Just a quick note this morning: James slept like a normal person for this first time, really, ever. He fell asleep in his crib (and I wasn't in it with him, as I've resorted to a few times recently.) He woke up just three or four times, fussing in an ordinary way, not shrieking. This morning he is cheerful, seems rested. What does it mean? Will it happen again?
It is a chilly morning, and Henry ate his breakfast sitting on the porch swing, swathed in blankets like the lava plug in a volcano. When I came out to check on him, he was looking east into peach & lavender clouds and told me excitedly that he'd just just seen a "whole bunch of little birds" fly away together. It's hard to convey how delightful it is to see him quietly contemplating his world and finding it good.
Moments later, with even greater excitement, he pointed to a hummingbird that was buzzing inquisitively around our porch, just at the level where a hummingbird feeder might hang. "Look!" he cried. "It's a little baby bird, looking for its Mama!"
Thursday, September 22, 2011
Friday, September 16, 2011
Pow, right in the kisser
Peter reported this pre-bedtime conversation with Henry last night:
Henry: Mama kisses me all the time.
Peter: Do you like it?
Henry: Yes. You don't kiss me.
Peter: Would you like me to kiss you?
Henry. No. You're not a kisser.
I was quite startled by this exchange. He has thoughts about my kissing him? He recognizes that I am a kisser and Peter isn't? It's so easy for us to think that we know everything about Henry, having known him from the moment he took his first breath, while he doesn't know much about anything. But suddenly I am forced to recognize that in fact there are important ways in which the opposite is true. He already evinces the intense privacy of a child about his inmost thoughts, and who he will be is a mystery to us. Meanwhile, he is busily watching us and drawing his own conclusions, with a completely innocent ruthlessness: He will soften nothing, excuse nothing, judge nothing. He just sees what he sees. Very scary.
Henry: Mama kisses me all the time.
Peter: Do you like it?
Henry: Yes. You don't kiss me.
Peter: Would you like me to kiss you?
Henry. No. You're not a kisser.
I was quite startled by this exchange. He has thoughts about my kissing him? He recognizes that I am a kisser and Peter isn't? It's so easy for us to think that we know everything about Henry, having known him from the moment he took his first breath, while he doesn't know much about anything. But suddenly I am forced to recognize that in fact there are important ways in which the opposite is true. He already evinces the intense privacy of a child about his inmost thoughts, and who he will be is a mystery to us. Meanwhile, he is busily watching us and drawing his own conclusions, with a completely innocent ruthlessness: He will soften nothing, excuse nothing, judge nothing. He just sees what he sees. Very scary.
Tuesday, September 13, 2011
A little woo
Late Sunday afternoon, I headed off for a solitary trip to Dirty Kroger. When I left, Peter was in the kitchen with Henry, James in his arms. Grocery shopping alone has become one of my luxuries, and I enjoyed myself plenty picking out tapioca starch and a new toothbrush. But when I was standing in line to pay, I was hit by a sudden lurch of panic, as if I were supposed to have the boys with me but had accidentally forgotten them somewhere.
Of all the hundreds of things I get scared about regularly, this is actually not one of them. I'm convinced that the intense and harrowing early weeks postpartum were, in part, nature's design to make sure that I never ever ever could forget from then until I die that I now am a mother.
A friend of mine who lived in LA told me once that a certain area of her brain was given over at all times to tracking traffic patterns so whatever else she was doing, humming along behind the scenes was her brain, working out how to get where, when, by which route. My brain now operates in the same way with respect to Henry and James, so that even when I am reading, or cooking, or talking to a friend, or crying my eyes out, I am also always keeping a mental eye on where they are, what trouble they could be getting into, and what needs to happen when to move them along to the next thing. In other words, the panicky feeling at Kroger was not just unpleasant, but truly surprising.
When I got home, I immediately started telling Peter about it.
"That's very strange," he said. "Because the whole time you were gone, Henry was inconsolable. He was crying and said his stomach hurt and that you were not going to come home. It was like he had some kind of panic attack."
I said something vague, and hopeful, about attenuated attunement across space, thinking a little about gold to airy thinness beat.
"A psychic tentacle," suggested Peter. He then went on to float the theory that the barometric pressure was awry and acting on us each independently in a similar way.
Oh, OK, fine. Still, the whole thing seemed very strange, as I kept feeling the need to say all evening. And I felt, momentarily, ever so slightly nudged back toward the optimistic agnosticism about the mysteries of the human condition that used to be mine.
Of all the hundreds of things I get scared about regularly, this is actually not one of them. I'm convinced that the intense and harrowing early weeks postpartum were, in part, nature's design to make sure that I never ever ever could forget from then until I die that I now am a mother.
A friend of mine who lived in LA told me once that a certain area of her brain was given over at all times to tracking traffic patterns so whatever else she was doing, humming along behind the scenes was her brain, working out how to get where, when, by which route. My brain now operates in the same way with respect to Henry and James, so that even when I am reading, or cooking, or talking to a friend, or crying my eyes out, I am also always keeping a mental eye on where they are, what trouble they could be getting into, and what needs to happen when to move them along to the next thing. In other words, the panicky feeling at Kroger was not just unpleasant, but truly surprising.
When I got home, I immediately started telling Peter about it.
"That's very strange," he said. "Because the whole time you were gone, Henry was inconsolable. He was crying and said his stomach hurt and that you were not going to come home. It was like he had some kind of panic attack."
I said something vague, and hopeful, about attenuated attunement across space, thinking a little about gold to airy thinness beat.
