One Lawyer and two children drove off to Kansas to camp in Lake Scott State Park, and acquire standing in an environmental suit I am filing later in the summer. We packed a tent, a king sized air mattress, a queen sized sleeping bag, a pile of camping food, dishes, camp stove, and other necessary gear.

We forgot the bug spray.

We remembered the hammock and the travel DVD player.

We drove 5 and a half hours, with over 7 stops, through the wilds of eastern Colorado. We stopped at fast food places, and gas stations. We stared in wonder at Kanarado, and signs for the largest prairie dog ever. We ate snacks, and I listened to Shrek, over and over again, and the kids paused and rewound favorite parts to get themselves through almost six hours in the car with nothing to look at but highway and wheat fields.

“Look kids, look at the lovely colors of the native prairie grasses! See all the pinks and purples! The silver sagebrushes and deep greens!”

“Look kids, cows!”

“Look kids! A baby cow!”

“Look kids! Horses!”

“Look kids! I see more cows!”

“Look kids! — “We know mom! Cows.”

Really, there are only so many times you can look at cows before you are bored of them I suppose.

Finally, after way too many hours in the car, and one wrong turn into some poor farmers wheat field courtesy of the GPS, We ended up at Lake Scott State Park. A beautiful, spring fed oasis on the western plains containing more species of grasses, birds, and reptiles than nearly any other place in North America. Oh yeah, and it’s hotter than a frying pan on a camp stove in July.

Once we got to the camp ground, things got a little, more interesting. My mentor and his lady love joined us at the camp site, and we chose a spot that prevented the children from launching themselves into the 100 acre lace without first running around a blockade of bushes, giving us adults a chance to prevent consistent attempts at drowning.

Jay and Nicole assisted in child watching while I set the tent up in the shade of a tree. Otter and Monkey ran around, investigating the surroundings, picking up Canadian goose feathers, and assisting me in finding tent parts.

Otter attempted to drive the car, climbing up in the front seat each time the door was opened.

Once we were all settled in and the tent was set up I unpacked the car and Nicole noticed our bush enclosure was riddled with large clumps of poison ivy.

Crap, so much for letting the kids run free within the enclosure. Camping became a lot more preventative from that point forward, with shouts of “Otter! Don’t touch that please!” resounding throughout the camp. It only got worse once we lit the fire and added potential buring to the list of iminent harm.

To top things off, it was hot. Blazing hot. Un-fucking-believably hot. We were in a little valley in Kansas, so there seemed to be no wind (until later that night during the wind storm of death) and the sun beat down on us mercilessly. We ended up swimming in the lake far sooner than we expected to, simply to get some relief from the heat.

The kids and I enjoyed that, and after convincing Monkey the lake water was not full of Crocodiles and was indeed shallow enough, she was paddling around like a duck in no time. Otter stayed glued to my hip the whole time, but was generally pleased  to be cooling down in the water instead of red-faced and miserable out on the sand. Nicole kindly took Monkey out further into the lake, and Jay swam out to the other side to investigate a nested cormorant.

We swam for ages, and then dried off on the ancient playground by the swimming area. The playground reminded me of the many playgrounds my brother and I enthusiastically visited during our youth, while on the way to my grandparents farm in Eastern Colorado. There were swings, and a round-a-bout, and about three million tumbleweeds. Somehow, these rundown playgrounds are always more enticing to me than the fancier gadget filled ones we see all over the city today. Maybe it’s because I remember how seeing them meant freedom from restraint and a break from the car when I was younger, or maybe it’s because their memory comes with the sense memory of hot weather, dry earth, warm wind, and the awareness of quiet deeper than any I had found in the city. The memory of the sun beating down on my back comes to me from years past, haunting me with the sound of rusty chains attached to tire swings, and the constant squeak of the un-oiled hinges deep inside the round-a-bout, as my brother and I traded off the burden of running along in the well worn path, with the joy of being made sick to our stomachs in its center.

Monkey screamed in glee while Jay pushed the round-a-bout, and Nicole tried valiantly to hold onto Otter so he wouldn’t fly out and break an arm. Sadly, all she got for her consideration was an upset stomach and a screaming Otter.

Once we had satisfied the playing needs of our small charges we headed back into the camp to settle into dinner by camp stove and a night of marshmallow roasting, wine, and mead. While dinner was cooking, Monkey and Jay rescued a Monarch butterfly floating out on the lake, and Monkey held it aloft while Otter yelled “Me! Me!” and tried to get it out of her reach. Jay took over the cooking while Nicole took the kids over to some Queen Anne’s Lace and instructed Monkey in the proper way to safely place the butterfly on the flower so its wings would dry.

