Faves

Bee's favorite things to do right now:
go to the pool
dig in sand, dirt, and gravel
drink watered-down juice
climb... also, climb
watch trucks haul, scoop, or convey stuff
hang from bars, pull-up style*
interact with big kids
talk energetically about this one time when we saw a parks crew
   employee get lifted up into a tree by a cherrypicker

*She doesn't have a ton of opportunities to do this, but she makes the most out of playground equipment and drawer handles.

Ne plus ultra

I've done some calculations with the available data, and I’m pretty sure Ben is the Cadillac, as they say, of husbands. Forgive my boast, but as far I can tell (and I’ve been watching him closely for close to a decade), this guy is the Sistine Chapel, Beethoven’s Fifth, the Hope diamond, and that ancient sequoia in California that they call the General. He asks for so little, gives a lot, works crazy hard, and shows his love for Bee and me in a thousand ways.

Lest you believe I’m purposely shorting you, Dear Reader, on the real details of what makes my fella so special: it suffices to say that the man is honorable, compassionate, and brilliant; in fact, he is the most honorable, compassionate, and brilliant person I know. Because Ben is who he is, I endeavor to be a better me. There! Now you know some things about my guy, and about me, too.

Anyhow, Ben's sensational enough that I’m occasionally inclined to wonder what keeps him around, to tell you the truth. It’s certainly not my financial prospects, my housekeeping, or my hearty good health. Because… it just isn’t. Oh, wait, it has to be my rainbowy disposition every morning! Except that I’m a colossal bitch before having my coffee. (Welcome to EVERY MORNING FOR THE REST OF YOUR LIFE, sweet husband. I'm sorry!)

So, to summarize, I’m both messy and grumpy, I accidentally break stuff all the time, I lose things (including, on one infamous occasion, an expensive thing), I get sick a lot, I spend our money on yarn while he hesitates even to buy shoes for himself, and, if I may exaggerate slightly, I owe a million dollars on student loans. Also, I’m pretty lazy.

So, see what I mean? Don’t get me wrong, I’m told I have my splendid qualities, but, really, I can take me or leave me. But Ben – there’s a personage I can really get behind!

Bee, of course, loves both of us devotedly. But she, like her mom, appears to worship the ground Ben walks on. It is sweet, Dear Reader, to witness! She grins open-mouthedly and ear-to-ear when Ben gets home from work, gazes at him with pure delight, and chatters with her papa in a joyous language only the two of them comprehend. And have I mentioned that Bee has spoken her first word*? Although I've been joking (because I am hilarious) that she is actually referring to her favorite nihilistic art movement, it has become very, very clear that when Bee says “Dada,” she means Ben. And as one of the people who have taken care of this baby since she came into the world, I’m amazed and fascinated by the creature’s ability to produce an actual word, with, you know, an actual meaning that she understands and intends. Not baby babble (although she does lots of that, of course), but a word: a verbal and conceptual representation of a thing (and in this case, a person).** She labors so hard to get all the parts of that little pink mouth into the right position to create the sounds. To hear her produce the word “dada” as she looked into her dad’s eyes (once in particular, last week – the first time I was convinced of the true word-ness of her first word) was, Reader, one of my most breathtaking parenting experiences so far – a zenith.

* It's on the early side, but we're convinced. Doubt if you must.
** Speaking of language and semiotics, we have been using a few signs with Bee since around six months, but it's not clear whether she's picking up on them. She might recognize some of the signs, but hasn't used them herself, as far as we've noticed.

The expanding universe

After a long Minnesota winter, our rivers have begun to run again, and the ice atop our ten thousand frozen lakes has long since fractured and softened and vanished. The sun even glows warmly most days, although we’ve had, I’m afraid, a rainy June, including a number of truly impressive Midwestern thunderstorms (I missed those something awful when I lived in Seattle, an otherwise perfect city where all you get is a bit of sad drizzle). But we’ve had enough warm, dry, glowy days to buoy our spirits, justify flip-flops, and coax out the zucchini plants. So, mustn't grumble!

Bee is getting bigger and merrier by the week. As spring evolves, at long last, into summer, and our number of daylight hours per twenty-four climbs upwards of thirteen (yes, we definitely keep count), our little enthusiast welcomes her expanding world with evident glee. Our surroundings are new and improved! Now with sunshine! And HEYIWANTTHATTHINGYOUHAVEINYOURHAND,
CANIPUTITINMYMOUTH?

