It's Hard

So remember when I was all, "Why did I think having a newborn was 'boring torture'?  This is fine!"

...I remember now.

See, once that initial New Baby Adrenaline is past (ie, once you've had 2+ weeks of no more than 2 hours of sleep at a whack) it starts to get really, really hard.  I'm in that place right now.

It helps that I know it will pass- in fact I know it will pass in just another month or so, and while it will still be hard, it will be a different kind of hard, one considerably more well-rested (mostly).  And it helps that when I posted about wanting sleep more than anything, several friends reached out just to say, "You've got this."  And it helps when my husband reminds me that he is perfectly capable of cleaning the kitchen himself, and to take a freaking nap already.

Second Thoughts

(or, rather Thoughts on a Second)

Well here we are, less than a week from my Official Due Date, and I've got an already-week-old newborn laying next to me on the bed.

(Turns out all that week 37 nesting wasn't jumping the gun, after all.)

I'll get around to Little Brother's Birth Story in the next month or so, but in the meantime I wanted to ruminate a bit on how The Second Time Is Different (At Least for Me).

First of all, let me assure you, Gentle Readers, that I absolutely do love Little Brother as much as I love TLG; I do not see him as a threat to TLG's resources; and basically everything everyone told me about how It Was All Going to Be Okay, was totally true.

So thank goodness for that!

Now that we have that out of the way, the main thing I've noticed is how much easier it is to enjoy the newborn stage.  I'll admit: I was kind of dreading having a newborn again.  I kept repeating the phrase, "Boring torture" to describe my recollection of the experience.  Fortunately for me that's not really the case this time around- due to a combination of factors, I think.  I'm just so much more chill, because I've been here, survived that- already learned all the diapering tricks, the nursing hacks, and how to recognize the all-importance Emergence of Patterns.  So I can spend less time freaking out about The Right Way To Do Things, and more time just appreciating his ultra-soft-skin and long, mobile toes.

The other thing is that, in retrospect, I'm pretty sure I was suffering from Postpartum Anxiety with TLG.  At the time Nathan and I were on High Alert for me to develop Postpartum Depression (given my history with depression in general it didn't seem like a stretch), but I didn't even know that PPA was a thing.  I just thought all parents felt like I felt- that literally any time I didn't have eyes on my child he was probably dead and it was all my fault.  I thought that all new parents would lay in bed, terrified to move because if they got up and checked then the baby would actually be dead, and not just... probably dead.

Yeah.  I thought that malarkey was normal.  That is not normal.  And the fact that I thought it was normal just goes to show how screwed up my brain had gotten.

I do not feel that way now, thank all the stars.  I think I now have actually normal levels of anxiety- I only check to see if he's breathing like once, maybe twice a day, instead of constantly.  I can sleep at night (in two hour increments, sure, but I will take it) rather than having a hideous "my child died in his sleep" movies playing on permanent repeat in my brain.

It makes for a much more relaxing experience all-around.

Nesting With My (Big) Baby Bird

This weekend was devoted to capital-N Nesting.  Like, I even wrote it on the calendar, you guys- that's how serious about it I was; no work appointments today, by golly- I have a car seat to clean and install!

I made a whole To Do List, which is not in and of itself particularly surprising (To Do Lists are How I Roll), but I did have some doubts about my ability to get all the way through it, given my Extremely Pregnant and Slightly Anemic State.  But I did get through it, Gentle Readers- I did!  Everything on the list got checked off!  And what's more, I didn't do it alone- Nathan helped quite a bit, but (more importantly to this particular blog entry) TLG helped, too.

One of my main tasks was to wash all of the newborn-to-three-month-old-clothes that I'd saved from TLG's infancy (/since received in anticipation of Little Brother's arrival), and TLG stood right there with me, happily transferring all the tiny little outfits from the hamper into the washing machine, one after the other.  And then he later transferred them into the dryer, and finally back into the clean-clothes hamper  He is delighting in his impending role of Big Brother, and it makes me so, so happy to see him so happy.  I can only hope the delight will survive Little Brother's actual arrival...

