Throwing Food at the Moon

And now for something completely different.

A heartwarming blog entry "mom style" about the pleasures and rewards of parenthood! First of all, there's my German child, whom I will call Wolfgang on account of the fact that he has vampiric-like fangs where his eye teeth ought to be. Today we gave him a water bottle in the car and he gnawed it with the sound of a jackal guffawing and schkgnurfling as it tears the flesh off an antelope. Not yet sated with these guttural, horrible noises, he began to shriek with great glee and volume. The more we protested, the more his evil laughs and screams resounded through the car. This was an improvement on yesterday's car ride home from a birthday party, during which the liebchin vomited undigested grapes, chicken chunks, and a good part of a Carvel ice cream cake, the latter of which came pouring out his nose.

The elder child I will call Thieving Crow Deux, his Indian name, due to his early propensity for poaching food off a parent's plate. (Wolfgang also goes by the name "Thieving Crow Trois.") Thieving Crow Deux is a.k.a. Repetito, Casper, Lil Dubya (in honor of our esteemed leader), and Scooter-Pie. Pale as white on milk, he cannot go outside without a sunscreen "dip" which I hope to patent in the near future.

He is a charming child who behaves most impeccably when around strangers, and then transforms into a wild, flailing ball of pent-up angst when within the safety of his own home. Blessed with more than a touch of OCD, Thieving Crow Deux has been known to line up Clementine pieces, curve bending inward to opposite curve, until--finding that he does not possess the last piece to complete the pattern--collapses in a tragic rage. His uvula is a common sight around the dinner table.

Thieving Crow Deux likes to play doctor, applying Band-Aids to limbs for a headache and suggesting that the patient's head is full of monkeys and elephants, which can be coaxed out by a tune played on the harmonica. When accused of being a quack and a charlatan, he says "he can't do nuffink for you!" He also conducts a practice called "whacking," in which he lays a stuffed animal patient out on the kitchen floor and whacks them hard with an object. My son the doctor! The younger one plays the nurse and brings the patient varieties of birthday cake constructed out of Legos.

They are both wonderful and I will kill anyone who menaces them in word or deed.

One day the three of us had a picnic out on our back yard, which we affectionately call "the back 40." After eating his fill, the little one noticed the crescent moon in the sky, an orb of which he is quite fond. "Da moon is hungry," he announced, and began tossing food up toward it. It rained down on our little picnic blanket. We joined in, tossing food at the moon in an effort to fatten it. Planes passed overhead and we threw food at them, too. "This is not so sane," said Thieving Crow Deux who, like his brother, has an unusual vocabulary. We laughed, and apple slices, bread chunks, and cheese bits sailed up to the heavens. We rolled and tumbled and the two boys sat on my head, and the sun lowered past the Post Marine and the Toyota dealership in the distance. The moon waited, placid and waxing. "Naughty Tomato-Eating Squirrel" and his brother "Thieving Rodent Quatre" waited in the wings expectantly, and a flurry of birds passed overhead and shat on our car, parked in the driveway.

That's what writing this is like, at times. A happy exercise in throwing food at the moon.