Jarbidge to the Oregon Trail

When you are a young mother, life goes by you in such a daze of weariness, diapers, feedings, and laundry. You don’t have the time to observe and cherish the little changes. They just are.

Grandmothers get a little more slack: life is still speeding by, but you do not have the diapers, feedings, laundry and over-all pregnant/nursing mother weariness.

The boys are changing so rapidly now. Javan (when he hasn’t got a pacifier in his mouth) “talks” constantly. He rarely has a pacifier, so he talks a lot. He wants to stand and walk, but he hasn’t perfected crawling out. Who needs to crawl when you are the King of the Breast stroke on Hardwood floors? He never scooted backwards: Javan has always had a good forward thrust to the flailing of his arms and legs and he can scoot across the floor on his belly almost as fast as Michael Phelps can swim the length of an Olympic-sized pool doing the same sort of breast stroke.

It’s amazing.

When I bring my camera out, Zephan is convinced that I have “babies” in side of it. He wants me to turn on the viewer and show him slide shows of himself or his brother. “Babies!” He doesn’t understand that I want to take photos, not look at them on the camera.

Zephan loves stories now. If Baba sits down for a minute, he begins to regale her with this refrain: “‘Tory? Rawrs? Monsers? ‘Tory?”

One night this week, we sat on the stairs and read so many “Little Critter” books (by mercer Mayer) that Baba began to lose her voice.

Javan has no fear. He will dive off the sofa or the bed or a safe lap. He crawls between the legs of an 85# dog that is clueless to the precious human scooting across the floor. He does it all while smiling.

He dives into Zephan’s “choo-choos” (the Duplo blocks) and dismantles them.

He looks around with wide-eyed wonder and amazement.

His Baba is pretty amazed by the substance that is Javan: the wriggling, reaching, laughing, cuddly little boy child.

“I know you have babies in there, Baba!”

Fortunately, the battery died and I had to put the camera away. Because there was no getting a candid photo out of this single-minded little boy.

He pushes my little step-stool around the house and climbs up to look onto the counter tops. Trash is picked up and hauled to the kitchen sink, “Tash. Tash.” Open the cupboard and let me throw it away.

He picks up baby bottles off of the counters and climbs back down, “‘Cycles?” Recycles. His father says we have brain-washed his child. If we have, it’s a good brain-washing. Zephan knows what is recycles and what is trash.

Don’t say the word “help” around here. That gets the broom out. “Help?”

And for goodness’ sake, never end the game unless you are prepared to deal with a two-year old size temper tantrum. Zephan is never as tired of the game as everyone else and he is that focused.

Ah, little ones.

I am so glad they belong to their mother.

Oh. One more thing. In about 25 weeks, there will be one more.

Now that she is used to the idea and past the disappointment of having three under three, Arwen is secretly hoping it will be a girl.