glad about

My kid is my favorite baby and he hasn't made me cry lately, at all.

I've had tears, sure, but they've been from laughing, or wind symphonies, or from the teeth cleaning last week with the buzzing at the roof of my mouth, or from listening to the finale of the Hamilton soundtrack, very loud, in the library's delivery van.

I'm glad about things, like new relationships, warm Decembers (shh, I'm denying things), baby butt wiggle proto-crawling, brownies, Amazon Prime.

And my truth-seeking, thoughtful, responsible, affectionate, bread-winning husband. I'm glad about him all the time.

traveling heart

Here is what makes me sad today: the kind, warm, sparkly-eyed pastor who performed our wedding ceremony four years ago has just had his ordination stripped for recently marrying a same-sex couple. I am hanging by a thread--a THREAD--here, people, and the more things like this keep happening to the people in the church who actually speak a language I'd be able (to want) to echo, the more likely my mask to become more of a mask, and my heart to keep journeying off on its own.

hand face

He sucks his thumb like a real baby, fingers curled around his nose, and last evening we were lying on the floor together and he kept grabbing my hand, my pinky in his right hand and my thumb in his left, and pulling it to his face and scream-laughing into my palm. It was the funniest thing he's ever done. Oh man.

helpless

Sometimes I get overwhelmed by the thought of what it must be like to be in your first few months of life. Locked in a tiny body that can't properly express and can't properly contain nascent emotions and needs. If a baby is in pain, lonely, cold, hot, overwhelmed, hungry, wet, tired, all they can do is scream and hope someone (some dumbass amateur parent, who is just as new to this as they are) hears, can guess the problem, and is willing to help. It's horrible to be stuck in a state of discomfort and to not know that it will ever end. Hungry and unsure if you'll ever be NOT hungry again. Even minor inconveniences would be almost unbearable when you have no ability to problem solve on your own steam. What if my baby has an itch somewhere?? I'd never know. I think it's good that memory doesn't start sticking for a few years. I think it's a good thing M won't remember how miserable he is every time he gets stuck on his side against the wall of the crib and can't kick his way back to comfort. Ow, my heart.

this week

I haven't been writing things down, but I want to remember looking at S across a table full of Mexican food while we talk about the ways we need to love.


The vase of slowly fading mums on my desk at work, and the reasons why fall is (still) so good for my soul.

The quivering, sensitive, almost-crying face my son makes when he's overwhelmed and the way my heart echoes back.

The way it feels to mash my feet into the pedals of the bike, pistoning my legs faster and faster down the hill so I can crest the top of the next one at a glide.

The raspy laugh of the baby's hilarious, cotton haired great-great-aunt, the one who mispronounces 'peony' and to whom we are (what's yours is mine) in debt.

Sore wrists. Nodding off at my desk. Bare feet even in the cold.

babies who keep secrets

Yesterday was kind of gloomy, so today I'll mention a dear friend whose pregnancy is 40 weeks behind my own, who found out about their little one days after my little one was born, and who whispered her tiny baby's existence into my tiny baby's newborn ear, and who later announced the pregnancy out loud to a group of friends through a game of pictionary, and who keeps bringing food, her husband, and her good company over to our home. This is ungloomy.

lagging

I think I'll always feel a sense of loss when I think of the laundry list of [laundry] and everything else between the baby's bedtime and my own early one, and the way I used to be able to... not.

I don't wish I wasn't working because I like my job, we need the money, I like being out and about, I felt trapped at home with the baby.

I wish I wasn't working because I'm always tired, I'm always in a loop, I'm always in a loop, I'm always in a loop, I miss my kid, S and I are on different planets.

There's been this shared head cold thing for the past week. There's been night shifts and long nights and early mornings and miscommunication and snot. We are two solo parents. This is really hard.
 
I am not really a perpetual motion machine. I am not always in go-mode. I am (I was) pretty good at knowing when I needed to say no, or back away, or take some time to myself. But now I'm trying to fake it and stuff down my instincts, because now I'm not on my own payroll.