We are now 100% ready for Little Brother to arrive, at least from a purely pragmatic point of view: car seat installed, bassinet set up, clothes washed, diapers and wipes ready and waiting.  Really, when it comes right down to it, everything else is gravy, and since TLG got himself born at just shy of 39 weeks, I felt getting The Essentials set up before the end of week 37 was just good sense (please no one laugh too hard if Little Brother decides not to make an appearance until after his official due date...).  There are other things I'd like to get done before D-Day (that's D for Delivery, you know) but I'm not going to sweat it if I don't get around to them.  (#parentingveteran, amiright?)

Now, in terms of emotional preparedness... that's another topic, entirely.  I find it interesting that I seem to have greater affection for this unborn child than I did for TLG at the same stage, a feeling which I can only credit to TLG already expressing his pure and uncomplicated love for Little Brother.  He hugs my belly, kisses it, giggles delightedly when he feels kicks or sees movement, and talks excitedly about how Little Brother will be born this month!  I see his love, and of course I love what my child loves (hence my re-found ability to discuss dinosaurs at great length), so therefore I love this newest uterine pirate in a way I was incapable of fathoming during my pregnancy with TLG.  Plus, you know... after two miscarriages I believe I was holding myself at a Bit of a Protective Reserve, whereas now I know it's entirely possible this baby will make it!  Woo!

But even as I'm feeling all this warmth and affection for Little Brother, at the same time I also have very real concerns about my ability to love him as much as I love TLG, once Little Brother becomes a reality rather than an idea.  Intellectually I understand that hormones will eventually kick in and I'll love him unreservedly, just as I did TLG, but my heart worries I'll only ever see him as a threat to TLG's resources, and never be able to bond properly.

I'm told this is a common (and entirely unfounded) concern.

Here's hoping.

Past Performance Is No Guarantee of Future Results

As you may or may not know, I generally pay the bills by being a Financial Advisor.  This means I work in a Highly Regulated Industry, which means I get to give lots of disclaimers on a daily basis, including the one I used as the title of this blog entry.  But in this instance I'm not using it to refer to Market Performance, but rather to Spawning Speculation.

The post from the other day, in which I wallowed in the perfection of my child, got me thinking about the possibility of recreating such perfection.  In other words, about siblings.  We have purposefully (and carefully) avoided providing any for TLG thus far, for a myriad of reasons, not the least of which is a) how hard it was to get him in the first place and b) how awesome he has turned out to be.

I know, I know- you'd think having an awful child would be more likely to give us pause than having such a cool one, but no.  Not so.  After all, what if a new spawn didn't live up to the standards set by TLG?  And let's be real- babies are freaking boring, especially compared to curious, independent little preschoolers.  And let us not forget that sleep deprivation is literally a form of torture.  (You read that correctly, Gentle Readers: I am of the informed opinion that babies are boring torture, and anyone who's spent time with one knows I'm right, even if they won't admit it in polite company.)  I know that if we decided to go through that again, hormones would make me not even care (mostly), but still... it's hard to willingly sign up for possible death, definite boring torture, and no guarantee that the outcome will be as immediately rewarding.

Building Up Mountains

I'm standing in the kitchen, washing dishes (as you do) and eavesdropping on my child (also as you do) tell himself wonderful stories.  There was a birthday party at preschool on Friday, complete with Goody Bags, and one of the items in said Goody Bag was a little thing of home made modeling compound (gee, thanks anonymous parent, she said with Serious Side Eye...).  I'd taken it away from TLG last night due to a Naughtiness Incident, but a new day brings new chances to Make Good Choices, and so I'd given it back to him when he requested it, along with strict instructions that if it left the table it would be gone forever.  (And he knows Momma Don't Play on this sort of thing.)  And so I am washing dishes and eavesdropping, and he is Telling Stories to himself using his dough.

"It's a mountain!  Oh no, the mountain is falling down!  The bad guys knocked it down to get it out of their way!  I'm a good guy!  I picked it up.  A  new mountain is growing!"  Etc, etc.  And I cannot help but flash back to The Early Days of TLG (when I still referred to him as Neeps, even), when I'd be washing dishes and he'd be laying in his swing like the Tiny Larva he was, and I'd wonder what was going through his tiny little skull.  I flash even further back to when I was pregnant, and having a conversation with Nathan about my Very Real Concerns regarding taking on a roommate for 18 years that we might not even like.

