Finnegan 2

G drew a picture of a cat and taped it to her wall a week or two ago - it was a white cat, and she wrote "Cat" above it.  She likes to label things, now that she can.  Today, I found her with a black crayon, making black spots on the cat.  She'd marked out "Cat" and written "Dog", and underneath that, "Finn".  She drew a black mark at the bottom of the page, "that's his fur that he leaves everywhere."

*Sigh*

We picked up his ashes yesterday; I had both girls in the car with me when I called to see if he was ready.  I should've thought better of that - Cora piped up, "We're getting our puppy back?"  The hopeful melody of her sweet voice broke my heart.  I had to explain again that we're just picking up his ashes.  That he's still dead, that he's not coming back.  "Ashes?" G was curious. "They turned him into dust?"  We talked a bit about that, what it would look like.  I told them to imagine the ashes under the grill, the ones they like to play in.   I sent out a silent thank you to the universe when we got through the conversation again without them asking how they turned him into ashes - I can't think how I would explain cremation technique without them being horrified.  "Did they turn his fur to ashes too?" G asked.  She had that sad, tentative voice that she uses when something is bothering her and she's trying to understand.  "Yes, baby, his fur too."  "Oh," she said, looking down.  "I wanted to feel his fur again."  Somehow I managed to not cry, but it took effort.  I lost it last night when I shared that anecdote with Jimi - he did too.  It's almost too much to bear, to think of his soft fur and what a good boy he was.

We got him picked up, though, got him home, on the mantle.  They included a paw print pressed into some sort of soft dough that will firm up permanently in a few days.  I don't know if that was great or terrible.  I cried last night for a long time.  It wasn't all for him, but a lot of it was.  I have so much guilt - I was not the greatest dog mom over the last 5 years, and I don't know how I'll come to terms with that.  I can't make it up to him.  I can't tell him I'm sorry.  I can't redo any of it.  I keep replaying this night in my head, one of our walks in his last few weeks, before I realized he was hurting - we were walking our usual route and he was being so slow, and I was in such a hurry, like I always am, to get to the next thing, whatever it was.  I lost my patience with him, I assumed he was just being pokey, taking his time, and I pulled on his lead and griped at him to "Come ON - hurry up!"  I would love to not have that memory anymore. When he was slow the next night too, that's when I noticed something was not normal.  Also, the weeks leading up to that, when he was so slow to get up and come to the door to go outside in the mornings; I assumed he was being lazy, or ignoring me - as if he ever did those things - and I would lose my temper and yell at him, "Finnegan, COME!"  I didn't realize until later, when I put the entire sequence together in my head, that he obviously was aching and sore and having a hard time getting up to go out - I was just so engrossed in my own bullshit, worried over my own morning checklist and timetable, I didn't even notice my best boy was having a hard time.  And if I go further back in this memory lane of self-hate - the days when we'd come home and he would be waiting there for us, and we'd blow into the house full of kids and to-do lists and walk right past him without much more than a "Hey Finn, you need to go out?" and we'd let him out, but then ignore him nearly completely until it was time to feed or walk him.  I noticed when he wasn't greeting us at the door any more, but I figured he was napping.  I didn't realize that those door-meet declines coincided with the slow mornings, or that our walks were gradually taking longer and longer, until it was just obvious, and then it was too late.  He deserved better than that.  I owed him more than that.

I want to defend myself, to tell how I was good to him, and to the other dogs in my life before him.  But then I remember that night on that walk, when I hurried him along when he must've been in pain, and I just hate myself.  

I had this ridiculous thought yesterday:  "Dog is God spelled backwards."
Then, "If the way we treat our dogs determines if we get into Heaven, I don't know if I'll get to go."
Then, just now, "If Finn is the one who determines if I get in or not, he'd let me in.  He was always so forgiving."

He used to love it when I'd squat down in front of him and hug him.  He'd lay his head on my shoulder or in the crook of my arm as long as I'd stay there, my face buried in his neck, my hands rubbing along his flank and back, telling him what a good boy he is and how much we love him.  I can almost smell his doggy smell, remembering it.  How soft his fur was, the way he'd lean into me.  I feel like if I get to meet him again, we'll do that, and I'll tell him all of this, and he'll understand, and he'll still love me like he always did.  In the meantime, though, I get to live with the memories, of both the good times and of when I was not a good friend to my best friend.

