It's important to be warm

It is official, we have 2day/week care for Little B! I’m so excited and pleased at the center we’ll be in. It seemed all too perfect that after several searches, the right opportunity fell into our laps. We know two other families there already; it’s convenient; it’s as affordable as it can be, all things considered. We begin in October officially, so I’ve got a week to store up milk and prepare myself. I believe I’m ready for this transistion and I know that the boy is. He *adores* outside input and interacting with others. He’s constantly charming strangers and loves being out in the world. Short of me being not only a Full-time Mum, but the sort who manages to take her child out everyday, I would not be able to manage the stimulation he’ll be getting by being in care.

This will make the time I spend with him all the richer, not to mention that I will be better able to continue working at the level of productivity my clients deserve. Ian and my mom are on board for other times and I’m feeling more confident by the day that it is possible to juggle it all. Considering that I’m still desperately underslept, that’s feeling pretty damn good.

Hurrah!

Hopefully I might even be able to post new pictures soon, since tomorrow marks the boy’s fourth (month) birthday and I’ve yet to post the third month set of pictures. Eventually I’ll catch up…

Filed by joy at 3:39 pm under baby, life
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I avoided any TV or radio yesterday on a mental health boycott.
This would’ve been worth watching. I increasingly respect Olbermann, a rare statement in current mass journalism.
hat tip to cousin Rob

As with the Kennedy assassination and all watershed cultural moments, I can still describe in clear detail where I was, who I spoke with, the fear and patriotism that rose in me. Without stealing the importance of the events of 2001 in our own life stories, I wish not to focus on it. That day is being stolen, warped in meaning, by a government in decline, grasping at any means to an end that involves silencing people like me. I keep what that date five years ago meant to me and mine inside me. I hold it so that it will not be sullied by the current state of national affairs. I turn my attention elsewhere, not because I have forgotten, not because I do not care, but because it means so much to me and I refuse the indignation of being told how and what to feel, who to love and hate, and how to keep grief from infecting my tiny child as long as is feasible.

There were wonderful things marking this year’s Sept. 11, from the 100th anniversary of Satyagraha, the non-violent movement to the birthday of a beautiful babes. I keep those in mind, and I keep my sanity by doing so.
hat tip to Susan

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If I woke up a year from now and read this article in the morning paper, I’d be tickled pink. Perhaps the RNC misunderestimated the meaning of satire.
hat tip to Oliver Willis

One more political, then on to other things:
Amazing perspective on Katrina (yeah, I know I’m late).

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I have rediscovered the local library. Not only have I gained an impressive collection of songs I want to sing to Benjamin, I’m actually attempting to read real books again, ones which have nothing to do with making or caring for children. It’s been awhile. I’m slowly bopping my way thorough Eats, Shoots and Leaves, which is wonderful. I may have to buy it as it is a fun reference book, among its other fine traits. While bouncing the teething boy, I read to him the grand history of the comma.

To counter my overachieving ideas about him helping us win the war on poor apostrophe usage, I recommend this Slate article: Babies are Geniuses at Grammar.

If I can’t get through the library books, there is always reading an epistolary novel online. Dracula is wonderful and I’ve never read it, despite all my Buffy love. They’re doing Clarissa when Dracula is done. I <3 reading in little chunks, as little chunks are the only time I really have these days.
hat tip to S.M. via Amul

Speaking of the Buffy love, I must find a way to go to the Buffy Sing-a-long. That will be too fun to miss!
hat tip to Tina

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I’ve been stewing a little about my career. That’s a pretty big stew as I juggle being a mom whilst I consider the options on baby care around here. (Apparently, I should’ve applied the moment I had the positive pregnancy result. They actually have that option on the application form. Bah!) I like where my freelance is going and enjoy the work I’m getting. As I look ahead, I need to keep attentive to this precarious balance of job and family. It’s come up that I could well have used the same Master’s Degree that Ian went for. But I don’t have much interest in going back to school, especially now. Sure I took a few classes and got heaps out of it; I can now play the I knew him back in school, and now he’s explaining aspects of my career better than I can. However, I don’t have those letters after my name, and what does it mean for when I’m done with baby care? It’s a far bigger question than I wish to tackle here and now. Suffice to say that it kept me awake the other night after the 3am feeding. I was more than a little annoyed with myself squandering such a great sleep opportunity with big imponderables that I couldn’t solve, nor did I need to, by morning.

Filed by joy at 10:52 am under life
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Wednesday night was my parents’ anniversary. Since the boy has been a little too fragile to take out (or I’m too fragile to have a screaming baby in public), we got takeout Indian and went to their apartment. This was a grand plan for a slew of reasons including my father’s balance and mobility issues. About halfway through dinner, Benjamin got a round of teething pains, was bored of hanging out semi-independently while we ate, and/or just tired and not able to let go the day. No matter what caused it, the fussing and hollering began, with several of us to pass the baby as he explained in detail his displeasure. Mom finished her meal then commenced rocking and singing in the same chair she purchased to rock her and me in thirty-three years ago when she laid down the law that she wouldn’t get through pregnancy without a proper rocking chair.

