Say Baby

He sidles up to me while I work, quiet-like, a sparkle in his slitty eyes.

“Say 'baby'!” He squeals, hugging my arm to his face and giggling. I look down at him and smile despite the interruption.

Eli and I have a running argument. I am trying to get him to give up the bottle. He is digging his heels in, attempting to delay the inevitable.

“You're not a baby anymore, you're a big boy,” I tell him. But he laughs up at me, both with his eyes and his triangular smile, while he squashes his nose into the soft part of my arm, breathing. With big snuffling noises and little growling sounds, he continues to look up at me sideways, wriggling like a frisky puppy, “say 'baby',” he urges.

It is times like these I am hard pressed at denying the very baby-hood of him: the chubby cheeks, the soft plump limbs, the remaining infant scent, and the special sweetness he employs to get his way.

“Mommy! Mommy!” He chirrups.

“Pet-a-poo! Pet-a-poo!” I reply.

But at night, just before bed, when he asks, “Peas...gimme...miiik...”

I tell him: “'Pet, you're a big boy. Big boys don't drink from the bottle.”

He runs to his cupboard and hands me one of his empties, “Miiiiik!” He yells mutinously, “MIIIIIIK!”

And after he drinks his fill, he crawls over to where I am frowning at him in disapproval. “Miss-you, Mommy!” he sing-songs placatingly, “say 'baby'!”

I am tempted to keep the status quo, just to have more of his hugs and squeals and sweet clingy softness, but there is his mouthful of teeth to consider, and I am sorely torn.

In the morning, he reaches over from his bed to feel for my arm, “'morning, Mommy....miss-you! Say 'baby'...”

I look down at him, and he is still half-asleep, but there is a quarter of a smile on his face where the morning sun is beaming, and his fat sausage fingers clutch at my arm as if never wanting to let go.

And neither can I.

Keys

Almost everything I've read about parenting toddlers claims these creatures have short attention spans and are easily distracted. In retrospect, I fear I may have birthed some species of alien life form.

"Keys!" Eli demands adamantly the moment he awakes in the morning. His father sighs and obediently fetches the car keys he has pried from his sleeping son's fist the night before. Complying to this royal edict is the only way we can keep the peace in the mornings.

Eli is into keys big time. Not just any keys. Car keys. What manner of child is this whose obsession has lasted months in the running? We have tried distracting him with shiny bunches of house keys, and the realistic "car" keys that Reader's Digest keeps sending to keep our hopes up about winning that all too elusive fabled-fairy-tale car. Instead of taking the bait like any normal toddler would, Eli throws horrendous tantrums.

"Keys-a-waaancerrrrr!" He screams.

And so we hand him the keys to Atch's ancient Lancer, and he carries them about proudly, clicking occasionally on the remote, alternately locking and unlocking the car doors. If we are lucky, he may condescend to restrain himself from triggering the earsplitting alarm and shattering the quiet calm of the neighborhood.

He takes a dump on his potty, keys in hand. He take his morning and afternoon naps holding them to his chest, as well. Only by dint of will and thousands of ingenious inducements does his nanny succeed in divesting him of them just before bath time.

And during those horrendous couple of days when Atch, without prior permission from his younger son, had the gall and disrespect to take said Lancer to the shop for repainting, we endured Eli's screams and yells until the beloved keys returned with the vehicle attached to it. Afterwards, he spent more than an hour inside the car with them, clicking on the remote with all the speed of a toddler suffering from Parkinson's.

Finally, the day arrived when the batteries ran out, and we beheld our son, in the first of many days to come, waiting with hands outstretched when we arrived from work.

"Keys cwosswind!"

He never even gives us a second glance the moment they are in his grasp. And there they stay all throughout dinner until he falls asleep - car keys to the bank's company car the sole property of one Elijah Raphael Tiples.


We pray fervently each morning before we leave for work, that he restrains himself from giving in to the impulse to hide them, just like he did the first few times, causing Atch and I to turn the apartment upside down in frantic search.