Cuppa

Tea at 11. P, that is. Caffeine fee, of course.

Thinking. Always replaying. I could've i should've done that so much better...

Tomorrow I will...  Tomorrow, I will. I will, tomorrow.

What if tomorrow never comes?  What if I never do better than I did today?  What if today was my absolute best?

I know better.

It's hard. All of it. Everything. Even when it's easy, it's still hard.

And beautiful. And perfect. And everything I always said I'd always wanted.

Tea finished, hour late, alarm early.

Goodnight. Until tomorrow.

My new addiction.

I spend too much time reading the internet.  Reading about things that don't directly impact me, or things that do, but they all have something in common - I can't do anything about any of it.  Well, not much, at least.  I'll meet with a group of women later today to bask in political conversation, in a place where we can yell and bitch and gnash our teeth and complain and cry and be aghast and angry and motivated, where it won't be a huge social faux paus to say things like "Who gives a shit how the soup is, our President is a Russian puppet!"  We'll talk about how scared we are and how small we feel, how helpless and impotent.  We'll talk about the things that scare us the most, the issues we feel need the most immediate attention - and then one of us will remind the rest that we ARE NOT ALONE.  That I may be one person, but when I join my voice with theirs, we become a chorus, and there are choirs practicing this particular song all over our country today, right now.  And we will feel less alone, and a little less afraid, a bit less weak, a smidge stronger.  And we will start to write.  We will each write a letter or a postcard to our representatives on each topic each woman identified as the one most important to her, and we will mail our choir song to the people whose job it is to listen to us sing...

And that makes me feel a little bit better.  It doesn't feel like enough, and it isn't, not by a long shot, but it is what I can do today, while I also do the other stuff, the real stuff, the stuff I should be concerned with, the stuff I was concerned with before the political took over my brain...you know, the real stuff.  Like loving my husband, loving my children.  Raising them to be good people, teaching them to give a fuck about other people.  Because that's what we do as parents, right?  We try to teach our kids to be good people, to be compassionate.  Be super smart and funny and awesome in every other way too, but from the get go, at the start, be a good person.  That one thing is the most important. 

I don't know how to balance.  I don't know how to stay woke and not be deeply depressed and sad and angry.  I don't know how to reconcile my love for my Trump-voting fellow humans at the same time I am vehemently hoping for the worst of his policies to have the worst impacts on his voters just as a big fat "WTF WERE YOU THINKING I TOLD YOU SO!"  I am angry at the people who voted for him.  I am angry at them for putting our country, our safety, our very freedom at risk.  I am so angry - and not just on my own behalf.  I am terrified for my children, and I am pissed at his voters for stealing a bright future from them.  See?  I can't balance. I'm all doom and gloom - as I see it, unless he's forced out of office quickly, and our Congress mostly replaced in 2018, we're fucked.  Who needs clean air and water, anyhow?  Who needs our rich history of welcoming immigrants with open arms?  Who needs a respected leader believed to be ethical and moral?  Who needs separation of church and state?  Who needs educated citizenry? 

I cannot compartmentalize, this shit leaches into my thoughts during every conversation.  I could easily turn every exchange into a lecture about current events.  I am not fun at parties anymore. 

Every day I tell myself, "I'm just not going to go down the rabbit hole today, I'm not going to Twitter or Facebook or Reddit..." but I do, and I am like a fucking junkie, getting hits/new tweets/statuses every time I pull that page down to refresh, getting more enraged and outraged and indignant and shocked with each new blow dealt by digging journalists or overreaching strategic advisors...

My dad told me a few days after the election, "The United States has survived the Revolution, the Civil War, the Great Depression...it has survived bigger things than Donald Trump."  Sometimes, for a few moments, I'm able to step out of the noise in my head and look at it from thirty thousand feet, and I can see that he's right, and it makes me feel better.  Sometimes I tell myself that I am a married white woman with a comfortable income living in a comfortable middle-class home, with plenty of food, access to affordable healthcare, with reliable transportation and two happy healthy little girls to raise - stay the fuck out of politics.  Why do I care?  Why can't I just bury my head in the sand like so many of my friends and not read the shit, not pay attention, pretend it isn't there?  It's not like I am actively working to change anything - I haven't been to any rallies or protests or community events.  I'm just reading shit on the internet and getting pissed off, occasionally releasing a little tension with a bitter tweet or facebook share.  WHY? 

