Falling in Love

During our wedding ceremony, our rabbi said that marriage was when "falling in love becomes loving, something less noisy and much more profound." In a the relationship between a man and woman, the falling in love comes first. Each day that passes, you learn something new about the person, something that ignites your soul. You begin to realize you are spending hours a day daydreaming about the person, that just the thought of them brings you the same high that you feel in their presence. You find yourself unable--and unwilling--to think of anything else. You are addicted to the feeling they give you.

As breathtaking as this phase is, it must eventually give way to the next. One day you realize the pain they may temporarily cause you with a thoughtless comment or insensitive action is insignificant compared to the wealth of love that has grown inside you. Your feelings are no longer flashing on the surface, keeping you hot and bothered and distracted. They have sunken into the deepest depths of your being, have taken root. You think of that person not because of the high it gives you but because your world view no longer exists separately from them. They have become integrated into your existence. There is no corner of your world that is not colored by their thread. Though not as exhilarating, as breathtaking, as the falling in love stage, this is the world of loving. It is calmer. Deeper. Endless. This is what falling in love becomes.

This is the progression that I knew.

And then you came along.

And from day one I loved you. I felt it in the depths of my being. From the tips of my toes to the tips of my fingers, coursing through every vein in my body. As steady as my heartbeat. I love you. You are a part of me. I love you. No aspect of my world exists apart from you. I love you. I will always protect you. Always accept you. Always. I love you. It's a love that is ingrained in my very cells.

And then I met you. I don't just mean the day you were born. I mean every day for the last five months. I am meeting you. I have been meeting you every day. Every day you are developing--revealing--more and more of yourself. I am learning your smile. The feel of your fingers on my skin. The texture of your hair. The plumpness of your cheek when I kiss it. I am learning your personality. Your sense of humor. Your astuteness. Your free and open heart. And each day you are more enthralling. More addictive. More endearing.

This weekend your father was sick. It was a bad weekend for him to be out of commission--we had a number of things planned, most of which involved us being out of the house for extended periods of time. I was nervous about how you would handle being thrown off your normal routine. I was anxious about being left to do it all alone. But then the most wonderful thing happened.

I fell in love.

We spent more time together this weekend as just the two of us than we have since I stayed home with you. And I found myself happier than I've been in a while. You were charming. Shy at first, you quickly warmed up to the rooms full of strangers and proceeded to cast your spell over all. Far from difficult, I found our time out together refreshing, satisfying, fulfilling. You played with other babies, or were held by doting adults, and every time I felt myself on the brink of grabbing you and pulling you back into my embrace, covering your neck with kisses, longing to feel your little hand holding onto my shirt, or my neck, or my hair. I felt consumed by you.

Last night you woke every two or three hours. At first I fed you. But into the small hours of the morning, when I knew you were no longer hungry, I just held you. Sometimes I walked around and rocked you. Other times I sat in the rocker in your room while you slept in my arms. I stared at your peaceful, sleeping face and felt like my heart would burst. The hours passed in a blur. Not because I was tired. Not because I was half-asleep myself. But because I was happy. Just holding you. Getting a few more precious minutes out of our busy days to be near you, to touch you.

In a marriage, falling in love may become loving. And it may be less noisy and much more profound.

But in parenthood, loving has become falling in love. And what a wonderful progression it is. The depths, the stability, of love from day one. But the exhilaration, the feeling of my soul on fire, growing with each and every day.

What an amazing thing you have brought me. What an amazing thing you are.

I am counting the minutes 'til I see you again.

Love love love you,
M.

5 Months

Sweet baby girl,

5 months old is my favorite age so far!! Baby girl, you are so incredibly awesome at this age. You are developing into your own little person and I LOVE it!

You are such a happy baby and are quick to smile at everyone you look at, especially if they are giving you smiles, funny faces, or funny sounds of their own. Many times you give the person a huge smile and then hide your face in my neck, as if you're being shy. But you are always quick to turn and look for the person again, with another smile just waiting on your sweet little cheeks. Your laughs you are more frugal with. We have to catch you in the right mood. Most often it's your dad who can get you going--you are a lot like me in that regard!