They never believed me at work the first few times I was late. I hardly believe it, either.

No Salvation

...and sometimes I drown in words, my eyes blank with acceptance as I sink into their depths. They fill my nose and my mouth and my mind until I cannot breathe and I cannot think. But I do not struggle as I slowly submerge. For this is my fate, and there is no salvation...

February

Early morning. I am getting some work done at the computer. Eli is behind me, gliding on his scooter. Woog is at the toaster, performing his morning chore of crisping the breakfast bread. Suddenly, just when I am attempting to extricate myself from an awkward turn of phrase, Eli screams loud, long, and piercingly. I turn around, ready to tell him off for crying at the drop of a hat again, but I see something that makes my blood run cold.

Woog, for some reason only known to him, has placed the butter knife inside the oven toaster and touches its red hot tip to his brother's arm. Eli's face is purple, and he is losing his breath with his screams. The rage that comes over me is inexplicable. I grab hold of the butter knife and whap Woog on the bicep, broadside. That the knife is still hot escapes my notice as I glare at him from a red film of fury. It is only when he squeals and claps a hand to his arm do I realize what I have done.

I grab my crying boys and lead them to the nearest faucet, spraying water every which way. Atch comes downstairs, demanding the cause of the racket. When he sees the raised blistering skin of his wailing sons, none of my words can pierce through his anger. He looms over me, a stranger with hard fists.

He takes hold of his first-born's arm with tears of wrath in his eyes, “this,” he accuses me “is how he will remember you by - the monster who burned him.”

I am a mother. I am a monster. The four of us stare at each other, crying. Above us, the clock ticks ever onward to my doom.

February

The days are slow in passing, and so is the depression. The word “monster” has burned its way into my mind, like a hot brand of accusation. Already, it has made its rounds within the family, and although no one speaks it out loud

“monster...”

I see the word in their eyes

“monster...”

shining like beacons to mock my dark.

“monster...”

Only my hurt sons continue to cling to me, allowing me to smooth my apologies into their burnt skin like I do their ointment.

“monster!”

February

I am a devourer of books. I stow away in frigates and sail to far-off places in my bid to escape the world I am in. I flee my unpardonable sins. I take flight from the disillusionment in my husband's eyes. I turn tail from the unbearable people I work with each day. I am constantly on the lam from this encompassing depression. But more importantly, it is because I seek desperately to evade the glistening pink and white scar that gazes piteously up at me from Woog's arm.

William Goldman, Gail Carson Levine, Audrey Niffeneger, Annette Curtis Klause. I jump into bed with them, one after the other. Diana Gabaldon, Neil Gaiman, Cornelia Funke, Christopher Paolini, Stephenie Meyer. If they offer trilogies or novels in a series, I pursue them ever more relentlessly. In the space of two months, I have buried myself alive in 15 books.

I look up and blink around me in surprise. I find that I am in need of new glasses.

Valentine's Day

I open my eyes. Atch bends over me with a kiss and a card in his hand. The card thanks me for seven fruitful years together. Happy Valentine's Day, Aifee.

Over lunch, I hie over to his office with a gift of my own. “Here you go, fruitful,” I tell him, setting a colorful fruit compote down on his desk, “Happy Valentine's Day.”

I am constantly stuffing his lunch bag with fruits and vegetables, and with good reason. He has finally quit smoking in December, and I am insanely proud of him. Food has become a compensation for the loss of his poison sticks, and he gorges himself at every opportunity. Between the both of us, after the holidays, we have gained a good three hundred tons.

Happy Valentine's Day. He sends me off with an ardent one-sided embrace. It is the only way we can hug these days. Our bulging bellies are in the way.

February

M/V Doulos sails into our part of the backwater. A real ship. Filled with books and books and more books. The last time she was here, Eli was a toothless infant with no neck. I tell the boys about her wondrous innards, and pretty soon they are badgering their Tatay to bring them on board.

“I want to go to Doulos,” Woog nags.

“Chip, ride chip!” Eli chortles.

