Samurai Sword.

I remember it was a Thursday. There was a gym, and a treadmill, and four TVs. I was on incline setting eight and there were burning quads.

On TV number three, there was a race ready to post. There was a horse. Horse number ten. I remember ten because it is so significant in our family. That we once were ten, then we lost our ten and became nine and then Rukai made us ten again.

Horse ten was called Samurai Sword.

Samurai Sword. Rukai's name has something to do with the Samurai. Too long to explain here but know this made my thighs burn less and my heart race and my brain decide it was dead cert our horse, the hero of this particular tale, was going to blow away the field. Our ten horse, our Samurai horse, would win because Rukai will win in life and that is that.

I remember this is what I decided, on that Thursday, on that treadmill, up that incline to nowhere watching that TV as if I had a fortune riding on Samurai Sword winning that lone race on a sandy track on the other side of the world.

In a way, I did.

I remember post time arrived, and as I powered up that lonely incline, old Samurai Sword, well he just chugged out of the blocks like he had been sat on the crapper engrossed in a copy of Readers Digest and missed the gun. Then it struck him, they're getting away from me here, and he put down his head and he ran like his ass was on fire. But the field pulled away. So far away that our intrepid hero fell clean off the TV screen.

And even though I kept leaning to the right, trying to will him back on screen, Samurai Sword stayed in the caboose end of that race to the bitter end.

But, by god, that boy kept running.

-----

We are tucked in for the night. Rukai is 6 days shy of a year old. Rukai's huge triumph today was grabbing my fingers and pulling up to stand, then bouncing - or as his paternal grandma calls it 'doing the bum shake' - before his knees gave out and he plonked down onto said bum, grinning with glee at what fun it all is. To grow. To progress. To shake bum. To keep on running. Like his ass is on fire.

To fall behind but damn it, that boy keeps on running.

Our little Samurai. Our little dragon.

You go on breathing your fire, my boy. You burn a hole clean through that box they packed you in that cold February day a year ago and you keep right on running.

I fear one day I will positively suffocate on my love.

Happy birthday my son.

It's just water, dude.

Baby flu.  I haven't cleaned this much puke up since...well...ever.  I thought earlier we may have to lay a tarp across the living room floor.  And the bouncer.  And the cot.  And the...ok, well, we will just have to coat the house in plastic and be done with it.  Coat Rukai too.

Wait, no, no, never mind that, we'll just set him up in the tub for a few days. 

Damn, that's right, the tub brings too much drama.  More later.

Why in the name of all that is good and holy did we lay carpeting in this house?  Oh yes, that's right.  We didn't have a child yet.  But since we want to move we will now be sure to move to a place with laminate floors.  Any carpeting in the new place is doomed, since we will unceremoniously rip it out and chuck it out the window.  Even if it's new carpeting.  Even if it's a balcony window.  On the twenty-sixth floor of a skyscraper.

I've done that with pizza waaaaaaay back in the day but that's an altogether different story.

So I guess I'll need to buy a megaphone.  Then again, maybe I can just precede the carpet toss with a few long shots off the five iron and shout 'fore!' really loudly to any wandering passers by.  Fair warning and all.  That surely must be set rule number four hundred and eight in the carpet toss health and safety manual, fifth edition, for insane puke cleaning parents only.

But carpeting will meet window will meet pavement.  Of this I am certain.  Because as I live and breathe, it is bloody hard to clean puke out of carpeting and I have had enough dry heaving the past 36 hours to last me till I hit the big 5-0.  Thank God I bought all that upholstery cleaner before Rukai was born.  It's the gift that keeps on giving.

Good news is at least I think he's stopped.  Dioralyte, you goddess you.  The blandness of baby rice and porridge.  The calpol/calprofen one two punch.  A cold washcloth draped over his head like a babushka followed by a hefty nap and we are back in the wonderful land of ninety-eight-point-six.

I refuse to translate fever to celsius even IF I live in England.  It's the principle of the thing.

Now.

