Tying Up Loose Ends

Since I never finished Thanksgiving parts 5, 6 or 7, I thought I'd end the year in gratitude.

I am thankful

-for my family, by which I mean the family I came from and Dean's family. Now that we have Amelia I feel like both families really are "our" families. I am thankful for everyone who loves Amelia so much and spent so much QT with her over our vacation while Dean and I did such things as go on our first post-baby date, walk on the beach, read, and eat dinner at the same time!

-for my mother and Luli, who have each agreed to come stay with us once a month to babysit when my new semester begins. It makes me so happy that A can be taken care of by her grandmothers (and sometimes grandfathers) even though we live so far apart.

-for Dean's and my own flexible jobs, which will allow us to work/teach from home twice a month to cover the other days A will need care

-for the rainforest playmat that is currently entertaining A while I write

-for the breastpump, which I also sort of hate, but I am thankful for the freedom it gives me to both feed my baby breastmilk AND occasionally leave her for more than 3 hours

-for my wonderful friends. Even though I rarely get to see most of them, I am so thankful to know such smart and capable women.

-for yoga

-for this blog--it is a fun space to think, record, and write. And I am thankful for my readers! I am always a bit surprised when I realize that people actually read what I write. I am sorry my posts are so sporadic lately. (Blame it on little A.) And I am thankful for my little blogging community, which are some of the best mommy friends I have.

-that, despite all of the uncertainty about the future, I have a happy and healthy little family here in our cozy rented townhouse in DC, where we will make pizza for dinner and continue our tradition of going to bed well before midnight on New Year's Eve!

Time

A recent post on Beyond Friendship Gate prompted me to reflect on how motherhood has affected my creative life.

Being a mother is definitely getting easier. Over our long Christmas vacation (in which we drove over a thousand miles), we discovered that swaddling is the key to getting Amelia to nap. At this moment she has been napping for almost two hours (so she will almost certainly wake up before I finish this post). Still, sometimes I feel just like Caroline: when I have time, I don't know what to do with it.

I used the first part of A's nap to do a little yoga. Then I ate an early lunch. Then I read for a bit and opened some Word documents, trying to get into a poem. Perhaps because I forgot to put on any music, I just couldn't get going. Part of it is that I sort of feel finished with my thesis. I am, theoretically, trying to turn it into a book. However, I am not sure I am still in the same "place" anymore. Since I wrote the poems for my thesis, I have been through the greater part of a pregnancy and the first 12 weeks with a baby. I have a few new ideas for poems that don't seem to fit into the content of my thesis.

So, I looked around the internet for awhile, toying with the idea of just sending the thesis off as a manuscript now. I don't have enough pages to do that, really. I could send it off as a chapbook. I don't know.

The problem with time as a mother at home is that you never know. I always did my best writing when I knew I had at least a couple of hours to work. Even if I didn't work the whole time, having the time there was key. Now in hindsight I know that if I had sat down the moment A went to sleep I would have had at least 2 hours to write. Sigh.

And now I am kind of obsessed with the idea that she is going to wake up any second.
Oh well. Maybe I should just use the little time I have left to try to work on something...

White Christmas

Well, we survived the "Blizzard of 2009!" The news stations were calling it that the night before a single snowflake fell, but despite my skepticism, their predictions of over 15 inches of snow came true. Our last official measurement was a little over 19. It'll still be a white Christmas here, but we are headed down to NC tomorrow for Christmas! We are both excited to see family, as well as to take advantage of everyone who wants to hold little A so we can rest. I have big plans for us getting out and about by ourselves once a day! That said, we have had a great couple of snowdays with Amelia. We are really getting to know her. She is a funny bear. She gets very excited at bath time--she anticipates it when Dean takes her up to get ready for the bath. And when she wakes up, she smiles and laughs when she sees us. We can't wait for everyone to meet her!