Once dinner was eaten and the dishes cleaned up we settled around the fire for marshmallow cooking. After painstakingly picking out sticks and sharpening their points, the kids decided they preferred the marshmallows un-roasted and proceeded to devour them at will. Having filled up on more of those than they did anything else I finally got them into the tent and to sleep. Of course, it took about an hour to do that, and was a battle royale, with Otter clinging desperately to me because our air mattress hadn’t filled up very well and every time we moved we careened into each other. The poor kid was terrified. However, exhaustion won over terror eventually and the late night hours found Jay, Nicole, and I trading life stories and future environmental plans over a dying fire, a fleet of bugs, and the remainder of the wine.

We dove for cover when the stars disappeared and the winds began to whip into our tents in a rather epic manner. Reminded of the thunderstorms experienced back home of late, I gathered all the remaining belongs at the front of the tent, tucked them inside, and dashed into the tent to ready myself for a horrible rainstorm.

It never came.

Instead, I was jerked awake all night by intense and violent winds whipping at my rain flap. The tent shuddered and shook, and Otter woke randomly, to sit up, bleat like an angry baby dragon, and crash into my lap. Monkey would kick Otter and I throughout the night as the noisy wind woke her enough to make her toss and turn. I woke up again and again prepared to batten down the rain-flaps, left open to cool the tent in the still oppressive heat, only to discover each time that there was still no rain, only wind. Finally, around five in the morning, it cooled enough to close the flaps and the wind died enough to calm the babies. We slept.

Until about 7 or 8, when we awoke bundled in a heap, roasting like bacon, and blinking blearily at each other. We scrambled out of our jammies, tossed on clothes, changed diapers, and began the morning routine. For me, that included breaking down a tent that would not continue to stay put in the wind without us in it.

Then, breakfasted and packed up, we wandered off in search of beetle habitat, the purpose of the trip in the first place. We drove to the spring wherein our endangered species was supposed to lie, and, avoiding the poison ivy lacing the trial, hiked along it’s habitat, enjoying the view and the morning.

First we came upon the bridge under which the beetle lives, and snapped photos of it (the bridge, not the beetle) We didn’t walk along it, as we did not wish to imperil either the beetle, or ourselves, by carelessly wandering through the rocky, and aged, habitat.

The Riffle Beetle Habitat

We hiked above the bridge on the neighboring nature trail, which was cool and lovely, though quite overgrown with spiny nettle and poison ivy. Monkey was wearing pants, but Otter had to hitch a ride on Jay’s shoulders, and his fat baby legs and arms were exposed to the plethora of poisonous plants growing in abundance around us. Jay was pleased to carry him, but just as pleased that the poison plant life cleared atop the trail, as Otter has never been a lightweight child.

The spring fed pond from the nature trail above the bridge.

Poison Ivy grows over the hiking trail.

At the end of the hike, we looked around the pond and Monkey inspected some rocks. The habitat, at the other end of the spring, was in no danger from her scientific inquiry here, so Jay and Nicole helped her apply her magnifying glass to a few slimy rocks and river bed critters.
Otter, less interested in viewing slimy insects and more interested in being down and free, watched the inquiry from a few feet away, occasionally investigating the butterflies alighting about.

Jay, Nicole, and Monkey search for critters

Otter watches the science team from afar.

One of Otter's butterflies

The Oasis

After our habitat adventure was completed, we drove back to the lake for another swim, and then ended our camping adventure with peanut butter and honey sandwiches and fresh water. Then, we took the long drive back into Denver, this time with me listening to Aladdin the whole way home.

Oddly, despite the bone weary exhaustion that struck me upon returning, the tick that attached itself to my right hip somewhere between the last swim and home, and the constant vigilance required by camping with small children, I would actually do this again.

“Your Dad is on the phone with a client, so I am going to need you guys to play quietly in your room and the living room please.” I instructed the children, as I set out a basket of oranges, graham crackers, grapes, and cheese slices, placed “Over the Hedge” on their little t.v. screen in their room, and provided them with juice and two different colors of clay, with various implements of clay creation to entertain them with.

“Sure mom!” Monkey said “I will keep Otter in our room and play quietly!”

Otter smiled, sat on his chair, grabbed a piece of cheese and the play clay knife and began industriously sawing away. Pleased that my plan to entertain the children seemed feasible, I went to the bathroom.

