*kendraspondence*

We got to the theater 5 minutes after the show had started. It was dark. Baby Girl isn’t exceptionally afraid of the dark. She’s much more afraid when cartoon characters crash their skateboards than she is of the dark.

We were there to see “Toy Story 3″ which we’d already seen before. But who can get enough of Woody, Buzz, Slinky and Barbie for that matter? I had popped popcorn to smuggle in. This theater had an ice cream parlor in it.

We had left Little Man at home with Daddy-o. Girls Rule and Boys Drool type deal. She was going to get to sit on my lap and we’d whisper to each other that we liked Mrs. Potatohead’s violet eyeshadow and yellow earrings. All of the tension over having to share me with a sibling would dissolve into thin, dark, movie theater air.

All of this is to say that I was going for Mother of the Year, or at least membership in the Mother of the Month club.

Until.

I couldn’t tell you what.

Only that I accidentally bumped Baby Girl’s leg on a chair when we were being seated.

TORRENTIAL TEARS.
OVER THE TEARS IN A BARREL.
FEMA WOULD FEAR THE DAM BREAKING ON THESE TEARS.

We sit down. It’s dark. The Pixar short is playing.

I WANNNNNA GOO HOOOOOOME.
NANA!
DADDY!
I WANT DAAADDYYYYYYYY!!!

I quiet her. Stuff some popcorn in her mouth. She’ll be into it once she sees the “Toy Story” trademark.

I WANT GEORGE!
I WANNA GO HOME!

We march back out to the car to get Curious George. Why would I not bring George into the movie theatre? Why would George not want to meet Woody? Duh, Mama K.

We use the loo.

We return to our other seats.

There are deep breaths. There is talk about how Andy is leaving for college and how Woody and Buzz need to get back before Andy leaves for college.

I WANNA GO HOME.

Somewhere from the back of the theatre, the voice of someone who wants to rightfully watch the movie for which he paid his hard-earned ten moneys.

SO GO HOME!

Fifteen minutes later…

We do.

We drive home.

But not before we stopped for a pizza moon.

Which is best eaten with 3D glasses on.

Hey, September, how yoo dooin’?

September, here’s what: I’m happy you’re here. You always bring with you the smell of U-Hauls and giddy college students, the sounds of wonky high school trombone players, “Haa-yaaang on, Sloopeh, Slooopeh, Hang Onnnn!”, freshly cut football fields. Your days start to slope, the sun waning, 7:30, 7:15, on on on down to 6:30 p.m. and by the time your turn is almost up, there is a coziness to the night and an acquaintedness with new school textbooks, while still a hopefulness that there are big things still to accomplish this year.

But let me tell you about this past summer, September, the one you’re sweeping up for me in your wake. I’ll be frank. I thought this summer 2010 was going to suck. I thought I was going to be all soaking bedsheets with milk and wandering zombie-like around my creeky home at 3 a.m. But this past summer was awesome in its unremarkableness. It was just lovely, and smooth. We didn’t go anywhere spectacular (Newport? Cleveland, anyone?). I don’t even think we went out to brunch somewhere splendid. We just ate a thousand popsicles on our cruddy patio, watched the airplanes overhead, and wasted a lot of sprinkler water on ourselves, which, if you ask me, wasn’t a waste at all.

Sure, it was no party when Loverpants got pneumonia. And the hematoma thing I could have done without. But I’ll always remember Fourth of July, sitting with Brother Greg watching the “Boston Pops” on our couch and talking about how his blanket and law textbook were waiting for him on the Common, but instead he was sitting watching the performance with us on TV.

I’ll remember chicken parm night with my old man and Julie, defining bummerooski with my mom and Goobs, and just being so grateful and shmoopy to come home from OH and come back to my life with my hubby.