When I'm driving alone, usually I'm trying to find the answers to all of these big issues we're facing - how do you convince people that insuring everyone is the only answer to our healthcare problems? How do we get people to stop being afraid of each other and realize we're all the same? How do we convert coal- and oil-industry workers into entrepreneurs in the renewable energy fields?  I'm asking myself how I can be part of the solution.  Sometimes the answer feels like the big obvious one - run for office if you want to make the laws.  That feels way too scary and hard and like something that couldn't possibly be something I could be successful at, though, so I keep digging and thinking and trying to come up with something, anything.   And then I remember that I can't even get a handle on my laundry situation, so I'm really wasting energy focusing on the wrong shit here. 

I got up at 4:30 this morning, on a Sunday, so I could sit alone in the dark with my cup of hot tea (can't grind coffee beans at 4:30 if you want everyone else to stay asleep) and read Twitter and WP and Reuters and NYT in the quiet stillness, without interruption.  I was going to sit here and bathe in the bad news, just splash all around in it.  I'm glad I came here instead.  I think this is probably better for my mental health.

Moratorium

I've decided to mostly stay away from Facebook for the next month, at least until after the election is over.  My feed has become a 24/7 blast of screaming election noise, and I can't take it.  I wake up in the middle of the night panicked at the idea that Donald Trump could be our next President, worried how I can convince everyone I know to not vote for him.  I am so disappointed with it all.  And you know, it's all based on where we get our news.  It's entirely possible in this country for two equally intelligent people to come to completely different conclusions based on which station they tune their radio to on their way to work in the mornings, which channel they're watching when the nightly news comes on.  And we surround ourselves with people who think like us, so we repeat the same stories to each other, making fiction into fact, or embellishing fact into fiction. 

Anyhow, Facebook moratorium.  Sort of.  Mostly.  For today, so far.  I turned off the notifications on my phone, but I didn't delete it.  So there's how you know I'm not completely committed here.  I can feel a difference already, though.  Seriously.  My mind is quieter, I'm not as anxious.  I'm legit scared about the potential outcomes of this election, but I can't bear to think about it anymore.  I'm practicing my serenity prayer, practicing the power of positive thinking, reminding myself that I cannot change the way things will be - that I only have one vote.  I do not have the emotional strength to try to change peoples' minds.  I do not want to have debates with people I respected up until we started this election cycle.  So I'm going to try really hard to avoid any mention of politics for the next few weeks.  I'm not going to think about what is hanging in the balance. I'm going to focus on my family and myself instead of rich people who don't give one single fuck about me.  I'm going to do the best I can each day to recognize and appreciate how awesome this life is, right this minute, and I'm not going to worry too much about the big looming questions of the future and what may be.

Tonight, for example, after dinner, instead of me sending the girls off to play while I got more and more angry at the internet and all of the dumb people on it, my phone stayed in my bag, and Cora and I took Finn for a walk around the block.  It was awesome - we chatted and ran and laughed.  She's getting so big so fast, and I'm missing so much of it just for the fact of having to work and be away from her most of the day 5 days a week; I really should try harder to not waste the little time I do have with them with my face buried in a screen, my blood pressure spiking over things I can't control. 

They started a new daycare this week, and I'm so glad and excited for it.  This one is so far above and beyond what we had; they have a curriculum! they have two teachers in every classroom! they have cameras recording constantly! they are organized!  In short, I love this new school. It's closer to my office, and so far seems to have adjusted our commute in a way that gets us home in much better time.  Or maybe that's just the shifted traffic pattern now that the bridges and roads are opening back up along the KY/IN border, but whatever. 

Life is good.  I need to remember that in the moment, and not just at the end of the day, after a beer or two, when I'm getting all sentimental and reflective.  Life is so so good.  And so short.  I should not sweat the small stuff.  It's all small stuff.  When did I get so uptight?  What's got me all wound up and bitchy?  Maybe I need to disconnect from everything for a while, see if I can get down to the fundamentals.  I'm sure there are journals and study guides out there that help you discover yourself, right?  I'm not going to spend my money on one, but I'd consider reading some information like that online for free. 

