Bababooey

There was nothing to do while Number Two dawdled over his dinner plate but look at him. I studied a face that had thinned out in the pattern following babies to boyhood. He ate sweetly. He's the only one who makes chewing sounds I don't mind listening to.

He watched me watching him. "I love your eyes," he said, his mouth a green gape of broccoli.

The unexpected compliment drew a smile from my lips. I laughed a little, my grin growing.

"And your big teeth," he added.

The Second Child

The morning was cold and quiet. The Boss busied herself getting dressed. The Partner set out cereal. I took a shower. In the midst of the footsteps, the clank of the bowl, and the running water, there was silence.

Number Two was away at the paternal grandparents'. I imagined he had no idea what to do with all the attention. Here, at home, he is swept up in the day-to-day of our four person household. He is carried in The Boss's wake. At least that's what I thought until his absence indicated otherwise.

On that silent Sunday I realized Number Two has his own drive. His feet pound the floor with distinct energy. He labels everything loudly. He's no bystander. He's on the cusp of three and I never knew this about him.

It's not that I don't see my two children apart. The Boss goes to school every day. From 8:30 to 3, it's me and Number Two. But it's so fast. There are errands to run and playgroups to attend and toddler "'nastics" classes to get to. Somehow he always seems to be in the shadow of activity. At the school parking lot, The Boss's huge aura swallows him up again. The fact that he's large and lively inside of it is not as apparent as it otherwise could be.

At home, at night, Number Two was still away. The Boss was perplexed. "It's so weird," she said. "This morning I wished he was in my room waking me up like always. But I don't like it when he does that! I want to sleep and he says 'wake up!' I don't like it, but I miss it. That's so weird." She shook her head at the opposition of these emotions. It was new to her.

The evening routine went smoothly. It was mostly self-directed by The Boss. There were no diapers to change, no extra stories to read, no peripheral obligations. There was no din.

I shook my head. This was new to me.

No Mommy No Cry

Today fists were raised through wide open car windows in solidarity with spring. The blue above was brighter in the warmth. On a tree across the street from Number Two's pre-pre-school building, three shirts--one each in red, blue and green--waved with the current and proclaimed "No nuclear nothing! Never! Ban it from the planet!"

Number Two and I exited the school close to noon. He ran ahead, enjoying the feel of his feet on the non-icy surface. "Hold my hand, please?" I asked.

"I run!" he shouted, blazing ahead.

I put on a melodramatic pout which was probably more enjoyable than it should have been. I threw in a gratuitous shoulder heave as if sobbing. "But I want to you hold your hand!"

He slowed.

"I know! I'll hold your hand and we can run together!" I grabbed his tiny fingers and we padded off toward sun that layered itself hotly over the salt-film of my car. We dislodged at a bumper that was worse for the wear after a season of rock-hard snow banks. I threw his backpack into the backseat and stepped back only to find him standing next to me with his hand held out for the taking. I clasped it in mine.

"Hold hands," he said. "Mommy no cry."

Give Him a Break

Number Two, like the rest of childkind, is on his own schedule. Like many parents, however, The Partner and I decided we wanted him on our timeline. We brought in professionals of the state-sanctioned child-development kind to assess his progress when he was 18 months old. They found him significantly delayed in several areas including those of expressive and receptive speech. Fast-forward one year (because that's how time travels): our formerly delayed son has been diagnosed "normal."

Sometimes the words come so fast they are barely intelligible. Some of them seem disconnected both to each other and to a overriding thought process. Other times a few key phrases hint at the fact that he knows much more than he's saying.

Yesterday Number Two was in his car seat on our way to a friend's house when he reacted to something I told him with obvious displeasure.

"That's stupid," he said.

"What did you say?" I demanded. I wasn't sure, or didn't want to believe, that the garbled words I heard were actually what I thought they might be. We don't allow talk like that in our house. On the other hand, he had to learn it somewhere--and it was probably here.

"Kiss!" he said, puckering up in deflection of the matter as he always does when a conversation is heading somewhere he doesn't want it to.

"What did you say?" I repeated.

