8 weeks

I composed "Thanksgiving Parts 5-7" in my head this morning after Amelia's 3:30 am feeding, but since I still had 23 papers to grade I did not let myself write it when I got up. As of 4:30 this afternoon, though, I am down to 17! Grading 6 papers on a day I am home alone with the small one is no small feat, if I do say so myself. AND I washed a load of diapers!

We've come a long way in 8 weeks...

Happy Thanksgiving! (Part 4)

Writing these posts has made me much more aware of the many things I am thankful for, so for today I thought I'd just list some randomly:

--Yoga! I just went to my first post-pregnancy yoga class. It made me very aware of my new/old body. For a brief moment, I actually missed my belly! I guess I really missed Amelia being with me all the time. She was much quieter back then. Anyway--I love yoga. It was great to be in a real yoga class again.

--I am thankful for our nice, soft bed, especially when it has clean sheets. And the fact that we get to sleep in it for so many uninterrupted hours.

--I am thankful for the Benetint crushed rose blossom potion that works as both lipstick and blush. Beautiful, smells like magic roses, a real time saver too.

--I am thankful for the way that Dean and now Amelia fill my life with music. I think have sung and danced more in the last seven weeks than I have in the rest of my whole life (and I was in the chorus for most of elementary and middle school, plus I took a lot of dance lessons).

-- I am thankful for the family that is on their way to see us, and the family that visited us last week, and the family we won't see at Thanksgiving but will see soon.

--I am thankful for the Maya Wrap. Amelia is stirring in it, so I have to go... Here's wishing everyone a day of laughter, peace and gratitude.

Thankfulness, Part 3

During spring semester of my sophomore year of college, I realized that Dean was in not one but two of my classes. I got a crush on his quiet, handsome self very quickly. I daydreamed about his intense eyes and very long hair. Soon, I got him to let me borrow his notes. (It was difficult because he said no one could read his messy handwriting, but I prevailed.) Later I followed him down the stairs of Greenlaw Hall and asked him to have lunch with me. We had pizza on a very rainy Monday. We shared an umbrella as we walked back to his apartment after lunch to study for our Spanish quiz. (Yes...study...)

Later Dean went to live in Spain for a year and we sent each other a lot of emails. I fell in love with his writing. He writes like Hemingway.

Dean and I have lived in four different places together. Together we have packed 4 moving vans, unpacked hundreds of boxes, adopted a cat, driven halfway across the country, climbed a variety of mountains, made a 5-hour trip twice in one day due to forgetting something very, very important, learned to make homemade pasta, swore we would never make homemade pasta again, paid off a college loan, obtained and left several jobs, survived terrible flus and one case of hives, watched all six seasons of The Sopranos in one summer, and cooked approximately 1,835 dinners. Oh, yeah--and we made Amelia. Our greatest accomplishment so far.

Dean makes me laugh, even when when I am grouchy and overwhelmed. Dean explains to Amelia the science behind yawning and makes up entertaining variations to "This Little Piggy." He has stayed home with Amelia while I have gone out to get a massage AND a pedicure. He has modified his work schedule while trying to accomplish the same amount of work so that I can go back to my own job. Dean is usually the one who remember to wash the diapers, and he is the Master of Swaddling. He is truly a partner in this parenting gig.

I am immensely grateful that he is my partner, husband, best friend, and one true love.

A Week of Thankfulness, Part 2

I missed yesterday, so I need to do two today!

What I wanted to write yesterday was that I am thankful for my job. This is not only because going back to work has made me feel much more like myself again, giving me the chance to wear real clothes and think my own thoughts during the drive to work, but also because I actually really like what I do! We found out during Dean's stint at the law firm how important it is to love or at least like the job you go to every day (or in my case, 2 days a week). I really enjoy my students. I even like their newly-discovered intellectual indignation, pretty common to freshmen around this time of year, about grades and "institutional education." ("We want to learn for learning's sake, but the system won't let us!!!") I also like teaching writing, even freshman composition. It's fun and challenging to improve my lessons every semester.

Also, even though Dean and I wish we were closer to our families, in this economy we know we are lucky to have any job, especially jobs that allows us such flexibiilty to spend time with Amelia.

As a footnote to this, and a tangent to the real clothes I mentioned above, I am also thankful for my boots, which I bought last year. (Mine are green. They were on sale.) These are the best shoes ever. They feel lighter than flip flops but they keep my feet super warm. They are great for walking across campus in the rain.

Anyway, speaking of jobs, I need to grade some papers. If the day allows, I will post again later.

