How we met Dr. Cornelius

So I let the baby knock two heavy clay mixing bowls onto his head. I am such a freaking amateur! I never imagined he’d be capable. They had been sitting on the bottom of an open shelf about 5 inches off the floor, but their size and weight seemed to put them out of the category of anything he could effectively manipulate. I was putting his bottles into the diaper bag and set him down right at my feet on the kitchen floor. At the first sound of jiggling crockery I had turned and was grabbing him, lifting him up to safety as the bowls splintered into large, thick shards on the linoleum.

Thinking we had escaped unscathed, I gaped wordlessly as I watched his face pull into a frozen, totally silent expression of wailing. Finally, he sucked in a deep breath and….WAAAAaaaaahhhhh! Apparently, as the bowls tipped, they clocked him on the side of the head and a nice little bump was already forming.

Poor kid. He’s such a little toughie, though. He got over it pretty quickly and we had a fabulous long walk downtown and he got a certain new toy we like to call Dr. Cornelius. We found the doctor at the puppet hut that sits beside the Indian Restaraunt downtown. I had been dying to go there for some time and was happily admiring the vast array of unique puppets when I noticed Nathaniel continually looking in one direction and laughing. Finally I sought out the object of his interest. A blunt faced, fleshy pawed, crazy eyed monkey.

I tried to convince the baby that there were many other, finer, choices. I stuck policeman puppets and nurse puppets in his face, trying to coax a smile. He'd only regard me with a bemused look that seemed to say, "So very amusing, mumma. I'm glad you enjoy playing with your puppets. Now, about that fabulous monkey over there...."

And, I had let him knock a bunch of bowls on his head. My fate was sealed. Dr. Cornelius was destined to become part of our family. Now, I look at him and realize my initial reaction had been too hasty. He really is a very handsome puppet. He speaks with a broad, friendly English accent and is a respected member of the faculty at Oxford. Sometimes, when he's in a very serious mood or, if he has a second glass of brandy, he'll tell us about the dark time when he lived at the Laboratory.

Shipwrecked Morning

Sometimes, no matter how hard you try to keep this new foundering ship that is now your life afloat, you inevitably end up with your stern stuck up your bow.

It had been a long night. First, I stayed up too late watching a DVD. Probably foolish, but on a tight schedule you grab the good times where you can! Once I called it a night I then had to crawl out of bed several times at the baby’s cry. He doesn’t require much during these late night rendezvous, just help finding his bunny and his pacifier, but you still have to wake up enough to go lurching around through the dark with one eye half open, trying your best to make your tormented moans sound like loving words of comfort for the child’s sake. Then you find your way back to bed to try to fall asleep again.

Eventually, of course, dawn slammed through his curtainless windows and he was rocking and rolling and my day had officially begun. Later that morning, while feeding the baby a bottle, I fell into a fitful, cold, uncomfortable sleep on the living room floor. I did not wake until a growing feeling of doom filled me and the following mantra pulsed through my brain – Get up and look at a clock, get up and look at a clock…

Reluctantly, I sat up and felt the full weight of my disaster. First, my Aunt Flo (you know, “Aunt Flo,” wink wink) had come to visit and made a mess of the clothes I was wearing. Second, the baby’s diaper was full of poop. Third, I was due to work a 9 hour shift and hadn’t made anything yet to bring along for my lunch. And, I only had about 20 minutes to get out the door.

Whatta ya gonna do? Call work, sheepishly explain you are going to be a “little late” and then thank the stars that you have a boss who, after ascertaining that everything is alright, says she’ll see you when she sees you.

Lie to me and tell me it gets easier!

Halloween Rainforest

Walking among the trick or treaters Halloween night it occurred to me that the crowd swirling about us in the dark was very much like the different levels of a tropical rainforest. The rainforest, from top to bottom, includes the emergents, the canopy, the understory and the forest floor. Each stratum comprises its own ecological niche containing species of animals unique to that one level. Riding on my hip, his head bobbing just below my chin, my baby occupied the Halloween canopy layer, passing other babies on other hips, all of them sharing the same stratum together. Bumblebees and ducks and carebears floated by one another in their own, separate world, grinning and cooing at each other. Parents' faces, at the top emergent layer, smiled greetings as the older kids terrorized the understory and toddlers walked and tripped awkwardly along the forest floor of All Hallow's Eve.

My little guy was a duck and I was suppose to be a scary New Orleans' voodoo priestess. I think he looks better!