Holidays

"Can I tell you the reason I had to come into your bed last night?"

"Sure."

"It's because kids have these things called realities."

"Realities?"

"Yes. They're like these tiny things that live inside your bones."

"Okay."

"They live mainly in the bones in your feet. And they're like eyes. I have one here." *points to the third eye spot on your forehead* "And last night my realities made me come in here."

I'm sorry I missed Thanksgiving notes for you, my Succotash. I am afraid that I had a book come out right before Thanksgiving, and then I was on the road for it, and my work ate my brain. For Thanksgiving this year we had kind of a big crowd actually - Ginger and Brian, Rhod and Vicki, Ama and PopPop, Miss Margie and Mister Bob, and us three. I put out your great grandmother's silver and all the old linens, and it was really quite beautiful, even after one of the leaves of the breakfast table collapsed and doused Vicki with red wine. 

Then for Christmas we had Grandpa and Aunt Rachel and her new boyfriend Dave staying over, and on Christmas day we added Ama and PopPop and Uncle Eli and Aunt Jenny - newly engaged at last! - and the volume of presents rained upon you was truly staggering. By far the biggest hit, however, was a George Washington costume, with a waistcoat and tricorn hat and bootlike leggings which you then wore for two days in a row. As I write this now one of the buttons from the waistcoat sits next to my laptop, waiting to be sewn back on. I got some pretty great pictures of you by the cannon at Fort Sewall. You also got some long knee socks which I think are technically meant for soccer, but which you have decided are "stockings" to wear with your clothes from "the olden times." 

Right now you and your dad are on your way outside to play with your new remote control car. Other items of note: you and I appeared in the first annual Old North "no rehearsal Christmas pageant," which was less chaotic than I was led to expect. You and I were sheep, and to be a sheep you determined to wear your rabbit costume, which still fits two years later. You actually informed me that you were a "Wererabbit," and that you were going to burn the meeting house down. Your father was very proud.

As we were getting ready for dinner on Christmas eve I had to put in you in a time out. Why? Because you were so insistent on being allowed to play with your great-grandmothers fragile silver coffee pot that you tried to throw a chair when I wouldn't let you. So, in some sense, though this was our first Christmas without my mother here, your penchant for delicate decorate art objects means she was here all the same. I offered you a silver sugar bowl or creamer instead, but you were adamant that it had to have a *lid.* I tried to explain, while you were in time out on the stairs, that it was so fragile even I am not allowed to play with it. You were mournful in your promises that you wouldn't break it, and I tried to assure you that I believed you, but that it was *so* fragile it would be hard not to break it on accident, and that we wanted to keep it safe for you to give to your children. As I said this, however, I heard the lunacy of it - we had to keep it safe so you could also tell your children they couldn't touch it? Is that a ridiculous position? Maybe it is. I don't know. I'm doing my best here. The salient point is, you really love sterling silver hollowware from 100 years ago. 

Today after church we walked the Murphys home - there was a lot of infighting among them and whining from you because you didn't have a hat and didn't want to go to the grocery store - but we survived and obtained buttermilk and black eyed peas for me to make for luck tomorrow. I haven't made black eyed peas in several years. I secretly worry it's this oversight that has contributed the horrors unfolding in the Middle East right now. So many horrid world events have unfolded in your short life span. I would give anything for 2024 to be a year of boredom and lack of news. That's my wish for us, and for the world at large - no news. Please, God, no news. 

You are getting more willful, but are also struggling with the tension between your growing desire for independence, and the anxiety that brings up in you. You will loudly announce you are not afraid of ANYTHING, but haven't been able to go longer than two hours sleeping in your big kid bed alone. You want to do things yourself, but haven't figured out that some things require practice before they can be mastered. You deal with your social anxiety by pretending to be someone else, which on some level I don't understand, though of course I do the same thing, but in my work, and also in my professional persona, which is related to, but different, from the person I really imagine myself to be. We are applying to Tower and Shore for you for next year, hoping a smaller class size and a more teacher-led curriculum will give you the calmness and structure that we suspect you really need to feed your voracious, observant, and introspective brain. We should know by February if either of those is happening. 

So. Here we are, on the last day of 2023. You are four years and almost three months old. I just had to step away for a moment to have a huge throwdown with you because you wanted someone to go to the bathroom with you and read a book. I'm in the unfortunate position of having to teach you that the world does not exist for your entertainment and convenience. You don't like it one bit. I don't either, frankly. But while I try to erect a scaffolding around you that makes you feel safe and secure, well loved and known in your community, I am also keenly aware that the world can be a cold and unfeeling place. And I want you to be safe and secure in yourself there, too. Because I love you more than anything in the world. 

Birthdays and Serious Charles

We have just survived the longest long weekend of our family life, though I think it was largely a success. 

