what love looks like

The boys spend days collecting ants and coloring comics, waiting for him to get home from work and wishing for the moon.

He spends time cooking pancakes and reading aloud endless picture books, pretending to be a tickle monster and pretty much hanging the moon.

the darnedest

Tollie still says some funny stuff.  And I still try to write it down when I can.
The first few here are from as far back as early spring, because I haven't compiled a list for awhile...

You know there’s another name for rain clouds?  Columbus.
(Close. Cumulonimbus, actually, but some weeks rain clouds may as well be called Columbus.)

Remember when that tree used to be bald?  Now it has leaves!

Discovering an empty Easter egg, surprisingly not disappointed because, he explained, the egg was full of love air.

My underwear are like butt protectors. Apropos of NOTHING.

Retelling a story: You know, God’s fork. (Andy eventually figured out he meant Neptune’s trident.)

In reference to a fictional character: He is so daft. 

Perched on the back of the couch, sun streaming in through the window behind him, watching:
Why are you cleaning, Mom? You’re really just whipping up more dust. 

Did you know there’s a school for babies named Hank? It’s in New York City. There’s a boy teacher who's 18, to play with him. And a girl teacher who can milk him.  

Watching The Croods: Mom, when we were all cavemen, I think Dad looked like that guy.

Trying to trouble shoot a new racetrack design: What’s your theory?

To me, yesterday, while we chased bubbles in the front yard:  You should grow a girl baby next. Actually three girls.  If you make bottles, I can help milk them.
Before we'd need to send them to school in NYC, I suppose.

strong with this one

Tolliver inherited a Star Wars costume recently.  He wears it regularly, of the strong opinion that Darth Vader may be the best bad guy of all time.  Tollie's been willing to share the outfit too, giving Hank an early opportunity to join the dark side.

as tight as you can

There are moments that the words don't reach.
There is grace too powerful to name.

I was eager to watch the Tony Awards this evening, excited to catch another glimpse or sixteen of the Hamilton cast.  I spent most of the day troubling over Orlando though, the soundtrack in my head stuck on the Quiet Uptown loop.
There are moments that the words don't reach. 
There is suffering too terrible to name. 
You hold your child as tight as you can, 
and push away the unimaginable...

three months with Hanley

Three months have passed, and a few nicknames for baby brother have been thrown around:
Hankers.  Hankerman.  Hankers away.

Tollie sometimes calls him Hanky Diaper or Hank Ham Sandwich.  I don't really know why.

Andy likes Bubbles or Bubs, because Hank is almost always blowing them.

The boys, moderately disappointed that we did not choose a third "T" name, were at one point determined to call him Tank, which is fairly suitable given his size.

Lately though, we pretty much just call him a good baby.

Sideways Stories

utterly ordinary

Our days feel utterly ordinary and marvelously miraculous and seemingly cataclysmic all the same.

The boys are best friends and then mortal enemies.  One morning I possess a vast capacity for patience, and run up against its limits that afternoon.  The house is under control... oh wait, no it's not.  Regularly we reach extremes.  And conclusions.  Like maybe the dirt and the divine are inseparable.

Some days I think, deliriously, that this could actually go on forever, nursing the baby, listening to the Minecraft monologue, all the hours that revolve around the bathtub and the kitchen sink.
It may be the most privileged strain of panic, letting today be dominated by tomorrow.
I remind myself that right now is all that really matters right now.
I remind myself that our worst moments don't tell the whole story in the same way our best ones don't either.  And there are so many of not one or the other, so many somewhere in the middle, so much that's not even worth noting. Except sometimes it is.

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