a birthday story

Once upon a time, there was a mommy and daddy.  They knew they were a mommy and daddy, but they had no baby.  That made them sad.

"Do you have our baby?" they asked the sun.  "No," said the sun, but it shone on them and warmed their skin and made them smile.

They asked the rain, "do you have our baby?"  "No," said the rain, but it watered the ground and made the green shoots poke out from the earth in the spring, and that gave them hope.

"Do you have our baby?" they asked the wind.  "No," said the wind, but it rushed and blew and made the fall leaves dance, and that made them laugh.

"Where is our baby?" they asked the mountains.  "We don't know," said the mountains, but they were great and tall and they made the mommy and daddy remember that the world is wide, and big, and full of beauty, even when they were sad.

"Do you have a baby for us?" they asked of the sea.  "No," said the sea, as it rushed in and out, onto the sands and back again.  The mommy and daddy walked on the sand and watched their feet make prints, and watched as the sea swallowed up their prints again.  The sea reminded them that all things change, and end, even very good things, and even very bad things.

"Would you give us a baby?" they asked God.  And there was a long silence.

A very long silence.

It seemed to last forever.  But, finally...

"That is a good idea," said God, "but we are going to need a lot of help with it."

So God sent them doctors, and nurses, and friends, and family, and people they didn't even know who listened to the stories they told in voices and written words.  God was right: it took a lot of people.

But, one day, the mommy woke up.

"The baby is coming," she said.

And then there were more people, all together, waiting for the baby to arrive.

The sun shone down, through the windows of the room where they were waiting.

The rain sent drops of water to tickle the windows of the room where they were waiting.

The fall leaves danced in front of the windows of the room where they were waiting.

The mountains hid in the clouds, not far from the room where they were waiting.

Far away, the waves rushed onto the sands and back again, far from the room where they were waiting.

All the people in the room held hands and helped and waited.

And God waited too.

And then...

"Hello," said the mommy and daddy to their baby.


A belated happy birthday to our baby, who gave us the best names we have ever had.

where did that month go?

So I was all proud of myself for keeping my blog up-to-date and then, as I was reading other people's blogs last night, I realized that some of my favorites haven't written for awhile, and I thought, "what's wrong?  Are they okay?  What's going on that they can't update their blogs?  I mean, I need stuff to read!  COME ON, PEOPLE!" - and then looked at the date of my own last post.

Hello, black kettle.  Meet pot.

It's been a busy month, and I have posts bubbling up that I hope to get to in the next few weeks, but the big event in our house was The First Birthday last Sunday.  How does it happen that, one day you have a squeaky infant who's up every two hours of the night, and poof! - you're complaining about how she wakes up at 5:00am but you neglect to notice that she sleeps through the rest of the night?  (5:00am does suck, though.)  You know what makes that happen?  Evolution.  The ability to block out the pain of childbirth and the happy-yet-exhausted daze of those first months is what makes the human race keep going.

Anyway.  All is well over here, and I'll be back soon.

it's a sign

More.

Milk.

(and, yesterday) Music.

My daughter has a three-word, signed, vocabulary and it feels like the beginning of everything all over again, in the most wonderful way.

So many of the frustrations of parenting in these first 12 months come from not being able to communicate with each other. I mean, that's where a lot of my frustration came from, and I can only assume it's even worse for the baby, because at least I can communicate with other people, whereas she's stuck with crying as her primary mode of explanation.  Hungry?  Cry.  Tired?  Cry.  Wet?  Poopy?  Cry.  Weary of life's existential burden?  Cry.

For the past few months, she's been able to get a few things across more clearly.  "Dis?" she asks, pointing at something, or, "dat?"  Ask if she needs a diaper change, or lunch, or to get out of the carseat, and she will often respond with, "da," as if we are raising a tiny Russian, but she's not very consistent about it.  One day, you'll ask at lunchtime if she wants lunch, and she will look straight at you and say, "da."  Yes.  Yes, you fool, it's lunch and I'm hungry.  The next day, you'll ask the same question at the same time and she will respond with, "seh;lfskdaj;lkhjgl" which is probably a very thoughtful and considered response to my question, but not one I can translate.

