Bathtime

Posted on May 20, 2013 by The Waiting

Tonight I am inspired by my daughter’s little shoulderblades.

B and I have been spelling out B-A-T-H so much that soon it will be a code for nothing and just another way to tell her that it’s Time. We tell her it’s time for a bath and she runs straight to the tub. Even though she doesn’t need to, she bathes every day because why not? Babies know simple pleasures better than anyone else.

I count 1-2-3-4-5 when she stands up in the tub. She’s usually down by 3. It shouldn’t surprise me anymore when she follows my rules, but I’m still awestruck when she does what she’s supposed to do. Watching her learn and retain is miraculous. Once she didn’t even exist. Then she did. Then she was born. Then she started understanding us. Then she started minding us.

Sitting alongside the tub, I like to get right up in her face and examine her profile. With her pacifier out, I can see her lips and appreciate her jaw when it’s not tightened by the constant sucking. She usually splashes me away because I get too close. Sometimes she smiles under the paci and her eyes beam.

She stretches to get to the rubber duck. Her tiny shoulderblades flex back and forth, a motion that illustrates her body working in harmony. I remind myself to change the lightbulb in the bathroom so I can have more light to see her move.

It is her custom to call out DA-DA when she’s done with her bath. He comes in and dries her while I get her toothbrush ready. She sucks out all the toothpaste before any serious brushing occurs. I act annoyed but knowing that those teeth are connected to those shoulderblades diffuses me. She runs buck naked back to her room. She just learned to run so we let her.

The running, the shoulderblades, the beaming eyes: they are all my C.

Mothers Day is great and sad. Twosies.

Posted on May 14, 2013 by The Waiting

Even though Sunday was my second officially-sanctioned Mothers Day as a mom, it was effectively my first one. Last year, C was only about five weeks old on Mothers Day and I had no energy or desire to celebrate. No one was sleeping, no one was eating well, no one felt like a human. I was paying my dues in the New Baby Club and stocking up on the experiences that would make me truly relish the return of sleep. If this was motherhood, I’d take a pass on celebrating it.

I had something to toast to this year. I celebrated my survival by sipping my coffee and eating pancakes B prepared for me. I sneaked a Dove chocolate between them. It was melty and perfect. I celebrated while lounging on the sofa and watching C and B screen an episode of Mister Roger’s Neighborhood on YouTube. I celebrated by fighting the urge to call and apologize for my tardiness when I ran long at my solo date to the coffee shop. I celebrated by showing B how to make fish tacos for us all for dinner. He only cut his finger once when he sliced the avocados.

We put C in her crib at 6:45. She woke up around 9:15, crying from a bad dream. She rarely wakes in the middle of the night anymore so I jumped at the chance to see her and be there with her. B and I had been discussing only a couple days ago how nowadays, we simply put her away at 6:45. We go about our after-hours routines and have to remind ourselves that she is indeed in the other room sleeping and living. By the time we turn our own lights out at 11, we have almost forgotten we’re parents.

She cried out and I held her. She nestled into my chest and I smelled her head. She’s a lanky baby but she is still so slight in my arms. Mere months before, it would have taken hours to pull her together and meet her needs. On Sunday night, it took no more than ten minutes. By 9:25, she was back in her crib.

I felt sad. At some point, this all got kind of easy. It made me pine for the days where I was regularly put through the fire and earning my keep as the parent of an infant. It made me sad for my own parents that they know exactly what it’s like to be needed intensely and then, in the blink of an eye, just standing by in the other room waiting for me to cry out. All we want is to be needed longer.

Parenthood is heartbreaking.

Let’s drink mimosas.

I miss this.

Dining With C

Posted on May 8, 2013 by The Waiting

This will be what I call a Grandmother Post, as in you may have to be C’s grandmother to be interested. We are going to talk about her diet.

In detail.

Fair warning.

I am the proud owner of a terrific eater. And yes, I own my child. I lug that incredibly leggy toddler around like an expensive purse. Only I don’t put my tube of lipstick in her mouth like it’s the little zipper pouch inside the bag.

What.

