"You Know We've Had Our Share..."

I am the worst for using snatches of old rock songs as post titles.

That song has been in my head a lot lately. "Good times, bad times" seems to sum up life with an infant pretty well. I don't think it takes a genius to infer from some of my posts (and lack thereof) that I find motherhood incredibly challenging. On the other hand, one reason behind the lack of posts is that motherhood has taught me the important lesson of slowing down. When I only attempt to tackle so much in one day, I am a happier person. Usually all I attempt to tackle these days is taking care of Amelia and doing what needs to be done for school, plus the usual household chores.

Anyway, I was thinking "Good Times, Bad Times" would make a good theme for a regular blog post. I'd like to do a better job of recording Amelia's babyhood. By definition, it is more than halfway over. She turned 6 months (and 26 weeks) old last Monday. She is 27 weeks old today. (As you recall, she was born on a Monday.) I think trying to jot down a few good and not so good things that are going on with Amelia and/or my life each week would help me get back into writing, as well as more accurately capture the realities of motherhood.

So, here we go--

Good times: it is spring. I love spring. For a while, in high school, I hated winter so much I counted down the days till the first day of spring. This spring has been early and beautiful, with only a few of those cold and windy days that creep in to torture you after everything blooms. We did have a few oddly, terrifically hot days creep in to torture us, but I withstand heat much better than cold--like rosemary--so that wasn't all that bad for me.

On the Amelia front--she is currently taking a nap--which is more than good; it is excellent. I've realized that 2 and 1/2 hours after she wakes up is a a good time to try for her first nap. We've started a little nap routine: going outside, diaper change, reading stories on the bed (A chews on the board books as I recite Brown Bear Brown Bear What Do You See and Moo Baa La La La from memory), then I nurse her a little and put her in the crib. I've been making sure she is not actually hungry at naptime, so that I can experiment with the "Pantley Gentle Removal" from The No Cry Sleep Solution. (Don't ask. You can probably guess.)

Another good thing is that I am trying to come to terms with the fact that I do not get to sleep through the night anymore. I guess I only recently realized the real conflict that might or does exist between sleeping through the night and breastfeeding. Again, as we recall, Amelia slept for 7-8 hours straight through from about 9-15 weeks and it was wonderful. So around 4 months when she started waking up 2-4 times a night to eat I was very upset--and exhausted. Now at 6 months she wakes up 1-3 times a night. Usually she only nurses on one side and I really don't think she's that hungry, but our experiments with crying it out didn't make anyone happy. Amelia seems to get to a point of being so upset that she just can't calm herself down. So I continue to bring her into our bed to feed her and then put her back in the crib. I am just trying to tell myself that eventually I will get more sleep. I haven't dropped dead from exhaustion yet (or thrown myself down the stairs, although the thought has occurred to me more than once) so I will probably make it through. Since I am blessed with a very healthy baby and a great milk supply, I assume that everything is going as it should be, and I try to remember to be thankful for those two incredible blessings.

Other good things: Amelia is learning to sit up on her own. She has some new solids: carrots, green beans, and this morning she sucked on a prune in a little mesh thing my mom sent her. She likes to eat ice in the mesh thing too. She laughs a lot, and she is rolling from back to front quite regularly. She is working on pushing up from her belly to hands and knees. It is not her favorite thing to do, but in the sake of her future mobility, it must be done.

Some bad times involve the grunting, whining Marge Simpson noise A makes when she does things she does not like to do. It drives me CRAZY! I think she might actually be teething, because she makes the noise so very much--and drools more than the drooliest drooly dog you ever met.

In general, I am sick of teaching, and I can't wait for the semester to be over. I feel like I am not doing a good job with teaching this semester. I never have enough time. I notice that I walk around with my shoulders leaning forward, something my yoga teachers attribute to "living in the future" and trying to accomplish too much. Makes sense to me.

