That gigantic head has a life of it’s own: slamming into and splitting your delicate lips that are just trying to survive the winter, landing square on the bridge of your nose when you (and your language censor) least expect it, and colliding with floors/furniture/major appliances for no apparent reason.

And it only takes a few days of healthy head growth and sub-par hair sprouting until your precious baby goes from a baby skullet to this…

Good gah! She has a bad baby toupee!

As Boogie approaches the big second birthday, a milestone wherein the doctor will actually measure her head and give us an accurate idea of how it compares to normal heads her age, she now rests her giant heed on her wee pillah with a baby toupee that makes Gene Simmons’ toupee look convincing.

It’s a challenge having a baby with an ever increasing cranial circumference. What, with all the tugging that it takes to get her sweaters (all open in the back might I add) over her head each morning, and then prying them off her head each night. And having to constantly clear the air space when she gets to excited and that thing starts whipping around.

We’re just hoping that the rest of her body catches up before she starts looking to much like a Blythe doll, or before it turns into something like this…

(Also, I am tagging this post with big headed baby.)

devil horns | melody

First Birthdays the Mister (left), Boogie (center), Me (right).

They say a foggy memory is the first sign that you are aging, but I’m here to tell you that it’s more likely that you’ll be driving along (during the day of course because you can’t see so well at night) when you flip to a radio station and find that your music collection has been hijacked and turned into an oldies station.

Perhaps there were musical harbingers of oldness that I had chosen to ignore: the fact that I own vinyl and not in that hipster cool way but in the you can borrow my copy of “Chipmunk Punk” way, the fact that I have a massive collection of tapes (one being a recording of when Q 106.5 went off the air here in St Louis because at my age for whatever reason I thought that would be something worth documenting), and the fact I spent a very long summer afternoon sipping margaritas and moving my tomes of high school music into my iTunes library. That’s right, I have been alive long enough to legitimately own three different types of music storage media. Three because I am just on this side of 8-tracks.

A couple of weekends ago as my thirty-second birthday (yes, I am not old enough to have to lie about it yet) approached, a local alt-rock station-the one that took me from Seattle-grunge virgin to progressive rock woman-was having what they call a “Way Back Weekend.” Now mind you this isn’t the first I’ve heard of this, but it was the first time that it occurred to me that I knew the words to every.single.song. Songs I learned in a pre-Google-era, when you would pray for lyrics on the CD insert or get creative with your EQ to isolate lyrics because it was crucial you knew every word. An era when life was so easy that you actually had time to devote to learning Nirvana’s entire library-which in all their random glory requires a higher level of functioning that even four years of college level lit classes hasn’t helped me figure out. My high school CD collection is now considered a throwback.

During said “wayback weekend” I found myself singing along to a Stabbing Westward song that I has considered a favorite, a song that was so passionate and resonated so well with my love-torn 18-year-old heart. As the song ended, without having forgotten a single word mind you, I turned to the Mister and said, “God that song is way melodramatic.”

Also, get off my lawn.

devil horns | mel

Since she is also becoming increasingly enamored of electronics, a love that started some time ago with licking outlets and hanging on floor lamps, it is nearly impossible to capture her musical styling on video. Instead of beautiful baby music all you would see is an extreme closeup of her mouth and incessantly running nasal cavities, maybe a few teeth, and sea-sickness inducing panning and swooping view of our home as I avoid her desperately clawing, sticky, pudgy fingers.

But never fear, there is an exact rendering of her vocal prowess that can be found right here on the interwebz. You need only close your eyes, press play and be magically transported to Chez Meiners and Boogie’s skillz…it’s like living here without the poopy diaper smell or having your white sweater smeared with tomato sauce.

taste teh awesome | melody

As a human we all have our dark moments, but it has to be one of the darkest places a person can go to be able to look at their own child and be able to beat them with such force, so often that their little life slips from them.