You think that it's great fun to take off your socks. In fact, your dad jokes that your alternative Russian name is Alina Sokov (sock-off). I think you are like me and just love to go barefoot! You spend most of your time trying to grab things and stick them into your mouth--your socks, your shirts, your blankets, your toys, my water bottle, the phone . . . anything that is within reach.

Your very favorite thing right now is faces, and you LOVE when your dad or I (or anyone else) puts our face right down close to yours and lets you explore it with your little hands. You feel our noses and our ears and our cheeks and our eyes and our lips . . . you are so curious! Your dad got sad the other day when he realized that eventually there will come an age where you won't want to put your hands all over his face like that anymore--he loves it so much!!

You are still rolling from your tummy to your back and are soooo close to rolling from your back to your tummy. You get all the way over on your side before deciding that something on the other side of the room is more interesting, and you roll back the other way. When you are placed on your tummy, you kick your legs, pull your knees up under your butt, stick your butt in the air, face plant, and then get frustrated. But then you remember that you can roll off of your tummy onto your back, and once you do that you look so pleased with yourself.

Always a big talker, you have started making discernible syllables and consonant sounds. Your favorite sound so far is "da," and when you are tired or cranky you tell me quite forcefully, with a very serious look, "DA-DA-DA-DA-DA!" I feel like you are scolding me. Even though I know you are trying to get across a serious message, it's so adorable that I just melt and laugh and hold you to me.

You kind of skipped "tripodding," which is where you use your arms to hold yourself in a sitting position. We tried to teach you how to do it, but you just toppled over. Then in the last three days you decided that it's fun to sit upright and have your hands free to grab for toys . . . so you are! It has been absolutely stunning to watch you teach yourself to sit upright in such a short amount of time. Four days ago you could sit upright for about 1 second before tipping over (usually to the left). Now you can sit for minutes while reaching all around you for toys. You are incredible!!

The 4-month-wakeful period did, in fact, strike. After sleeping peacefully through the night since you were 8 weeks old, for the last month you have gone back to waking once (or twice), usually around 2 or 3 a.m. Some times you are simply hungry and drift right back to sleep after eating. Other times you are convinced that it is morning and time to play, and when you see me or your dad walk wearily into your room, you squeal and laugh and wriggle with joy. It takes a bit longer to get you back to sleep on those nights! We are weaning you off of the swaddle, and so far you have done sooo well! We are now leaving both of your arms loose and just wrapping it tightly around your torso. You kick your legs so much, I think it still helps you to feel the tightness around your body and to have your legs a bit tamed. But in the next week or so we will probably do away with the swaddle completely. You are such a big girl.

We have also altered your bedtime routine. Whereas before we were doing a bath and then our final feeding of the day, you were always falling asleep while nursing, which made you more likely to wake up in the night, hungry. So last night we fed you first, before your bath. This also made it possible to start doing a bedtime story and snuggles in our rocking chair. You handled the change like a champ and slept all the way through the night again, from 7:30 to 6:30. Hopefully, now that you are five months old, the 4-month-wakeful period is behind us!

You had your very first Valentine's Day this weekend. We took some Valentine's pictures of you with sweet signs for several of my friends' little boys, and Daddy got quite mad about it. I'm going to apologize in advance for him . . . if he is already that protective of you now, just wait until you are all grown and going out on dates for real. He is going to have such a hard time with that. I think he just wants you to be his sweet baby girl forever.

This month marks the end of several things. I will no longer go and nurse you during my lunch break. You haven't needed that feeding in quite some time, but I loved seeing you so much. It just got too hard on you to have two totally different eating and sleeping schedules--one for weekdays and one for weekends--so now we are just following your normal weekend schedule all the time, and that means I don't see you anymore for lunch. The last two and a half months--ever since I came back to work--have, in part, been so wonderful because I knew I got to see you during the day. I am going to have such a hard time with this newest transition, but I know it's what's best for you. Just another example of you growing and becoming more and more independent . . . and needing me less and less. It makes me so proud, and at the same time a little sad, too. This will also be the last month that you receive only my milk for food. At six months we are going to start you on solids. I am so excited for this next step, this rite of passage into the adult world. And I'm so proud that you have grown the way you have simply on what I have been able to give you, especially after our somewhat rocky start. What an amazing five (and then six) months it has been for us.