On that note, I am going to try to use the remainder of A's nap time to practice a little yoga on my own. Speaking of good and bad times, though, we had a pretty big piece of news this week, which I plan to write about in a post of its own before the week is out--and oh! I have some great pictures of Amelia to put up--so stay tuned.

Be (2)

I thought I'd check in re: being. "Be" is my word for the year. So every time I feel overwhelmed or upset or out of control, I try to remember my word and just be.

So far it's a moderately successful enterprise. Probably you're not supposed to talk about "being" in terms of success or lack thereof, but that's where I am. Some of the time "being" results in making me calmer, happier and more thankful, and other times it involves staring at the coffee table while I nurse Amelia because I can't reach a book, a magazine or the remote control. Still other times, though, this doing nothing turns out to be a wonderful thing, because Amelia, who has yet to know how to do anything but just be, stops eating to look up at me and smile. She will even stop eating to chat sometimes. She has a lot to say in the form of gurgles, vowel sounds and, just since yesterday, a kind of raspberry-buzzing noise.

I have a hard time "being" in the mornings. Before I was pregnant, I would wake up, get some coffee, and spend 20 minutes or so writing in my journal. I didn't write anything special there, not poems or anything, scrawls and lists and these swirly things I like to draw, truly just pretty much crap. Honestly, I tried to find a better word than crap, but that's what it was (from my dictionary: Crap: noun; something that is of extremely poor quality; nonsense, rubbish, junk). Still, it usually resulted in some kind of plan for the day. After I wrote I would sometimes read poems, or at least my poem of the day calendar.

Then I got pregnant, and as I recorded ad nasuem, haha, my mornings were spent throwing up in the sink. No more sipping coffee, it made me queasy. Now I can have coffee, but it's not really a sipping situation, more like gulping. I have become a second cup person, even. And I have yet to find the 20 minutes to sit and write in the journal. I have managed to write while I'm pumping from time to time, but it's not quite the same thing.

Little did I realize how important these quiet mornings were to my sense of sanity and my creative process. I think they helped me realize what was on my mind and decide what needed to get done that day. Now, more often than not, I get out of bed because Amelia won't sleep any longer. I have coffee while I pump, and then the day just gallops along, diapers and feedings and breakfast and such. I do have time alone once Amelia takes her morning nap, but things feel a little out of control by then. Not knowing how long A is going to sleep makes it difficult to know how much I can do while she naps, so I try to prioritize. Sitting and writing crap in a journal is never at the top of the list.

So, it's hard to "be" in the mornings. I think that this week I will focus on trying to, though. I'm not sure if this will involve trying to find a few moments to write and sip, or throwing myself more fully into whatever the morning brings--maybe both?

Be

A hundred years ago, when I started this blog, I was reading Elizabeth Gilbert's Eat Pray Love and was taken with the idea of her giving a word to each city. This year, both MPJ and JW have chosen words for the new year. I think this started several years ago. I can't remember if it is from the book. One of my yoga teachers also does it. I see it as a take on the New Year's Resolution, perhaps one a bit more open-ended that declaring that one will exercise three times a week or lose 15 pounds or what have you. This year, I want to play too, and I have chosen my word.

My word is be.

Whatever I am doing, I want to do it totally, without looking forward with anxiety or back with regret.

I am being now, sipping a glass of yesterday's pinot noir while Amelia naps, and writing. I was being earlier this afternoon, when I found my distressed, still-sleepy baby wide-eyed in her co-sleeper, and I lay down with her and nursed her back to sleep. She wrapped her fingers around the edge of my teeshirt. I was being this morning, when I put on some beautiful music and began to write the moment A went down for her morning nap. And I was being 45 minutes later, when the nap ended, and I picked up my smiling, cooing baby and brought her downstairs to dance and sing.

This year, my first full year of motherhood, I sense the danger of the never-enough, of the constant feeling that there is more I should be doing, that there is too much I am not getting done. I want to try to live in the moment, enjoying all of the love and the blessings I am so lucky to be surrounded with.