I'm starting to talk crazy talk.  I think maybe it's time for bed.  Sweet dreams.  :)

The Birth of Geneva Aibhilin - The Conclusion...Finally. Sort of.

My beautiful daughter is 8 months and 1 day old.  I've not yet finished telling her birth story, and I'm ashamed of myself.  The details are fading in my memory - they aren't as sharp as they were in the days and weeks that followed.  Everything in my life now feels as if it is coated in a haze - like the glare that seems to always be in pictures taken on a sunny day, yellowish-white fingers that reach into the scenes of your memory and soften the edges and block out a few, just a few, details in the corners and edges of the frame.  It's a happy haze, but a haze nonetheless. 

So I need to finish telling the story of her birth.  For her, and also for me, because, let's face it, that was the best, most challenging, most mind-blowingly amazing thing I'll ever do - probably the only miracle in which I'll actively participate. It's sort of a big deal.

WARNING:  Below contains some pretty yucky graphic descriptions of the real stuff that happens during the birth of a human.  Don't say I didn't warn ya.

When we left off of Part One, I was heading into transition, still riding those waves in the tub, thinking about how I was going to make sure the world knew Jimi called me a manatee while I was trying to birth his baby.  Bless his heart, though - the things he saw that day.  When the nurse checked to see if my water had indeed broken, she released a flood of yuck, so I'm told.  I can only imagine.  I was unaware of said yuck, and had no hindrance when it came to dunking my head and face under the water for relief between waves (contractions).  At one point, I vividly remember leaning my face up to kiss Jimi, and he sort of pulled back and urged me to wait while he wiped something off my forehead with a washcloth.  Eww.  And that was just the beginning.

When I started feeling the urge to push, I was nearing 9 cm dilated, and it was time to get out of the tub. Oh, how I dreaded getting out of the tub.  I just knew the pain would be too much.  My wonderful nurse brought huge heated blankets to wrap around me, and helped Jimi lead me to the bed.  I think I lay on my side for a while, but the waves were so strong, and I just knew that if I could get on all fours, they wouldn't hurt as bad.  So that's what I did, for a long while.  I don't know how long I pushed - time was sort of irrelevant.  I remember shivering through transition, and I heard Jimi ask the nurses and midwives if I was okay, and hearing them reassure him with the answer that I already knew but hadn't fully come to realize was happening to me at that moment - the time was so near!  They told me I could push whenever I felt the need, and I did, there on the bed, on all fours, covered for a while with those now-cold warmed blankets, then with my bare ass shining out for all to see.  I remember looking down and seeing the bloody mucus hanging - oh my goodness, there were four women staring at my ass as I slowly dripped yuck.  And my husband!  He was seeing this too!  In talking with Jimi later, I think he missed a lot of that because he was up with me, at my head, reminding me to breathe, and release, and relax.  He was calm and gentle and strong and wonderful, and at one point my audience, comprised of two nurses, my midwife, and her student midwife, was heard to whisper - "His voice is so soothing, I feel like I could go to sleep."  I can hear you!-I thought.  A good chuckle was had by all. 

I pushed for a good long time, but nothing was really happening, at least not that I could tell.  So I turned around and used the bar at the foot of the bed to support myself as I squatted and pushed.  Jimi just reminded me the midwives kept saying "good sounds, good sounds", as I moaned and aaahhed my way through my waves.  If I hadn't been so otherwise engaged, I would've had a hard time controlling my giggles and the peacenik hippie images they brought to mind - I saw myself in the same position in the center of a green field, surrounded by women in long skirts and flower wreaths circling their heads atop long flowing manes of blonde hair.

The squatting wasn't working, and I was becoming less and less concerned about my naked ass in front of these women, and more and more concerned with the fact that Geneva hadn't arrived after a couple of good pushes.  It felt like nothing was happening. 

So back on all fours I went, again, for another good long while.  (All told, I think we've pieced together that all of these good long whiles lasted a total of probably 2 hours, maybe slightly longer.  They seemed an eternity at the time.)  Progress was slow, and I was tiring quickly.  My midwife could tell, and encouraged me twice to lie on my side, which I refused, fearing it would make the pain so much worse.  Finally, she insisted we try it, and I was so tired, so desperate for this to be over, I relented and flopped over, allowing the student midwife, Jimi, and the nurse to prop various parts of me with pillows before the next wave came on.

