singing this through contractions:
and assembling this in between them:
…and wishing I had more cereal. or ice cream. or both.
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*alex sent me the video. after years of single handedly crushing my spirit by sending me hellacious lies about the T-rex (vegetarian – wtf), velociraptor (scavenger), and triceratops (NOT EVEN REAL)…he finally decided to make it up to me.
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Motherfucking bear-a-dactyl.
a pillow for Rex – hanging the wine rack – pretzels & mustard – reupholstering free bar stools – boys snuggling – garage sale finds: floral suitcase, pretty table cloth, foot stool, vintage tins – 10 cent pie bird – sewing pillows – carny town – my boy in my sunglasses – sheep dog – 40 weeks and counting.
Brigzilla the Great now weighs 26 pounds and is 36 inches tall. He’s off the charts. He wears a size 7 shoe. seven.
He can run and walk and gallop all over the place. He walks himself to the car now and likes to wear shoes even if he’s otherwise completely naked – which is his favorite thing. He adores Alex – kisses and hugs and cuddles all day every day and if he isn’t here, B will walk all over the house calling daddy.
He can say mom, daddy, doggies, Stella, G (padre), and will spout out a solid toes or please or whatever every now and then. He’s great at pointing to what he wants or he’ll just bring you his cup if he’s thirsty, his blanket if he’s tired, that kind of thing. He likes to throw balls and do pushups and play with all the baby stuff for Rex. He loves books and is more content now to read them than eat them – but he’s still kind of a goat when it comes to eating paper and cardboard :/
He dances like a girl in a rap video. If he hears music, he’ll haul ass into the room and instantly start dropping his butt to the floor, with one hand down to brace himself and then pulls out his signature spin. It’s awesome.
He goes through these phases with food where one day he will eat all of everything you put in front of him and then a day later will only eat bananas if they’re cut a certain way or something equally ridiculous. I started putting liquid vitamins in his diluted juice so that no matter what I know he’s getting them. He also likes to feed the dogs. He’s really sneaky about asking for snacks (bringing me his snack trap or banging on the pantry door) and then he’ll put one in his mouth, wait until I walk away and then give it to Stella.
He likes to take showers with us on occasion and my basket of bras in the closet amazes him and he drags them all over the house which can be awkward when people come over and realize they’re sitting on my pink bra with the pretty straps.
He’s got like a hundred teeth. And when he goes through teething, he gets at least 6 at a time so those weeks are always really shitty. He has a little toothbrush and brushes them by himself every night in the bathtub.
He likes to rearrange the salad dressing in the refrigerator and dive over the sides of the couch. He’s got two spots in the house where he likes to sit and chill and hide things. He likes shutting doors. All doors. He’s got his own cabinet in the kitchen with plastic stuff in it and helps ‘cook’ when we’re in the kitchen.
He listens pretty well as long as you don’t sound mad when you tell him no – he’ll test boundaries and limits and smile at you so it gets really frustrating, but after a few times he’ll stop and after a few days he’ll basically never do whatever it was he was doing again. However. If you yell no at him and sound mad or startle him, he has an insane breakdown because he thinks he’s in trouble and he gets all clingy and pitiful and then you feel guilty and want to cry too.
He likes to drink out of normal cups even though it’s majorly messy. He can kind of eat with a fork – a few bites will make it into his mouth. We’re working on weaning the bottle and the pacifier…so yeah.
He still goes to bed around 6:30/7:00 and sleeps 12 straight hours with one nap in the middle of the day for 2-3 hours. When we moved, he went through a month long period where he was up several times at night…but now we’re back to normal, thank god.
If he needs a diaper change, he’ll bring me a cloth diaper…one time I was peeing and he went into his room, grabbed one and brought it to me and then he clapped. He likes to clap. And he’ll take off disposables if they feel wet and I caught him peeing into one of his bath toys a couple weeks ago so we got a little potty for him to get comfortable with and hopefully have him trained by the time he’s 2.
He’s a major flirt and people always comment on his eyes/general happy disposition/and his smile. But he can still be a cranky jerk sometimes and he whines and throws ungodly tantrums and hits ( fastest way to piss me off) and bites (he thinks it’s cute) and makes huge messes and can be a massive handful. But overall he’s good and even tempered and really funny. He’s kind of a smart ass. And a charmer. He’s cute. And really affectionate. And independent.
We just switched him to gdiapers (using cloth inserts) and they’re amazing. I love them. B, however, still flips when you lay him down to change his diaper 90% of the time, so all diapers – disposable, water, cloth – can be a pain to get on him. But beyond that, they’re great. They don’t leak and the kid pees like a 300 pound Clydesdale.