I'm wondering how to find restoration. Do I have a secret pocket of unsinkableness?

I had --HAD-- this thing where I'd just poof and go for a solitary walk for an hour or hours when I needed to clear out my cobwebs and level out my emotions.

I had --HAD-- this thing where I'd spend an extra hour in bed in the mornings and read, or I'd go spend an evening at a thrift store.

I had --HAD-- this thing where I'd make a week's meal plan and shop and cook and clean up the kitchen afterward.

Now what I have is... guilt and irritation and heavy eyelids. Frozen pizza and cereal and stagnation.

Now what I have is a wonderful, snotty, iron-willed baby, who squawks and flails and laughs and is a spit up houdini and who smells like old cheese/baby shampoo/poop/heaven and who needs me, and whose care and affection necessarily trumps everything I'd be doing instead.

What a trade.

asking for it

Honestly, I was really asking for it when I made a dump cake for the staff Halloween party and then biked to work with it. It dumped.

And I was asking for it when I spent the last few hours of the night on the couch with the baby, even though the bed was wide open, S working the night shift. Sleeping on the couch with a white noise app supplanting my alarm, snuffly sleeping baby supplanting my desires to even roll over to check the time.

Oh, and I know full well that sitting in the bumbo seat makes the baby poop. So I have no one to blame but myself for putting him in it while I was running late, trying to get his diaper bag ready for the day, already dressed, both of us.

800 miles

My favorite nickname for the baby is Moolos. Also I really like referring to him as The Smitty. There's no reason for either.

He has his first cold. He's dripping rubber cement and sneeze-coughing-gurgling. He cries and he grins through the discomfort and my heart bumps. I would always always let him sleep a night on my chest.

He makes traveling difficult! We drove about 800 miles with Moolos in the back seat. On the way back his voice was froggy when he cried. He makes traveling kind of better! He is a good side kick. He makes a good trio out of us.

I say: thanks for not being an asshole. Thanks for being patient. Thanks for being mine.

I say: thanks for being quirky. Thanks for being up and down. Thanks for being warm and sweet in your sleep.

I am very lucky to have friendships that span decades, already. And brilliant weekends to celebrate and share and get lost in the fall and plan for the decades to come.

this-is-for-now

I need to not forget gloves.

I need to wake up at 2:22am without a sense of dread.

Yesterday the small one earned his first $10 by sitting on my lap in the university's cognitive development lab. He watched images on a screen; he was watched. I am always wading through all-campus emails that say, 'volunteers needed!' or 'do you have a child under the age of...' and I usually blink them away, but this time, I DO have a child under the age of.... I DO have a child.

I think, no, I know, that the way to get through this whole kid thing in tact is to not make assumptions and to not read new-normal when it's really this-is-for-now.

He rolls over. And then he gets stuck. So, you know, there are lots of things to laugh about.

12.5 weeks

My person is different. My PERSON is different

I am deeply, deeply, disturbingly in love with a tiny human that came out of me

He is fussy and intense and really likes when I sing to him and taking naps draped all over me and going on walks and being on tables

He is amazing

He is strong and in a state of perpetual motion

He is expressive and weird and grins a lot and sounds like a jaguar when he's overtired or overhungry

He is a mini S and I love them both so much for being rooted in each other

I have been awake since 4:45 and I think this is just how it's going to be 

Wearing patterned shirts only, or no shirt at all, if I want to not change outfits later 

I am squashy and sore and my lungs are deep deep

I am biking again, and pushing not to push too much

It's hard not to give 100% with a bike 

I know I have to cool it at first and work up to flying

It's hard to give 100% at work 

I have been away from work for a lifetime but also it was only a few days, to me

All I want is a sleeping baby in my arms and not a stack of bound periodicals

But I still really love my job because of what it feels like and how it fits and who it surrounds me with