My gut reaction to hearing his mother had done this was tears. Tears that would not stop all day today. They caught my breath and surprised me. I cannot fathom that the last moments of that poor baby’s short life-one that had not had enough time to develop a callous, one that didn’t have time to become jaded-were spent scared and afraid of the person he loved the most in this world. A person he trusted.

And I can’t fathom just how dark of a place his mother could have been in to watch his fear, pain and suffering without being able to have one joyful memory call her back and make it stop.

I heard many people say they weren’t surprised to hear today’s news. That the Casey Anthonies of this world have become so much a part of our American psyche that they knew his mother was responsible before she was arrested today. What a sad mark upon the face of this world that is. I don’t blame them though, and they were right.

But as a mother it is so far from my comprehension and belief in people to be able to fathom that a person is capable of murdering their own child. And so many times this has happened lately. It tries a person’s resolve, and it is haunting.

Bits of information, the color of his pajamas, his blanket, anything that might help the search began furiously circulating on social media and local news outlets.

I can’t tell you how many times I have awoken in a panic to find the clock reading 9:30am, realizing I didn’t wake up to Boogie’s special brand of  morning screeches.  It’s a parent’s worst nightmare-something happens in those few, vulnerable hours when you aren’t there to stop it. Call it new parent panic, or just being a parent, it’s the kind of thing that keeps you up at night.

Tears burned my eyes just a few hours later when I noticed updates about the case had stopped scrolling across the bottom of my screen. The SARAA alert had been called off. I dreaded every second I watched the screen as I hit rewind, finally seeing those last few scrolling sentences say they had identified the body found near the boy’s home as Tyler’s.

I grabbed Boogie tight, gave her as many kisses as I could until she head-butted the bridge of my nose nice and good, and decided this…

Never will I ever feel sorry for myself because I had to clean up your spilled cup of milk.

Never will I ever take for granted that you will be there when my work is through.

Never will I ever promise a moment to someone who won’t appreciate it the way you would.

Never will I ever feel it can’t get any worse when I can hear your giggles.

Never will I ever take one smile, one moment, one day for granted. Not as long as I am your mommy and you are my Boogie.

My gratitude mixes with pain as my heart, thoughts and prayers go out to the mother and family who are today facing their worst nightmare.

**Updated at 10:02pm, Tyler was actually 13-months-old at the time of his murder, not 18 months as I had originally read.

Like taking ice cream from this baby...

I don’t mean to be all apocalyptic, but I also may or may not be hoarding food-stuffs in my basement.

What used to be welcome signs of the first tender days of summer, the quiet song of the cicada and the face-warming temperatures of late-Spring, have turned on everyone. They have become the deafening roar of horny, obscenely large bugs, and the sweltering stickiness that I usually associate with the end of summer, when my liver is so exhausted from patios and margaritas that it has chosen to travel alongside me on a skateboard.

We are only a few weeks into summer and it is shaping up to be about as appealing as eating a Blowpop while grooming a collie.

Because my uterus has essentially delivered up a tether to my front porch in the form of Boogie, I have been spending most of these sweltering days indoors. It is slowly becoming an elective quarantine though since the few occasions I’ve ventured out have done more to instill the fear in me than they have for curing my cabin fever.

Is there anything worse than taking ice cream from a baby, your baby no less, then being dive-bombed by a cicada as you are trying to stuff her very angry, very chubby little limbs into her car seat? Probably not. Unless of course you include that horny, obscenely large bug landing in the handle of your car door, and an entire restaurant watching as you roundhouse said door trying to scare it from its lazy landing spot. Or if you were to compound it with that awkward teen drive-thru worker who simply came out to offer assistance, probably at the beckoning of the lone patron who could breathe out a plea on your behalf in between laughs, only to be greeted with you screaming in his face like a banshee because he walked up too quietly behind you (the better to infiltrate that horny, obscenely large bug’s enemy lines of course).

Not that that would happen to anyone.