It was the right thing - the next wave was intense and I could feel Geneva moving down inside my body.  I felt very full in my hips - I guess now her head hung out there between my pubic bones for a while, as I pushed good and hard a couple times, but stopped short at the last second because (I thought) I could feel myself pooping.  Despite everything else these people had seen of me in the few hours we'd been acquainted, I was concerned enough about my dignity that I did not want them to see poop come out of my butt.  The third time, though, the phrase "fuck it" when through my mind, and I pushed and didn't pull back, I followed through.  I still don't know if I pooped - I think I did, and Jimi says he couldn't say for sure, that if I did, they had me cleaned up immediately so no one could've noticed.  He says that because he loves me.  It seems so ridiculous now, knowing what came next.

So, after the poop push, Geneva was right there, you could almost see her head.  I pushed again, but I could feel myself stretching, at the top of my vagina, and I was so afraid I was going to tear, so again, I held back at the last second.  Poor Geneva. They said her head was RIGHT THERE, and asked if I wanted a mirror to see - "No!  I just want her out of me!!"  I was so poetic that night.  I wasn't going to be able to hold back again - it was time for her to be born, and this thing was going to have to happen. With the next wave, I pushed with everything I had, and when I felt myself start to tear, I again thought "fuck it", and pushed harder -

And she was here.  She slid out of me like a slippery fish and was flopped onto my naked belly.  I was so dazed at first - I looked at her and she was purple and so small and she has hair and she's SO BEAUTIFUL.  Oh my goodness, my daughter was bruised and scuffed and had bloody rings around her irises for days because of the cord that was around her neck once and the time she spent in the birth canal as I tried not to poop or tear my vag - but she was the most beautiful creature I've ever seen.

I shamefully remember thinking "My daughter is so small and petite! I have a petite daughter!  Holy crap, Jimi and I made a petite daughter! How did that happen?"  I say I remember that shamefully because I absolutely do not want my daughter to equate her self worth with the size of her jeans.  I do not care if she is a size 2 or a size 20, so long as she is healthy and happy with herself.  But our society values small sizes, and a lifetime of indoctrination that slim = good overcame me in that moment.  But seriously, how did Jimi and I make a small baby? 

I'd sought an all-natural childbirth for several reasons, but one was that I'd heard an awful lot about that high that hits you once your child is born - I was totally trying to get high on life.  I read about waves of euphoria washing over you once you see your child's face, the immediate endorphin rush that makes all of the unpleasant things that immediately follow birth - delivering the placenta, getting stitched back up - not quite so bad, or even noticeable, really.  I think the women who tell those stories might be liars, but i'm not sure.  As I stared at my beautiful daughter, thoughts of "I thought it was supposed to stop hurting now" and "Oh my god, my vag stings so bad!" kept crowding in on my awe and adoration of Geneva.  Her umbilical cord was stretched taught, it felt like, and its path from me to her lie directly in the tear she'd made on her way out.  It stung like a sonofabitch.  Finally I couldn't take it anymore and I reached down to move it - "No No No!" The midwives stopped me immediately.  "But it stings!" I complained.  Moments later, it was time to cut the cord - I'd decided

********************

I wrote all of that LAST Tuesday night.  It's Tuesday again, and Geneva is another week older, and her birth story still isn't posted.  Shame, Mother, Shame.  Anyhow...

So I'd decided to let the cord stop pulsing before it was cut, a decision I thought wise and well thought-out pre-birth.  We'll come back to that - it was time to cut the cord, and Jimi couldn't do it.  He'd told me in prior discussions that he wasn't sure if he'd be able to handle the, um, texture of it.  I totally understand what he means - the way I can't handle killing any bug that crunches.  So someone asks Jimi "Dad, do you want to cut the cord?" and he hesitates, but finally he calls it and declines - saying "I just can't do it."  "I'll do it!" I piped up, "I don't give a shit!"  SO Eloquent, Geneva's mother is. And so with my new daughter on my belly, I reached around and below her and took the scissors they handed me, and aimed where they pointed me, and I severed the physical connection I'd nurtured for so long. 

