Thief of Hearts.

He has stolen my heart and my time and my sex life. He has robbed me of sleep and alone time and skin elasticity. He has rocked my very world, and changed my life for the complete better.

Our Ziggy, he is making me into the woman I always thought I might could be.

He is four months old now. Where did the time go?

He can roll over, and laugh, and play a joke by smiling and popping off during nursing. He thinks that is very very funny.


Ziggy went on his first outing with Daddy Booty this week (leaving Mama home alone for the first time ever in Mama-Life)-- in the Baby Bjorn, and to the dog park. Did Ms. Booty Homemaker loll in a tub of bubbles and nibble on dainty petit fours in their absence? No, she did not! Rather: I cooked up a mean enchilada casserole, washed dishes, rocked out to my favorite current record (Sufjan Stevens, Illinoise) and wished like hell for a fake beer to accompany this singular event.


Our man Ziggy can stick his entire fist in his mouth. He can purse his mouth inward and and make a new and endless string of urgent sounding exclamations. He can sit on a Mama knee and dance to next Tuesday, explode poop all over the inside of a pajama suit and make sixty something year old grandparents giddy and deliciously rediculous.

He can soak a shirt in drool in a quarter of an hour and gum a parental hand to the point of pain.
He can say da-da and have no idea that it means Daddy, and make his want for the breast extremely clear from any position at any hour of the clock.

He can make his big viking daddy weep. This is the same big viking daddy who harbors (not-so) secret desires of his son dancing in the NFL in-zone. This morning, early early, we are up for coffee and whispering over what the day brings and of course, as my Mister is a weather freak parade the Weather Channel is casting its wee morn neon glow into the living room. After his shower, Daddy Booty ducks into the bedroom for clean work clothes, emerges to ask, "You check out the wingspan on that kid?" (As per usual, my man has lingered over his baby boy, still sleeping in our big family bed; often I find him there with a dreamy half smile and a look of profound wonder shot through with gratitude.) "Yeah," I say, "he's just long and lean." My Mister allows that he's re-jiggering his hopes toward the NBA, 'if they still allow white guys to play basketball by the time he gets big enough," he says. It's a family man thing, this sports obsessed hoping, and I recall that my Mister's favorite thing anyone said when Ziggy was born was the announcement by my father, upon first view of his grandson, "He'll be one hell of a tight-end!"