six months!

What a cool day: Our son is half a year old! I have been looking forward to this for so long. I find myself reflecting on the seasons and milestones that have passed since that day in August, the day after a thunderstorm, after the heat wave but before the leaves of fall, when our lives changed more than they'd ever done before, when — after feeling him kick and roll and hiccup inside me for months — we met our sweet Daniel in person. How he has grown since then ... developed a little personality, learned to grab and giggle and roll over and gaze at the art on our walls. He seems less and less like a baby and more and more like a little child every day.




As if to celebrate his birthday, Mother Nature dumped inches upon inches of snow on us overnight. We went out in it this morning — put Daniel in his new snowsuit (which used to be his cousin's), popped him into the Ergo and tromped through the unshoveled snow down to Caribou Coffee, where we frittered away the morning in the comfy chairs with coffee and newspapers.


If you'd asked me six months ago if I'd still be breastfeeding by now, I honestly couldn't have told you. I know it hasn't always worked out for members of my family. My sister never got it down in the hospital, and my mom tells me she lasted about three months with each of us. I am so thrilled that I am still going strong with it! I love doing it, too. It makes me feel so bonded with him, even in the middle of the night, when I grumble about being awakened and mutter, "Fine, I'll feed you if that's what you want." I love watching his little hands as they push and knead against my breasts with an unexplainable expertise; it's as if my breasts are musical instruments and he is the virtuoso, knowing exactly (and much better than me) how to get the sound he needs from them. I love the way he pulls away quickly and looks up at me with a smile, then just as quickly turns his mouth back to the task at hand: Just checking in.

I wonder what the next six months will hold for him. Sitting up, crawling, eating more foods, learning more about the world, maybe even walking. I feel so grateful for his life, and I feel so privileged to be a part of it. Sometimes Steve and I lean over him and watch him while he sleeps and marvel (tearfully, in my case) at the whole journey parenthood has started us on, almost as if we can't quite believe it. It's kind of like how giddy we felt when we first got married, saying, "my husband," and "my wife." But now it's "our son." And he's amazing.

c is for cat

Poor Cat. That's what we've been calling Ingrid lately, just Cat, because it's the same word we use when we point to the picture of the cat in the Book of Words that brings a smile to Daniel's face. Cat gets lonely at night. I sometimes hear her body scud against the door of the bedroom, as if she is settling herself down to lie as close to us as possible. Other times, she cries a lonely cry from the hallway that makes me want to relent and open the door and let her in. When I come out to use the bathroom, she always runs to greet me, swishing up against my ankle and angling for a head scratch.

She used to sleep on our bed with us, back when it was just the three of us, and earlier, when her brother George was still alive, and they jockeyed for the prime positions in the crooks of our knees or behind our heads. When I was pregnant, the vet came over for a house call, and I told her I didn't know what we were going to do when the baby was born because I worried about Ingrid jumping into the bassinet with Daniel and possibly smothering him. She advised me to get her used to sleeping outside the room before the baby was born because otherwise she might associate Baby with Exile. So we started, half-hearted, but we are softies, and soon she was back in the bed.

We had to get serious when we brought Daniel home, though, first sleeping in the bassinet and now between us. (His crib phase lasted about two weeks before he was back in our room. He sleeps better when he's in the bed with us.) Strangely enough, and despite her occasional loneliness at night, Ingrid seems to understand. Aside from the minor ankle-swiping freakouts when his crying gets to her, she has been surprisingly patient with the new little bundle, who now grabs eagerly for her ears and whiskers and legs and would put her tail in his mouth if she let him get away with it. For all the stray whiskers we've had to pry out of his fists, Ingrid has never once hissed or snapped at Daniel. And that's something. Because few people have entered our house and escaped the wrath of Ingrid. Cynthia knows. So does Anne, who once slipped on her stocking feet and landed on my wood floor, only to come face-to-face with a batting, hissing feline who thought her mommy was being attacked.

Ingrid is losing a lot of weight. Her tummy no longer swings back and forth under her when she walks, and her muscle tone makes it harder for her to jump and run like she used to. Kidney failure and nearly 15 cat years of life will do that. But she still makes it onto the bed, and during the day, it is her domain. She digs head-first into the down comforter until she's burrowed her way under it, and she'll stay there for hours, hibernating, dreaming, curled into herself. Sometimes when we bring Daniel onto the bed to play, we'll accidentally nudge her awake under her lump of covers. It shifts and moves, and pretty soon, her head pokes out, and her body is all warm and soft, and Cat comes and sits almost dutifully next to the smiling boy ("Hi, Cat!"), ready for another tug on the tail. The other day, she laid herself down next to him, and I thought that maybe it would be OK to let her back into the bed with us at night. We're not quite there yet, but maybe soon.

the jojo with the mojo

I wish you all could know my friend Johanna. She's fearless, adventuresome, funny and smart, all rolled into one exuberant, curly-haired package. And a man-magnet, to boot! Back when we worked together as reporters in Mississippi, it never failed that practically every guy she interviewed ended up falling in love with her and asking her out. We had a lot of fun back then, Rollerblading through the streets of downtown Greenville with hockey sticks on Halloween, letting loose on the dance floor at One Block East, getting in trouble for having too much fun at the Mayor's Ball or some such civic function. We traveled to Panama together back in the 90s, and on the way home, we ran into Lyle Lovett in the Houston airport. (OK, the truth is that I spotted him and forced Johanna to run with me as we chased him down.) We got this nice picture out of it, though!

