With all the company we’ve had the past week or so, it has been easy for me to forget what it’s like being around Ford, when he is not competing for attention between one or more babies. His enthusiasm, when he is engaged, is really unbridled. Unbridled engagement. That sounds weird.

Today we rediscovered the Austin Nature Center. In May I took the boys there, but we didn’t make it past the first tier of exploration; today, we stepped throught the back door and into the rest of the museum. It’s such a gem! They have a collection of native animals in the form of a miniature zoo, so the kids can see a coyote or a ringtail or coati or raccoon walk feet in front of them. No annoying cotton candy vendors along the way. It’s small, shaded, and in the middle of town. There were several trails adjacent to the animal enclosures that we earmarked for later. Today’s focus was the outdoor dinosaur dig.

Ford asked a ton of questions about the Pleisosaur fossil model. “What bone is this, mommy?”
“It’s a phalange, but look how many there are on his pointer finger!”
“One, two, three, four, five, six, seven, eight, nine,”
I ask “How many are on your pointer finger?” I help him identify them:
“One, two, three..”
“Three! That’s not quite as many as the Pleisosaur, huh?”

“Mommy, what’s this bone?” Points at some kind of wrist bone.
“That looks like a wrist bone, maybe a metacarpal?”
“Where is my metacarpal?”
I take his hand and poke around towards his wrist, nearly in the same area. “Right in here are several metacarpals. But in your hand, the wrist bones that you feel are actually part of your arm bones!”
“What are your arm bones called?”
“The radius (I point to the bony prominence on the distal radial head) and the ulna (yada yada).”
He lays his hand down upon the “fossil” remains.

Chas kept crawling in and out of the Pleisosaur mouth. He does that a lot. I mean, he’s not particular to Pleisosaur fossils, but if there is a cozy nook then he must rearrange the contents so that he can wedge his round bottom into it. He will systematically throw Hot Wheels out of the toybox until none remain in the small box, then squirrel around inside the box like a restless dog until he’s comfortable. And then he’ll sigh, sometimes clap. And then claps some more. And grunt, smiling. It’s very cute.

Ford is an expressive, independent kid, and I’ve never tried to squash the juice out of him by making him “draw things” or label his art. Naturally, I would think, his artwork would be as it usually appears: more evocative than representational. He usually begins a piece by slowly dabbing and stroking the paper with paint, and then begins to get physical with the medium by testing the limits of the brush against brute strength(how hard can I jab the brush into the paper? how many times can I do this over and over again before something gives? this feels GOOD!) until finally, his piece resembles a meteor storm or a hurricane, or a dance, or a race. His work is never static.

I was in a funk after Jim and Alis left, feeling vaguely cathartic, venting, and extremely tired, when I began to sob. This consumed Ford, and he began to offer to buy me various things which he thought might make me happy again. I told him that I didn’t really want him to buy me anything, but that I would appreciate a drawing instead. And continued to decompress, although I was charmed by his efforts.

About five minutes later he came upstairs and handed me this drawing. It is, according to him, a picture of me and I am smiling. Notice the long arm, of which my left is longer (I am left-handed) and the petite legs. The smile is uncontrived, very nice. This is his first fully representational drawing that he initiated on his own. And all for me, it is mine. Granted, I am not praising his newfound mastery of realism, but instead just amazed at how he has restrained this capability he already apparently has in order to be true to his art, to nurture his expressive style. I’m very proud of that.

I drive to Houston every three months for a haircut; I only trust one person with my hair. One of the best features of the current do is that it holds up when tossed about and messed up, because it is usually tossed about and messed up. Actually this is not unlike how I feel currently.

It rained. It rained from the minute we awoke, in heavy little pats, until late evening, in one long exhale, the sky clearly exhausted from crying so long. I don’t think it’s rained here in weeks, so the plants outside–the non-natives–are completely overjoyed and outstretched for more, bursting to produce as many flowers as possible before the next drought. It’s impossible to traverse the driveway without stepping on tiny little snails, overzealous and anxious to breed. They are aimlessly sliding around like little old drunken men, groping their way through their drunken haze, leaving a trail of drool. One of the twin fawns is now an adolescent; I was startled to see her in the blue twilight, slowly stepping through the juniper-cedar outside the living room window. Her white spots travelling through the branch silhouettes made a striking image, inspiration for a quilt.

Alis and her family are visiting. Best friends are wonderful gifts. They arrive, and the music doesn’t skip a beat. Jim falls asleep peacefully reading on the sofa while Alis and Ford bake apple pie. The house smells more like home than it ever has, and I feel content and blessed.

Parenting is hard work, but proof of God. Otherwise I would have barehandedly killed Ford today. Stronger forces exist outside the realm of my patience. But oh, the demons within. I mean, how else am I supposed to react to our new residents Jeckyll and Hyde, where five minutes after retorting “That is not a good idea. bitch.” he murmured, “I want you to sleep with me, mommy.”
Yes, the “Terrible Twos” was a cakewalk. This, people, THIS is the Fucking Fours.

I am sitting in my bed, listening to jazz pipe in from the next room as it ripples through the white noise of my children, in bed beside me, breathing. I think I am damned lucky to enjoy this moment, I want to cling to it knowing that I’m still here enjoying this as a refugee from Katrina sits up in bed, acheing through a wave of despair in having lost a home, a loved one, possibly a child.

I’ve been blogged down for a couple of weeks, but tomorrow is a new day.

But perhaps not as much as Chas. The two of them, they’se like peas n corn.

Chas has evolved into this dense chunk of loveliness that stops my heart mid-beat; I have to remember to breathe. I don’t know if it’s the hobbit-baby hair, long strawberry blonde pouring over his ears and face, or if it’s his huge top teeth set a mile apart from each other and opposing two tiny bottom teeth, or his cosmic blue eyes. Or if it’s the Proof of God that I see as I watch him sleep, with leaden eyelids. But it’s arresting, his presence. Of course, at other times I’m too distracted to sit in awe.

Chas is now walking across rooms. On Friday he began practicing in earnest, stopping only to eat and sleep, but today he feels he has mastered his first footed gait and is scrumptiously sleeping now in his bed, smiling and dreaming and proud of himself. His reddish hair is rumpled around his head, tired and wasted from a day of hustle-bustle, not just from walking but from climbing up and down from Ford’s booster seat in the middle of the living room floor. Chas looked like a finicky dog, spinning and adjusting, around and around for fifteen minutes atop the miniature seat, before sitting, sighing and smiling in satisfaction. And then clapping! And then he proceeded to traverse the house once more, clap, and repeat. Again and again. And again. Again. Again. again.