The Last Onsie

It's hot.
Almost unbearably hot, as the mercury climbed over 100 degrees in our back yard today.
The pools and lakes are closed for the season. When they were open, it was too cold to get wet outside. My plants went from moldy and pathetic to burned and frazzled.
They didn't know whether to grow or shrivel up and die.
The kids took the mini heat wave in stride. We met some friends at a beach in Alameda, and while the air was cooler, the water was full of organisms that burrow into your skin and cause itching.
"Don't go in the water guys".
"But, I want to go in the water!"
"I know. We can't".
So we went home and napped, and hid in the relative coolness of the house that I had locked up tight by 9AM. After naps we took cool baths and put on cool clothes. I pulled out an old favorite, that I liked to put my babies in whenever the weather turned hot- the Onsie. We actually still had some in the back of Julian's drawer sized "24 months". It fit. By two, when you start potty training, there is no point in wearing something that snaps under the bummie. Kids can't pull it down by themselves, so you don't really see onsies after 2 years. But jujie is still in diapers, and the cool blue of the soft, thin cotton looked comforting in the heat. Something to absorb the sweat, but not make them more hot than they already are. And as Julian stood there in his onsie, reading a book with his hair wet from the bath, I thought, "this is the last onsie. The last onsie he will ever wear." And as long as he can wear a onsie, he's still my baby.

We made some dinner and icy drinks, took a blanket down to the basement and had a picnic on the cold cement floor and watched all of Pinocchio on the laptop, until long after dark, when the kids went to bed and I could finally open up the windows, and breathe.