My mistake.

As soon as my pants were down, literally, both children were screaming their heads off in the kitchen, mere inches from the office door and Lee’s phone call with the all important client.

Rapidly interrupting and cleaning up from my heretofore necessary, but now less important, bodily functions I sped out of the bathroom and hustled everyone back into the kid’s room.

“What on earth is going on?” I demanded from Monkey, exasperated that my careful providing of snacks and two distractions had failed so quickly and dramatically. “Didn’t I just finish telling you that Daddy is on the phone with a client and you both need to play quietly in your room?”

“Well, Otter was fine until he took some of my yellow clay and ran off with it so I decided to go get it back and make him play with his own yellow clay but he didn’t like that so he ran to the office to get daddy but I knew you didn’t want him to so I stopped him in the kitchen and yelled at him so he yelled back. ” Monkey replied, in one breath.

Hmmm.

“Okay, let me get this straight. Your brother, who is two and doesn’t really understand the whole your clay/his clay concept, ran off with your yellow clay. Instead of simply letting him go and taking his yellow clay, you chased him into the kitchen, where you weren’t supposed to go, and took it back, thereby making him yell and cry. Then when he wanted to go get Daddy, you yelled at him outside the office door, making him yell and cry again. All this right after I explained to you that Daddy was on an important phone call with a client and needed the house to be quiet. Do I have that right?”

“Yes” Monkey responded, hanging her head. “Sorry mom. I won’t do it again.”

Oh, but she will. For you see, mere minutes after I deposited the children in the bedroom with new snacks, a restarted movie, new play clay, the option to paint with the “no mess” paints and paper, and NEW instructions to play quietly because Daddy was on a phone call, Monkey engaged Otter in a game of “Who can scream the loudest.” (Otter won by the way, he has a scream that can break glass.)

Then, when I blocked access to the kitchen off with a baby gate and locked the bathroom door in an attempt to at least keep them physically further away from Lee, Monkey thought she and Otter should ride around the dining room, nearest the baby gate,  on Otter’s loud new scooter, singing loudly into the volume enhancing microphones they bought with their allowances yesterday. The microphones I am now the proud temporary owner of.

I told her to get off the scooter, that she wasn’t allowed to ride it until her Dad was off the phone. She pushed it over and loudly stomped into her room yelling about how unfair it was. Then, when I followed her into her room, she screamed her head off, horror movie style, because “I scared her.” I asked her if she would like me to lock her in her room for the rest of the day and cancel the day’s activities, because I had just about had enough of her unwillingness to listen, follow instructions, and behave like a sane person. I then told her to remain in her room, on her bed, silently watching her movie until I came and told her she could do otherwise.

Of course, when I told my husband about the trials and tribulations I suffered while providing him with some semblance of peace for his phone calls this morning, he told me that my mom and dad were probably high fiving it and laughing hysterically upon reading this, well revenged for some of the shit I had pulled on them growing up.

I informed him that statements like that were only wise if he was attempting to have a long and happy marriage with my mother.

stretched tight, skin aching,

heart beating, loud and frantic.

Afraid if the slightest rip appears, the band will snap!

The page will tear, the fragile hold we have on life will be no more.

So many of the people I know, or know of, seem to be desperately holding on to what they have, blindly putting one foot in front of the other, simply so they can continue to exist. Certain that this sort of blind continuing is what is required in order to survive.

I have discovered recently that the problem with this blind moving forward is that one doesn’t seems to be able to remember that sharing our burdens with each other lessens them, eases the weight they place on our shoulders. When the world seems to be crushing you with its unceasing ability to push your head underwater while you desperately try to breathe, calling a friend is often the best way to catch your breath. Even if that friend is going to spend as much time telling you about their personal suffering as you spend telling them about yours.

Actually no, I would say especially if that friend is going to spend as much time telling you about their personal suffering as you will spend telling them about yours.

I have been swimming underwater without air for so long now that my chest hurts with an almost constant longing for breath. Yet, regardless of how much I know my friends and family love and support me, I can see how tautly they are stretched too. I shudder at the thought of further burdening them with whispers of my troubles. So when asked how I am, I say “fine.” I soldier on. I choose not to burden them with my troubles, which means I also don’t make much time for theirs.

But the other night Hatchet and I took our girls out for an evening date. We set them loose on the park and she and I talked. Really talked. We talked about how much life sucks. She shared her life suckage and I shared mine. Suddenly, there were bubbles of air in my dark, oppressive pool of life. They tickled up around me, caressing my face, arms, legs, like a natural spring sauna, bringing with them life and laughter, smiles and breath.

