I'm baaaa---aaaack.

Dude.  I had to go and have another friggin' baby and now I'm back in the business of drinking box wine and so here I am.

Here's a picture of the baby I had.  I actually like this one.  The baby, not necessarily the picture, since he's being all DickCheneySerious.

Let me clarify:  I loved (love) the other baby I had too, but I wasn't at a point in my life where I could like him.  Sorry, but it's true.  Now that he's five, it's easier.

It doesn't help that he (the older one) is just so very intense and that other one up there in the blue chair is so easy and laid back. 

I paid $81.94 for a woman to follow me out in a field and snap these photos.  She hasn't sent all of them to me yet, but I have a feeling it's gonna end up breaking my credit card hiatus.

I mostly did it (hired a professional photographer) on account of my mother bitching about how I don't have any portraits of the children and me.  She wanted one of me in a white flowing gown cradling the baby and hugging the big one.  She wanted them to be wearing smocked fucking outfits. 

Well, this is the best I could do.  We just aren't white gown/smocked outfit people.  My cousin is.  Let her wear the damn gown and embarrass her children. 

We are overalls-wearing, outdoorsy types people.  Give or take.

So, when my mother saw these, I wasn't surprised that her only comment was, "Oh.  Well look at y'all out in the weeds."

I guess they are weeds, but the photographer and I actually liked the idea of long, unruly grass.  It's probably a nice parallel to my hair and my parenting style.

Truth be told, I'm not crazy about all this artsy, ain't-that-sweet stuff.  I really just wanted to get good close-up shots of the kids, but then I thought maybe I should get in one or two myself ... and look what happened.

I wanted her to capture the sweetness of siblings before they get older and it gets ugly.  I am exceedingly happy that my children have siblings.  I never had that and wanted it.  Now I can watch them have it and probably -- within a couple years -- figure out why it's overrated. 

Oh well.  What isn't overrated these days?  I mean, besides chemotherapy, people have a habit of making most aspects of their lives out to be either overly miserable or beautiful.  It's so easy to fashion ourselves into shitty or whole or holy or whatever ... pretty much at will.  I mean, as long as your status update on Facebook has a few "LOLs" on it, who cares, right?

LOL!

Seriously though.

This baby has given me a whole new perspective on things and unfortunately it's a whole new ability to fathom the possibility of loss. I know that most moms hover over their babies like fog, checking to see if they're breathing, making sure they don't have any weird stuff in their ears.

But I never could get there with my first baby. I was never able to settle enough to just breathe. Or even sniff his ears for funk. It was all I could do to get through the day and night with him. B would go and check on him and I'd be lying there in the dark thinking that there were two possible and horrible outcomes to all of this incessant checking:

1) He'd wake the fucking baby.
2) He'd discover the baby wasn't breathing.

And in my crazy, hormonal, fucked-up, post-partum mind, I disliked both of these outcomes with an almost equal fervor. I'd lie there thinking, "If he wakes that baby I'll kill him, but if the worst is true, shouldn't we at least get the luxury of facing that fact having had a good night's sleep?"

Sick.

But this baby is different. The caretaking is the same ... I nurse the baby, change the baby, speak Ridiculous-ese to the baby, bathe the baby, swaddle the baby, put the baby to bed ... but somehow ... amidst all that ... I am awash in contentment and gratitude and excessive fear.

Last night, at 3 a.m., I woke up in a sweat, convinced that the house was too hot, the swaddle was too tight, the baby was too dead.

Then he cried out. So I brought him to my bed to nurse but became maddened by the temperature, by the husband who had turned up the thermostat before going to bed, by my desire to have this baby, this precious, perishable treasure. By mortality.

I put the sleeping baby back in his crib and woke husband.  He used some shit we learned in marriage counseling several years ago:  "I hear you saying that you're really hot, so I believe that you are really hot, but it's cool outside, and it's cool in here."

"But the baby," I say.  "He's on his stomach, half swaddled, and the temperature ... it should be between 68 and 72 and it's not.  It's 76.8.  I checked."

"Kim, I know you're hot.  But just take off your clothes and uncover yourself and get a drink of water."

He doesn't know how boobs leak, how I love the weight of covers, how many drinks of water I've already taken.  He doesn't get how the baby is in serious danger, four feet away in his crib.

So I get up, fetch a wet washcloth and a cup of ice water.  Another cup of ice water.  I take off the pajamas, climb into bed, and bathe myself with the washcloth, trying to put out the fires.

And it works.  Sleep calls me; the baby doesn't.  And that combination lulls me into a dream about a mommy friend ... in the dream she has six pianos (two baby grands) and uses them only to play hide and seek with her three daughters, who have all been baptized.

Neither of my children have been baptized.

What if that shows a lack of gratitude? 

The baby calls me and I go.  Now it's 6:30 a.m., and the automatic coffee pot is perking.  I get the baby and take him with me to grab a cup and, hopefully, a lesson.