Meanwhile, we are all trying to understand each other in a big, long guessing game (which, one presumes, is preparing us for parenting a teenager).  "What's wrong?" my husband will ask when she wakes up crying at 2:00am, as if I have some kind of Baby Wailing 101 textbook next to my side of the bed.  "What does she need?"  I don't know.  Honestly, dude, I never really know, I just try things until one of them works. 

And then, last week, she started signing, "milk."  "Do you want mama milks?" I asked her, and she made the little squeezing sign with her hand, so fleetingly that I almost missed it the first time.  Until dinner, when I asked her if she wanted more sweet potatoes (even though I know the answer to that is always, "Hellz, yes") and she made the "more" sign, touching her fingers together in front of her chest.  My heart leapt - she can tell me something.  And I can understand it. 

I think about the lifetime of conversations ahead of us, all the things she will say to me.
I am afraid of the dark.
I want more cake!
I AM NOT TIRED!
Somebody pushed me on the playground.
Why do I have to go to church?
I love you.
You don't understand me.
Somebody broke my heart.
Can I borrow the car?
I am in love.
I got a new job.
It will all be okay, mom.

And it starts with those three little signs: milk. more. music.


Marvelous.
 

blog, interrupted

So, this is what pneumonia (now that I've had that, after having shingles last summer, I'm ready for the nursing home), followed by sick husband (to be honest, I though he was doing his whole hypochondriac-overreacting thing, but then it turns out that he developed a staph infection so I felt pretty bad about my crankiness with him because, you know, it's all about me), compounded by annual-insane-fall schedule looks like: no blogging.  Bummer.  For me, anyway.

Because there are a lot of fun things happening in our house which are unrelated to germs and their resulting side effects.  Baby Girl is turning 11 months on Friday (sidebar: WHAT?) and she is becoming, well, not so much Baby anymore - this morning I watched her pull herself up to standing, holding onto her toy box so that she could peer into it and choose toys for herself, and I thought, "who is this little girl living in my house and what did she do with my mewling infant?"  She changes so fast it makes my head spin.

• While she doesn't quite creep around couches, ottomans, and other stable objects, she looooves standing and showing off her increasingly improving balance.  "Improving," however, still implies a lot of falls on the bum.  Mostly this is okay, and I think the cloth diaper thing gives her a bit of extra cush.  
• She also loooves pointing at random objects and saying, "dis?" or, "dat?"  You tell her the name of it - "light," or, "fan," (90% of the time the answer is one of those two) - and she looks at you with utter delight, as if she has just discovered a new crater on the surface of the moon or tasted chocolate for the first time.  It also works in reverse: ask her where the 'light' or 'fan' are, and she'll point right at them.  Most of the time.
• She says "dada" on a regular basis.  "Mama," not so much.  Or, you know, never.  But when you point at me and ask, "who is that?" she responds with enthusiastic lip-smacking, so at least she knows that I taste good.  It's a start.
• Nothing is funnier than a baby intensely focused on pooping. I never laugh at her (out loud) because that doesn't seem very nice, but inwardly I am giggling every time.
• Did you know that there is a baby living in the mirrors of our house who looks just like the baby who lives in the house?  I KNOW.  It is freaky amazing.
• The kind of soul-love I have for things like my child and husband and a really good piece of chocolate, she has for sweet potatoes, blueberries, mum.mum crackers, and, well, just about anything edible.  This kid is an eater.  And exceptionally gifted at finding very, very, tiny pieces of lint on the floor which she delicately picks up and consumes.  Although, these days, after unending repetitions of "no, thank you," she looks at the piece of lint, turns it over carefully, and then reaches out to hand it to us, like, "here, take it, I know you're just going to steal it anyway."
• Please, all that is holy in heaven above, may she learn to sleep past 5:00am.  Soon.

