Today, The Bug went to the zoo for the first time. His daddy carried him in the Bjorn for a long time. He saw flamingos and a peacock, many rare birds, giraffes and elephants, a hairy brown rhino, chimpanzees, about eighty different kinds of kangaroo, some lizards and snakes, and he was equally unimpressed with all of these.

He was good, though. He didn't complain and seemed interested in all the people. By the end of the day, he was knocked out.

Bloody hell, we all have the goddamn flu.

I forget so much. Here are some things I know I will forget if I don't write them down:

I liked being in the hospital. I liked my delivery nurse. She was a drill instructor. When I pushed my hardest, she made me push harder. In my head, I heard the voice of my personal trainer, barking that clipped "C'mon!"

The Bug came out at about 9:20 a.m. That night was the first time he peed on me. I was so perplexed by it all that I called the nurse. She showed me where the changes of clothes and padding were. I secretly hoped she'd change his clothes for me, but she didn't. She just told me, kindly, that I wouldn't break him, and left. So I told him, the first of many times, that we would have to figure it out together, and after a struggle, he was clean and dry and dressed.

I never had to change a meconium diaper. Back then, I dreaded the poop. After you have a kid, bodily fluids are par for the course. You're vomited or peed or pooed on at least once a day. You pick out boogers and go through spit rags like Kleenex. It's how I imagine a BDSM relationship must be after ten or twenty years: the kinks are loving but ho-hum. Anyway, I had so much help from Mister Aran's family that all the meconium was taken care of. I've more than made up for that since then, but I am thankful to this day.

The epidural wore off slowly. Mid-afternoon, I still didn't need to pee. A nurse came in and rushed me to the bathroom, even though I explained that I really didn't have to go. Once on the toilet, though, I peed longer than Austin Powers. I was astonished. I thought it would never end. I nearly overflowed the toilet. I didn't know I had that much capacity.

I sent The Bug to the nursery both nights. The first night, I struggled and struggled, and he wept and wept. I had never been so tired and achey, so I finally gave up and called to have him taken away. Then, it was so quiet. I could hear the nurses on the phone outside, and the wheels of carts, and the cries of babies far down the hall. I heard The Bug's, too. It took all my will to stay in bed, and not run down and grab him. I adjusted the bed fourteen times, placed pillows here and there, turned over and over, tried laying on my stomach for the first time in months. Nothing worked. I might have slept an hour. Finally, finally, they brought him back to me, wrapped tight and hungry. I sat in the chair and nursed him while the sun came up, this vast relief washing over me with the light. I felt like I'd sent a limb to the nursery for the night. Until the day before, he'd been a part of my body, after all. I told him all about the sun, and how it works with the earth, and I showed him the hills and trees out the window, though it was all very fuzzy to him, then. Mister Aran came in at around 6:00 a.m., and held The Bug in the chair, and they were so gorgeous together that I snapped a few thousand pictures. Then I fell asleep.

The second night, I sent him before the struggle began. I changed him, wrapped him the best I could, fed and rocked him, and when he fell asleep, I called the nursery. When they came to get him, I felt like a very good girl, but nobody congratulated me. I spent the night, as I had the night before, visualizing the RN's out on their smoke breaks, talking about what an awful mother I was, sending away her newborn. I got a little more sleep that night, but not much.

They brought him back to me at 5:00 a.m. He'd slept for five hours. He forgot how, after that, because he didn't do it again until about a month ago. He'd picked a bad night to do that, because it was the night my milk came in. My breasts were straining against my skin, trying to escape. My nipples were pulled so tight that they were flat, and The Bug couldn't get a latch. It hurt so bad that I cried. I took numerous hot showers and put hot packs on. It didn't go away until a couple nights after I went home. I put cabbage leaves in my shirt for short periods of time, and they shrank.

His nose took a day or so to take its true shape. It had been smashed on his way out. His lips were off-kilter, too, and there was a Star Trekkian V-shaped dent in his skull. He had gorilla hair all over his back and shoulders.

He nursed right away, while I was still all banged up in the delivery room. He has always been very good at eating. It only took him a few tries to figure out the spoon, too, though when he tries to hold it, the food goes onto his forehead.

Here's why I'll never tell God I'm bored again.

