom, tell me a story about when I was one,” Clara says around a mouthful of toast with butter and jam. It’s her second slice. She’s really hungry because she didn’t eat the lunch I made for her. I comfort myself with the fact that the bread she’s eating is whole grain.

It’s mid-afternoon and I’m trying, for the third or fourth time today, to wash the dishes. Baby Louis is in his Jolly Jump Up, vibrating with breast milk belches. Occasionally he emits one that threatens to become a geyser but, today, at least, it seems the front of the Jolly Jump Up will stay dry.

I tell Clara the story of when I was sitting up in bed breastfeeding her when she was just born and I was so tired I fell asleep and she rolled out of my arms like a little sausage and rolled down a long pillow that was against the bed and ended up on a bunch of pillows on the floor.

“And I woke up and said, ‘Eeeek! Where’s my baby!’” I finish, looking up from the pan I’m scrubbing.

“Heh heh heh,” Clara chuckles.

“Heh heh heh,” Louis chuckles, because Clara did.

“Mom, read me a book,” says Clara, climbing out of her chair. She wipes her butter-greasy hands down the front of her Hello Kitty shirt. There are long smears of blackberry jam at the corners of her mouth, making her look like the toddler version of the Joker in Batman.

“After the dishes, and go clean your face,” I say. Miraculously she doesn’t protest.

Later we go downstairs and I put Louis on the floor. My hands are still kind of wet from doing dishes, so I duck into the laundry room for a towel. When I come back out Clara is lying on top of Louis, holding his little fists against the carpet so he won’t grab her hair (one of his favorite things to do-Ever) and smashing her nose against his. Louis is on cloud nine. He opens his maw and tries to get her nose with his drooly gums.

“Hey, hey!” I say, grabbing at Clara. “Don’t lie on top of the baby!”

She sits up and begins to gently sock Louis in the gut. He gurgles at her in delight.

“Okay, especially don’t do that! He doesn’t know any better.” I say. Wait, I think. That doesn’t make any sense.

“What I mean to say is, he’s little and delicate,” I amend. Wait, that’s not exactly true either. He’s about to grow out of his infant carseat and is almost as tall as she is.

“Well, he’s young. Younger than you.” That’s not it either. Don’t karate-chop your brother’s stomach because he’s younger than you? I can see myself in future years: “Don’t chase your brother with a chainsaw because he’s younger than you.” “Don’t back over your brother in the SUV because he’s younger than you.”

What I really should have said is, “Don’t punch your brother in the gut because it’s not nice.”

Why can’t I think of the thing these days that’s exactly the right thing that I want to say in that specific moment? It reminds me of the time, a month or so ago, when we were walking down the sidewalk and Clara asked me to carry her and I said I couldn’t because I was carrying Louis because he didn’t have any legs. In my defense, I was so foggy from lack of sleep I could barely concentrate on brushing my teeth that day.

“He does have legs, Mom! He does!” she had yelled.

‘No, no he doesn’t,” I had replied absentmindedly before amending, several steps later, “Oh, oh, you’re right! You’re right! What I meant to say is, ‘He can’t walk.’”

“This is how you roll over over,” Clara says on the playroom carpet, after finally ceasing her jabs at Louis’ tummy. She gives him a shove and he overturns slowly, like a reluctant iceberg. “Holy cow!” she says, for no particular reason. She takes his hand in a spectacularly wrenching fashion, bending it back and splaying his fingers. Surprisingly, he seems unaware of the terrible pain this is inflicting.

“Ok, you’re not playing nice, so you need to go over there and find something else to do,” I say, pointing to the other end of the room. She goes for her Cinderella Legos.

Louis watches her leave with some disappointment. Then he forgets about her and begins to Indian leg wrestle with one of the nursery chairs. Unable to topple it, he grows frustrated and uses it as leverage to roll. He tumbles over, directly on top of a bunch of his toy cars. He groans in frustration. He meant for them to go in his mouth! Now he must figure out how to skooch down the carpet so he can get them in range. Alas, linear movement is, for the moment, beyond him. He decides to roll over again and crashes into Clara’s toy baby stroller. He wrestles with it for a moment, making all sorts of determined noises. After a small, lamenting moan, he begins to chew on one of the wheels.