It turns out that I like him very much indeed, and I love hearing what's going on in his head.  We take walks together, and have actual two-way conversations.  This is my most favorite stage so far, but then I've said that about every stage.  I do hope this upward trajectory continues.

103 Words (Of Little Interest to Others)

The other night Nathan and I were talking about how many words the Little Gentleman now has in his (rapidly expanding) vocabulary, and we thought it might be neat to write them all down to get a rough count.  And so here I go, indulging in a supremely self-indulgent entry (I promise to make up for it with something made up in the near future...)

daddy mama oma opa papa asha hello bye no yes help up down off on in out hug more food apple banana cracker cheese hot cold water bath potty poop pee diaper coat shoe sock boot hat shirt bed chair ball block book phone bike car truck red orange yellow blue black pink brown white one two baby cat dog duck bear raff(giraffe) pig sheep cow goat horse owl fox frog toad mouse fufu* fly(butterfly) bird crow tree flower rock dirt outside inside door wall walk run ready go nap shh ow eye nose mouth ear hair button foot hand butt leg elbow

He can also do the plural of most of those words, as well as various sound effects ("Beep beep!" "Rawr!") that I'm not counting.

Not bad, baby O.  Not bad at all.  More than I was thinking when I sat down to start writing it all out.  And it's funny how the more I wrote, the more other words popped into my mind: "Oh yeah, he says ___ all the time now..." and then I asked Nathan to look it over and he immediately added like fifteen more to the list.

Of course, you'll notice that "please" isn't on there.  For some reason the boy insists on signing "please", even tho' he has stopped using any trace of signing, otherwise.  Not sure why that should be the case, or whether we should make a more concentrated effort to get him to verbalize instead of doing his hilarious chicken-wing-version of "please".  Eh.  I'm sure it's fine.  Especially since "thank you" is also missing... and, uh, that's entirely on us.  We say it all the time to him, but haven't put an emphasis on him saying it... whoops...  Oh well!  Therapy forever, I guess...




*fufu = bunny.  He actually did say "bunny" for a while, and then one day decided "fufu" was better, and while I made a half-hearted attempt to correct him in the beginning, eventually I let it go because it's so damn cute.

Morning Noon and Night Revisited

There are many bad things about social media, but there are also many good things.  One of those good things is the timeline feature, where Facebook shows me what I posted exactly one year ago today.  And one year ago today I posted this.

Go ahead and (re)read it: I'll wait.

It was so interesting to read where I was at, mentally and emotionally, on that first day of daycare.  And I'm so, so grateful that I was doing a 365 project at the time, because it means I caught many such milestone moments in my first year as a mother.

And it got me thinking about the difference between Jenny O, mother-to-a-six-month-old, and Jenny O, mother-to-an-eighteen-month-old.  Most specifically, it got me thinking about what I felt this morning, as opposed to that morning.

This morning I got up a little early, as I do on Tuesdays, because Tuesday is the day of the week I take Neeps to daycare.  We had our respective breakfasts, I loaded him into the car, and off we went.  On the drive over, he announced, "Red car!  Black car!  Red car!  Red car!"  (Identifying cars is the new favorite pass-time)  Once we got to daycare I unstrapped him, carried him into the building, and then put him down to walk under his own power to the classroom.  Which he did, with a brief pause to peek inside the kitchen and say, "Ello!"  ("Hi Neeps!" came the cheerful reply of someone I don't know- apparently my son gets around...)

I opened the door to let him into his classroom, delivered the various bits of detritus that go along with having a child in a daycare, and then picked him up to say goodbye.  He gave me a long, long hug (not usual: typically such affection is reserved for Daddy alone), then turned from my arms to his teacher's.  And I was suffused with a warm glow of satisfaction that he is so loved and cared for while I'm at work.

And then I went to work, and I didn't really think about him much for the rest of the day.  Except for when I checked Facebook and saw last year's post.  And then when a client came in and I showed off some photos.  And later when a product partner called and asked about him.  And later still when I mentioned to the second-graders I was volunteering with that I had couldn't stay forever because I had to pick my son up from daycare.  (One boy freaked out with joy when he realized that he attends the same daycare- it was super cute).  So yeah, okay actually I thought about my son a decent amount, but not with any sort of pain or longing.  Just love and pride and satisfaction.