C eats really well. She has yet to go on a macaroni and cheese hunger strike, which is good because my husband has some strange aversion to the boxed variety and starts retching whenever he sees an ad for it on TV. I don’t even know. I ceased making separate meals for her once she turned one and now she eats little bitty portions of whatever we’re having. This is a win-win situation because I don’t have to work at making an extra set of kid food, and I’m more motivated to make something halfway healthy, ie. no mayonnaise sandwiches. Not that I ever ate mayo sandwiches to begin with, but you know. Small victories and all. I also never murdered anyone.

*Pats self on back.*

Most mornings, she has yogurt with fruit and cereal. For awhile, I was buying her little readimade fruit-on-the-bottom yogurt cups because one of those super couponing people gave me a TON of coupons while I was staring at the massive yogurt selection at the grocery store. Seriously. She was one of those people who carries around massive file binders full of coupons at the store and buys like 74 rolls of Bounty and 38 boxes of frozen garlic bread and ends up paying $2.75 for her entire purchase. But who am I to judge because she gave me a fat stack of coupons for a brand I occasionally buy, claiming that she only buys the kind with M&Ms. Can’t judge her for that. Anyway, we finally ran out of coupons, and since I’m not going to clip them myself because I’m too busy thinking about blog posts I could write about Bob the Builder and how one of the little songs on that show reminds me of “Like a Virgin”, we are back to good ol’ plain yogurt mixed with Cherrios and blueberries I’ve cooked down a little into a thick, syrupy consistency. She likes it.

Post-breakfast pic. Also, who is the mom who just now updated her little one-ply infant spittup bibs to proper scoopy toddler bibs? It’s me, it’s me.

Lunch and dinner menus are pretty interchangeable. She usually has something proteiny like peanut butter, beans, or a little pork or beef if we have it around. She likes whole wheat bread, pasta, cucumber, tomatoes, strawberries, chickpeas, and cheese. AND BANANAS. Oh Lordy, does she like bananas! She really likes pesto, so sometimes I spread some on a piece of toast and put some sundried tomatoes on it and melt a little cheese. Yum. I may or may not totally bogart her meals those days.

The best thing about eating the same thing as her is that it gives me the excuse to buy really good, high-quality, grass-fed, free-range, ubiquitously-hyphenated meats. I’m pretty sure I’ve told you before about how we live literally 45 minutes from the largest pork packing plant in the world. And I’m not exaggerating. The entire world. So suffice it to say, there is a ton of scary cheap genetically-modified pork in these parts. We instead pay a bit more for the good stuff at the farmer’s market because you can’t put a price tag on unknowingly eating pig snouts. We talk to the guy who raises it and feel good knowing that we’re supporting him and not putting nasty hormoney animals that lead miserable existences in our bodies.

Salads have made a major resurgence in our lives as of late. B dislikes many salads so I imagine salads and macaroni got together and bullied him when he was a teen. What an after-school special that would have made. C likes salads, though, and she often joins us when we eat baby spinach sprinkled with goat cheese, cranberries, and walnuts. I put a little vinaigrette on it and she om-noms it. She also likes spinach sauteed in a little olive oil and garlic, since she’s a gourmet and all. Or a freak of nature? Let’s stick with gourmet.

Snacks are where this child really shines. Sometimes I fear that her tongue isn’t working properly because some of the things she really shouldn’t like are her faves. B and I are obsessed with wasabi peas because we like to pretend we’re exotic and fancy when we eat them. We usually class-up our feeding frenzy by dropping most of them on the floor. C inevitably gets them and goes.to.town. She licks them and swirls them around in her mouth. She is also a big fan of limes and lemons. The tarter, the better. She sucks on them and then usually comes to ask for more once she’s efficiently removed a couple layers of enamel off her seven baby teeth.

C’s first round with Korean food was a big success. Truth: her diaper was a little rough the next day.

B and I don’t pretend to have anything to do with C’s very open palate. We are both equally amazed at mealtimes when she actually eats most of what is put in front of her. It will definitely be a confusing and sad day for us when she learns that Dora the Explorer yogurt exists and refuses to eat anything else.

What else should I offer to her? What are some strange foods your kids like?

