THAT was Fun

When I am not running away or considering inflicting bodily harm on my child

When I am not puking in the sink all hopped up on adrenaline and rage

When I am not getting ranty where I shouldn't

Sometimes I actually laugh at my kids; wait! with my kids. Like this one time... Rory was 3 and a solid half and the GFYO was a non-walking one year old. We were having one of those good-idea-at-the-time-do-I-get-points-for-this-later outings. Rory was on her bike -- a natural athlete but with no respect for physics. The GFYO was in a stroller and with no respect for my aching back on our roller-coaster road: all up and down and up and down and no wonder I was skinny then.

We were on a downward part of the street. It was recycling day. Rory's foot missed the pedal and she could not recover. She shot head over handlebars into a blue bin.

That's when I started laughing, like howling, because you know, my 3-year old was ass and feet up, helmet down in a fucking blue recycling bin and that's -- please -- very very funny. And I was holding a stroller and laughing too much to remember to push the brake down and suddenly realizing that OH SHIT SHE MIGHT BE HURT and so I rushed to the bin scene, ditching the stroller, which I realized a second later, was uh-oh -- a mistake. Which made the whole ridiculous scene even funnier.

I really owe that nice anonymous lady who witnessed the whole thing from her car because I have never seen anyone leap so fast from a vehicle to a grab a rolling stroller that was racing down the hill. She grabbed him, hugged me, asked if the other kid was okay. And I replied that yes, she was fine and then I said -- I said this OUT LOUD to someone who has just rescued my child -- "well, at least she missed the bins with the bottles" and I burst into the most ridiculously uncontrollable laughter that if I had water or coke or beer in my mouth, I would have spit it out. On her. 

I remember when I couldn't sleep because my week old baby's breath sounded "weird." Sometimes I remember just waking out of a dead sleep because some pattern in her breath seemed different.  I remember reaching into her bassinet and putting my hand on her chest to know that it was rising. I was desperate when she had her first diaper rash. Then her sister was born.

Now? My kid takes a plunge into a recycling bin and I can't stop laughing. My paranoia has metabolized into something completely the opposite: you can't breath cause of that of ball/kick/punch in the stomach? Go sit on the couch until you can 'cause I'm cooking dinner.  I figure someday, one of 'em might come in with an eyeball hanging out of the socket and I'll say, oh just get an ice pack.

Things change. Thankfully.

(And also, thank you.)