24/7

The morning was cold and quiet. The Boss busied herself getting dressed. The Partner set out cereal. I took a shower. In the midst of the footsteps, the clank of the bowl, and the running water, there was silence. Number Two was away at the paternal grandparents'. I imagined he had no idea what to do with all the attention. Here, at home, he is swept up in the day-to-day of our four person household. He is carried in The Boss's wake. At least that's what I thought until his absence indicated otherwise. On that silent Sunday I realized Number Two has his own drive. His feet pound the floor with distinct energy. He labels everything loudly. He's no bystander. He's on the cusp of three and I never knew this about him. It's not that I don't see my two children apart. The Boss goes to school every day. From 8:30 to 3, it's me and Number Two. But it's so fast. There are errands to run and playgroups to attend and toddler "'nastics" classes to...

The Boss has taken to exploiting our sick leave policy. At first I didn't think anything of it; throat cultures at the doctor's office confirmed strep throat in two separate instances earlier this winter, so there was no question about the validity of her claims. Then I began getting phone calls from school with reports that The Boss was not acting like herself and was sporting a 99 degree temperature. I'd pick her up early only to see a radical transformation as soon as we got home. It took me an entire season of cases, both confirmed and questionable, to start looking a little more deeply at the situation. It was just this week, after the assistant teacher at The Boss's school told me that my daughter had been complaining about an earache and an upset stomach, that I sat down for a talk with The Boss. "So how exactly do you feel?" I asked. "My stomach hurts," she said. "What does it feel like?" "Like hot, bubbly goo," she said....

The Boss is now 5 1/2 years old. I'm sorry if I've blogged in such a woefully inconsistent manner that this is a surprise to you. I find it pretty shocking myself. Yesterday there was ROFLing in the aisles of TJ Maxx as my daughter regaled everyone in the store with her perspective on life, liberty and the pursuit of the clearance rack. Her voice was clear and confident beyond her years; her observations carried. Whether she was talking to me or to strangers, everyone within five racks got the gist. And appreciated it. I think most people left that store in better spirits than they arrived. In the fitting room, where we both tried on an array of clothes that--based on previous experience--was bound to disappoint, a voice carried over the veneered partition from another stall: "Your daughter is very entertaining!" Every so often, a chortle from the attendant reinforced that fact as The Boss was holding sway over the entire fitting room from behind her red curtain. The ...

She's five now, but we haven't had enough time to realize how much she knows. She's almost four feet of feelings, but we forget. Like this afternoon, when I shouted to The Partner in his home office about the nearby shooting in which at least nine people were killed. "The guy killed nine people," I shouted. "Did you know?" "Yeah, I heard that," he said. I went back to the Hartford Courant article laid out on my computer screen. I read about the disgruntled employee of the largest Budweiser distributor in the state. He was, allegedly, a "disciplinary problem." I didn't hear The Boss come up behind my scratchy swivel-chair on wheels. "Tell me it's not coming here," she said. "Tell you what's not coming here?" I asked, hoping she was talking about something different. She does that a lot. But she looked at me knowingly. Then she pulled her hand across her throat, pointer finger out, making a sucking sound ...

Number Two runs in a jig, his feet kicking out to the sides yet propelling him forward. "No run! No run!" he shouts as short legs splay from his torso, the swish and the sweep finding a strange traction. I’m not sure if he knows what he’s saying. I can’t be sure that I know what words are coming out of his mouth. But it sounds like “no run” as he burns rubber in light-up sneakers that illuminate trails at home, at the ballpark, at the furniture store, and on the sidewalk in front of his sister’s school. Number Two doesn ’t seem to need words the way The Boss does. He is absorbed by process while his sister thrives on explanation. Number Two runs to feel the earth more, to feel the wind more, to feel the catch in his lungs and then the exhale. The Boss, on the other hand, runs so that she can be the first person to arrive at the finish line with a story to tell. When my son moves, he is so solid on the ground that he seems to weigh down the sky. “No run! No run!” The language ...

The Boss loves nothing more than hearkening back to the days of youth. Currently, this gives her a three year span to work with. Her own memories can take her back to the latter half of two; her family's nostalgia fills her in on the rest. "Remember when you used to eat dog food when you were a baby?" I asked The Boss one night as we dumped a new bag of Rachel Ray's Nutrish dog food into Roxie's Rubbermaid receptacle. "It was no fluke, either. You went back for seconds." I giggled at the stupid things people will do before they learn about pet food processing. The Partner lent a chuckle. The Boss, who likes to be involved in family amusements not just by inclusion but by shared memory, looked at me. She looked at her father. She looked at the replenished container busting forth with red, green and brown kiblets . "Okay, I guess I'll try some." She shrugged. "I guess." The Partner and I did a double-take. "Whoa, hold up,...

