A rant, snapshots and a confession.

A few last ranty haiku:

Great job, truck driver,

stopping across the crosswalk,

for no good reason.

I really enjoyed

walking through your exhaust cloud

with my two-year-old.

I hope it was worth

endangering families

to gain two seconds.

All right, for now it may be out of my system.

I am endlessly entertained by my ever-more-verbal toddler. The other morning two of his favorite shows mentioned the word "camouflage". Since then, he has been hiding things and saying, "alaflage". I think he has a rudimentary grasp of the concept.

The other thing he is working on, bless his little heart, is "yuv you Mommy." I think I have only heard it three times, but I would probably crawl on my belly through fire to hear it again.

Confession: I am a napaholic. For the last few months, after figuring out I was not getting back my energy in the second trimester, I have resigned myself (without much prodding, admittedly) to taking a nap when my toddler does. Now, however, when he starts stirring again it is difficult to actually get out of bed again. I have found myself with my brain fully alert but not physically able to move. Sigh. Maybe I should be going to bed earlier. I guess it would be helpful if the boy would stop waking in the night...I think he is working on those blasted two year molars. YAWN...

Declaration.

This blog post is hereby declared ranty-haiku post. Observe:

Dearest chirping bird,

it is four in the morning.

Shush, if you love life.

Kid screaming in street:

you really should know better.

Let the nappers nap.

If you do not want

to share your food with toddlers,

don't let them see it.

Why, no, everyone,

I had not noticed that I

am extremely huge.

When you point it out,

I am grateful; I worried

no one could yet tell.

A word to the wise:

despite your experience,

don't guess. You'll be wrong.

By the way, it's not

"any day now" that I'm due,

I have till July.

And yes, I have checked

several times with my doctor,

and no, it's not twins.

So let's let it rest

and you can think your deep thoughts

and leave me alone!

100 days.

It's hard to believe that there are only 100 days at most until our next little boy arrives. My doctor has already assured me that because of my first son's hefty 9 pound-plus birth weight, she likely won't let me exceed the due date. He is so strong, even though he barely weighs over a pound at this point. I don't remember my older son kicking quite so often or so hard. I hope that doesn't mean he'll be a handful, but even if he is, I will love him more than life.

I am eager to find out whether this little guy shares my eldest's fair skin, hair and eyes or if he takes more after daddy's dark handsomeness. I'll get a bit of a hint in a few weeks when we have a 3-D ultrasound, but until then I'll just have my daydreams.

I am so proud of my two-year-old. He is coming out with new words daily, and I can tell he wants to say even more. I have no doubt he will be talking in paragraphs before I know it. The other day he was pretending to eat a sticker and saying "Mmm, yelicious." He learned the words "awesome" and "cool" this week, ensuring his hipster status. Listening to him trying to sing all the words of "Twinkle, Twinkle, Little Star" is pretty entertaining, as he still doesn't know all the words, so he replaces some of them with rhyming syllables. Ahh.

Haiku News

Stocks rallied today,

good news for my 529

for my sons' college.

Seems it is unclear

whether 8-year-old knows just

what he gave at school.

Man's old Atari

video game cartridge fetched

over $30k!?

Tragedy.

I just learned a few hours ago of the horrendous, deadly plane crash claiming the lives of Poland's president and first lady as well as many top leaders of their government and military. While as an American I knew none of these people, any event involving such a large loss of life seems to ask for acknowledgment.

My favorite professor of poetry, Adam Zagajewski, is Polish as well, and this event called him back to the front of my mind. I contacted him last summer in the hope of creating a reading list of poets to fill up my reservoir of poetic inspiration, and one poet he says he is always reading is Wlslawa Szymborska. She is a Polish poet of amazing depth and economy of language. I am finding it fitting to include one of her poems here, translated by Mikołaj Sekrecki.

