Luckily for me, when he wasn’t yelling he slept very sweetly.

And I mean sweetly.

As he grew, his hair did too. I miss those baby curls.

Though maybe I let it get a little out of control.

When we cut it, I admit I did cry. But as different as he looked to me at the time, this is Mackie as we know him and love him now.

So grown up, but still all Boy.

Some of you may be acquainted with Mackie. If so, you know he definitely has Opinions. Many of them have to do with being photographed. I don’t let it stop me.

Anyway, he’s cute when he’s mad.

Over the last year he’s grown so much. His vocabulary is endlessly amazing; his costume changes purely inspired; and his view on the world makes my day brighter (though sometimes louder).

He loves Batman, pirates, legos, cars, and trains. He adores his big brother. He longs piningly for baby birds and the neighbor’s cat, Charlie — Mackie begs me for a pet twice a week — though consistently turns down Iain’s offer of a pet snake (good boy!). He likes to make up stories. He potty trained himself seemingly overnight a few months ago, and I have to say, it makes me laugh to bump into him in the bathroom in the middle of the night, both of us squinty eyed in the light and hopping on one foot.

He is as slender as ever, just like the day he was born, and his blue eyes regularly arrest old ladies at the supermarket. He is by turns charming and devilish, like a good little Gemini. One minute he’s curled on your lap stroking your hair, and the next he’s got a sword, an eyepatch and a license to kill.

He’s one-of-a-kind and I’m so glad he’s mine.

Happy Three to you, Cormac Louis Macaroon Looney Roon Toon Tooney. I love you. More than you can guess. More than you will ever know.

Meanwhile, Mackie, age 3 minus six weeks, is enmeshed in a love-hate relationship with insects and all creepy crawly things. He can no longer eat lunch outside because the hymenoptera which are currently buzzing around the yard absolutely terrorize him. Just this morning he encountered an ant in the kitchen and screamed like Cujo was two feet away and licking his chops. And yet? While we were digging in the garden yesterday, he dug up a grub as big as my finger. He clutched it close to him, befriended it, brought it round to show everybody. (He also maybe hugged it too hard, because I heard a chorus of “ewwww”s from the rest of the family and something about “guts.”) The next day, he realized he must have misplaced his dear friend Grub, because he was suddenly inconsolable about his absence and insistent on digging up the (freshly mulched) flower bed to find him. I was loathe to explain that the most we would find would be Grub’s rapidly decomposing remains. I think the take-away here is that as long as it doesn’t have a stinger, he’s willing to love it, study it, and bring it way too close to my face.

For example, today’s post is going to tell you that the kids are sitting with Iain in the recliner playing Wii Lego Star Wars and that I need to switch the laundry and there goes the snow plow down our street.

I lost momentum over the weekend when my family came to visit; we were always cooking or eating or playing Qwirkle or gasping at the Olympics, and then Sunday we went to the Carnegie Museum of Natural History together. We had a really good time. It’s kind of bonkers that we there are six of us and even though we’re mostly grown up, we still like to hang out together. I think that’s pretty cool.

Oh look, it’s freaking snowing again. This afternoon I got stuck in a snowbank while trying to back out of my garage so that I could drive my iBook to the repair shop. I had to spend twenty minutes wracking every part of my Midwestern brain to figure out how to get myself unstuck (hint: put the kids in the house, grab a shovel) and am thereby extra snowbound, which, oh yay. Just what I needed for the longest winter ever. Oh and plus here’s my busted computer sitting on the coffee table, snowbound along with me.

In baby news: I am 10 weeks along and totally in maternity pants and Bella Bands. The baby is about the size of my thumb, so the only excuse I have is a major carbohydrate addiction and the fact that my body gets the whole “pregnant” message loud and clear pretty much immediately. I’m having better nausea days, or maybe I should say “fewer,” though of course it hasn’t let up all the way. My fingernails are growing at Guinness World Book speeds but my skin has reverted to ninth-grade student ID photo day. I’m having fucked up dreams and waking every morning at 4:15 a.m. for no reason other than that I’ll have a newborn again and evidently need the practice.

In child news: Cormac is kind of potty training himself, by which I mean he’ll have an accident in his pants, remove said pants, and stay high and dry and naked from the waist down the remainder of the day. I suppose I can’t critique the method — it works, though it makes me shiver to see his tiny heinie running naked around our 68-degree house.