Populating Life

Posted on April 29, 2013 by The Waiting

I’m coming off a high induced by playing a rudimentary version of Hide and Seek with C. After dinner, I put in The Fox and the Hound just to see if she was interested in watching it. She wasn’t, but she was wily. She was ready to play that brand of play that possesses babies like the Holy Spirit at a big tent revival. There is something about the interim period between the end of dinner and the beginning of her bedtime ritual that makes the air electric and charged with that same guileless air she wears so effortlessly all the time. We all become possessed and absorbed in hunting each other down and possibly devouring each other.

I was seized when I was in my closet putting some clothes away. Something primal clicked in the reptilian part of my brain, and I just hid. I pushed myself between hanging sweaters and shirts, clicked off the light, and just waited.

And waited.

“Heh-EH?”

Tiny fingers wrapped around the door frame and peeked inside.

BOO!

The sound of a toddler screeching in glee is what is keeping the human race going. I was afraid her face would turn inside-out, her cheeks could physically not contain the grin it held.

I rushed across the apartment to her bedroom and hid in the space between her open door and the wall. I learned that in the twenty or so years since I earnestly played Hide and Seek, I evidently never outgrew my inability to giggle while I waited to be detected. She humored me, though, and basically passed out in sheer hysteria when I jumped from behind the door with my arms outstretched like a good-humored Boogeyman.

Source

♥♥♥

Sometimes I have the inclination to apologize for the good things that happen to me. I have been told that I am not very good at taking complements. When joy and good fortune enter my life, I often pass them off as something I never really earned.

But I am embracing the beauty of my life, including this little girl whose joy is so raw and unrefined and inherently her. I recently started reading Happiness Is Not a Disease. Every time I see its title in my Reader, I talk back to it as if it’s reminding me personally that my happiness is not on loan. It is my own, paid in full.

“Happiness is not a disease.”

“That’s true. It’s not. Stop apologizing for yourself, Emily.”

This happiness we experience every day is nothing to feel ashamed of. The electricity of a game of Hide and Seek is not an element outside of myself that chooses to overtake me when it pleases. It is part of me, and I am allowed to celebrate it even if the world outside of the walls of my life is screaming at me to put my own happiness on hold and mourn for it. It is when scary, disturbing things in the world happen that I am in most need of the safety net of an after dinner game with my baby. By relishing her joy, I am made a better human for the world that needs me.

I am populating my life with moments of joy and allowing myself to savor them.

What is your happy place?

Disingenuous Elmo

Posted on April 24, 2013 by The Waiting

Disingenuous Elmo is not the opening act of the opening act of the opening act of MGMT at Coachella. It is the theme to much of my first year of parenthood.

One of the real neat things I do when I get thrown into a situation in which I have no idea what I’m doing is play make-believe that I have control. I put on a $9 wig from Party City and trot around like it’s totally normal and gorgeous. I eventually get swept up in the charade and convince myself that my farce is real, which I guess might be the entire point of pretending in the first place. Playing pretend that we have everything figured out is a coping mechanism. We cling to images and symbols that sound right and we want for ourselves. But when those symbols – take Elmo, in my case – don’t jive with reality, I have to snap myself out of my pantomime and start living as a real person rather than an actor. My neon blue curly wig is not fooling anyone, and it’s only setting me back from embracing my own graying roots.

No Elmo in sight in this Season 16 cast picture Source

Elmo was still a minor character on Sesame Street when I was a child. In the ’80s, he was just a minion in the Bird Bird Army. But then, when I was in ninth grade, Tickle Me Elmo came out. Little kids got the Crazy Elmo Eyes and parents became equally possessed with Elmo fever, essentially slitting each others’ throats on Black Friday to acquire one of these toys for their kids. I absorbed the Tickle Me Elmo wars as they were recounted on the evening news. As a side note, just remember the next time you are throwing a shoe at your TV for reporting “news” about skateboarding pigs that this has been going on for years. Fluff journalism is nothing new.

I could not have known it at the time, but observing the fixation that both children and parents had on Elmo in 1996 was shaping my view of parenthood, which I wouldn’t enter myself until 2012. I filed Elmo away as the kryptonite of all crying children, and the vibrating doll became the symbol of parental appeasement.