I left work to pick him up (a half hour later than I would have last year, since we've changed our hours), and got the pleasure of watching him unobserved for a little bit.  He was wrangling two toy vacuum cleaners- but then he noticed me and charged the door.  I scooped him up and was treated to another long hug, collected the various bits of detritus (some new), peeled off the random toddler who had attached himself to my legs, and off we went to Boozeday.

So there you go, Past Jenny O- you made the right choice for your family, just like you figured.  Neeps is happy, I am happy, Nathan is happy- we are better parents thanks to the caring professionals who take over for the childcare weekday-shift.  It's worked out better than we ever could have anticipated- and probably most of our other choices will, too.  Which, of course, means that Present Jenny O can breathe a little easier, too.

Strangers in a Gym

So I mentioned that I'm getting back to the gym.  With that comes conversations with people- some I know, some I don't- and the other day it included a conversation with an extremely pregnant woman who was hanging out, waiting for her friend to get off work.  We got to talking about pregnancy and how having a kid changes things in unexpected ways (it's her first) and I want you to know, Gentle Readers, that I am very proud of myself, because I didn't tell her one single Horror Story- not one!  I mean, I wasn't making it out to be All Magical Bliss, either, but I think I did a good job of being the kind of mom I liked to chat with while I was pregnant: realistic about the challenges, but positive overall.  Mostly I focused on how much I enjoy Neeps these days- how much I like him as a little person.

And, honestly, I think she found it encouraging to hear that I'd gained around 50lbs while pregnant- because obviously I am not still carrying that weight.  (Never mind the amount that I am still carrying- that's beside the point).

We humans have to support one another, eh?  And that means not adding to/embellishing upon the anxieties our brains are perfectly capable of manufacturing on their own, thank you very much.

Sharing My World(s)

My boss and I decided to change our office hours this year, and as a result I now get off early on Fridays (why yes, he is the best boss ever, why do you ask?).  As a result, I've been making it into the climbing gym once a week for the past five weeks or so, and I can definitely feel the difference.  Not just physically (although my goodness yes), but mentally and emotionally, as well.  Every time I solve a route, every time I push through trembling muscles to the next hold, I feel like me again.  Like my life has finally settled down enough that I can brush away all the dust that came from carving the new "mom" parts and re-reveal the old "pre-mom" parts.  Is that a simile that even makes sense?  I'm sticking with it, regardless.

Sweaty!

Anyway, the past couple of weeks I've been there, there's also been a father with his young daughter.  She's about five, and he belays her while she top-ropes.  It's freaking adorable, and I can't wait until Neeps is old enough to try.  He's recently become very interested in climbing onto things, so I've been thinking that pretty soon now I'm going to take him in to the gym to see if he wants to do a little baby bouldering.  Heck, maybe I'll even take him in tomorrow morning- it's scheduled to rain, after all.

Today it did not rain, however, so my bike ride back from the gym was glorious, and once I got home I did what I've been dreaming of doing for months and months- installed a toddler seat.  (I finally used my Christmas money and ordered it earlier this week: it arrived last night.)  And then I went and picked my son up from daycare, brought him home, helmet-ed him up, and took him for a ride.

Please note the adorably ruffled jeans, borrowed from daycare after too much playing-in-puddles.

He loved it, but I don't know if he loved it as much as I loved it.  Because for him it was just a new, fun activity- for me it was fun and emotional.  My heart was swelling up and singing joyously, so happy to be able to share another beloved activity with him.  Now we have hiking and cycling that we can do together.  And soon?  Climbing.  And eventually?  Him being able to do all of those things independently.

It's funny how my life has become this combination of super-fast and so-much-waiting.  On the one hand, Neeps is developing at a crazy rate: I love watching him figure things out and use new words and identify connections and basically just self-program his little meat-computer brain.  But on the other hand, let's face it- the past fifteen months have been a lot of me putting aside things I used to do all the time, so that I can focus on what needs my attention right now (poops and meals and naps and stacking blocks and reading Goodnight Moon for the umpteenth time) until I could someday come back to those things- and introduce my son to them, as well.

