So, it's been a long, long, loooong time since the Bunker has been updated; so long, in fact, that the people at BlogHer knocked on my e-mail inbox last month to inquire if everything is OK. Yes, well, I've been fine, but the kids? Not so much. It's been one long string of illnesses since Halloween, basically -- maybe one or two weeks of reprieve in between. A few cases of croup here, a touch of bronchiolitis there, a really miserable brew of virus and infection.

Do I sound whiny? Yep. That's because I am. It's been a real drag. In fact, if you were to happen upon me on the street and ask me what's been going on, I wouldn't be able to think of much else but illnesses. We've been to the pediatrician's so much we sent them a Christmas card.

And then, there's MJ last week. She got one of the dooziest doses of yuckiness a kid who's already had croup three times this fall could get, and she got it on Christmas Day: Pneumonia. I don't think I've ever seen her feel so miserable. She would cough, and then she would cry. She had no energy. She walked around mumbling, "I'm so tired. I'm very, very so tired." (That would be a direct quote.) Some kids might be up all night listening for Santa; she was up all night in pain. I felt so bad for her; 3 1/2 is such a fun time to be a kid at Christmas, but not like this.

But despite how awful she felt, she managed to surprise me that morning. She had asked Santa for a couple of items -- and these were the only two things she mentioned whenever she was asked what she was getting for Christmas. We had put them both into a red Santa bag that we left by the fireplace, so it would be a big finish after she opened the rest of the gifts -- "Oh look, Santa must have dropped his bag" ... that sort of thing. But she was so thankful for everything she got that she didn't even notice that the "robot" and the Screaming Banshee (from Cars) that she asked for were still missing. She even came over to me and hugged me and said, "Oh, thank you, Mommy!" when she opened two presents I had given her -- a Curious George t-shirt, and a hockey jersey "just like Mommy wears to the games!"  which I was certain she'd care little about, given everything else under the tree. You'd have thought it was Lightning McQueen himself in that box.

Those hugs were the best presents I got Christmas morning (even better than the GPS, which is pretty cool, I have to say). She didn't let her misery get in the way of the magic of being grateful, and being grateful is really my favorite part of Christmas.

Back when I was a diligent blogger, i.e., when I rarely took time to clean house and my car was always late for an oil change/inspection/etc., things would happen that I knew I'd want to write about, and I would scramble for a notepad to write it down before I forgot. (I still have to write EVERYTHING down, mind you, and here's a sampling of what appears on my kitchen calendar right now: "clean oven," "rose bush trellis," "philosophy." Yes, I have to remind myself to clean my oven, as if the crumpled pizza carcinogens smoking from its bottom aren't reminder enough. And don't get too excited about that "philosophy" bit; I have not taken up higher studies just as my beloved fall television schedule gets underway. That refers to the skin care company philosophy.)

ANYWAY, as I was clearing out some junk today, I came across a little mini- notation I made several months ago, little bits of dialogue MJ and I had shared. Without further ado, and so I can cross something off my to-do list (which feels so great to-do, ahem), I present "The Tale of the Boon" and "Perfect," two slices of life with MJ:

MJ has a ridiculously good memory. A month or two ago, she got a green dolphin balloon at a birthday party, and toted the thing around the rest of the day. She also toted it out onto our deck, where, predictably, inevitably, she lost it to the clouds. Today, we were sitting on the deck, and she looked up at the sky and said, "Mommy, where's the green 'boon?" It took me a very long time to figure out what she was talking about, and when I did, I reminded her that we'd lost it when she'd let go of it.

"Oh," she said, "Maybe the air took the 'boon to the boys to play with."

I have no idea who the boys are.

And on that same day, she had been sprawled out on the kitchen floor coloring with markers -- a little bit on paper, mostly on herself. She hopped up, ran past where I was standing at the stove and into the bathroom. A few minutes later she came out -- inexplicably wearing her backpack -- and said, "There Mommy. I washed my knees. All the marker's off. I'm all perfect."

"You're perfect?" I asked.
"Yeah, I'm all perfect," she said. "I'm all clean and fluffy."

The cutest. Just the cutest.

My baby is 11 months old today, which is so hard to believe. With MJ, I recall time passing sort of slowly through her first year. With so much to learn and, every day, something new happening in the world of this little person -- first cereal, first smile ... even her belly button stump took four weeks to disappear (and, disconcertingly, we never actually found it ... yikes) -- the first 12 months of her life floated deliciously by, and I can honestly say I savored each one.