Little lamb bones stared up at us from our plates. I don't generally cook lamb, but my mother-in-law does. She had served the rare delicacy at The Partner's 32nd birthday celebration. I brought out the leftovers at home the next night because, while I don't generally cook it, I have no qualms about reheating it. The Boss pondered the meat and bone curiously. I think the difference between that piece of meat and the others she eats unquestioningly on a regular basis lays in the nomenclature. "Lamb" is straightforward. Things like "hamburger" and "roast" and "hot dog" beat around the bush a bit more. One can eat them without being reminded via word choice that the food he is consuming once romped around a pasture or looked out longingly from a cage. "The lamb that had the bones tooken out of it must be dead now, right?" The Boss asked us, looking more toward The Partner than toward me. He's the one with the answers. "...

She says "You're the best mom in the world." She means her world, of course, which is vastly different from the greater and lesser world around her. Nobody else would consider me the best mom; nobody else needs to (her brother excluded). When she says I'm the best, she means it. And I am. Are there better moms? Most of them are. But other moms don't matter. There's something liberating about being held accountable only to the authority of my children. I don't have to worry about what others think and there's no need to curry the favor of strangers. When it comes to bestowing best mom status, only my children can do it. I've never been the best at anything before; I wouldn't believe it if someone told me I was. There's just too much competition and I'm too realistic. But when The Boss says "You're the best," or when she narrows it down to "you're the best mom in the mom's club," or when she opens it back ...

Number Two doesn't listen to me. If I so much as mention his name within earshot, he will freeze in place and refuse to move even an eyeball in my direction. He's unbudgeable. The same child is putty in his father's hands. All The Partner has to do is look slightly perturbed at an action Number Two is taking and it will cease immediately. Under The Partner's watch, Number Two finishes his plate. Under mine, he is liable to starve. Number Two sleeps at The Partner's behest; he splits ears with his shrieks at mine. I don't think I lack severity or foll0w-through, so I'm not sure where the exact discrepancy lays. All I know is that The Partner has officially made himself indispensable around here, as if being the main breadwinner and the brains behind this operation hadn't set him up in high enough regard already. The Boss, too, knows how it is. She referenced this fact as Number Two was wailing in his room after I put him to bed last night. The Partner was...

We were sitting at the lunch table when The Boss referenced Christmas for the 3,100,068th this week by way of a declaration related to all the presents she would be receiving. The Partner, who was working from home because nobody else at the office would be there to notice, looked at his offspring in alarm. "Who's getting you a lot of presents?" "Santa Claus," The Boss said. "Oh, phew. I was getting worried. I mean, I didn't get you a lot of presents. How do you know Santa will?" The Boss looked at him with an air of confident--and maybe just a bit withering--excitement. Her cheeks shone reddish pink as if exerted by expectation. She was almost levitating on her bench seat with the force of her glee. Finally, she erupted: "Because I've been good all damn day!"

I was working on an article at my computer in the kitchen while The Partner and The Boss made gingerbread magic in the dining room behind me. The clack of the computer keys in front of me were my soundtrack until a sound from candyland jarred me out of my reverie. "That will be his penis," I heard The Boss say. I did a doubletake . "What?" I demanded. I heard The Partner stifle a laugh. This I had to see for myself. I walked into the dining room. "What?" I repeated. "A penis," she said. "Where?" I asked. "Here," The Boss said. She pointed to a small bead, edible and red, that she'd stuck under the gingerbreadman's crotch. All I could do was nod, thoughtfully. What I was thinking about was how hard I could laugh and still maintain some semblance of maturity. Apparently I gave The Boss just enough convulsive laughter to glom onto. She loves an appreciative audience. "Penis." She let it rip once more, her ton...

Santa Claus came to the town green yesterday, bringing with him red- and green-sweatered elves eerily reminiscent of local middle school students. The Boss went moony, her eyes full and shining at the sight of him. I was more discerning, raising an eyebrow at the rough outline of what seemed like foam padding underneath the worn red velveteen and the belt held in place with a paper clip. "Where's his sleigh?" The Boss whispered to me. I looked around. "Hmm, I don't know." I cast a long glance to the roof of the historic grange building around which we were assembled for the tree lighting. "No sleigh there. Maybe it's on the other side?" The Boss was skeptical. She stared at the roofline, as if willing a magical Christmas menagerie to appear. She did a full body pout that started with the crease of her forehead and ended with heels stomping into the ground. "Humph," she breathed out. "Not even a single reindeer."

This morning was a rare opportunity to lay in bed with nothing pressing on us but The Boss as she bounced all over our duvet-covered limbs. The Partner was on edge, ready to double over in protection of the family jewels if one of The Boss's feet landed in the wrong place. I vacillated between trying to fall back asleep and making the most of this just-the-three-of-us time. Rain beat against the roof. "I'd hate to be any shopper waiting in line for Door Buster sales at 4 this morning," he said. "Amen." I nodded in happy acknowledgement of our dry and uncrowded environs. Relatively speaking, anyway. The Boss did a flying squirrel and landed between us. "Hey, The Boss's friend B. counted to 200 the other day in the car when I picked her up for a playdate ," I mentioned to The Partner, apropos of nothing but the nagging need I have to compare my kids to every other child within a five year age radius. "Let's hear how high you can count,...