He sighed. "I just talkin'. Give break."

I had to smile. He offered a valid point. Isn't that what we wanted? After all the effort we put into getting him to a place that I now think he would've arrived at without our intercession, maybe it's time to give the kid a break.

Sometimes it's just talk.

The Kiss Keeper

Number Two, despite being put together of mostly inscrutable parts, is straight-forward in matters of the heart. He is a kisser. He puckers whenever the urge strikes, thwack-ing toward me with mouth and legs working in concert. He will continue to suck his bottom lip into his bottom teeth, with the top lip breaking the suction loudly, over and over until I lower my own face to his. Then he'll smile into a turn. Then he'll waddle off. Then he will be, once more, the cryptic kid--but only until he kisses again, with the generosity of a soul that knows just how much to share and just how much to save for later.

Running Away

Number Two runs in a jig, his feet kicking out to the sides yet propelling him forward. "No run! No run!" he shouts as short legs splay from his torso, the swish and the sweep finding a strange traction. I’m not sure if he knows what he’s saying. I can’t be sure that I know what words are coming out of his mouth. But it sounds like “no run” as he burns rubber in light-up sneakers that illuminate trails at home, at the ballpark, at the furniture store, and on the sidewalk in front of his sister’s school.

Number Two doesn’t seem to need words the way The Boss does. He is absorbed by process while his sister thrives on explanation. Number Two runs to feel the earth more, to feel the wind more, to feel the catch in his lungs and then the exhale. The Boss, on the other hand, runs so that she can be the first person to arrive at the finish line with a story to tell.

When my son moves, he is so solid on the ground that he seems to weigh down the sky. “No run! No run!” The language is what floats away. Does he mean he knows the rules, but is flaunting them? Is he telling me I shouldn’t chase him? Is he saying no to everything except the race? “No! Run!”

I don’t get it. I don't get him. But as Number Two darts away from my grasp in a fit of laughter, I see that my running enigma is sure enough for the both of us. Steady enough, too.

Playing in the Dark

Number Two is an incoherent one. He talks and talks, but the sense is peculiar to him. He hums his own songs in the sweetest tones. He plays in circles around the spaces we inhabit so solidly in deference to the demands of the day. Sometimes he escapes to the basement and plays in the dark.

One evening I came home from something or other, entering the lowest level through the garage. I shut the door behind me into darkness. I was about to ascend the stairs when I heard the "hi." The voice was pitched and eerie. It came close to the floor behind me. I turned to see Number Two, barely, waiting in a shadow as big as the room. I scooped him up and carried him toward the brightness of the main floor.

"How long was he down there?" I asked The Partner.

"Not long," he shrugged.

I released Number Two to the wooden planks of the dining room, where his feet pushed off in a waddle-run. He shrieked, jazz hands waving in flight. Then he was gone again. We heard toys spring into action on the other side of the house. Wheels in need of lubrication rolled over the carpet. The alphabet emerged muted from plastic casing in need of batteries. The Partner and I stood still. Sometimes it's as if Number Two hogs all mobility.

Other times it's as if we all move around him.

That Look

Number Two doesn't listen to me. If I so much as mention his name within earshot, he will freeze in place and refuse to move even an eyeball in my direction. He's unbudgeable.

The same child is putty in his father's hands. All The Partner has to do is look slightly perturbed at an action Number Two is taking and it will cease immediately.

Under The Partner's watch, Number Two finishes his plate. Under mine, he is liable to starve. Number Two sleeps at The Partner's behest; he splits ears with his shrieks at mine. I don't think I lack severity or foll0w-through, so I'm not sure where the exact discrepancy lays. All I know is that The Partner has officially made himself indispensable around here, as if being the main breadwinner and the brains behind this operation hadn't set him up in high enough regard already.

The Boss, too, knows how it is. She referenced this fact as Number Two was wailing in his room after I put him to bed last night. The Partner was setting a new CD to "play" at the tail end of The Boss's nightly pre-sleep ritual in her own room down the hall. She wrinkled her nose as if Number Two's screams smelled funny. She looked to The Partner. "You're the boss of my brother, right?"