Also...

I am joining MPJ's "Just for Today" challenge. Every time I nurse, I think I could be reading a poem, either to myself or aloud to myself and little A. More on this subject soon.

A Week of Thankfulness

In honor of Thanksgiving and of my 31st birthday on Wednesday, I thought it would be nice to try to write each day a bit on thankfulness. During my hardest moments over the past 7 weeks--and 10 and a half months, for that matter--it has helped me to stop and list a few things I am thankful for. This has gotten me through more than one teary moment in the middle of the night when I thought I could not possibly wake up and feed you-know-who. Just considering for even a second how thankful I am to have the healthy, lovely Amelia here with us now made the sleeplessness and exhaustion suddenly bearable, even not so bad.

(Note that I am referring to sleeplessness in the past tense. Amelia has been sleeping in 6+ hour stretches for the past several nights, waking once to eat, and sleeping some more. This is because we began swaddling her again. Or, rather, Dean began swaddling her--he is the master of swaddling. It's wonderful. It also considerably cuts down the amount of grunting and writhing Amelia does while she sleeps. Of course I know her sleep habits will change and change again, but I am reveling in this while it lasts.)

So to begin, I am so very thankful for Amelia. I love her. She is a cuddly, squirmy, fascinating little person. After she eats, she throws back her head and cradles it one arm like some little diva tossing her hair back because she knows the paparazzi is watching. She makes baby farm animal noises in her sleep. When she wakes up, after her initial adorable grouchiness, she smiles at whoever is there, and she loves to rest in her pack and play and watch her black and white mobile spin around. She coos at it.

She is the very picture of good health, too, which I am extremely thankful for. She is already quite chubby.

Yea, Amelia! My life, though admittedly more complicated and less my own, is infinitely more interesting and more wonderful now that you are here.

Two Review

Here is the announcement about the poetry contest I won second place in.

Bed, Bath and Baby

Little Star

Six weeks old!

Amelia is definitely smiling at us from time to time, and she is trying hard to get her thumb in her mouth.



I have a new haircut, and we got a Moby Wrap.

In other news, I accidentally just Ferberized Amelia. I didn't mean too; it's just that she cried for over an hour and clearly needed to sleep. I fed her, rocked, sang, swaddled, walked, and started over from square one. So I put her in her Pack & Play just to take a break. The crying continued, then suddenly stopped. She is still asleep. Ahh, silence.

Luck and Love

Soon after Dean and I started dating, he invited me over to his aunt Linda's house for dinner. I remember walking in to smiles, hugs, and room after room of beautiful, colorful art of all kinds: paintings, blankets, pottery, sculpture. Linda and Dean's uncle Harry had The Pizza Tapes playing, and we sipped wine, talked and laughed as Harry made dinner. Later on, I went to see Dean at his parents' house over winter break. Here was another house filled with incredible art, fascinating conversation, great music and great food. During both visits, I remember thinking how happy I would be if my life were filled with as much art and music, beauty and joy.

Little did I know how lucky I would be...

I was remembering these things this morning because Luli and her sister Linda, as well as numerous other women in the NC Triad area, have a Whimsical Women show coming up this weekend, and they've been featured the blog Triad Smarty Pants! Check it out. And if you're in the area, go to the show! You'll be sure to find a little taste of what I felt on those first two visits with Dean's family.

Cat, Mouse, Milk

I am writing this blog entry at my upstairs desk, at which I haven't sat for months and months. This special occasion is due to the fact that Suki finally caught the mouse that has been lurking under our sink. I opened the cabinet doors when I noticed her crouching there, and a few minutes later, I heard a crash, and looked up to see Suki run by with the mouse in her mouth. But she can't just kill it. No. She is carrying it all around, dropping it, letting it run away a little bit, and re-catching it. It's injured, so it can't get far. It's a horrifying scene. Plus now I feel the downstairs is going to have to be mopped with Clorox.

Suki's catching of the mouse interrupted Amelia's nap in her Pack and Play, which provided free and quiet time I was using to actually write poems. !!! This is big news. I haven't sat down to write since a couple of weeks before Amelia was born. It was great. I revisited some stuff I was working on through the spring and summer to find that some of it has potential! And I started something brand new, which is very energizing.

In the meantime I thought I would write here since it's been awhile since I've said anything of substance on the blog. Two words: time and tired. Not only is it hard to find the time to sit down and write, when I do have a few minutes during naptime or when Dean is home and caring for Amelia, I feel so brain dead I can't put together a coherent sentence.

