Poppy and Pooh
Originally uploaded by tnpryor05.

My cousin Taylor was here for a few days this week, and she snapped some great pictures. This is one of my favorites.

Poppy never kicked or moved about all that much before she made her grand entrance into the world. She’s held on to her laid-back style, for the most part. For the last week, for example, I’ve had to wake her up every morning. I don’t like to let her sleep past 10 am. Even with her 13-hour sleepathons, she usually takes a 2-hour nap during the day. Today, it’s been closer to 3 hours.

But this isn’t about Poppy. This is about her little brother. The ninja. He moves all the time. And they aren’t gentle little nudges, either, like his sister used to give me. Most of the time when she moved, it felt like she was tickling me from the inside. When Pete is flopping about, he is punching and kicking and flailing. And it’s generally in the direction of my bladder. I find myself this close to weeing my pants roughly 800 times a day.

Last night, as I was trying to get to sleep, little Pete torpedoes hit each side of my stomach simultaneously. What is he doing in there? Calisthenics? Whatever it was, it went on for hours. I’m trying to get as much napping in as I can now, because I something tells me little Pete isn’t going to be as enamored with sleep as Poppy is.

I’ve been worrying a bit about the differences between raising a girl and raising a boy. When I brought Pete’s activity level up to my sister-in-law, who has two boys and two girls, she said, “Oh, that’s right! You’ve never seen someone stick a fork in an electrical outlet. Yet.”

I’m trying to prepare myself for Life With A Boy. Life with considerably more dirt and wildlife and rambunctiousness. But it will also be life with extra hugs and kisses and another sweet little voice saying, “I love you too, honey.” And I’m definitely OK with that.

The first time I saw Rockford, I knew. It flashed through my head with just as much certainty as you might think, “Today, I’ll have a cheese sandwich for lunch.” And as much fanfare, too. It didn’t shock me or shake me. It was just there. I saw him striding across the commons, and there it was: “That’s the person I’m going to marry.”

It was, I believe, 1990. We were in the seventh grade. I didn’t speak to him for a full year after that.

With all the casualness I could muster (and I would’ve been roughly 12 years old, so I’m sure it was a convincing display), I asked my friend Amanda if she knew who he was, this feathered-haired vision in the Bo Jackson T-shirt.

“That’s Rockford,” she said. “He’s really into baseball cards.”

He doesn’t feather his hair anymore (a shame, really), and much to his dismay, he no longer has a Bo Jackson T-shirt. And he’s not really into baseball cards anymore. (Baseball itself is another story.)

But I’m just as certain now as I was that day. He’s my guy.

Happy birthday, Rockford. I love you.