Jack’s arrival into my husband’s and my life has been thrilling. We are never bored by his shenanigans. It is truly exciting to watch him learn to laugh, make jokes and recognize his world. The first time he ran over to me and yelled “duck!” because he heard a truck outside was one of the happiest moments of my life. This little being that just recently didn’t exist is here in my living room talking to me. And he is excited about something! Something he chose on his own to be excited about.
He seems to always be two steps ahead of us. When he does something new my mouth drops open, my heart rate picks up and my brain feels like it’s being blown into a million pieces. He has started to experiment with spinning in circles. Whipping his head in one direction and allowing the force to bring his body around with it. He is so pleased with himself. When I leave the room I hear his little feet going in and out of various rooms. He pushes open doors with as much force as he can muster. When he finds me on the other side of one he smiles, takes a deep breath and exhales a giggle of self-satisfaction.
Jack is taking the world by storm. He will stop at nothing to test the limits of his body and he leaves not an inch of world left uninspected. He has visual capabilities that I left behind in childhood. He narrows in on anything he hasn’t seen before. His attention and energy get swept away with curiosity. These have been some of the most shocking and startling moments of motherhood.
I was carrying Jack in the ring sling one afternoon. My husband had put out a plate of cheese and crackers on the kitchen island. I walked over to put a piece of cheese on a cracker and shove it into my mouth. I turned away from the island and boogied a little with Jack. I looked down to give him a smile and in Jack’s hand was a steak knife.
Oh! I’ll take that! Thank you, Jack!
We met up with some friends at a local park recently. We sat on a huge blanket, shared food and let the kids run free in the huge wooden play structure. Jack started to wander off and my husband followed. I sat next to my friends and watched my boys in the distance. Jack scanned the wood chips for something interesting. My husband looked away for a moment and when he turned back around in Jack’s hand was a dead mouse.
I jumped to my feet as if I was on the moon and only 1/6 of the normal force of gravity was holding me down. I ripped my friend’s antibacterial gel out of her bag, smeared the entire bottle on his hands, rubbed it around with a wet wipe and rushed him to the drinking fountain to then rinse off the chemicals. I ripped his clothes off, shouted at my husband to take his shirt off and luckily had a spare of each item of clothing in our bag. My friend googled “picked up dead mouse” and said I had done everything correctly. She inquired about the exact state of the mouse. There began the conversation of the century. “Josh, just how dead was the mouse?” “I mean are we talking fresh?” “Were there insects on it?” My friends and I combed the park looking for the culprit. I found him first. The most aged, insect covered, rotten carcass of a rodent ever in existence. Oh god. My baby. Where are the fucking hazmat people!? My husband calmly talked me out of going to the emergency room. But I had a plan. We were to walk home, as soon as we entered the house we were to all strip down to our bare buns and throw every item with us either into the dishwasher or into the hot washing machine. We were to all take hot showers with soap. I mean the nasty stuff. The drug store antibacterial soap. By the time we got home Jack was asleep and half of this happened. My husband carried out as much of my wishes as he could while I lay with sleeping Jack. We both worried the rest of the day. He somehow survived.
My parents were visiting one weekend. Jack was marching back and forth from grandparent to grandparent. He grabbed various things on his way and threw then across the room or shoved them in his mouth. My mother looked down at him and said “what’s he got in his hands?” I walked over to him and in Jack’s hands was our lube.
Abby Theuring, MSW
