fourteen months with a brambleberry bug!

This, what I’m doing right now? This is stealing. Straight up thievery. I am leaving Bram on me for a nap (an EARLY nap to compensate for how EARLY he woke up today) so that he’ll actually sleep for awhile, but instead of writing (which I should absolutely be doing, which I HAVE been doing whenever I’m not on with him for weeks), I am blogging. Robbing my work and not even caring! :) This won’t be a long post, though, so: no update about my almost-here deadline, or Love Child, or the date J and I are taking tomorrow night (!). Instead, I have just enough time for an update on what has to be the world’s weirdest, sweetest, most earnest kid.

So, Bram at fourteen months. In no particular order.

• This morning, right before J left for work, I said: “Bram. Can you say pomo?” And clear as day he looked at his pomo and said: “pomo.” Then he smiled.

• He also regularly and appropriately says “mama,” “cat,” “dog,” “uh-oh,” and “truck,” and occasionally “goat” and “cow.” He still signs “please,” “milk,” “water,” “more,” “all done,” and sometimes “thank you,” and he shakes his head vigorously “yes” or “no.” Especially no. The boy knows what he does not want.

• Often (though not every morning), Bram wakes up, rolls over to my side of the bed, pulls himself up onto me, and smooches me straight on the lips to wake me up. Then he sits up, pats the bed (pat, pat, pat), and calls: “CAT!” About half the time, a cat comes. These are the most delightful days.

• He can correctly identify his head, hair, nose, mouth (usually), ears, eyes, belly, belly-button, hands, feet, toes, and badonkadonk. Well, he thinks his badonkadonk is his upper right thigh, but sort of around the back. And if you ask him to shake it, he shakes his right leg. We have to get video of that soon.  Oh, and he can point to identify pomo, mama, Bubbie, Aunt Kippie, Hades, Nemesis, trucks, cars, almost all barnyard animals (in books), squirrels, rabbits, specific Lego pieces (the goat, the farmer, the horse)… just about anything we’ve defined for him once.

• The child is obsessed with books. He has very definite opinions about what he wants to read, and how many times he wants to read it. So far, his favorites have been Barnyard Dance, Caps for Sale, Jamberry, Good Night Farm, The Wizard of Oz, Hug, and Hug Time. (My apologies for not including authors… I sense this nap is coming to a close…) Who knows what tomorrow’s favorite will be, though. His loyalty is fierce but shifting.

• He is walking-fast-all-the-time now. It matters not a bit to him how many times a day he bites it. He just gets right back up (which he can now do without any support!) and takes off again.

• His favorite foods this month: anything with curry in it, carrots, (ethically sourced) chicken, (wild caught) fish, broccoli, peas, mango, bananas, Mexican stir-fry, the gluten-free bread J makes us, oranges, blueberries, pomegranate seeds (when my mom brings them), spinach smoothies, potatoes, egg yolks, lentils… He still eats incredibly well at most meals.

• He also LOVES the broom. [Does anyone know of an affordable, real, kid's sized broom for sale? The child likes to sweep, which I would like to encourage.]

• At the end of bath time, J now gets Bram to pull the drain himself and say goodbye to and thank the bath water. It is sweet sweet sweet. She then asks if he’s ready to get out, but he never is. So she patiently waits while the water drains, asking every few minutes if he’s ready (to which he shakes his head “no”). Eventually, though, he gets cold and consents. I love that she gets his buy in this way. It would be jarring to just be pulled out of the bath at random times, no matter how much you were enjoying yourself!

• Finally (not because I’m out of things to write, but because I’m almost out of time and I want to include some photos!), I am on the precipice of being home with him alone thirty-seven hours a week with NO DISSERTATION TO WRITE. I’m wondering how those of you who are home full time approach a schedule. For example, how many times a week do you do play dates? Other activities? Do you have days where it’s just you all day with no outside interaction? Do you find that a routine helps? Lay it on me, whatever you got. Even though I’ve been home with him full time, I’ve scheduled some much of these fourteen months around writing that I’m not sure how to approach the openendedness!

And photos!

• Bram usually helps me make lunch from my back. Here, he adds paprika to paella.

• An old photo, but a beloved one: one of my favorites of my boy with his Grandpa Jack.

