Why are we actually doing this, Dad?

The only time we ever slept in a tent.  Didn't want the little crawler to wander off in the middle of the night. Yes, we carried out ALL the diapers.

Parents tell me that they would love to hike, or bike, or go on river trips, but they have to wait until the kids are told enough.  Robbie never had that choice.  When he was little, he was popped into a front pack, then a backpack, then hauled along on his wee little legs.

Maybe this is why he doesn't hike now.

I carried him until he was three.  The forty-pound pack wasn't so bad, it was the fact that the pack jumped up and down yelling, "Are we there yet?" For about a year he stayed with Grandma Marji while we hiked, but he first climbed out of Grand Canyon by himself when he was four and a half.  Took all day, but we did it.

18 months old, climbing Mt. Harvard

blueberry tongues at Looit Trail in Oregon

The baby pack: a modified kid carrier attached to a real frame pack.

Any port in a blizzard  This is the outhouse at Cedar Ridge.

Airing out the baby.

A gal on Mt Adams asked me where I found good hiking clothes for a twerp.  They are out there if one knows where to look, and I sewed a lot of them, like Robbie's raincoat.

A trifle unsteady going up Camelback Mountain

         I was watching a movie that wasn’t very good, but it featured a small baby, goo-gooing, and chewing its fists and being adorable.  And I thought, “You know, Robbie was a total pain in the ass”. 

         First he had colic.  He cried ALL THE TIME unless he was asleep or nursing.  Everyone told me, just put him down and let him yell.  Ignore him.  Yeah, right.  The child was being murdered by unknown forces right in front of me.  Just because I couldn’t see them he obviously could. 

         A new theory of colic: invisible aliens pinching the baby to see if they can drive the mother nuts.  I actually think there was a Star Trek: Voyager episode like that…

         Once the colic had run its course, we had the ADHD.  The kid was a superball.  Never still.  Never kept his hands to himself.  Grabby little monster. 

         If an adult was demonstrating, oh say, dissecting a cow’s eye at the museum, he wanted an eye of his own.  No eye available, he would try to get his hands on the one being used. 

         Now, he was, and is smart.  I think that was part of the problem.  There is was, ready to build a cold fusion reactor, and all his chubby little hands were capable of was ripping Bereinstain Bears Books to shreds. 

         He wanted things NOW he wanted them RIGHT NOW and he wanted them HIS WAY.  That may work for certain GOP presidential candidates.  For a two-year-old, not so much.

         And other children are perfect. All of them.  All the time.  One wonders what the principal at Robbie’s school did when Robbie wasn’t around.  Because according to these self-same mothers, no one else was EVER called into the office.  No other mother was EVER telephoned at work to get down there five minutes ago because there had been An Incident. 

         What did these mothers do that I failed at?  Were their invisible aliens benign, and mine were vindictive? 

Nah, obviously they were perfect as well.  They ate non-GMO, organic, picked-by-serene-Buddhists foods when they were pregnant.  They spent their entire pregnancy sitting in a pink room reading free verse with Mozart on the stereo.  They did not backpack when they were 8 months along and fall off a cliff.  Or attend graduate school while enceinte and stress out when the computer program they were writing almost crashed the entire ASU system.  When the TA said that nothing we did in class could hurt the computer, he lied. 

So obviously everything that went wrong in my pregnancy was my fault, and resulted in this child.  Who is gutsy, and independent, and wicked smart, and yeah, still a pain in the ass.  But he is not boring. 

          

Robbie was hyper-aware of his surroundings.  It is tempting to think that our hyper kids are simply more intelligent, more alert, and more insistent on being part of everything.  When they are tiny, they want to converse and build and program computers, but they are stuck in that useless, tiny body. This is frustrating, so they yell.  When they are older, they grab, and they snatch, and they talk over people because they want to DO IT ALL!!   That is "rude" so they get into trouble.

Robbie could not wear diapers or use wipes with any type of scent: they would turn his miniscule body bright red.  He would only tolerate 100% cotton or slippery nylon, no labels, no zippers, no buttons.  Tee shirts are pretty easy: cotton is all around.  Pants, not so much.  We wore a lot of nylon soccer shorts or cotton sweat pants.  Whenever he could get away with it, he wore nothing. 

Didn't we ever feed that kid?  He's into the dog food.

Sweats and soccer shorts are fairly boring, so I began to sew Robbie's pants.  They all had huge pockets, for the treasures he picked up, extra padding on the knees and butt, and long hems so I could lengthen them as he lengthened.  And, being me, they were always brightly colored.

