12 Months

Today, baby girl, you are 12 months old. One year. 365 days. To see the changes this year has wrought, to know what we brought home after you were born, and to compare that baby to the girl we bring home today, is boggling.

You were so tiny. And helpless. And you flailed your little limbs around without any control. You couldn't lift your own head. Couldn't focus your eyes on anything far away. Couldn't really do anything but snuggle and sleep and nurse.

And now you are practicing how to feed yourself with a fork. You try to brush your own hair. You brush you own teeth every night before bed. You feed baby dolls tiny plastic bottles. You know how to have pretend tea parties, putting the cup to your mouth and then giving a satisfied, "Ahhh!" You understand jokes. When I put your shirt or shorts on top of my head while changing you, and look around and say, "Where did it go?" and you point to my head, and I look all around the room as if I can't tell where the clothes are, you crinkle your little nose in delighted amusement and laugh and point again and again and again. You dance to music. You communicate with us. You sign more, all done, eat, and please. You shake your head "no" when you don't want something. You point to what you do want. You say book and duck and kitty and baby and hi and when we ask you,  "What does a kitty say?" you say "eeaaahhhh," and when we ask you, "What does a snake say?" you say "sssssss." You pull up on anything stable and walk around holding onto things. You crawl around the house trying to find us. You laugh. You smile. You play the drums.

So much has changed in these last 12 months. But so much has stayed the same, too. You are a lap baby and love to be held, love to be read to. I nursed you on your birthday, just as I nursed you on the day you were born. You are still content. You are still happy. You are still easily entertained. You are still a fantastic sleeper. You are still the most amazing, beautiful creature we've ever seen.

So many times I hear mothers wonder, shaking their heads, "Where did time go?" I don't have to wonder. I know where the time went.

It went into naps where you slept in our arms, wrapped tightly in warm, snuggly blankets.

It went into evenings when you slept in your swing, the nighttime cricket noise chirping while your dad and I tiptoed around the house, eating dinner in the dark.

It went into nights when your dad would come and lay on the floor of the nursery to keep me company and give me support while I nursed you and worried you weren't getting enough.

It went into putting my hand on your tightly swaddled chest every night while you slept next to our bed, just to reassure myself that you were breathing.

It went into stripping you naked and running around the car with you in a deserted parking lot in the chilly October air trying to get you to wake up and nurse on our first road trip to Dallas.

It went into a Halloween costume fashion show.

It went into tummy time and cheering when you reached for a toy.

It went into being marveled at the sweet sounds that started coming out of your mouth, at the concentrated way you said "da-da" for the first time, at the way you used to chide us with the same sound.

It went into long walks around our neighborhood every afternoon, singing my own special alphabet song until you drifted off to sleep.

It went into dance parties in our office while we wore you in the Bjorn.

It went into meeting you at daycare every day on my lunch break to nurse you.

It went into getting up every night to pump one extra time while the rest of the family slept the night away.

It went into trips to the park to watch you thrill in the wind and become fascinated by leaves and grass and animals.

It went into your first taste of an apple, of avocado, of banana.

It went into motorboating and "bub-bub-bubbing" and clapping.

It went into you being able to sit up and play with toys on a blanket outside while your dad and I played Frisbee.

It went into the era of the army crawl.

It went into splash parks and neighborhood pool exploration and lake get-togethers, where we learned you love to jump and splash and swim.

It went into laughing as you became a real crawler, laughing at your sounds of exertion when you hit "top speed" and knowing we would never lose you because we could always hear where you were and where you were headed.

It went into games of peek-a-boo and "Where's Ali?"

It went into family reunions where you charmed one and all, where you first tasted bar-b-cue and Russian food and where you, ever the easy-going girl, slept while I wore you on the Dart train into the city.

It went into learning to use a sippy cup, learning to drink from a straw, learning that veggies are yummy but fruit is the best.

It went into directing your dad or me from picture to picture to picture around the house. 

It went into peeking around corners and chasing us and then turning to flee when we chased you.

It went into sweet, open-mouthed, wet kisses and "I love you" head bumps.

It went into laughing at you as you held your toy phone to your ear.

It went into gasping at your first steps.

It went into bathtime books and helping us put away your toys.

It went into singing along with your lullabye CD, into story time and snuggles before kissing you goodnight for the night.

It went into glorious mornings when your smile is the first thing to brighten my day, into days where you sit up to greet me, clapping sleepily or signing "more" or waving hi.

This year was filled with a thousand million moments that took my breath away, that made my heart burst, that stopped me in my tracks and put a smile on my face that I hadn't known before I knew you.

