Superpowers

Posted on January 28, 2007 by Natalie

Our house has recently become littered with a growing number of make-shift barricades, perpetually closed doors and “hey!-look-over-here-instead” decoys, all implemented to distract Porter from the various and sundry ways in which he chooses to cause mayhem. Aside from the laundry room and bathroom, he has also become enamoured with the gigantic potted plant in the dining room, and all of the fun that can be had by frolicking in it’s loamy goodness. The only way I can truly relay to you his child’s sheer will and single-minded focus is to explain it as his superpower. If given the opportunity, I am sure he could bend iron with it.

Our increasingly regular showdowns are like something straight from the movies: Porter will be casually crawling along, and he’ll spy his target. Sensing the imminent danger, I will glance his direction. He and I will make direct eye contact for about 3 seconds. From there, a mad dash ensues wherein he will scurry towards his intended mark, while I hurdle toys, blankets and pools of drool. Invariably, I get there first – crushing his joy, yet again. In the old days when I’d close a door ahead of him, or relocate him to another room he’d just look at me and blink. Nowadays, however, I get a loud and official accounting of how I am the worst mother e-v-e-r.

Baby-proofing issues aside, Porter’s single-minded focus brings a whole new level of challenge to about every other task undertaken. Changing his diaper has become a full-on aerobic activity. His ability to twist and contort rivals something out of a Cirque du Soleil show. I’m never sure where exactly it is he thinks he is going, but he is damn sure going to die trying to get there. It is a fairly common practice these days for all the piles of extra diapers to end up on the floor next to the changing table, and for me to end up with my hands on my knees, panting. Put simply, it’s messy, dangerous and exhausting. I guess you could say that the literal act of changing diapers has become a metaphor for my life.

And, although I have written pages upon pages about his need to run us through the sleep gauntlet, I actually have some good news to report. Well, sort of. Upon returning from our holiday travels, Porter started officially sharing a bedroom with Stella. And when I say officially, I mean sleeping in the same room. Stella still hasn’t fully wrapped her brain around this concept, in that she still refers to it as “Porter sleeping in my room.” Whatever.

I moved the crib into her room months ago, but never got up the nerve to let him sleep in there for fear of exacerbating the sleep side-show we already had going. Although I was quick to complain that it couldn’t get much worse, I know that deep down I feared it could. And so, in there it sat, dormant, acting as nothing more than a giant stuffed animal corral. That is, until the day I walked into my bedroom to get Porter after a nap and found him standing up in his bassinet. Hmm. I’m just guessing here, but I bet if I went back and read the Co-Sleeper literature, I’m fairly sure there would have been some sentences specifically dedicated to advising against this type of activity. Probably in red. And all caps.

And so it was, that in trying to circumvent being brought up on child endangerment charges, the two of them began to sleep in the same room, gulp, at the same time. We had to dig out and dust off the monitors, of which we haven’t used even once since Porter’s birth (you know, the same ones we had glued to our side the entire of Stella’s infancy). Then we waited. Waited for the earth to fall off it’s axis and go spinning off into the universe. But, guess what? It didn’t. We didn’t all combust, or implode, or any of the other heinous things that my imagination had convinced me were sure to happen under such circumstances. Instead it just became a regular old night of sleeping and waking, but through some miracle of nature, Stella manages to sleep through it. And, it completely escapes me how, considering she is less than 10 feet from him. As I see it, there is only one logical reason: it’s her superpower.

So, Porter continues to wake at random and unscheduled intervals, but we actually have our room back. And you know what that means. Yes, we no longer have to quietly forage around in the dark for our pajamas and wonder if we have put them on backwards and inside out. Aww yeah.

In the immortal words of Boy George: I’ll Tumble for Ya

Posted on January 24, 2007 by Natalie

9 Month Porter: tongues, toilets, catfood, clapping

Posted on January 21, 2007 by Natalie

A big round of applause for our little McGoo, who has managed to make it – alive and healthy – to his 9-month birthday. And for that I congratulate all of us, as there were honestly some moments when I thought the earth was going to open beneath our feet and swallow all four of us in one giant gulp.

As I mentioned earlier this week, I am (naievely?) optimistic that we are finally moving from Chaos-Land into Settling-Down-ville. Stella really and truly seems to enjoy and appreciate Porter more and more every day, Steve and I realized that perpetual forward motion is the key to survival, and most importantly, I have finally come to the conclusion that if I don’t stop my bitching, the whiner police are going to come haul my kids away and give them to someone who completed the program in This is Parenting You Big Baby, So Just Suck it Up Already – a degree in which I apparently took an Incomplete.