Possibilities

I prefer the cinema.
I prefer cats.
I prefer oak-trees by the Warta.
I prefer Dickens to Dostoyevsky.
I prefer myself liking humans
to myself loving humanity.
I prefer having a thread with a needle close at hand.
I prefer green.
I prefer not claiming that
the intellect should be blamed for everything.
I prefer exceptions.
I prefer leaving before.
I prefer talking to doctors about something else.
I prefer old marked illustrations.
I prefer being laughable because of writing poems
to being laughable because of not writing them.
I prefer odd anniversaries in love life,
to be celebrated every day.
I prefer moralists
who do not promise me anything.
I prefer calculated goodness to goodness that is too gullible.
I prefer the earth in civvy street.
I prefer conquered countries to the conquering ones.
I prefer having my objections.
I prefer the hell of chaos to the hell of order.
I prefer Grimm tales to the first pages of newspapers.
I prefer leaves without flowers to flowers without leaves.
I prefer dogs with their tails unclipped.
I prefer fair eyes since mine are dark.
I prefer drawers.
I prefer many things I have not listed above
to many others unlisted here.
I prefer noughts that are loose
to those queueing for a digit.
I prefer insect time to stellar time.
I prefer touching wood.
I prefer not asking how much longer and when.
I prefer considering even such a possibility
that existence has its reasons.

Poetry Challenge #26: Spring Poem

Well, chickadees, whether the weather in your backyard is indicative of it or not, the calendar claims it is spring, so with that comes my challenge to write a poem in reflection of that fact. Because I am in one of the unfortunate areas that suffers from some season-identity crisis every time the seasons change, my poem will echo that, but yours can be as joyous or not as you desire. As always, this theme-based challenge only has that single requirement, so feel free to use any sort of form or rhyme scheme that tickles your fancy.

Here's my effort:

Walking 'round in my winter coat

one time more than I hoped I would,

it occurred to me that seasons should

change like channels on TV,

not like stations on the radio,

cold static bleeding over into the sweet

melodies of warmer times.

Yet signs of victory abound,

despite defiant wintry gasps:

trees show signs of verdant green

and some bold ones even sport blooms;

the grass is showing signs of life

and flowers have unearthed themselves.

As I gaze on the fledgling leaves

presenting trees in the manner

of Monet, with delicate flecks of emerald

seeming to dance before my eyes,

I glimpse the blue beyond the grey

of clouds threatening rain over my head,

and dream of days not long from now

when warmth will win, the winter dead.

10 things I love about my little boy.

1. The way his nose wrinkles when he is really happy, and he can't help stomping his feet with joy.

2. The way he says "peez" and "tek you".

3. The way he sleeps on his tummy with his hands underneath his body.

4. He has started parroting things from me and off TV, leading to fun things like our "You OK Mommy?" exchange at least 10 times a day.

5. The way he says "Hewwo" to strangers when we're out on a walk.

6. The way his hair always has a little piece sticking up at a funny angle.

7. The way he snuggles into me when he's feeling sleepy.

8. Watching him explore his world with such wonder.

9. Now that he can say the word, discovering what a two-year-old considers beautiful. Like fire trucks.

10. The way he tries to sing "Twinkle, Twinkle, Little Star," even though he can't say all the words yet.

Minerva, pity party of one.

Sigh.

My son has gotten over the cold we both had last week, and seemed back to his sunny self today.

Other than that, today was, shall we say, challenging.

I was getting the boy ready for our afternoon walk when a sadly-familiar odor of urine wafted under my nose. Sure enough, our dog had taken a huge pee on my living room rug. Again. This time at least I can't blame myself because she had gone out on her regular schedule today. After we returned from the walk and I let her out again, I steam-cleaned the rug. It hadn't even had time to dry before I smelled something rather worse than pee. Yep, she decided to poop the biggest poop I've ever seen my 12 pound dog produce on the exact same spot. Anyone want a dog? Cheap? Free???

To top it off, I let myself blow off some steam on Facebook the other day by posting a status update related to my neighbor's daughter's trike being left on our common porch. My son sees it daily and has lately been carrying on or whining because he can't ride it. He doesn't have one yet but he will shortly. Anyway, I had made mention of the situation on Facebook, even throwing in the choice phrase of "stupid trike", and my neighbor saw it. Lovely. I don't think she liked me much to start with, but that certainly didn't help the situation. Of course I wrote her a message apologizing profusely and saying it wasn't her fault that my son was upset at all, there probably isn't anywhere else she can put it anyway, but I don't know if that will help things much. Sigh.

Hopefully tomorrow will be better.

Haiku News

A breath of fresh air:

Coburn defends Pelosi,

then rips on Fox News.

Bad medicine here:

doctors perform c-section,

woman not pregnant.

Airline adds new charge

for passengers' carry-ons;

what's next? Charge for air?