• With an eggplant. Like normal.

• Bram adores all of these things.

• Morning smiles.

• Robot-Bramble.

• I finally got J in a ruck! For all your babywearers out there: this is PHI v2, and J and I both LOVE it. I think it’s her first favorite wrap.

• In the letter jacket that a close friend of the family passed down from her son. The last little boy to wear this is now twenty-two years old.

• First spring day.

• Fourteen-month Bram Grows! shot!

just to be sure, there’s happy too

Bram’s first time sledding:

One year in, still (or once again) us. And dating (each other, of course)!:

Pomo + Bramble + Mama (at B’s one-year-well-baby):

One year down. Now bring on this sweet second year we keep hearing about! (And thanks thanks thanks for all of your words of late.)

why the first year of parenting reminds me of boot camp, and other year-in reflections

This is the last day of Bram’s first year of life. The last day! Tomorrow marks one year since this sweet creature made us pomo + mama, and two years since Emmett Ever made us parents. This, I think, calls for a well-organized reflective post full of anecdotes and observations. The trouble is, I only have the length of one nap time to write it. I hope, then, that you’ll settle for a hastily organized, mildly reflective post full of what I manage to hold in my head long enough to write about it. :) Here goes:

I went to boot camp in December of 1997. I think it sounds strange to people now, but the truth is: I loved it. Not at first. At first I was terrified and homesick. I craved the comforts of sleep, relaxation, and good food. I felt small. I longed for a friendly voice and a hug. For touch. I don’t do well without touch. But as time went on, I began to realize that everyone felt that way, which was of immense comfort to me. When I went to officer training six years later, this was not true. People who go to officer training are, for the most part, already skilled in things-military. They are competitive. They want pilot slots, navigator slots, intelligence slots. They want to outperform their peers — doing so is the whole idea. But at boot camp, pretty much everyone’s a kid, and pretty much nobody knows anything. For this reason, boot camp suited my soul – everyone all vulnerable and relying on one another and having to work together – while officer training broke me. So when I say that parenting reminds me of boot camp, I mean it with love and adoration. I mean: the first year of parenting is fierce and formative.

By two weeks into boot camp, I knew the women in my flight. I knew who they’d left behind. I knew who got letters, and who didn’t. I knew what I could rely on them for: who was best at folding and ironing underwear into a perfect square (yeah.), and who was dynamo at polishing boots. I did pre-inspection checks of all of our lockers because I have a good eye for detail. I looked over uniforms. I quized them in preparation for the exam. Other airmen paced me as I struggled with the run. We took care of each other. We were scared. We missed our family, so we became family. By the end, I didn’t want to leave. I was exhausted, but I didn’t mind. We had made it through together, and there was nothing sweeter on earth than that feeling.

Nothing since boot camp (except officer training) has made me anywhere near as tired as I am today, and those experiences can’t even compare. I’m saying: I am tired. My fantasies are of napping in a cool, dark room, in a warm bed, alone. That must be what most parents fantasize about. Because really, there is nothing like attachment parenting a child through his first year of life to teach you exactly what the word tired means. But the exhaustion? I don’t care. I am so proud of the hours I spent sitting up with this person, holding him, rocking him, singing, bouncing, kissing, loving him through the newness of living. Through teething, Through colds and flu bugs and learning to share with Sauly. Though it has not always been pretty here, I am so grateful to have lived it. There is nothing sweeter on earth than this feeling.

And the community! Even with all of the community we had before parenting, I still couldn’t have expected this. Friends I just trust and rely on. My mom coming through all the time to make dissertating while parenting possible. Friends and family who’ve held our hands through every new hurtle. Who’ve offered guidance. Or quietness. Or help. Or all of these things in exactly the right way. Kate at All Things Relative is not too far into her first year, and she’s been struggling with some postpartum depression. I read what she writes and I think: yes. And I think: you are a lovely and a powerful mama. And I think: you are doing great. You don’t know it yet, but you will. She’s still in the trenches (that’s war, so I’m mixing metaphors now, but cut me some slack: I haven’t slept a full night in a year!). The “my baby’s sick.” The “what if something happens?” The vigilance. The insecurity. The trying to have something leftover for your partner, or sometimes, just sometimes, even for yourself. The depth of love that most days, you don’t even know what to do with. The terror of loving somebody this much. The way it almost crushes your heart sometimes.