There are still days I'm overwhelmed. Still days I look into the future and wonder how I'm going to do it all, how I'm going to keep you healthy and thriving and learning and growing. But then I remind myself to stop looking to next month, or next year, or the next ten years. I remind myself to look only to today, to right now, when you cuddle me in my arms, when you hold your toy out to me to share, when you crinkle your little nose and grin your toothy grin at me. I don't know what I'll do with a two-year-old, or a four-year-old, or a ten-year-old, or a cheeky teen. But I do know what to do with you.

With you, I play. I snuggle. I laugh. I encourage and cheer. I love.

What a year it's been. You've come so far. You've learned so much. And I've traveled that same distance with you, learning and growing right alongside.

Thank you for the gift of this past year. For teaching me and for learning. For the laughter and the tears. For being my sweet bear, my munch, my heart and soul.

May all our years together be as sweet.

With love forever and ever and ever,
Mom

The Beginning of the End

When I started breastfeeding, I was wary of setting a goal for myself. Too many times I had seen mothers unable to keep going. Too many times I had see the absolute guilt that wracked them over having to wean to formula. I didn't want to set myself up for that kind of disappointment. So my "happy with myself" goal was three months. I wanted to make it until I went back to work. Work--and the pumping that goes along with it--would be a game changer. Going back to work came and went. I nursed baby girl during my lunch break. I am lucky and have my own office, with a door, so I was able to block off pumping times in my daily calendar and not have to worry about how, when, or where. All this time I was still waking up at midnight (even though baby girl had been sleeping through the night since eight weeks old) to get in one more pump. It all went to my freezer stash. I was paranoid about my supply tanking. I wanted to keep the "demand" up.

Six months came and went. I allowed myself to stop getting up at midnight to pump. I worked that pumping session backwards until I was just pumping to empty before heading to bed for the night. And we settled into a routine, a rhythm that has held for the last six months. I nurse her twice a day. I pump twice at work and once before bed. On weekends, it's glorious. I get to nurse her all day long, even if we're out and about. I've never had to worry about bringing milk along with us, keeping it cold, etc.

My supply has gradually slipped a bit here at work in the last month or two. Before I would pump 11 or so ounces at work in two sessions, and then another three or so before bed, to cover the 15 ounces she gets at school (two 6-ounce bottles and 3 ounces of breastmilk with her oatmeal for breakfast). Now I'm lucky if I pump eight ounces at work. It didn't matter though. My hard work in the beginning created a ridiculous freezer stash. So we've been dipping into that for about four ounces a day for a couple of months now.

Which brings us to now. A whole year. I surpassed any kind of goal, any kind of expectation I set for myself. I won't even begin to talk about the nursing relationship we developed, about my thoughts on breastfeeding my daughter. That's a whole other, much more emotional post. What consumes my thoughts now is the transition to other milk. The beginning of the weaning process. And it starts with my before-bed pumping session.

We have a couple of trips coming up in the next couple of months. The last thing I want to have to do is lug my pump with me and excuse myself to go pump somewhere private every evening, and then worry about where to store the milk. I am ready to not have to pump before bed. I've worked in one extra pumping session every day for a year now, and I'm ready to not have to do that anymore. So for the last couple of weeks, I've gradually cut back on the amount of time I pump at night. From 20 minutes down to 10, down to 8, 7, and now 5.

I can't tell you how difficult it is to turn off the pump when the milk is still flowing. I know it's what I have to do to train my body to drop that "feeding," but it goes against everything I've done for the last year. I have to literally not look at the pump, or the bottles filling slowly up, when I turn it off. I have to look the other direction, reach back with my hand, and turn off the pump abruptly, like ripping a bandaid off of a wound. And it makes me sad. Every night. Every time.

And I know it's just the beginning, the beginning of the end.

Eventually I'll drop the two daytime feedings so that I don't have to pump at work anymore, although I'm experiencing a lot of guilt over that, too. It's so easy. I have my own office. Really there's no reason not to continue to pump at work except for my own desire not to have to deal with it anymore. But then I think, that will always be the case. It will always be easy. I have to draw the line somewhere, right? And then I think about not being able to just nurse her on the weekends anymore, having to worry about other sources of milk, and I'm right back to feeling conflicted. BOTH options are convenient. Not having to pump at work? Convenient. Being able to just nurse her all day on weekends? Also convenient. I wish I could have it both ways.

Eventually, I'll only nurse her in the mornings and before she goes to sleep. I plan to hang onto those as long as I can.

I'm so proud and so thankful my boobs have provided so much, so consistently for my daughter. I am so blessed to have had the ability to nurse her as long as I have. Bear with me over the next few weeks/months as we see where the weaning process takes us.

