Dear Parks,

You are going to be nine-months-old in ten days and I realized that I haven’t written a monthly letter in quite a few months. I’ll blame that on the lack of sleep and increase in legal medications.

I can’t believe that you have been outside in this world almost as long as you were inside of me. That makes me sad in some ways. Like, this big bad world will be WINNING in some way a few weeks from now. That can’t happen. Just ask your father how much I enjoy a good competition. If it were up to me I’d try to find a way to stuff you back in and carry you around for a few more years just so I would WIN. I don’t know exactly what I would win-other than some pretty nasty stretch marks and bad case of urinary incontinence. But, it isn’t what you get that matters. It’s just that you actually WIN. The preceding three sentences will probably also explain to you later in life why I will beat you soundly without apology at any board games we might play despite you being a hapless toddler/kid/adolescent.

I come from a long line of WINNERS. My Mamaw, your great-grandmother, taught me to play poker and scrabble at the ripe old age of 5 and no matter how cute or innocent I was, she beat me every single time until I finally honed my skills enough to win fair and square. And, let me tell you, there are some days I still can’t repeat that beat down and she’s now eighty and deaf and blind. Your Mamaw can still play a mean game of poker. She’s like Helen Keller in Vegas.

You yourself are working on a very good poker face. In the past few months you have learned enumerable new skills and are using them to deftly manipulate your father and me into pretty much giving you whatever you want. As soon as you realized that crawling let you get wherever you needed to go without depending upon us to put you there, you immediately begin to refuse to be held and cuddled. Nay, I need a word stronger than “refuse”. When we pick you up off the floor to take away whatever object you’ve decided must enter your mouth you flail, push, and yell your desire to be dropped back upon your four appendages so you can take off again. If this doesn’t happen within a predetermined amount of time, the wailing begins. And, let me tell you, when the wailing starts you will often take “drama” to new heights by wailing until you choke yourself on your own spit. If it didn’t hurt our ears so much, we would laugh more. People openly remark about the drama of this scream. I’m almost proud as I know you get this proclivity towards the dramatic from me. I’ve wailed enough times in my life to notice the similarities in my progeny. Pretty soon this wailing will be replaced with creative forms of cursing and writing on bathroom walls. When it does, I will consider my work here done.

This past month you’ve taken to entertaining yourself by grabbing fistfuls of either of our hair and then yelling like Mel Gibson in “Braveheart” right before battle. It is very deep and throaty and victorious-and somewhat delicious. Sometimes you yell like that just to yell. We tell ourselves you are simply testing your decibel levels. I can’t tell you how much I love it. It makes me laugh and feel like you are strong and independent. I have no idea what kind of woman you will be when you grow up, but I can tell right now that it will be one that doesn’t take shit off anyone. And just as a side note, that whole “pulling hair” thing will serve you well all the way thru high school-especially with the bitchy girls.

We started attempting to transition you from co-sleeping to your crib in the past month. This happened with more urgency than we originally planned as last weekend included our very first trip to the ER with you after you fell off the bed while taking a nap. You turned out to be fine as you seemed to have inherited your father’s extremely large and hard head. But, it scared the beejesus out of the both of us and we agreed that you sleeping in your crib must happen sooner rather than later.

The first few nights this happened with such ease that we led ourselves to believe that “This whole transitioning thing is a breeze. We are genius parents. Look at us parenting our well-adjusted child so effortlessly and seamlessly.” Then the second week of the transition hit and we finally realized that we were not in control of this situation at all.

It’s like you thought “Well, I can handle this whole crib thing for about a week. But, any longer than that and I’m going to have to file a grievance with the parenting committee”.

You filed that grievance last night. We ran into your room at the sound of cries so horrific we thought for sure part of your face had fallen off, only to find you gripping the sides of the crib and hiking a leg up making somewhat of an attempt at a jail break. There’s no way you can actually get over the side of the crib, but you were going to try goddamnit…and you were going to scream while you did it.