First, we all came down with Preschool Plague, and your Dad and I are *still* not over it almost two weeks later. Then your Aunt Rachel came up to visit for the weekend, bringing a cowboy costume, a firefighter costume, and sundry vintage Fisher Price toys, which caused so much delight for you that we still haven't opened your birthday presents days later because I'm sort of concerned you'll get spoiled. 

On your actual birthday we had a pirate theme party with lots of kids from the neighborhood, adults who love you (Miss Margie! Uncle Eli! the Naughtons!), your new best friend Ryan (a sweet little guy you met through T ball), and your favorite babysitter Abby (who you used to call "my big kid with Crocs"). We had a treasure chest pinata and bad grocery store sheet cake decorated by Rachel and punch in plastic coconuts. And - my poor Charles! - you had a terrible time. You got a freak paper cut from one of the blow-up swords and it launched you into a full on meltdown which took you out of the party for upwards of half an hour. I felt terrible. The truth is, I think I responded in a very similar way to birthday parties when I was your age. The anticipation, the pressure to have a good time, the attention, the noise - it's a lot for a sensitive person, which you avowedly are. I think next year we will give you more control over what kind of birthday celebration we have. Once it thinned out a little and it was quieter and down to just a few kids, you actually started to play and have a good time. 

Uncle Eli stayed over, and the following day we undertook a massive quest. We packed up your knight costume and drove an hour and a half to King Richard's Faire, the annual Renaissance festival in Carver, MA. Fortunately your dad and Eli had read up ahead of time, and so we managed to get there early enough to actually get a parking space. We explored a charming mock medieval village, gawked at all the grownups in crazy costumes, waited in long lines for everything (once behind a group of kids named Odin, Freya, and Raven - this is a whole situation, I'm telling you), and saw - joy of joys! - an actual mock tournament. I was pretty impressed by those guys, no lie - it takes some gumption to shatter a lance on another guy while cantering, and then throw a sword into a bale of hay while in motion. A couple of the knights were even adept at stunt falls, and threw themselves backwards off of their horses to the ground. Unhorsed! We cheered. We booed. It was good fun. Then you and I waited in a long line to ride a pirate ship swing thing that you move by pulling ropes. Waiting was tough, but we pushed through and then you had a huge smile on your face. By then it was time for bad overpriced pizza, and shopping for a sateen cape for you pattered with a gold lion's head. I was grateful your dad talked you out of the wooden swords. Man, all you wanted was a wooden sword. But you like shiny dress up capes better. On the drive home you fell fast asleep.

Another notable development - on the night of your birthday you informed me that you were a big kid now, and you were ready to sleep in your own bed. We tucked you into the antique twin that is in the nursey - the same one I slept in, and Grandpa slept in, and my grandfather slept in, and everyone slept in, going back to - we estimate - around 1820. It has a horsehair mattress and carved pineapples under the cannonball posts, and it creaks. Fortunately I can still fit in it with you. You've fallen asleep in there three nights running. To be fair, each night you have rejoined the big bed sometime between midnight and 4 am. But I'm pretty impressed with your decisiveness. This is the second time you've just made up your mind that you are going to do something, and then done it. (The first was potty training.) 

One of your favorite books the past couple of days is a book about a baby robot who wonders what love is, called "Love, Z." It's a library book from school, and last night you were heartbroken because it had to go back to the library. But I've ordered a copy for us. One night in your big kid bed we were reading it, and you remarked while looking at the different robots, who all have differently shaped heads balanced over differently shaped bodies, that the robot with the round head and round body would have a hard time balancing their head. 

"Why is that?" I asked you.

"Because with round things, when you touch them, they only come together in one place," you explained. Which, to be honest, blew me away, Mr. Perception of Geometry. Dang. 

This morning you were playing with a calculator that was part of Ryan's birthday present to you, and you decided to pretend it was a cell phone.

"I am Serious Charles," you informed us. You and your Dad sat on the sofa in the kitchen being Serious and taking meetings. You answered the phone and said "Hello? No. Yes. I'll meet you there at eleven. Bye."

My very serious Charles is a big four year old boy now. And I try to tell you, every single night, how proud I am of you. And how very much I love you.

Sartorial

 Today for Montessori you chose to wear:

1. Jean shorts

2. Red "Support Texas Bookstores" t-shirt

3. Red Mount Gay Rum Figawi 2019 hat, signed "To Railmeat" by the crew, as it's the first race you did when you were in utero.

4. Vineyard Vines whale belt kitted out with CYC keychain repurposed to serve as a scabbard, with bright green foam sword.

5. Light up red spider cowboy boots

And on the way out you announced that today you were Sir Gareth of Orkney as a kid.

Well, one thing's for sure - you are definitely my son.