Love and the Backdive

When I was a little girl, my dad used to take my brother and I to the city pool. We were both water kids, comfortable swimming, maniacs with cannon balls and diving deep for sunken rings. My brother's courage extended to the diving boards, where he was doing dives and back dives, flips, gainers and half-gainers from as early as I can remember. My courage stopped at the buoy line that separated the main pool from the deep end.

We gave up on me ever doing a flip. I wasn't interested in even trying. But my dad was unwilling to give up on me doing a back dive. I would climb the three steps to the board, slowly walk down the plank to the edge, the raucous crowds of kids, the jostling in line behind me all fading to oblivion. He would stand on the edge of the deep end, just feet from where I stood at the end of the diving board, and call out encouragement to me. I would slowly turn around and carefully scoot back to the edge, to where I could feel the board dip under my weight and spring gently back up.

And there I froze. Time and again. When it was time for me to tilt backward and trust that the world behind me would be just as it was when it was in front of me. Trust that physics would hold true and I'd enter the water head first. Trust that the water would embrace me as gently as it did when I did a forward-facing dive. It wasn't the motion that scared me. It wasn't an inability to perform the move, or a fear of what would happen when I hit the water. It was that period of blind trust. That moment when I had to tip my body backwards past the point of no return, before I could see anything behind me. It was confidence in myself, that I would know what to do when I felt my body falling, when the entrance and the lifeguard stand and the water behind me all suddenly appeared upside down. And all the while my dad just kept telling me to just do it. To not think about it and just look for the lifeguard stand behind me.

Sometimes my fear of that moment, that falling, that blind trust, won out and I would turn around at the last second and dive forward, into the familiar, into the comfortable, into the known. But sometimes I would bend, heart racing, looking first to the sky, then farther back, back, back, until the roof of the building, the bricks, and then finally the lifeguard stand came into view, falling, my heart racing, until I entered the water, my hands above my head slicing the water into a warm, open embrace.

Sometimes I was able to find the courage in myself to know that I just had to leap. Bend. Trust. Trust that I would be able to do what I needed to do after I had passed the point of no return, after I was already falling. I had to learn that fear would always be present. Fear that lives in the mind, that multiplies when you think too much, when you give it free reign. I had to learn that fear will always overwhelm you, suffocate you if you let it.

I had to learn to defy fear.

And I did. I learned. I grew into a spunky, strong, independent, bit-of-a-smartass, don't-tell-me-what-I-can't-do kind of woman. I've become really good at not letting fear dictate my decisions. At leaning back back back and trusting that I can handle what comes when I'm falling.

And now I'm leaning again.

I saw a post once, on a message board dedicated to women who were trying to get pregnant, a post polling everyone about how they knew, how they knew they wanted kids, how they knew when the right time was. I saw a lot of responses about a feeling of lacking, a feeling of incompleteness in the family. I saw a lot of answers about simply always knowing that you wanted to be a mother, about motherhood being an integral aspect of these women's identities.

But that wasn't my answer.

My answer to that question is more simple. Or maybe more complex, depending on how you look at it. My answer was love. To me, the point of living, the be all and end all of our existence here on the planet, is love. To know love. To be loved. To experience love. I always knew I wanted to be a mother so that I could give another soul the gift that was given to me: the chance to experience love. That was my answer back then, and now, today, that is my answer again.

I want to give another soul the gift of love. Love of existence. Love of siblings. And all the millions of other kinds of love that come with every breath we take.

We are choosing love. We are defying fear. We are trusting that we will be able to handle what comes when we're falling, blindly, not knowing what to expect.

The looking up, the looking back, back, back 'til we pass that point of no return, that point of falling, is as terrifying and thrilling to me now as it was to that little girl so many years ago.

Here's to trust. Here's to courage. Here's to love.

When Sports Euphemisms are the Only Way I Can Say It

We pulled the goalie.

Well, actually, there hasn't been a goalie present for the last two years. So, I guess, more accurately, we are resuming taking shots at the goal rather than taking the ball all the way downfield only to turn at the last second and boot it out of bounds.

Capiche?

Holy shit.

Turning Around

I always heard that one day I would turn around and my baby would be all grown up. Changes in her are difficult to see. I see her every day. I study her face. I know expression. Her sounds. Her size. The weight of her body in my arms. The texture of her hair as I run my fingers through it. Every day I study her. I can easily identify the exact moment I hear a new sound. Or see a new skill. Or witness a new expression.

Under such close familiarity, it's true that changes are difficult to miss. But sometimes it's also hard to see certain things. I'm so close to her, I'm not really able to step back and think about how far she's come, how grown up she is getting to be.

