Liner Notes 1/23

"Orchid." Orchid is the baby Fable has kept in her shirt for the past week, refusing to remove her even at school. She sleeps with her, wakes, and promptly tucks her into her shirt or dress or coat, pulls her little face through so that her little head rests below her chin, chest to chest.

Fable has always been maternal but it wasn't until this week that she started wearing her babies on her person.

"Hey, how's she sleeping?"

"Good. She really tired. She sleep a lot."

"What are you coloring?"

"A spider heart!"

I took Fable and the babies to the Flea Market over the weekend. It was our first sojourn the four of us (five, including Orchid, who Fable wore in her dress all afternoon). We perused piles of discarded treasure, old barbies in orange crates, costume jewelry Fable insisted I try on, slap bracelets. I let Fable pick one for herself.

"What about Archer?"

... And one for Archer, too.

Every week I take pictures of the girls on the rug with the intent on making them flip books of their first year, but really, I just love dressing them up and taking their pictures. It's just... fun.

Boheme and Reverie had their four-month check-up last week, weighing in at twelve and a half pounds (Revi) and fourteen and a half pounds (Bo) respectively. It was the first time I took them to the doctor alone, and between shots, comforting after shots and feedings took three hours from start to finish. But we did it! We survived. I think I might even be getting the hang of this, manybabybusiness.

(Kind of?)

With Archer and Fable's help, I can get dinner ready on my own when Hal's working late. Archer has mastered the art of entertaining the girls:

"It's because I know their passwords," he says.

Indeed. So much so, I can FINALLY remove Bo from my body when Archer's home and set her up in her chair next to him. Chop some broccoli, stretch ye olde weary bones, etc.

An Archer and his Bo

The flowers came in the middle of a fight. The timing couldn't have been worse. Hal and I were mid-argument and then, all of a sudden. "Knock, knock, knock!"

"Delivery for... Rebecca Woolf?"

The bouquet was beautiful, an anniversary gift he designed himself, which of course, at the time, made me all the angrier. Because I wasn't finished being mad. I needed AT LEAST another hour of slamming doors and sweeping hallways. Because there's nothing worse than a beautiful bouquet of flowers when you're trying to be pissed off. It wasn't fair.

I refused to look!

"Do you like them?"

"Yes."

"Don't you want to read the card?"

"Goddamnit, YES."

We made up just in time for the sitter to arrive and later that evening, at our fancy anniversary dinner, I spilled an entire bottle of champagne in my lap. But not before we toasted to seven whole years and four perfect children and two full spider hearts.

GGC