Resigned, Atch takes his family to the port where we feast our eyes on this seafaring missionary vessel just two years Titanic's junior.

On board, the whole city it seems, is neck and elbow amongst shelves upon shelves of books. We sweat freely while the boys dump their choice of reading material into my arms.

I am surreptitiously returning a Spanish-version Scooby-Doo board book back on a shelf when Atch hands me five cd's, his idea of digestible literature. “We're going to get ice cream, Aif,” he says before taking his sweaty self and both his sweaty sons out to the commissary, leaving me to pay for our purchases.

On the way home, it dawns on me that all I have gotten for myself is a mid-sized thesaurus and a book of household cleaning tips. No matter. I have given my boys the gift of words, and it will see them through for years to come.

Not Much Difference Really

Panic. Panic. Panic.

Woog is moaning underneath the blankets. Clutching them up to his chin. Curled into himself like a shrimp. Shivering, burning, shivering.

Mom. Sniffle. Mom, my head is dizzy. My feet are cold. Mom. Mom.

Thirty-five years does not prepare you for the sight and sound of your son's first full-blown fever-chill. Not when the Biogesic fails to work. Or the cool sponge bath. Or the glasses of water. Or the two layers of blankets, one of which is thicker than his tongue.

Panic. Panic. Panic. Should I call an ambulance?

Eli is looking at his mother in wonder. She is fluttering about like a headless chicken. Totally useless female. He clambers up on the bed and tries to warm his brother by leaping upon the bundled-up febrile form. Maybe all Woog needs is a good romp to start him sweating again.

Ooomphff. Mom. Eli is bothering me. Go away, Eli.

Leave Manong Woog alone! He's sick!

'Tick, Eli says. 'Tick! 'Doog 'tick!

Mom, my bones are owwie. Mom.

I could give him a massage. Accupressure-something. Where did I read that?

I rummage through the medicine box, hunting for the ever-reliable cure-all. My bottle of Polar Bear. That menthol-eucalyptus essential embrocation that has seen us through headaches and toothaches, mosquito bites and back pain, clogged noses and sore throats. It will help Woog's owwie bones, at the very least.

But it is missing. I upend the medicine box on the bed. Gone. Who had it last? I rack my useless brains.

Oh! Woog did. For his asthma. I run to the adjoining room and start pawing through Woog's baskets.

Panic. Panic. Panic. Oh, my poor fevered and shivering son.

Woog! Where did you put the Polar Bear, I call, still ransacking through his well-ordered belongings. Woog! I yell louder, fear making my voice hoarse. Where is the Polar Bear?

Footsteps thundering on the floorboards behind me. Eli.

He lifts up his worried eyes and offers me:

Bear, he says, bear.

He is handing me Blue Bear. His comfort plushie of choice. Bear, he says again, gifting me with a frown of anxiety and his most precious possession.

I am nonplussed. I can hear Woog in the other room. Laughing, shivering, laughing.

Oh, 'Pet.

I gather Eli and Blue Bear in my arms, the object of my quest forgotten. Woog is still laughing hysterically in between bouts of shudders. I start to laugh, too.

Bear, Eli declares adamantly. He hands the toy to his brother, who is too bundled-up to reach out, and too shaken up with mirth to take it.

Eli eyes the laughing lunatics. Perhaps this is an inside joke, he thinks. If it is, he doesn't get it. But he starts to laugh anyway. If you don't get 'em, join 'em. The one who laughs last, and all that...

Our laughter subsides to snickers more than half an hour later. My panic subsides with it.

Woog is fever-free the next morning, and decides to do a whole day TV-thon. All is well with the world. Eli and Blue Bear with it.

Not much difference really

Finally

Siesta Hour

October.

He wouldn't sleep. Not even to close his eyes and be still. He had began to yawn, but still he preferred to sit up and talk in single-word mono-syllables, ride giddy-up on piled-up pillows, and burrow under the blankets like a green-and-orange flowered ghost.

