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 Dalai Mama Weekly BlogCatherine Newman chronicles life parenting Ben, 8, and Birdy, 5
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March 26, 2007
For the Love of Four
 Birdy wakes up cranky. She groans inaudibly into the pillow and I can't see her face. "What is it, my love?" I ask, and she grunts, "Put my socks on." "Okay, you fierce thing," I say, and she makes a sound like "Nnnnng" that I'm guessing means — ironically — "I am not a fierce thing." She kicks her kicky legs and succeeds in kicking Ben, who is lying placidly next to her. "Birdy, don't kick Ben," I say, and she says, "Nnnnng" and kicks him again. Ben rolls his eyes at me, and he and I get up and out of bed, tell Birdy we're leaving her to sort herself out. "Don't leave me!" she cries, miserable. "I'm a fierce grump!" Birdy wakes up happy. She is smiling before she even opens her eyes, and her face is rosy and warm. She rubs crust from her eyes, drapes her bare, meaty legs all over me, and sings, "Rootin' and tootin' and-a rootin' and tootin'" in a craggly little sleep voice. She presses her face against my neck and craggles, "Mama-la, my Mama-la!" and I smell her nice, stinky sleep smell. She pushes her feet into my chest: "Put my socks on." When I raise my eyebrows at her, she says, "Please?" then grabs at my face with her fingers, which I hate. "I'm honking your nose! But just a very gentle honk." "Why are you so naughty?" I ask, and she says, annoyingly, "Because I just love you so much." Birdy is screeching. She's standing at the table to serve herself tapioca pudding only she won't get herself a chair to stand on and the Kozy Shack container is too high for her to reach. She's blooping eensy spoonfuls of pudding from the container into her bowl, hopping from foot to foot and screeching. "Birdy," I say. "Birdy honey, you're so frantic. I'm wondering if you need to pee." "I can do it myself." "I know," I say, "but it would be easier if you peed first." "Nooooooo!" She runs away from the table and buries her head on the couch. "No! No! No! I'm frantic!" And then a second later, from inside the couch cushions, "I need to pee!" She screeches past us in a blur, screeching all the way to the bathroom, and then there is silence. A moment later we hear her say to herself, "Phew!" Birdy is regressing. "I yuv you," she lisps into my neck, and when I ask her about the baby talk, she baby talks: "I say 'I yuv you' because I yuv you!" Then she plunges her hands down the front of my shirt, baby talks, "Warm place! I'm finding a warm place!" These are sweet and fleeting times, and she is a dear, affectionate child, but I have the same instinct to shake her off as when a strange dog is humping my leg. "Give me a little space to breathe in," I say, and her face morphs into an octopus tentacle and suckers itself to my jawbone. Birdy is four years old. This time last year she was unwrapping her first-ever package of underpants, and it seems like a lifetime ago. I don't understand time and the way it passes. Ben lies on the couch with me after dinner, rests his head in the crook of my arm, and happiness courses through me like endorphins. "I'm going to cuddle you forever," I say into his scalp, and he says, "Forever?" I'm practically asleep. "Forever," I mumble again, and he's silent. "But what about after you die?" he asks, grave and twinkling. "Do I just have to lie here with your drooply-drapply old body?" "I'm sorry, but you do," I say, and Birdy rushes over, flings herself on top of us. "I want to!" she cries. "Even when you're droopy and drappy, Mama! I will!" And it's so crazy and twisted and wrong, but still — it almost makes me cry.   
Catherine Newman is the author of the memoir,
Waiting for Birdy: A Year of Frantic Tedium, Neurotic Angst, and the Wild Magic of Growing a Family, available online and in bookstores nationwide. Post a comment
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