Robbie's hiking pants.  Those are some mutant cockroaches.

Years later, different pants (and a hat) same material.  It was on sale: wonder why?

Dino pants in Boston

Striped pants with matching raincoat.

Space pants

First day of school outfit:  matching hat.

Chili pants:  this is a Han Solo gun that Robbie designed.  I made the holster.

My crowning achievement.  Pants, shirt, and hat were so gaudy that Robbie was attacked by a baboon at the Phoenix Zoo. He thought this colorful male was in competition for his females.

Eventually Robbie would consent to wear Levis or khakis like the other kids.  He still prefers cotton, though mostly now he wears black.  Undoubtedly a reaction to all those bright colors I stuffed him in when he was too young to protest.

No one seems to know what colic actually is, but everyone has an opinion about what to do about it.

My neighbor said that when her baby had colic, she shut herself (and him) into a dark room and sat there for six months, completely shut off from external stimuli.

The ideal environment for the colicy baby

Sounds lovely, except apparently she had an army of household help to do the shopping, the cooking, the cleaning, and the driving.  I am not sure this was conducive to a relaxing time for her husband and her older son. Also, after six months of sitting, I would be a quivering blob of adipose.  

the reality, at least in my world.

So, because I have a life, including getting a stressed husband off to work every day, teaching a programming class at ASU, working on my doctoral dissertation, and leading hikes for the City of Tempe, Robbie pretty much lived in a snugly.

I got to be pretty good at fixing meals, shopping, computering, and hiking with an incubus attached. 

 The first time I left Robbie with his grandmother (who had a huge capacity for punishment) so I could teach my ASU class, I felt as though I had undergone major surgery to remove a 10-pound cancerous tumor.  

When I got tired of standing up, Robbie would deign to fall asleep on my stomach.  Of course, then I was stuck on my back, with the blob on my stomach.  

Hmm, I have to go to the bathroom...

Naturally, the colic was my fault.  Either Robbie was over-stimulated, or I kept the house too warm, or too cold.  Or it was the food.  I didn't eliminate sugar, or artificial dyes, or gluten (though, that was not a "thing" then).  

This was an actual conversation.

And since I was nursing, everything I ate was under scrutiny.  I was supposed to keep a food diary and keep track of what made the colic worse. Is it just me, or do these people exist in a day which is longer than 24 hours?  This was my first introduction to the depressing fact that every other mother's child was perfect but mine, and it was All My Fault.  

After an eon or so, the colic did go away.  But Robbie was still hypersensitive, and hyperaware, and hyperactive.  But that was a whole other set of problems to deal with.  And, of course, All My Fault.

More Costumes: the Renaissance Faire

         When Robbie was about eight, one of the engineers at Intel told us we MUST go to the Renaissance Faire in Apache Junction.  Ours is the first Ren Faire in the circuit, because the weather in Phoenix is usually nice in February and March

         We found that after one pays the entrance fee, quite a lot of the other attractions cost.  The elephant ride, the museum of torture, all the games…

         However, the shows are free.  And people dress up.  They dress up!  In costumes!  Alert costume making mode.

         The first year Robbie dressed as a wizard and I as a merchant’s wife.  We were harassed by Ded Bob: he called Robbie pencil head, and me the Pepto-Bismol lady.  I found out that Ded Bob does not appreciate being harassed back, either.
      

Pencil Head and Pink Lady.  Robbie said the tights were uncomfortable, too.

        So I started research on Renaissance clothing.  No one wore purple except royalty.  Everyone had to wear a hat.  This was decreed by Queen Elizabeth to support the wool industry.  And the costumes got more authentic:

The dragon cape.  My costume is pretty authentic this year.

Dragon trainer

The shirt is red, and the hats have changed.  Notice the bags hanging from the belt:  no one had pockets.

Robbie's Pirate costume was a hit, and his own design.  I got hassled for wearing purple and not being an aristocrat.  Some people take the Ren Faire too seriously.

A lot of people took Robbie's picture this year. This was Pirate of the Carribean time, and he did look a lot like Johnny Depp. We found the pewter tankards at Goodwill, and the leather straps at a hobby store.

Still in purple, Robbie has his final wizard costume.  A lot of people complained about the stick: whenever we sat down they had to walk around it.  Of course, some of them were smoking at the time, which is much more obnoxious.

I kept researching Renaissance clothing.  One year I was a lady of the court, but those clothes are very uncomfortable.  So I went back to being a Merchant's Wife.  The Renaissance was the start of the Middle Class:  Nobles were not allowed to engage in trade, yet exploration had opened up new avenues for buying and selling, so the lower classes began to start up businesses.  Some of them became richer than the nobility.  

