A Monday night a few weeks ago:
Working at the house, three days into a monster of a job for Olive Garden with a super tight deadline. I suddenly had what I thought was a cool idea: let’s pack the girls up and hit up the Olive Garden in Poughkeepsie for dinner! It’ll be ironic or something. Now before you feel all superior to me, please consider my situation: I had gone three days almost without food or sleep, with nothing but propaganda for Olive Garden in front of my face. Those are pretty much prison-camp brainwashing conditions, you know.
As soon as the words were out of my mouth, Faith leapt into action. She’s learned through experience that she can’t stop me from working insane hours, or from becoming a strung-out stress goblin over the course of a heavy job. But by God, a heartwarming family trip to Olive Garden was something she could damn well put a stop to. In a flash she dug out the lonely jar of Prego in the back of the pantry and tarted It up with fresh garlic and leftover shrimp and vegetables. When the smell hit me it was like my body suddenly registered three days of hunger, stress and exhaustion all at once. It was all I could do not to shove my face into the pan while it was still on the stove. Just as we’re about to dig in, baby Roxy decided it was time to shred what few nerves I had left with a monster screaming fit.
I happen to be the black belt in baby kung fu around our house. It's sort of the one thing I bring to the table, not being able to say, lactate, or balance a checkbook. This was the sort of five-alarm barn-burner of a meltdown that was going to last a good hour and can only ever be marginally contained. If I made her mom handle it I would get to eat, but we were still going to have to listen to it. What could I do. I let Faith and Edie enjoy their meal and walked Roxy around the house, using every secret Tibetan fussy-baby trick in the book to keep her from blowing our ears out. An eternity later she exhausted herself, and I was able to pass her off to mom for feeding and bed.
A broken shell of a human, I stumbled and collapsed at the table next to Edie. She sat and watched me struggling numbly to push my fork at the cold noodles. One of the hundreds of reasons that I’m madly in love with this kid is her way of exhibiting empathy at times. Or maybe she just thought it would be funny if it was her turn to feed me for a change. In any event, she looked me up and down, and showed that there was more to her than diabolical master plans to score cookies and stall her bedtime. She took my fork and started lifting big long strands of pasta, waving them menacingly in my general direction. Even if I wanted to say no to a two-year-old, she pretty much could have overpowered me at that moment. I bobbed and weaved and sort of aimed my mouth at it as she stabbed at my face. She even did the running commentary that people do to her when she gets fed: "Here it comes! Thassa big bite! I guess you like it!" She didn’t stop until the plate was empty.
I sucked down a beer and we mutually helped each other up the stairs. Faith had the light in the bedroom off so the baby could sleep, and I managed to put Edie’s one-piece pajamas on her body all wrong, which she found hilarious. Even after I figured it out and fixed it, she was still laughing at me and giving me crap: “That’s notta arm, thassa leg!” She tumbled into the crib and wished me nice dreams. My three girls went to sleep and I went back to work.
No comments:
Post a Comment