Owen is a joy and a help these days, fetching me antacids and pretzels and keeping a stern eye on his younger brother. He asks me for chores to do so he can earn money to buy this ridiculous Lego police station that even Santa couldn’t swing. He loves to wear black dress socks and sweatpants and long-sleeve T-shirts with some sort of boy-approved image (Lego, Pirates of the Caribbean, Power Rangers, et cetera). He has a bunch of girlfriends at school and is reading a few books from memory, which is freaking awesome to witness. Mostly it’s the black dress socks that kill me. He may only be five, but in his heart he’s 54 and about to retire.

Ah, childhood

Yeah, I’m not getting a lot done these days. Owen has developed an allergy to penicillin (chip off the old block!) which was alarming, but the reaction he had to the second, replacement antibiotic is what really got my blood moving this morning, his face as bumpy and red and round as a raspberry without any hairs. His ears were both huge and red and his entire body is mottled and he just hurts to look at.

On the plus side, the local pediatrician’s office has a pretty good record of both answering their phones AND returning calls. (Not that I have anything against secretaries. It’s just a nice change of pace to discuss my kid’s health issues with an actual medical professional.)

So we got him in for an appointment again. The doctor took one half of a glance and was basically all “YA, he’s a bit polluted, eh?” And out comes the prescription pad and a sympathetic pat on the head.

The sad ending of this story is that Owen’s got to finish his antibiotic course with a medicine that smells (and presumably tastes) like rotting deer entrails dipped in motor oil. I tell you what, I’m never allowing him to get another infection again. Time to bring out the Bubble.

He has been waiting all summer for this day.

Cut to the bathroom, I’m brushing the kids’ teeth. Owen expresses excitement about his flower and how he is so excited to keep it forever.

Is this where I should put the foreshadowing?

I, like a dum-dum, casually say, Well, you know it won’t last forever, it’s just a flower, it’ll probably die within the week, but that’s OK, we’ll toss it on the compost heap and cut another one.

Oh my God. He burst into tears. He was wracked with them. I might as well have told him that his puppy had incurable cancer and we’d just kick it to the curb next Tuesday. Sobbing.

“But I don’t want my flower to die!”

Jesus, I had no idea what to say. It never occurred to me (me, the lover of the green babies) to prepare my kids for the death of botanical-type objects. I mean, we pull weeds all the time, we eat the peas right off the vine. I didn’t think that floral deceasement was like, a Topic I had to cover. Obviously I was incorrect.

Thus I began a long schpiel about seasons, and autumn, and the Age of Aquarius, and turn, turn, turn, and compost heaps, and seeds, and appreciating fleeting beauty. He was not soothed. Finally I took him onto my lap and just let him cry.

The moment turned and grew. This was not about the flower, no. This had become bigger. I was witnessing a Moment, a developmental milestone, a watershed of the human experience. This was about death and facing up to it.

After a while I started crying, too. I thought of people I loved who had died. Of fleeting beauty and being powerless to stop time. Soon we were both crying and just clinging to each other, me apologizing for making him sad, him shaking his head and holding on, both of us mourning something that wasn’t even gone yet.

“I don’t like it anymore,” he said, avoiding looking at his flower.

“Do me one favor,” I said to him. “Promise me that you will enjoy it first. We’ll look at it together, and remember how beautiful it was in the garden, and how much fun we had cutting it and putting it in the vase, and how nice it looks here on your toy chest with the sun shining in on it. I want you to remember that, and think about you and me together when you look at that flower, and enjoy it while it is still here with you. Can you do that for me?” And he nodded. And he smiled. And I smiled. And another tear rolled down my face, not gonna lie.

And then Mackie, fresh from his bath, walks up to the two of us.

“Mommy crying,” he said. “Noney crying.” He looked from Owen’s face to mine and back. We were both snuffling and wiping our eyes. Then Mackie stood back, in all his tiny naked two-year-old glory, and yelled, “My penis is big!”

Thereby demonstrating at a very early age an understanding of the purpose of potty humor.

Well, lately he’s been telling me “Flat on top, curly on the sides.” I’m like, uh. What?

Turns out he meant this.

My kid. Marches to the beat of his own fife and drum corp. (And for the record, I failed miserably at this style. I think I need some wig powder and a pair of hot tongs.)

I was all, say what? And he was all, what. Saw it on Sid The Science Kid. And I was like, high fives, little smart dude.

Cotton rib knit from Joann, striped cotton from an old pair of my sister’s PJ pants.

The pants were finished ages ago, and I just knocked out the shirt this afternoon. I love being able to fill custom orders from my kids. (And who knew purple would be such a popular color with these tots?)

p.s. The pirates he got for his third birthday? It’s been like 350 days straight that he’s been playing with them. Literally. Every day for almost a year.

Best present ever.