That someday is getting closer and closer.  And I'm so excited.

Adventure Buddies.

The Rootless Ones

I have confession to make.

It's not much of a confession, as far as confessions go.  Generally speaking, confessions ought to be at least somewhat of a surprise, right?  Or at least involve some sort of naughtiness?  This one just involves confusion, mostly.  And guilt.

I guess it's the guilt that makes it a confession.

Anyway.

My confession is this: I don't understand roots.

Or perhaps- I don't know how to do roots.

I am the military brat progeny of two military brats.  My husband is also a military brat by way of at least one military brat.  We are really, truly, not from anywhere, and the culture of our childhoods is not one that we can go back and visit on a whim, because our dependent ID cards were revoked when we turned 21.

We bought a house in this town, after years of wandering for the both of us, with the idea of staying here long term- of settling down, if you will.  Putting down roots.  Four years later a little shoot popped out, young and tender and easy to transport.  Rootless, just like us.

Before he was born- before he was even conceived, we'd talked about our fears regarding raising a child in one place, without moving every three years.  We have no experience with that- we're not sure how to do it.  All we knew is that there are people in the world, people we have met, who have lived their whole lives never leaving the county they were born in- the same county their parents were born in- and they are content with that.  And that concept chilled us to the bone: we wanted more for our child.  Better.

Hence the importance of budgeting for travel.  We want to make sure he is exposed to other places, other cultures, other peoples.  We want to make sure he can adapt and thrive wherever he is planted.

And I worry I will fail at that, because the only way I know how to do it- the way it was done for me- is not what I can do for him.  And what I can do for him- will it work?

And I worry that there will be such a disconnect between us- that he will have roots and ties to a specific place, a specific house, a specific town, and I will not be able to understand it, and he will suffer from that lack of understanding.

I guess all we can do is try.

Nautilus Girls

Spent an hour writing an old friend, and found myself coming back around to a recurring theme in my life- that of the nautilus, crafting itself from itself, the new encompassing the old.  Here is a short excerpt from the letter:

"I am interested to hear what breakthroughs you make on contentedness vs. happiness.  I have always been more of the happiness/joy end of the spectrum, but I find myself in this new and interesting position at the moment because happiness/joy is so closely entwined with content/comfort.  I was actually thinking about it as I walked to my car this afternoon, how it was strange to step back and examine the fact that I was super happy to go home and hang out with my kid, when that is so different from anything that would ever have given me fierce joy even three years ago.  I am far more domestic.  And I was wondering if I should be upset by the change- it's like, I know I've been brainwashed by the hormones, but as long as I'm happy, does it matter how I achieved that happiness?  Or do I owe it to my old self to still chase after the old things?  That just seems silly.  But again- if I knew a friend had been chemically brainwashed, would I be like, 'Well hey, as long as the cult makes you happy...'?  Not that I am comparing parenthood to a cult (or am I??) but there's something to the fact that I'm not myself.  Not my old self.  I am a new evolution of self that encompasses my old self, but has also grown in new ways and shed old pieces that are no longer necessary.  And still other pieces are simply in hibernation during this season, and they will come back.

"I find myself often repeating, 'This is a season.' "

Fat Lip

It's a slow day at the office- my boss is out at a conference, and the heavy rain is apparently dampening people's desire to leave the house.  In fact, when the phone rings at 1130 I jump a little, because it's been silent all morning.

I glance at the readout as I pop my earpiece into place, taking in a breath to deliver my cheerful, "Thank you for calling!"  But the caller-ID makes my stomach drop.

It's the daycare.

To her credit, the first words out of her mouth are, "Neeps is okay, but..."

The relief that washes through me almost cancels out the rest of the sentence, but she keeps talking and eventually I put it together: my child has managed to lose a fight with a hard corner, and now he has a fat lip and a torn frenulum.  But he's fine.

I am less fine.

My immediate urge is to go to him and pick him up and cuddle him- but he is fine, and so I will not do that because I need to be at work.  Instead I will sit here and feel guilty that I wasn't there to pick him up and cuddle him when he injured himself.  I will try to fight off the poisonous little voice that hisses, soon he will learn that he can't count on you to be there for him when he's scared and hurting, when he most needs his mother...

