Wringing out the towel of happiness

My kids love Elvis.

Primo was the progenitor of the family's current Elvis craze. For a long time, he's been hard-core into the crooners -- Frank and Dino, in particular -- and from there, he leapt to Elvis. He has introduced his sisters to it and the King pleases them all, especially the baby. I think it's that simple, driving beat that is so baby-friendly, letting her unleash her frenetic dance moves in all their glory.

Yesterday, Primo cued up "Hound Dog" and the kids had an impromptu dance party in the living room. The baby shrieked with delight and ran over to her sister, grabbing her hand and leading her into the middle of the carpet, while Primo, in a bow tie and suit shirt, joined in. They all bounced up and down like bona fide teeny boppers, wild, joyful smiles spread across their faces, sporadic giggles erupting from their mouths. Does this sound like a Hallmark moment? Good. It was. It was a super-sized feel-good moment that makes your heart so warm, it's molten.

"This is what I imagined when I told you we should have another child," I said to David. "I told you I could see us side by side, watching three crazy kids being loud and ridiculous and laughing their heads off in the middle of shenanigans and I could see us looking at each other and shaking out heads, full of wonder and joy and exhaustion."

"Yes," he agreed,"This is that moment. And you better enjoy it, because it will last approximately three more seconds."

As he finished his sentence, the baby's frenzied dance moves propelled her into the wall, and she started bawling her head off. Right on cue.

David is right. We get those Hallmark moments -- and for our family, they're never the quiet moments of repose, but explosive moments of cacophony, where the three children collide together into a fleeting, thunderous communion of spirit. We get those moments, I'd estimate, once every week or so. The moments where you feel a joy so expansive you can barely contain it. A fullness. It's transcendent. And it never lasts more than 10, at most 30 seconds. Then it's over, and reality descends with crying and squabbling and anxiety and disappointment.

But, when you think about, 10 seconds of transcendence and joy is really a windfall. The trick is not to miss it. So, this year, among my other resolutions, I think I'll work on sucking every last ounce of those beautiful moments in, right down to the dregs. You could call it savoring the moment but I imagine it as a  bit more violent: wringing the towel of joyfulness out until that stingy thing releases it's last drop.

Happy New Year, folks. May you wring the SHIT out of your happiness.

The Little Things

Yesterday it was as if my daughter was on Ecstasy. She kept pointing out the very obvious with extreme wonder and joy. Of course, it could be that she's just a kid.

"This water is too hot!" Sec shrieked while washing her hands in the morning. One advantage of our house being so small is that I can basically reach anything in it from where I'm sitting, particularly in the bathroom, in which the toilet, sink and bathtub are all touching. So I leaned over from inside the shower and turned the faucet towards cold.

"Oh that's MUCH better!" she gushed, "How did you DO that?"

"Well," I explained, I just turned it in the direction of cold."

"You mean, if you turn it in one direction, the water gets hot and if you turn it in the other direction the water gets cold?" she re-iterated.

"Yes."

"That is SO COOL!"

"I agree," I told her.

Then I heard her run into the living room and reveal this new discovery to her brother.

"Primo, did you know that if you turn the knob in the sink one way, the water gets hot and if you turn it the other way, the water gets cold?"

"YES I KNEW THAT!" Primo yelled with extreme exasperation.

"How did you know? Was it because you did it before?"

"Yes, I did it before!" he exclaimed.

That satisfied her.

Since I serve that kid breakfast, I know no one's slipping anything in her Cheerios. Though I may try having some of those CHeerios for breakfast tomorrow, just as an experiment.

Sleep Giggle

My daughter is now 3 years old but that doesn’t mean she is sleeping through the night., Every night sometime between 1 and 4, she wakes and though David used to be the designated Sec-soother, she has started to reject him lately which means either

1. David picks her up and brings her into our bed, so she sleeps with us all night kicking David so violently he moves into her bed ( Although I do have superkeen hearing,-I have trained my body to feel nothing in sleep so, as long as they were silent, a bunch of giants could play volleyball with me in my sleep and I'd never wake up. Its a Darwinian thing, like my ability to eat a meal in under 5 minutes.)