Louis gets his four-month check-up

One of my favorite things...

One of my favorite things about Louis is his hands. They are delicate, long-fingered and very expressive. When I nap with him I like to drape my arm across his chest--I support my wrist and hand on the other side of him with a pillow so my arm isn't too heavy on his body--and he plucks at my arm with tentative exploration. As if it were a harp string or something. I like to carry him upright with one arm and he puts his little hand at the nape of my neck, his fingers flicking and grasping softly at the short hairs there. The effect is very relaxing, and sometimes I find my eyelids drooping, even as I'm walking around with him, doing laundry or dishes one-handed.


Louis gets his four-month check-up...

Thursday was Louis' 4-month Well Check. I took him out of his carseat in the doctor office's waiting room and let him stand on my lap with my hands supporting him under his armpits. He was wearing his blue jammies with the penguins on them, but I knew what he looked like under all that fleecy comfiness: his knees, locked as he stood rigidly, would have disappeared entirely into the delicious chubbiness of his legs. He has such deep, firm, wonderful rolls on his thighs now that you could probably use them like a chip clip, or an impromptu holder of pens and pencils.

I'm allowed to talk about his chub like this for two reasons: one, I'm his mother. And two, I know from experience that as soon as he begins to crawl all of that sublime baby blubber will, sadly, disappear.

In the doctor's waiting room was another baby, a little girl with a tiny, pert nose, wearing soft pink jammies. She was crawling all over the place and pulling herself up using the waiting-room chairs and end tables. Her mother said she was about ten months old. The mother brought her over and stood her in front of Louis, about a foot from him. He jerked excitedly and grinned at her, drool dangling off his chin. He loves other babies.

The little girl baby stood calmly watching him back, exercising the controlled muscles of an older, and thus more accomplished, baby. Sensing the opportunity to show off, Louis lurched to his full height, his little arms wind-milling. He looked like a skier just conquering the "snowplow." A fleeting look of bravado crossed his face. The girl baby reached a hand out to touch his nose and he abruptly lost all his form, bending at the waist, sagging at the tummy, face going completely slack as his dribbly mouth gaped open, wanting only to catch one of those tiny pink fingers and chew on it until it was prune-y with slime.

Seeing that Louis was a flesh-eater of the highest degree, the girl baby withdrew her little hand in dismay. Louis stood up again. This time, when he was fully upright, he glanced sideways, his eyelashes fluttered briefly, and I thought I saw a more grown-up emotion on his face: bashfulness.

The nurse came to the door and called out our name. I was relieved to see it was our doctor's nurse, the hip one that wears clothes from R.E.I. and always has kind things to say about my hair. The other nurse--the one that helps out when the regular nursing staff is swamped-- always shouts Louis' name in French, even though it's pronounced the American way. When she yells, "Looo-eeey!" I always think of that call, "Sooo-ey!" that pig farmers use to make the pigs come running.

I stripped Louis down to his diaper and we weighed and measured him. He came in at the 93rd percentile for weight and the 98th percentile for height.

While we waited for the doctor, I stood Louis on the examining-room table and let him talk to himself in the mirror next to it. He gurgled and chortled, and then he swayed and swaggered and scolded that baby in the reflection.

After awhile he got tired, and anyway the baby in the mirror didn't seem that scared of him. I sat him down on his bottom. His interest was caught by his foot. Slowly, very slowly, he bent at the waist and brought his mouth down lower and lower, until it enveloped his pink, unsuspecting big toe. His face registered interest, surprise, and then the euphoria of a connoisseur of French food tasting the finest, most expensive truffle.

The doctor came in a few minutes later and examined him. She pronounced him very healthy and cleared him to sleep ten hours a night without eating.

Then came time for the shots. The nurse came in with three syringes and a dropper on a tray. She laid him on the examining table and squeezed Louis' thighs, both to straighten them out and to find a good place in which to poke the needle. Louis, who is VERY ticklish on his thighs, giggled.