I sent out invitations for her first birthday party and, the whole time, kept thinking, "one? How is that happening?"  I am every parental cliche coming to life, people.  Part of me misses the tiny baby-ness, the curled-up-sleeping infant who laid happily on the playmat and slept in our room, but on the other hand, it's so much fun to watch her figure out the world that I'm always eager to see what she does next.  So that's good.

well, rats.

Turns out, I do have pneumonia.

After a sobbing session yesterday in which I had convinced myself that I had given a possibly-deadly disease to my child (who shows no symptoms whatsoever after having been around me for five days of illness), I have resigned myself to the fact that, sometimes I will make her sick.  And sometimes she will make me sick.  And sometimes one of us will get sick and the other family members won't, and - apart from the stuff we already do, like washing our hands and not licking each other's faces (much) - there's not much we can do to control this.

Also, it could be worse.  One of my best friends lost her home in the wildfires in Austin.  She and her dog got out, but other than that, she lost nearly everything else.  Pneumonia is no fun, but neither is replacing everything you own and finding someplace else to live while still trying to work and live your life.

It is what it is, as they say.

(But please, don't let my baby get pneumonia.  Amen.)

what's worse than a sick baby? sick mommy.

For the second time since Baby Girl was born, I am down for the count with an ugly bug.  Granted, the first one was worse - a stomach flu, which both my husband and I got at the same time, causing us to call my mom, who mercifully came to the rescue so we could throw up all night without worrying about the 6-month old upstairs.

But this one is hanging on a lot longer.  Not a stomach bug, this time, but some kind of nasty virus that gave me a fever and aches and chills and a terrible, awful, no good, very bad cough which hurts like the devil.  I feel like somebody punched me in the ribs all night long.  Uggggggh.

Some lessons I have learned over the past few sick days:

• I have a lot less patience when I am sick.  So that, when my husband came home after picking up Baby Girl from daycare (THANK HEAVENS for daycare) yesterday and asked, "What am I supposed to do for dinner?" I jumped down his throat like he had suggested I cook a 5-course meal.  I mean, he had a slightly irritated tone in there.  But my response may have been, perhaps, a little overstated.  Maybe.
• The worst part about being sick is that you can't kiss your adorable baby.
• Oh - and that you can't enjoy two nights in a row of her sleeping through the night because you are up every 20 minutes coughing.
• Also, when you go to the doctor because you are paranoid that you have pneumonia (I don't), and everyone who comes in the room to check on you is wearing one of those surgical masks, it's a little disconcerting.
• The pharmacist is never slower than when you are huddled in the corner, waiting for your cough syrup, wishing you could crawl under a bus.
• I think the baby gets a very minor version of these bugs and then, in the transition between her and us, they morph into Nearly Deadly Bedridden viruses.  Don't get me wrong - I'm very glad she's had the minor kinds.  But maybe they could stay that way next time.  (Or, you know, avoid us altogether?  Yeah.  Probably not.)
• The fierceness of this cough has demonstrated to me that not all is as well as I thought down there in Ladyparts Land.  I will need to do more Kegels.  Because it's no fun when you cough and then...yeah.  You get it.
• But the good thing about having a nasty cough when you are no longer pregnant is that you can have a hot toddy.

And on that last note, I think I'll go make myself said hot toddy and crawl off to bed.

dear tina fey,

I just want to say that your book, Bossypants, is my new very-favorite-book-in-the-history-of-ever and I have a tiny bit of a girl crush on you.  I am so happy to read about someone who was an unrepentant nerd and yet who does not romanticize said nerd history, because being a nerd in high school pretty much sucks even if you realize later that it was good for your character. 

Also, your "Prayer for My Daugher" chapter is brilliance; I won't quote it here because probably everybody has seen it on Face.book, but if anyone out there has not seen it, trust me - that chapter alone is reason to buy the book.

The only comparably funny thing I have read lately is this post from Mommyland which actually made me snort coffee out my nose, and after last night's scream-fest from 1:00-2:00am, I'm in favor of any laughter I can find. So, thanks, Ms. Fey. You rock.

Sincerely,
babyinterrupted.

PS The baby was screaming, by the way. Not me. Although I was close.