Three hours of being sad together. Three hours of walking in our muck and shit together and I was lighter.

She and I aren’t stupid people, so we did it again last night, and today, I am lighter yet again.

My life is more possible based on three hours a week of shared suffering than I ever imagined it could be.

So I offer up a challenge I suppose,  make time for each other again. Break out of the routines you have locked yourself in, find that friend you have been convincing yourself you were saving from having to deal with your troubles. Call them up, share your burdens, and ask them to share theirs.

You will find yourself loosening up again, better able to breathe, simply by sharing in each other’s stories.

(Oh and Hatchet dear, this one is for you.)

Last week Otter and I said goodbye to nursing. He was two months past his second birthday.

The decision to wean was not made lightly. He had been growing more independent for quite some time, blossoming the way breastfed babies do. Then suddenly he began to regress, demanding more and more milk, becoming less willing to eat solid foods and becoming violent and angry when I wouldn’t let him nurse. I started feeling as though keeping him on the breast was doing him more harm than good, a feeling that started inside me, and grew. One day he and I had a huge fight about nursing, and we decided, together, that it was time to stop. I told him, in one week, we say bye bye to Mama milk.

That week we snuggled a lot more, we nursed for longer periods, even though we stayed on our three times a day schedule, mornings, naptimes, and bedtime. When weaning day came, we woke up and I invited him to have as long a nurse as he wanted, because it was our bye bye to Mama milk nurse. It was a wonderful nurse. We nursed for a long time. We smiled at each other, patted each other’s cheeks, played with our hair, smiled. He would sit up and talk from time to time, and then settle back in to nurse some more. We snuggled close, took our time, really said goodbye.

Then we got up, got dressed, and went out to Target to get Otter his very first “Big Boy” toy. He picked out a plasmaglider, this very cool self propelled glider. He was very proud of it, rode it through the store, the checkout line, and under my very paranoid eye, even out to the car. He has ridden it around the house constantly ever since. He is thrilled with it, because sister even likes it, a sure sign that it is, in fact, a Big Boy toy.

This week has been surprisingly easy for my boy. We have had a few times when he has asked for milk, and then gotten sad when I have reminded him that we said goodbye to it, but for the most part he has not missed it. He has been co-sleeping again to make up for the lost closeness, and has been less willing to be away from me during the day. He has been needier. However, it seems the milk was more a comfort thing for him, than it was a source of food, as he doesn’t miss the nutrient as much as he does the snuggles.

As for me, I have found it very hard. I have not only said goodbye to nursing Otter, I have said goodbye to nursing. I have said goodbye to babyhood. I am no longer the mother of infants. All those silent moments of communication, spent staring deeply into my baby’s eyes while they greedily drink away, every swallow bringing satisfaction, knowing I am personally responsible for making them healthy and strong. All the soft, fuzzy head snuggled against my arm moments. All the hushed nursery moments. All the first balloons, and baby chortles. At thirty three years of age, that magical part of my life is behind me. Otter was my last baby.

I am on to the hustle and bustle of noisier children, busy children with questions and activities, and the certainty the Mommy doesn’t hold the world in her hand and certainly doesn’t always know what she is doing. I am on to PTO meetings and playdates, boyfriends and girlfriends, allowances and driving permits. I am on to children who don’t have time to snuggle me, and won’t want to spend an hour on Saturday morning cuddled in bed with me, just talking and playing with my hair.

Otter took well to weaning. Me, not so much.

I borrow the above lingo from my friend Kate. I have been experiencing an increasing number of unpleasant side effects from the Topomax. (My medication of choice for controlling the Dr. Strangelove style seizure accompanying my form of Epilepsy.)

Yesterday and today I have been trying to ignore a ridiculous level of joint pain and the sense that someone took a whip to the bottoms of my feet for several hours. My gums are super sensitive to pressure, bleed at the drop of a hat, and the inside of my lips feel as though I have been sucking on sour candy for days on end. The most frustrating part is that my doctor is refusing to consider that these problems may be caused by the drug. As if, in addition to suddenly coming down with Epilepsy, I have also simultaneously developed sudden onset rhumetoid arthritis, gingivitis, and a number of other ailments.