They were dressing like nobility, too, so no one could tell who was royal and who wasn't.  The Queen first passed laws against wearing certain items, like fur, but then decided to tax them.  Upstart middle class ladies could wear fur if they paid for it, and the Queen got more money for the treasury.

On Robbie's birthday, I asked Don Juan to embarrass him, so he was called up to be the whipping boy.

Robbie and I were wandering around the Indoor Swap Meet one weekend, and found a Renaissance booth.  It was unmanned, so we asked the merchant next to it where the proprietor was.  He said, "I was supposed to watch the shop for ten minutes, but he's been gone an hour.  So anything you want is half off.  I bought my black hat and a black bag with a silver pentagram.  Robbie found a great pair of boots.  

My final costume, pretty much.  Comfortable and cool.  We found the hat at a half-off sale, and I barely escaped being disemboweled by Robbie in the resulting fight over it.  He wound up with the boots, though  

When we sold the house, I told Robbie and Renata that we had to go to the Ren Faire one last time.  "I'll never be able to go once you leave, "sniff sniffle, "so this will be my last Ren Faire."  Puppy dog eyes.  "And Renata has to dress up."

Renata was not convinced, but I overrode her and shortened one of my costumes.  The great thing about Ren costumes is they are basically a big bag with a vest that laces up, one size fits all.  We told her that if we were dressed up and she was not, she would look like a geek.  We insisted that the stage performers never call anyone up to embarass if they are in Garb.  She still hated it.

I dyed the Pepto-Bismol outfit so it wasn't as glaring.  Renata still hated it.  But she sucked it up and was a good sport.  Robbie has stolen my black velvet bag with the pentagram.  Also he has ditched the stick.

   So Renta doesn't like wearing costumes.  This is the only flaw I have found in this lovely young woman, so I guess I can live with it.  As long as I still get to dress up.  And when Robbie left town, he gave me the boots.

The Second most popular holiday

         Halloween is a big deal to kids, probably holiday number two after Christmas.  My mother always sewed my costume, and when I was old enough, I began making my own.  I only remember one year when we purchased one of those cheesy, cheap rayon outfits.

         So when Robbie was born, he had homemade costumes.  For the first several years, he was at my mercy.  When he was old enough to express preferences, he came up with the idea, and I executed the design.

         The first year he was just his own cute, adorable, troublemaker self.

         The second year I added mouse ears and a tail to his PJs. 

         Third year he had a clown costume.  He noisily refused to wear the ruff (scratchy) and a clown nose (icky).  That outfit works for two years: I’d made it large on purpose.

         Fourth year he was Batman.  At the last second he refused to go trick or treating. I knew he would pitch a fit if he missed The Night, so I asked if he would go if we both dressed up as well.  So I whipped up a cape for Brad and kludged together a purple Batwoman for myself.

         He has been a dragon, and a vampire.  He designed his own Lego uniform, complete with black Lego “claws”.  The year he put together a Mr. Steed costume, he got mad because everyone thought he was Charlie Chaplin.  Obviously not fans of the British Avengers. The year he was Zorro, we went to Mexico to buy him the whip. 

Mr. John Steed, NOT Charlie Chaplin

Vampire. Wearing sneakers.  To silenty approach the victims?

Dragon.  Couldn't figure out how to make flame, thank goodness.

Lego man.

Never learned how to use the whip, also fortunately.

         Two years in a row were Power Ranger nights.  One year, the Blue Ranger, the next the White. 

I take advantage of any opportunity to wear a costume, so when Robbie was Hercules, I was Hera.  

I don't think Robbie knew what Hera finally did to Herc.

         In the fullness of time, we stopped trick or treating.  We actually never ate the candy.  In fact, I would save the candy from one year to the next and foist it off on the following year’s trick or treaters who came to the house.

         Instead we concentrated on giving treats.  We had green lights, a flashing, waving ghost lit with a strobe light. We found a talking skull on sale and nestled it within the cacti.  Some years Robbie’s friends came over and lurked by the doorway, dressed in black capes of my design. 

         I sat in front, dressed as a witch, to hand out treats.  One little boy wouldn't come near the place.  As he clung to his mother, I started toward him to give him his candy.  He wailed, “They’re coming after me!”

When Robbie left for College, I stopped decorating for Halloween.  Then we moved to a small, small town, where it is always far below freezing on The Night, so I gave up sitting outside and scaring small children as well.  I still have most of the costumes, though.