Now that she knows there’s more to this plane of existence than our happy little house, Bee loves to be outside, and I sure as hell can’t blame her; born to a prairie family at the head end of a long, bitter winter, my little girl didn’t get out much for the first half of her life. So now, when she and I go out on walks, or to run little errands, she gets to, you know, see new stuff. There’s more to this world, she begins to realize, than mommy and daddy and the turtle quilt and NPR and her wooden abacus and this thing. There’s so much more. The barista’s auburn beard and a bag of red lentils hold Bee in the same state of fascination as birds on branches and teenagers on ten-speeds; dogs and toddlers and mail trucks are amazing, as is the cool, breezy, and verdant arboretum, rambles through which (with aid from the Björn, of course) keep our girl fairly spellbound.

My world grows vaster, too. Parenting a newborn (which is no longer what we’re doing, thank Jesus!) is utterly absorbing and exhausting, requiring a both a crash course and a sort of laser-like focus on one’s subject matter: for the first several months, we exclusively changed diapers, fed, scrubbed, cuddled, and tried to induce sleep (and also tried to get Bee to stop constantly flipping out). Now that our girl is a little bigger, older, and more able to interact with us and others, Ben and I have expanded, joyously, the scope of our activities and our attention. I mean, everything we do is Bee-oriented, of course, absolutely, but we can do more with her now – take her more places and interact with her in more apparent (and often more fun) ways. She entertains us, and we [try to] entertain her. As she grows, so grow our many ways of teaching her, communicating with her, and enjoying her company. Having a slightly older baby is “absorbing and exhausting” too, but at least there’s a little more variety.

And it would take a year’s worth of overwrought blog posts to even scratch the surface, dear Reader, of the subject of my always-broadening understanding of myself as a mother. For now I’ll only admit that which will surprise no parent: namely, that the PURE CHAOS of parenting a baby casts my own foibles and strengths in an entirely new light – sometimes flattering, and sometimes not. Of course, I’ve no notion of using my expanding awareness of Self to improve my character in any fashion; with my kid’s outrageous sleep habits, there’s not enough coffee on the continent to prepare me for that kind of reflection-based self-improvement. Sorry, self.

Another opportunity to use my "time travel" tag

I'm no theoretical physicist, but, being a little obsessed with phenomena of time*, I love this news story from NPR. LOVE!

* This study isn't about time travel, but it does throw me a bone.

Nocturne

These days, Ben and I take turns sleeping. Here are some things I do to stay awake at night when it's my turn to spend some quality time with our girl:

1. Play this brilliant game,


2. listen to Music Through the Night,


3. look at Facebook and wrestle with important decisions like whether I should edit my "political views" info -- from left to far left,


4. eat leftover Halloween candy (namely, Jolly Ranchers),


5. blog (if I can reach the laptop),


6. admire my perfectly sweet little girl,


7. read novels by Jack Finney, and


8. stream Netflix (recently: season 2 of Futurama, season 3 of Eureka, some recent SNL episodes, 84 Charing Cross Road (wonderful!), and a handful of Dolly Parton movies (I love Dolly!). Catching up on years of television and movies is one [dubious] bonus to breastfeeding for fifteen hours a day.

I bet the Germans havean actual word for it

Our healthy daughter, a dark-haired, wide-eyed creature, was born seven weeks ago. She's seven weeks old, seven weeks tall, seven weeks fat*! Already this girl, our daughter, is different than when we brought her home: not just bigger, but more... person-y! She recognizes us, she turns her heavy little head in the direction of interesting things, and she states--as it were--preferences. (Preferred: cuddling, opera music; strongly not preferred: scratchy woolen hats**).

My month and a half-long hiatus from blogging is not just a consequence of the intense craziness resultant of caring for a newborn (although having a newborn is RIDICULOUSLY CRAZY AND BASICALLY IMPOSSIBLE TO HANDLE NO MATTER WHO YOU ARE); the lull, to tell you the truth, has more to do with the Too Much-ness of it all. The intensity of the experience of childbirth -- it's Too Much, too momentous, to put into words. The special closeness between Ben and me as we meet our girl and get to know her, and as we work out how to best love and take of her together -- it's Too Much, too enormous, too special, too ours to translate. And especially the love I feel for this little girl, that in particular is Too Much to explain. For now, at least. Maybe coming up with descriptions and explanations will seem less impossible when I start getting more than two and a half hours of sleep a night. Maybe not, though, you know?

