betterbutter

momma mia

Mom has come and gone. She concocted a reasonable weekly meal plan that requires little to no thought or time. She dazzled me with  the kind of patience and professional distraction techniques that I must have taught her back in my baby days. She even got on the floor and crawled through an empty stroller box to hijack a tantrum. She walked Maltsby, washed dishes, slept on the floor, donned her one dollar Coors tank, strolled through the tangled streets of our hood daily, got lost by following signs for what she thought was route 30 but were instead speed limit signs and judged nary a thing.  And when we said good-bye two weeks later my throat was tight and my eyes watered and I could barely look her in the eye for fear of the noises and snotty mess I'd make. But when I did look  I saw her see me as her kid. A look I couldn't have recognized pre-Eli and Henry a mere eighteen months ago. I saw violent bottomless love and the strength it must take to walk away from your kid as they face uncharted life.

This motherhood gig is tearing me down and building me anew.

sitting in time-out times infinity

Joe and I got in deep trouble this past Christmas. In a nutshell, we opened Eli's present from Grandma, my MIL, before Christmas. He had been teething. We were exhausted and the package seemed like the answer. It was an impulsive, desperate move on our part. That was not our  most egregious offense though. In addition to the premature opening we didn't let her view the event over the web cam. It was never totally clear to us that that was the plan but in her mind it was and as such we had gone back on our word. The fallout from this breach of contract wasn't ever directly vented to us but through others we learned that tears were shed and from Grandma herself we received lots of silent dead air time punctuated with long, deep sighs. We apologized for our offenses several times and then quickly took photo after photo of him playing with his toy to try to shove some love and appreciation her way. It was not enough but nothing could heal the hurt we'd inflicted upon her. To add insult to injury, Joe bought her a Buddha statue for Christmas. Not once did the irony of Buddha for Christmas occur to us. It did, however, occur to her and, boy howdy, that was messy. This is old news.

Fast forward to last week when our Easter package arrives. Throwing caution to the wind, we opened it and then remorsefully wondered if, although never spoken, the same rules applied to this package as the Christmas package. Were we breaking the contract again? We went back and forth all weekend about whether or not to lie about the open or unopened state of the package. In the meantime, as is required, I took pictures of Eli with every item in the package. Here's Eli eating a cookie you made. Here's Eli tearing off the bib you made out of glittery fabric. We love glitter! Glitter, glitter, everywhere! Here's Eli wearing the jacket you sent. It'll be great for the grocery store where the AC really puts a chill in the air!

Ultimately, we decided to be honest but Joe didn't get a hold of her so I knew I would have to break the news which I did this morning  in the same breath that I shared all the photos with her. I did NOT send my favorite photo of Eli pooping WHILE eating her cookie. I do have a touch of class, no?  Please also note that I dressed him up for this photo shoot just in case it was to appear that these were taken ON Easter and that he was donning an Easter outfit. The rouse ran deep.

After apparently getting away with opening the Easter package, she knocked me right back on the floor.

"What are you all planning for Easter?"

This is a loaded question. The answer is nothing but that's not the right answer. I mentioned an Easter egg hunt as loudly as I didn't mention church. And since we don't catch wind of our transgressions from her personally, I have yet to hear what heap of doo-doo we're in now. So we  lay in wait.