So, here's going on with us. Amelia is much less fussy during the day than she was for a week or so. We are waiting excitedly for her to really, truly smile at us. Dean's thinks she smiled for real yesterday morning but it's hard to know for sure. I am trying to play with her during the day, but she seems to be sleeping more for the last couple of days. She is still sleeping pretty well at night, going for 3 or 4 or stretches most of the time. Tuesday night, she slept for about 6 hours, but that stretch was tragically wasted due to me waking up once with a horrible stomach ache and then later with a milk overflow situation. I don't feel I am using the word "tragically" hyperbolically, either.

Anyway, speaking of breastmilk, I have been trying to pump some milk since I am going back to teach on Tuesday, believe it or not, and I will leave milk so Dean can feed Amelia while I am gone. It's a bit difficult to know when and how much to pump. Last might I did it right before Amelia woke up hungry after a nap. I fed her a little, but we had to wait for Dean to come home to give her the bottle I just pumped. (I read I am not supposed to give her a bottle since she already associates me with an alternate method of obtaining her food.) Amelia seems to take the bottle fine, so I am not worried about her eating while I am gone, but I am a little worried about myself, not being able to feed her or to pump for almost 5 hours while I travel to school, teach and come home. There are only 15 minutes between my classes, which is probably enough time to pump, but there is no where to go to do it. My office is in another building, plus I share it with three other people. I guess I can lock myself in a bathroom stall during the break, but that is going to be noticeable to the many other women who use the bathroom at that time. Maybe there is a quieter, less-used restroom on the upper floor of the building. We'll see.

I've also had a couple of adventures in breastfeeding in public. Once was right before Dean went back to work. We took some sandwiches to the park to eat. There were some young boys, maybe 7-9 years old, playing there, running all around with plastic guns. After Dean and I finished eating, Amelia was hungry, so I fed her. Everything was covered by both a scarf and my windbreaker, but I suddenly noticed the boys had become very interested in the park bench next to ours. I looked directly over at them to show them I was on to their spy tactics. It was strange to have an audience.

The second time I tried to feed Amelia in public was in my doctor's office's very crowded waiting area. I was holding the scarf all wrong and got flustered by the silence in the room, a silence that was being broken only by Amelia's cries and grunts as she tried to latch on. I am pretty sure my breasts were on display for everyone there. Finally Marla, Dr. Footer's wife/receptionist/nurse, said I could go back to this big soft chair in one of the exam rooms "where I might be more comfortable." So I did.

It's funny; breastfeeding is totally natural and I had imagined myself being cool and composed when Amelia needed to eat while we were out, but I got pretty flustered on both of these occasions. The third time I fed her in public, though, I did a better job. This was last weekend at Dean's office mate's wedding. It helped to have another mother breastfeeding at the next table. Also, I got the hang of the scarf.

Parenthetically, Amelia's first wedding happened to be a same-sex wedding. DC will recognize gay marriages from other states, so Dean's office mate and her partner went to Connecticut to be officially married, then had their ceremony here a few days later. It was very beautiful. Everyone was so happy for the couple, and their families gave extremely touching toasts that showed how supportive they were.

And, it was really fun for Dean and I to be out in public. We enjoyed talking to Dean's co-workers and the other guests and showing off the baby. Dean's office mate had knitted Amelia a little bear outfit, which she was wearing, so Amelia was a great conversation piece. And of course everyone thought she was beautiful.

In the meantime, I just took a break to change and feed the awake Amelia. We tried to go downstairs, but found that the mouse is still alive. I am typing with one hand while A finishes lunch. When she finishes, we might have to brave the wind and rain to escape the carnage.

5 Weeks and 2 Days

From my rarely-checked email inbox yesterday...

Dear Kimberly,

Congratulations!

Judge Sholeh Wolpé has selected your poem "On Rereading Leaves of Grass" for 2nd Prize in the 2009 Two Review Poetry Contest.

We would like to publish your poem in the upcoming 2010 issue of Two Review. You will receive two copies of the journal, and in addition, a check for $50 from Cold Press Publishing when the issue is released. Please send us the poem in MS Word format when it's convenient for you.

Thank you so much for participating in this year's contest!

Sincerely,

Jeremy

Poetry Wednesday

This is the poem "Otherwise" by Jane Kenyon:

I got out of bed
on two strong legs.
It might have been
otherwise. I ate
cereal, sweet
milk, ripe, flawless
peach. It might
have been otherwise.
I took the dog uphill
to the birch wood.
All morning I did
the work I love.