It's been harder to do with Little L, though I've tried, and though I've been all-too-conscious of trying. That's because MJ continues to have firsts herself, the subtle kind that show up in a grown-up remark, a comprehension she didn't have the week before, even a new kind of beaming smile that grabs up the world around it in a knowing way -- different from that baby smile, the one of joy over simple motions happening in the space around her, of a person she trusts making an entrance into the room, for example.

And so my mind is always split. But in short, quiet moments, I do savor the things that make a baby a baby for such a short time; the ones I still conjure in my mind, I suppose, when I end a request or an answer to one of the many "Whys?" I hear every day from MJ with the term of endearment, "baby."

And here's one of them, one that doesn't last long: The snaggletooth smile, via Little L today. Yes, I know you get a version of these later, when they start to lose their teeth ... but are they ever quite like this again?

I sometimes think our worldviews mimic the landscapes we grow up around. When she moved to North Carolina from Kansas for graduate school, my friend Julie used to talk about how "freaked out" she was by the trees here, and how they blocked the view. It's hard to understand what she means by that until you go to Kansas and see the difference for yourself: Look to your left, look to your right, and you can see for miles unobstructed. And it makes sense: Julie, a sports psychology professor at Southern Illinois, has a knack for seeing the big picture, the forest for the trees.

I grew up in the shadow of the mountains you see in the picture above, and I vividly recall sitting on the swings at the school playground and trying to "touch" the tops of them with my toes each time I flew forward. I did a lot of dreaming when I was little, a lot of imagining, bold and often improbable thoughts inspired by those heights.

So when we were driving home from a trip to West Virginia yesterday, we stopped at an overlook to show MJ and Little L the view. I walked LL over to show her the trees and the little stream below, and for some reason I started telling her about the poetry that she could find here, if she let herself find it. And here is what I love about my baby: She looked up at me as I talked, and then back at the mountains, and then back at me, as if to say she completely understood, and that it might just be the most fascinating thought she'd ever heard. You could say we had a moment.

Generally speaking, I've never been a fan of reality shows, not even the all-encompassing "American Idol." But I love "Dancing with the Stars." There's something about dancing that brings everyone down to the same level, so I was "geeked," as my friend Julie would say, to watch last night's final.

But the best dance I watched came from MJ. Yesterday was the seventh anniversary of my first date with Randy (yep, I still find space in my tiny little brain to remember that day AND my wedding anniversary), and we marked it with a nice dinner outside, a glass of wine and the always entertaining antics of a little girl. Yes, Kristi Yamaguchi had her hip-hop thing, Cristian de la Fuente had his hips and Jason Taylor had his macho muscles ... but none of them had the Beastie Boys.

I've tried to describe MJ's dance style in previous posts, but it's kind of a difficult task when there is no music that goes with it. Her dancing has its own kind of "musicality" -- to use a Carrie Ann Inaba word -- which, until last night, never matched any song she's ever jumped and bounced to.

Apparently, "So What'cha Want" is the beat she's been searching for. Every stomp was completely in sync with the music, every kick had a purpose. She even breakdanced, people. I can't wait to see what she does when I turn on "Brass Monkey" tomorrow night.

When I came downstairs yesterday morning, MJ was sitting at the table enjoying her third bowl of cereal. Randy was making himself some tea.

"What were you supposed to tell Mommy today when you saw her? Do you remember?" Randy asked her.

"Oh," she said, eyes twinkling, "sorry, Mommy."

And with that, she went back to her cereal.

I laughed. Of course, he had coached her to tell me "Happy Mother's Day," but in the true Pavlovian tradition of a three-year-old, she went instead with a phrase that she's had to say quite a bit lately for various transgressions done upon all three of her roommates (not to mention the dog):

"Don't tackle the baby. That's not nice. What are you supposed to say to baby?"

"Molson doesn't like mud baths, MJ. What do you say to Molson?"

In this case, I guess, it was more like:

"Mommy went through nine months of pregnancy to bring you into the world, MJ. What do you say to her?"

"Remember that grueling case of mastitis Mommy had when you were three months old? What are you supposed to say to Mommy?"

"You know all that trouble you plan to get into as a teenager? Why don't you go ahead and get the apology over with now?"