When my day of reckoning finally did roll around and I pushed C from my loins in a moment of triumph with a splash of what-the-eff-have-I-gotten-myself-into, all those old images of Elmo came back to me like the smell of my kindergarten lunchroom. I clung to them and assumed they were collective parenting Truth. I sincerely believed that if things got really bad one day – like, the baby was screaming from dawn to ~~dusk~~ dawn, totally angered that she had gotten stuck with me as a mother – Elmo was the trick to fix it all. All I’d have to do was switch him on and she’d mellow out.

This is as delusional as it sounds. Obviously. Elmo was the furthest thing from C’s mind when she was hungry, tired, or just frustrated. All my attempts to thrust that little red monster on her were met with contempt and ire. This is no surprise, of course. It’s also not the moral to the story.

I continued to perpetuate this image of her that she just loved Elmo. Look at my cookie-cutter baby. She is so cute and obsessed with a little red monster. Yes, she is just so attached to him and isn’t that just darling? Thank God for Elmo or I’d never get rest! LOL LOL LOL. Platitude after platitude. It was all fabricated by me because I was panicking that I didn’t know who my kid was. Elmo was this symbol I latched onto and perpetuated in my everyday dealings with other parents and in my writing because I didn’t want anyone to know that even though I loved C, I had no idea who she was. No idea. Some days, she was happy as a lark and then she’s have a Jekyll and Hyde moment and turn into a seething teething monster. Her preferences were fickle. Just when I thought she was developing an attachment to a particular toy, she’d scorn it. She really, really liked that damn Gangnam Style, but that didn’t fit in with my image of things babies should like. So I disingenuously convinced myself that Elmo meant something to her even when she couldn’t give a crap about him. All I wanted was a good, safe symbol.

It has been my experience as a parent that all births come in pairs, even if your child wasn’t a twin. First, you give birth to a little screaming salami. Then, in the bloody, mucousy afterbirth comes another screaming infant: yourself. That person is just as foreign to you as your baby. During your childless years, you were in utero preparing to be pushed forth into a foreign, cold world of parenthood. Just like your baby, you baked long enough to survive on the outside, but surviving is not the same as thriving. You still have to figure out who you are and whether Elmo or whatever you selected as your arbitrary mascot is actually yours. You have to shoot spitballs to the wall and see if any stick. And if they don’t, you have to let it go and forgive yourself for not living up to your idealized version of your parent self. Let that effortless love you have for your baby leak into the dwindling supply of love you have for the parent you, that other new baby. Forgive yourself for not being able to anticipate who you would be.

But then, move on.

It took me a year to realize that Elmo was not ours. More importantly, it took me a year to realize that it’s OK to have moments - nay, weeks – when I look at her and feel like I’m staring at a stranger. Even though I may feel like she changes every day, there is a thin, strong, invisible fishing wire threaded right through her that makes her essentially her. As her mother, I have the ability to find it better than almost anyone else, but only when I stop looking for it and observe her as a whole.

I’m stripping away the Elmos and finding a relationship with my daughter that is better than anything I could have ever seen on the news when I was thirteen.

Sweet Relief

Posted on April 18, 2013 by The Waiting

C’s heart murmur is innocent.

I had just put her down for a nap when I heard my cell phone ring in our bedroom. The curtains were shut and the air had just cut off, leaving the room in a state of solemn coolness. I saw the local area code pop up and I knew the results from her echo cardiogram on Tuesday were in.

The call took less than 45 seconds. Forty-five seconds to let me exhale and know that she is OK. It almost seemed counterintuitive that good news could be shimmied into such a brief period of time. I called B to tell him right away.

“I always knew she was alright.”

“How did you know?”

“Because she’s happy. And even if she wasn’t healthy, she would still be happy and perfect.”

These are my people.

Innocent

Posted on April 10, 2013 by The Waiting

So, April. April, April, April.