Your father was convinced that something had to be wrong with you considering the noises that were coming from your mouth until I picked you up and you immediately stopped crying and actually grinned and giggled. This scenario repeated itself for two hours and included at least one attempt by your father and I to let you “cry it out”. You don’t “Cry It Out”. You “Cry OUT”. Then you choke on your own spit and start making spastic noises that should only be coming from someone having a seizure. I should have known this wasn’t going to work as the last time we made any attempt at letting you “self-soothe” you shit your pants so bad it shot up your back and out the neck hole of your shirt. You get this from me. I always get diarrhea when I’m upset or nervous. I pre-apologize for the rest of your life for all of the time you will spend on the toilet the first day of the school year, right before a big test, or when you have a really hot date. Hell, your father went to New Orleans this past week for four days and I got so excited the day he was coming home that I still had to stop and poop four times. You come by this naturally.

When you finally realized that we weren’t giving up on the crib thing you allowed both of us to cuddle with you while we rocked you back to sleep. This was a delight to both your father and I as your strong independent streak makes these moments so rare. I was actually holding you while you cuddled into my chest and I stroked your head and looked at your dad and said, “This is so sweet”. He looked at me and said, “I know. I’m jealous”. So, we traded places and you burrowed into his chest and he stroked your head for a while until you finally drifted off. It’s the moments like that I know I will remember when you are thirteen and demanding a body piercing and an 18-year-old boyfriend named “Skeeter” be allowed to stay over.

It’s these moments that will keep us from killing you when you wreck the car at seventeen or stay out past curfew and call us “shitheads”. It’s these moments that help me to understand why people say being a parent is the hardest thing on Earth but there are tiny moments of it that will scar your soul with love so strong you won’t ever be the same.








You have made every child my child. And I can never thank you enough for that.

Love,
Mama

Dear Parks,

SLEEP. A REALLY WHOLE LOT.


Love,

Mama

On Motherhood

People often ask me what it’s like to be a mom. You know, now that I’ve procreated and made it eight whole months. I often answer that it’s somewhat like being in one of the fourteen Saw movies they’ve made. You never quite know what exquisite torture device your child will devise for you when you wake up that day-but it’s always going to be creative and, hopefully, Cary Elwes will somehow be involved. (Mawwiage??) Or, maybe it will just suck and you’ll end up in the emergency room.

Maybe they will dive head first off the bed in search of a ball of cat hair and splatter small pieces of brains about the wood floor. This will then convince your husband that an MRI is needed to ascertain whether or not their IQ will ever rise above the level of towel rack. Maybe they will decide they are Superman and leap off the couch wearing a cape landing with all their body weight squarely on their left front tooth. You never know what exactly it’s going to be. But it all makes you wince and possibly gag a little. And when you’re a mom it’s sometimes actually painful. It’s never really easily explainable.

How can you explain it’s like having four extra limbs and a head but having absolutely no control over them? You can’t. So you talk about how good they smell and how funny it is when they fart. They become exquisite and hidden. They become embroidered burp cloths and soft Onsies that match their “Boppies”.

The truth becomes nothing like my relationship with my child-this fearful and magical thing that I care for and love. She is a stranger to me-a stranger that will one day speak English who will hopefully be somewhat rational like her mother but have her father’s sweetness. Some days she giggles at things that aren’t there and points at the wall and speaks a long line of gibberish. The DSM=IV defines this as psychotic behavior and I’m pretty sure she gets that from me. She grunts and turns red around her eyes when she poops. ( I’m pretty sure she gets that from her Dad.)

Sometimes I’m truly frightened of her. This has more to do with her waking up one day with an IQ that’s one point above crapping in her pants and realizing that I have no idea what I am doing. But also has a lot to do with the mirror she creates for me. Her very existence constantly reminds me of the things that I have done wrong….the things I need to fix. Her birth gave birth to better parts of me. And I can’t ever explain that.

But if I were to truly answer the question, it’s nothing like I expected it to be and sort of more like it in other ways. Its resentment at things I gave up to be with her and joys I didn’t know I had alive inside of me. It’s this entire understanding that I get to do this whole journey called “life” over again with her. Some days, it’s the only thing that gets me out of bed in the morning

But most days, it just scares me shitless.

The unexpected

The amount of sheer LAUNDRY that comes with this process.

Dear Parks,

Right about the time that I wrote the previous letter that damn brand new computer up and died on me. Can you believe that? It's not because Mom dropped it. I know it's not. Because it worked fine after I dropped it. It was a full twelve hours later the backlight went out.