"A psychic tentacle," suggested Peter. He then went on to float the theory that the barometric pressure was awry and acting on us each independently in a similar way.
Oh, OK, fine. Still, the whole thing seemed very strange, as I kept feeling the need to say all evening. And I felt, momentarily, ever so slightly nudged back toward the optimistic agnosticism about the mysteries of the human condition that used to be mine.
Wednesday, September 7, 2011
James at nine months
Height: 28.25"
Weight: 19 lbs. 4 oz.
Head circumference: 45.4 cm.
Which puts him in the 50th percentile right down the line.
His iron levels are a little low. I'm following roughly this approach to feeding him and would prefer not to mess around with iron-fortified cereal or supplements, so I'll make sure to give him more meat and do more cooking for him in cast-iron. He'll be rechecked in December.
Meanwhile, he remains as stinky a sleeper as ever. We were up seven times before 4:30 this morning, and I haven't been back to sleep since. His otherwise satisfactory doctor has nothing to suggest beyond leaving him alone in a room in the dark to cry. (When we were going through similar troubles with Henry, the doctor told his responding to his cries would--and I quote--"create a monster.") Leaving aside my profound discomfort with following that advice, it is a practical impossibility, in our 2-bedroom, 900-square-foot house.
Weight: 19 lbs. 4 oz.
Head circumference: 45.4 cm.
Which puts him in the 50th percentile right down the line.
His iron levels are a little low. I'm following roughly this approach to feeding him and would prefer not to mess around with iron-fortified cereal or supplements, so I'll make sure to give him more meat and do more cooking for him in cast-iron. He'll be rechecked in December.
Meanwhile, he remains as stinky a sleeper as ever. We were up seven times before 4:30 this morning, and I haven't been back to sleep since. His otherwise satisfactory doctor has nothing to suggest beyond leaving him alone in a room in the dark to cry. (When we were going through similar troubles with Henry, the doctor told his responding to his cries would--and I quote--"create a monster.") Leaving aside my profound discomfort with following that advice, it is a practical impossibility, in our 2-bedroom, 900-square-foot house.
Tuesday, August 30, 2011
In which the Swedish dancing girls make an appearance
Things have been really difficult around here the last few weeks. James's sleeping habits have gone from bad to worse--night after night he wakes up eight, nine, ten times or more. And oh, I have a lot to say about sleep, sleep-deprivation, motherhood, rage, expert advice, toddlers and discipline, and the difference between child-abusers and the rest of us (hint: it involves being able to get help when you need it), but writing all that is just too damn exhausting.
So here's what I've got instead.
Postprandial conversation on the near west side.
Me: I'm thinking of going to a movie on Thursday night. That OK with you?
Peter: Oh! (Expressive of amazement, because I haven't gone to a movie in the theater for more than 3 years). Sure. I guess we can have our frat party here.
Me: Call in the Swedish dancing girls.
Henry: I want to have the girlie party Wednesday.
Me: That's nice. You want me to feel included, huh?
Henry: I want to have a girlie party RIGHT NOW.
Me: Who's going to come to your girlie party?
Henry: Girlies! (Duh.)
Me: Who are the girlies?
Henry: The girlies are aminals. Who live in the water.
Me: What do they look like?
Henry: They look like lily pads with frogs on them and the frogs go up up in the sky.
Peter: I think this sounds more like an acid party.
So here's what I've got instead.
Postprandial conversation on the near west side.
Me: I'm thinking of going to a movie on Thursday night. That OK with you?
Peter: Oh! (Expressive of amazement, because I haven't gone to a movie in the theater for more than 3 years). Sure. I guess we can have our frat party here.
Me: Call in the Swedish dancing girls.
Henry: I want to have the girlie party Wednesday.
Me: That's nice. You want me to feel included, huh?
Henry: I want to have a girlie party RIGHT NOW.
Me: Who's going to come to your girlie party?
Henry: Girlies! (Duh.)
Me: Who are the girlies?
Henry: The girlies are aminals. Who live in the water.
Me: What do they look like?
Henry: They look like lily pads with frogs on them and the frogs go up up in the sky.
Peter: I think this sounds more like an acid party.
Thursday, August 18, 2011
Snips and snails etc.
Henry was ranging freely around the house this morning in the altogether, stroking his arms & his belly, the way one does, when he suddenly stopped to ask a question.
"What am I made of?"
Oh, dear. I made a stab at it. "You're made of skin and blood and bones and organs."
Which seemed, mostly, to satisfy him. He did want to see how far I was sticking to my story, by asking me what every single other person he could think of that he knows is made of. And then he threw in what he clearly knew was a trick question, slyly smiling. "What's Planty [Mom's cat] made of?" I said he was made of the same stuff as the rest of us, plus fur, at which point Henry moved on to another disquisition on butts for James's benefit.
(That's the same James, by the way, who is now pulling himself up to standing and then letting go--so that he can clap--and not falling down.)
"What am I made of?"
Oh, dear. I made a stab at it. "You're made of skin and blood and bones and organs."
Which seemed, mostly, to satisfy him. He did want to see how far I was sticking to my story, by asking me what every single other person he could think of that he knows is made of. And then he threw in what he clearly knew was a trick question, slyly smiling. "What's Planty [Mom's cat] made of?" I said he was made of the same stuff as the rest of us, plus fur, at which point Henry moved on to another disquisition on butts for James's benefit.
(That's the same James, by the way, who is now pulling himself up to standing and then letting go--so that he can clap--and not falling down.)
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