There are quite a few little McGoo idiosyncrasies that I have been remiss in chronicling on these pages of late. Following is a a quick laundry-list of some of the charming qualities that make us scramble to be the first to say, “Um, yeah. He get’s that from your side.”

Behold the tongue thing.

I’ve got about a million more where that came from. Think of it this way: The harder he concentrates, the more that tongue figures into the equation.

Then there’s the toilet and catfood thing. I have already mentioned his need to loiter in areas that keep him strategically positioned to bolt for either the bathroom or laundry room. I am not exaggerating when I say that he can be in the living room playing quietly, and the moment he hears that bathroom door open, he will drop everything and move at mach-5 to get there. 99.9% of the time we catch him. As for that .01% that we don’t, well, I think you can figure it out. Like, for example, last week while I was handling a Crisis Level 3 situation (untangling Stella from the mini-blinds) and someone stealthed his way into the bathroom. By the time I realized he wasn’t in the kitchen where I had left him, he had already managed to soak his entire upper body in toilet bowl water. As I raced in there to prevent him from taking a full-on swim, the look on his face as could fairly accurately be described as saying, “It’s exactly as beautiful as I’d imagined it. And, given the opportunity, I’ll do it again in a second, lady. Count on it.”

And, there is that thing about how he worships his sister, and can’t get out of earshot of her without nearly panicking. Now that he is moving under his own power he trails her like a shadow. And to my delight, she actually kind of indulges him. As she and I headed out to do some errands last week, I asked her if she wanted it to be just the two of us, or if we should bring Porter too. Without even considering it she said, “Porter has to come too!” I guess if I had someone worshipping my every breath I’d want to keep them as handy as possible too. As a testament to this wonderful (albeit temporary) sibling cameraderie, Porter unveiled a new trick to us last night, but now only will do it at Stella’s prompting. Before he decided that we weren’t worth his time, I managed to get a tiny video clip of it. The reason it gets so shaky (beware of motion sickness) is because I am trying to simultaneously hold the camera and clap my hands – something he will now mimic us (or, rather, Stella) doing. If you look closely, you’ll also see that tongue…

Porter wishing he had a set of cymbals.

And here’s a (dark and grainy) clip of Stella and Porter in a high speed chase scene.

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And for those of you who need to update your flip-charts (and you know who you are, Judy Walston): 22 lbs | 27 inches | size/height: average | 7 teeth | chest: same | slight baby bowleggedness (absolutely common) | advised that sleep problems need proactive resolution, given name of new literary resource

Two words: Crawl. Ing.

Posted on January 12, 2007 by Natalie

For the past couple of months, Porter’s method of getting from point A to point B involved a convoluted form of what could only be described as â€œrollingâ€. It went something like this: Heâ€™d start in a sitting position. Then heâ€™d maneuver himself onto his hands and knees. Then heâ€™d straighten out his legs so that his body formed an inverted â€˜Vâ€™. Then heâ€™d flop back over to a sitting position. And, voila! He had moved about six inches in any direction. Not exactly a method that was going to set any land speed records, but it got the job done to his satisfaction. That is, until he made loving eye contact with the catfood dish. Neither Hell nor high water was going to prevent him from answering it’s haunting call.

He’d call to it from across the room. He’d lay on his belly and attempt to air-swim towards it. He’d attempt to maneuver closer by executing his patented “rolling” method, but short it of sprouting legs and walking to him, nothing was going to bring those two together. As we neared our departure for the Christmas holiday, he and his beloved were still separated by a sea of linoleum.

And so it was that on December 28th, heady off the aroma of Christmas, our little McGoo officially started crawling.

Within a few short hours of being home, we had to fish a handful of catfood out of his mouth, and then caught him gnawing on the plug of the dining room lamp (that he had so masterfully released from the confines of the outlet). For reasons we cannot yet figure out, the bathroom seems to call to him like no other room in the house. It is as though he has developed an extra sense that immediately alerts him whenever we have been careless enough to not bolt it shut. Same goes with the laundry room – or, as I am sure he calls it: That Beautiful Place Where the Golden Delicious Nuggets From Heaven Are Kept.

Staying true to my long string of desparate acts as a mother, I figured out a way to use his obsession with grazing from the catfood bowl to my advantage. By simply replacing the catfood with a bowl of dry cereal, I am able to keep him happily occupied during those times where I might otherwise be trying to keeping one child from diving headfirst into the toilet and the other from covering herself head-to-toe in Band-Aids.