Last April I was worried sick over my new baby. I didn’t talk much about it in real time because 1, I was exhausted from sheer lack of sleep and 2, because I was busy convincing myself that it was completely my fault that we were struggling like whoa with breastfeeding. It took C six days to gain back her birthweight. I was racked with guilt for supplementing her with formula. I detest admitting fault (even when it’s not my fault) so I swept the entire topic under the rug and pretended that I was completely in control. Hint: I wasn’t. Another hint: no one is (except on those rare occasions that they are.)

Fast forward one year. Today C had her one year checkup. In the waiting room I checked off all the boxes on the worksheet that proved that I have One Healthy Child. It was a wonderful feeling to know that my baby is perfect perfect perfect and that this set of papers was just the document to prove it. She’s walking. She’s babbling. She’s expressing love and care. She’s feeding herself.

They checked her heartbeat.

“Hmmmm. It seems like there is a little murmur. I wouldn’t worry. This is very normal and most of the time it’s an ‘innocent’ murmur.”

Innocent. Like it’s just hanging out in her heart, waiting for the bus. No, ma’am, I don’t mean to cause any trouble. Move along.

But just to be sure this murmur is minding its own business and is really only at the wrong place at the wrong time, being accused of something that it has no intent of doing, C is going in for an echo sonogram next week. I’m worrying over a probable nothing and this is likely days-old April breastfeeding all over again.

It got hot within the last 36 hours. I took C out in her stroller for a walk this afternoon and put on my Teva sandals which I haven’t worn in a year. The leather on them is worn and soft because I traipsed all over Seoul in them during the Korean rainy season. They know my feet but my feet are acting like they are foreign. I had a blister by the time our one-hour walk was over. My feet and my mind are the same. Whenever life introduces a hiccup much like all the other hiccups they’ve known before, I am completely discombobulated. I worry and stress (what’s new?) over small things that will likely be completely remedied by infant formula, meds, and a bit more walking.

This, I am learning, is parenthood. I will worry. Sometimes it will be over small things that are innocent, and sometimes it will be over big nasty beasts that I will remove my gloves and bloody noses for. But I will always do what is best for my girl and care for her every time a new blister boils up.

Wee Cee’s Bloggy Birthday Extravaganza!

Posted on April 2, 2013 by The Waiting

MamaSheri’s Blog

Welcome to Wee Cee’s first birthday party, here at YeeHaw Ranch Curly Locks! As C is getting bigger, she is becoming slightly obsessed with animals, so what better locale for her birthday party than a farm! MamaSheri has graciously opened her home to us to celebrate C’s first birthday, and her Angora goats couldn’t be happier. Babies and fluffy aminals go hand-in-hand.

First to arrive at C’s party are little baby Rutabaga the Mercenary Researcher and little baby Lisa. They heard that Wee Cee recently outgrew her own sailor dress and decided to don their nautical garb to her first birthday party. The marine contingent must be properly represented at any and all children’s birthday parties.

Rutabaga

A Gripping Life

Sporadically blogging but with a vengeance is C’s future father-in-law, Ande from & Squatch Makes Three. He must be on Spring Break because he was able to make an appearance at C’s shindig. Squatch (Cee’s future spouse) is still just a glimmer in his eye. Or maybe in his tooth? Keep the goats away from Ande’s chompers.

& Squatch Makes Three

C’s future husband Squatch also sends his regards.

& Squatch Makes Three
Alternate caption: Why I love the Internet

Here’s Doodle! What a happy guy! He cannot contain his enthusiasm and wishes “ABC” a big “happy birthday” with gusto!

Stay at Home Trauma

The magic of the Internet has also brought C’s Auntie Tracy here too! A sweet face – it runs in the family.

Baby Tracy

Wee Cee, 25ish years later

“Family resemblance” isn’t a strong enough phrase.

A couple minutes into the festivities and baby Ashley has already gotten a little too up close and personal with the goats. Into the bath she goes.

Zebra Garden

This party would not be the same without Baby Weebles and Wee Clown. Wee Cee’s birthday bash will go down in history as the place where these two WordPress icons met for the first time. Here they are next to the pony rides spouting genius and plotting their total Internet takeover. And crapping their pants. Awwwwww.