If only I could carve Jerk Brain out like the malignant tumor it is.

In the end I do leave work early- but only by an hour.  And he is all delighted smiles when he sees me (although his smile is misshapen by his swollen lip) and I pick him up and hold him and he hugs me back and Jerk Brain has nothing else to say.

The Precision of Simplicity

I absolutely love precision of language.  Few things give me quite the same pleasurable thrill as using the exact right word.  Our language is glorious, and I glory in it; I only regret that there are so many words I don't know (over 950,000, as estimated by a Very Accurate Internet Quiz).

But then my child started asking questions.  And I began to internalize just how screwed up our language is, and how near-impossible to learn.

In the beginning it was no big deal.

"Dat!" he would say, pointing imperiously at some object.

"What's that?  That is a juniper bush," I would answer.  And he was content.

But soon he was pointing at everything, demanding to know, "Dat!" and I realized that I don't always know the exact label for everything- which is a problem because why does Mommy get so specific about some things but not others?  What is the significance?
 
And so I began generalizing.

"That's a bush.  That's a different bush.  That is yet another bush."

Of course, I am also fully cognizant of the fact that it must be confusing as hell for someone learning a language to come face-to-face with the fact that all of these things which are so obviously different have the same name.  Which is why, sometimes, if I'm not feeling too beaten-down by his unending font of curiosity, I'll even add, "It's a prickly bush."

Feeling It

i didn't feel like "a mother"
for a very long time
not when i lost
that first fluttering heartbeat
or the second
not when i birthed
the fully formed third(first)
not when i held him
in my arms
instead of
my womb

not when i nursed him
or read to him
and called him by name
not when i walked with him
in the sunshine
or the snow
not when other people
called me
"a mother"
not when i woke
night after night after night
and sleep deprivation
became the new normal
not when I had to
go back to work
and felt sick to my stomach at leaving him
not when he crawled
or stood
reaching out for me
laughing

but yesterday
yesterday
when i heard the news
and i wept
for another woman
that's when i finally
finally
realized
what it meant
to be a mother
and that of course
of course
i feel like one

Unnatural

My friend's daughter died, and I am devastated.

I am devastated for her because she is my friend, and her sorrow makes me sorrow.  That much, I might have expected.

What I did not realize- could not realize- is that from now until forever, I am devastated for her and other people like her because I am a parent now, and I have some inkling of the horror.

Her daughter was not a baby.  Her daughter was not a child, or a teenager.  Her daughter was a grown woman, just three years younger than me.

But her daughter was a baby.  A chubby baby just like mine, standing tall and triumphant, but not quite certain how to take that first step.  Her daughter was a child, running in from outside just to say, "I love you mommy!"; was a teenager who rolled her eyes but took advice anyway.  Her daughter was her daughter and suddenly I understand that the fear never, ever stops.  I thought surely he would get to the age where I'd stop constantly worrying about him dying, about me not being able to save him but she was thirty-two with a baby of her own and she still died.

Which brings us to the next level of my devastation.

That baby's mother died.  That chubby little baby will never get to know its mother, except through other's stories.  What if I die and all that's left for my son is words on the page?  It's not enough.  Not enough,  not enough.

I am selfish in my grief, turning it inward, making it about me and my fear, if only because I don't know what else to do.  If only because I know there is nothing I can do.  Babies die, even when they are parents themselves, and all the phone calls and hugs and casseroles and tears in the world won't change the fact that her greatest fear happened, long after she shouldn't have had to be afraid of it any more.

At my father's funeral my grandmother wept, "A mother shouldn't have to bury her children."  At the time I couldn't understand that: after all, they were adults.  Adults know people who die- adults go to funerals all the time.  Everyone knows that.  It's little kids who weren't supposed to lose their parents, in my mind.

And, of course, they're not.

But she was right; parents shouldn't have to bury their children, no matter what the age of those children.  That's the difference.  Someday (hopefully a long, long time from now) my mother will die, and I will mourn, but it will be part of the natural order of things, my burying her.

There it nothing natural about my friend burying her daughter.

The Boy With the Golden Wings

Once upon a time there was a beautiful green meadow ringed by gracious trees and bathed in laughing sunlight.  And in this magical place there lived a little boy with golden wings: a fairy prince.

