I had horrible dreams last night. As I mentioned yesterday, I watched The Pianist before bed and I think that had a large role in how my dreamscape played out. The hardest part of that movie for me was hearing babies crying. Like when a big crowd of Jews were rounded up waiting to be transported to concentration camps and off camera you'd hear babies crying and then there's a scene where a woman is crying out because she smothered her baby while her family was in hiding. Jesus. Made me want to go into Gavin's room and check his pulse, maybe just sit beside his crib and hold his little hand, watch him breathe. He looks very beautiful when he sleeps. But I didn't. Because chances of me waking him up would've been high and that is not a good idea, no matter how freaked out I am at the thought of holding him while he cries in a hot and crowded square where everyone is starving and most everyone will die. I suppose I should have a "No Holocaust movies before bed" rule, but I probably wouldn't follow it. Or I'd just read a true crime novel instead. What can I say? I'm obsessed with disaster. And let me tell you, having a kid makes it that much harder to stay sane in a completely insane world where people do terrible, terrible things to each other.
Thankfully Gavin and I did not have a terrible day. We had quite a good day, actually. For our big outting we went to Whole Foods to do some grocery shopping. I wanted to get him some more black beans and yogurt. Unfortunately the yogurt I bought had a slightly opened seal so it will have to go back. I usually check for stuff like that but shopping with a nearly 10-month-old means shopping fast. In the checkout line Gavin grabbed a DVD off the shelf (why they have DVDs in a kid-in-a-cart-level rack hanging off of the checkout counter I do not know. Perhaps they're hoping for a "you break it you buy it" moment). The DVD was called, appropriately enough, Two Angry Moms. I told him that while he did, in fact, have two moms, I wasn't sure that we were "angry." But then I thought about it and told him that I actually was angry, but not at him. I don't, like, Incredible Hulk rage or anything, but there are plenty of issues that get me pissed off. In any case, I looked up the movie and it's about two moms taking on their kids' awful school lunch program. Stacy and I have, indeed, had conversations about this and it's something we care about. It's astonishing the shit that kids get fed at school. In any case, I plan to see the movie now and I never would have known it existed if it weren't for Gavin Grabby McGrabberton.
Gavin stood up on his own today without using something to hold onto while he was standing. He was sitting down and I was on my stomach on the floor of his room with my head resting on Stacy's legs (family time!) and Gavin started to smack me on the butt, then he pushed himself off and into a standing position. Mind you, I didn't get a good look at this, Stacy did, but I take her word for it.
The weather was finally nice today and it felt like May instead of March. Gavin, Henri, and I took a stroll (Stacy was at class. Kind of. She's taking a class at Wayne State on Friday evenings starting tonight, only her professor never showed up. She was really pissed. So she came home and gave Bear a bath instead). On our way back to the house I saw that the two little girls across the street were playing on the car in their driveway (it's more like a mini SUV type, really). They were on top of the car's roof and the older one had the younger one's arms and was dangling her off the side. It didn't look safe to me. Not to mention the fact that they could very well be denting the roof. I had a very strong urge to say, "Do your parents know what you are doing?" but I didn't. Shortly after we'd all come inside I heard them getting yelled at by their mom's boyfriend. These are the same little girls who, one morning last summer, took the screen out of the second story window of their house and were climbing out onto the roof in their pajamas. Having engaged in similar antics as a child, I strongly suspected that their activities were neither condoned nor known by their parents. I didn't say anything to them, but I did wheel Gavin's stroller down the driveway and stare at them from the sidewalk in front of my house in an "I totally see you" kind of way. I didn't care that they were being mischievous, but what they were doing was dangerous. They could have totally fallen off of the roof. They stared back at me for a short while and then climbed back into the house. When Gavin and I got to the end of the street a couple houses away and they thought I was gone, they climbed back out. When they saw me they kind of half climbed back in while they waited for me to continue on with my walk, which I did with mixed feelings. While the girls were being yelled at I watched the 1 and a half year old in the other house across the street from us sitting in the open front window of his house, his hands and feet pressing against the screen. They must have a couch or something under that window that he can sit on. I have seen him do this several times and each time I want to go across the street with a boombox Say Anything-style and play Eric Clapton's "Tears In Heaven."
As my friend Claire remarked, "Welcome to motherhood, where everyone's child is your child." Seriously. And it's exhausting. Like the saying goes, "It takes D'Anne to raise a village." Or something like that.
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