My daughter was born.
 

*****************

I started this effing blog entry 4 weeks ago.  Four!  It's the Tuesday before Thanksgiving, and next week Geneva will be 9 months old. 

There's more to tell to this story - the people who were there before and after, a 24-hour stint in the nursery for observation because of G's "thick" blood, our extra night in the hospital that was on the house - but for now, this will do. 

And there you have it.

Awesome and exhausting, motherhood is

Blog titles since Geneva's birth have been her age in weeks/days - it's been long enough since my last post that I've lost track of exactly how old she is.  28 weeks?  Something like that.  I'm an awesome mom.

Life is busy.  There's not much time these days for much more than what has to be done, and blogging hasn't fallen on that list in quite some time.  My carefree days full of hours of nothing to do and no plans has become a life so full that sometime I feel like I need to add "shower" and "make coffee" to my daily to-do lists so I can make sure I find a way to work those important things into the day.  (Plus, I really like checking stuff off on my to-do lists, so I find adding simple things like "shower" and "make coffee" gives me a boost, because I know I'm going to get those things done.  Fuck cleaning the floors, but momma needs her coffee.)

Geneva is amazing and I'm going to regret terribly the fact that I've not recorded every moment of her life here, so I can go back and read it all later.  I already miss the tiny bundle she was while I was home on maternity leave - she's changing so fast every day!  I spend her awake hours playing, singing, dancing with her, between the feeding and the changing and the bathing.  When she's asleep, there's laundry and dishes and dinner and maybe 20 minutes for yoga and 10 minutes for Facebook.  The day is over before I know it, even when it starts well before dawn. 

She's still my little milk baby and I don't even have the words to describe how proud I am of her little fat rolls on her legs, ankles, and wrists.  At her 6 month check-up, she weighed in at 16 pounds 10 ounces and was 26.5 inches long, and I was sort of disappointed they didn't throw me a party or at least offer me a sucker - I mean, I've been growing this little lady for well over a year now, and look at what a great job my body has done sustaining her!  I'm in awe of my body - I'm in awe of her, and the fact that she came from me, and that I'm able to keep her strong and healthy.  What an amazing experience motherhood is. 

I love breastfeeding, and I'm so glad we've been successful at it.  I hate pumping.  I tip my hat to mothers who pump exclusively - that's some dedication I don't know if I possess, and I'm grateful I didn't have to find out.  Because the awkwardness and discomfort aren't enough, it also is time-consuming and has made my job so much more difficult.  I'm less productive because of the interruption two to three times a day, and my co-workers are resentful because of my unavailability during those times.  I also suspect they secretly believe I'm kicked back with my feet on the desk, taking a short siesta while my milk flows - in reality, I'm hunched over with an elastic band strapped tightly across my chest, chapped nipples peeking through holes in the fabric to be fed into plastic cups that pinch and pull at the delicate skin, bare back covered in goose bumps as the AC blasts and my shirt lies wadded on the corner of the desk while I try to sort my pile of billing without moving too much (don't want to spill anything from the bottles dangling from my tits), hoping to accomplish something during this 20 minute torture session so I don't get further behind and have to stay late or take work home.  And then, when it's over and I emerge from my cave with my bag of milk and nearly-obscene bottle/flange contraptions coated with milk droplets, I'm greeted with "It's about time!" and "Finally!" and "Oh, she just came out, hold please and I'll get her on the line."  Pumping is a fucking party, let me tell ya.

Nearly seven months in, I've managed to keep up with her demand pretty well, but I have next-to-no stash of extra milk.  Patricia (a friend I've known forever and Geneva's Other Mother/Babysitter during the workweek) has maybe two days' worth in her freezer, and I have four bags in mine.  So yeah, not much milk stored up.  It's a constant worry for me, and I'm stingy with that expressed milk the way Scrooge was tight with a penny.  But we're making it, and we're going to keep getting by. 

She's just starting to learn solids.  I don't know what in the hell I'm doing or how to feed her - she's trying a bit of this and a little that, a mix between jarred babyfood I swore I wasn't going to give her and chunks of things we have around - like banana, avocado, peaches, lemons.  She really loves the purees and happily takes the spoon into her own hand and guides the food into her mouth on her own.  The chunky foods seem to be more for holding and squeezing than actually eating.  When the chunks do make it to her mouth, she never seems glad they got there.  She still hasn't had cereal of any sort, and I've got no plans to change that any time soon. 