I pleaded and cajoled, scolded and screeched. I fabricated stories of red-eyed furry creatures with long sharp teeth that would burst from the windows and swallow noisy sleepless children whole. But siesta hour was fast approaching its zenith, and not a single grain from the sandman's potent arsenal had found its way into this little boy's eyes.

I was sleepy and irritable. Manong Woog, also sleepy and irritable, had scrunched into a tight ball at one corner of the bed by the wall, protecting his tenders from energetic kicks and overly enthusiastic toddler tackles. In spite of the air-conditioning, in spite of the sweetly drugging sleepy-weepy music on the cd player, in spite of my rhythmic patting of his plump thigh, Eli remained wired on the adrenalin of his very youth.

Frustrated beyond all reason, I seized about for something substantial to throw at his shrieking, bouncing self and I chanced upon Goofy, one of the stuffed animals that had taken permanent residence on his bed. Goofy stared back at me with such insufferable dumbness, sure of his place in the face of my son's sleeplessness that a red un-motherly rage shut down all sense of reason.

In front of my happy frolicking son, I started to violently slap Goofy's face. Left and right. Left and right. All the while shouting: “You horrid little dog! I'm mad at you! Mad! Go to sleep, now!”

Not content, I grabbed hold of Alligator, an ancient 3-foot relic dating back from my own childhood. I stretched poor Alligator's mouth wide by two of his remaining chicklet teeth and yelled at his soft green non-ear: “Set a good example, you %^&*@ ! Close your eyes and go to sleep! You're keeping Manong Woog awake!”

Pooh with his yellow belly fat was not spared the force of my wrath, neither was Mr. Monkey or Barney or Blue Bear. I was on a roll, vaguely aware that Eli had gone very still in the middle of the chaos of pillows and piles of blankets.

I seized Goofy on my return trip, ready for another lambasting rerun, but Eli snatched him back from my grasp with a whimper. His eyes were swimming in unshed tears and his lower lip a 5-kilo piece of blubber whose ends were quivering downwards to his collarbone. Sniffling, he crushed Goofy to his chest and gathered the rest of his stuffed menagerie closer about him. He was asleep in two point four seconds.

Behind me, Woog gave a hearty sigh of relief as he settled in for some deep slumber of his own.

Gazing at my sleeping sons, I debated whether I did the right thing. I may have solved the problem at hand, but the long-term consequences might very well translate to an adult Eli spending long hours on his therapist's couch trying to rid himself of the replaying images of his mother's stuffed animal abuse.

But then again, didn't I just teach him the value of empathy?

Feeling better about myself – after a fashion – my own sweet siesta hour began.

Zzzz-zzzz.

Toddler Tales 2

These days, it seems, most members of the family have been seeking their own little spaces of alone time. The patches of inner peace that we find during various times of the day are our way of dealing with the chaos surrounding us, particularly the chaos emanating from a two-and-a -half foot tall shrill and belligerent dynamo, whose painfully imposing presence, it seems, has started to take a toll on all of us.


They say the Terrible Two's are one of nature's ways of ensuring that our sins against our own parents are equitably balanced by the magnitude of tantrums thrown by our children. If this is to be believed, than it may very well be the combined weight of our filial iniquities that have amassed in a roiling dark cloud over our Eli's head, breaking into storm-tacular extravaganzas at an average, it seems, of 30 minutes or so.


As Woog is won't to say, in the lyrics of his favorite Queen, “...thunderbolts and lightning, very very frightning....”


“.....Meeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeh......!” Eli seques, calling to mind the unending siren-screams of the alien-infected in Invasion of the Body Snatchers. It seems we are living in an audio version of the movie, with our baby's glass breakers calling forth the same kind of goosebumps.


*shudder*


We suppose he would be that kind of a baby, being not only the coddled youngest, but also unable to harness the wealth of words that had come so easily to Woog so many years before. Whereas Woog was lisping complete paragraphs at age two, Eli can claim only one complete sentence to his name: “Oh no!”


This frustrated inability to express himself effectively may have great bearing on this constant rearing of his temper. That and his persistent constipation that has resisted formula changes, a high-fiber diet, and sippy cups full of prune juice, ending with a final violent struggle to insert a suppository.