Social Awareness

 You have started to come up with ways to persuade us to do things.

This morning I told you that this afternoon after school we are going to have a playdate with Ryan.

You got all excited. "Will I get to go into the basement and play?" you said.

"Well," I told you. "I think today what's going to happen is Ryan and his brother AJ are going to come over to our house. You get to show them some of your toys."

"Oh!" you said. But then you put on a face of extreme concern. "But Ryan might be disappointed that we don't have any Nerf guns."

You, my crafty son, are very keen to be given a Nerf gun.

"I think it'll be okay," I assured you. "After all, he doesn't have as much vintage Fisher Price as you do."

"Oh yes!" you were relieved. "He likes Fisher Price. We like the same things, because we are best friends!"

I can't wait to see your next move in the great Nerf Gun Scheme of 2023.

I haven't met any sons today.

This is a new game you like to play. You will all of a sudden transform into someone else.

"I haven't met any sons today," you inform me. 

"You haven't?" I say.

"Yes. Do you have a son? I'm just a knight/pirate/space ranger/harpooner. I haven't met your son."

"Oh that's too bad," I say. "He's so cool. I think you'd really like him."

"Was he here just a minute ago?" you ask, all concerned.

"I thought so," I say. "I hope he comes back soon. He's so great. He's tall, and handsome, and funny, and a good friend, and his name is Charles."

Often the game will then continue with your alter ego evincing confusion about something Charles knows really well. "I don't know what a restaurant is, I'm just a knight," you explain. "I'm from the olden times."

"Oh I see," I say. "Well, a restaurant is a place where we go a a neighbor makes food for us. My son Charles really likes this restaurant."

Sometimes your alter ego will transform into another alter ego before Charles comes back.

"He's got your imagination and my ability to free-associate," your dad remarked to me the other night.

Other recent innovations:

"Behold!" you said, presenting me a book to read at bedtime with a flourish.

And the other night, when we were talking about a particular book we might want to read, you put on your best Fred Savage in The Princess Bride expression and said "Are you trying to trick me?"

And your dad cracked up and added "Is this a kissing book?"

We think it was your first conversational movie reference. If my son had been here, he would have loved it. 

Solutions

Your Dad: "Charles, we need to go to bed earlier so you get enough sleep before school. What do you think should we do?"

You: "I think we should pile rocks around the bed so we can't get out of bed in the morning."

Dad: "That's not what I said. I said we need to go to bed earlier."

You: "What about bricks?"

Kramer vs. Kramer

Your other favorite game is one that you don't know your Dad and I call "Kramer vs. Kramer," after a famous film from when we were little kids starring Meryl Streep and Dustin Hoffman about a brutal custody battle. (I know. We're hilarious.)

In this game you and I snuggle, and your Dad pretends to steal you away. This is best played in the pool or in bed, somewhere where we can wrangle over you in safety. Your Dad says "Gimme that baby!" and then takes you into his arms and snuggles you. 

And then he says "You want to go to your mama?" While I loudly protest that you are my baby, he can't have you, he has to give you back to me. And you say "Yes! I want to go to my mama!" And Daddy pretends to give you back to me, and I hold out my arms, but at the last minute he snatches you away and smothers you with snuggles and says "Nope! You're all mine! You're my baby, just for me!" And this goes on for awhile until finally he surrenders you to my arms and I sign with relief and say "I got my baby back hooray!" 

And then you ask to play it again. You call this game "The game where Daddy tries to steal me." You love it because you are the center of attention and affection and we are shameless in our expressions of how much we love you. Usually we end with all three of us in one big hug, sometimes making a "Charles sandwich."

When I was little Nana and Granpa would pick me up and we would do "Everybody loves everybody!" where we would all do a big three way hug, and after we got our dog Muffin we would have to pick up Muffin (poor Muffin) so she could be in "everybody loves everybody" with us. An early iteration of the Charles sandwich. God help whatever poor creature winds up being your pet and brought into the Charles sandwich too. 

Egg

Time was, when we took you out of the bath or shower we would wrap you up in a towel and say "I'm going to wrap you up like a Roman senator! I'm going to wrap you up like Seneca!" while rubbing you down with terry cloth, and you would giggle.

Lately, at least for the past few months, you prefer to step out of the shower and play "egg." This game requires both parents to be present (as you have sadly informed me on evenings when I've tried to play egg while your Dad was still downstairs). It entails covering you with a towel completely so that you are totally hidden and sitting in a ball. Then I have to loudly discover you are there.

"Lou!" I'll exclaim. "Look at this huge egg I just found!"

"What egg?" your Dad will say, often standing at the sink and brushing his teeth.

"This egg! I don't remember laying an egg. But I must have, because there's an egg right here. Do you think there is a chick inside?"