At noon I lay down
with my mate. It might
have been otherwise.
We ate dinner together
at a table with silver
candlesticks. It might
have been otherwise.
I slept in a bed
in a room with paintings
on the walls, and
planned another day
just like this day.
But one day, I know,
it will be otherwise.

Jane Kenyon was one of the first poets I read when I started to like poetry. Her poems are often simple and memorable. She died of cancer, and this poem, I think, speaks to her battle with her disease, but it is also bigger than that.

I've always liked this poem, yet I've always been a bit perplexed by its simplicity. Today, though, as I nursed, sang to, and rocked Amelia, as I changed her diaper and nursed, sang and rocked again, I had its refrain in my head. I felt like I came to a new understanding of the poem.

These days of babytending are bittersweet: difficult, perplexing, but also filled with odd moments of surprise, delight, and joy. The time since Amelia was born has had the odd quality of seeming to pass both very slowly and incredible quickly. She will be one month old tomorrow. One day it will be otherwise.

Question.

Or, Questionair returns to its roots.

For all you other mommies out there: how much did your new babies cry? (I am starting to feel like Amelia cries all the time!!! This is an exageration, of course, but she does cry a lot. I am starting to wonder what is normal.)

You can post your answer in the comments box... thank you!

"Good times, bad times...

you know we've had our sha-ar-re..."

These lyrics have been in my head recently. (Is the real song in first person singular? Hmm.) Anyway, these lines describe our last few weeks very well. A few weeks before Amelia was born, I was talking to my friend Corrie on the phone, telling her about my mood swings: sometimes I was very happy, sometimes in bleak despair. She said she thought maybe that was what having kids was like in general, some really good times, some really bad ones. Based on four weeks with Amelia, I'd say that sounds about right. Sometimes I am incredibly delighted by her; other times, such as when she has been screaming for an hour, I look at her and think, "What have we done?"I guess this is normal. In general, it's a good spiritual lesson for me about living in the moment, enjoying the good times and breathing though the bad times.

I've always been a worrier, and recently I've been remembering something I used to do when I was a little girl. I would create a mental checklist of all the different categories of my life: school, home, friends. I would think through all of the recent events in these categories and consider whether they were all problem-free. If they were, I could relax and be happy. If they weren't, I would worry until whatever wasn't "perfect" was fixed. For example, one Christmas vacation--I think it was in third grade--I had an overdue library book. Actually the librarian said it was overdue; I thought I had turned it in. So I thought maybe it was lost. I hemmed and hawed in my mind about the book all of Christmas break. Even as I opened presents, the book was in the back of my mind. When I went back to school, the book had turned up. So all the worry was for naught.

Obviously there is a lesson here. I am getting a little better about saying, this too shall pass, as opposed to being constantly worried about the next crying fit or how much Amelia will sleep during the coming night. Currently Amelia is sleeping in the carrier and Suki is on my lap. I'll see how far I can use this quiet time to write about our last couple of weeks!

So yesterday, Amelia began wearing her cloth diapers:



We thought they were too big but Dean decided just to put one on her and they actually fit pretty well! She seems to like them. They are much softer than the disposable ones. We are figuring out our system of rinsing and storing them until they are washed. The hose that attaches to the toilet is key in this process. There has only been a little random spraying of freezing cold water.

As we tried out the diapers, Suki discovered the diaper drawer:



Second, yesterday was of course Halloween. Amelia wore her Halloween pajamas that Bubbles sent her. She loved them.




We were going to take her trick or treating, but she decided to be a colicky baby for Halloween. (It was a good choice: that is, obviously, the scariest thing she could possibly be.) She cried from about 5-8 last night. I think it was because we took her on a long walk right before 5 and it messed up her normal nap schedule. By 5:30, she was clearly very tired but wouldn't let herself drop off to sleep. We rocked, swaddled, and sang, but she didn't settle down till after 8pm, when I tried to feed her again. She nursed furiously for about 3 minutes and fell asleep. Luckily she then slept well for the rest of the night, waking up as usual every 3 hours or so to eat but going back to sleep soon after.

We plan to be more careful about her afternoon nap today.

Also, Amelia likes to read:



She is quite a thinker.



In general, Dean and I have just been hanging out and getting to know our baby. We are excited about the coming weeks, in which she might smile at us! Also, the baby week-by-week books says she might sleep for 6 hours at a time...

Before Amelia's birth, I kept thinking about the metaphor of the roller coaster. Now that she is here, I realize we are still on the ride--and for better and for worse, we are never getting off! For now, we are all gradually settling in to our new family and learning how to enjoy the ride.