Back to the tub.  Bub snubs the tub.  The tub has consistently scared the shit out of bub.  The tub is one of the hugest stressors in my life.  You'd think I filled it with itching powder.  Or hot lava.  The way he squirms and slipslides away on the gallons of E45 churning through it like a white oil slick.

It's just water, dude.

'Just water,' he thinks.  Then flips me the baby black panther salute and commences the squirmscream combo.  'Take that you washer woman,' he thinks.  'You just TRY and hold me.'

It's not fun.

Bathtime should be fun and it just has not been fun.  And don't even get me started on trying to get that first nappy on while he's damp.  Or wrapping him up in a towel.  When you get one arm in the leg pops out.  The leg in, the head cover falls off.   This is why they invented wine.  I'm sure of it.

They didn't say anything about this in all those baby books.  But hell, at least I know the freaking out is just cos he's just a baby who likes being supported and warm in the tub and not because he's got every sensory issue on the planet.  I know this because it's 2013 and in 2013 I am no longer afraid of what might be.  I am committed to fixing the problems and not over egging the cause because some numpty doctor studied a sheet of stats and puked them out at us.

He's a baby.  That is all.  Pukeity puke puke.  (Take your stats and shove them up your ass!  Lalala.)

So I have been working on finding the solution.  Over time this has meant we now own:

- One adult sized bathtub that scares the crap out of him.
- One newborn bathtub that he no longer fits into but actually seemed to like until about age 4 months.  Damn.
- One newborn plastic bath support that jammed up against his bum and made him cry.  Wouldn't you?  Now don't lie.  Yes, yes, I thought so.
- One bath seat / bath mat combo that he can't sit up in and has ripped, respectively.  And guess what?  It made him cry.
- One chaise lounge-style bath support that was too low in the water to fill the tub high enough to keep him warm.  So he froze every bath and lo and be-flipping-hold -

It made him cry.

So then I'm on Amazon the other day, shoe shopping in the sales. As you do. And I think, 'must find a better bath support to get him stabilized in the tub so he stops freaking out.'  Typey typey type and whaddayaknow I manage to find the very same tub as the first one he liked, in a bigger size.

Wot?!

Are you joking?!  Where were you hiding this when I bought all that other shit?!  It's even made by the same manufacturer.  It's even the same shade of blue.  It even goes well with the little fish bath mat I bought to keep him from slipping.

Hey hey!  It arrived!  I put him in it!  He wasn't freaking out!  In fact he was splashing his arms and having a whale of a time.  But damn it all to hell, he keeps slipping. So one useless hand of mine holding him up and the other doing the one hand miracle wash while eating a sandwich and doing the online grocery order combo I learned back in month one and we are rocking and rolling. 

Just hope he doesn't puke in it.

In other news, baby's first Christmas has come and gone.  We nearly needed a U-Haul to bring everything home but managed to get it all in a giganto-box shoved in the back seat of the car once we removed the seventy-two tons of cardboard and other packaging.

But alas, such a spoiled little man.  Spoiled and utterly and completely deserving.  His smile lit up the room brighter than the lights on the tree.  The videos are priceless.  The blurted laugh on seeing his mister man 'Mr Happy' sleepsuit took the biscuit.  Because when he is in a good mood, he IS Mr. Happy.  So we laughed with him.  We always do.  He is such a light.  Such a shining star.  Such a schmooshy squidge.

Baby's first Christmas followed swiftly by baby's first big honking flu.  Just over one month til baby's first birthday.  Time still rolls. 

Let it roll baby roll.  As long as it's not a roll of carpet.

Ring in the new.

2012 began in a roiling black cloud of fear and uncertainty. It ends eating the dust of a boy whose only challenge is the establishment and its blind status-quo.

2013 will greet this family without fear. We got this. Big time.

Roll on midnight.

Shovel the shit and shine up the saddle.

Looking back on the past month, the standouts are simple.  A Dad hug for me.  A frog legged, pressed-up, pre-crawl for young son.  A supported stand.  Perma-horsey setting.  He's so nearly there, I could explode.  If pride is a vice you can call me Miami, buy me a white suit and rev up the convertible.