It’s love at first sight. (L-Fear No Weebles, R-A Clown on Fire)

Winning the award for “furthest traveled to get to a first birthday party” is Lazy Laura Maisey and Pixie Girl! They have donned their cutest little frocks and sailed across the pond from the UK to celebrate with us! Hurrah! Tea and crumpets!

ADORBS! (L-Exploring Pixie, R-Lazy Laura Maisey and her bro, sporting the most awesome pants of all time)

Actually, I take that back. Twindaddy and Baby C have joined us from a galaxy far, far away. Incidentally, Miss C’s first word is “Va-dow.” Teaching them well and all.

Stuph Blog

Time for presents!

Presents are kinda fun. Just slightly.

Baby Sara is extremely willing to help C open her gifts, should she need any assistance.

Life in These Times

Tamara has brought along her sweet girl who highly recommends this groovy floor mat.

Mockingbird, Don’t

Arthur from Cupcakes and Hoodies is passing along some awesome rings and board books!

Cupcakes and Hoodies

Heather of Becoming Cliche has brought along her entire brood! They are giving Wee Cee her very first tortoise and a copy of Harry Potter and the Sorcerer’s Stone.
In other words, they are giving her the most awesome gifts anyone could ask for.

Becoming Cliche (clockwise from top: Mama Heather, Girl Child, Squish, and the Padawan

Kortney knows a girl’s heart as and brought Wee Cee some totally rad ’80′s costume jewelry (and a business card for the hairstylist who will equip C with an awesome mullet of her own once she gets some hair.)

Stay At Home Trauma

No birthday party would be complete without a few games. Because Lyssa is an expert on all things Halloween, she has come to the party equipped with a few pumpkins for carving. I have no idea where she got them in the middle of spring, but I’m not asking any questions because she may sick her fiance Shirtless Ryan Gosling on me if I do, and he will blind us all with his abs.

Psychobabble

Lily in Canada

After the Easter Birthday Pumpkin Carving extravaganza, let’s all go swimming with Lily! This is a rare moment in her childhood when she is swimming instead of doing TV-viewing research for her future blog Kidz Showz. Tim takes his future commitment to Kidz Showz far more seriously and has opted to stay home from the festivities so he can watch a GI Joe marathon.

Now, where are my manners? We’ve all been at the party for some time now and I haven’t even offered you any refreshments. Assuming that you don’t want to eat goat food and the shards of pumpkin left over from carving jack-o-lanterns, I had better whip something up.

Cake time!

C’s cake was pretty much the most delicious thing EVA.

Logan will assist Wee Cee in blowing out the candles if she needs some assistance.

Thoughts and Musings

Leading the singing of The Birthday Song are Curly Carly and Wee Cee’s Auntie Cameron (AKA Krug the Thinker) and Uncle Martin. They are her main contenders at the party in toothache-inducing cuteness.

Curly Carly

Krug the Thinker

Southern Fried in Vegas

However, man cannot live on cake alone. Oh no. That’s why we invited the Head Chicken of Southern Fried Chicken in Vegas and Gummy to the party. Both are well-aware that baby birthday parties have a tendency to wear on the nerves of grownups (it’s intuition), so they have brought along a few adult beverages for all the adult handlers who are accompanying their kiddos to the party.

With all this ~~alcohol and cake consumption~~ activity, everyone is starting to get tired. The best part about baby birthday parties is that there are naptimes built in. Let’s all settle in and let Kristin’s Grandpa tell us a story before we hit the hay. (Literal hay, since we’re on a farm and all.)

Thoughts and Musings

The Bean is ZONKED out.

Life in These Times

We can’t say so much for baby Ruby Tuesday. She doesn’t want to miss any of the action.

I Was Just Thinking

Awake from her nap and raring to go, Amy refuels on cake an goat face time. She also wonders about the identity of the topless outtie behind her.

The Bumble Files

Amy from Lucy’s Football seems to be petering out. Did someone give her raisins? For shame.