"I hope so," says your Dad. At the point the egg starts giggling.

"I had better sit on it and keep it warm," I say. I don't actually sit on the egg, but I do hug it and rub its back through the towel with my hands and sometimes shower kisses on its head. At this point, the egg with sometimes start to move.

"Lou!" I call. "The egg! It just moved!"

"It did??" Out pops one Charles foot.

"Yes, look! A little baby chick foot is sticking out!" 

"A little baby chick!" 

"Yes! Look, now there are two little baby chick feet!"

This will go on for some time as we excitedly discuss the imminent hatching of our new little baby chick, and then when you can't stand the suspense one more minute you will throw off the towel and say "Hatch!"

And then I will hug you and kiss you and exclaim over how happy I am that I have a brand new baby chick, and how much I love it. And you will pretend to be a chick who is just born and can't fly, and sometimes I will offer you pretend worms out of my hand, and you will pretend to eat them. And then gradually you will grow and try flapping your wings and eventually you will run naked around the bedroom and then, when it's time to put pajammies on, you will tell me "Now I'm back to being a human."

And then we all go to bed.

I think this game came about because we read a picture book that I remember loving as a child, called How Fletcher was Hatched. This book is not what I would call a "good" book. But it's about a big hound dog who thinks the way to make his favorite girl love him again is to pretend to be a baby chick, and so his good friends Otter and Beaver make a huge egg around him out of clay, and then the egg is discovered and Fletcher keeps very quiet while everyone wonders where it came from, until he hears Alexandra, his girl, crying because she misses Fletcher. And then he hatches! And I think it's also a way for you to process how you feel about not being a baby anymore. Because you are growing and changing every day, and very soon, you will be four years old. My very own most favorite baby chick. 

Big Questions

"Who was it, who I love, who died?" you asked me.

"It was Nana," I said. "My mama."

You considered this and then said "Oh yes." You thought another minute, and added "But Poppop isn't going to die, right?"

"Well," I said. "He is. But not for a long time. Poppop is very healthy." 

"What is Poppop going to die of?" you asked.

"I don't know," I said. "Nobody knows." 

"When is Poppop going to die?"

"I don't know. Not for a long time. You don't have to worry about it right now."

This mollified you for a bit, but not entirely. Later, upstairs, we were getting ready for nap. You were in bed and I was readying to lie down and hold you.

"Does everyone die?" you asked.

"Yes," I said. 

Then, the worst question of them all. Your face changed, and you said "Am I going to die?"

My eyelids started to burn and I said "Yes. I am too. But not for such a very long time."

You started to tear up. "I don't want to die," you said. 

My heart shattered into a million billion pieces and I said "Nobody does, sweet pea."

Then I put my arms around you and we cried softly together. "I'm sorry I had to be the one the tell you. It's a hard truth."

"It's okay, Mama," you said.

"You don't have to worry about it right now. We get to be together for a very, very, very long time." I can't bear to tell you that sometimes, it's not fair, when we die. Sometimes grownups die when their children are young. Sometimes children die too. It is not our birthright, my mother told me she realized when she had cancer, to live a long and happy life. But you are still only three. I still want to protect you from the beauty, miraculousness, and yet brutal unfairness of existence.

This morning, driving to school, you asked me, "Where did you put Nana when she died?"

"She's in a pretty garden right by where I went to church when I was growing up," I told you. "There's a fish pond and pretty flowers." I didn't tell you that I sobbed when Dad emptied the bag of ashes into the ground, and when the time came for me to leave, after all the receiving line and gentle smiles and hugs and thanks for coming were over, that I had a very hard time pulling my car away, looking over at this place where my mother both is, and is not. 

"Where do we go, when we die?" you wanted to know.

Sometimes I wonder where you were, before you were born. Were you floating around in some nether haze, waiting to be formed? It it possible I ever lived in a world without you in it? 

"No one knows," I said. 

"But that place where people go when they die, what is it called?" you clarified.

"A cemetery," I said.

"Yes," you said. You looked out the window.

"Do you have any other questions?" I asked, looking at your face in the rear view mirror. You had some chocolate on your mouth, because I gave you chocolate pretzels as a special treat for breakfast today, because you have been reluctant to go to school. I worry that you are lonely there. I'm already planning to apply to other places for the year after next, when you are almost five. 

You didn't answer.

"Would you like me to put the story back on?" I asked.

"Yes," you said. We are listening to Moby Dick. I turned the story back on, where we learn that Quequeeg is a Polynesian prince, and I think of you, my Ishmael, not yet four years old, as you stare down the barrel of the biggest questions of them all. 

