Doap

So, there I am, shredding some pot-roasted pork for tonite’s Mexican meal, when Nels approaches. He just woke up, and he’s hungry. However, Nels understands that a trade must take place. Like the savages of old who traded valuable furs for gold trinkets, Nels offers me a toy ViewMaster and then says “Hung-ee?” Unfortunately, this savage can only speak broken English, and not enough for us to communicate fully. As for his native tongue, it’s a Godless, pagan one I do not comprehend.

This savage also understands intuitively the role that status plays in our modern world. At the end of the bath time, I prompt him “Say goodbye, soap.” He looks at the soap, but catches the trick. Addressing the Enhancing and Revitalizing shampoo with a serious look, he says “Good-bye, Dampoo.” Then, and only then, can he address the lowly surfactant with a simple “Good-bye, Doap.”

Towel is a five-letter word

Just minutes ago, I was getting Nels out of the tub. Sophie, already out, was running down the hall naked to pick out her own jams. This is something she gets to do since she’s the big girl, and Nels is just the little brother. I picked Nels out of the tub and put him across my lap on a fresh towel. “Towel,” he said.

Honest to dog tears welled up in my eyes.

I remembered when Sophie was his age, a book she had that listed various bath toys. Towel, Ducky, Soap, Faucet. I was overwhelmed with nostalgia for just a few years ago. In Kid Time, though, those years are uncannily light-speed. I mentally flashed-forward to Sophie, a 20-something parent of her own, and me trying to tell her about that book and the word “towel” and how she said it. I wondered why my own parents don’t relate these little memories of growing up. Then I was struck by fear that these moments dissappear; that memory is incorrect, that this memory will soon be gone. That’s why my parents don’t tell me. They don’t remember.

I was suddenly sad, but my son was already down the hallway and picking out his own pajamas, and there was no more time for nostalgia.

I Had A Baby Today

It’s a boy!

Nels Hogaboom (no middle name as of yet)

born 8 lbs, 7 oz

21 inches long

home birth in the tub — water baby

The birth experience was really, really nice. I couldn’t imagine wanting to have a baby in a hospital again. Now that I’ve been all the way through the home birth, I can appreciate how — mundate — it is. It’s not some crazy, we-need-professionals-in-sterile-rooms Serious Operation. It’s a thing the woman’s body was meant to do, the body excels at doing. DLR said it best: might as well jump.