Urban Drool

My little pickle,

Today you are 2 months old. This new space of ours may have been started a bit late, but I’ve been a wee bit busy the past 8 weeks, what with all the feeding and rocking and singing to and cleaning off of your little butt. {Disclaimer: I cannot put anything in here that does not sound amazingly gooey and cliché, so why fight it? Since your arrival my emotional being has been shattered into zillions of little pieces anyway, so I figure…what the hell?}

Your arrival. Wow. Someday, if you feel like hearing a horror story akin to The Shining or Halloween (the first one only remember – all the others sucked), I will relay to you the events surrounding getting you out here into the bright n’ dry. It involved 3 ½ days, 2 failed inductions, over 20 hours of unmedicated labor, an emergency C-Section and a few liters of blood for me, to replace all I lost. You were perfectly fine the whole time; it was me that nearly kicked it.

Know what made it all better? When I nursed you for the first time. When I saw your dad holding you. When you were curled up all asleep in your little crib. When you smiled at me for the first time. When Maude sniffed your head and Harold licked your right foot. Or….or…pretty much every minute of every day since the day that you came.

Yeah. It’s that good.

I was able to spend the first 6 weeks at home with you. We had an amazing amount of fun – me, you and your dad would stay up until 3 or 4 am every night (your idea) and then sleep in until 10 or 11 (dad’s idea). We learned how you like to be rocked (up and down at a brisk tempo), swaddled, which boob you like best (the right one), bathed and sung to (Elvis ballads, Ben Folds Five, Tom Waits and early Rogers & Hammerstein).

16 days ago I ripped my heart out, laid it carefully next to you in your crib, and trugged off to work. I am told that this is the best thing for us – as a family unit. I am told that you will not suffer any emotional or psychological trauma from my daily absence. I try to believe it. Some days are OK. Some days suck major donkey balls. But I console myself with the knowledge that in comparison to the children of a lot of other working moms, you have it pretty damn good. You get to stay in your own home, with your 2nd favorite person in the whole world. He sings to you and walks you around and around and around the whole house. He likes to take you on walks in your stroller – to the park, to the market, to the coffee shop. He stuffs you full of the breastmilk that I pump and put into bottles. He has a special song he likes to sing to you when he is changing an especially noxious diaper. He tries so very hard to get you to say “Daddy,” ignoring the fact that you are only 8 weeks old.

Yeah. Could be a lot worse.

But I still leave my heart next to you in your little crib when I walk out the door in the mornings. And I still live for Saturdays and Sundays, drinking you in like I am dying of thirst and you are the most incredible glass of water ever invented.

In the past 8 weeks you have jet-propelled yourself from a wee little sprite that would lay calm and still in a blanket, content to be nursed, changed and laid to sleep to a feisty 2 month old who demands to look around at the dogs, TV, kitchen stove, fish tank and backyard and who wants to eat every 27 minutes except when you want to eat only once every 4 hours, which interrupts the 90 minute naps you take except when you sleep for 8 hours in a row.

I have never been so sore and exhausted in my entire life. I cannot even begin to describe how much I adore you and I cannot wait to see what happens next month.

Wet sloppy kisses all over your belly,
Mama