"Right," The Partner affirmed.

She nodded, looking him directly in those hazel peepers that can silence a beast. "Then go in there and give him the hairy eyeball," she said.

Oh Damn

Here's the thing about Number Two: he's gruff. When he's nursing, I can't look down at him too long without my face being slapped away by his hand. Over the course of the day, whenever he finds something awry, he will point at it and shout "oh, damn!" Repeatedly. Part of me would like to believe that's not what he's actually saying, but it's obviously the sentiment and more than likely the curse.

He's huggy, though. He wraps his arms around my leg willy-nilly as we go about our business. He kisses with his bottom lip sticking out and fat. He hangs onto is sister like he's hanging on for life. He says thanks.

He's an enigma. That's not to say I know any parent who's got his or her child all figured out. It's just that, in my limited experience as the mother of two, I see him as the child who plays it closest to the vest. He's the one with more words than he lets on; he's the one who chooses them slyly.

He's nineteen months old and I can already tell I'm never going to figure him out.

Whoomp (There It Is)

Number Two has precious few words. I might worry about it more if he didn't do things like shout out "Whoomp, there it is" at random intervals over the course of the day. He heard the song one time, a week and a half ago, and up it pops in casual conversation to this day. I will admit that it sounds more like "Whoop, deer-is," but for a 19-month-old whose entire vocabulary consists of "ball," "dog," "dad," and "thanks," there is something impressive about his grasp of the Tag Team concept.

"I'm taking it back to the old school,
'Cause I'm an old fool who's so cool"

(Seriously, though, doesn't he look about 19 years old in this picture?)

Wordless

Number Two gives kisses with his bottom lip protruding. It would look like a pout if it weren't for the raised eyebrow, indicative of his sly wait for the object of his affection to offer a cheek.

Number Two can focus with angry intensity. His eyes narrow only enough to pull his nose and upper lip into a sneer. The expanse of hazel seems suddenly darker. I am looking at my husband, minus 30 years.

Number Two's eyes can be bright as light shining over his laugh. A tickle can do it, or a toss in the air, but mainly it's The Boss who elicits the most guttural glee from this tiny, stoic man. He giggles in bursts, each one louder than the last. For a short while it seems like he never wants to stop.

At nineteen months, has very few words. Number Two gets his point across with two sharp eyes and mouth that is in turn kissable and vindictive. He leaves no room for questioning. His silence is crystal clear.

In Jersey Number Two

I wish you could see Number Two catch a football. I never had an iota of interest in pigskin (or, in this case, Nerfskin) till I first witnessed my 18 month-old's arms come up in casual receipt of that ball. I threw it over and over--not from afar, yet further every time--toward his baby chest. He was so cool. His catch and clutch seemed natural in a way that made me believe the energy of the recipient could have more effect on an object's trajectory than that of the sender. The ball just fell into his arms. One second his hands would be at his sides, pudgy little puckers over each knuckle. He'd appear not even to be watching me. Then I'd lift the ball into the air and, after a short flight, it would land in an easy embrace I hadn't even known my son was open to.

In these moments, it's not that he's a boy to me. It isn't about the gleeful recognition of stereotypes proven true. It's about a baby gaining control of his spastic hands and his hard-heeled feet. It's about his stoic face going smiley with pride. It's about a simple game that is already making him joyful, and all the possibilities it holds for a long life of playing time.

Mister

This afternoon Number Two refused to eat his bread, letting the pieces fall to the floor all around him in gracious offering to our dog.

"No more of that," I said. "No more feeding your bread to the dog."

He froze in mid-throw. That's what he does whenever I reprimand him. All his processes came to a halt, his stare blank yet guilty. A piece of bread was suspended in his hand as he waited me out.

"What did I say, mister?"

He slowly moved the bread back to the tray of his high chair. Then The Boss's gleeful voice piped up from the living room. "Mister is his name when he's in trouble!"

Looks Like the Mug Shot After a Baby Bender

Is this the face of H1N1? It would be alarmist of me to presume so. All I know for sure is that it's the face of a 104 temperature, body-shakin' chills, blue hands and feet, and one surly disposition. I'd write more, but my baby beckons...and that's one face only a mother can care for.

