On the upside, the diapers I'll be changing this weekend won't contain last night's enchiladas revisited

Like my brother Kyle, Ethan is much more aware of the outfits the women in his life are wearing than your average male. I have a t-shirt screened with sheet music, and he always points at me and says, "Mommy, at's moosic on your shirt! Like [Little] Einsteins!"

I also have this shirt I got in Virginia, it's a red shirt with an illustration of the state on it with mountains drawn as small blue triangles. Whenever I wear it, Ethan pokes me in the mountain range and asks, "Wha's that?" and I say, "Mountains," and he says, "No, at's blue triangles."

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On Thursday I'm headed of to Chicago for four days and five nights all by myself, to see Kim and her new baby Judah. I'm super excited, but I've been waxing nostalgic and getting teary-eyed thinking about leaving Ethan the closer it gets to Thursday. I've been creating lots of cuddle-conducive environments to subliminally guide the boy into my arms, where I can inspect his little limbs for new freckles, bury my nose in his considerably thicker and more texturized hair, and sniff his baby-but-with-a-hint-of-musk aroma as much as possible.

This morning we were cuddling on the couch watching Minnie's Bow-tique (informally known as "Teak" round these parts) and Ethan started messing with the cord to the Roman shade on the window behind us.  So I tell Ethan to quit messing with the cord because it's dangerous. Incidentally, I'm wearing my Virginia t-shirt and reading a book.

I watched as he scrunched up his nose purposefully and restarted his protest sentence a few times to strike the right tone ("You... YOOU... "Youu..."): "YOU stop talkin' a me about it. You go backa bed wif your blue triangles and your book," he spat venomously, with a sharp rap of his finger on my book for emphasis.

I don't know what I'll do without him for four days. And Noah, too, of course.

At any rate, mothering is a strange and wonderful beast. The object of my deepest affections alternately tells me he loves me "so much" and calls me "Stinky Pete." He makes me long for the days of sleeping late and mourn for the nights we'll spend apart. Maybe I can get Kim to call me Stinky Pete a few times between cuddles with Judah.