Kawasaki Days

My most wonderful Succotash, I'm so sorry it's been so long since I've recorded the doings of your life here. The truth is, your mother has had her bandwidth reduced to near zero in the past few weeks. So, a quick summary of where we are in your life right now:

You are, at the moment, upstairs watching one of the apparently one zillion Toy Story spinoffs, in your "pajammmies" with your dad and Ama. Last night, for the record, watching Toy Story 3, your father and I were both in tears reflecting on how all children grow up and that one day you, too, will outgrow your toys and there was also an elderly dog and I really couldn't cope.

Last Tuesday Montessori called because you had a headache. We went home that night and took it easy. You developed a fever, then a rash, and then in the night you barfed up rivers of chocolate protein shake the likes of which I hadn't seen since the Great Scallop Mishap of 2021, when you were only one year old. We went to the doctor on Tuesday, when your eyes started to redden. The short version: we are monitoring you for Kawasaki disease, which is a rare systemic inflammation response that is very treatable, but if not caught in time can damage your heart. Your favorite friend Gabriel's mother Sarah is, thankfully, a pediatrician with privileges at Boston Children's, which also, thankfully, has the world's expert on Kawasaki. For a time it was looking like we were going to take you to the ER this morning. We are at the moment holding off and it looks like we'll be taking you tomorrow morning for outpatient evaluation instead. I am, as you can imagine, only pretending to hold it together. 

Other things: in May I had to go to Houston for two weeks because we moved my mother, Nana, into hospice care. She died on May 31, while I held her hand and told her stories about our trips to New York when I was a child and then read her the part of Eloise in Paris where Eloise and Nanny are calling everyone to tell them they are leaving for Paris France. Bon voyage and merci beaucoup. Goodbye. Goodbye. Goodbye.

This has affected you in indirect ways. It was hard for both of us to have me gone so long. Also you can tell that I am off. I was incredibly stressed out in the weeks leading up to my being gone, due both to Nana's failing health and also to my being under absurd pressure at work. (I actually read Nana the first pass page proofs of my Astor book for the first stage of my sitting with her on her deathbed, which I told myself Mom would appreciate, both because she would have enjoyed the book, and because Mom was as much a workaholic as I am. But it's still ridiculous that I had to do that. Maybe one day as an adult you will understand how indefensibly ridiculous that is.) While you didn't really ever develop much of a relationship with my Mom - a fact that by itself made me mourn what I had for so long imagined when I was trying to have you - you are nevertheless processing this otherwise vague loss. Your biggest loss up to this point was Milo, who you knew and loved, and who was there one moment and then gone the next. We see pictures of him and tell stories about him still, and you sometimes profess to miss him. I don't think you will miss Nana per se. But you have been affected by how it has affected me, and for that I am sorry. 

I can tell because at moments of high dudgeon lately you will say what I imagine is, to you, the worst thing imaginable. You will bellow "BAD GUYS," or more commonly "EVERYONE DIED." 

Unfortunately you have been in some dudgeons lately. You are now on a behavioral modification plan at school, because you continue to hit kids in your class. Your dad and I are really baffled by it all, as you have largely moved past that behavior at home, and at the playground. Sometimes you will even run around playing with new friends without my intervention. School has asked us to stop letting you pretend you are a pirate or a knight, which I find utterly heartbreaking. We are trying to think through what we should do. Is 20 kids too many in a classroom for you? Shore, where I really want you to go, only has ten kids in a class. It's telling that your dad's and my class backgrounds come so much to the fore when we are worrying about you at school. I worry "What if he doesn't get into the prep school I really want for him?" Your dad worries "What if he's a sociopath and he goes to prison?" I don't think that's very likely, fortunately. 

On the upside, you are tall, and handsome, and merry, and warm, and hopefully you don't have Kawasaki. You are getting more articulate, and have a really wonderful vocabulary. "Bewildered means confused, Mama," you explained to me as we read together one night.

And that is where we stand at the beginning of summer when you are three and a half years old.  

The Admiral Benbow Inn

I used to think that the biggest challenge any relationship could weather was a trip to Ikea. But now I know the truth - it's building a kit playhouse.

Fortunately, Succotash, your father and I survived. On the first warm day of spring we busted out the power drills and the screws and the mallet and the hammer and the level and all that stuff and slowly assembled a cheap wooden playhouse from a kit of nearly infinite pieces, which is now nestled in the hemlock hedge. It has a little play sink and stovetop, and a doorbell and door, and you have decided that it is the Admiral Benbow Inn, just like in Treasure Island. We spent several hours this afternoon moving between there and the Hispaniola, before you became absorbed with watering the tulips, making mud, watering the tulips with mud, and other projects of your own devising. When you came around the corner of the garden yesterday - your grandparents had to pick you up so your Dad and I could finish the final touches, applying the flower pot holders and the doorknob, your whole face awoke with pleasure and you said "What's this?"

"This is your playhouse," I said. "Do you like it?"