And though it’s so much deeper than the intimacy I shared with those women all those years back, the sense of having done this, together, with J is immense. We let go of the comforts. We let go of the indulgent pleasure of childless evenings. We jumped, together, holding hands. We put this little boy before all else because doing so was exactly right for all of us. I watched her become a pomo. I am her truest witness, and she is mine. I am fiercely proud of her, of us, not because we didn’t have a hard year, but because we did, and we’re here, and we’re in love. There’s nowhere near enough time for each other, but we are in love. We get tired, we get worried, we snap at each other, but we’re in love. Being her co-parent is the hardest and finest thing I’ve ever done. We got each other through this year day-by-day, hour-by-hour. On bad nights, minute-by-minute. No one will ever know the mama I am at 2am except her. She recognizes the subtle shift in my voice that means I need help. That I might not have it to give for just a moment. It’s a dance, and we’ll go on perfecting it, but it is the hardest and finest thing.

And now here we are. We are the parents of a one-year-old son. I am the mama of a one-year-old son. A son who took three steps from his Great Aunt Nancy to his Bubbie when I wasn’t even watching. When – after what has felt like a year of never looking away – I glanced down. A son who will go on being his own person, at once of me and not of me. A son who loves broccoli and eggs and chicken – his pomo’s boy – and curry and French lentil soup and oven fries – my kid. Who lights up for pomegranate seeds and animals, Oh Animals! A son with a hilariously goofy overbite, and his pomo’s big eyes, and his mama’s uncaged expressions. A little person who hates to sleep without one of us curled up next to him. Who knows how to hug and to smooch like nobody’s business. Who knows the word “dance,” and who wiggles and bounces every time he hears it. Who signs “more” when he wants anything, and is sheepish and quiet when we ask him to sign “please” instead (though just today, he finally did it!). A baby whose laugh holds all of the goodness. All of it. A little light in the world who is at turns vulnerable and tough and brave and clingy. Whose love for play is as aggressive as his love for our arms. For being in our arms.

All these years later, I still think of the women in my flight at boot camp. I’m not in touch with any of them, but that doesn’t matter. We met 4am together, day after day. We urged each other through one more mile, one more day, one more fear. We listened. I would not have made it through without them and – philosophical concerns about the military aside – the person I was then needed to make it through. Being a mama is eight trillion times greater than being in the military [and more important! and harder!], but there’s something of the pride and gratitude and camaraderie that I felt then in what I’m feeling now, one year in. There are lots and lots of people I couldn’t be the mom I am without, and I’m thinking of all of you now. And of my partner in all of this, and of how sure I am – despite all the bumps – that I chose very, very well. I’m thinking of our little girl, and of her almost-brother this year, whose lessons to me as a parent were how to let go. And I’m thinking of our little birthday boy. Our sugar-sweet son, whose joy is the only thing I ever need to believe my life here is meaningful.

Happy birthday, Bram.

Strong work, pomo.

And thanks to all of you for cheering us on through this sweet sweet sweet (hard) year of parenting.

.ten things for ten months.

My ten favorite things about ten months:

* Turning the corner on daytime naps and night-wakings. Hello again, sleep my old friend.

* Waving hello and goodbye. Heart melting.

* Watching Bram watch big kids in order to learn more about his world.

* Yoga for the almost walking set.

* Almost walking!

* The patience and desire to finish every last morsel of dinner.

* The desire to share dinner with the cats (where chicken is, of course, welcomed, but broccoli takes more convincing) ;-)

* Big unexpected bear hugs and snuggles. This kid has gotten so good at throwing his arms around your neck and nestling in. Again, heart melting.

* His ability to still seem like a little baby when his 23 pound self is nursing sweetly in my arms.

* His newly found desire to fall asleep in the car (see #1)

And a bonus eleventh thing: Getting to do all of this over again starting in only eight (or so) weeks!

And a few recent shots of his adorableness. The first is of B helping me to prepare a mother hubbard squash and the second is of B showing off his bookish side at the optometrist (there for me, not for B):

bram grows!

