It’s Getting to That Point Where These Will All Be Baby Posts From Here On Out

No, he says, and cries, and pulls away.

Come ON, I say, cajoling.  It’s fun, sweetheart.  Go on, you’ll be fine, just try it.  You’ll love it.  I am a wheedling pusher in an after school special, craftily talking him into something he doesn’t want to do.  Come on, his dad joins in.  Daddy can’t fit in there, but if you just go you’ll have a great time.  You’ll be safe, we promise!

No.  No.  He runs from us, from the terrifying spectre of the Giant Bouncy Castle of Doom.  So we throw up our hands and say – fine.  OK.  We’ll go see some other part of the festival, buddy.  We won’t force you.

We wouldn’t let him in the thing when it was full of other kids – because they’re all much bigger, and would bounce him around, land on him, jar his bones.  Small toddlers have broken bones on trampolines when they were bounced around by heftier kids who didn’t know to be cautious, and I didn’t feel comfortable throwing him into a pile of middle schoolers when I couldn’t fit my bloated body into the tiny kid-sized door to come to his rescue if he needed me.   Then, miraculously, it cleared out, and the fun of a lifetime was ours to give our little toddler.  He loves to bounce on the bed, he would adore this.  But our stubborn little man refused to squeeze through the heavy vinyl door flaps, or even go up the slide that served as an exit.  Not.  Going.  In.  There.

I’m not sure how I ended up with such a cautious son.  I am not a cavalier mom – things worry me, stupid things worry me, see trampoline caution of above paragraph – but I do try to filter the stupid worries from the sensible ones, and expose him to fun things that could, in a freak accident one-in-a-million shot, really harm him, but very likely will not.  You know, like letting him watch The Bachelor at my friend Michelle’s house, or exposing him to too much Elmo.  I don’t smother Jack, I don’t think.  I let him run, I like him to run – I let him climb – I push him away from me, tell him to go, go on, you can do it.  He’s bloodied his lip and skinned his knee plenty of times already, and these small injuries don’t bother me – the opposite of bother me, in fact, I’m quite pleased when he suffers a small boyhood injury and soldiers on through it, when I get the opportunity to teach him how to take small setbacks in stride.

Somehow, though, he’s ended up a pretty fearful kid. * This only pertains to things.  He would happily go home with Freddy Krueger, especially if Mr. Krueger was playing some kind of loud, booty-shaking music – had we lived in Hamlin in days of olde, my son would have been first in line to follow the Pied Piper, tripping down the dock to his doom.  Jack loves music, loves animals, loves people, and everyone he meets is a friend.  It makes him a likeable kid, I think, and someday when he has the discretion we’ll probably have to have a talk about Stranger Danger.  For now, though, I like that he is a jolly little fellow.  I like when other people laugh at his gorilla ape dance, or smile when he flashes them a grin.  I think if he can retain this gift of charming everyone he meets, he will do well in the world.

On the other hand, take him to a Child’s Storybook Village all lit up for Christmas, and he’ll cower into my knees rather than walk over the little bridge into the Shoemaker’s Cottage, which was really just a shell of a building made of molded plastic, completely open to the elements, manifestly not the Yawning Cave Where Dragons Be, or whatever Jack saw.  Turn on our Roomba vacuum cleaner and he’ll scream to be picked up, then babble at it worriedly from the safety of my arms.  Today when we turned on the Roomba, in a moment that made my heart swell with pride, he raced over to gather up Old Bear (who was reclining on the floor precariously close to the vacuum’s path) and only then ran to us for safety.  My brave son, running to collect his fallen comrade from certain death in the form of an 18 inch wide plastic circle.

Yesterday, as The Professor and I walked our little boy to a different area of the festival, we talked about our second son.  The one thing all parents of two-or-more tell us we can be certain about is that he’ll be different, and we wonder how.  We haven’t as much time this time around to daydream about his face, the color of his hair, if he’ll be a singer or a soccer player or an executive.  We are kept quite busy by his older brother, of course, his older brother about whom we still wonder many of these things.  The day Angus the Fetus (not his real name) enters the world will tell us very little about who he’s going to be.  As we’ve learned from Jack’s black-turned-blond hair and his little face, one that once very much resembled his father’s but looks more and more like mine every day, we won’t even really know what Angus is going to look like on the day we first get a look at him.  It will take several days before we figure out what kind of baby he’ll be – mellow?  Fussy?  Colicky?  Sleepy?  It will take several months before we start to get a glimmer of personality.  It will take the rest of our lives to drink up everything we can learn about who he is, this boy we created with love and purpose (instead of love and too much alcohol, and dear Jack, we love you none the less because you caught us by surprise).

Nevertheless, as his kicking grows more insistent and regular each day, and as my belly grows and grows, I find my mind wandering to thoughts of him more often.  We’ve already begun to redesign our house layout a bit in preparation for his arrival.  My mind is also rearranging itself, making room for another little boy.  Will I divide my heart in half, between these two cherubs, or will it double at the sound of my second son’s cries?  I know the answer, though I can’t believe it.

A teacher I had once told me that she’d planned on having one child, but when her son was born he consumed so much  of her that she decided to have a second child, just to keep herself from going crazy with love of the first.  This was not our reason for having two, but it will be a nice side effect.  We are having two – three, in fact, if all goes according to plan – so each can be a gift to the other.  I treasure my siblings, the older I get the more important they are to me, and I’m glad to give my children the gift of each other.

Since one thing I do know about Angus is that he will be a person and not a whirling plastic circle vacuum, chances are good that Jack’s going to like him.  I can wait for the sleepless nights, and the endless nursing, and the management of two carseats/strollers/accoutrements instead of one.

But I can’t wait to introduce these two boys to one another.