"Yes!" you said, popcorning up and down, which is one of my favorite things to see you do. You do it when you are overwhelmed with delight.

We are discussing getting a mailbox, and possibly a hanging sign that says "Admiral Benbow Inn."

Springtime in the garden has begun.

Weaned

We did it, Succotash!

We nursed in the morning on March 10, before you left to go to school and I left to go to Houston for five days. A long trip. And since then we've largely stopped. I had one duct that was holding on - WHAT ABOUT THE BABY? it kept saying, and so I have had to pump a time or two to keep it calm. (Because I am neurotic, that milk is in the freezer. In case of what? The end of days?) You could tell, and sometimes rummaged under my shirt after it. "But there's milk in there!" you objected. We had some bumps, and some tears. 

A couple of days ago my stubborn duct was sore, and it was the morning, and you asked if you could nurse. It had been several weeks. "Okay," I said. "But this will be the very last time."

"Okay," you said.

Up went the shirt. You took a long sniff, like a connoisseur of fine wine testing the nose of a favorite vintage, and you settled in. But you were only there for a minute or two. Maybe there wasn't much left. Maybe you realized you were done. Almost an instant later you were up on your elbows wanting to play Jim Hawkins and start our day.

I am proud of us. Three and a half years! You turned three and a half last weekend, though we didn't really mark the occasion, busy as we were with Passover (22 people!) and Easter (church! Egg hunt birthday party! Bunny suit!), and the general pleasures of living in New England in spring. Yesterday you asked to see if you had grown. I am proud of you for being proud of yourself, for weathering this change. I am proud of myself for lasting this long - too long, it could be argued - and for keeping you healthy through a global pandemic, the anxiety of which hasn't fully left me even as the national emergency has slowly been called off. 

But now we are weaned. Your babyhood is over. You are, at long last, my little boy.

Dream

 This morning you woke up early. We are starting to wean, I think. You've been able to fall asleep after nursing but without boob in mouth the past couple of nights, and when you wake in the night for nursing you accept chocolate milk (actually a kids protein nutrition shake pretending to be chocolate milk) and go back to sleep. This morning you nursed around 6 am, and by 6:30 you were leaning your elbows on your dad and saying "What did you dream about, Daddy?"

Your dad mumbled something incoherent, because we usually wake with the alarm at 7:15.

"I dreamed about a platypus bowling," you said.

"You....what?" I said.

"Bowling. It's a game where you roll a special ball down a lane and knock over pins. Bowling."

"You dreamed about a platypus bowling?" I repeated.

You laughed with delight. "Yes! It's what I think about whenever I hear thunder."

You fell asleep for a bit in the car on the way to Montessori, and you didn't eat enough breakfast, after yesterday wolfing down everything that came within arm's reach. I asked you if you were growing. 

"Yes," you said. "I eat a lot of food and then I grow, and grow, and grow, and grow, and grow."

Threenager

Oh, my Succotash, this morning I was all set to drop you off at the abbatoir. Fortunately, you still don't know what an abbatoir is. But you are VERY THREE. Like, super three. You don't want anyone to tell you what to do, but you also do not want to do it yourself. This morning I brought you no less than six different shirts, each one rejected in turn until we settled on a boring navy long sleeved t-shirt. You wouldn't wear anything with a polo pony on it, because you are NOT PRETENDING TO BE A HORSE RIDER TODAY.

"Please stop shouting at me," I said to your adorable, enraged little face.

Then, it was time for pants. You want SWEATPANTS, you roared. 

"I hear what you're saying," said I, who has learned all my gentle parenting techniques from Instagram. "But all the sweatpants are in the dirty clothes. Do you want jeans, or corduroys?"

"SWEATPANTS!" said my charming, adorable son from his thronelike perch on the toilet.

"They are all in the dirty clothes, and we don't wear dirty clothes to school," I said.

"THEY'RE NOT DIRTY!"

"I'm sorry, but they are. I didn't wash them, and Daddy didn't wash them, and you didn't wash them." 

"NO I DON'T WASH THEM!"

"Please stop yelling at me. We are not a yelling family."

"I'M NOT YELLING!"

"Fine. Here, you can wipe yourself and put your pants on, I need a minute break." I shut door and attempt to put on my own clothes.

*thirty seconds pass*

"Mommy? Moooommy!"

I didn't fully snap until you, pantsless, refused to brush your teeth on the grounds that you were cold because you weren't wearing any pants. 

"I'm THROUGH WITH ARGUING WITH YOU," cried your frazzled Mommy, who picked you up, shoved cough medicine into your hand, and then brushed your teeth without singing the tooth brushing song.

"Mommy, do you still love me?" you asked me when both our storms had passed. 

