Valentines

It’s

Two days away

Making cards with dada

For

Grammy and Poppy

Grandma and Granddad

Valentines for school friends are already done

Initialed

Rubber banded

Ready to go

Ready to give away and

We’re

Ready to fill the next two days with

White

Pink

Red

Rectangles

Circles

Hearts

Love

Two days

One Day

The Day

Every day

-By Wyeth and Dad

Haiku With Wyeth

Alphabet Blizzard

Letters falling down

Like the snow outside but with real

Accumulation

Cheese Cheese Please

My cheese Cheese has stripes

I eat it at dinner time

In every season

Train Ride

I have a ticket

Choo choo and clicekty clack

Riding down the track

Tonight

Tonight
As we decorated the house with
Santas
Snowmen and
Baby Jesus Christs
My kids
Played with their
Little People Christmas Story Nativity Scene Playset
Wondering out loud who the queen was and what she had to do with
'The Lord G' and
Then they played the sleigh game
With my son riding on the couch
Santa hat on his head
Pretending to whip my daughter
Who was Kneeling in front of the couch
Wearing reindeer antlers and
Answering to the names of each of the reindeer
One after the other
The future might belong to God and his chosen people
But Rudolph and the boys reigned supreme
Tonight

Seasonal Change

She is in school all day now and
He is there two and a half hours a day
Three days a week
My birthday has past
Only one year left between me and forty
The cat is looking more bedraggled and skinnier than ever
As he enters his fifteenth year
Worn down by the love of a three year old
The air is really only colder at night
Now
But the message has certainly been received and
While it might just be that I too am skinnier and
More bedraggled
Than ever
Due to the love of a six year old and
A three
Now almost four year old
I'm shivering
All day long but
Most especially for
Two hours each morning
Three days a week

Farther Away ... A Feeling

She's feeling further away

Already

I need the zoom lens to find her

More often than not

She'll still jump into the camera but

Now I erase the blurry photos

I can 

Imagine when blurry photos will make it into the album

As artsy

As all there is

So maybe I should 

Keep taking all I can now

While it's just a feeling and

Still farther away

Throw away the script

You think there's a script
Really
So someone wrote in
"And now he will begin to lip his lips
Often and
Excessively
Everywhere he goes"
If so
It doesn't seem as
Frustrating or
Cute
And why did he have to pee on me when he first did the other thing on the toilet
When I think that it is all improv
I'm OK with it but
I know I'm not living through a Hollywood blockbuster
An indie or
Even a horrifically bad B-movie and
I guess I've just never been the sitcom type

Quiet Doesn't Clean Up

Underwear on the kitchen floor

A smattering of cheese and corn and cheerios here and there and

Everywhere

Measuring spoons in the car

Rocks tumbling out of the diaper bag

Blankets covering the coffee table and rocking chair

A stuffed turtle in with the pots and pans

It’s kind of like scat in the woods

You don’t want to step on it but

I bring binoculars and a camera on my walks for a reason

Besides

Quiet doesn’t clean up

It's Happening

It had to happen

We had to put her in the stroller and

Bundle her up excessively

We had to erect every possible barrier that the stroller had to offer

Between the inside and

The world

We had to stay within quick sprint distance of the house

We had to be nervous

We had leave the house

So

I suppose

This has to happen too

Eventually

There are no home school fraternities and

I can’t hold her on my arm

Between my wrist and my elbow

Anymore

Of course

Right now

The burning behind my eye balls doesn’t stop

When I say

It has to happen

It had to happen