Just the Four of Us

Today I felt myself switch over into "Single Mother Mode," and had a better understanding of how I do this when Lena's gone for a month every summer (Lena has a great summer gig working as a sea kayak guide in Alaska). Yesterday left me feeling a bit insane, but today was sweet and I felt very glad for the three little loves who are still at home with me while my Love is away. We woke up at 7:00 (usual wake-up call by Lukas who likely had been watching the clock for an hour), and all 4 of us climbed into the clawfoot tub for a hot bath. Bathing with my children is, perhaps surprisingly, one of my most favorite things. Hot baths in general are hugely medicinal for me, and I've found that they work a similar sort of magic on my relationships with my children. Anytime there's bad energy between us, a shared bath is sure to switch us back into a more patient, loving, and respectful state. I think it's as close as I can get to just popping them back in my womb for a moment. Things are getting a bit squished in the "family bath" these days, and I have been wistfully remembering the heaven of the two-person jacuzzi tub we had in our last home. It was the deal-maker in convincing me to move 30 minutes away from where we'd been living previously, and it was the one feature of the house that made it hard to leave two years later. Still, I totally took that tub for granted. But as squished as we all were in the bath this morning, it was absolutely the best possible way to wake up, after a night of barely 6 hours of interrupted sleep at the bottom of a four-person pig pile, in an unheated bedroom.

Tonight we once again mourned the absence of Lena by once again doing something that she generally dislikes for dinner. We went out to eat at our favorite restaurant, and it was lovely. While we waited for the food to come, we played drawing games on scrap paper. Our old standard, "guess what this is I'm drawing," occupied us for a couple of minutes until no one could guess that Jasper's black scribbled circle was actually supposed to represent a "RED apple," and things started to fall apart. I decided to introduce them to one of my old favorite drawing games from my childhood, and it was a huge success. We each drew the head of a person on a piece of paper, and then folded it over so that whoever would be drawing the torso wouldn't be able to see what the head looked like. Then whoever drew the torso folded the paper again so that the third artist could add the legs. Jaz and Luke have just recently gotten to the point of being able to pull this off, and they LOVED doing it. Here are the results:


I left the restaurant feeling full of good food and good love for these three small people whose lives have become the purpose of my life. When we got home, Luke and Jaz each ate a banana (apparently they were still hungry), and then Jaz fed a sliced banana to Zeb (who is perfectly capable of eating a banana all on his own, but who loved being fed by his big brother). Jaz and Luke take such good care of Zeben, and I just can't get enough of it. It makes it all feel worth it. I love watching them be so tender with their baby brother. I stood and gawked and snapped some pictures until Jaz yelled at me to put the camera away.



Later, as Jaz was climbing into bed, he reminded me of how he'd alerted me to get a marble out of Zeben's mouth earlier in the day.

"It was really a good thing I noticed that Zeben had that marble. Because if he ate the marble, he might get dead or something."
"Yes, thank you Jaz. That was so scary for me. You do a really good job taking care of your baby."
"But if he did eat the marble? And if he did get dead? Then I guess we could just have another baby, right?"
"Well, regardless of whether or not we ever have another baby, we would feel really, really sad if anything bad ever happened to Zeben."
"But then, if he did die, you'd at least still have two kids left."
"Yes, I would. But I really want to just keep having all three of my kids."
"Yeah," chimed in Lukas, "because we're all your babies, so you don't want any of us to get smushed or dead, right? Right?"
"Right."

I sat in their room, on pirate watch, until they had both fallen asleep. And, sleeping, they really did look just the same as they did when they were my babies. And I was reminded of how it feels when your newborn baby wakes up in the night to nurse, and you just feel so excited to get to look at him again. Even if it's only been two hours. And you study each little detail of his face. And you're so tired, but you just can't stop staring even after he's done nursing and he's peacefully sleeping again. You want to eat him with your eyes. I guess I still feel that way about my big babies. When I let myself remember.