True Friends, Heightened Humor

Grandma's story about E that greeted me when I picked her up yesterday surprised and spurred uncontrollable giggles. E doesn't talk yet, but apparently understands and notices quite a bit. Grandma was feeding her lunch as dad grabbed a quick nap, snoring on the recliner in corner as she ate. Making conversation, nai nai asked E where daddy was. She pointed. Then nai nai asked her what he was doing. To her surprise, E not only slumped over and pretended to sleep, but started immitating the loud snores coming from the corner as well. Grandma laughed so hard that daddy's nap was cut short.

After we got home from grandma's, bff's Jac and Larry came over at 8:30 to force hubby and me to change into gym clothes and go down to our apartment’s gym to work out with Larry while Jac watched the monkey for us. “30 minutes cardio and 10 minutes sit ups—that’s the routine for this week and don’t come back without doing it!” Jac said as we left. They had to leave to finish their grocery shopping after we came back (it was after 9!) and it was only after they left that I noticed she had ALSO folded the mountain of unfolded laundry we've been hiding in the office as it has accumulated over the last month or so. E was asleep and when I called her to thank her for doing what we had not been able to get to in so many weeks, all she said was, “I don’t know what you’re talking about. I didn’t fold any laundry.” She wouldn’t acknowledge having done it or take credit for the help she had given. I've been feeling so preoccupied with the summer institute lately that I half wonder why anyone would even want to be around such an absent-minded friend. And it was in this moment that they showed up at our front door.

Friday

The weekend oasis of time finally arrives, finding me with a sore throat and an achy heart. “She’s so cute today. I keep singing her the Mozart tune and she keeps laughing,” hubby said after school to me on the phone. I picture it; the baby responding to singing like that and it’s brand new and wonderful to imagine and hurts at the same time. I have permission slips to record and file, homework to look over, a test to grade, emails to respond to, and copies to make. And it’s already almost 5 because of a parent conference. It was imagining being on the other side of the table for E one day that gave me the heart and energy to take the time and make sure the concerned dad felt listened and responded to. “Everything was fine in pre-school,” he says. “Maybe this is developmental and he’ll grow out of it.” I see the extinguishing hope in his eye, along with the recognition that it may not be, and the resignation to seek help from a specialist. He thanks me for my time before he leaves and wonder when things became so demanding for kids and whether it’s better for them to face the difficulties earlier or later in life.

Back home I watch E roll over and over until she bumps up against our bookshelf and can’t roll any more. She bumps her head against the glass door as she attempts to roll through it. “Roll the other way sweetie. Come back over here,” I call to her. She looks over but continues trying to roll over the bookshelf until she starts to get frustrated. I bring her back to her play mat and she smiles up at the swinging monkey brushing the top of her crazy Elvis hair. She starts to roll back towards the bookcase. “Enjoy this time of simplicity baby,” I think to her, to myself. It’s not easy growing up in the world today.

Bleary Eyed
School started. We adopted a new standards-based report card with no assessments to go with them. I got 4 pieces of furniture I did not order because a district higher-up wants to standardize our classrooms…complete with missing shelves. Our new social studies curriculum was delivered the day before school started—textbooks, teacher editions and all 26 support materials in all of their glory spilling over the counter tops, the tables, the desks I’d spent the previous week cleaning and getting ready for our first day. E went through a growth spurt during the first week of school, waking up every 1 and a half to two hours. I have 190 minutes a week of required instruction outside of the core curriculum to fit in around 8 resource sessions with two students who can’t miss any of that required music, PE, art, computer, and library time. Never mind that one is reading at the first grade level and the other suffers attention deficits requiring constant one-on-one help just to keep from floating away into another dimension. The principal says that we’re not allowed to keep students in at recess or lunch for homework or behavior issues. No matter how hard I try to be efficient, I find myself working 10 hour days just to keep from drowning in all of the assessments, scheduling, planning, and meeting schedules and scheduling. I look in the bathroom mirror in the morning and realize it’s fuzzy from my tiredness. It’s the official welcome back.

And then, in the midst of the getting-ready-for-Back-to-School night, new textbook training, scheduling field trips and learning to cook with E hanging out in the Baby Bjorn strapped to me, a night like tonight tiptoes along—as simple and quiet as laying on the bed with E, talking softly to her as she looks at me and smiles and smiles as if she understands every word. Like a shared secret we ride the waves between silent smiles and her luscious laughs. When she starts to get restless, I scoop her up and bring her around to the light switches. As we turn them out one by one, I quietly tell her that it’s time to go to sleep and I’ll be right outside the door. I hold my breath as I put her in her crib, waiting for the wail of protest…but it doesn’t come. A cautious peek over the railing shows she’s caught sight of a hand and is examining it contentedly. Two minutes later she’s asleep—an almost-smile punctuating her expression. I can’t stop looking at her—she’s so…overwhelming. I’m bleary-eyed from looking.

Take my breast away...

She’s found both hands now. She’s trying to aim and suck on the right one. She has this gesture where she holds her right hand in her left tapping all of her outside hand fingers, holding both under her chin. It looks like she’s thinking, planning something that will shock the hell out of us all.

She also verbalizes. Not grunts like “more, more, I want more!” No not Emma, that would be too baby-like for her. She watches you talk, focusing in on her lips, then carefully shapes her own mouth a few different ways before trying a tentative “oow” or “haiii.” When you laugh and talk back, she tries a little more until she ends up in an out-loud smile. Conversations with her are some of life’s highlights.

