Now With Extra Cheese Sauce

I’m all turned around from the busy December and the holidays which have been remarkably holiday-like in that no one got very sick and we all had time off. Saint Aardvark has been off work for almost 10 days (including weekends) and I have 1 more day off in a 5-day stretch before I go back to my job. I can barely remember what day it is. Did I shower today?

(yes)

Oh, good. What day is it?

(Tuesday)

Still, it has not escaped me that it’s both the first day of the (calendar) year and Trombone’s 18 monthiversary. For these reasons I feel like I should write something significant. Poignant. Worthy. With a photo at the end.

So. Yesterday Trombone fell face-first on the floor and his nose bled. This is the first I have seen of his blood and, like all the people say, it is a shock indeed to see your child’s blood running down his face for the first time. His little clotted, red nostril drew my attention every time I saw him for the rest of the day. I know this is the first of many bloody noses (especially if bloody noses are the least bit hereditary because mine bleeds if you so much as tell it a tasteless joke) and the first of many times I am the recipient of that injured expression, that “hey! how did you let that happen?” look that instantly makes me wonder “hey! how did I let that happen?” even if I hadn’t been thinking it before, even if it wasn’t my fault.

Then we cut his hair. Saint Aardvark gave him a toothpaste tube to worry and I did my best impression of a shearstress, all fleh diving in with the scissors and floooot holding hanks of his hair between my fingers. The results are far from terrible; the main result being that he looks like a little boy even more and less like a baby. Combine the bloody nostril and the boyish ‘do and I am suddenly catapulted across the room, landed flat on my own noggin, thinking, “Gee, I birthed a little person. What. The.”

When I went back to work in July, it seemed that Trombone got awfully interesting all of a sudden. I chalked this up to me being significantly away from him for the first time in a year – you don’t know what you’ve got till it’s gone, after all. Since July, in my more conscious moments, I have noticed that he is turning into a really damn cool kid. Ask my co-workers. And then my kid did! And then my kid did! And ohhhhhh, my kid! He is so awesome! Some of it is because I miss him. But also, I can tell you (relatively) objectively after spending the past 4 days with him, it’s not just me; he is turning out really damn cool.

He sings (in tune!). He dances. He climbs things (just since yesterday). He eats yogurt like an old Chinese man eats noodles. He hugs everything within hugging radius. If you tell him someone’s sleeping, he whispers. He knows what his name starts with and pretends to type it on the keyboard. He is still strangely obsessed with my friend Joanna. He loves roosters, referring to them as “cock a doos.” I think he thinks the new baby is in my belly button (more of a belly, er, doorknob? at this point) because he greets it occasionally by saying, “Hello! Gagoo!” and poking the protrudant bits back in. Hopefully he is not actually jabbing his sibling’s soft spot. I guess we’ll find out in 3 months.

I do know that 18 months is a hard age. Already this week he has woken 15 minutes earlier every morning since Friday and I have read about 18 month olds and I know that having told the Internet how cool I think he is, I have probably cursed myself with 6 weeks of stomach viruses, temper tantrums, eating nothing but peanut butter and possibly even the descent of a cloud of cackling locusts upon our home.

But today, he saw the cake I made and exclaimed, “Cake!” and when I said, “yes, that’s our cake,” he said, “WOW!” And I thought, he used to NOT EVEN EXIST. That is so amazing. I guess I’ll just have to put on my wide-brimmed hat & tall rubber boots and suffer the locusts and poop storm because he’s totally worth it.

(pre-haircut, you see. And yes, we do take a lot of photos in the bathroom. What of it.)