More.  Two long haul flights uninterrupted by baby bleating for three hundred plus BA passengers.  Well at least MY baby was bleat free, I can't say the same for the ones who managed to score the cot seats.

I guess not being able to get a cot and getting stuck buying a seat for him was a gargantuan blessing in disguise.  Guess those wee bubbas slept like shit in their thin BA travel cots while Rukai chilled in his reclined car seat, his 'command center' set up, Ice Age and Madagascar and Lion King looping on the bubba sized screen in front of him.  Oops.  So sorry.

Seriously, my son was the perfect passenger.  Entirely unaffected by altitude and air pressure.  And here I was so worried about the supposed 'structural abnormalities' those thin statistics say he's likely to have in his sinuses and ear canals that I expected full meltdown and expulsions out of both ends.  I brought five changes of clothes for him on the outbound.  One on the reverse.  I need to go write the 'Take your stats and shove them up your ass' song now.  I may have just penned the chorus.

So only three hours awake the first go and he was snoring five minutes into the return flight.  He woke up when they turned the lights on for breakfast.  Oh, and he woke up HAPPY.  And then he ate.  And then he found the ceiling panel flipping hilarious.  That and the magic intercom voice.  The turbulence, not so much.  The plane dipped and shimmied and his eyes bugged out as if to say whatthehellwasthat while he threw some jazz hands.  The first time I thought 'awww'. When he did it again I nearly peed myself laughing.  I'm not sure I have cracked the visual there but I wish I had been filming.

Ok.

The reason for the visit home comes in a far less chirpy version: one life is truly beginning.  One is beginning to end.  Our year of turmoil has officially been wrapped in a big red bow labeled 'Dad has incurable lung cancer'.  So we hopped and we scotched across an ocean for a two week visit which included Rukai's first plane trip, as much grandpa time as we could muster, Dean's cottage cheese and Lou Malnatis and Buona Beef and Portillos and store bought Christmas tchotchkes and here we are back home hoping like hell goodbye wasn't really Goodbye.

It turns and it turns and it turns.  My first thought: the problem with life is it ends in death.

My second thought: thank God we went.  Dad has seen his grandson doing well.  That means everything to me.  And that hug will never wash off.  Perhaps neither will the tear stains.  But I will hold that hug in my heart for the rest of my days.  I will hold the conversations in my heart.  My Daddy.  Please let there be more hugs.

My third thought (and segue with me here):  damn, British Airways trolly dollies sure wear a lot of slap on their mugs.  Like theatrical pancake.  Even the guys.  It was like flying Air Madame Tussaud's.

I'm hanging on to thought three because once again that old mom-ism, when you most feel like crying sometimes you just have to laugh.  Leave it to our magnificent squidge to provide it.

Despite our heavy hearts we have been wearing perma-smiles because mister bubba has become mini John Wayne, and is stuck on 'horsey' setting.  Sit.  Flail.  Giggle.

I think it may have been the Chicago water.  The diesel fume free air.  The freak Thanksgiving heatwave.  The 48 oz of greek yogurt.  The vat of pretzels I bought from Kmart with my cart full of tchotchkes.  Ok, maybe not those, those were MINE.  But the last two weeks have given us some extraordinary developmental milestones and equal amounts of joy.

If you looked at my life from elsewhere you may say 'damn, you have been delivered a bit of a shit sandwich this year'.  And we thought that.  And then we look at this amazing kid who just lifts everyone around him and realize that we are staying above it because of him.  Because he IS.  And we are so blessed by whatever higher power has sent him our way.

We even had security people at the airport gurning at his chubby cheeks and (there's that horsey again) three foot long eyelashes.

Security people.  At Heathrow.  At O'hare.  I was bamboozled.  They even forgot to make me taste half his food the second time round.  I may never go anywhere without him again.

Ok, a final few standouts.

