(Much love and admiration to Bill for continuing to unwaveringly document our life, from behind a gaggle of lenses and straps, despite my clucking and occasional eye-rolling. You were right. I will thank-you one day for these. Thank-you.)

Liam has always freaked me out a little. I think most of that feeling stemmed from him being our first baby and us not knowing exactly what to expect…us not knowing at all what to expect. You know in general. Generally, there will be dirty diapers and cracked nipples. Generally, there will be cooing and 4:00 a.m. feedings that leave you clawing for the magical, reanimating coffee pot at 7:00 a.m. Generally, you will feel a crushing love for this wrinkly little person who just kicked the leg out from under the card table holding your half-done, jigsaw puzzle life. But, when it came to specific milestones, every article or book I ever read ended with the equivalent of a condescending pat on the head. ”Don’t worry, anxious, obsessive Mommy! All children develop and learn differently and at their own speed!” Also, true, yet not particularly helpful or comforting. Especially when you’re watching your non-walking 18-month-old from under knitted brow on tilted head tell you the letters of the alphabet and the sound each makes.

When Liam turned 18 months old, he had only been walking for two weeks. Prior to that, he would scoot himself around on the floor sideways in a half crawl, half monkey-knuckle-walk. We called it crabbing. Proper motivation for walking erect arrived in the form of baby-Nate when Liam was 17 1/2 months old. He decided he’d better bring it if he was going to properly battle the new guy. The first time Liam strung together multiple footfalls was in my hospital recovery room when Bill brought him to meet his baby brother. I excused myself to pee for the 30th time that day, and Liam chose that moment to take ten steps across the antiseptic floor. I heard the muffled cheers from my cousin, Jessica, and Bill through the bathroom door.

The potty-training milestone also vexed us. Liam started preschool at the end of October 2008, a few days after his fourth birthday, because we were still trying to get him to consistently use the potty. I know. At the parent-teacher conference a few months later, his teacher laughed and remarked that he had an amazing memory. She had been making up a song one day about the stages of life of a butterfly. When she taught it to the class in the following weeks, she inadvertantly skipped a part. Liam rocketed his little hand up. ”You forgot the part about the chrysalis, Mrs. Dent!” And then he regurgitated the two-week old line from the song that he had heard once in passing. 

And then, he was reading. Not because we consciously taught him to read, but just because he could. We’d be playing Xbox and he’d casually ask, “Why does that say ’press A to continue’?”. “Can you read that, buddy!?” We weren’t sure if he was memorizing or actually reading. He’d laugh and refuse to throw us any more word crumbs until he was good and ready. His Pre-K teacher in 2009 sent home with him classroom books that had interested him in school. She attached pink post-it note explanations like, ”Liam spent all of his free time reading these today. I thought he might want to borrow them.”

When a thank-you card came in the mail from that same teacher at the end of the year, I told Liam it was addressed to him, so he should read it. And, he did. All except the word, ‘Delphinium.’ He resisted reading the card for me on video because he stumbled over that one word and he didn’t want his mistake to be recorded. He made me remind him what the word was so that he could read ALL of the words.    

Liam’s first day of kindergarten is tomorrow. And, none of this was to blarg, blarg, blarg, my-child-is-so-special blarg!!! Liam certainly isn’t the first kid in the world to enter kindergarten reading. But, I do think he’s a bit ahead of the curve. While I’m wildly proud of him, he also worries me. I’m worried because his teachers might not see it and he might get bored. I’m worried because, in his kindergarten orientation pack, the summer activities they asked us to focus on were learning the numbers from one to ten and recognizing the difference between upper case and lower case letters. I’m worried that he’s going to think it’s MUCH more challenging and fun to find ways to piss off his teacher and torture his classmates.

My worry is diluted by the fact that Liam is not worried at all! Our anxious, high-strung little boy is very ‘meh’ and seems bored by all the hoo-ha surrounding kindergarten. I would prefer to see a little more enthusiasm, but I’ll take cool detachment over debilitating fear any day. It occurs to me only now, though, that what I might be reading as ‘meh,’ ‘bored,’ and ‘detached’ is actually confidence. He might be further ahead of the curve than I thought.

