acquiring sound

We had an early intervention assessment last week because the little dude is proving slow to talk. He's fine, though, really, and none of us have any hard worries [about that, anyway]. It's only been a week since he was pronounced borderline delayed, and already since then he's been trying his little darndest to figure out how to make his first (almost only) word--'cat'--have more of a rounded 'caaa' sound at the start instead of the 'taaa' it previously was. Man, he tries. And he's just started to fling these slightly husky 'mama's around, too. He'll point at me, smugly: 'mama.' I point back.

it is what it is

I noticed that I often start my emails with 'Yes--' even when if you read further on you will find that my answer is actually kind of 'no.'

Within four days this week I completed a 1000-piece and 500-piece puzzle all on my own, though the 1000-piece puzzle turned out to actually be a 999-piece puzzle so maybe that's why it came together so quickly. I do what my mom does and what her dad did and circle on the box where the missing piece should have been. 1 missing.

My husband is a super man and superman and we are again in a period of heads-down. The thing about that is we've done it before and just like last time I can't seem to resist feeling like it's all about me when in fact it's all about him. He works very very hard and sometimes all I do is fold laundry and sometimes not even that.

I wish I were raising my son more like a second child than a first child. It is really not fair to him that I don't know what I'm doing, and that my attention is laser focused even when it doesn't need to be and sometimes I totally overlook what I think in retrospect, oh I should have been noticing that. I am both showily permissive and showily anxious. I think if I had five kids I'd be less showy, anyway.

We are in debt, a lot of debt. Can you be in space debt? As well as time and money? I have a strong sense (a born optimism) that eventually we'll be ok. I'm very lucky to feel that way. Eventually there will come a shift back to national sanity. Eventually will come graduations and larger paychecks and hopefully enough savings for a house and a larger family. I can't plan for Eventually, though. I am stuck planning for this weekend (sleeping off a night shift, refreshing Twitter over and over, getting out of the house, groceries, diapers).

I keep saying, 'it is what it is.' This makes very little sense to me, but I don't really want to actually use the number of words it would take to say what exactly it is.

mirrors

Sometimes the most devastating part of raising a toddler is how
desperately
he
wants
to please me.

flabby mind

I have three half finished [cold] hot drinks and a sense of righteous anger on your behalf and a rubbery, uncalloused brain trying its hardest to multitask.

I have not yet had time to take a breath.

flight

I dreamed last night that an airplane fell from the sky and landed across my abdomen, heavy and cold.

reflection

I'm still kind of distracted by continuity and identity and the illogics of my heart. I think nobody TOLD me I'd never be April again. Maybe they did and I forged on anyway?

This week I'm alone in the office at work sipping mint and playing Lucius on repeat.

This week I'm victorious and paying attention to detail and punishing myself at every turn.

Honestly, I'm fine--was fine--will continue to be fine--. What I lack currently is a. unclaimed time, and b. willpower. There's always a chance willpower will spontaneously burst from the soles of my feet sometime in 2017.

I'm very lucky. I suspect I'll get to the next decade of my life with only a few more callouses and bruises from lashes of Weltschmerz. There are things I'm good at, like catching a wiggly, dripping toddler fresh from the bath when he leaps into my arms.

faster

This week has been a high speed zigzag, and a time of clinging. I am so very, very lucky to be who/where/what I am, because my biggest immediate pains have been my loss of desire to stream NPR all day at work and to read dystopian novels in the evenings. I feel this keenly.

I really like being a niece, but this week I was seized as a mascot between aunts and uncles, a target on one side for vocal affirmation and on the other for denouncement. It's never happened before, and it feels weird to block family-in-law from being able to send me facebook messages, but here we are. 2016 has never happened before, either.

2016 is liminal at work, too. There are many ways this is true. Sometimes I am shocked that I am still here, but there is an appeal to being the pillar (for me). There is an appeal to being a pillar slowly shifting, but not too much at once. In this week of mourning and fear I have been grateful for the minutia like web conferences and staff meetings and prepping for end-of-semester maintenance.

Oh and I'm a mom to a toddler who is tall and clever and draining, who doesn't talk but squawks, who lights up the room with his joy and silliness. He's predictable and glorious and I get really worn down by him sometimes. There is still that wedge of my soul that thinks from time to time, was this a good idea?? But then, his existence could never been called into question. He is, he was going to be. We're going to laugh and cry our way through his childhood.

me too, but silently

Sometimes even when I'm thinking ME TOO ME TOO ME TOO I don't want to open my mouth to say so.

I knew not sleeping well was part of the bargain. It's still jarring, sometimes. Mornings at work are hard. Work is not hard, but being here is.

I would like a time machine, please.

I would like a donut, please.

self care

lying flat on my stomach on the living room floor listening to Bach

140 minutes of brisk walking

casserole an hour late

amazon prime

dark chocolate, hot tea, animated movie, asleep halfway through

extra coconut oil

not folding laundry

honesty

audiobooks

sleeping pressed against S with as many body parts as I can manage

bringing the baby into bed with us in the wee hours

bluetooth headphones

conscious un-jealousy

conscious un-googling

shoulders back, chin up, straight forward

all ear

Sometimes when I'm in bed at night I think my ear is growing to take over the whole side of my head. 95% asleep, with the up ear completely alert. I keep waking before the squawking starts. My ear lies awake too long after the squawking stops. Full of phantoms.