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.

snow days

I have a clanging head and a sense of displacement, because I’m at work after a snowed in four day weekend, most of that time without S, who was snowed in himself, away from us, at work.

I’m really tired.

And still in the stage where I actively resent the lack of sleep, self-government, and out of the box spontaneity that life with a baby has brought. Oh man, a blizzard without a baby would have been so different. Wading through the snow banks, diving down deep. Sleeping in late, watching movies, reading books, putting together a 1000 piece puzzle. I’d probably have baked bread, which I do about once a year, on a snowy day. There may have been too much wine and hiking over to a good friend’s apartment up the hill to share it, and the bread.

With a baby, especially with THIS baby, at THIS time, I was sleep-deprived and deep in poop-covered laundry instead of snow drifts, down on my knees on the kitchen floor picking up chunks of sweet potatoes, stuck inside.

It’s still ok though, actually. It was very ok.

I watched the clock and thought to myself: 42 more hours of solo parenting, 33 more hours of solo parenting, 17 more hours of solo parenting, 5 more hours of solo parenting. But by the end, when S finally made it back home, I was still ok to keep on loving, being a primary lover, being the reader of signs and soother of tempers. I hop out of bed right away.

We sat by the window and watched the snow plows. He’s wonderful, you know. He has wispy hairs that stick out over both of his ears. He’s so curious, so wiggly and wily and sweet. He’s got such a great gummy grin and he can do things like pick up and feed himself peas. He naps the best when I hold him. It was so good to have the time available to hold him. Rock in the glider for an hour, and then two, while he snuffled and sucked his thumb in sleep. I hold him until my arm falls asleep and then keep holding him because that’s how I get to watch him in stillness. I try to count his eyelashes. He’s mesmerizing. He’s so kinetic while he’s awake. He can’t quite crawl but tries really hard. He rocks and he rolls and he lunges and grabs and dances and can pull up from his belly to his knees to a sitting position on his own. He splashes in the tub, he kicks his legs on the changing table. He cackles and yells and demands and giggles and coos and pulls hair and comes at my face with his mouth wide open, conking into my nose or my cheek or my forehead with what I’ll call a kiss, though it’s borderline abuse. He wakes up noisy and hungry with every muscle in his tiny body taut. He’s insatiable. He’s beautiful. I really just can’t even quite believe he exists.

The pull in both directions is about equally strong—I want to always be with him. I want to still be my own person. It might sound like this is balanced, but it’s not. It’s impossible. I’m doing it anyway.

He is a hard thing. He is the hardest thing. He’s impossible. We're existing anyway. We're really lucky.

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.