I asked her if she had ever heard of Occam’s Razor, or the law of parsimony, and then promptly scheduled an appointment with the University of Colorado Advanced Neurology Department. Thanks to a friend’s Mama, who works there, I will be seen at the end of the month. It usually takes four to sixth months to get in to see these doctors, as this is the national leading clinic for the treatment and care of Epilepsy. I am happy there are people who love me and are willing to call in favors for me right now. Bless them.

I am feeling less scattered, but still seem to be forgetting words. This terrifies me on so many levels, because I rarely if ever forget anything. One of the reasons the law appealed to me, litigation in particular, is my ability to recall, with nigh perfect clarity, conversations, things I have read, etc.  It has helped me in the courtroom on more than one occassion. This “side effect” of losing short term memory and being unable to remember words is making my job very difficult to do indeed. I am going to have to stop this drug for that reason alone if it gets any worse, regardless of how effective it has been at preventing migraines and seizures.

I only have two weeks until the new doctors examine my files, my tests, and me. Maybe they will have a different take on medication. Maybe Topomax is not the one for me, despite being 22 pounds thinner and headache free, I am thinking the downsides outnumber the up.

On behalf of my client, WildEarth Guardians, who has graciously granted permission to discuss the details of the case in the press and blogosphere, I filed suit against Secretary of the Interior Ken Salazar on June 17th for failure to prepare and implement a recovery plan for two sub-species of Jaguarundi.

As we chose to file in Texas, I filed pro hac vice, through local counsel Pete Thompson of Thompson Marsh. Filing Pro Hac basically means Pete kindly agreed to let me file under his license and reputation with the Texas bar, as I am not licensed in that jurisdiction.

To summarize our claim a little; the Endangered Species Act requires the Secretary of the Interior develop and implement recovery plans for endangered and threatened species as ultimate purpose of the Act is to recover species to the point that the protections of the Act are no longer necessary. Well, these two sub-species of Jaguarundi were listed as endangered one year before Star Wars, A New Hope hit the big screen, and the Secretary still doesn’t have a recovery plan in place to help insure these species survival. We are arguing that this is undue delay and are asking the court order the Secretary prepare and implement such a plan posthaste.

There is a lot more legalese in the complaint, which you can read in the press release linked to above or again here. (You really don’t have to read it though. I won’t be hurt if you choose not to. I promise.)

Wish us luck!!

* ESA Recovery Plan word cloud created using Wordle

I used to believe I could do anything.

Over the past few years I began to realize that belief was born more of my youth and ignorance than it was of any innate capability or superhuman ability. I began to doubt myself, curb my own enthusism, stop tooting my own horn.

Well, as my dearly departed godmother Arie used to say “If you don’t tooteth your own horn, your horn will remain untooteth.”

So today I decided that realization was just plain wrong.

Clearly, whily my youthful self was woefully mistaken about things such as choosing first husbands and the wisdom of pairing three inch heels with stretch pants, she was wise beyond her years in the believing in myself department. This current me could stand to learn a lot from the sheer unmitigated temerity and chutzpah that younger me had when it came to believing what she deserved. Why is that?

Why should a teenaged girl with no credentials be more determined to believe she deserves the world on a platter than a thirty something with a resume peppered with successful interships and clerkships, a pile of degrees, and licenses lining her walls? If anything the roles should be reversed. I should be more willing to demand the world now than I have ever been, or at the least, more willing to believe I deserve it, should my hard work and diligence result in a nicely sized slice.

Yet, here I am. Can I?…. Should I?…. Have I paid enough dues?….Worked hard enough?….Do I have enough experience?…..Is everyone else out there better than me?/smarter than me?/more prepared than me?/better connected than me?…

Oh how that list drones on.

Today I decided to throw the list out. Tear it up, throw it out, tell my older, “wiser” self to shut the fuck up, and start believing in myself again.

Let me tell you something my teenaged self knew intrinsically; no one else out there in the world is going to come along and reinforce you. Your boss isn’t going to come along and tell you how amazing you are, and how much they need you at the company, and hand you a promotion. If you want to get ahead, you are going to have to believe you deserve it, and then make the people with the power to promote you believe you deserve it.

And if you are like me, and you have your own business, no one is going to walk into your door and tell you what an amazing business you have. You are going to have to sell them on it. Opening your doors to the world is like opening your heart and soul. You have to push them open, and them gather the world into them, so you had damn well better believe with ever fiber of your being that you are absolutely amazing. I have never met a client who went out of their way to tell me what an amazing lawyer I was, unless they started out as an old family friend.

So today marks the start of a new era of temerity and chutzpah.

Yes, I can do anything. I have my own business, I have a license to sue, and damn it, I am just that damn good.

