We Are Experiencing a Short Delay

Five years ago, Word Boy had just turned three. He had also just started sleeping through the night. Like his older brother, he was an easy three-year-old: busy, self-entertaining, reasonably independent. I have a note from this time that one day they spent the whole afternoon building a submarine in the living room; another day, they spent 6 hours outside making forts in the front yard.

I was enjoying the unfamiliar feeling of being well-rested day after day, and the freedom that the kids ignoring me for long stretches of time gave me. I took up long-forgotten hobbies, dusting off my sewing machine and doing a couple of small projects before I sat down to piece together a quilt top for Word Boy's bed. I expected to finish it in a month or two, and then work on something for the Lego Savant.

We expected to wait another year or, more likely, eighteen months, before we brought a baby home. I settled in to enjoy this hiatus from intensive child-rearing. As the weeks passed, I began to enjoy myself so much that I became aware of a deadline, an unknown point in the future beyond which, if we didn't already have a third baby, it would be too late. I wouldn't be willing to go back.

Indeed, when our agency called on August 1 to offer us a birthmother match, I had no hesitation about accepting it, but part of me was whining, "I'm not ready! I've only had three months' worth of sleep!"

A few days later, we picked the Tiny Tornado up at the hospital, and did not put her down again for over three months, because that's the kind of baby she was.

You know how you pace yourself for the finish line? You've had a rough day with the kids, and your partner or babysitter is supposed to come at 6, but is fifteen minutes late. Is anything harder than that last 15 minutes you didn't expect? Or, say, your 2-mile run turns out to be 2.2 miles. No problem, if you've planned for 2.2--but if not, that last fifth of a mile can be excruciating. That's how I felt about my final child turning three: that it would be, in some ways, the end of the line. I remember, a few months before the Tornado came home, watching my two kids dash off into a waterpark, and saying to a friend, "My life is going to be so easy when the last of my kids is three."

Somewhere, a god laughed.

Here's a note from September 28, 2007:

The Lego Savant and Word Boy spent practically the whole day in the front yard again. Mountain-climbing, parachuting, and exploring strange new worlds.

My baby, smiley as she is now (which isn't really ALL that smiley--she doles them out like they cost their weight in gold), has not let me put her down in three days. I haven't had a shower since Wednesday morning. She's not unhappy. She just wants to be held. Awake, asleep, dozy, active, relaxed: all of it in-arms.

I'm a bit tired from it. She's up to 8.5 pounds, and having her in the sling is just that tiny bit wearing--the kind of thing where you first put it on and say, "Hey, this is nothing, I hardly notice she's there," and by 36 hours later, are ready to fall down. Every job is just that bit more awkward. Like the house has been filled with knee-deep water.

A year later, September 18, 2008:

The Tiny Tornado has never been the kind of baby you could easily distract. Some babies, if they're playing with something they shouldn't, you can just pop something else into their hand and take the choking hazard away, and they'll goo cheerfully. The Tornado, never. She's single-minded. We weren't even able to distract her from her love of television remotes and cellphones by buying her a toy cellphone. She is contemptuous of the toy phone. She wants the real thing.

She rose to new heights the other night, though, holding a grudge against David after he took away some paper clips I'd carelessly let her get hold of. He would offer to pick her up and she would shake her head and crawl away at top speed. Over and over. Her first full sentence might have been, "Oh, you want to get all lovey now, do you? After you took my paper clips? Fat chance, buster."

October 7, 2009:

The other day, the Tiny Tornado brought me a tube of toothpaste and her toothbrush as I worked on the computer in the Lego Savant's room. I put a little paste on her toothbrush, and she of course sucked it off because she's at that age, and then she brushed a little, and then held out her brush for "More!"

"No more toothpaste," I told her.

She left, returning a moment later with a different tube of toothpaste. I took it from her and set it on the desk next to the other one. "No more toothpaste," I said, "Too much toothpaste isn't good for little kids."

She runs off again, coming back with yet another tube of toothpaste--this one our housemate Andon's I think. I put it on the desk with the others, &c. This did not end until all the toothpaste in the bathroom (a surprising amount and variety) plus a tube of Andon's Clearasil had been brought to the Lego Savant's room.

I don't have a quote from right when she turned three. Because I didn't write anything for three months. Coincidence? I think not. But this is from November 29, 2010, when she was just about three years, four months old:

Y. is like a tornado wrapped in a hurricane with a side of world domination, but she's otherwise a pleasure.

From her third birthday on, my whole life basically consisted of that 15 minutes when you thought the babysitter would already be there, or that .2 miles when you thought you'd be sitting down and drinking your Gatorade by now. I kept telling people, "I'm ready to move on to the next stage of my life, but I can't. The Tiny Tornado won't let me."

Six months, eight months, twelve. I'm hanging fire. Eighteen months. I'm like a runner in the blocks and the starting gun never goes off.

And then, finally. Finally, I get the go-ahead.

You notice I got the juggling balls out again a couple of weeks ago. You notice I took up crocheting. You notice I'm going back to school in September. Sure, you also notice that the Tiny Tornado is going to Begindergarten instead of homeschooling next year. You notice that I'm feeling quite nervous about the end of preschool in less than two weeks, that I have become one of those parents who looks forward to summer vacation with a mix of pleasure and trepidation. Because she is nothing like her brothers were at 3, 4, and 5, and to be with her all day every day for more than a few days in a row is exhausting and a bit wearing on the patience.

But she's mellowed in the last six months. No, that's not right. She has not mellowed a bit. But she has begun to channel her energy more productively. Her abilities have caught up with her aspirations. She really can pour her own juice; she can build an obstacle course in the living room and spend awhile playing on it; she can join in with the Lego Savant and Word Boy when they have a sword fight going; she can play video games with them. She can run errands with me and be a pleasant companion and helper.

I was in the basement the other day, and said to myself, "What's in this bag on the shelf here?" It was Word Boy's quilt top. It just needs its border cut and sewed on. I can begin to imagine that this will actually happen.