So now, Mom is operating a new, brand new laptop. Turns out that Sheeba was actually discontinued in the thirty days since Nana purchased it. I bet I know why...people can't drop them without the backlight going out. People need to be able to drop their computers from time to time. And pour wine on them and use them as a plate. Things like this are important.

You are currently napping and its twenty degrees outside. I haven't bathed and your father is out running errands-pretty much a regular exciting Wednesday-off-work-because-the-City-of-Jackson-doesn't-have-water around here. The past two weeks have been extremely busy as we've finally moved into our new house in Fondren.

There are now lots of bathrooms and extra rooms that confuse you. You still wake up and look around with this confused look on your face and then quickly look for me and your Dad as if to say, "Man, I REALLY shouldn't have taken that roofie last night." I hear ya, kid.

This past month has been crazy in general and not just because it was "Baby's First Christmas". Mainly because your father and I decided that we were going to take two weeks off of work and-during that very, very, VERY short two weeks-we would take a week long trip to Florida with a six-month-old, celebrate THREE family Christmases and move. Yes, we were obviously feeling a little grandiose-and that is only one part of your parent's shared mental illnesses. That decision only capped off a year where we got married, had you, and changed jobs. What are we, CRAZY? I'll tell you what we are...TIRED.

You're about the only reason we haven't collapsed. And that's only because you demand it. That and you're so damn cute its hard not staying awake just to stare at you.

Just this morning you woke up at 7am (like usual) and you quietly played and kicked me in the stomach accepting a paci (officially known as a 'fighter' in this house) until 8:45am when you decided it was high time for us to get up and feed you. Then you wailed in an octave only dogs can hear and the day began. We then got up and gave you a "Ba Ba Jones". Your father coined that term and I can only suppose the reasoning behind it being something like those bottles are so important to you that they obviously deserved a formal surname. I would have gone with "Ba Ba Wellington"-or something of that nature-seeing as how they are so expensive, named after a doctor, and contain a forumla so costly it beats my weekly wine and gin intake. Wellington is much better suited for a bottle of that nature-but I digress. We then take you to your room, change your "booty cover" (Mama coined that one...I think the reason why is pretty obvious), and try to find some clothing not crusted with sweet potatoes and the sweat of a thousand tiny baby pores. We then attempt to entertain you for approximately twelve hours until its time for you to go back to sleep.

All of these very simple things are contained in a pretty typical morning around here unless its one of those days when your father and I obviously prayed, held our mouth right, and garnered favor with The Gods when you sleep until 8:30am and we can actually get up and bathe before you awaken and began summoning the neighborhood dogs.

All in all, the three of us have found a comfortable routine to this new life. It amazes me every day how much you are growing and how quickly it is happening and how much that breaks my heart-even when you are wailing.

I probably shouldn't tell you that we lovingly refer to you as "The Kracken" at times.

One day you will get that and think its funny. I promise.

This is you when you discovered you could sit up on your hands.



This is what your father does in his spare time at work.



We can only explain your fascination with shells and cheese as it being a hold over from my pregnancy when about 90% of your nutrition came from the box of shells and cheese I ate 5 out of 7 nights every week. We also don't feed you a lot and encourage you to play with plastic bags and electrical outlets.



You absolutely ADORE sweet potatoes. I feed them to you almost every night. CORRECTION: I smear them on your face. Then you laugh.




Love you Tootle Bug,
Mama

Dear Parksie,

I’m writing you this letter at Christmas because Santa came to Mama’s house and brought her a new laptop. Santa rocks hard. One day you will figure out that Santa’s name is “Nana” and I’ll be the one holding you while you cry about that. Although, I will admit there are some upsides to that. Nana dresses better and is less hairy. Santa doesn’t frequent Chico’s as much as Nana.