We’ll be sure to follow up with pictures and reports of the first day, especially given that this is such a big milestone and we have our own personal Dadarazzi to document it for us.

I gave birth in October 2004, March 2006, and November 2007. In case you’re slow with the digits like I am, that’s three births in three years and one month. That’s also a one-way ticket to LOOOOOOOONville and I highly don’t recommend reproducing like crystal meth infused bunnies.

It’s a logical assumption to think that the weight I’m dropping is residual baby weight, compounded by multiple pregnancies in a relatively short amount of time, that I carried over like a big, fat remainder in a long division problem. But, that isn’t the case.

With the exception of the run-of-the-mill BS that goes along with pregnancy (fatigue, mild nausea, fluid retention, peeing like a damned leaky lawn sprinkler during the third trimester, heart burn, etc.) the only real problem I ever had was being in false labor with Liam for three days before I was in actual labor with him for 26 hours…still bitter about that. We didn’t have the heartbreaking infertility issues that are so common in “older” couples, there was no preeclampsia or gestational diabetes, no horrible morning sickness or bed rest ordered, no stretch marks and no post-partum depression. None of the babies were even so much as jaundiced at birth. They latched on easily and were *voracious* nursers. We were lucky. I gained 25-30 lbs. with each boy and within two weeks of delivering each time, it was all gone. My shape wasn’t back, unless you consider a deflated kiddie pool a body shape, but the weight was gone.

All of that is not to brag or take credit for dropping the baby weight quickly, because I didn’t do anything to lose it other than breastfeed. When you consider that 10 to 12 of the 25 lbs. was baby and placenta and a huge amount of fluid weight was released in the week following delivery, there wasn’t that much left to lose.

Liam weighed 8 lbs. 4 oz., Nate weighed 8 lbs. 4 oz. and Sam weighed 8 lbs. 2.75 oz. The doctor said that if Sam hadn’t pooped on his way out, he probably would have been 8 lbs. 4 oz., too. (Oddly, I also weighed 8 lbs. 4 oz. when I was born.)

Besides obviously being amazed that I had just pushed another human being out of my body Turducken style, I was FLOORED by how huge the placenta was! For some reason, I had pictured it as an innocuous, silver-dollar-sized piece of liverwurst, happily attached to the back of my uterus, knitting baby booties to pass the 9 months. But, no…this crimson, liver-sized monster was practically as big as the baby itself, minus a giant, unyielding, coconut head and Olympic swimmer shoulders, and smoked a Camel Light and chatted up the doctor while it was being weighed, measured, and checked for veiny goodness. (Check it out if you dare. You have ample gross-out warning.)

While the weight I’m carting around isn’t pregnancy weight, the babies are most definitely the root cause of it. They were beautiful little time vampires who sucked the minutes from my days, a good part of my nights, and often, my sense of self out of me. After they were down for the night, sometimes I would sit and think, ‘Man, I don’t think this is how I’m supposed to feel. I’m doing this wrong. I’m missing…something. Maybe somethings missing from me! I got a defective set of hardware! I’m missing the instruction manual and bolt #3A that holds the whole damned desk together!”

As the boys got older, and with Bill’s help, I regained small pieces of time and wee bits of myself. To the point where, most importantly, I felt like working out and could take an hour out of the day to go sweat and not feel like I was abandoning my kids or overloading Bill. It got easier.

I thought last week was going to be a disastrous set-back, but I guess all of the swimming we did helped off-set the Swiss Roll with Pop Tart chaser diet I was on. I did exactly zero structured exercise and ate terrible, delicious, chemical-dipped foods, but still managed to drop 1.9 lbs. Maybe it was momentum from the week before.

Week 1: -5.0 lbs.

Week 2: -1.9 lbs.

Total to date: -6.9 lbs.

Yesterday, I noticed the late afternoon light falling across our opened front door in a particularly appealing way, so I quickly went to get my camera and tripod. I set up the shot, adjusted the camera, and snapped a series of pictures of the empty doorway. But when I look at this one, I swear there is what appears to be a little boy standing behind the beveled glass.