Until a photo I snap stops me in my tracks.

Here I see a hint of the precious girl she is growing to be, and less and less of the sweet baby I've known. There's something about her smile, the light in her eyes, the gloriously disheveled hair, that I somehow miss when I'm so close to her, day after day, night after night, laughing and sharing tickles and kisses.

That single photo made me turn around, made me remember that every day, every hour, every breath she takes, brings with it growth and change. The baby she is today is not the baby she'll be tomorrow. And one day, soon, she won't be a baby anymore at all. She'll be a toddler. Then a young girl. Then a teenager. Then an adult. One day I'll turn around and it will be her as a bride staring back at me from the picture. The same smile. The same light in the eyes. But so very different at the same time.

So what now? Now that I was turned around to my big girl who is growing up literally before my very eyes?

Now nothing. There's nothing you can do in the face of the flow of days. There's no sense in weeping at the passage of time. No sense in lamenting its relentless march onward. You can no more stop a river by standing in the middle of it, arms outstretched, trying desperately to catch the water as it flows by, than you can hold onto your baby as a baby. And what's worse, if you do fight it, if you spend your time mourning the loss of youth, you miss what time you do have now. It's a vicious circle--you spend your time pining over how fast your child is growing, and you end up missing those five minutes, or that hour, or however much time you spend thinking of the future or the past or any moment but the here and now.

So what did I do?

I did nothing. I returned to playing with my silly girl, with my funny baby, with my energetic and goofy child who cracks me up and delights me and thrills me. I loved her in the moment we had together, these days where she sits on the brink of babyhood. I loved her and soaked up every second of her that I could and didn't pay any mind to the passage of time, didn't waste any of our time together thinking about any moment other than right then.

Time will pass. She will grow. Rather than trying to hold onto each day, each moment, I stood in the stream with my arms outstretched and focused on the delight of the feeling of the water as it flowed by my fingers. Far from trying to stop it, I instead celebrated the sensation of it passing.

And what an incredible sensation it is.

11 Months

Today, sweet girl, you are 11 months old.

You have had the most amazing month! You learned so many new things this month, gained so many new skills, it's hard to even know where to start. You are growing up so fast, in so many ways. You no longer eat pureed baby food. You are on "real" food now, all the time. Mostly you just eat bits and pieces of whatever I'm eating. Your favorite is whole blueberries, followed closely by strawberries. You don't even like us to cut them up into little chunks anymore; you want to be able to take bites off the whole strawberry as if you were eating an apple. You love anything with a lot of flavor--mild spiciness? Yum. Pepper cream sauce? Yes, please. Regular steamed broccoli is fine, but if it's broccoli sauteed in Chinese stir fry, even better! You definitely take after your Mom in that regard!

You have seven teeth now (four on bottom and three on top) and your eighth tooth is about to break through. I think the top-teeth teething is harder on you than the bottom teeth. When you're getting in new top teeth, you tend to grind your teeth together. I imagine it feels good, but the noise! Ack!

You are now pulling up to stand on anything that will support you, even if it's a flat surface with no handholds, like the front of the refrigerator. You never went through a stage where you could get up but not down . . . smart baby to wait until you can master both directions before really delving into the skill! You are starting to cruise up and down our furniture in pursuit of items you want. Half the time you still drop back to the floor, crawl over to the item, and then stand back up, but you are starting to gain the strength and confidence to just stay standing and work your way slowly over to the item.

You know how to turn your toys on now, and you are so much fun to interact with. Rather than just banging buttons or turning pages, you can chase down balls and put them back in the funnel and you can make the little animals pop UP instead of just knowing how to close them. You love to roll a ball back and forth between us and to throw a toy across the room (you already have quite an arm on you, which makes this softball momma proud) only to gleefully chase it down. You are learning to play with your toys, using your imagination to entertain yourself and it is so much fun to watch!

You are also very helpful with your toys! You take all your toys out of their box, but then when it's time to clean them up, you help me put each one back in the box, too. You like putting things into other things, putting things up on shelves and stacking things, and in general building things and putting them together instead of just tearing them all down like you used to!