Lucy’s Football

And now that the party is almost over, it’s time for some goody bags. Well, only one, because kids = expensive. You didn’t think I forgot about the giveaway, did you? Congratulations to Mamasheri for winning an assortment of North Carolina-made goodies! Hurrah for free stuff! The fates were in her favor when she was randomly selected to win blueberry jam, honey soap, and pumpkin barbeque sauce from Nephew’s BBQ Sauce and Rub Company! I mean, she DID put up with a bunch of babies all day. Major, MAJOR shout-outs to Ashley, Heather, and Laura too for the goodies y’all sent us via snail mail. They made C’s special day all the more wonderful, and we both truly appreciate them.

Thank you for coming to C’s first blog birthday!

“How old are you?”
“I’m ONE!”

The Other Side: A Final Note For the First Year

Posted on March 31, 2013 by The Waiting

Dear Miss C,

Hello, my girl. It’s been one heck of a year, eh? I will never forget the moment I awoke at 6:15 one year ago today and knew that you were coming. Just the day before I had been at Target doing some mundane shopping and thinking about how I still had to wait one more week to meet you. Just like your mom, though, you were a little early. That’s a good habit to get into.

I knew you were mine, but I still had to get to know-know you. There is no orientation weekend for babies and moms; you just have to dive in headfirst and hold your breathe. I was dumbstruck that nothing in my life could have prepared me for the mix of emotions I felt when I looked at you and attempted to give you what you needed. I often thought about how ludicrous it was that only a few days before, you were still baking inside me. And now, you were out. Just out. I was as new to being a mom as you were to being a human, and we both cried a lot and slept very little in those days.

OK, so maybe you slept. Sometimes.

Looking all happy with the world at 2MO.

But we learned. You taught me to practice a brand of patience I never dreamed existed. This was a special kind of patience that I couldn’t acquire while waiting at the DMV or even teaching ESL kindergarten. This patience wasn’t forced; it just existed within and without me at the same time. You broke my heart with your sweetness and delicateness. I had no desire but to love you and give you the best of the world. All of a sudden, those long, long weeks of not sleeping and just struggling to get through the day are a distant memory, even though they were less than a year ago. This is because you are magical and somehow found a way to contort time itself. Um, maybe not. But I’m your mom so to me you’ll always be magical.

“Highchairs are AWESOME!!!! ZOMG!”

You have been an easy baby. Don’t think I don’t appreciate it. You slept through the night when you were seven weeks old and weren’t collicky. You loved being held and curling up on our tummies while you slept. You’ve never much liked it when I put you in you playpen or your scooter when I took a shower, but day by day you’re learning that you can occupy and entertain yourself. The world is your oyster and as much as I cringe when you dart towards the dishwasher whenever you notice that it’s open, I am glad that you care. I’m reluctantly happy that you would rather tear pages out of books than watch TV. You are my special little mess and I relish the fits you throw because then I know that you’re feeling. I have made a little breathing feeler. If you ever have children yourself, you’ll understand why that’s such a big deal to me.

I have made a human, and that human is you. You were the one I waited for all along.

Vote early and vote often. Let your voice be heard.

Let your voice be heard. And go ahead and rip your socks off if you don’t want to wear them, too. Do what you gotta do.

The other day, we were taking a bath and you looked straight at me and babbled a sentence-length series of syllables. Your sentence was full of meaning and intent. The words weren’t there, but you had basically taken off the training wheels of language. I stared back in your eyes and marveled that you had something to say. And not only that, but it was to me that your words were directed. Please always, always know that your words are valuable and strong. Take care of them and own them. When you use them, be kind and smart, both to others and yourself.

Knowing you has easily been the most incredible honor of my life. The word “amazing” springs to mind, but I hear that word too often and so it surely cannot describe the uniqueness of watching you interact with the world and knowing that you are mine in a way that no one else is. I adore you, my Sweetbabybuney. Thank you for being you and loving me in a way that no one else ever has or ever will. Thank you for existing and for making me be a better me. Know that Daddy and I love you more than we could ever possibly tell you in a letter or a poem. Our hearts keep growing with every breath you take. Keep inhaling and soak in this big world at your feet.