Damn this has been a great class

So this email was in my inbox this morning, sent by one of the students to our coursemail address:

Hey everyone hope you have a great holiday season. Its been a lot of fun chillin with all of you bros. If any of you need anything my number is ***-***-****. Hope all of you get smashed on new years. Damn this has been a great class. Love all of you...

-Jason

This is amusing. Also a little frustrating--how many times did I explain its is possessive and it's=it is?

It's also kind of touching. I mean we're talking about freshman comp here, a required course that's not exactly everyone's idea of a good time. Perhaps this student was up late celebrating the fact that U-Md's last day of finals was cancelled due to the snow? Anyway, I'll take whatever good feedback I can get. Maybe I should forward the email to Agnes...



P.S. You might notice from the time stamp on this post that I am up early: Amelia slept from 9pm-5am!!! Yes, that is EIGHT FULL HOURS!!! But after I fed her at 5:00 I was so happy that I couldn't go back to sleep.

Snow!

Finally. Finished. Grading.

Once again, thank God for the Moby Wrap. Now I am going to stuff diapers. Maybe soon, I will find time and energy to write some of the blog entries I have been scribbling notes for on scraps of paper.

(Here's a sneak peak: "Chocolate chip cookies--addiction." "Cardiologist." "Pre, post-natal, Itsy Bitsy Yoga.")

Santa baby...

and another good hair day...

"I am 9 weeks, going on 10 weeks..."

First, here are some pictures for Sophie, sweet girl, who likes to get up and look at the baby every morning.



Amelia loves the Rainforest play mat--



but she did not like this hat.



And I love the snowsuit pictures.

Amelia is beginning her second hour of sleeping in the Moby Wrap. For some reason she has been very fussy and sleepy today. This is not one of Caroline's Wonder Weeks. Who knows? Maybe she misses her grandmother. Luckily her other grandmother is coming on Sunday.

Having a baby here in DC has taught me that humans are meant to live in small tribes. When I'm with Amelia and other people I have a lot more fun. No offense to Amelia. She is great. But let's be frank: she's not the best conversationalist. It's sometimes kind of lonely to be alone with her. It's more fun to watch her smile and try to laugh and wriggle around with someone else around. It's nice to be able to have someone to hold her while I do something other than hold her every once in awhile, too. I don't want much, just to be able to get up and pee, and maybe eat lunch...

I do miss the incredible freedom I used to have, and of course was totally ignorant of, before Amelia was born. I woke up this morning with all kinds of ideas for next semester. I got up to write them down and maybe work my gradebook a little, but didn't even get down the stairs before Amelia decided to forgo her last stretch of morning sleep, so that plan went down the drain. I've been feeding her or holding her all day. Somehow I did manage to cut up a butternut squash. It's my biggest accomplishment so far.

I was feeling kind of sorry for myself until I read this op-ed on poverty in last Sunday's Washington Post while I finally ate something. I am still not in the mental state to coherently comment on it. Although I did find the energy to write a three paragraph response to someone's question about getting a baby to take a pacifier on MOTH.

I've had a lot of time to think about why I feel like I need to get anything done anyway. If Amelia, who is less than 10 weeks old, wants to be fed and held all day and I do it, then I am already accomplishing an awful lot.

I disagree with the advice in all the parenting books, though, that you should just ignore all the housework. Well, the advice might be good, but I can't do it, and I've figured out why. Pre-baby, I was pretty much in charge of my own life. I got used to those long swaths of unstructured time in which I could work and write. Post-baby, not so much. The cleanliness of the house is something I can semi-control. A clean, neat house makes me feel calmer. We're not talking about a deep clean here. I am totally ignoring the state of the downstairs bathroom, which is where we spray the diapers. But I can keep the kitchen neat, and I can sweep while I am wearing the Moby Wrap.

In conclusion, little A is stirring, so I am sorry that I will be unable to revise this post. I think we will try to get out of the house and into the day. It's cold, but it is sunny.

Snowsuit

Heehee!

Amelia is two months old!

Well, now, two months and one day.