Having a new baby on the way makes me hyper aware of all the things I haven’t gotten to yet, like posting our monthly BRAM GROWS! photos to the blog. Since I haven’t done this since he was four-months-old (mama fail), here are months five through nine.

Five months:

Six months:

Seven months:

Eight months:

Nine months:

As is evident, B has become increasingly unwilling to just sit for photos. He is wiggly, squirmy, delighted, and ever-moving.

As of his nine-month well-baby visit, he is twenty-one-and-a-half pounds (the 77th percentile for boys; the 50th for boys his height) and thirty inches tall (the 95 percentile for boys), with an eighteen inch noggin.

He climbs the stairs now with no assistance (though his parents obsessively spot him), cruises everywhere, and takes great pleasure in letting go of whatever he’s holding on to, swaying for a moment, and falling. He also adores the feeling of the air filter fan blowing on his face, and of being faux-dropped from above my head. I fear he will like adrenaline as much as his sky-diving pomo.

He has loved BLW, and he eats three meals a day now, which consist largely of butternut squash, sweet potato, apples, bananas, carrots, avocados, red-skinned potatoes, grapes, pears, peas (which he’s not yet great at grasping), and (as of this morning) gluten-free oatmeal with applesauce.

His laugh recently changed: when he laughs now (which is often) he sounds like a kid and not an infant. It’s still the best sound in the world.

He and Hades are mad for one another. Bram always offers Hades food when H walks by while B’s eating, and the other night, when we had to snot-suck a very congested Bramble, Hades attacked me (bit me hard and tugged my arm away) because he thought I was hurting Bram. It melts me heart.

We’ve recently transitioned to a loose nap schedule (still baby-led, but these times seem to work) of 10am and 2pm, and a bedtime of around 7 (or that’s when the rituals start, at least). B still nurses A. LOT. in the night, which is worrisome since J hopes to exclusively nurse Sailor, but she’s doing lots of research, and I know we’ll find the right answer for our family. B starts out the night (when J first nurses him down) in a toddler mattress on the floor right next to our bed, but since he wakes up several times in the two or so hours we’re up after him, he’s usually in our bed by the time we’re solidly there. We hope to transition him more and more to his toddler mattress over the next couple of months, though we won’t co-sleep with Sailor at first because co-sleeping with newborns still makes us nervous. We plan to set the porta-crib back up, probably on my side of the bed, and see what happens.

B is UNDONE with delight every time he sees another baby, older or younger. He’s pretty much not afraid of anything, though the cows at the pumpkin patch scared him a bit, especially the one with the audacity to “moo” and stick out her tongue.

He is still every bit as earnest as he was in those early months. He’s also adventurous, brave, sweet, and snuggly. He’s just a wonder.

flu and better news

Our little boy has the stomach flu.

It started Sunday morning at 4am: throwing up, dazed, dry heaving, our first middle-of-the-night call to his nurse practitioner’s service. By morning, he had a fever, which hovered just below 102 for a little under twenty-four hours. He drank very little, so we worried about dehydration. During this time he wanted almost nothing except to be snugged up tight. He couldn’t sleep much at night, but napped a lot on us all day. When his fever broke at 4am on Monday, we thought we were out of the woods. Bram’s energy was low, but he seemed a little more himself. Then the diarrhea came. And wow: that stuff is hardcore. We were worried about dehydration – and even a little about Rotovirus, which we haven’t vaccinated for yet – but we took him to see Nan (our beloved NP) today, and he conveniently had diarrhea in the office so she could check it out. :) She reassured us that it’s not Rotovirus, that he’s doing great considering, and that we’ve been right to hold off of Tylenol since his fever was low grade. She said we’re doing all the right things, which made us feel really good (and for which we should thank Christina, our midwife throughout the pregnancy, the amazing woman who caught B [with me] and who is now a wonderful friend). She gave us lots of great advice and reassurance at the peak of our worries. Because man-oh-man is it terrifying to have a sick kid.

Since we’ve been swaddle-weaning this week anyway, it’s now been five night since we slept more than two hours at a time. The last two nights have mostly been one-hour stretches. We’re exhausted, but mostly we’re just grateful that B is on the mend. Nan thinks this will be of-the-past by Friday (which is when J’s dad arrives for a visit). I’ll be glad to have this behind us, though all these long snugs have been so sweet. It’s amazing to feel of comfort to him.