"Oh, Charles," I said, kneeling down to give you a hug and feeling like absolute garbage. "Of course I love you. I love you all the time. We still love each other even when we are angry with each other."

You have your doubts. I worry that you are getting the message that you have to be happy all the time to be loved, which I definitely don't want you to feel. The truth is, it's *because* I love you so much that your roars of disagreement and rebellion and impatience and frustration make me despair.  

What I appreciate about you, though, is that you see through things. All the parenting advice says to give you choices, which makes you feel empowered. This shirt, or this one? You are aware that this is an artificial construct. You know there are other shirts. However, I'm at a loss how to convince you things are factually the case when you will insist they are not, if you do not want them to be. Sometimes we are just completely out of apple cider, and no amount of shouting at me "WE DO HAVE STICKY DRINK" will make it true.

New remark you make: "Ohhh, right, riiiight," in the manner of someone being reminded of something they momentarily forgot. I don't know where you picked that up, but it's funny.

Recent ideas of yours: this morning you lifted your head from my boob (oh, you are still not weaning, don't even get me started) and said "I have a great idea!" "What is it?" "We should build a treehouse!"

You also think we need to get juice boxes. I have promised to take it under advisement. 

Finally, on our drive to school this morning, happily with our coffee (me) and smoothie pouch (you), listening to Sidney Bechet ("I used to listen to this when I was a baby," you told me. You also told me you really liked it, which is fun. I love that you love jazz), I heard you giggle apropos of nothing.

"What's funny?" I asked you.

"When Piggy and Kermit say, follow that snake! That was so funny," you said. You are obsessed with Muppet Babies, and so today I learned that your brain works, at least in some respect, like mine - that you memorize movies or TV shows and sort of rewatch them in your mind's eye, and with enough verisimilitude that you can make yourself crack up.

Right now you are home with your dad while I am parked in the waiting area of the Toyota dealership getting our flat tire fixed, thinking about you. I think about you all the time. Every day. Almost every minute. I am sometimes overwhelmed by how much I love you. I know I cannot be a perfect mother, because perfection isn't possible, but I'm sorry I wanted to drop you at the abbatoir. You are my very favorite person in the whole wide world, and I will always love you.

Turning Point

Today's blog is less about you, my Succotash, than it is about the world immediately around you.

Once there was a day, many years ago, when everything changed. On that day, described in another blog at another time by an earlier version of your mother, your dad gave a job talk at Harvard Business School at the exact same moment that my first book went to auction. Is it shook out, the auction was a smashing success, but the job talk was not. The following year was a hard one - I was on the road promoting the book they had paid for, but your dad was on the road being a management consultant and feeling like everything he had worked so hard for was coming to nothing. (It wasn't true. In fact, the things he learned at that otherwise terrible job went on to inform his work in significant ways. But even so. It was a hard chunk of time.)

Well, this week we have another one of those days. On Wednesday, we will learn if you get into the snazzy private school we are hoping you will get into, at the exact same time your father will be giving a job talk at Johns Hopkins. We also, at some point in the coming days, might field a second offer on our New York City apartment. I hope some day you will forgive us for selling that beautiful little prewar box with the working fireplace and the soon to be illegal gas stove, where you spent the first five months of your life, and then one year when you were two. I guess overall that is a smallish percentage of your overall life, and if you retain any memories of it at all, they will be hazy, and probably having to do with an elevator that still had an elevator operator. It will last as a story you tell about yourself, after hearing us tell it to you, and seeing the pictures.

Otherwise, you continue to grow. We're still trying to wean, and it's tough going, but we have discussed that even though it will be sad when we stop nursing, that it will mean that you are really a big kid, and that is something to celebrate. I've dangled the prospect of a balance bike as part of this coming celebration, something only big kids can do. Balance bikes aren't for babies.

I think you are using pretend to work through your feelings about no longer being a baby. After warm water when we are getting ready for bed you will sometimes pretend to be a little baby, curl up in a ball and ask me to carry you like a baby. I pretend to rock you, and sing Rockabye Baby, and shower you with kisses. Sometimes you even say "I am just a baby! I can't walk! I need a diaper!" and then we put your underpants on, and you tell me that you "kept growing, and growing, and growing, and now I'm a big kid!" I like that you are using stories and pretend to work it out. I've whispered to you that sometimes everyone wishes they were still a baby, even grownups. As my mother fades and fails far away, I sometimes wish I could be a baby still, too. Last night I even dreamt about her, as she was, giving me instructions about something. I wonder if the day will come when you dream the same thing about me.