As funny as it began, though, the day only got sweeter. As I was upstairs later, I heard Randy telling MJ and Little L that it was time to make a Mother's Day card for me. So I waited until all the commotion died down, until I couldn't hear any more markers dropping to the floor, and I made my way downstairs.

"Mommy! Mommy!," MJ said, hopping and skipping toward me with her creation, "Look! I made you a thank-you card!"

And I thought, you know, that's a pretty great gift: A thank-you card. It gets right to the point. It says a lot more than "Happy Mother's Day" does. In fact, it kind of says it all.

I dearly wish I could remember how I used to go to sleep at night when I was three. There are many, many things I am grateful that I cannot remember about childhood. Cutting teeth, for example -- how completely painful that must have been. But sleeping ... I wish I could go back and relive what it must have been like to have to turn off a world I didn't know enough about yet, just to close my eyes and sleep simply because my parents said I had to. Because I think this is MJ's problem. (That's her above, back in the day when all she did was sleep.) I think she can't shut off the world for 10-12 hours every night. She's afraid she might miss something. I know the feeling. Except that what I'm missing is sleep.

She was the baby who, once past three months, settled into her crib without a song or a rocking or any other sort of prop, and was off to sleep within minutes. We liked it that way. We were spoiled. Now, she is the toddler who needs "fresh water" and "Dolly" and "one more book" and "three more minutes" and piggyback rides and has practically written a thesis on what color purple sky is the right color purple sky for sleeping. (Answer: None.) Lately, I've been laying with her, singing to her, brushing her hair with the palm of my hand and rubbing small circles on her back to cajole her to sleep. Sometimes it works; sometimes it doesn't. It can take an hour or more for her to finally give in. But along the way, I've learned a lot about how she processes the experiences of her days -- she hasn't forgotten the dolphin balloon she accidentally freed into the clouds earlier that morning, or the funny dance we did at lunchtime. She recounts them to me like the 11 o'clock news. Then she lays on her side and studies my face while she gives in to sleep, and I think to myself: I wonder if she'll remember this years from now, when she has kids of her own. Will she remember how I looked now? Because I'll think of her exactly like this. I'll remember this little face, and how it looks now, forever. And I guess I can lose a little sleep for that.

I said, "a little." If we could pack the sentimentality into 30 minutes instead of 60, that'd be great. Which is why, this week, I asked my posse:

Your child(ren)'s bedtime routine: Quick and painless, or excruciatingly drawn out? What steps/routine do you have to take to get your kid on the train to sleepytown?

Barb: Bedtime routines at our house revolve around T.V. I'm not going to hide the ugly fact. Anyone who lives in the Central Time Zone, where prime time starts at 7 pm, would probably agree with me. If a Carolina basketball game or something else worth watching is on ("American Idol"), we use the man-to-man strategy. This involves each of us taking a child and throwing them into PJs, brushing teeth and reading one book before lights out. We have this routine down to about 15 minutes. Luckily, the 5-year-old is OK with this and happily looks at books before going to sleep. However, Little C usually ends up in the family room watching TV with us until she passes out from exhaustion.

On the other nights, we go with more of a zone defense. Carter will take care of baths, I take on PJs and teeth and we both read extra books. Little C also gets extra mommy time, which involves rubbing her back until she falls asleep. Truthfully, they are easy to get to sleep, however staying asleep is a totally different monster. {That monster? The scariest one of all.}

Brandi: For Eliana (2.5 months old):
Between 7:30 and 8:00, she eats while listening to "The Wiggles" or "Thomas and Friends" with big brother. {I'm not sure that "The Wiggles" aren't Big Brother; their songs seem to follow me for the rest of the day when I hear them.}

And then she's in bed.

For Gabriel (2.5 years old):

7:30ish Watch "The Wiggles," "Thomas and Friends," or whoever is popular that month;

7:55ish Push Mommy or Daddy away while they are trying to brush my teeth, stick my tongue out;

7:56ish Diaper change and pajamas;

8:00 Storytime; bed.

