Late wakeups. Coffee and magazines, Jack still in bed. Adult quiet for a few blissful moments.
Up, dressed, in the car. We leave our urban home, looking for Nature.
We find her, dear god, Nature with all her enormous spiders and enormous flightless grasshoppers black as night and enormous alligators rolling, trolling through bayou.
A hike, one with no change in elevation, on life-saving, elevated boardwalk, as the calculating reptilian face ponders our toddler’s chubby legs, dangling from the Ergo baby carrier like Tantalus’s fruit – deliciousness, just out of reach of his jaws. Thanking, again, the builders of the elevated boardwalk, which intervention saved Mama from having to tussle with an alligator.
Then he is asleep, face planted in the middle of Dad’s sweaty back, as we rumble through the tropical, spideriffic forest, steamy, swampy, hot, heading back to the parking lot where I shake out my hair. No spiders. After, we stop for gluttony at Sonic Drive In – grilled cheese, burgers, fries, tater tots, and ice cream shakes to finish it off, all this without even having to step out of our car. I spoon tiny bites of ice cream into Jack’s baby bird mouth.
Home, naps all ’round. A little laundry, a little tv, early bedtime.
In the night, lightning, thunder. The dog frets, the baby cries. I pull him out of his crib and into bed with me. A chubby arm around my neck, wide glistening eyes. Nestled in the curl of my body, he sleeps.
Up, dressed, in the car. We leave our urban home, looking for Nature.
We find her, dear god, Nature with all her enormous spiders and enormous flightless grasshoppers black as night and enormous alligators rolling, trolling through bayou.
A hike, one with no change in elevation, on life-saving, elevated boardwalk, as the calculating reptilian face ponders our toddler’s chubby legs, dangling from the Ergo baby carrier like Tantalus’s fruit – deliciousness, just out of reach of his jaws. Thanking, again, the builders of the elevated boardwalk, which intervention saved Mama from having to tussle with an alligator.
Then he is asleep, face planted in the middle of Dad’s sweaty back, as we rumble through the tropical, spideriffic forest, steamy, swampy, hot, heading back to the parking lot where I shake out my hair. No spiders. After, we stop for gluttony at Sonic Drive In – grilled cheese, burgers, fries, tater tots, and ice cream shakes to finish it off, all this without even having to step out of our car. I spoon tiny bites of ice cream into Jack’s baby bird mouth.
Home, naps all ’round. A little laundry, a little tv, early bedtime.
In the night, lightning, thunder. The dog frets, the baby cries. I pull him out of his crib and into bed with me. A chubby arm around my neck, wide glistening eyes. Nestled in the curl of my body, he sleeps.