And that is Brigsby.
spaghetti baby. new diapers. surprise birthday. virgin daiquiries. chocolate cupcakes. green icing. bad stella. cracker barrel. garage sales. lawn mower. happy husband. gasoline and an open window. water park. laughing. splashing. sliding. swaying hammock. filtered sunlight. green stripes. irish dinner. boondock saints. tiny stitches. dead dragonflies. green grass. scraped knees. hot pizza. driveway basketball. a handmade easel. a husband’s love.
I want you to know what’s going on inside my head, to know the thoughts that wrap themselves through me, the whispers constricting every dimension, every star, sky, and field, of the world I’ve created inside myself. I never saw you coming. You showed up there, in a place I’d overlooked, cloaked behind a heat wave. I couldn’t comprehend you at first…but there you were, calling me, a tiny spark of life shining through the punctures of a bleeding heart. I didn’t know how you got in, into that place that I created so long ago, the place where no one else had ever been before I so carefully sought out your father and brother, held their hands and walked them through…where I rooted them into the burning landscape my reality pours forth from. I didn’t let you in. But there you were. Nothing has singularly terrified me as much as that, not your brother, not your father…not the childhood I’ve left behind me, not the skins I’ve shed. You shook me up, turned everything upside down, dismantled so much…and the place I would have gone to sort it out, to find something to cling to, the place I could have always gone to before to wait and hide and heal, the place that fills up the cracks and voids and endless time wasn’t the same…I went there over and over and over again, each time only to find you there, waiting. A son so intimately mine, that you knew the way into a place where it could only ever be you and I, a place carved into every facet of each other for us to coexist on a level that no one else will ever know. And that place will always exist, outside of our physical bodies, outside the constructs of time, a place for you and I to find each other.
My Rexley.
I’m coming for you.
hot peppermint tea
glittery toenails
pretty kitchen hook
sprouting avocado seed
these two
painting rex’s room
pretty shorts
leopard pants
yard work, bitchessssssss
lets start with the before shot.
Obviously we painted. I lost the battle for the blue house so we settled on dark brown. DARK brown. with off white trim.
Then Padre built us a fence – both sides of the front were down so he took care of it. It looks nice.
And the awkward half wall to the far right got demolished because it served literally no purpose.
And lots of things got cleaned or killed or pulled.
And then came Sunday. Sunday was great. Alex was all happy about doing yardwork and B and I cleaned inside and listened to music with the doors open and whatnot. It was boring and fantastic all at the same time.
The rock to the left of the house got covered in trellis and jasmine vines that should cover most of it by summer.
the bright green hedges that were there got moved to the right of the house to break up all the brown.
the rose bush got moved to the right of the garage and we’ll try to cut it back and get it to fill out more.
And that weird spot between the hedges and even weirder concrete wall?
WE PLANTED WILDFLOWERS.
Phase Two will involve removing the ugly holly by the door and continuing whatever those bright green shrubs are.
And closing in the concrete wall and connecting it to the house…so it doesn’t just stop in the middle of the grass.
And we’ll plant a yellow bougainvillaea tree to the right of that wall.
And we’ll tear down the ugly palm trees and plant a different tree in the middle of the yard.
And some pretty flowers in pretty pots will go up on the wall and we’ll trim the walkways and flower beds with mulch or something. And I picked a spot for my hanging basket. I just need plants for it.
And I will have a succulent garden by the front door in one of those 3 foot tall planters with the holes that stick out of the sides, if I can ever find out that isn’t crazy expensive.
Phase Three will be new light fixtures, house numbers, and mailbox. And we talked about adding dormers to that long stretch of roof on the right.
I don’t know.
And there’s this stretch of blank wall that bothers me.
Give me your thoughts.
Because I have none.
so the internet attacked my blog and then tried to eat it. sorry about the porn pop ups and malware. not sure what else to say about that other than what. the. fuck and change your passwords regularly.
then google blacklisted me and we had to delete the blog permanently and start over. and naturally, I have never in three years backed up the blog or saved any of it anywhere, so there was a few panic minutes when I seriously thought everything I’d written in the last three years – letters to B, love notes to alex, letters to my dead grandma, memories – all of the important stuff – was about to disappear. and that made me sick to my stomach.
but alex backed it up and then fixed it. so back up your blogs. regularly.
there’s still some tinkering to do…photos were lost, links are broken, plugins that need to be installed and configured…and google friend connect is a huge whore and cancelled on anyone without a blogger account.
oh and I’m trying to get ready for the baby because I think he’s coming sooner rather than later.
so bear with me.
if you’re still reading this – or subscribed to this shit in some way, shape, or form…thank you.
I feel like crap right now.
also, in the imminent demise of the blog, I rethought some things.
I can’t get my head straight right now.
go back up your blogs.
the soundtrack for a body shutting down, for a baby being born.
this is all I’ll be listening to for a while.
Rexley
Archer
Dunn