I think I’ll ask Sam. He was right beside me as I was setting up the camera. In fact, he insisted on looking through the viewfinder at least twice, and at one point, he even went around to the front of the camera and pressed his cheek and eye against the lens. He was also playing with the tripod some.

Maybe he saw something.

Nate stretched out his arms and said “I’m a biiiiiiiiig foooooooouuuuurrrrrr”.

He reclined in my lap, looking up at me, and I cupped one hand on his head and pulled his bangs up off his forehead. Now he resembled nothing so much as a puppy with its ears pulled back, and his mischievously gleeful expression never changed. It’s an expression he wears sometimes when he wakes up first on a Saturday, and quietly dances from one foot to the other towards our bed. It’s an expression that’s all teeth and tongue and sparkly eyes and crinkly nose. It’s that puppy, now with its chest on the ground, paws splayed out front, and looking up sideways. 

So he smiled up at me, and I smiled back down at him. And where there was once a baby, there was now a little boy. I smiled back down, because this was his big day. I smiled back down, because he’s happy and gracious, even when the birthdays aren’t his. I smiled back down, because today, it’s all about him. And he smiled back up at me, well, because he’s Nate.

The time of Three is now gone, and he’s Four Strong. He’s Baby Seal Four, and he smiled and he smiled.

***

And there were giant red poppies, handmade from colored tissue, and each had a Rice Crispy Treat nestled in its center.

And there were exhausted Mum-Mums, Da-das, and Grandys who had stayed up and up.

And there was a great slab of poundcake, cut into the shapes of a rabbit and a magician’s hat, then slathered with homemade buttercream frosting.  

And the kids’ table sat awaiting kids, and there were top hats and stuffed bunnies and wands and draped over small chairs, there were capes that sparkled with glittery red names.

“The Notorious Nate,” said one cape.

“The Amazing Allison,” replied another.

And Zac was Zany, and Clare was Captivating. Rachel was Radiant, and Liam, Lively.

Aleister, Hannah, and Colleen?  Awesome, Heavenly, and Crafty.

There was the Glamorous Grace Margaret, and the Lovely Leia. Elise the Enchanting, and Everett the Energetic.

“Sam the Stinker,” croaked the last, small cape at the end. 

And then there were grandparents and brothers, parents and friends.

And later, there were magic tricks and balloon animals and live bunnies and unexpected doves fluttering from impossible places. And there were bags and scarves and wooden clowns that started off one color but ended up another. And then there were handkerchiefs with disappearing polka-dots and drawings that colored themselves. There were volunteers from the audience, and pileups of hastily shouted magic words. 

And each of these things was punctuated by peals of laughter and claps and occasional looks, stolen briefly over tiny shoulders to assure that we were all watching too. And there, in the first row, was Nate - the Big Four; the Man of the Hour - with his cape falling over his small shoulders and his plastic hat perched perfectly straight atop his head. And he was beaming and bouncing and delighted. He was smiling with his mouth open, and when the magician would do something particularly magical, he and Allison would clap and look at each other. Allison is his best.

And then there was a tight circle of the Glamorous and the Zany, of the Amazing and the Enchanted. And there was the tearing of paper, and there were things that were new. There were things to be coveted by and then shared with the Lively and the Stinker.

And then four striped candles were lit, then not, and shortly afterward, a rabbit disappeared, followed by a hat.

And faces were wiped and hands were washed. Friends were thanked, and poppies were given. And then, one by one, groups of hats and bunnies and wands and capes began to disappear as well.

***

And Nate’s in his bed, and he’s snoring softly. His Big Day is over, and he’s got his ‘baby’ - Curious George in ’RollerMonkey’ Gear - on one side of him, and his much loved Elmo Binky on the other. I pull his robot covers up to his chin, and in his dark outline, I can see both the baby he was, and the boy he will become.

***

click for more pictures of the gala

Nate wanders into the room, dragging a toy broom and a plastic workbench leg.

Nate: “Dada, what if I said ‘Three Popcorn Leg’? And then… and then you said ‘Three Popcorn Leg!’”

Dada: “I don’t know…”

Nate, turning and leaving: “Three Popcorn Leg.”

Dada: “…how to answer that, man.”