I now know that our 'ick', or that skin condition is so hereditary that anyone 'practicing medicine' who relates it to DS hereafter can kiss my son's giraffe speckled ass.  A wonderful afternoon with family cleared that one up.  Not literally but I now have officially scratched that off the is-it-a-symptom-or-not list.  Um, thatwouldbeno.

And the real kicker is anyone who's spent a length of time with Rukai over the past couple weeks has seen what we do.  And that is nothing.  That is 'virtually unaffected'.  And that remains a relief.  We can keep riding that particular horsey.  I'll even shovel the shit and shine up the saddle.

There's that piece which stays behind.

Just left my son with a stranger.  Feel like I'm going to make my own Rorschachs on the floor.

Sure he's met her a few times.  Sure it's only to give him lunch, max an hour.  For now.  Sure I will collapse in a heap of relief when I go to pick him up and he's smiling and giggling and burping and shouting just like he does at home.  There may even come a day when he cries when leaving her house.  I will surely burn that day like I'm locked in an oven.  I will surely cheer his independence.  I will surely adore his spirit.  Even more than I do today.

Inhale.

Talking with my NCT pals the other day we were saying how it's a dead certainty that we will have to let the babies go, over and over again all through life.  To childminders, to school, to the grocery store, to teen discos, to gap years.  Now having a child of my own, now about to regularly leave him to get to the business of growing up and mixing more often with other kids than with mommy et al, getting to the business of that next phase of life that doesn't involve me changing the bulk of the nappies, feeding all the vegetable sludge, teaching him to hold the cloth, the spoon, the cup, the bell, the crinklebug.  Well, now I understand what my parents must have felt when I left home.  Left the country.  Got married.  Flying flying and flying away.  All the time flying.  But there's that piece which stays behind.  That piece that is woven into their very souls. 

That one stays behind.

Exhale.

Will I one day pick him up and there he will have learned to sit up by himself at last?  I cannot pretend I will not turn a shade of deepest green for a flash before the pure joy sets in.  But I desperately wanted that one.  I wanted it before I went back to work.  I go back to work tomorrow.

Yes, thank you Sir Mick, yes, I realize you get what you need.  But still.

I haven't loads more to say right now.  That is enough.  That is everything today.  It is such a small thing but it is such a huge day.

Sure.

Dinner wars.

After not being able to keep any food down yesterday, Rukai has just won the Oscar for most picky baby on the face of the earth.  Today's dinner menu:

2 oz of fresh carrot juice = yum yum go mama, more please
2 spoons of packet chicken dinner = tantrum, I don't want savory thankyouverymuch
3 spoons of carrot/swede mashed up = tantrum, I don't want solid veg thankyouverymuch
1/2 spoon of carrot/swede mashed up, disguised with fruit puree = straight back out and are you fricking KIDDING me?
The rest of the fruit puree = Ha ha mama, I win.
1/2 an organic snack hoop.  Most in his mouth this time.  Ha ha baby, I win this round.
1 teaspoon of Philadelphia cream cheese.  Straight.  A huge hit.  If you won't take your milk, I'll get your dairy in you somehow.  Score two for me.
2 sips of heavily diluted apple/blackcurrant juice.

It's all staying in. What's coming out is one helluva stubborn streak.

Bartender!

You can't cure baby sick with bacon.

It all started when Bubba got blasted by a big bad blockup.  Top end.  Stuffiest of all stuffy noses, the poor boy was snuffling and squidging around so long a couple nights ago we went up to right things and found ourselves with a very warm headed unhappy little man.  We, the old folks downstairs, charging up to fix our baby.  Our boy's not well.  We behaved like parents in an urgent situation and that, to me, was a very strange experience.

Of course we've been behaving like parents for eight months now but it's a bit like getting that first car / credit card / apartment / house / bottle of Jack Daniels.  You think to yourself 'hey I'm an adult now, this is not kid stuff.'  But when the stuff that is not kid stuff IS kid stuff, well, that is when you have truly arrived, baby.