Thank you for the most amazing five months, baby girl. Thank you for the squeals and smiles and hard-earned laughs and almost-rolls and face-explorations and neck-hides and scoldings and even for the occasional sleepless nights. These are the jewels of my world.

Love love love you,
Mom

Goodbye Swaddle

It's time to break the swaddle.

I knew the day would come. I knew she wouldn't go to high school still being wrapped into a tight burrito baby. But I dreaded it. I relished our swaddled baby. And what's more, she relished it. She loves being wrapped tightly, securely. And it makes her such an easy little manageable package. No loose arms, little hands groping at my nose or curling tiny little fingers inextricably into my hair. No fumbling legs. Just one, sweet, tight little bundle.

But alas. No more. Even though I knew the day would come when we had to start to let her sleep unswaddled, I never thought it would happen for the reason it did.

We use a miracle blanket. And it has been miraculous! She broke out of other swaddles in no time flat, but this thing was inescapable. It features an ingenious design that basically uses her own body weight to pin her arms down by her side. Wrapping around her pinned arms is about three feet of fabric that goes around and around and around. I had heard of other parents whose kids broke out of the miracle blanket. I couldn't understand how. They must have just been doing it wrong. Wrapping it too loosely. On top of the inescapable miracle blanket, we put her in a sleep sack. A recipe for tightly bundled, inescapable bliss, right?

I was so wrong.

Two nights ago, I went in to wake her in the morning and I noticed the sleep sack was turned 90 degrees, so that the arm whole was in front of her chest. I imagined she'd just spent the night scooting around like she does (even in all of her straight-jacket trappings, she still scoots all over the crib at night). But as I started to unzip and unwrap her, I noticed the pieces of the miracle blanket were not where we had left them. The arm flaps were no longer over her arms but under her back--they were across her chest. A knee was poking out of the foot pocket. And the three-foot-long outer wrap was only wrapped around her once. It was like someone had done a piss-poor swaddle job. Only no one had touched her all night long.

Uh oh.

The next night confirmed our suspicions. TH went in to find her not only escaped from the tight confines of the swaddle, but with one arm sticking out of the arm hole of the sleep sack.

Somehow she has learned how to bust out of her baby straight jacket.

The only thing I can think of is that she rocks to her side at night, which defeats the body-weight-keeping-her-arms-pinned-down design.

Regardless of how she's doing it, there is no denying that she IS doing it.

So operation de-swaddle has begun. We will begin by wrapping her with one arm free so that she still mainly feels the familiar tightness but begins to learn to be comfortable with free, movable limbs. Do that three, four, maybe seven nights. Then we'll leave both arms out of the swaddle and just keep the tightness around her torso. Repeat time frame. Then . . . *deep breath* . . . completely swaddle free.

I'm not going to lie. I'm scared shitless. Already four weeks into our four-month-wakeful battles, we are on the brink of being as sleep deprived as we were when she was a newborn. We are thankful for the nights she only wakes up once. THANKFUL. And now we are about to unwrap her, to send her into the long hours of the night without the safety of the tightness, the comfort of the wrap. I have low hopes for what this does to her sleep habits.

Trying to look on the bright side, though, it will be nice to get to the point where she doesn't have to be swaddled to sleep well. It will be nice to be able to start working a book into our bedtime routine (cuddling with mom in the rocker doesn't really work so well when you are wrapped into a little torpedo shape).

And it will be nice to get this big transition behind us so that it's not looming on the horizon any longer, the way it has for the last couple of months when I could sense it drawing nigh.

Tonight is night one. Heaven help us.

60 weeks

Today, it has been 60 weeks since my life changed forever. Since I started believing that 1 + 1 = 3.