"That makes me feel bad," the nurse sighed, getting the first syringe ready. She plunged it in and Louis squalled in shock and fury. "What are you doing?!" he seemed to yell. "First you guys insist on trespassing inside my diaper line and now this..."

However, he calmed down pretty quickly, and even grinned at me a moment later with red, teary eyes. He got three Bandaids, one for each needle wound. One Bandaid was blue, with some kind of cartoon on it, I don't know what. One was black with cool tri-colored flames on it and the other had a skull and crossbones.

Telling the baby in the mirror to, "Get a life!"

Feeling sleepy, sore and kind of feverish after all those shots.

There are fish in the swimming pool

Clara turns three this week, so we enrolled her in swim lessons. Today was her first day. In the locker room of the local Y, we put on her blue gingham bathing suit, tucked Floppy the stuffed dog under her arm and wiped the blackberry jelly -infused snot from her upper lip with the corner of our swim towel. Floppy and I watched the lesson from the pool deck, where we sat in white plastic patio chairs. Louis drowsed on my shoulder, bedazzled and hypnotized by the sunshine streaming through the windows and reflecting off the turquoise pool water.

Clara did great, and even jumped from the edge of the pool afterwards and into the waiting arms of her swim teacher. She put her head underwater, too.

After the lesson, she seemed concerned and distracted. Surprisingly, she declined to splash around in the kiddie pool.

"A fish swimmed into my mouf," she whispered to me, huddling in her towel next to my knees.

"It did? Honey, there are no fish in the swimming pool."

"Yes, there are. I saw her. There's a mama fish."

"Here, come here. Show me." I put Louis in his infant seat and crouched at the edge of the big pool.

"Right rair," she said, pointing to the bottom of the pool, where the concrete was splotched with dozens of yellowish stains. "Oh!" she shouted. "There they are!"

"Those are just stains. Fish can't live in this pool. They put special juice in this pool the fish don't like, so they stay away. They say, 'No, thank-you very much! We're going to stay in the pond!'"

"The mama fish swimmed to the bottom and planted a tree in the dirt," Clara whispered conspiratorially. "And then she swimmed into my mouf. And she wants to go into my belly to be with her baby and big girl."

"Ohhhh-kay," I said, deciding to join her in her reality. "How are you going to get them out?"

"They will come out when I go potty. He will swim in the toilet."

"Alright. Let's go pee then."

We did, in the sodden restroom next to the pool.

The fish didn't come out.

"They will come out with a toofbrush," Clara decided when we found ourselves back on the pool deck. (Louis was an absolute doll. Throughout the fish epiphany he cheerfully sat in his seat, giving Clara his best idolatrous drool-filled grin.)

"We don't have a toothbrush. Shall I scrub your teeth with my pinkie finger?"

That didn't work, either. Back in the girls locker room, Clara stood on the stool in front of the vanity mirror and stared into her mouth.

"He's in there," she confirmed. Then she grimaced hugely, inspecting her teeth.

"Hey, that lady is taking our room!" she said suddenly, pointing to a woman who was undressing and putting her clothes into a nearby locker.

"They're called lockers. They don't belong to anyone in particular. When we come we just find whichever one is open to use. Last time we used the one that she's using. But that doesn't mean it's ours. It's just the one that happened to be open last time. This time we're using this other locker. See?"

The trespassing, villainous woman smiled at Clara. Clara blinked.

"I think the fish are stuck in my teeth. I will try not to eat wem."

We went upstairs and Clara opened her pink My Little Pony lunchbox. I gave her half of her peanut butter and jelly, but withheld the other half until she ate three green beans. She stuffed them all at once into her mouth and chewed deliberately. After a moment she spit them out in a little fibrous, slimy green pile on the table.

"Right rair! The fish is in rair!" she said, pointing to the pile.

"The fish is in the green beans?"

"Yes."

"Well, you're going to have to eat more green beans since you spit those out."

"Okay."

Later in the afternoon I came upon her looming over Louis in his Jolly Jump Up, her mouth gaping.

"I'm giving my fish to Louis. The fish is jumping out of my mouf and into Louis' mouf."

By the time Simon arrived home from work, the fish was back in Clara's body and had worked its way down to her feet. No sign yet of how it'll make its way out.

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!"