She sleeps pretty well these days - nursing to sleep around 8, then up again for a nightcap at 9, then one more meal in the middle of the night, around 4:30.  She'll sleep on her own until 7, and if it's not a workday, she'll go back down until 9:30 or so.  (That's why I've found the time to write this morning.)  On weekends she takes two good naps, about 2 hours each, but I think she has a hard time staying asleep that long during the week.  (Other children - and shiny things - are incredibly distracting, and she doesn't want to miss anything.) 

She is so sweet.  She's so good.  She laughs and coos all the time.  Her smile is radiant.  Her eyes are such a magnificent blue, and so wide and deep.  You can see her brilliance.  Her hair is starting to come in more fully, but we still can't tell what color it will be.  Strawberry blonde seems the most likely contender here lately. 

She sits up and plays quietly with her fabric vegetables and fruit, or will bang wildly on her little baby piano.  She's not quite crawling, but she can get anywhere she wants to be by throwing her hands forward and pulling herself, using her feet to push forward.  She'll get up on her hands and knees, but hasn't figured out yet that putting them one in front of the other will move her more quickly.  Last night, she started pulling herself up onto her knees using the edge of her crib - time to lower the mattress, methinks.  Bath time is still her favorite - she loves to splash! 

She loves everyone she meets, and most often has a beautiful gummy smile to share.  (No teeth yet.)  She recently started testing us, seeing how we react to certain screams and demands.  I think we're still winning, so far, but she is a clever girl, and we're going to have to stay on our toes with this one.  It's going to be hard to not spoil her - I want to give her the world. 

Jimi and I celebrated our one year wedding anniversary.  He's a great husband, and an amazing father.  Geneva and I sure lucked out.  A woman told me once that if I wanted children, I should hurry up and have them, but not to expect any help from Jimi, because he's lazy and wouldn't be there for me.  Sometimes I wonder if he's so involved because he knows that accusation was made.  Mostly I think that woman just didn't know Jimi and was running her mouth because she was a sad lonely person who didn't know how to say anything good about anyone. 

I can feel my free time running short, and I really need to heat up my coffee - I've had less than half a cup and let it go cold.  I miss you, bloggy world - I want to say that I'll try harder to come back and do this more often, but we've all heard that before and know that it's probably not true.  It sounds nice, though.    

3 weeks 2 days - Babies are hard.

We were getting along swimmingly, and then I think she gave my nipples the thrush.  Suddenly my right nipple felt like it was being pierced when she ate - I've cried a lot in the last few days.  And then her latch got lazy - she only wants the top half, thank you very much, you can keep that bottom part.  Except that's excruciating.  So we're relearning our nursing manners.  I've cried a lot in the last few days. 

It's overwhelming that I'm the only one who can feed her.  I feel like I'm with her every second of every day and that I never get a break.  I remind myself that a baby is what I wanted, and that this is part of what it means to have a baby.  I look into her sweet face and count my blessings again - but I'm so tired.  Two of the last three nights have been really rough (have I mentioned how much I've cried?).  Thankfully, she seems to know right when I've hit my limit, and she magically goes to sleep - for 3 or 4 hours.  So she's working me.  I get that now.  She's training me.  It's rough training, man.

Jimi tries to help, but I understand why he says he feels helpless, useless - there's just not a lot he can do.  I think he's sick of fetching me water and snacks, and I feel guilty every time I ask for another favor, but I'm stuck where I am, you know?  I try to get him to change as many diapers as possible, not to pass off the task, but so he can get some face time in with his daughter - of course, she hates having her diaper changed, so in his mind she's starting to associate him with horrible things, like a cold hooha.  And some nights nothing will console her but a nipple, and his don't fit the bill - and I get jealous as hell watching him over on the couch, able to get up and move around all nimbly pimbly whenever he likes.  I squash down my feelings of resentment - it's not his fault he can't feed her. 


I wonder how we'll ever get on enough of a schedule for me to go back to work in 4 weeks.  I wonder how I'll ever manage to leave her in the care of someone else for 9 hours a day.  This mom shit is serious bidness, yo.