Janice: Ahh sleep, the elusive beast in our home too. Maya has always been a terrible sleeper. But she comes by it honestly. First the napping ... we no longer enjoy that luxury in our home anymore. I try (for me, I put on a Sesame Street and I have my nap now!). But the nighttime is the interesting time. I am all business - I have been attached to her for the past 12 hours straight, I have very little loving left. So it is teeth, two stories and lights out. There is a bit of protesting, but frankly I am positive she has had it with me and sleep is her only escape! So peace begins about 7:15pm. But Daddy is another story. When Daddy does the deed (which gratefully, is more often than I do), he plays, has a true riot brushing teeth, and then comedy hour with storytime and then screaming and yelling for Daddy to come back. So much drama. And me sitting in my sewing room trying not to get up to interfere (read: solve the problem) and cringing the whole time. And then the running back and forth between our bedroom and her bedroom slamming doors until she collapses somewhere to sleep. So peace begins about 8:30pm. Hmmmm, should I just suck it up and do it each night to save the drama and tears? Nah, I should just shut my door. {Exactly ...}

Becky: Sleep! Who knew something so simple as sleep could become so complicated? Even ants sleep. Perhaps if we made our kids forage for food, carry two times their weight (or is it more?) on their backs, walk for miles in a single line, they'd close their eyes on command. Fortunately at 3 1/2, my daughter is better at her bedtime routine. I don't know if it's because of her better grasp of language and more predictable schedule, or my gained experience as a parent. I had one of those Oprah "Aha!" moments when Amanda was 3 months old. It was after 11 p.m., and I was rocking her on my knees, nearly asleep myself. "Little girl, little girl, when are you going to go to bed?" Then it hit me.... That, Aha!

I am the parent. I need to put her to bed! Talk about no-brainer. Yet bedtime, naptime, anything involving her missing out on the world for a brief amount of time, still was a major struggle. Somehow, though, over the months and years, we've progressed to reading three books (five on a special day, significant only for its bartering power), quick prayer that signals lights are about to be out, nightlight turned on, and kid's CD playing on her little stereo.

Lisa: Before you judge me for putting my kids to bed as early as I do, let me tell you that they wake up at 6:30 am no matter what time they go to bed, so I’m getting mine on the back end. {Judge you? How do we emulate you?} Our kids have the earliest bedtimes of anybody we hang with and we’re regarded with equal measures of horror, envy and disbelief. Don’t hate us because we’re well rested – it’s how I keep from strangling them or committing hari-kari.

We don’t have any magical formula, just constant repetition, like the Suzuki method for sleeping.We’re pretty low maintenance folks, so the bedtime routine is straightforward: bath, jammies, story, bed. The big one gets 10-15 minutes of quiet reading time. The little one gets a few minutes of nose-to-nose ‘snug time’ with Mommy. Everyone is touching sheets by 6:30 pm. All things being equal and if we’ve managed to wear their perky little butts out, that’s the end of the story. But usually, it goes like this: Big, with her boundless enthusiasm and desire to fill us in on Every. Single. Detail. of her day will appear at least once after she’s been tucked in for good. We call these forays ‘pop-ups’ and they’re just as annoying as their Internet brethren (the world record still stands at 15, the night Mommy got the daytime and nighttime cold medicines mixed up). Little is hardcore potty training and has discovered the power of parental manipulation with the key phrase: ‘I go bathroom.’ A lesser used but potent back-up phrase: ‘I super, super thirsty.’ You’ll recall that the only thing I can promise my children is adequate hydration, so I am powerless to resist. Once they’re down, they’re down for good, sleeping through all manner of loud television, raucous partying and ill-conceived late-night attic excursions. Until...the sun rises and my beautiful little morning glories sally forth. They have learned, after experiencing the wrath of a poorly awoken Mommy, not to enter our bedroom until 7:00 am. They will circle the bed like carpet sharks, waiting until they see a sliver of eye-white at which point a tidal wave of love and breakfast requests sweeps any remaining vestige of sleep from their target parent. It’s the mental equivalent of trying to do a push-up immediately upon awakening. Try it!

Do my friends rock, or what? Have a happy weekend, full of glorious sleep, if you're lucky ...

Even at Little L's little age, she shows just how different she will be from her older sister. I always imagined, when I was carrying LL, that she would be just like MJ. I couldn't think of any other face on a baby of mine, so surely she would look exactly like the first. Surely she would have the same personality and quirks and baldness as MJ, the one and only experience I could draw from.
I was so wrong.

They've been different from the beginning, from how they came into the world to how they approached it once they did. Not just because LL has hair and MJ did not; not just because MJ was a reserved baby and LL is a professional squawker. MJ thinks, studies, considers, ponders; she inspects. The moments when she is most free come when she is at home with Randy and me, where her comfort level is steady and her environment already tested.

LL reacts. She goes head-first; she trusts more readily, smiles more easily, complains more lustily, craves interaction like a nighttime bottle.