Don't Burst His Bubble

Number Two loves balls. His own, of course (what boy doesn't?), but also the other varieties: beach, base, basket, tennis, foam, and bouncy, just to name a few. His infatuation started with a balloon and now that's what he calls all these round objects, invoking the name with a precise glee that contradicts his otherwise meager vocabulary. My boy cannot--dare I say will not--utter the word "mama," but balloon rolls off his tongue with a smooth "ball" and then an "OON" that pops.

He could play with his balls all day (not unlike The Partner, though in that case I'm again referring to the baser definition). Number Two once had a pink helium-filled balloon that he chased around the house for a week until it was nothing but a pathetic choking hazard. He learned to walk, I believe, because it was easier to carry balls that way. He won't eat when in the presence of balls because food just isn't as interesting.

I was worried about his lack of vocabulary until "balloon" came along. Now I realize he only says what he wants to say. He is pointed. He is determined. He is a toddling, ball-holding bundle of obsession.

My baby boy's got balls.

Inscrutable

I don't know Number Two.

I know he likes balloons and baths. I know he's calm most of the time, except for when he's tired, or when I return from somewhere else and he suddenly realizes I was gone. Then his upper lip starts to quiver over a straight bottom one, and his eyes wrinkle a bit as tears wait for just one more crease to push them over the edge.

But in this one whole year, I don't yet know him.

His time is his alone. My time is for feeding and changing him; for meeting every ramped up demand of his big sister; for housework and homework. He plays by my side, or crawls fast around the first floor in time with the rhythms of our life. His moves don't elicit the attention that The Boss's every one earned the first time around. I don't force myself into his head the way I did with his sister. There are too many heads now. There is too much going on to figure it all out. He's happy to avoid analysis. He's content with a tickle and a big laugh.

When The Boss was one, I did not understand the shortness of twelve months. So I had to know her right away. I made it my business. Now I know a year is a blink--the kind of blink, like Number Two's, that finally makes the tears spill over--and that it doesn't have to hold all the answers.

I will know him soon enough. I'll know him well enough. Then, and for a short time, I'll know him better than anybody.

Smoke Through a Keyhole

The Partner was home all day with no big plans to fix all that was failing around him. We ate breakfast first, which he cleared as I nursed Number Two. Then the baby napped. The Partner and The Boss played a board game. I shut the door on them all and ran a bath.

Later we watched home movies of The Boss when she was the age Number Two is now. I had no recollection. Was she really ever so tiny? I looked down to where she sat, nestled in my arm on the love seat, and I found it hard to see her as anything other than what she was at that very moment. The past, though vivid on the screen, was faded; the future, a blur. I patted the solid bend of her leg next to mine.

Then we were diverted to a flea market, where we bought a camping chair for $2. At home again, I cleaned up breakfast pans I'd left sitting. The Partner kissed my neck from behind me. The Boss watched a movie. Number Two played in a pen of primary colors.

The Boss's bath came before dinner. I lined up foam letters in short word formation on the wall of the tub. I held my breath as The Boss sounded out the first one.

"Puh-ah-duh. P-a-d. Pad!"

I screamed and clapped. I ran to get the Partner, who wore mechanics' overalls as he worked under my car in the garage. He followed me up the stairs to the bathroom.

"You've got to see this." I arranged three more letters in front of The Boss, who was splashing slap-happy as the center of attention. "She can read! She can really read!"

She studied the word. "Buh..."

The Partner and I stared down, nodding her on. My eyebrows were high in my forehead. I still wasn't breathing. "Yes?" I sucked in air, prodding.

"Buh...ah...guh. B-a-g. Bag!" The Boss fell forward like a seal, splashing water over the side of the tub, sending the letters sailing away. We were all spastic.

At the end of the night, after the dishwasher had been loaded and the kids' beds filled, The Partner and I sat down to a movie. I don't like to be sad on purpose, but I suggested The Bucket List anyway, thinking that an uplift would prevail. And it did. We've never been immune to schmaltz. Toward the end I cried so hard that my face hurt where the tears clogged my sinuses.