Happy birthday,

Mommy

The Other Side: Notes on the Eleventh Month

Posted on March 7, 2013 by The Waiting

This is the second to last first-year post I will be writing about Wee Cee. When I named this series “The Other Side”, I was referencing the fact that she was no long in utero. Now the title seems totally outmoded. Of course she’s no longer in my belly. She belongs out in the world and has basically found her place here. I almost don’t know what I’ll do with myself once her first year is over and I won’t be writing these Other Side posts anymore. Don’t be fooled: it’s not about writing the posts; it’s about raising a child who is way more toddler than defenseless baby. That’s scary. I’ve been thinking more and more about her impending childhood and teenagehood recently and it makes me feel overwhelmed because if I’ve learned anything during her first year of life, it’s that it goes fast and the older she gets the more complicated things will be. Stressing over whether she has gotten enough to eat will be replaced with stressing over fractions, not-so-nice kids at school, first dates, and driving a car.

So let’s focus on her babyhood while we still can, shall we?

The one where she has giant squid eyes

Her days are now made up of struggles to get words out. She sticks her little tongue out and flutters it around in an effort to say what she needs. She gets frustrated at first, but I try to take her seriously and hide my amusement at her funny talking faces. We think she said “bottle” this morning. When all else fails, we ask her what a cow says and she answers with a tone of “mmmmmm”. It doesn’t matter that she makes the same sound when we ask her about the sounds of cats, horses, and sheep. She’s got the cow down so we’re good.

She can stand unassisted. She hasn’t made that first unassisted step yet, but she can hold off for awhile as far as I’m concerned because she’s difficult enough to keep up with as it is. Sometimes I feel like she gets frustrated that our apartment is small and she doesn’t have a lot of space to roam, but when I think about it, it’s really probably me who is frustrated. She doesn’t know anything else so as far as she is concerned, the place is fine. It’s just that a lot of places are off-limits to her. She is obsessed with rooting around in the fridge and the dishwasher, and we recently had to just make them unavailable to her because she was tossing everything on the floor really loud and it got to be too annoying to constantly clean up. Incidentally, pulling her away from the dishwasher when she’s already spotted that it’s open is a surefire way to make her Angry with a capital A. Stiff torso, rigid body, blood-curdling screams. Eeee-gah.

*UPDATE: Not three hours after I wrote this, she took three consecutive steps towards me. They weren’t repeated for the rest of the day. BUT STILL. :D

Standin’ queen!

Her motor skills are blossoming. She loves clapping, and she tries to snap her fingers with pretty impressive precision. She likes to make the motions to wash her hands. The one thing she hasn’t gotten entirely is blowing a kiss. Instead of holding her hand up to her mouth, she holds it up to her forehead so it looks like she’s doffing a make-believe hat. She also understands the purpose of her comb and likes to run it across her head after her bath.

The couch makes a good impromptu teething ring.

She is not a fan of TV. Seriously, I could not pay her with a million Cheerios to watch TV for 5 minutes. I realize that this is a relative problem that many people would love to have because their kid cries if they don’t get to watch TV, but I need to get stuff done around the apartment without having to worry that C is going to dump all her toys in the toilet in the meantime or scream at me to let her out of her play pen. I worry that I make myself too available to her because when I try to get her to play alone or amuse herself for a little while, she has a hard time settling herself down and detaching herself from me. I don’t want her to think that the world revolves around her and that she can always have my attention whenever she wants it, but she’s being pretty resistant to playing by herself for any substantial period of time. I keep telling myself that she will grow out of it. After all, she is still a baby. Also, her fussiness seems to be magnified to me a lot more when she’s going through a cluster of milestones all at once, so that is probably also making my anxiety a bit more intense.

We are gearing up her her first birthday at the end of the month. Her actual birthday is on Easter Sunday, so we will likely do big fun birthday activities on the Saturday before and then have a special family party on her actual birthday. She is a big fan of ham so she will be in hog heaven with her Easter ham! To help us celebrate her bloggy b-day, remember to send in your baby picture to thewaitingblog(at)gmail(dot)com by March 27 so you can be entered to win a prize pack filled with delicious North Carolina goodies!

Opening up an early birthday present from Kendra and Chris

Now, to take a nap. That little gal has got me tired. ;D

The world is neat.

The Waiting

Turns out, it's not the hardest part.

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