She is the life; MJ, the soul.

One of the great joys of being the mother of two girls is taking them both to a party with other kids. And I'm not being sarcastic; I'm not talking about the part where you run from one room to the next, making sure each is safe and/or not destroying the furniture or sitting on the family dog. I mean the other parts, watching them come into their own, and thinking about it later: how beautifully different their personalities are, and the little ways in which those differences were revealed earlier that day.

At our talented friend Janice's house yesterday, celebrating little Maya's third birthday, Little L looked as if this was the social event she'd been waiting for all year. She laughed. She smiled. She sat in a circle with toddlers who were not MJ and mommies who were not Mommy and looked as free as I've ever seen her. Not just happy, but gorgeously happy, glowing from her sweet little toes to her sparkly blue eyes, looking from person to person, listening to people talk and smiling at them, at the room, at everything around her. "Oh Mommy," she seemed to say, "thank you so much for bringing me here. This is the best."

MJ was just as content but played mostly by herself, in corners and nooks and crannies, behind trees and bushes that were different from the ones at her house, carefully exploring, contemplating, imagining how the things she saw and felt fit with the world she knows. Every now and then, she would check in with the other kids to see what was happening, what new piece of information might need to be filed away in her little scientist's Rolodex. A game would start; she would be there for the beginning, but gone before the end, on to the next adventure.

LL looks for social connection; MJ searches for worldly connections, the ways in which swatches of information transform into quilts of experience.

The other great part about a kid's party? The clean-up. If there's one thing MJ will commit to, and bond over, with another somebody her age, it's her love of birthday cake. It also bonded nicely to her clothes. For mommies, the party never ends.

Today I'm bringing the sentimental out, people. Sentimental has been mired of late under the heavy load of all that is frustrating about being the parent of a very young child (or two), i.e., sleep disturbances, drama worthy of an M.F.A., refusal to eat properly -- and those are just my own symptoms. My toddler's issues? Much worse. But with not one, but two lunches out of the house this week (I've gone mad with freedom!), things are a little lighter around here today. Perspective has settled over the fine dust of my sanity.

After I had MJ, a friend gave me a CD of lovely lullaby-ish songs, which I absolutely treasure. Nothing calms the fury of new mommy colic like soothing music -- and I'm sure MJ enjoyed the songs, too. One of my favorites was (and is) "Turn Around," which on the CD is sung by Nanci Griffith:

Where are you going
My little one, little one
Where are you going
My baby, my own
Turn around and you're two
Turn around and you're four
Turn around and you're a young girl
Going out of the door

I loved this song for the meaning it brought to what I'd just gotten myself into, this motherhood thing. Though I believe complaining to be an inalienable right of the job, I am also rightly awed by it; more so when I had time to sit around and moon over my employer(s). Recently, I ran into a book in the children's section that reminded me so much of that feeling that I had to buy it. It's called Someday -- I'm sure I'm the last Target shopper on Earth to see it, but I loved it from the first page, which reads: "One day I counted your fingers and kissed each one."


Some other things I love about it:

"Someday you will swing high -- so high, higher than you ever dared to swing."

"Someday, I will watch you brushing your child's hair."

"Someday, a long time from now, your own hair will glow silver in the sun. And when that day comes, love, you will remember me."

I have these moments, I call them "flash forwards," when a very ordinary something is happening before me that triggers an impulse to look ahead. Sometimes MJ will be doing nothing more than eating a slice of pizza, and I'll see her as a teenager, doing the same task with more dexterity, but with the same baby look I'll always know. Little L will laugh her sweet laugh, and I am taken to some unknown scene from her college years -- she's home for break, perhaps, humoring Mom and Dad with her shiny presence. I feel immediately connected to a future I haven't even met. A little swirl begins in my stomach and ends in my throat in those moments, and I am thankful for everything that I have, and everything that I will. For every finger and toe I've been lucky enough to count, for every single someday up ahead.

That's my three-year-old on her birthday. With her jacket hood covering her hair and her eyes closed, sleeping peacefully, her round face looks just as it did when she was bald and brand new to the world. The image is the beginning of my journey as a mother and its present tense, all in one. Zero to 36 months in no time flat. Blink an eye, and your baby isn't so baby-ish anymore.

Sweet, isn't she? You might change your mind when you read tomorrow's post. (I would tell you about it now, but I'm too busy using a Mr. Clean Magic Eraser.)