The Boss has a well defined and passionately protected sense of self. She doesn't take well to being told that a belief she holds true is false. It's like the time (yesterday, in fact; if it was any less recent I would've already forgotten it) that The Partner dismissed something she told him with an "in your dreams." That's what he said. In your dreams. I thought it was a bit rude when I heard it, but I didn't comment. Turns out, I didn't have to. The Boss defended herself. "Dreams can come true, you know," she informed him. She was matter of fact and emphatic. She may have been just a teensy bit haughty, too. Yes! I thought. Thatta girl. The Partner shrugged his shoulders and cocked his head to the side in concession. I could tell from his smile that The Boss had hit him in that oft-wounded spot somewhere between the heart and the funny bone (where would that be, exactly--the armpit?). She is one of the only people in the world who can ch...

Roughly ten years have elapsed since the heyday that was The Partner's college years. Nowhere is this more evident than in the condition of his fraternity tee-shirts. All across his collection there are holes in the necklines, holes along the bottoms and, as will be shown here today, big gapers in the underarms. But until a breach gets so big that it causes the shirt to fall off his body of its own volition, The Partner will continue to wear the soft, cottony vehicle of the Pi Kappa Phi logo with pride. Today I walked into our home office with one of the worst offenders and held it up for the Partner's scrutiny. "What am I supposed to do with this?" I demanded. I could've stuck my entire head through the fissure in the seam of the right sleeve. Sensing a commotion, The Boss ran into the room behind me. "What's going on?" she asked. "I'm trying to figure out what your father expects me to do with this shirt." She looked at the shirt. The...

This afternoon Number Two refused to eat his bread, letting the pieces fall to the floor all around him in gracious offering to our dog. "No more of that," I said. "No more feeding your bread to the dog." He froze in mid-throw. That's what he does whenever I reprimand him. All his processes came to a halt, his stare blank yet guilty. A piece of bread was suspended in his hand as he waited me out. "What did I say, mister?" He slowly moved the bread back to the tray of his high chair. Then The Boss's gleeful voice piped up from the living room. "Mister is his name when he's in trouble!"

I am a hypochondriac on a good day. On a bad day, I'd sooner put the house on lockdown than venture into a world filled with bacteria, pesticides, pestilence, mold, #3 plastics, and the types of people who change their children's diapers on dining tables at Burger King. I worry that my son has autism. I worry that my husband will die of cancer. I worry about Alzheimer's for my parents, but I can push such fears aside with the knowledge that heart disease will probably get them first. I worry about vaccines and I worry about not getting vaccines. That, my friends, is the stuff of an internal dialogue so vertiginous that I could puke just thinking about it. Sometimes I talk to my husband about my fears and he calls me crazy. That usually makes me feel better. Sometimes he agrees with me. That's when we're screwed. The Boss, as always, is the voice of reason. She recently picked up on my paranoia of outside places when I was hemming and hawing about going to the store ...

Motherhood can be thankless, but my four year old daughter is not. Her manners are impeccable; her perspective, astute. One day we were riding in the car when she dropped her juice box. This is a story that illustrates my premise. I leaned back from my seat on the front passenger side and reached blindly for the carton. My arm did a lot of flailing as the center console dug into my chest, which was protected only by the merest hint of cleavage-enhancing foam. I made an "umph" sound to ensure that my effort would be noted. A few more lunges awarded me the prize, and I waved it victoriously in The Boss's direction. She reached out from her five-point perch and grabbed the juice. As I settled back into my seat, I heard the Boss's sweet " thanks, mom ." This time I only had to crane my neck slightly to smile at her. She brought the juice box to her mouth, then paused before taking a sip. "You come in handy sometimes," she said.

It happened on the way home from The Partner's parents' house. Apparently, they fed me something they shouldn't have. I let one loose in the midst of a car load consisting of The Partner, The Boss, Number Two, the dog, and me, the fart queen. The odor made its way back to The Boss. "Ewww! What is that freakin' stink?" she yelled. "What is it? What's the freakin' stink?" I tried to decide whether to laugh hysterically or to suggest that she reevaluate her word choice. Instead, I indulged the conversation. "It was me. I farted." "Oh, so you're the freakin' stink," she said. Then, because she's nothing if not supportive: "That's okay. I still love you."

I have no idea what The Boss knows. I haven't got any context for this four year old girl and the way in which she assigns meaning to the world around her. Hints come out only in cryptic bits. "I don't want to go to heaven. I want to live more," she told me as we watched an HBO Family show that broached the topic of death in a segment on dreamcatchers. "I want to live more than ever." I nodded. She was nestled in the microsuede loveseat across from me. I was on the sofa, where the leather crackled beneath me as I pulled my feet in close to my seat. It was cold. I rubbed my hands together, less in heated promise than in prayer. I am always searching for the words. "You will," I said. Yeah, that's good , I thought to myself. I nodded again. "You will."