So bubbo snuffaluffagus was unwell and we did our best to fix him.  We seem to have done a pretty miserable job of it, which I discovered today, as two minutes post-breakfast, half the contents of said breakfast were soaking into the carpeting like a Rorschach blot and snuffly boy was screaming blue Jesus.

The mommy antenna went up full height and I admit the urge to clean up the puddle first was a bit strong.  But no, baby first.  He's not only unwell, he's a bit freaked out at that new sensation and I have to find a way to fix it.  How's about a wiped face, a kiss on the too-hot-for-my-liking forehead, fresh nappy and a new top.  Check.  Now let's get him resting a bit on the sofa.  Carefully drape a blanket under him in case the rest of breakfast comes to the party.  Cover him up with another blanket.  Finally open up that Calpol that's been staring me down for eight months and spoon a bit in him.  Good, good.  I'm mommy-ing.  I'm fixing the ick.

He conks out.  I feel triumphant.  Until he wakes up after a brief nap and I go to cuddle him by putting him on my shoulder.  A gurking sound pierces my eardrum like a chisel and as I whizz him around, there we now officially have an empty stomach and more Rorschach on the other side of the floor.  I'm not sure if it looked like an octopus, a racecar or three blooming coins in a fountain but it plain as day looked like a fresh puddle of puke I was going to need to mop up.  He goes back to the sofa and I refill that bowl of water.

Scrub scrub.  I'm mommying again.  He is quietly watching Mickey Mouse Clubhouse and sucking on a muslin cloth.  I am wondering how in the hell I'll get some fluids in him if it keeps coming back up.  How do I comfort him if he's not comfy cuddling in the newborn hold and the shoulder plank empties his guts?

I check him again and he's slowly becoming not so grey faced, forehead a bit cooler.  Thank you Calpol.  Having consulted Doctor Google again I see he could very well be quite perky even though he's got an obvious tummy bug and it's only if he's seriously out of sorts that it's time to panic.  And lo and behold he's seeming to bore and crabbing to get on the floor again.  Five minutes after I dump the bowl in the sink, I look down and he's rolled to that same tummy that just returned breakfast and I'm thinking first: 'dear lord, please don't puke on your playmat', and second: 'you sure do bounce back quick.  Tough as old boots'.  He's clearly on the fritz and there he is going roly poly.  Pride.

Yet they say WOMEN are confusing.

He is now full of a half bottle of milk and a couple crumbs of rice cake and napping again, the sleepiness the only indication at the moment that he's off piste.  I think he's ok for now but I may just fill that bowl again to be on the safe side.

The real shame of it all?  Unlike a hangover, you can't cure baby sick with bacon.

_____


In other news, this is officially the last day of my maternity leave.  Nine months gone and it's time to enter a new phase of life and get back to work - only part time til year's end, thank god.  I would sink like a boulder if I dived straight in.  Baby steps.  The adult kind.

Our childminder has been selected.  We are getting close to the first full day with her and I'm growing new greys by the minute just thinking about it.  I am feeling melancholy but more than relieved that compressed working hours are on the horizon and Rukai and I will have one weekday together to keep his development on track.  We are on such a roll and seeing that slow - worse, cease - would break me like Uncle Pecos' old guitar string.  Crambone.

To be at this point after an eight months which started in the wilderness, smothered with such worry and concern, now feels a bit like a quiet miracle.

Rukai is coming on still with no issues, firmly at the tail end of normal where milestones are concerned.  Surrounded by about a dozen other kids the other day at baby singsong I saw that he isn't doing anything any differently than they are.  He may be a bit on the late end but by god he's doing it.

He's now rolling over regularly and with ease both ways.  He's grabbing and trying to shake the very color off his toys.  He babbled an accidental mama yesterday which set me alight and raised a flock of butterflies in my own belly.  He is so strong and rambunctious, so tenacious and stubborn.  So much a perfect combination of me and his Daddy it is just untrue.

So today I have stuffed my worry in a cab to Heathrow, checked it in on a flight to Don'tLetTheDoorHitYa and sent it packing.  It may find its way back but in the meantime we three are going somewhere much sunnier.  I'll send a postcard.