The Burrow

According to my mother, I loved Mr. Kelley above all other things.  I have no memory of him at all. Mr. Kelley resurfaced from my early childhood when the crawl space in the basement flooded.  Many treasures were stored there, including, it seemed, my very favorite toy.  Daddooooo and Brother bent over beneath the very low beams, tossing out moldy this and soaking wet that when G'ma cried Mr. Kelley!  Oh, no, Mr . Kelley Who? You don't remember Mr. Kelley?  You loved Mr. Kelley. I continued to stare at a sodden clown, his red/white/blue ruffled collar drooping, his elongated limbs dangling, my mother's hand strangling his neck, her expression a mystery to 16 year old me. Fast forward to the nightgown Little Cuter loved to shreds, the one she wondered why I'd saved all these years.  Consider Big Cuter gently shaking his head, telling me that although I remembered those books, the ones I'd saved in the box, the ones I'd read over and over every ni...

My baby is having a baby.   She's gone from "looking like I ate too much for dinner this weekend"  to having a small protrusion in the middle of her body.  Growing in size from a lentil to a grape to a plum to a kumquat, the baby is making its presence known. Everything smells weird.  Her pants don't fit anymore - "not even close." She's over the super-exhaustion that accompanied the start of the adventure - "It's not that I wanted to sleep; I needed  to sleep." Her 36 hours of nausea abated, and she's stopped wondering how anyone could be that sick for more than a day or so.  I try to keep quiet about the three or four months I spent hurling and napping while she was establishing herself in my body; she's already apologized. SIR is proud and happy.  TBG and I are still searching for the words to describe our joy.  We find ourselves looking from one end of the couch to the other, grins plastered on our faces, grins havi...