Now for some brighter news and photos:

Here’s B’s four-month photo. Curious boy is about to climb OFF of the glider. Gods help us once he’s mobile.

Earnest baby. I was just recalling this weekend that Ernest was in our name-pool for this boy. J and I met over Ernest Hemingway, so it seemed appropriate. We love the name, but aren’t crazy about the nickname Ernie. Anyway, it would at least have suited him.

I am not-yet good at wearing Bram on my back, but I’m working on it. I’m struggling because I want to carry him high, but I’m so short that my arms have a hard time making him a seat once he’s up there. Anyway, we’re getting it. I feels like a hurtle that we’re training for together. Like we have to trust each other a lot to get proficient.

Happy boy. Delighted pomo.

Curious boy. In-love mama.

Lords I love these expressions. I adore B’s smiles, but this face just makes me melt. He makes it a lot, usually just before a big, goofy grin.

This was taken at B’s first birthday party: his friend Thea (Dorothea) turned two! (Or, “too much” as she likes to say.) Clockwise, Anne, the aforementioned Christina, Bramble, and the birthday girl. We are so grateful to have this family in our lives, and to have been there to celebrate this righteously awesome little girl. [I desperately hope we did not infect them.]

Swaddlers, a Baby K’Tan, and our Moby. All put away now until we’re (Gods willing) blessed with another squish. It’s concomitantly sweet and sad for B to have outgrown these early, stretchy tools.

Finally, we rearranged our house in the three days before B’s flu. We needed more room for our growing boy (more soft floor space, more maneuverability). He was also outgrowing the portacrib in our room, but we were nowhere near ready to move him into his own room, so we had to dissemble and reassemble his big crib in our room. In fact, we want him closer, not further away, so while we were at it we took apart our bed frame and put the mattress and box springs squarely (or, you know, rectangley) on the floor. Now we can nap with him less fearfully, and we can bring him into the bed for family bed if/when we’re ready.***

This shift gave us a lot more space in B’s room for what we really do in there: read, rock, listen to music, play, and do baby yoga and massage). There are lots of floor mats and pillows in there now, and tons of blankets for floor time.

I thought I’d hate having our bed on the floor, but I’m finding so much pleasure in the feeling that our house is set up to accommodate the thing we most care about: family time. I love not feeling terrified of B falling from our high, high bed, and I love the closeness of knowing he’ll be rooming-in for a long while to come. I used to care more about aesthetics. Now I care about function. I think it’s a good house to start a life in, and that makes me so happy. [Also, in the aesthetics department, the blanket folded over at the end of our bed is a wedding blanket made for us by our dear friend Mick. It's got our date on it and everything. It used to be in the living room, but I'm thrilled to have it in our bedroom now.]

The newly arranged living room. A whole rug of play space. A handy stack of blankets.

*** Co-sleepers: any tips as we ease our way into this? Though we understand the research, we’re still nervous. One of my biggest goals as a mother is to put down my anxiety so that my kid doesn’t incorporate it into his own way of being, and I think I’ve done a pretty great job of this. This is one of the reasons we’ve avoided co-sleeping for this long: I don’t want to be afraid every night. I don’t think we’ll move towards all-night family bed because this week aside, B is a great sleeper and we don’t want to mess that up. What we’d like is to bring him into our bed after his first wake-up, though, and sleep together until we have to get up. The problem is, J and I haven’t managed so far to actually sleep. We kind of just watch him. Suggestions?

doors

I closed the door last night to the last classroom I’ll probably ever teach in at this university.