Environmental law is a strange legal creature. I like to imagine it looks a little like a hybrid car would ten to fifteen years in the future, still in pretty good shape, but with some parts held together with duct tape here and there. Our environmental laws require businesses to clean up the toxic messes they made in the past, even though it used to be legal to make them, prevent business and government from making them in the future,  protect and recover species from extinction, try to prevent or at least unravel the mess that is environmental racism and inequity in this country, lower the particulate matter in our air and clear the toxins from our water, to name a few.

The hodge podge series of laws that make up our nation’s envrionmental legal arena often seem hobbled together, in part because they were. Many of the laws were written in haste and enacted in response to seeming environmental disasters during the Nixon administration. They often refer to each other, instead of being whole laws unto themselves, requiring those who practice environmental law to flip between statutes to get the exact meaning of certain terms and conditions.

But they are, I believe anyway, fun.

Which is why my summer will be spent fighting on behalf of some cats, some mussels, some beetles, and the air we breathe. Sound like a party to you?

The guest list is a distinguised one, as the U.S. Secretary of the Interior Ken Salazar will be invited to dance with me at each and every one of my shindigs, well, everyone but the Clean Air Act case, I think that one gets to go to someone else. I will find out soon.

My first case goes live on the 18th. Once the press release goes live, I will copy it here so you all can read up on it.

We have baby talk.

Otter has begun to express himself in strange and adorable words the past couple of weeks.

My favorite word so far is “Waer”.

Instead of the infamous wawa that befalls most toddlers when asking for water, Otter has sounded the word out with the “t”. So he will point at a fountain and say “Waer ma sa ma! Waer!” (That’s me, Ma sa Ma, not Mama, he seems determined to do everything just slightly differently than everyone else, why do I have the sense that I am in for it in the not too distant future?)

The stopper is definitely out of his flow of words, he is coming out with new ones every day. He said nurse the other day, “what’s this”, “slide”, “lily” and more come each day. It’s funny, because he tries really hard to say each word precisely, which seems to be way he waits so long to say them. He won’t try to say a word until he has it down to almost the exact cadence, and then he’ll belt it out. It makes for some pretty amusing baby words. Such as “waer”, I suppose.

He is getting very “two” as we say, stubborn and angry at his limitations in expression. When he wants something he will grab my hands and try to make me do what he wants. If he wants to leave a place he will take my hand to the door and try to make me turn the knob. If he wants me to wipe his face he will put my hand on a napkin and then to his face. If he wants a snack he will drag me to the refrigerator, etc. It’s a very strange experience, being made into a human puppet by an angry screaming toddler.

When he gets really mad he starts kicking and hitting now, so we are trying to teach him to stop that. Of course, he is still really sensitive, so when we yell “no” he starts to cry and crumples into a ball of sodden sad baby.

We are generally getting pretty frustrated all around here.

We thought Monkey was our terrible two but it’s starting to be pretty good odds around here that she was a cakewalk compared to Otter.

A few days ago Nana picked Monkey up in her big new truck for an overnight. Everyone made a big deal out of the truck, even Monkey talked about how much better she could see from her car seat. Otter was getting really excited about the truck, but then everyone drove away, and left … him… behind. He was really upset about being left out. He stood at the window crying for about twenty minutes. He yelled at me on and off for about two hours. I told him repeatedly that he and I were going somewhere special after his nap but there was no comforting that young man. Finally he exhausted himself and fell asleep.

The minute he woke up he took his shoes to me and said “shoes.. go”. I told him we still had 30 minutes until we were meeting our friends. I ended up leaving early and cleaning out my car for fifteen minutes instead of dealing with another two year old meltdown. He finally felt better after he got to go to Stapleton’s central park with Ma sa ma and her friends, and play in the fountain, run around on the playground, stay up late, and eat pizza.

The next day when Nana dropped Monkey off she asked Otter for a kiss. He looked at her, shook his head, and walked away.

Terrible two’s here we come.

Hello, I would like to place you on a medication with side effects that include the following:

Anorexia, depression, metabolic acidosis (ph imbalance of the blood that can result in blindness, kidney failure, coma and death if left unchecked), and suicidal thoughts. Would that be all right with you? Excellent.

By the way, I will only respond immediately to concerns about any side effects you may experience while taking this medication during the first two weeks you are on it, after that my rapid pit bull of a receptionist will do everything in her power to hang up on you as quickly as possible each and every time you call. Got that?

Fantastic.