As the boy finally let go and slept, mom sang Bicycle Built for Two and both I and my father joined in on the chorus. It certainly wasn’t the most tuneful of renditions, but it was sweet. That song—just two years younger than our house—with its wonderful history is one each of us encountered in at different stages in its journey. When it plays in my head, I hear the HAL9000 version. I’m sure my mother and father don’t.

When my mom comes over and does her magic nap-inducing thing, she sings for hours what she calls “The Soundtrack of My Life” to him. She rocks and sings the songs that she and her grandmother used to sing while sitting on their porch in the evenings. They’d pick a color of car, and whoever counted the most of their color heading up Eighth Street was the winner. Her grandmother, who was a young woman at the turn of the last century, sang the songs of her era. Mom adds all the songs of her young adulthood. Of course, Mom knows all the words to Istanbul (not Constantinople) from the first time it was a hit song; we simply sing it in different tempos. I and my mother and Ian all sing You are my Sunshine to the wee boy. All the brokenhearted verses, too. When Héctor was visiting, he sang him Tom Waits and I joined in.

Of course, there is no telling what Benjamin will retain of this bizarre waltz through popular songs of the past 100+ years. I tend to look into his deep gray-blue eyes and see an old soul, so hopefully this does something to ease his transition into this particular turn at bat.

post inspired by S.M.

Filed by joy at 9:01 am under baby, life
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There is probably some saying about how when you have children, you see your own worst tendencies played out. Someone who doesn’t have a pissed off infant can go look it up and get back to me on that.

It stands to reason that the boy has high expectations, impossible ones even, for himself. He has tightly wound parents. My mother tells me I would get very frustrated when something did not come easily to me. That’s still true, but I do hide the inner temper tantrum rather better, I hope. Patience is not one of my strong suits, and it is something that small children are not known for being born with anyway.

A week ago, he couldn’t really hold things that interested him in his hands. A week ago, he didn’t really physically interact with objects. He’d watch them and be (momentarily) pleased, but he didn’t activate them. Now he can scoop up a toy, pull it with both hands to him, and get it to his mouth. (He’s especially fond of his blue elephant from the lovely and long-suffering cousin Z.) However, he cannot accurately get to that toy; he cannot hold onto it as well as he’d like. Most things are still out of his reach, and he resents not only his limited mobility, but his surprising (to him) lack of telekinesis. I can see in his frustration too clear a mirror. Since Bennington, a line from one of T’s poems has always stuck with me: “She resented not being a prodigy.”

More mirroring is that I did not sleep much as a baby. My mom no longer remembers all the details, but it is clear that the boy gets it honest and it is my fault. He will not regularly nap, though he needs to. Only his grandmother, with her vast experience of baby brothers, seems to be able to get him down for a real nap. When she comes around, he’s always a pleasanter baby afterwards. Nothing that Ian and I do is as effective in the nap department. It’s frustrating, though at least he gets a nap on occasion.

Benjamin has been rather a terror this week. When he is happy, he is the sunshine. He is bright and beautiful, with big grins and proto-laughter that sounds rather like gagging on something—in a cute way. But when his is mad, oh he is horrid. He hollers at me, he kicks and squirms, he refuses to nurse properly, he gets himself all worked up, his belly aches, his digestion and bowels are all off, he doesn’t sleep well, he is grumpy, and he hollers at me. While the hollering hurts me the most, perhaps the belly ache—not the belly aching—should be first on that complaint list. It’s impossible to say which is the chicken and which is the egg in this situation. With the sleep levels I’ve been getting, I couldn’t tell you if the chicken came up and pecked me anyway.

Of course I well know that “Your baby is only a baby for a short time” and the stage will pass. But a week IS a long time when we’re talking about a totally screwy sleep situation with multiple feedings and fussings in the night. The only certainty is that there is no pattern at all. My body cannot adjust as it did when he was smaller and this was expected behavior. Besides, he is NOT an infant anymore; the fourth trimester is over and he’s got a bigger tummy and more connected brain. He’s just all over the map for reasons he isn’t explaining (though it is likely that he is pre-teething, with the drool quotient he’s producing, poor kid). I was no longer enjoying watching Benjamin sleep, which is my personal barometer on maternal sanity. The brief sleeps he took just felt like momentary calms before the storms.

Mom came over at the end of this trying week to offer us the blessing of an uninterrupted dinner, made the boy nap, giving me the favor of a holler-free remainder of the evening, as well as the following morning. I got some decent sleep and felt almost like a human.

I have a scheduled Benjamin-free outing tomorrow morning. That will be lovely. By the time I get home, I’ll miss him terribly, which will be equally lovely.

Filed by joy at 1:33 pm under baby
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