He was too little yet to fly, but he would spread his wings and bathe them in the warm afternoon sun as he went about his little adventures, soaking up all the joy and love the natural world had to offer.

Because he knew that someday he would fly, and then his little adventures would become big, and he would need all the lovingkindness he could carry, to see him through to the end.

Sharing is Caring

 Reasons My 10-Month-Old Offers Me His Food:

1.  He is a sweet and loving child who wants to make sure I eat something, too.
2.  He thinks something tastes good and feels I should try it.
3.  He finds it hilarious to offer me food and then withdraw it, giggling, when I go to take a bite.
4.  He sees what I have to eat, thinks it looks better than what he has, and is hoping I'll trade.
5.  He is done eating but doesn't want to be cleaned up yet.
6.  He thinks something tastes terrible and figures that's the best way to get rid of it.

Clever Creature

Nice People Everywhere

Today Neeps and I walked to the grocery store to get something or other, and on our way back we fell into step with a Hispanic woman who was also walking home from the store, and we had a lovely conversations predicated on my child's friendliness.

This is not the first such interaction he as lead me into (not even on that outing), with his grinning and his waving and his general perfection, and I feel certain it will not be the last.  And every time we say goodbye to the person who has struck up a conversation with us, I say to my son, "See?  There are nice people everywhere."

I want him to grow up believing that.  I want him to be of the opinion that most people, given the chance, are just friends you haven't met yet, and that friendly conversations with strangers, wherein you treat one another like real, actual people and not just statistics, should be the norm.

It's funny how raising a child is sort of... bringing me back to my best self.  I feel like we can get so run down, so tired of trying all the time and getting nothing back, and so we get lazy and even shut down because what does it matter anymore?  We're not doing any active harm, we're just... not engaging.  But knowing he's watching me, learning from me and how I handle life... well, to be horribly cliched about it, it's forcing me to be the change I wish to see in the world.  It's revitalizing me, reminding me that there is goodness in the world and it's up to me to acknowledge and increase and contribute to it, not just withdraw when I get too overwhelmed with badness.  I have to give him this sort of running head-start before he launches into the world for his solo-flight, so that maybe he'll be able to go longer than I did before he gets sad and broken.  Maybe he'll never get sad and broken at all.  Maybe he'll just always be one of those nice, friendly people that smile and say hello, soaring gloriously on into the sunset.

I sure hope so.

Dat Zap

It's interesting to see how various people translate babies' sounds and gestures.  For example, Neeps has recently started sticking out a finger and making a sound that I've been translating as, "Dat?" as in, "What/who is that?"  As such, I've been responding by pointing to whatever it is I think he's pointing at (pointing being a rather inexact science for 10-month-olds) and saying, "What's that?  That's a tree/bush/wall/etc." or, "Who's that?  That's your daddy/Oma/Isis the dog/etc."

But then we went to visit family, and they were delighted that Neeps was playing "zap", a game familiar to them from their own baby.  Which is to say, when Neeps stuck out his finger and made his noise, they would touch it with their own finger and say, "Zap!" in mimicry, and general giggling would ensue.

Obviously there is no right or wrong in this- babies may or may not have an initial meaning for their flails/gibbering, but we train them to mean what we think they mean based on our responses.  And that's fascinating.  It's incredible to watch babies learn to be human or, as Nathan would say, self-programing meat-computers.

Not to mention what it tells us about our own psyches, and what we find value in communicating.  Makes one wonder if there's not a bit of a subconscious-memory-thing going on, of our own time as infants, and what we meant when we did those things.  Or perhaps just what our parents translated it.

Curiouser and curiouser.

She is Not a Tame Wife

I don't like the word domesticated, as applied to myself.  I like the idea of being a Wild Creature.

But I'm not.

I'm not a Wild Creature anymore.  I'm married.  I'm a mother.  I have to consider more than just my own selfish instincts.  And so perhaps it's time for me to come to terms with the word domesticated.

But then I remember that cats are, technically, "domesticated".  Cats who don't come when you call, but will curl up with you in bed and keep you warm.  Cats who will put a bloody corpse in your bed to show that they love you.

Domesticated, but not tame.