I think somewhere along the line I neglected to mention that Mama got crazy one day when she was pregnant with you and dropped her laptop, cord side down, on the floor. Seems the good old fashioned Dell (Or, as your Dad called it “the battle field response unit” due to all the food that was encrusted on its screen and the red wine inbetween the keys) that housed everything that Mama has ever written was made before they figured out you shouldn’t route the motherboard of the computer straight into the cord outlet. What’s that you say? Yes, I agree. I can’t believe the retards that ever made computers did that either. Because when you drop the thing cord side down and the cord, understandably, jams into the computer, it will fuck up the entire thing. In fact, it will fuck it up so good it will lose everything you’ve ever written (Yes, this does include eight chapters of Mama’s first book and every column she ever got published). This ultimately resulted in Mama getting on lots of medication and going a little crazy. Mama shortly figured out that writing made her at least half sane. And, well, not really having an accessible outlet to do that resulted in a little crazy going down at the Garrott house from time to time. But, thankfully-after almost a year of catching a computer and internet access when I could-“Santa” fixed all that and Mom’s sitting on a hot little piece of Toshiba Midnight Breeze with a Fusion Finish and a 16 inch screen. One day you will understand that and-if I’ve raised you correctly-you will be just as excited as Mama is.

You turned six months old two weeks ago and now you’re old enough to start housing your own brand of crazy. I can’t begin to tell you how exciting it is to watch this unfold before me. You already have your picadillos and your ideas about how life should work out. Most of these focus on your needs being met immediately and any human within ten feet of you worshipping you like the goddess you believe yourself to be. I will go ahead and readily admit you get this from me. You are your mother-already. Or maybe Mama was just a six-month-old until she was 32. Who knows?

You dislike loud noises and discord and will cry if anyone raises their voice around you. You hate being in a room by yourself and love to stare out of windows and watch trees wave in the wind. The cats can stop you in your tracks and give you a case of the giggles. You smile at everyone. If fact, you smile so much people mention it openly when they’ve been around you-“Does she just smile all the time?” I hasten to tell them that you do lose your shit from time to time…but not a lot…and not without reason-like poop, or needing more sleep, or wishing the New Kids On The Block never got back together. Mostly very important things.

You are, of course,unmentionably beautiful to me. When you smile my skin tingles. I sleep next to you and your smell is heady and comforting. My body recognizes it as “like” and its something I can’t explain with words. I want to kiss you all the time and keep you under my arm. If will could cause your chest to rise and fall you would never stop breathing. Watching you become a “person” is the most wonderful thing I’ve ever experienced.

Its in the way you spread your toes wide and sigh when I take off your socks at the end of a day. Its when I ask you, “Do you want Ba-Ba?” and you actually giggle and say something that sounds like “Yeeeeeh.” Its when you wake up in the morning and the first thing you do is prop yourself up on your hands and grin at me like you’ve just won five straight hands of poker and the hooker is on her way to the hotel room. Its in the way you fight naps like a tiger but when you finally give up will put your arms around my neck and lay your head down on my shoulder with a resigned sigh. Its you, kiddo. You’re cooler than shit.

It doesn’t hurt that you cut your first two teeth the day after Thanksgiving (the two bottom center) and when you grin you look a little like a drunken homeless man that’s just found a box of wine and a brand new cardboard box. I’d give you anything for that grin.

You get angry. You get excited. You get happy. You get sad. You get scared. You get sleepy. Most of all, you are just you. And I can’t wait for every day that I get to discover what the rest of “you” is like.

Love you and Merry Christmas,
Mama

P.S. Hopefully letters will get much more frequent now that “The Sheeba” is here.

La Vie En Rose

Dear Parks,

I name this entry after an old French song for a couple of reasons-one because I feel it fitting to describe the past month of your life. You turned four-months-old last Friday and while your father, at times, exclaims frustrated, “She cries 80% of the time,” I am your mother. I do understand that being your mother probably gives me a slightly rose-tinted view of you and how you act. But, to me, you are full of goddamn awesome-ness. I know your dad feels this way as well because he only screams about your screaming when your screaming has almost made me scream and with the amount of Xanax I take on a daily basis-that’s a lot of screaming. The other reason I name this entry this has to do with how this song makes me feel. It reminds me of skipping in sunshine and sidewalks I’ve never walked drenched in smells I have yet to smell. You do the same. Despite the screaming

What I find amusing about this situation is the fact that I’m awfully glad that the Powers That Be didn’t give us a “normal” baby. I say “normal” because everybody that meets you says you are the most laid-back “chill-laxed” child they have ever seen. And I must admit that most days you sit back and enjoy the ride that is your current life. You handle things much better than your mother and father. Sometimes, while we are both freaking out around you, you just lay back and smile really big and if you didn’t look exactly like my grandmother, I would wonder where you came from. Large amounts of anxiety should be hitting you genetically from every single side of your DNA. How are you escaping this? And if your takin’ something on the side, you should really let Mama in on it.