Your communication has grown this month in leaps and bounds! Not only are you mimicking more and more sounds, like the meow our cats make (your version sounds like, "eeeaaaahhhhhh"), the "ba-da-bum!" sounds on one of your toys, an exaggerated laugh that your dad or I make, or even a "ooooh!" when you turn on a cool toy, but you are also starting to vocalize things on your own, things that tell us what you want! Last month your dad taught you so say "Ah!" after taking a drink of water. Then you figured out that if you say "Ah!" when you're thirsty, we'll give you water! It is AMAZING to be able to communicate with you, to find out your needs and to be able to give you what you want. Not only can you tell us what you want through pointing or saying "Ah!" but you can tell us what you don't want, too. You have learned how to shake your head no, and even to say "nonono!" when you don't want something. So now when you point at something and we guess wrong, you shake your head and say "nono!" until we figure out what it is that you want. You are also starting to sign more and more. You sign "all done" when you don't want any more food and when we finish a book, and when you want more of something, you clap and point to it. It's not exactly the right sign for "more," but it gets your meaning across, and that's what's really important, right?

You have learned to blow kisses when someone is leaving. There are no words for how unbelievably sweet this is.

You have even started saying words! REAL words! Book was your official first word. You had just finished nursing and sat up, pointing to your stack of books, and said, "Buh!" I know it wasn't exactly enunciated correctly, but it was clear as day what you meant and what you wanted. Awesome! After book, you have said no, duck, bear, baby, and kitty. It is so COOL to hear you saying real words! My sweet little talker.

My very favorite new thing that you do is the questioning gesture that you use when you have a question about something. Whether it's "Where did my toy go?" after your drop something to the floor, or "Where did Dad go?" when he's hiding behind a wall, your hold your little hands up, palms to the sky, raise your eyebrows, and utter a sweet, lilting "eh?" sound. Melts.My.Heart. Seriously. You are the most adorable kid the universe has ever seen.

Eleven months old. In one short month, you'll turn one. That milestone will bring with it changes, not the least of which is the start of the weaning process. Rather than focusing on how sad I'll be to see our nursing relationship come to an end, I'm going to focus instead on the wonderful month ahead. Know that I am savoring every moment of having you cuddled up against me.

You are an incredible child. Your energy, enthusiasm, sense of humor, intelligence, and sweet, loving nature amaze me every second of every day. You make my life better than I knew it could be, and there is nothing that puts a smile on my face the way you do.

Happy 11 months, sweet baby girl.

Love, love, love,
Mom

#20

#20 on the previous post.

No.

I'm not pregnant.

If I were pregnant right now, you'd find me with a paper bag permanently attached to my mouth to prevent the hyperventilation and fainting spells that would surely accompany such a reality.

All #20 meant is that we'll be trying for #2 soon.

At least, I think we will be. Some days.

Other days I think that a 3-year gap between kids sounds MIGHTY nice.

This has turned out to be the hardest decision we've ever made in our lives. The decision to get married? Easy. The decision to do a half-ironman? Piece of cake. The decision to give up everything we've ever known and bring another life into the world, a tiny, helpless little creature we'd be entirely responsible for not only keeping alive but raising to be a normal, functioning, contributing member of society with relatively few mental health issues? Done and done.

But #2. Oh, #2. How terrifying. Our life right now are not only the most amazing, wonderful, blissful, heaven-on-earth, but (dare I say it?) . . . our life is easy. We have the whole "1-child" thing DOWN. She is our light. She is the reason we get up in the morning, the reason we smile all day. We get to devote all our free time to her, and still manage to work in time to spend on each other, be it on an actual date where we get all fancied up and pretend to have manners out in public, or on our couch, in our pjs, laughing at each other until we cry. The decision to try for a second child would change all that. It would rock our little boat and nothing would ever be the same.

On the other hand, isn't that what happened with #1? We were happy just the two of us. We didn't feel like anything was lacking. We were blissful. And well rested. And yet still we knew we wanted kids (plural, if you'll note), and so we had #1 and though she rocked our boat completely and our life has never been the same since, I can honestly say it is better, richer, funnier, happier, and in every way superior to the life we used to lead. So isn't it fair to say that the same will happen with #2? That the fear of the unknown will turn out to be so comically unfounded, because the "unknown" is simply something better than we can possibly comprehend right now?

So that's where we are. Wavering between knowing that we want more kids, knowing that we want our kids to be relatively close in age, knowing that the time could be right to grow our family again . . . and the fear of the unknown, the fear of losing the brilliant, happy, easy, comfortable, easy, wonderful, easy existence we have right now.

We take it day by day. Some days it seems like a good time to take a deep breath and jump, trusting that history will hold true and our same good fortune with #1, the same treasure we discovered, will happen again with #2. Other days the fear wins out and we hunker down in our life of a blissful little trio and never want to jeopardize it at all.

But the good days are coming more frequently . . . even if the fear days are still the prevalent wind.

So we'll see. But the conversations are being had. The edge of the cliff is being looked over.

And in the meantime, we're enjoying the hell our of our easy little life right now.