Easily Dunn

June 30th, 2011

my life in lomography.

June 29th, 2011

…this would be tuesday.

7ish: roll my ass out of bed. don the old rose robe. open windows, light candles, burn incense. get B’s breakfast ready.

7:24 AM: B is up and decides to let the entire neighborhood know. he eats lots of food and then plays in his gym, tries to crawl, attacks Stella, and lunges for the guitars.

8 AM: alex is working from home. make minty hot chocolate while alex gives me a lot of shit about it. I harass him until he begins to consider a restraining order. he concedes defeat and retreats to his office. I clean a lot of dishes and general squalor because it just wasn’t going to happen the night before. and I water the plants and feed the animals and other important House Manager tasks.

9:32 AM: B goes down for a nap. I shower, harass alex, answer e-mails, blog, and pack up orders for the shop.

11:47 AM: B wakes up, a little more subtly this time, and we head out to run errands and go to the post office to ship out some orders. B flirts with every lady that comes within 10 feet.

1:53 PM: We get home, B goes down for another nap and I eat some cheese and crackers. I keep harassing alex.

3:00 PM: B wakes up and we have his photo shoot and snuggle on the floor. We go downstairs and he scoots around the house in his jeep.

5:00 PM: I start dinner. Alex takes Corona for a run. B steals all the dishtowels and scoots away. Alex gets back, B eats and goes to bed. Then we edit photos, do some blogging, and drink wine. I then continue to harass alex in my sleep.

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June 29th, 2011

The suckiest night actually took place on a Sunday, but the story starts on a Saturday.

Leave it to my child to cut every tooth in his gummy little mouth at the same exact time. So all last week he was sad and clawing at his mouth and mostly miserable. But not insufferable, and not crying, just not smiling and laughing non stop like usual. So Saturday night rolls around and Mema and PopPop want to have a sleepover because they missed their Wednesday hang out night that week and I knew they missed him and I missed alone time with Husband. So. We drop B off, get him ready for bed, eat dinner, everything is just fine and we leave. B gives me the look and I cry and shortly after he falls asleep.

Ok. So B is sleeping. And sleeping and sleeping and sleeping per usual. Except this time he craps in the middle of the night. But he doesn’t wake up. So he just has a poopy diaper and he’s sleeping, whatever. EXCEPT when babies cut teeth it changes the acidity of their poo. So B has this skin-burning-acid-poop in his diaper wrecking havoc on his little butt. So he finally wakes up at 5 AM. And to Mema’s horror B has diaper rash for the first time ever. And not just any diaper rash. Acid burn diaper rash. So naturally, he cries like any normal person would just recently having their butt burned with acid poo. He calms down and falls back asleep. And then I come over to get him. And he’s fine. I change a couple diapers, get sick to my stomach when I see the rash, but so far so good. I write a 10 page proposal while B naps. Awesome Sunday. So far.

There’s something that should be made perfectly clear about B. He loves to sleep. And he loves to be scared…surprised, fake-dropped, that kind of thing. But under no circumstances will he tolerate being startled in his sleep. BOUNDRIES HAVE BEEN CROSSED.

So B wakes up screaming bloody murder, I run to him, hold him, change him, kiss him. And nothing’s working. Nothing. This has never happened before. He doesn’t calm down until we get into the car where he quite happily looks out the window and talks to himself in the mirror. We go to the grocery store. Not a peep. We come home. He runs around in his walker, blissed-out chasing Stella. Great. I put away groceries. He scoots his little diaper-rash ass into the kitchen. I turn around. We make eye contact. And all hell breaks loose.

He’s screaming and clawing and gasping and red and oh shit oh shit oh shit. I try to feed him food and he doesnt want it. I make him a bottle and put him in the bath tub. Water distracts him for like maybe a minute. But I’m optimistic. And that was a bad choice. The second, and I mean the exact second, I got him out of the tub he freaked out in ways I did not know possible. Like he was in unimaginable pain. And It hurt my heart and my ears and my skin and my stomach to hear it. My hands shook. And I held him and there was nothing I could do. He wanted me to make it stop, to make this foreign pain go away, and the longer I was unable to make it better, the harder he cried. He wouldn’t sleep. He wouldn’t eat. He thrashed around in my arms screaming and crying and hurting. I ran him to the car and drove aimlessly until he fell asleep. I carefully pulled him from the car seat, up the stairs, and as soon as his head touched the mattress his red puffy eyes opened and he started screaming all over again. Alex came. We tried the chamomile, we tried the bourbon, we tried more singing and rocking, cuddling and kisses, until finally Alex kicked me out of the nursery…because every single time his little eyes met mine, he realized I couldn’t make him better and he screamed louder.

But I physically could not stay away. I sank into a corner with a pillow over my face and before I could even take a breath, I was back in his room. Nothing, nothing could have kept me away. I put him back in the car seat and we took another drive. For 20 unbearable minutes he didn’t calm down. I thought of taking him to the hospital…something just wasn’t right. And then the cries came a little softer, a little less urgent, until for the second time that night he fell asleep. But I kept driving. For an hour we wandered the streets of our tiny little town until all the hysteric thoughts of internal bleeding and broken toes had finally abandoned my head.

And I brought him back to his room and layed him down. I kissed his forehead and sat in the dark of his room in the perfect silence until I was certain it was over.

And that was the suckiest night. That’s what she said.

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June 28th, 2011

you reach for me now. when you’re not in my arms, you want to be and you twist your little body to face me as if I were your sun. you fell asleep on my chest twice this week, fingers clutching my arms, my sides, my neck, and I could feel your breathing on my skin…warm and rhythmic and perfect. and with this greater awareness of your mother came a greater awareness of your self, brought on, I think, by truly feeling pain for the first time, raw and relentless and overwhelming. I can only equate it to the day I had you…the pain I felt as our bodies began to be violently separated from one another did things to my mind that made me intrinsically aware of every facet of myself…and the further I dove into that person to survive the war that was raging inside, the more that person felt like a stranger, someone I had never met before. This morning we caught you holding your mirror in your hands, holding it to every possible angle, big eyes staring back at you as if you had never seen yourself before. As if you were new. As if for the first time you acknowledged your own existence, your own identity…someone of significance and no longer just my baby.

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June 28th, 2011

follow me on instagram @easilydunn

I promise an obnoxious amount of photos (mostly of B), occasional captions, and repetitive use of the same filters.

cross my heart.

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June 27th, 2011

you guys.

YOU GUYS.

I found Elvis.

and thus began his recent adventures.

ELVIS from Jamie Dunn on Vimeo.

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June 27th, 2011

black clouds. gray sunlight. candles. raindrops. moving boxes. crystal doorknobs. south tampa. dirty floors. happy baby. daiquiris. walking alone. dragonflies. broken bricks. nesting cranes. early morning stroller derbies. sitting on the stairs. soccer and beer. proposals and paperwork. sunsets on fire. crying and driving…crying and driving…crying and driving.

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