An Explanation

When J arrived back from church this evening I was holding James up to the spice cabinet in nothing but a diaper and his fall jacket with Christmas music blasting in the background.

Her exact words were: "I'm listening."

James and I have had, as you might have guessed, an awesome past two days. Yesterday he came to visit me at my school and stayed the whole afternoon. It was Spirit Day, so there was loud and obnoxious teenage music, there were loud and obnoxious teenage games in the gym all afternoon, and most of all there were loud and obnoxious teenagers. I don't have a lot of patience with loud and obnoxious teenagers yet. I'm hoping that as James grows up I find hitherto undiscovered reserves of patience and grace. Or maybe he could just skip teenagedom all together. That would be fine too.

So yesterday he stayed with me from lunch to dismissal, and he had a blast. He watched the kids play dodge ball and desperately wanted to join in, then toted around a stray blue foam ball and yelled at the top of his lungs while the big kids played knockout. (He would periodically set the ball down and applaud with wild enthusiasm when he heard other people clapping or was moved by the Holy Spirit.)

When the big surly seniors blasted mind-numbing hip-hop music (presumably Christian mind-numbing hip-hop music) through two amplifiers and I covered my ears in annoyance, James danced and grooved and shot flirty looks at the high school girls who were doting on him. Once we'd finished bus duty and gone back to my band room we decided not to stay for the basketball games. Well, I decided not to stay for the basketball games. James would have loved to stay, but I was teenaged out. I carried him, his diaper bag, Steven, his bottle, and five trumpets out to the car. He is getting heavy. And he loves school.

Today was another great day. We went outside twice to see the bunnies and spent most of the day coloring with crayons. (J and I discovered, to our dismay, that some of the coloring time was apparently spent on our bannister. Does anyone have any extra eggshell-white paint?) Things started to go downhill when J left for church, which was how he ended up half-naked in the spice cabinet.

The spice cabinet is actually fairly easy to explain. We need the spice containers to build towers, and sometimes for bowling. Well, mostly for towers. And as far as James is concerned, we only build the towers so that we can have something to knock down. So he and I built towers for awhile once J left, and then I smelled something very stinky. "James," I said "Do we need to change your diaper?"

He nodded and trundled over to the stairs. We climbed the stairs and went into his nursery, and as I changed his diaper I thought to myself: "Well, it's 6:00 now. Bedtime is at 7:30. He usually doesn't take his bath this early, but if I put him in now he could just wear this diaper to bed."

"James, would you like to take a bath?"

He nodded with great excitement.

I stripped him the rest of the way while singing his bath-time song (Bath-time for a James Bear, bath-time for a James Bear, bath-time for a James D. Bear, which nobody can deny) and then set him down naked on the carpet in his room. He watched me fill up the tub with his usual belly laughs and did laps in the nude between the bathroom and his nursery. But when I picked him up to put him in the tub, he fought against me and leaned away.

James loves bath-time. Aside from possibly seeing the bunnies, it is his favorite part of the day. It's never a problem to get him in the bath. He's used to getting them from me, so I know that wasn't the problem. I'm also fairly certain that the water temperature was well within the safe range either way, so that shouldn't have been a problem either. When I picked him up and put his feet in the water he freaked out at me. He hollered in absolute terror, and when I picked him up again he clung to me as hard as he could.

Glancing at the clock again, I saw that it was about 6:10. J would be home in less than fifteen minutes. Perhaps bath-time with Mommy would be better? But what to do in the meantime...I didn't want to put him back in his grimy playclothes, but I also didn't want to get his pajamas all dirty either. So I put a diaper on him and covered him up with his fall jacket. Once we were downstairs he was perfectly happy again. But if I asked him "James, what about your bath?" he would come running in fright and bury his head against me, then shake it "no" back and forth.


Oh, and the Christmas music. Both of our iPods docks have broken, so the stereo system on top of our TV cabinet is the only means by which we are currently able to amplify music. It has a five CD changer, but we don't keep any CDs downstairs anymore. The only disc currently in the stereo is A Very Uncles Christmas, which James has decided he loves even more than Celine Dion. (He particularly likes We Three Kings and Joy to the World.) So if either J or I found the energy to go upstairs and dig through our CD box for new music, we could probably listen to something other than our homemade Christmas CD. But James is really active recently, and climbing the stairs just to come right back down again seems like a lot of work.

Anyhow, J got home, and I explained why James was dressed the way he was. We took him upstairs and practically held him down in the bathtub. He sobbed the whole time, and then fell asleep almost immediately when we took him out. Any veteran parents have any ideas about why this might be? It would be a real shame if bath-time suddenly became a nightly battle.

To unwind after the long day, J and I made ourselves a fancy supper that did not feature peanut butter or jelly as an ingredient at all. We made beef stroganoff, and I was the sous chef. Whenever we cook together it's my job to measure out all the ingredients into their correct amounts and keep them ready for Julie in the cute little dishes we have. This makes us feel very important and professional. We cut up and floured the beef, cooked it with mushrooms and onions, put on the noodles, and thickened the sauce to a gravy like consistency. We added sour cream, and last of all, half a cup of cooking sherry.

"Are you sure it called for half a cup of sherry?" J asked.

I looked at the recipe card.

"No. No, it didn't."

At the very last step of the process, I had added 1/2 cup of strong alcohol instead of 2 tablespoons.

J actually managed to salvage the sauce from becoming a runny mess. She added some more flour, and it thickened right up again. But I think it would be more appropriate to refer to the leftovers in "shots" rather than "servings."