An Hour Late
May 15th, 2006 Caroline
The day begins around 6:30 when I hear Eli’s quiet “Tah! Tah! Tah!” from the next room. I roll out of bed, shrug into my robe, and open his door to see him sitting in the middle of the crib, the tag of his silky blanket clutched in his hand. He holds it up to show me: “Tah! Tah! Tah!” Then he drops it and pulls up on the side of his crib, suddenly impatient to nurse.
Ben usually wakes up before Eli and I are done – nursing only twice a day now, Eli takes his sweet time—and either joins us with a book or gets right to his trains. We’re downstairs eating breakfast by 7:30 or so, and embarked on an imaginary trip, via the collapsible firetruck-airplane, to Chicago or Connecticut by the time Tony, who sleeps in to recover from pulling the night shift with Eli, comes downstairs.
When Eli sees Tony, he bolts on all fours toward the kitchen, occasionally stopping to point toward the espresso machine. “Dah! Dah! Dah!” he repeats. He loves making cappuccino as much as he loves nursing, I think. When he’s querulous in the car we can calm him by asking, “Eli? Did you make a cappuccino today?” “Dah!” he laughs. We slowly narrate the whole process and can distract him enough to make the ride a bit more tolerable.
Eli’s ready for a nap around 9, and usually that’s when Ben gets to watch a video and I head out for a run. But this morning Ben got me; “Mama, will you cuddle wif me?” The sun was warming the couch and I couldn’t resist cozying up, inhaling the buttery nut smell of his head, to watch Rudolph, the seasonally-inappropriate video of the week.
By the time I got out, an hour later than normal, the sun was high and hot. I’ve been running in the arboretum this week, enjoying the heavy scent of azaleas and rhodedendrons. The sprinklers were on full-force. The cranky voice in my head wondered about the wasted resources, all that water evaporating in the heat, and groused about my painstakingly straightened hair, springing right back into its normal corkscrews. But the cool water on a hot day quickly silenced cranky voice. I felt a bit like a kid who’s only pretending to dodge the sprinklers, and I ran around to get sprayed again.
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