"It was the little girl that got me," The Partner said. She was the new found granddaughter Jack Nicholson kissed on the cheek; she was the most beautiful girl in the world. "I can't see a little blond and not think of our own adorable kid." His eyes were puffy. He sighed beneath the weight of pride. That breath propelled him into the star-struck addendum that follows almost any mention of The Boss: "She's the best." It takes a little more air away each time. "The best."

You won't hear me deny it. I've said it right here. We'll never be immune to schmaltz.

Like Father, Like Son...Maybe

I understand that children are designed to look like their fathers at birth so that the male's desire to flee is kept in check by his ego. Women as a whole do not need additional incentives to stick by their babies; men, on the other hand, lack nine months of shared biology tying them to their offspring. They look for themselves in the newness. They see the resemblence and think, "yeah, I guess he is mine."

There's no doubt that Number Two as a newborn looked uncannily like The Partner. And what do you know? Ten months in, The Partner is still here.

Now that the bond has been set and the child is biologically free to grow into his own person, I wonder how he will look? Am I deluding myself to think that there just might be a little of me in him after all? Recent findings support my theory. Just the other day a friend's mother told me that my son is so much cuter than he was as a newborn.

But you be the judge. Here I am, splish-splashing wild and free at 7.5 months:

And here is Number two at the same age:

I think the eyes have it.

___

His First Con

My children are slow to sit, crawl and walk. They are content to be where they are. They are laid back. But I've made the mistake of assuming their sluggishness extends to their gray matter. Number Two just reminded me I should not be so cavalier.

He is sitting next to me in his exersaucer, munching on a bagel as our dog, Roxie, watches. Every so often I catch a subtle movement in my periphery. The slow turn of my head reveals him reaching toward Roxie with foodstuff outstretched. As soon as Number Two sees me, he pulls back. I narrow my eyes and scrunch my nose. He crams the bagel into his mouth and looks at me with the same old expression I've been chalking up to vacancy. In fact, my son is a nine month old con artist.

He's been told before not to feed the dog, but I didn't think the message actually got through. Seeing him now, sitting in slick wait as I turn my attention back to the computer, I realize I was wrong. He knows what he's doing. Again, I look at him. Again, the dog is nosing in for bread held out. Again, Number Two catches my eye and stuffs the bagel back between two red gums beginning to show the first signs of teeth.

I'm more impressed than perturbed. I'm sure that will change soon, but right now it's the first sign of my son's cognitive wheels being put in motion. It's manipulation, not of the motor-skilled variety, but of the thinking kind. There's something going on there.

I'm shaking my head. I'm staring at these words on the screen. And, suddenly, he's doing it again.

He's growing up when he thinks I'm not looking.

Like Brother and Sister

I was in the kitchen when I heard a sound like a little miracle from the living room. It was a 9 month old belly laugh lurching out in spurts at the prompting of a three year old. Not the least of the miracle was the fact that the 9 month old part of that equation had just popped two teeth--simultaneous eruptions of exactly the same height and width in the center of his bottom gum--the night before. It was a labor of love impossible for him to sleep through. He had been a Teething Mimi for the past 24 hours, during which time there were no smiles.

The second marvelous aspect of the scenario was the instigator. The delight The Boss took in entertaining her brother was totally new. Up to that moment, she'd sooner let him choke on a Gerber Puff than divert her attention from the television to notice his windpipe had been compromised. But then she did something that made him laugh. Sequestered in the kitchen, I didn't know what it was. But he did it again, and again. He really laughed. Suddenly The Boss didn't want him to stop.

It's these moments that remind me of the potential that lays before them as brother and sister. It's the belly laugh that brings me to the dinner table where my own brother would put me in stitches nightly. It's the adoration that comes unconditional not from up high, like mom and dad's, but from ground level, down and dirty, where the most fun is had.

The Boss and Number Two have no idea yet how their sibling bond will play out, but in that moment in the living room while mom was away, they may have gotten their first inkling.