It would seem his frequent tantrums are his way of expelling the emotional waste his nether orifice cannot. In any case, it has put quite a damper on all our efforts at toilet training:


Eli (squats in a corner): Mush!


Mom (hurries toward him with the potty): Sit here, 'Pet, not on your diapy.


Eli (scuttles further into the corner): Oh no!



And so, between bouts of soothing him, distracting him, extending our stretched-to-the-limits tolerance, and flat-out ignoring him, we are forced to escape into realms of our own making: Atch relaxing outside with the neighborhood toughies taffys, smoking poison sticks and downing a shot or two; Woog assembling complicated Megabloc structures with his eyes glued on Pokemon at full volume, and Eli's mom in front of her blog, waiting for the moment when tiny rays of sunshine decide to shine through her younger son’s rain.

Toddler Tales

"Conversations" with my son:

(Back home from church)

Mom: 'Pet, let Mom change your clothes so we can go down for lunch.

Eli: Bag!




















Mom: Let's go, 'pet. Tatay's waiting downstairs. He cooked us some yummy soup.

Eli: Bag! Bag!




















Mom: Give Mom the bag please, you can play with it after lunch.

Eli: Oh no!




















Mom: Elijah....

Eli: Baaaaaaaaaag!




















Mom takes the bag away. All hell breaks loose.

*****


(5:00 in the morning. Before the sun.)

Eli: Kiss!

(proceeds to plant several damp smooches on various body parts)

Mom: *mumble-mumble*

Eli: Hug!

(drapes his heavy legs and prodigious tummy over his mother's neck)

Mom: 'Pet... *mumble-mumble* ...Mommy's still sleepy. Go back to your bed. *mumble-mumble* Sleep some more.

Eli: (puts his finger to his lips) Shhhhhh.....Shhhhh....Shhhhhh....

(two point five seconds later.....)

Eli: Kiss! Hug!

*****


(At the breakfast table during Monday morning rush.)

Eli: Deeeenk! (points to Manong Woog's chocolate milk)

Manong Woog obligingly pours some of his milk into Eli's plastic elephant cup.

Eli: No! Deeenk! Deeenk! (ignores his cup and makes a grab for Manong Woog's ceramic mug)

Woog, aided by the memory of his brother flinging one of Mom's precious porcelain coffee cups to the floor, spirits his mug away to safety. All hell breaks loose.

*****


(Last few minutes before school and work commute. Shined shoes are laid out in a row.)

Eli: Shus!

(takes off his slippers and slips into Tatay's shoes. )

*clomp-clomp-clomp*

Eli: Shus!

Yaya: Eli, no. Take off Tatay's shoes. Tatay will get mad.

Eli: No! No! No! Shus!

*clomp-clomp-clomp*

Yaya tries to offer him his own shoes.

Eli: No! No! No!

He crouches on all fours and sticks like a gecko on the floor, but Tatay comes over, gives him a kiss and relieves him of his borrowed footwear. All hell breaks loose.

*****


(Nighttime, post-bath. )

Mom: Ok, 'pet, time for your jammies. Let Mom put them on.

Eli: Oh no!

Mom: Look, it's the one with the trucks and cars! Vrrroooom-vrrrrooom!

Eli: No! No!

Mom: It's cold, 'pet. You can't sleep in your diapies. Your tummic will hurt.

Eli: (resisting all efforts to be carried) No! No! No! Noooooooo!















Mom puts on her angry face. All hell breaks loose.

*****

A Toddler's Birthday Tantrum

Look at you, Pet-a-poo. Crying your eyes out. Mommy tries to snap a picture of you on this night of your second birthday, but all you want to do is grapple the camera away from her. Tears are coursing down your miserable face, and runners of snot are dripping down your nose.


Do let up, 'pet. It's your birthday.


This morning you woke us up inhumanly early, raining kisses down on random body parts and grounding your chin down where you kissed. You left us groaning and ill-tempered on this blessed dawn while you chuckled and burrowed through the blankets and bared our warm limbs to the too cool morning air.