And we aren’t going to talk about how many times horny, obscenely large bugs have hitched a ride inside prompting you to strip off your pants, shirt or other assorted piece of clothing and throw it outside overnight.

Not that that would happen to anyone either.

Anyhow, I need to get back to buying canned goods and water… you know, not that storing food has anything to do with that earthquake that woke my arse up way too early this morning.

devil horns | melody

Photo credit: J Pollack Photography

The Mister: I don’t know if you heard me ask it the other day, but what do you think about having another kid? They say two years separation is ideal.

Me: {Diamond Cutter}

Image credit: anorak.co.uk

Devil Horns | Melody

Hey man! Where's the party?

Dear Boogie,

One year ago you officially joined our family, though for many months pending your arrival you had been sharing your personal brand of zeal for life with my rib cage and lower back. It took 34 hours, but you finally came to us, covered in goo, with swollen cheeks and puffy little eyes, your button nose perfectly perched above your tiny little lips. We were so happy to meet you.

One year later you have grown so much, from a tiny little bundle of bones and fat rolls to a tiny little person, complete with a few more emotions outside of mad at the world, more sophisticated control of your extremities, an actual chin, knuckles that are more than just decorative dimples, and an inexplicable fondness for dog food.

I am convinced that this transition has indisputably proven your superior intelligence.

You are curious and fearless, as evidenced by your lack of concern for bodily harm. You are empathetic and loving, as we see with every slobbery kiss and concerned tilt of your head. You are every laugh and smile your Daddy and I ever shared together, on two marshmallow-man legs and with a set of killer lashes.

There are some days when I wouldn’t trade you for all the riches in the world, and others when I would for a stick of gum. And though I may spend the majority of my days just trying to keep you from getting crusty, I assure you that when I scrub your cheeks until they are raw it is not without all the love in my heart.

The last year has been somewhat akin to living with a perpetually drunk Japanese midget, but we have enjoyed every challenge and every finger that has inexplicably ended up in our nostrils and somewhere in the vicinity of our ocular nerves.

Tonight we are going to take you out on the town, stuff you full of black olive and mushroom pizza until you stop banging on your tray like a medieval king who isn’t afraid of gout. And as we tuck you into your bed, snuggled in with your rabbit, we will embark on year two with you, looking forward to the moment when you stop going peeing your pants every few hours and start letting us in on what all of those judgmental faces really mean.

With all the Love in our hearts,
Mommy and The Mister

The problem is her hair is growing, just not on the top of her head.

Reenactment.

She is now rocking a skullet, which, regardless of what a bevy of middle aged men might have convinced themselves, does not flatter anyone or even remotely conceal the fact that they are balding.

Even bows are starting to look a little awkward at this point because they highlight the thick hair that is coming in from approximately the top of her ears down and the serious lack thereof from the ears to her forehead.

Because we would rather not judge her, and we also tend to be the “go all the way or go home” types, the Mister and I are considering giving her a tiny paneled van, a Led Zepplin tee, a couple of Creed CDs, and then dropping her off in the middle of Jefferson County.

Devil Horns | Melody

Also, this happened. I guess at least I'm still technically keeping her off the pole...

There are many things in my life I am grateful for. At this moment it is that the ladies from Lipstick and Laundry weren’t here with their cameras rolling when my child ripped her pants off like a Chippendale, and then crammed a fist full of dog food into her mouth. The fact that she looks genuinely shocked when I tell her not to eat dog food has me not just a little worried.

The previously mentioned camera crew *will* be here in about an hour however to document the tumble weeds of dog hair that Boogie has not eaten (they are few and far between, but they exist), and if they are lucky they may even get a nice shot of Boogie passionately tounging her favorite outlet on the wall.

I should probably put away all of the clues as to how bad of a mother I really am (hide all yer remotez and shock collarz), toss around a few kid friendly CD’s and throw a wad of cookie dough in the oven to char while they are here. Instead, at this moment, I may or may not be considering throwing all of our dirty dishes and laundry in the trash can.

Devil Horns | Melody