Now Jo lives in Jackson Hole, Wyoming, where she married atop a mountain and continues to live life to its fullest and regale her old friends with tales of her escapades. And she just started blogging!

as lent begins

Steve came into the room yesterday as we were getting ready for church, wearing a knit wool sweater and a pair of plaid boxers that matched the sweater.

"Do you think I can go like this?" he joked.

"Sure," I said. "You can tell everyone you're giving up pants for Lent."

We both burst into laughter so loud it woke the boy.

"Think of how everyone will persecute you for your sacrifice," I added when I got my breath back.

"I doubt Jesus wore pants in the desert," he pointed out.

We giggled and whispered about it all through church. So much for solemnity.

books books books

Today, I received a wonderful letter from a dear friend whose love of books has always inspired me. She included her list of books she read in the past year, a list she's been sending for a few years now, and I try to reciprocate. This year's collection formed an impressive library. (I'll add some titles by way of example when I don't have a sleeping boy on my lap preventing me from getting up to get it.) Aah, to have time to just sit back and read. I'm just getting back into that groove, usually catching a few minutes to read in bed before I fall asleep. I'd already been inspired by Liz's 50 Book Challenge, so I've updated my own (much-shorter) list. Here it is: Books I read (or reread) in 2006. It doesn't include the books about baby care that sit on the coffee table, as those are works in progress.

Midnight Is A Place by Joan Aiken

A Little Princess by Frances Hodgson Burnett

The Secret Life of Bees by Sue Monk Kidd

Being Dead Is No Excuse: The Official Southern Ladies Guide to Hosting the Perfect Funeral by Gayden Metcalfe and Charlotte Hays

Northanger Abbey by Jane Austen

Persuasion by Jane Austen

The Kite Runner by Khaled Hosseini

Perfect Madness : Motherhood in the Age of Anxiety by Judith Warner

How to Avoid the Mommy Trap: A Roadmap for Sharing Parenting and Making It Work by Julie Shields

Wisdom of the Celtic Saints by Edward Sellner

SoulTypes: Matching Your Personality and Spiritual Path by Sandra Krebs Hirsh and Jane A.G. Kise

The Thinking Woman's Guide to a Better Birth by Henci Goer and Rhonda Wheeler

Birthing from Within: An Extra-Ordinary Guide to Childbirth Preparation by Pam England and Rob Horowitz

The Scent of God by Beryl Singleton Bissell

The Simpler Family by Christine Klein

Anne of Green Gables the full, eight-book series by Lucy Maud Montgomery

Bridget Jones's Diary by Helen Fielding

The Jane Austen Book Club by Karen Joy Fowler

The Happiest Baby on the Block: The New Way to Calm Crying and Help Your Newborn Baby Sleep Longer by Harvey Karp, MD

Queen of the Turtle Derby and Other Southern Phenomena by Julia Reed

I'll be keeping my 2007 list in a separate post. If you have a book list to share, please do! I love this stuff.

playground

Everybody likes to hang out on the bed ...




... and we all sleep there, too. (Except for the cat.)

tiny

Today, we went to see Kerry and Eddy and the triplets in the hospital. Oh my word, to set eyes upon a tiny human being (much less three) weighing less than three pounds is ... amazing. Miraculous. To see those tiny, tiny, delicate, fragile hands and eyes and eyelids and noses and lips and ears ... like little miniature doll versions of babies, only moving and blinking and making sucking movements with their mouths ... and their bodies no longer than my foot, practically ... took my breath away and brought tiny tears to my eyes. Steve was similarly moved. As we were leaving, he said to me, impulsively, "Let's have triplets." And then, with a glance at Daniel, who seemed like a giant now, "Well, maybe not."

potato-leek soup

Teresa was from Spain. She had dark brown hair cut in one of those simple, short styles that look chic on European women but frumpy on me. She had the knack for finding the one cool, whimsical pair of earrings in an antique shop full of junky knick-knacks. She spoke English with an exotic accent and showed us artistic pictures she'd taken of her American boyfriend on vacation on Majorca. She seemed so sophisticated. I was a little in awe of her. She and her boyfriend were part of a group of friends of an ex-boyfriend of mine, a guy who was all wrong for me, though at the time I clung to him, embarrassingly, like a codependent fool. One Thanksgiving, the year I was 23, we drove up to Champaign-Urbana, where he had a friend in grad school, to spend the long weekend with them. I'd never met them before then. They were funny and friendly, well-traveled and intellectual, hipsters in an almost nerdy way, and we spent the weekend cooking, going to antique shops, talking about books ... just talking, talking, talking. I'd have enjoyed myself immensely if I hadn't been obsessing over the fact that they all had known my predecessor quite well and worrying that I didn't measure up to her. I ended up never seeing them again because the boyfriend and I broke up not long after that. But something good came from it because it was that weekend when I learned to make this soup.