Tatay finally got up and asked you if you wanted to go for a ride. "Come!" You squealed, lifting your arms up imperioiusly. Manong Woog roused himself too, and the three of you left Mommy in peaceful blissful sleep.


Downstairs you continued to shriek, "Car! Brooom-brooom! Go....go!" Mommy had hopes that Tatay would bring you to Church for a birthday prayer, but he brought you to the market to buy coffee instead. In your 'jamies. With a full to bursting diapy.


(Doesn't matter to Tatay where he brings you, or what state he brings you in. As long as he gets his supply of heady caffeine, then all is right with the world).


But you are happy and you come home excited from your foray into the realm of native coffee beans, chattering incoherently to the neighbors about your grand adventure. And then not a few hours later, we leave for work and school, and you are in tears again. Poor 'pet. Bewildered each day as your nearest and dearest abandon you for long stretches of time. No wonder you are in a constant itch to go out and explore.


Look at you now. Night has fallen and you are in your 'jamies again. Your universe has shrunk to a minute space where you and Mommy engage in a tug-of-war with the camera. You are wailing piteously, turning your face up into the sky as if to ask, why? Why do I have to suffer such injustice? You look exactly the way you did two years ago at this exact same time: a yowling bundle of pug nose and fish lips, inconsolable at being pulled out from your warm watery home.

Poor 'pet. You are channeling your newly two-year-old self in a tantrum of great dimensions. Your own personal version of picketing at the roadside with a huge placard of protest for being left at home.


If only I can make you understand why we have to go away to work each day. And as I try to explain, you reject each placating offer of Tatay's laser pointer, a story book, and Manong Woog's fancy red ruler. Tatay finally puts Enya on and I twirl you around to Orinocco Flow. You settle down then, head deep in my shoulder, arms holding me tight. Music to soothe the savage beast. You have missed me, it seems, but never more so than I.


I hand you over to Tatay and you dance with him too, a sliver of a smile peeking from your lips and flaring your too damp nose. We wish things were different, that we could spend whole days with you as you grow. But for now we settle for waltzing away your hurt and sulk. Anything to put a smile on your face again.

Ah, good. You are laughing once more, shaking your hands to a Celtic beat. But you keep your arms tight around our necks, unwilling to let go. For now.

Because you are newly two and we are your whole world. It would be nice to keep it that way for as long as we can.

Happy birthday, 'pet.

Just so you know. You are our whole world, too.

In Tribute to Philip Pullman's Lantern Slides *

Woog, arguing hotly over the phone about why he isn't allowed to watch tv while eating his lunch. It is 2 PM and he has been home from school for over two hours. This is his mother's second check-up call and lunch does not seem to be on the radar of his consciousness. He is complaining about Yaya not giving in to his request for a piece of toasted bread smeared heavily in butter. For lunch. His mother tries not to lose her temper, instead suggests he wait...just wait...for his father to call. She hangs up the phone gently in the middle of his whining protests, and puts her head between her hands. In front of her, some puzzled clients spare her glances of pity and consternation.

Yaya Rose, returning from retirement, much to everyone's surprise. She has just turned 18. A year before, she quit her post as Woog and Eli's nanny, bowing to the dictates of her father. But poverty and her father's need for liquor found her seeking employment once more, and for a time she was nanny to Woog's cousin next door. For pretty much the same reasons, her father's whims sent her packing for home again. Now, she is pleading to be taken back, and she cannot meet anyone's eyes. How many children like her are forced, by poverty and feudalistic-minded parents, to come down from the hinterlands and seek work in the cities?

Dondi, reclining in bed. She is dead tired and her limbs are stiff. She asks for a backrub and her husband willingly complies. He gets behind her, and for a time, all is silent as he kneads at tight muscles. But he has other motives in mind, and he begins to grope and pinch where no groping and pinching are needed. Dondi is frustrated beyond all reason. To add to her sorrow, Eli demands her attention by jumping up on her aching thighs and doing an unsteady bruising cha-cha.