The first 20 weeks. What a blur of excitement, smiling, sharing our news, worrying about every twinge, praying that my body was doing what it was built to do, what it was meant to do, building that precious little girl just right. At the end of the first 20 weeks:


The next 20 weeks. Getting down to business. Buying cars and building cribs and taking classes and doing load after load of tiny little laundry. The anticipation as the days slipped by. The excitement. The worry that after coming so far, then, in those last few weeks and days, that something would go wrong to take it all away. Who were we to deserve such happiness? We read to her. We sang. We cherished our last time as just "us"--celebrated the end of an era. Celebrated the beginning of an era. At the end of those 20 weeks:


And now 20 more weeks have passed. 20 weeks of learning. Of laughter and sweet baby smells. Of tiny little fingers and tiny little toes and gummy smiles and sleepy sighs in my arms. Of learning her personality. Of watching her discover her world. Of reading to her and singing to her and dancing with her, and smiling in the dead of night while falling into bed for a few more broken hours of sleep, smiling with love and gratitude for the reason we are awake at all. And of course, of worry. A million trillion things to worry about. At the end of this 20 weeks:



In some ways it seems like we just brought baby girl home from the hospital yesterday. We still feel like novices at this whole parenting thing. We are still getting our feet under us. In other ways it feels like she has been a part of our lives forever. We have gone through so much already. Learned so much. Grown so much. Taking care of her feels so natural, so normal. Thinking back to a time BBG (Before Baby Girl) feels like thinking back to another life. And in many ways it was another life.

We have lived a lifetime in the last 20 weeks. A lifetime infinitely sweeter and more fulfilling than the one that preceded it.

60 weeks. Or rather, 3 x 20 weeks. Each window so different from the last. Each so much more exciting.

I can only imagine what the next 20 weeks will bring. Imagine and look forward to with a smile of knowledge and of hope, of patience and of excitement . . . the smile of a woman who has been blessed a million times over in the span of just 60 weeks.

I've got scratch marks on my boobies.

I wish I could say they are from some particularly feisty fun with TH. But no.

They are from my daughter, who has decided the fun thing to do while nursing is to grab a fistful of boob and push and twist. And damn if her little nails aren't like tiny little adorable claws.

We have resorted to a variety of coping mechanisms in our attempts to save my ladies from anymore undue trauma. We've put baby legs on her arms; her hands only come to about halfway down them, and the extra fabric flops around limply like . . . well, I'll just leave that one unsaid. We also have what we call "nursing safety mitts." Really this is any little glove that we can find--her newborn hand covers, the snow mittens I got for her a few months ago . . . anything that will keep her from being able to inflict her small, innocent, yet nonetheless brutal version of a Texas Titty Twister.

Have mercy, baby girl.

Time

Time is such a funny thing. So paradoxical.

It can move so slowly. Or so incredibly quickly.

It can seem like you have more time than you know what to do with. Or like there are not enough hours in the day to get done the bare minimum of tasks.

You can count the seconds until something is over. Or you can look back one day and realize so much has slipped past you without you even realizing.

Having a child has only made my perception of, and relationship with, time even more ambiguous. Sometimes the minutes drag on like hours--when she's crying, in the dark of the night when she wakes again, and again, and again, when we have the afternoon stretching in front of us like a field and she is not interested in walking/singing/reading/playing/bouncing/rolling. Other times I look at the clock--or the calendar--and it takes a moment for reality to register, that the day is over, that already more than four months have passed since her birth, that time is passing so very, very quickly.

So much of my life now is centered around time. Is it time for her to eat? Is it time for her to nap? How long has she been awake? How long did she sleep for her naps? Is it naked time? Bath time? Bed time? What time is it when she stirs and wakes in the middle of the night? How long do we let her cry before rushing in to scoop her up and reassure her that we are there, that Mommy and Daddy are there and that everything is okay? Is it time for me to get up and pump yet? How much time does she spend on her tummy every day? How old is she? How much time has passed since xyz? How much time is left until xyz?

I spend my days at work torn between actually working and using the time to think about her or do research about things like developmental milestones and cradle cap and sleep training and the pros and cons of starting solids . . . all the things I wonder about when I'm with her but can't seem to find the time to learn more about. So I end up not having enough time, again--not enough time to get all my work done, not enough time to answer all my questions.