We started her on the bottle during the day today. She cried a little each time we tried to feed her, but mostly just didn’t eat much until 4:30pm—12 hours after her last breastfeeding session. Then we put a bottle in her mouth while I was holding her upright on my shoulder. Grandma gave her a bottle from behind me and, what do you know, she drank…the most I’ve ever seen her drink from a bottle—3 ounces! After leaving grandma’s house for some grocery shopping, we gave her a bath and I gave her my milk before bed. She started out hyper, wiggling and burying her face into me, like she was trying to swim inside the milk. Then after five minutes, she started falling asleep. But every time I tried to pull away, she woke up, sucking with fervor as if to say, “No, no, no, not yet! I’m not done yet!”

The mr. and I have decided that she’s a serious baby. She looked at us with serious eyes most of the day, and tonight, when she fell asleep, she still looked serious. Content, but serious.

Things I love about being a stay-at-home mom:
1. No alarms: Even though E. gets up at 7am every morning, I don't have to be anywhere at any specific time. I can entertain her in my pajamas and uncombed hair until whenever I get to that shower.
2. Visitors and visiting: I'm free to live my life around family and friends, visiting family when I need a break holding the baby and visiting friends when I need a break from family.
3. She knows me: I've had the chance to get to know my daughter. I know just how to comfort her, how to hold her, make her smile, put her to sleep. Maybe because of these things she watches me intently when I talk to her as if thinking, "Hey, she looks familiar!"
4. Being there: Seeing the changes as they happen, finding out her rhythms and preferences, being able to comfort her and see its effects.
5. Doing what counts for the one who counts on me most.

Things I won't miss about being a stay-at-home mom:
1. Being a stay-at-home mom alone
2. Not being able to see what I "accomplished" at the end of the day
3. Collegiality
4. Feeling unsure or indecisive for so much of the time as I'm trying to figure this parenting thing out.

She laughed today

School is starting again soon. I only have two pairs of “fat pants” that fit me and it seems every shirt I own goes right to the part of my middle I’m most self conscious of. So I finally gave in and decided to go shopping for some basics just to get me by for what will hopefully be more of a temporary than permanent amount of time. God I hate being fat. When I first go pregnant my cousin said, “Oh God, now you’re officially old.” I think we have this image about moms because hardly anyone ever gets to see the sexy versions of their mothers. By the time we’re born, we’ve RUINED it! Of course, there are exceptions to this generalization: like movie stars and that sickening mom at the pool sporting that red bikini and swimsuit model of a figure. If she ever wonders why the other moms were all hanging out and she was just with her beautiful son, she need only look in the mirror and remember that women can be jealous and petty when they’re feeling most insecure and sleep deprived.

So I called in reinforcements—the shopping queen and parking lot magician—my mom. We went shopping and took E with us because it just so happens that she’s going through a growth spurt this week and is hungry every hour and a half to two hours. Luckily for us, she dozed in the car seat and stroller throughout the six hour spree, waking up only to be fed, held a little, and falling back to sleep. At the end of the long day of shopping, I was talking to my dad at their house while mom was holding E, talking to her, making faces, and trying to get her to smile.

Dad was in mid-sentence when we heard E’s first all-out laugh. We both stopped and turned to see her, beaming at my mom, mouth opened wide in a smile, her voice bunching up and bursting out as mom said her name and lifted her above her face, calling her name. Mom was making kissing faces and wiggling her body back and forth in the air. E just kept laughing and laughing for what must have been at least a couple of minutes. All I could do was smile and smile and repeat, “She’s never done that before! This is the first time!” a few times over just to make sure they both knew what a momentous occasion it was because I could feel my insides bursting.

Baby laughs, even deep and throaty, are so pure they break your heart.

To Do Or Not To Do...and related questions

Looking at the number and frequency of my posts, you'd think that mothers don't have thoughts all that often. While that may be true to the extent that we've got so much going on in our heads that we lose some of our thoughts in the everyday shuffle before we can get a firm enough grasp on them, the truth of it lies in a constant tug of war going on in our heads. Take now for instance. I had already read a couple of other people's blog entries, feeling like I'd taken advantage of some of the "me time" that comes along when baby falls asleep for these longer stretches at night.

But then worry set in--what's the point of her sleeping longer when I just waste it all away on-line all the time?!? I should be sleeping when she does, that's what all the books, chat sites, parent websites tell me. Besides, after a long day of almost constant baby attention and living in between the small increments of time that motherhood chops life into, I feel pretty brain dead and doubt my ability to write anything halfway coherent, much less inspired.

So I hurriedly logged off, brushed my teeth and washed my face to get ready for bed. But then as I was brushing my teeth I started thinking about how unused this blogsite has been. The hum of the automatic toothbrush put me in a meditative trance and I began to see why; these precious moments in between feedings are always forcing me to make a tough choice between guarding my time to regroup or using it to do things in a hazy, half-conscious state. Do I invest in sleep, and possibly more clarity and coherence? Or should I jump into communication with the outside world, even if it might mean risking losing my thoughts mid-sentence, or a point I knew I wanted to make but can no longer put my finger on...

Oh well, the baby will need to be fed in just a few hours. Maybe I can get through an entire dream tonight before that happens. If not, it'll just be another hazy day.