New Year

You are upstairs with your dad watching the Disney Robin Hood movie, "the foxes one, not the people one, the people one is for older kids." We have been on a quest for movies with knights in them for you, and tried A Knight's Tale ("I think this one is for older kids") and The Princess Bride a couple of times ("too scary!"). Last night we did Ivanhoe, which as far as we can tell was a success, though in was a bit surreal having a forbidden exotic Jewess love subplot lying in wait in an 11th century English knight movie, with Robin Hood and King Richard and a ton of arrows and some really solid swordfighting scenes, to say nothing of jousting.

"There's too much talking, I want to see the joust!" you said. Reasonable. You also had to wear you knight costume, which consists of hauberk, cape, sash, helmet, sword, and shield made from an Amazon box. Also your "knight pants," which are sweatpants Ama found somewhere that for whatever reason have a shield on them.

You have been a little under the weather this week, though we can't figure out what's up. You are COVID negative, but have no appetite and are very tried, but insist that you feel okay. Tonight something hit you the wrong way and I unlocked a motherhood level by having you spit up at the dining table at Maddie's into my cupped hands, which I quickly secreted away in a paper towel. Fortunately we had an extra shirt.

"Look at it this way," your dad said as we wheeled you home in your red carriage. "That's not the first time someone has barfed at that table at Maddie's."

True.

Earlier this afternoon we made a snowman together, which was charming and idyllic. Your talking has gotten so much better that at Christmastime Ginger and Brian exclaimed over how much progress you must be making in speech therapy, but you haven't actually begun speech therapy. Nor will you, at this rate, given that they have no placement available for you. They keep wanting us to do interminable intakes and meetings and so far you have received zero services of any kind, despite it having been three months. All of which underscores my suspicion that early intervention is largely a scam designed to bilk insurance companies, and any advances can be explained away by growing. But I am a curmudgeon, Succotash. You know this already.

What else? We had Will and Irina and Clara come for Christmas, and it was largely a success. Clara, who is almost six, enjoyed setting up treasure hunts for you, which was adorable to see as we hunted around the house for a driedel shaped box filled with chocolates which she had hidden in some folds of the Christmas tree skirt. She had a slightly rough time Christmas morning, under the impression that you had received more presents than she did. Oh, well. I can't control if kindly neighbors wish to give you presents. So it goes.

We have started going to Old North on Sundays, which you like because of the music, and because of the lemonade and snacks afterwards.

Some terms of art: "yogurt milk" for the little yogurts you now enjoy drinking, "sticky drink" for apple cider. We are trying to wean, and when I say "we" I mean "me," because you are still very committed to nursing. "I love nursing," you will say with a wistful sigh. We've made some progress stopping nursing at night, but honestly, you're closing in on 3 1/2 and I don't want to scar you for life by carrying on so long you remember it.

Clara was also a reluctant weaner who nursed well into her third year. I tried to introduce this as a point of common interest for you two to discuss. "Yeah," she said, nodding. "I'm still kind of obsessed with my mom's breasts." So, maybe it's too late? Oh well. You do excitedly cry "Boobs! I want to nurse on them!" when I get undressed for the shower. Guessing the ship has sailed.

After Christmas we went to Houston to see my parents, and it was a really lovely visit. I got some nice footage of you handing Nana Christmas presents, and playing piano with Grandpa, and pretending to conduct Grandpa like in An American in Paris. You are largely unaware of this, but in the past week or two my mom has suffered a severe setback, in part because of her and Dad finally getting COVID, and maybe because of Paxlovid interfering with all her Alzheimer's meds. I've been very on edge for a couple of weeks, under pressure at work (three book contracts, not enough feedback, and not being paid on time), and under pressure to help my mother, for whom I can do nothing meaningful beyond traveling to see her, prattling to her on the telephone about you, and sending her a walker from Amazon. Between that and weaning, I haven't been the mother I want to be to you. For that I am sorry. I'm trying to do better. It's hard going, midlife. I'm glad it's a good long time before you are there.

Tomorrow you and I are going to Shore Country Day for a shadow visit. We applied for you before we bailed on New York after the cluster that was the beginning of the school year at Flatiron. We'll find out soon enough if you get in. Initially we'd planned for you to do another year at Harborlight, but now it seems that while you are growing socially by leaps and bounds, you aren't actually learning anything. You know, like letters, or numbers. You can't tell the difference between yellow and green. I guess we could be working harder on that stuff at home, but I think I assumed that you were, you know... going to school? 

Anyhoo. We'll see what happens. Presumably by the time you read this, should that time ever come, you will have sorted out that yellow and green are different. Or maybe they aren't different, and you have no truck with arbitrary and culturally-determined distinctions? You already reject the artificial choices that all the parenting books say we should offer to give you a sense of agency and authority. "Do you want your horserider shirt with the hood, or a bowtie shirt?" I'll ask you. "No shirt!" you will say with an impish grin, a grin that tells me that you know you have to wear a shirt, but the choice I've just offered is meaningless. I know it is, my smart boy. I know it is.