I’ve taught a class a semester here for four years. As I turned off the lights and pulled the door closed in an empty building (I collected essays until 9:15 last night, so I think I was the last instructor there), I reflected on what these past four years have meant to me. When I came to this town, I had only been studying literature for three years, and had only taught for one. I knew I wanted a transatlantic focus, and that postcolonial studies spoke to me, but I was intimidated – completely baffled, really – at the thought of making my own narrow way through such broad spaces. Everything felt new, on the brink. J and I were committed, but not yet engaged. We’d yet to grieve Charleston. To find this little cottage. To find our footing as partners. To meet our wonderful wonderful friends. To sit in silence – in a room full of our loved ones – promising to always uphold each other. To honeymoon in Boston. To be nearly run off a mountain for being gay in rural Ohio. To get pregnant. To lose E. To get pregnant again. To bring our son into the world. J didn’t have an MA or a passion for doula work. We didn’t know I had Graves’ Disease or Factor V Leiden. I’d yet to hear Jack Halberstam speak and feel the puzzle pieces of my scholarship click into place. We had no idea what terrible gardeners we’d become. I’d only just started learning to cook. We couldn’t fathom how deeply we’d love parenting.

When we first got the offer here, we weren’t sure we’d come. I also got a funded offer from SUNY Stony Brook, which houses a higher-ranked program. My mentors in Charleston felt strongly that SUNY’s was the offer to accept. But J and I had a hunch, an instinct, that this was the place for us. So I called the man who would become my dissertation director (though we didn’t know it at the time). Then we packed up everything we owned in a u-haul, put the cats in a carrier on the seat between us, and drove across the country towards a small city we’d never been to before.

Now here we are. I closed that door last night and began to face the prospects of a whole year with no teaching. The last year of a long road of formal education. I found out last week that in addition to the internal dissertation fellowship, I will also receive an AAUW (American Association of University Women) fellowship starting in June. For me, this is a big deal. This is a dream. The AAUW has been funding women in higher education since 1888. They’ve funded some pretty amazing women doing some pretty remarkable things. I’m blown away to be in that kind of company. Truly: aside from my ongoing struggles with medical anxieties and an autoimmune disorder – both of which I’m trying to cure – my life is pretty much perfect. I’ve been striving for so much for so long, and now I’m surrounded by the things I’ve wanted. And you know what? Now that those things are here, they’re even better than I’d imagined.

As I type this – green tea at my side and rain falling steadily from a gray sky outside – Bram is upstairs taking one of his very.few.ever crib naps. (I know I should be doing the laundry, babe. I’m sorry.) We got to spend lots of time this week with our dear C (Kippie), and having her here makes all three of us happier. She even brought us some of this year’s first crop of asparagus, and you know how I feel about that. My mom’s coming on Friday, and we’re planning a trip (B’s first time on the road!) to visit lots of J’s family this summer. It isn’t that things are easy. Really, they’re hard. My writing schedule for the next year is intense. I just finalized the plan last night, and I’ve got a lot of work ahead of me. We need to find in-home childcare we can trust for about eight hours a week, and that’s daunting. Being back at work is hard on J, and though I love doing it, being home alone with B for forty hours a week is tough. We’re both exhausted. But it’s an exhaustion born not of grief, nor of longing, but of doing what we’ve desperately wanted to do. It’s an exhaustion of life coming together.

Now a few photos of that life.

First, Bram and Ramona at three months. He’s not one of those constantly-smiling babies, but he’ll give you one if you earn it, and gods they’re worth the world:

B and his dearest friend. He loves that boy madly:

Bram in Aunt Kippie’s arms:

Sitting up for peace:

B now joins us for family dinners:

I hope this spring is treating all of you kindly. I’m as grateful as ever for this community.

 

two-month-happy

Bram still likes to be worn. A lot. And he is still the sweetest.

He also rocks it retro-style.

Here he is with the novel that inspired his name: Burger’s Daughter, Nadine Gordimer’s fictitious retelling of Bram Fischer’s life (or more accurately, the life of one of his daughters). This is the first novel I fell in love with in grad school and it’s a big part of my voice chapter. If Bram doesn’t grow up loving books, it won’t be for lack of access.

Bath time: a big big hit in our cottage. (Naked time in general is a hit; the water is just a bonus.)

Okay, so the boy isn’t in this photo – and I’m not even sure J knew I was taking it – but seriously, folks: my wife is gorgeous. I’m more in love now than ever. I can’t tell you how sexy it is to watch her grow into such an amazing parent to our son. She really blows me away.

We’ve finally started to adore floor time (a great triumph for my back). We also adore Mortimer the Moose.

Me (and Hades) after J’s first day back to work. Boy is two-person attachment parenting easier than one-person. Still, we are figuring it out. And we are so so happy, if tired.