I'm very glad to be here

I hate that I'm not at home

There's a picture of my baby on the wall above my desk and looking at it makes me tear up

I have cried more in the past 100 days (88 days of mothering, a few extra thrown in before the mothering started for good measure) than the decades that came before

This is all drudgery 

This is all something I miss when I'm not drudging 

S and I are trying to find a rhythm and it's not there yet

He's either on or off, and I'm both

Everything is either rushed or too serious

I talk too much and repeat myself over and over

I worry 

I overflow with pride and delight

I go to bed too early and fall asleep too late

I get restful sleep, I think, in only two ways: when I'm asleep with the baby on my chest and when I'm alone in bed when S is up with the baby

They are the only circumstances when I can relax enough for deep sleep

The baby's WITH me, or he's WITH him and I can stop my alarm system 

I have grown a keen alarm system 

Marriage is hard, after a baby, when it was easy before-- or should I say being a wife is hard, after a baby, when it was easy before 

We have run out of toothpaste and I haven't cooked in weeks and S had to wear un-laundered scrubs today

Our kitchen smells like old coffee and formula

I am a bad cow, thus the formula 

Maybe if I have a second baby I will be a better cow?

Maybe if I have a second baby I will cry less?

Maybe if I have a second baby I will love him/her with a calmness, instead of terrified desperation?

It took, oh, eight weeks this time

THIS IS A TIME WARP

All of these things I'm doing, I don't really have another option

This is hard to accept

This is hard

This is somehow unnaturally natural



This is my kid, this is my kid, this is my kid.

life getting stronger

Fog is burning off of the massive round of transition that is rapidly approaching my tiny family. That's the thing that matters to me--seeing the transition, not the transition itself. I have a constant chronic case of needing-to-know.

Well, now I know things. Things, she says. Type of human, timing of changes, level of income, a place to nest, a career for S.

I'm caught up to where my heart is! The baby--the boy, he's a boy!--is dancing in me and I'm glad to be getting to know him. I'm past early doubts to unconditional gratitude. S is brilliant, and the pride I feel for that man as he approaches the last months of school with a job offer in tow is chokingly strong. I would choose him over and over and over and over. I'm safe and lifted and content and picturing him as a father until the choking pride turns to choking tears. He works so hard to make sure I know I/we am/are loved. Oh, how I/we love him back.

The long winter has finally extinguished, and blue skies and squelchy mud and hints of regrowth are calling me to my feet, dragging me off the couch again. It's good to move, to move within movements. My insides move, too, in flutters and taps. We all feel the promise of life getting better and stronger. We all do.

grounded

One of the most grounding things I can do is to think about family trees. I'm pretty predictable--you can always, always tempt me to stillness with a family photo album, even for families not my own. I love hearing the family lore, I love leafing through the daily diary of a grandparent, I love tracing family resemblance through a stack of sepia toned portraits. I'm currently pleased with the fact that I can trace back one arm of my family tree--the Miller one--back six or seven generations. Ernest Miller, an immigrant from Switzerland sometime in the mid-to-late 18th century, who was the father of David Miller, who was the father of Martin Miller, who was the father of Reuben Miller, who was the father of Alvin Miller, who was the father of Harold Miller, who is the father of me. Next generation currently brewing. This, the the mind-blowing odds that each of these men survived and thrived enough to pass on their name, that they mated with my lady ancestors at just the right time, each time, to produce someone who would repeat that so very tenuous process all the way down to me, all the way down to the half-child in my uterus, all of which was happening simultaneously on so many other branches of my family tree... THIS is what gives me a sense of purpose. More people than I could ever possibly count, or ever possibly organize into a chart, have gone into the making of me. I am adding to the multitude. If I'm lucky there will be generations that take a veer through me. This. This will never not be the way I find awe and gratitude and the value of the fixed space and time I occupy. I am a part of something so big, connecting to so many. Literally everyone is. I mean.