Last night your father walked in and told me he had some “really bad news”-and other than your head suddenly exploding from the amount of formula you are currently scarfing-there really wasn’t one single thing I could think of about you that could be “bad news”. It was at this point he decided to inform me that you were not my baby. For half a second, I totally believed him. After all, you enjoy watching football and will sit in your own poop and smile for whole minutes at a time. These are all traits of your father.

This month you learned to roll your tongue and hum. You talk to us in a little bird-y voice trilling your “rrrr’s” in this extremely pleasant tone with a big smile on your face. When I roll my “rrrrr’s” and answer you in the same way your eyes get huge and its like you just realized I’m not mentally retarded and can actually speak-instead of just stare at you and grin insipidly. Then, when you realize that the gin and tonic I’m pretty sure you asked for isn’t on the way like you wanted, you start screaming and realize that English is a shit language that the rest of the world doesn’t speak anyway. I’m expecting you to start asking for a bottle in Spanish because-after all-it’s a much more useful language and your early mastery of the rolling of “rrrrr’s” gives you a leg up.

About three weeks ago you discovered the remote control and JESUS CHRIST I can’t explain your love for it. Sometimes your dad will hand you over when you are screaming and will quickly leave the room to give his ears a break from the deafening wails and when the room immediately becomes quiet upon his vacating it, he will walk back in to see what magical “mommy trick” I have pulled from my repertoire to quiet the desperate wailing. It is then that he will see me sitting on the couch waving the remote control in front of your face while you purse your lips, bounce up and down, and scream, “Ooooh, ooooh, ooooh” like it’s the best thing you’ve ever seen in your life. Your father will then call me a cheap whore for using electrical appliances to keep you entertained. Whatever it takes, kid, whatever it takes. That’s our main parental philosophy at this point.

We are what is called a “baby-led” household. You eat when you want, you sleep when you want and you poop when you want. We do what you want (except sticking forks in electrical appliances. We only allow that after six months of age-or until you at least grow enough hair to make it entertaining). We also “co-sleep” “Co-sleeping” basically means you sleep in-between us with all of your appendages flung out to the far corners of the bed. This relegates your father and me to tiny portions on opposite sides of the mattress teetering on the edges. We don’t care. You sleep ten hours straight at night and for that, my dear child, you could sleep on top of me and periodically spit up IN MY MOUTH. I don’t care. This arrangement also conveniently prevents unwanted siblings which I'm sure makes us both happy at this point.

Getting nine hours of sleep a night has allowed your mother to not only have a baby and return to work. But, it has allowed me to decide to change jobs and take on one that is much more challenging and full of responsibility. You know, because getting married and having a baby in one year wasn’t enough. I blame this all on a rush of post-delivery hormones that forced me to believe I was a super competent adult who could actually “have it all”. This is still up in the air. But, things are looking promising. And, every day that you are actually ALIVE proves that we must be doing something right.

Your GG takes pictures of you during the day and sends them down the street to the Kroger to get processed and then gives them to your father when he picks you up after work. I’m appreciative of that as I wasn’t sure that real hard copies of pictures actually still existed until your GG started doing this. Every time she gives us a new picture I marvel and marvel at how much you are starting to resemble my grandmother. I mean, minus the mustache. Thankfully, there seems to be less of the hairy Italian genes in you as you are half-bald and sorely lacking any other body hair (let’s go ahead and thank the Baby Jesus that the hair on your butt you were born with finally fell out. I was really concerned about your marriageability for a while there and thought we might just have to build a house out in back for you to live in and hire someone to come monthly and wax your back-like my Uncle Jimmy)

Other than looking just like your great-grandmother, you smile just like my brother; you have my hands, your Nana’s hair, and your father’s eyes and toes. You are a delightful mix of everything that’s ever happened before you ever got here. Life is, right now, la vie en rose.

One day you will make fun of me for all this horrible old time-y music I listen to and I look forward to every minute of it. After all, things aren’t nearly as much fun as they will be when I teach you to cuss and we are finally on even ground.

Love,
Mama