Teresa made it for one of our meals that weekend. She didn't use a recipe but directed us as some of us peeled potatoes and others washed the sandy insides of the leeks. The simple soup is a staple of French cuisine, I have since learned, and is served hot or cold (which makes it Vichyssoise). All I knew then was that it was hearty and delicious, perfect for a chilly fall weekend in the Midwest. So good, in fact, that everybody pestered her for the recipe. I scribbled down notes on a piece of looseleaf notebook paper as Teresa — occasionally grasping for the proper terms in English — took us through the process. It's a pretty easy soup to make. She explained how to separate the layers of leeks to get them completely clean. She told us to sauté the onion and leeks under a "low fire" until they were "translucent." To cut up the potatoes into small pieces and add them, and the beef broth ("consumée"), cooking them until the potato falls apart easily when you press it against the side of the pot with the back of your wooden spoon.

The sheet of paper has become messy and stained with time, and I don't bother to pull it out anymore because it's mostly in my head. Over the years, I have fiddled with the recipe, sometimes upping the number of leeks, sometimes using chicken broth instead of beef broth, sometimes skipping the onion altogether, sometimes, throwing in garlic and various spices. A few years ago, I saw a similar recipe in one of Jamie Oliver's cookbooks, but he added chick peas, so now I often do that, too. Tonight, I mashed six cloves of garlic through the garlic press and scraped them into the pot to sauté with the leeks and added two teaspoons of coriander because I was curious how it would affect the flavor. It wasn't bad. In fact, I think Teresa would be proud.

burping on command

"Can you burp for Mommy? Do you have a nice burp for Mommy?" That's what I usually say in my sing-song voice when I'm patting Daniel on the back after I feed him. Lately, I'm beginning to suspect he actually knows what I'm saying. In the past few days, he's been looking at me, then letting out a big, healthy burp ... almost as if he heard me, then summoned up a good one for the occasion. Could farting on command be on the horizon? I hear boys like to do that. :)

reduction

In cooking, sometimes you have to boil a liquid down to its essence, to concentrate and intensify the flavors left in the pan. A reduction, it's called. I was doing this a couple of weeks ago, trying to make a gravy, when it occurred to me that my work-daycare decision is also about boiling something down to its essence. And the essence of the matter was that I don't want Daniel in daycare. So how do we make everything else work around that? When I figured out the basic intention, everything else — whether to go back to work, whether to work from home, whether to try it out and see how daycare goes before making a decision — just sort of fell together. Therefore (went my line of thought): I won't go back to the office. I will stay home with Daniel. We will live on a tighter budget. Whatever I would like to do in the way of work will be accomplished around that. It really became quite simple ... I don't know why it was so agonizing before. (And in case you're wondering, unhelpful guilt-trips such as those left in random comments here on this blog did not factor into my decision.)

Not that staying home with Daniel full-time will always be easy. It can be monumentally hard work at times. I understand why some moms find it mind-numbing. Mind-numbing, but also (at times when I need it most) ridiculously joyful. This morning, I sat at the table in mismatched sweats and slippers, spooning puréed carrots into his mouth and scraping the runoff from his chin, saying "yum yum" and "good boy", and I thought, "Look at me now. I am so far from the nicely dressed professional I was six months ago. I used to spend my days writing articles, researching interesting topics, editing page proofs. I used my strengths, my intelligence, my social skills. I used my college degree. Now I use my sleeve to wipe slobber off mouths, and I consider it normal to go two days without bathing. I have absolutely no training in child development. I hardly recognize myself." And then I looked at Daniel's eager little face waiting for the next spoonful and felt such a wave of love and protectiveness toward this precious, vulnerable little child. This job is important, too — maybe the most important one I will ever have, and I don't want to hand it off to anyone else. (Except maybe Steve sometimes!) Yes, sometimes I don't recognize myself. But I am still here, just learning — new skills, new challenges, new ways of loving and living.

I feel certain that I won't lose that old part of myself, though. (Heck, with the amount of time I spend reading about my latest obsession — vaccines — I come close to feeling like my old self at times!) I will continue to look for ways to preserve my individuality, to protect my passions, to keep my writer's identity honed. In that respect, I am lucky to have the boss that I do; he's willing to let me do some work for the paper from home. Plus, I really do hope to get this freelancing thing going and slowly, eventually build it into a larger business.

Meanwhile, Daniel naps on my lap as I write. He likes to sleep in my lap, and unless I have something else to do, like pump breastmilk or make myself lunch, I don't mind holding him. It's a Friday afternoon, the end of a long, cold week, and we didn't go out into the near-zero temperatures today. I usually go a little stir-crazy if I don't get out of the house, so I've tried to make it a priority, at least most days. Lately, we've been to the Minneapolis Institute of Art, where Daniel smiled back at the Buddhas; the Rosedale mall, where I bought a belt to cinch my now-too-big post-partum jeans; and the St. Paul downtown library, where we hung out in the warm magazine room with the homeless people, and I paged through old issues of Vogue and the Utne Reader. It felt like a luxury.