Mother’s Day Weekend

Each month on the month-a-versary of their birth through to age 1, I have taken a photo  of my sons sitting next to this bunny, as a means of measuring how quickly they grow in that year.  Here is my littlest, at his three month session.

I had to fend the other boys off with tasers to get a shot of Craig, solo.  (Just kidding. I don’t have a taser, more’s the pity.  I used my hoary hooves to scatter the boys, and they fled before the horror of my hideous feet.  Mama needs a pedicure for Mother’s Day.)

That last picture is my new favorite of the three of them.  I have it up at work.  That skinned knee, those loveys, the walkie talkies that they love to carry around but do not know how to use right . . .  They each hold one, stand three inches from one another, and shout as loud as possible into it.  They say things like “ten four” and “roger dodger” and “stand by, stand by.”  Where do they get this stuff, I wonder.

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I just went for a run.  I run a thirteen minute mile these days, if you can call that “running.”  I shuffle a thirteen minute mile, I should say.  But I did three miles today, and I did two last week.  So . . . I’m shuffling my way, slowly, back to my base level of athleticism.  When I run, the flabby pocket of my belly flops up and down, up and down.  A body that is three months post-partum is a hard body to love, even for me, though intellectually I understand that it is ok that I am still kind of a mess.  It takes a year for a newly delivered mother to turn back into a person who doesn’t feel emptied of the baby she just carried.  Defined by what she lacks.

In any case, I grab a handful of skin at my midsection.  Look at that picture up there and then think, with a sigh – well, ok.  Ok, sweet body of mine.  Ok.

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A few weeks ago in church, I was sitting a couple of rows behind a mother and her only child, a fifteen year old son.  She was wearing a long “statement” necklace – big silver hoops, linked to each other, draping down to her waistline.  Through the sermon, which I barely heard, this fifteen year old boy was fiddling with the necklace.  Sticking his fingers in and out of the hoops, running it through his hands, tugging it around her neck, absent-mindedly clinking the links together and apart.  Bored.  She didn’t even notice, just watched the preacher talking, and meanwhile I watched this kid, this kind of old-ish kid, manhandle his mother’s body in that un-self-conscious way that my children handle mine.  From the tangle of links, he gently freed the wisps of hair at the nape of her neck, laid his head on her shoulder, patted the necklace flat in place.  She tilted her head to lay it on top of his for a second, then they split apart again and the kid started to doodle pictures on a collection envelope, the necklace forgotten.

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Here are some photos from last weekend’s trip to the estuarium.  I, the family photographer, once again am in none of them.  I’m going to have to train the husband up in taking a picture once in a while.

Below is a link to a youtube video of the stingray petting pool.  I used to be able to embed these, I swear . . .

High Five

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Liam and I have this thing we do in the mornings now, after Jack is gone to the bus.  He runs to the mailbox to wait, and I pull the car out of the garage and around to pick him up.  I roll down the windows and the sweet sweet tunes of Alvin, Simon, and Theodore blast the speakers and shake the neighborhood awake.  “We’re the boys of rock n’ roll, ya better believe it, yeah yeah yeah.”  He grins wide, usually hugs me through the window, then climbs into his seat in the back.  We listen to the Chipmunk Adventure soundtrack all the way in to school.  When I drop him off, he’s dancing.

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Tomorrow, the boys plan to make me some sort of breakfast.  I will call my mother.  I will attempt a nap, so I am not a grumpy mama. Happy Mother’s Day weekend – I hope its as mundane and blessed for you as it has been for me.