This morning, The Bug and I took Mister Aran to work, then went to Trader Joe's. We came home and he had belly time, back time, side time. He played with many toys. We discussed things. We took a short nap together, at the end of which I had five minutes to prepare my lunch before he woke. Then we hunkered down on the floor again: more belly, more back, more toys.

We read Where The Sidewalk Ends. He ate bananas. I was bored as hell, and it was only two p.m.

He used to give me a little time to do things. He used to stay in one spot for a minute or two. Although I know it's bad, he could be left alone for slivers of time. Lately, he needs constant attention, and at two p.m., I was just sick of baby stuff. God, I'm bored, I prayed. Please give me some stimulation.

God would do well to consider my options, you know? Would it have been so hard to create a new mommy friend out of thin air for me to have coffee with? Or, at least, make the baby nap so I could play a little Zelda?

no.

Instead, God sent shit. I've written here before about shit, but this was the biggest, worst shit ever. It's brown and very stinky now, because of the solids, and The Bug has been doing this thing where he saves it up for several days, sometimes more than a week.

Cleaning him up should've required blueprints, planned attacks by generals in situation rooms, tractors, sedatives (for him), banana liqueur (for me), and those ER scissors they use to cut clothing off people. At the very least, I needed an extra pair of hands, but I had none of these things, so I took off my shirt and did what I could with what I had.

It was all up the back of his long-sleeved Bronco outfit, the one my grandparents bought him. It was on his sides and in the cracks where his thighs meet his belly. I looked him over several times but could not figure out how I was going to get his outfit over his head without smearing poo everywhere. I sort of rolled it up. Then I asked The Bug, "Do you think that you could maybe not touch anything until we're done here?"

He grinned, said, "Ah goo!" and promptly sank his hand into the pile of shit on his side.

I'm pretty sure I caught it before it went into his mouth, but I was juggling clothes and diapers and wipes and feet and I'm not certain of anything.

I plopped him, naked and basically wiped down, onto a receiving blanket in his crib and ran him a bath. Luckily for me, he takes great joy in nakedness. In fact, it's one of the ways to change one of his bad moods: take off the shirt and blow raspberries into every crevice.

He soaked in soapy water and was soon fresh and damp and gave me ten minutes to pre-treat his Bronco shirt in the sink. It was the kind of cleanup that required cleanup afterward. I touched poo, though I tried not to. It feels like you think it would feel. I gagged a lot. I should've just thrown the thing away, but it was his Bronco outfit. (Not the blue one, Ma, don't worry.)

It's 3:30 p.m. now, and he's asleep in my lap. There is still work to be done. I will have to clean out my sink really well, and do a load of laundry. But I'm not bored anymore.

Oh, I'm so smart, with all my big ideas and opinions, and I'm the first one to have ever had them.

I like to think of God smiling when, at eighteen, I proclaimed that marriage was nothing but a tax break and a piece of paper, all the while quietly getting this fantastic guy ready for the rest of my life. And then, when I talked about not wanting kids, I'm sure God and my Bug chuckled together up in heaven.

I bet I'm cute when I get all huffy.

Life was so much easier when I was thrashing around in my sad little adolescent darkness, torturing my mother with suicide threats. It was a simpler time, when I could hate my family, when I prayed in anguish to be surrounded by better people with fewer faults. It sucks intensely to wake up human, morning after morning, with no one to blame, a dozen people to worry yourself sick over, and a bathroom to clean.

Okay, I tell God, I've gotten married, I've had the kid, you win. But I'm only having one. This is my big plan, and I'm sticking to it, dammit: one kid only, and then maybe adoption, if we suddenly find ourselves millionaires.

Sometimes God in my mind is this lady, knitting in a rocking chair, knitting out the scarf of my life. Me, the scarf, I'm barking out orders about what color I want to be, how this or that color will clash, but all I can see is the row I'm in. And God just keeps rocking and knitting, adding color and, if I whine too much, maybe shushing a little, the way I do when The Bug halfway wakes from a nap.

Oh good god.

Sometimes you take a picture and you just have to roll your eyes. Like, c'mon. There's cute, and then there's just showing off.

Proof that he has found his toes:



Proof that he does, sometimes, get his belly time:

He continues to be beautiful. He's eaten sweet potatoes, turkey (on Thanksgiving) and carrots. He seems to dig the carrots.