I’ll remember getting to know the girl that Baby Girl is now at an articulate 2.5 years-old, how she used “I’m sulking” totally appropriately, how her sapphire eyes, framed by her pixie cut, look out at a world and see not a complicated planet but only the ripe cherry tomatoes in the box garden, the sequined pink slippers on sale at Target, the travesty that is the removal of the “Shrek 3″ billboard on Gallivan Blvd.

Most obviously, though, I’ll remember the ease and wonder I felt for 104 days of meeting this new Little Man in my life. I don’t know what angel interceded in Heaven so that I could have this little boy with a halo all summer long, but I am grateful. He is so marvelously adaptable that holding him – which I try to do as many seconds of the day as I can – is a tranquilizer, it’s possibly the best drug a hospital lets you leave with, no prescription necessary. Just hold Little Man for a minute, ohhhh those soft little cheeks and fluttery eyelashes! And you will know.

So all that is to say that life until now has been wonderful, and welcome to you, September 2010. 30 more days in this month of turning 30. Yahoo.

***
Some snaps that our new friend, the talented Dr. Paul Yoo took at Boston Temple in the Fenway.

Linda over at All and Sundry wrote recently that having a two year-old is basically like experiencing the most awesome and the most wretched extremes of a person, with very little of the happy medium.

I have to agree.

I’m super sensitive to the way my own two year-old treats me at times, and how I treat her in return. And it’s not all reactive. Sometimes it’s preemptive. Just trying not to trigger a tantrum, just trying to think one step ahead.

But I didn’t think she’d actually be tempted to use the spray sunscreen and squirt it in her mouth today. Ya know, just to see. Otherwise, I would have put the stuff on a high shelf.

I find myself playing a lot of Bubble Breaker these days. Correlation?

I also find myself pondering these two little chubbacheeks. Yes I did pluck them from the Cabbage Patch.

TJL @ 2 mos

MJL @ 2 mos

There were moments when I could see it, feel it on her face.  Moments of recognition that, This is Love.  Love is here. I am known, loved, counted among the special.

I saw my daughter fall in love with her family, her extendeds, people whom she has only known through quarterly visits and digital images.  I could see her melting into their hugs and finding the arc in their laughter where trust and vulnerability live.

7 days in Ohio, in the home where I got busted multiple times for getting nail polish on cherry oak furniture, where I played endless games of Uno, where I learned how to read and read my mother’s angry face and fell asleep under lit Christmas trees in a California Raisins sleeping bag.

Now my daughter sleeps on that floor, in the same California Raisins sleeping bag, and wakes up to a different hum in the morning than I remember, but one no less sweet.

Oh how it pained me to leave, but double the torment of pulling my baby girl away from this fanclub of fandamily.  Little Man will come to know the club soon and well enough in time.  But this last visit was monumental for Baby Girl.  She has inside jokes with her Uncle Mikie.  She has special songs with her grandparents and there are toys retained in their basements only for her.

I have believed for the last couple of years that this wide geographic divide between our families was overrated.  And after this last visit home, I am convinced that it is downright cruel.  But I’m trying to be content in the present and hopeful for the future and keeping a look-out for opportunities….lots of opportunities…..

The land of Cleve, on the shores of Erie

Go Buckeyes

Do the grandmothers in your family enjoy giving children baths as much as mine seem to?

Auntie TP

Baby Girl was so stoked to have cousins. She had prior to this told me about imaginary cousins that had given her presents…

Chillin’ with Uncle Mikie

My wonderful in-laws came to have lunch on sabbath at my mama’s. I made quinoa. It wasn’t terrible.

My mama. My baby.

Swimming at my old man’s

I had grand delusions about all the project doing and people seeing I was going to accomplish in Ohio where I spent the last week. Among these was spending time in the photo annals of our family albums. I only managed to skim through one album, but it netted me this choice picture. I showed it to my stepfather and he asked who the little girl was with Madigan. Bing Bing Bing!

Here I am with my baby sister, Christmas 198something in our rustic kitchen in Lakewood, Ohio.

And here is my daughter, Summer 2010, snacking per usual.

Blood. It’s thicker than water.