Eli, sitting on his father's lap. The overhead light glares at an ugly purple knot on his forehead. He has been pushing a footstool across the floor again, running to evade his Yaya's grasp. In his haste to escape, he has collided with the hardwood arm of the sectional sofa, and raised a bump the size of Mount Kanlaon. There is a scratch underneath his right eye where he has scrubbed furiously away at his tears. His mother tries to figure out why he ignores his toys, and prefers instead to forcefully upend chairs and shove them around by their upraised legs.

Dondi, late at night. She is slack-jawed in front of the computer and wondering how some people manage to post updates on more than one blog Every. Single. Day. This after clocking in more than 10 hours at their day job, or attending to a houseful of their tantruming snot-faced children. Perhaps they spend the whole day walking around in Compose Mode? She wonders if she will ever have an uninterrupted slice of time without the baby slamming his palms on the keyboard while clamoring to be carried (“Up! Up!”), or the older son needing help with his homework. She knows she can ill-afford to lose out on more sleep, lest her zombiefied self cause the menfolk to complain about being late for next day's school and work. She sits at the computer and stares, clueless. On the wall above her, the clock strikes midnight.


* Philip Pullman, ending each of His Dark Materials trilogy with vignettes of stories lurking behind stories: lantern slides. Dondi looks forward to reading his Lyra's Oxford and is eagerly awaiting the release of The Book of Dust. She speculates on whether Lyra and Will ever see each other again, and fervently hopes Pullman doesn't sue her for borrowing heavily from his literary style.

Slices of Sunday I

It is another of those power-interrupted days when the city's electric cooperative has magnanimously decided to do maintenance work on our neighborhood's power lines during these last few scorching days of summer. And so Sunday finds us at my parents' house for lunch and siesta.

Woog is asleep. Atch is asleep. Eli is giggling with my father in a generations-old kick-ass tickling game called Pong-Pong-Piyadong. I am in my mom's storage shed out back, looking through dusty cobwebby memories of my childhood.

Eli screams. Long, loud and piercingly.

I run back inside, ready to hurl frightened angry accusatory words at my father, but he is cradling my sobbing son in his arms, and those words die a guilty death at my throat. Eli has made mushi.

I lay him down on the couch and change his diaper, wincing at the sight of his marble-hard turds. In his easy chair, my Tatay wrinkles his nose over a cup of coffee.

Eli whimpers. I thrust Optimus Prime at him and he is instantly engrossed, silent. My poor baby son is the unfortunate recipient of the hard-bowel malady that has plagued countless ancestors from both sides of his family. It is an ailment that has so far eluded capture, through countless formula and diet changes, and futile attempts at toilet training.

It is excruciating to watch, this process of voiding his bowels. He finds a nice quiet corner and squats on one fat haunch, lifting the other cheek into the air to create a pocket of space. And then the pushing comes. His face turns red, he sweats rivers, and his legs tremble with the effort. He grunts and groans and gives birth to dark awesome monstrosities while the air is filled with his ululating cries.

Sometimes we ply him with prune juice. Other times, his poor abused behind is speaklessly violated with a suppository. Always, it is an agonizing time for him. Except during his good days, when from out of nowhere, he tugs at my leg, pats his heavily sagging diapered bottom, and proudly announces, “Done.”

Today is not one of his good days. And together, we feel his pain.

Running Late

Delays are a thing of my life. I remember being part of a team of fellow tardy students who scrubbed, swept and dusted the faculty room at my old high school. Our punishment for being perenially late for the 7 a.m. bell. I learned a thing or two about housework, though. Something no one taught me at home.

In college, I was housed in an in-campus dorm, about a couple of minutes away from most of the classrooms. I was late everyday, too. My thesis was late, and as a consequence, so was my graduation. It was the same for every job I held down, and I got by on the skin of my teeth. Must have very pretty teeth. Most people seemed disarmed by my smile (except Atch, he has bigger teeth than I do).