Intimidated by the thought that I had write about things I knew I couldn't properly put into English (who exactly do I think is reading this blog, my expository writing prof from sophomore year of college?!), I took a guilty break from blogging. Now that my explanation of the Too Much-ness is out of the way, though, I admit to feeling rather liberated, and I think that I'll enjoy posting regularly again--an activity I think may be viable during my eleven hours a day of sitting in a chair and breastfeeding. I'm sure my six readers and assorted anonymous lurkers (who I'm pretty sure arrive here after Googling "vegan potpie recipe") will be relieved to hear this.

To conclude this post, I'll just point out that our daughter has ten happy little toes (see photo evidence above). Same with fingers.

* She was on the small side at birth, under seven pounds, but has since gained half a pound a week, which apparently is a lot. At last week's check-up, the pediatrician took one look at our girl and said, "Well, she's certainly not failing to thrive!" -- a weirdly-phrased pronouncement in which Ben and I have decided to take cautious pride.
** Below: Bad hat!!!!! Photo snapped one second before the three-day-old baby completely lost it. As soon as I snatched the hat off of her head in maternal terror, she regained her composure and the angelic expression to which we have already grown accustomed.

Introducing... the most amazing thing that has ever happened to us.

Not itsy-bitsy

Today I finally spent an afternoon at our town's amazing outdoor swimming pool. I loved it! The water was gloriously cool, and there were plenty of lounge chairs, and they have a climbing wall... when you fall off, you fall into the pool! There were about a billion kids loving the heck out of that climbing wall.

Mostly, I floated. I had read that being in the water is nice for pregnant ladies because, during the heavenly half hour or whatever you spend in the pool, you feel relatively weightless. I'd been going about feeling very weighted indeed, so that was a nice sensation. I floated and floated, when I wasn't being smacked by the flailing limbs of local children (I'm used to the flailing limbs of our unborn daughter, but that's a different sensation). As I floated, buoyant in spirit and body, I imagined our baby, floating in her little space as I floated in the pool. We both wiggled, suspended, and I wondered if her floating-within-floating felt any different to her, or if floating, at some point, is just floating. If you're already floating, can you be any more floating?

I haven't posted many belly photos here, and above is one that might make you glad I've spared you until now. I figure since this swimsuit is basically a pair of loose shorts & a modest tank top, I can feel free to post pictures ALL OVER THE INTERNET! Don't worry, in public it covers my belly. But that makes for a boring photo.

Tripping through whatever kind of flower this is

I've never seen so many flowers in all my life! Our Minneapolis neighborhood is covered in them this spring and [early] summer! I really don't think its just the wide-eyed wonderment speaking, either; there really are more flowers than you can shake a garden hose at.

To satisfy my desire to document this amazing display, I'm making ink out of flower petals this week. I've been wanting to photograph (done!) and illustrate some of this fabulous flora for a while now, and painting them with petal-ink is the sweetest way I can think of to allow content to inspire form. The only problem so far is that it's virtually impossible to make green ink from green plant materials, although it is very easy to make smelly, unusable, yellow-brown ink from green plant materials.

Undocumentable.

I'm nineteen weeks pregnant now, and these months are slipping by with slightly alarming speed. I know time might seem to slow down toward the end of these nine months, as things get, you know, BIGGER and MORE UNCOMFORTABLE, but right now I feel a sort of desperate guilt about not documenting these months more closely -- in, I don't know, some sort of [private, non-blog] journal or something. I wish I could slow down time in order to appreciate more fully this special period of time that is destined to come to such a complete and definite conclusion in November.

I suppose I could at least be documenting this time a little more devotedly. I'm already forgetting some of the details of things that happened at the beginning of this pregnancy, and maybe it's not important to remember exactly what happened the morning I got up in the middle of the night because I was so excited about peeing on the pregnancy test stick -- but maybe it is important, somehow -- that's the feeling that badgers me a bit. It's crazy... this nagging feeling that something utterly irretrievable will be lost if I don't remember exactly what time I got up that morning or precisely what we said to our friends when we finally shared the news.

But it's been hard for me to find words, or to feel the necessary drive to do the work of writing things down, except in a cursory and public* manner, with everything else that's going on in our lives this summer. And anyway, I so often find myself thinking, what can I possibly say about this experience? Not only because I surely can say nothing that hasn't been voiced by a billion pregnant ladies before me, but because, if you'll pardon the wide-eyed wonder, I am frequently, these days, left speechless by the beauty and marvel of it all. Perhaps I should at least be keeping copies of my letters to friends, à la Clarissa Harlowe, but I've not taken the time to do so. It may turn out that this silly blog, and some illustrations** I've done this summer, will have to be documents enough.

* Theoretically public, if anyone were to actually read this blog.
** The uterus, above, isn't really one of them. It's just a little thingy I cut out of black paper and thought was cute.