Here I come to shave the day

The next person who looks at Cmonkey and tells us "It's time to have
another!" is going to get:

A. a punch in the face
B. "So you're pregnant, then?"
C. a punch in the face
D. "But we haven't eaten this one yet."
E. a punch in the fucking face

Aside from the fact that family planning is a very personal decision between
me, my babymaker, and my partner--and that's an infuriating boundary to
cross, but a different post--right now a second kid is in limbo. There will
be another (body willing) but not anytime soon (now that the contraception's
sorted out).

My grandmother had seven kids, spaced out over twenty years. And when my
grandfather retired and the last kid moved out, they nearly killed each
other because they had no idea how to live together outside of parenthood.
They figured it out, at the cost of a separation and a suicide attempt, but
they made it work again with just the two of them.

Mr. F and I have years of friendship to work with, to boost the signal as we
shout over the din of this extra work and responsibility. But I'm still not
ready to even think about the proposed second kid. I do want another, but
there's no room in the life right now to do a sibmonkey justice. And I know
for most folks it's not a big deal, it's more the merrier, but raising
Cmonkey is so intense, so fleeting and amazing, I want to have enough mental
resources to pay proper attention to the second kid as they race through
their own childhood.

Perhaps I'm simply weary and weirded out by the last few weeks of playing
doll. She has a ten inch plastic babydoll that looks like Tor Johnson as a
chubby infant, and we've easily spent forty hours so far pretending the baby
has to go potty, needs a nap, needs to cuddle, has an ouchie, has snarls to
be combed out, needs to nurse, needs to take a bath. Big Stuff is happening
in her brain right now, processing who she is in relation to others, getting
a handle on what babyhood is as she's moving out of it.

baby's gotta drop some kids off at the pool

Imagine Tor in caucasian colored plastic, and a little knit tunic and
woolie pants. Now imagine Tor fallen face first off the pot Elvis-style and
mooning you as you walk in the room.

I play along, guide her in how to care for it, play catch with
dollclothes, and much of the time she's sitting on her own potty along with
the doll perched on a little toy dutch oven. I draw the line at nursing
Tor. She's tentative about pretending to feed it herself, and it feels like
we're circling around what's driving the sudden intense interest: the two
steps forward, one big step back that's been our flirtation with weaning.
Momma's getting serious, and so Cmonkey wants to redefine what the dyad will
look like without milk before committing to the cause.

Speaking of inhabiting roles, Cmonkey now refers to herself in three
different ways (similar derivations from her own name, not Cmonkey):

Me - emphasizes matters of personal import, "Daddy gave it to *me*."
Nundee - neutral reference to self, slowly being replaced by I,
"Nundee wipe it, the table."
MonkMonk - imperious, cheeky, chiding, sometimes referring to her
body as something she owns, "Unbuckle MonkMonk!" "No wash it, my MonkMonk!"

We've determined MonkMonk is her evil alter-ego.