B and I sending our best love and luck to mommy on her first day of doula training. We just know she’s going to be awesome at this new gig.

Though it was threatening at first, this has become one of my favorite-ever sights. I adore seeing my two loves connect so deeply.

Our boy at two months! He’s quickly gaining on Ramona. And he steals our hearts more each day.

leap day

It’s a lovely day here in our part of the Midwest: Cloudy but warm, in the 50s this afternoon. The light filtering in through the windows of our little cottage is tempting us out and into the day. It isn’t spring yet, but this air tells us spring’s coming. Things aren’t easy, but they’re getting there: J is feeling more peaceful, Bram is interacting more and more. He’s only had two long sleeps so far, but that’s a start. It’s a promise of more. He loves high contrast board books. He’ll sleep in the MamaRoo for twenty minutes or so twice a day, and it’s startling what you can do with twenty arms-free minutes. He can’t get enough of music – jazz, classical, folk – so we sing and dance our way through each day. He’ll be six weeks tomorrow, and in keeping with this “I heart rain, it makes the grass grow green” onesie, the boy is growing.

He must be nearing eleven pounds. He’s too long for nearly all of his zero-to-three month clothes, and for his newborn diapers. He still loves our sling carriers, but he’s spending more and more time awake and alert, his first attempts at play, which involve grabbing at or pushing away our hands, discovering his own dangling limbs, reaching for (but not clasping) rattles, and smiling when we bestow loud, loud smooches on his finally.healing cheeks. He’s busy learning about this world, a concentration you can see in his furrowed brow line.

I love how much of his life he shares with us, but I also adore watching him in his own, private world, the one we’ll never fully grasp. It’s not a lot, but he does have some autonomy. Before he came, I wondered how I’d gauge his consent: how would I know for sure if he wanted baby massage, or yoga, or kisses? But we don’t need language to read each other in these ways. And he doesn’t have to cry for me to know he doesn’t grant consent. I watch him, and I know. We ask for his permission to do things, and then we watch to see if we have it. Respecting him – both his needs and his boundaries – is a great pleasure to me. It might be one of the greatest of this whole journey. I don’t want to shelter my child from grief, or sadness, or even pain (it hurts him to digest, but I know that’s just part of it; it’s just hard to be a new person with new little organs and new, unpracticed flesh), but I pray with all of my might that he might always know respect, that he might always respect others.

I love co-parenting with J. She is a remarkable parent, and I believe we are doing well by this child. Second only to honoring my marriage, this is the strongest calling in my life, and meeting this calling is thrilling. I don’t always feel great at parenting, but I do always feel that I’m mothering him in a way that is consistent with my values, my beliefs, my intentions for my family. I believe that J and I are a great team. I listen to The Swell Season’s “In These Arms” * and believe that I was born to hold this baby, to guide him. It is more of a privilege than I can describe. When he’s grown, someday, I hope he’ll read this and think these words have been born out. If he does, I’ll believe I’ve used this life well.

* Thank you, MJB. You and your music bring us much light.

Bram Grows! (and other nearly.five.weeks business)

• We are so thankful for your suggestions about Bram’s allergies. Not only have we put some of them into practice, they’ve helped us feel less alone. This last bit cannot be overstated, as this early work of parenting can be isolating. So, thanks. Our nurse practitioner wants J to wait on the elimination diet to give the dairy-free diet a bit more time to work. And in fact, it may be starting to help. Bram’s rash is still really bad (it’s spread to his neck, shoulders, and chest), but it’s gotten quite dry and looks less inflamed. We pray this means it’s starting to heal. He still won’t let us put him down except at night, he’s still spitting up in great volume, and he’s still upset a lot of the time, but it feels like we’re making slow strides. Some of that sense may just be us accepting how difficult these next weeks/months will be, and that’s okay too. It’s of great comfort to know that these particular struggles won’t last. I’ve begun to think of each crying jag and each long night like I thought of each week of pregnancy or each contraction: one less we have to get through and that much closer to an easier time. (To spring, which has never sounded so glorious.)