OR

2. I get up and try to sooth Sec back to sleep, usually falling asleep in bed with her

I’ve always thought that if you had to sleep with your kid for whatever reason, it was a better bet to sleep in their bed rather than vice versa, because you can always get up and leave their bed but just try kicking them out of yours. And that is why Primo hasn’t been in our bed since he was a toddler.

But since we’ve put the two kids in the same room, I’ve realized there is a big problem with me sleeping in bed with one of them. Once I’m in that room, it is as if they can sense my proximity and rouse themselves from sleep to start a tug of war with me. “Mommy!” calls Primo in the top bunk. And as soon as I’ve gotten him back to sleep I hear, “MAMA!” from the bottom bunk, and as soon as I’ve drifted back off its “AHHHHHH!” from the top bunk again, and on and on until morning has mercy and ends my servitude.

But last night something different happened:

As usual, Sec started crying at 3am and I automatically stood up, like a drone, crawled into her bed, slung my arm around her and collapsed into sleep within 30 seconds. Some time later, I was awakened by a strange sound coming from the bunk bed above me.

It was a giggle. A someone-said-the-word-“underpants” kind of giggle. I thought to myself, “Is the kid awake?

Has he just been lying there all night long quietly drawing pictures or talking to himself or something and he’s now giggling about it?” The thought was so unsettling I lay there, wide awake, listening for more sounds.

Then came a louder, more emphatic giggle. An I’m-watching-something-forbidden-on-TV-and-its-really-hilarious giggle.

I lay motionless, poised to bawl that child out.

At the next giggle, I climbed up the ladder to deliver the stern talking-to and found my son totally, completely asleep. Giggling in his sleep.

It filled me with the most delightful, bubbly, happy feeling. Nothing on earth is better than seeing your children happy, especially when they are happy in their subconscious. I wish I could bottle the feeling of hearing his sleep giggle and take a nice long drink of it on the mornings when everyone’s uncooperative and late for school and its raining but we can’t find the umbrella and I forgot to pack lunch and the stroller’s suddenly missing a wheel. The Sleep Giggle High. Ahhh . .

O frabjous day!

Primo slept for 12 hours last night. Twelve. And this miracle helped me understand something. My boy really needs every minute of those 12 hours of sleep, every night. This is too bad because he won’t get 12 hours of sleep again until the next time he goes to bed at 10:30 pm and wakes before dawn’s first light, which is precisely what happened the night before the 12-hour sleep miracle. He was so under-rested (thanks to an ill-timed late-afternoon car nap) that he was forced to surrender to the siren song of sleep at an unprecedented 6pm the following night.

And surrender he did, like a ton of bricks in the car so that I had to carry him up the three flights of stairs to our apartment. David, my geriatric spouse, threw his back out over the weekend and has been out of commission.

So although Primo comes up to my upper arm, I hoisted his legs on my hips and heaved him up the stairs. By the time I oh-so-gently lay him on his bed, I had to lay there, too, for a good five minutes, wondering if I should call for help. My heart was thundering so wildly it seemed a trip to the ER would be likely. I know, I know, I need to clock more (any) time on the elliptical machine. The point is, a little arrhythmia is a small price to pay for a successful car-to-bed sleeping transfer. And I did it. And he slept 12 hours. And life has never been so good.

Today, my son was an actual member of an angelic order. A wunderkind. A marvel to behold. Case in point.

We were walking down the street when a passerby complimented his striking blue eyes.

“You’re lucky,” I said when she had passed, “Mommy doesn’t have beautiful eyes like you.”

“Oh Mommy,” Primo said, “I like you just the way you are.”

And the hits just kept on coming. He peed without protest. He shared with his sister. He consented to having his hair washed. He walked all the way to Grand Army Plaza and back without a single complaint of wobbly leg syndrome. We lived together in perfect harmony today. Prim and me.

At bedtime, we always talk about our favorite moments of the day, and although these past few weeks, the kid’s been driving me so nuts my favorite moment has often been when he’s zoned out on the couch, watching the Backyardigans, tonight I said, “I had such a great day, Primo, its hard to choose.” To which he replied, “Maybe the whole day was your favorite moment, Mommy.”

Quite right, my son. Quite right.