Life started to change after marriage, what with a seargent-at-arms of a husband harrying me through the day. Thanks to him, I cut a bathroom record for 3 minutes per bath. Shampooing and moisturizing included. I can sweep and wax the upstairs floors in 30 minutes flat, with him hollering nonstop for me to come down to breakfast. I am now an hour early for work each day, with enough time for me to put on my make-up, de-hair my armpits and legs, and get way way ahead of my workday schedule. He's been able to teach me some things in my old age, this man of mine.

But delays are making their intrusive way into the fabric of my existence once more, like an addiction worming its way back into my skin. Only it's not my skin I'm bothered about, its Eli's. I worry about the state of his development. That is, his lack of it.

Not that there's anything the matter with his physical growth, he's as sturdy as an ox and has a belly pushing out in front of him like Friar Tuck after downing a barrel of mead. His meaty arms often choke the breath from my stringy neck, and if the ceiling thunders overhead, one can be sure he is trotting on the floorboards upstairs on a quest for something or other.

Catching rain from the downspout

But still I worry. Eli is pushing two and has yet to conquer the language barrier. He says “up”, and “go”, and “car”, “piss” (please) and “ta-ta” (thank you), “kich” (kiss) and “ugg” (hug) and “ba-ba” (bye-bye), but that's about all there is to it. To get something he wants, he'll point to the object of desire and go “Mmmm?!”.

Parenting websites tell me that all babies develop at their own pace. But Woog's mouth was running on lispy sentence fragments at this stage. I know I shouldn't compare (Bad mommy! Bad mommy!) .... but still.

Also, for no reason in particular, he's developed a great dislike for his potty, and nothing we do will make him sit on it willingly. He's on XXL diapies now, but with the size of his butt and the volume of his expulsions, we'll have to think about getting him size small adult diapers soon.

Gathering leaves

Most toddlers his age are sleeping through the night. Not this little monster. In the dead of sleep, when we are well into r.e.m., he climbs into our bed: “Up!” he explains unapollogetically, “up!”, and he knees us on the belly and elbows us on the nose, until he has found that precise position between us, with his head against my ribs and his feet on his father's face. At around this time, we are groaning and cursing, while “Up...” he sighs blissfully, falling back to sleep.

We have tried plunking him back on his bed, he simply finds his way back up again. Rather than go through this exhausting repetitive cycle for the rest of the night, our sleep deprived selves have decided to let him be. Surely, he'll grow out of it. It's a decade or so before he becomes a teenager. Not too long a wait.

Too, at 20 months, his temper tantrums have reared their ugly head. Taking just one wheel off its axles from his offroader jeep isn't enough for him, no. He has to remove the remaining three tires, as well. And it's all our fault that the vehicle is a little too well made for him to discombobulate. So SCREAM, SCREECH, YOWL, SHRIEK you! Same goes for the square-block-that-won't-fit-into-the-round-hole puzzle box, or the plastic hanger that won't hook into the closet handle. HOOOWWWL!

What do you do about a toddler who insists on being carried, all 500 tons of him, until he warms up to the new day, or leaves whatever cobwebs he has woken up with behind? Or an almost two-year-old who shies away from new people, is terrified by the kiddie rides at the mall, and hollers blue murder at the modiste trying to take his barong measurement for his aunt's impending wedding (assuming he'd consent to wear one)?

Hiding inside Mom's closet

Except that at 5 A.M., before you even want to think of getting up, he is draping his heavy barrel chest on you, asking for his “kich”, and wetly smothering your face with a combination of “ooombwah's” and the new smacking sounds he has just recently learned to make. And after you'd make some sleepy grunt of acknowledgement, he'd press the point of his chin on your cheek or arm or shoulder, and dig and wiggle down until you are wide awake. Then and only then, will he demand an “ugg”, and give you one of his own without even waiting for your reply.

“Who's my sweet little fat little gwapo little baby?” I'd ask him. “'Ah-jah!” (Elijah) he'd squeal, tapping his chest proudly.

Delays? Was I talking about delays?