• We also learned that Bram still has jaundice. His bili levels aren’t dangerous, exactly, but there’s some concern that since it now looks like breastfeeding-induced jaundice, it may be very, very slow in abating. The quick way to fix this, we’re told, is twenty-four hours without breastmilk (i.e. on formula), but we’re not big fans of this approach, nor is our nurse practitioner. The plan now is to check his bilirubin again at six weeks and discuss options then. Anyone have experience with this?

• In other news, B (and by proxy we) slept for an (unprecedented) CONSECUTIVE 4 hours and 40 minutes last night. I wish we could have videotaped the look of shock on our faces when we saw 4:40am on the clock. I had enough energy for a dance of joy with our son (not something I ever thought I’d do at 4:40am), and I caught a glimmer of what life will be like when we’re sleeping again. Oh, sweetness.

• It’s Ash Wednesday today, and though we’re not Christian (and we’re certainly not Catholic), we practice a kind of secular Lent. I’m sure this annoys people for whom this is a religious practice, but they have plenty of beliefs that more than annoy me (birth control. gay marriage. the whole animals.don’t.have.souls business), so I’m okay with that. I do it because it’s the easiest time of year to give things up. If you’re in a restaurant, for example, and you say you need something taken off of a dish because you’ve given it up, it’s easiest to say it’s for Lent. I also enjoy the community of knowing that so many others are going without things too. This year was a little tricky because with the elimination diet looming, giving up any of the few foods we can eat (since I cook for us and don’t have time to cook two meals, I’m giving up whatever J gives up) seems cruel. So we decided as a couple to create some mindfulness practices instead. Here they are: The first is resentments. We both feel like we’ve been nursing some resentments lately, and those aren’t healthy for anyone. I mean, we barely have time to brush our teeth; there’s certainly no space for dwelling on hurt feelings. So when we find ourselves doing that (either in our heads or with each other), we’ve committed to moving on. It’s happened a couple of times today, and I’ve found it pretty easy to avert my attention. I mean, there are plenty of thoughts more deserving of my time. The second is bickering. When you’re barely sleeping, bickering is an easy habit to fall into. Not fighting, just being short with one another. Being petty. Being critical. So the same rules go: for the next forty days, if we notice we’re doing it, we just move on. No snide comment we’re inspired to make at 2am is worth saying. The third is internet time. When you have a baby who won’t sleep anywhere except your chest from 9am to midnight, you bond with the internet. And when it come to watching How I Met Your Mother on Netflix Instant (we can’t handle the seriousness of our usual style of television when we’re up at night, so we’ve settled on the lightness that is HIMYM), or writing blog posts, or keeping up with friends on Facebook, that’s okay. But the bleary-eyed hours we spend just surfing? Those seem like a waste. So we’ve both committed to five-minute checks. When we’re stuck sitting still until the boy wakes up, there are better ways to pass the time. For example, I can read for my dissertation or for the class I’m teaching, and J can read the texts she has to finish before she starts doula training next month. Has she told you about doula training? Oooh, you should get her to share! It’s exciting news. Anyway, we’re hoping that forty days into these practices they’ll have become habits. Because, really, who ever has time for nursing resentments, bickering, or pointless internet surfing? Especially when there’s a Bramble Bunny there who needs baby massage, and baby yoga, and songs, and snugs, and high-contrast books, and walks, and lots and lots of smooches all the time!

• In work news, my union (how blessed am I to be at a university with a teaching assistant’s union?) is bargaining, and I feel badly for not being there (rallies. negotiations.) in solidarity. I haven’t been involved enough since we started TTC in 2010, and right now the only rally cry heard around these parts is: “What do we want? Milk! When do we want it? Now!” But I look forward to B being big enough for marches and rallies soon. I hope we keep our revolutionary spirits. I hope Bram is the son of activists, and not the son of former activists. I hope he makes us even more committed to social justice.

• Finally, here’s Abram Adrien at one month – February 19th – which was the one-year anniversary of the small memorial we held for Emmett Ever. We got the idea to take a photograph of B (next to a teddy bear) on all of his month-iversaries from a fellow blogger. We’ll photograph Bram growing on the glider my mom got us, and next to Ramona, the sweet sweet Vermont teddy bear J’s mom sent along (in keeping with one of her family’s traditions).  That look of curious surprise has become a standard on B’s face. Gods, how I love this child. I feel like I’ve known him all my life.