Evenings slide by in a flash of eating, playing, naked time, bath, eating, and then before I know it she's falling asleep in my arms and we are putting her down for the night. Not enough time together. Never enough time. Not to do all the things I want to be doing with her--tummy time to strengthen her back and neck muscles and practicing rolling over and sitting up to strengthen her stomach muscles and standing up to strengthen her leg muscles and independent play to strengthen her independence and walks outside to get her fresh air and what-about-mom-and-baby-cuddle-time??? Some evenings I just sit with her on my lap and we read books and chat back and forth about our days and I let her tiny little hands explore every inch of my face and we don't get around to ANY of the things that I "should" be doing with her. And part of me feels guilty, like time is flying by and we need to be helping her grow and learn things and get stronger. And part of me feels defiant, like I don't give a rat's ass about all the things we "should" be doing with her, I just want to hold her and love her and not worry about any of it.

That's really the crux of it. I want to say fuckitall and not worry about anything but loving her, trusting that all her skills, all her development will come in due time. But then I remember that time isn't something you can get back. There are no do-overs. Once this second is gone, it is gone. Once her third month is over, it's over. She has either learned something by now or she hasn't. Too much defiance, too much ignorance of that fact and baby girl will slip further and further behind. At least, that is my fear. And that is what drives me to take her off my lap in our hour together at night and work with her--in the time we have--on all the things I feel will benefit her.

And then there's the rest of life--the cooking and laundry and cleaning and paying bills and washing bottles and spending time with our cats and let's not forget giving TH the time and attention he deserves.

If I had a super power, it would be the ability to stop time. To give myself the gift of time to fit in whatever it is that needs a few more hours' worth of attention.

I end this post looking at the clock, knowing I have to leave in three minutes to go to her and nurse her during my lunch break. Our 45 minutes together that I can't get to soon enough and that doesn't last nearly long enough. Only to have to leave before I'm ready to get back and eat a hurried lunch at my desk, working, getting in some "me" time, some time devoted to maintaining my professional identity. (It's amazing that work has now become my "me" time.)

And while there I will look at her daily log and ask about how long her naps were and how she spent her time. And I will long for that time to have been with me. I will envy them of the time they had with her, seconds, minutes, hours that I will never have.

So what's to be done? What recourse do we have in the face of time, ever coming, ever going, never enough? I once heard a parable about a man who held his hands under a stream of grain. He grasped at it, trying in vain to catch the tumbling seeds. Inevitably the last grain tumbled out and he was left grasping at air. When asked to remember the grain, to remember the feel of it as it passed through his hands, he had nothing to say. He had been too busy trying to grab it to stop and take notice of its feel, of the gentle, cool caress as it flowed over his fingers.

Rather than spend my time longing for more, lamenting the hours that pass in a blur, I resolve to stop fighting the flow and focus instead on how it feels as it passes through my fingers.

So that I may have a memory of how this time, however fleeting, felt as it flowed by, taking so much along with it.

Laughter

She started chuckling a while ago, monosyllabic grunts of pleasure, a funny noise that sounds like a joyful "Huh!"

She doubled-up on her "Huh!" the other day while watching TH dance. We counted that as her first real laughter, but it was still a baby sound, something that we hear her do and interpret with our adult brains as laughter, but falling short of mimicking real adult laughter by itself.

And then last night. Naked time. TH blowing raspberries on her tummy. It happened.

She giggled.

Not "Huh-huh-huh," but a real, adult, normal, hee-hee-hee of a giggle that was the most amazing sound I've ever heard.

Each step of this parenthood thing has been more wonderful than the last, but laughter, real, true laughter . . . there are no words to describe how awesome this is.

What a sound! I replay it in my memory like a drug, like the first time I heard "I love you," an audio memory played on loop so that I continue to get the surge of elation it releases each time.

I am addicted. And like a true junkie I will do all kinds of crazy things to get her to give us that sound again.

She laughs. 4 months, 5 days.