Urban Drool

My dear little Pickle…

Yesterday, on your six month birthday, you laid in bed with your Papa and grinned and gurgled and squeed out loud, kicking him in the ribs with your “egg beater legs” (only done when you are very happy and excited about something) and I felt once again the daily tug at my heart and thickness at the back of my throat, because I knew I had to walk out the door.

If I was not already ridiculously in love with you (Hint: I am) I would have fallen head over heels in love with you this past month. This past month we have witnessed what I like to call the Beginning of the Era of Advancement and Exploration. The things you have done, seen, felt and places you have been in these past 4 weeks is astounding! Let’s re-cap, shall we?

- you, YOU, young lady have been on your very first vacation. Hilton Head Island, South Carolina shall ne’er be the same place again, now that it is felt the love o’ the Lucy. In order to get there, we had to travel to the airport, hang around for 2.5 hours, then actually board the plane (smiling beatifically at the very nervous looking passengers who noticed that we were boarding a plane with an infant oh my God are you INSANE?!?!), spend 1 hour and 37 minutes in the air and a total of almost 8 hours in a car.

I was exhausted by the time we got to the condo at 9 pm that night and ready for the vacation to be over already.

But you handled it like a champ and merely looked around, wondering when happy hour was going to start.

While on vacation you “swam” in the ocean (read here: had your feet dangled in the water at the edge of the surf while Gram-Gram hovered nervously around the periphery and glared at Grandpa K every time he referred to you as “Shark Bait”), “swam” in the pool (read here: sat like a lump in the blow up “boat” that Grandma M gave you while being tooled around the pool by me), went on many a sunrise and sunset walk on the beach, ate crawdads and shrimp at a raw bar, spent the afternoon in Savannah, Georgia (dining on the Plantation Buffet at a restaurant that was housed in the oldest building in the state of Georgia), and took the whole big long trip back home in your stride. What a little trooper.

Of course, you did make us pay for it later. Oh, yes. Need we mention the 4 times a night requests for nursings at 40 minutes apiece that started almost as soon as we got back home? Need we mention the screeching for endless minutes on end for no apparent reason?

- while on vacation, you got to meet the coolest uncle in all of uncle-dom, your Uncle Z. Now, I know he’s kind of scary looking (people who are 6 ft, 5 inches tall but only weigh around 135 pounds do tend to resemble your average scarecrow) but I assure you, he’s the coolest, nicest dude around. Don’t hold the fact that he’s vegan and hippie and blasts his trumpet at all hours of the day and night against him, OK?

- So…you can move now. And…my life is officially over. While you are not exactly crawling yet, you are definitely “creeping.” You love to simultaneously straighten out your arms so that all your weight is supported on your hands, stiffen your legs and thrust yourself forward in a constant attempt to get at your latest love (these days – either the Snoopy doll or your little plastic purple block.) You will also on occasion get up on your hands and knees and rock back and forth, grinning at your damn self the whole damn time. Wow. I am told that this means that actual, legitimate crawling is just around the corner. Yikes.

(Note to self: maybe we should move those exposed wires out of the way?)



- Your constant need to explore and discover has taken over, and it is the dearest, most wonderous and most exhausting quality you have yet to exhibit. While the dirty floor and it’s environs hold substantial interest, nobody or thing is more irresistible to you and your inquiring hands than either me or Papa. You crawl and roll all over us, patting down various parts of our anatomy (ahem), poking your wee fingers in our noses/mouths/ears and twisting and turning those little pinchers to see what you can extract (um, ow). My long hair continues to be a particular favorite plaything of yours, and I laughed until I peed myself the first time you grabbed my cheek with your hands, planted your little lips on it and started sucking away, actually EATING my face, while making “mmmm…mmmm…MMMMM!!!” sounds. In truth? I absolutely adore witnessing this huge leap in your development. Your constant need to see, smell, taste and touch us is amazing to me. To me, it is a representation of the remarkable trust you have in us.

- Your sounds. The noises you make. They change and become more numerous with every passing day. Your current repertoire includes the following:
o Mmmm!!!!
o Dadadadadadada…..
o Ppffffbbbbtttt (this one is done with your tongue thrusted out and spit flying everywhere)
o Oohhhhhhh!!!
o eeeeeeeeEEEEEEEEEEEEeeeeeeeeee (like a ambulance siren. Only cuter.)
o dddduuuuurrrrrrrr…….
o ggrrrrgrgrgrgrggguuuurrrrrrrrgggglll…(a kind of back of the throat, gurglish, Marlene Dietrich kinda
thing)
and so on…

- you have gotten so big and so strong. You can no longer be contained in your bouncy seat. You love to illustrate just how inadequate the safety belts and various limitation-enhancement options of the bouncy seat are by twisting and turning your wee little body until you reach up with both hands and grab the TOP OF THE BOUNCY SEAT AND TRY TO DRAG THE TOYS THAT DANGLE THERE DOWN TO YOUR GAPING MOUTH!! And then you look over to make sure one of us is watching you, as it to say “Do you see? Are you understanding the depth and power of my abilities here, people? Time to step it up a notch or two, you poor bastards.”

And step it up we will. The pack and play for the living room and the exersaucer have already been ordered and are on their way. Papa is doing mental list making and general hysteria in his planning on how to baby proof the house. You eat three meals a day and like to watch Nick Jr. and know which buttons are your favorites on the remote control.

But you are still such a baby to me. You will still on occasion sigh and melt into me while you nurse. You still curl yourself up against Papa when you take your morning naps in the big bed. You still will not go to sleep at night unless you are swaddled and rocked, with tiny kisses being rained down upon your wee little head.

And I love it. And I love you. Happy 6 months birthday, my little pickle. My pickle-tickle. My squdge. My boo. My Lucy-Goose-Juice-Monster.



Warm sloppy kisses all over your belly,
Mama

My little Pickle,

You turned 5 months old last Sunday, and per our agreement, you started kicking in your share of the room and board.

…no, not really, but wouldn’t that be nice?

Everyone is so impatient for you to grow up!! Grandpa K asks me all the time if you can “say the words ‘Tatoo’ or ‘Mazarati’” and your little cousin is so psyched for a young female relation with whom to share dolls and make-up tips that she seems almost disappointed that you are not as interactive as she wants you to be.

“when’s Lucy gonna walk?...will she talk to me yet?...I wanna play with her!...why doesn’t she smile at me?” are her plaintive cries as she shoves yet another toy approximately 1.2 inches from your face and waggles it around.

Good-hearted and patient soul that you are, you usually just stare at her bemusedly for a moment and then turn away to grab what you REALLY wanted…Mr. Crinkle Cow. Or occasionally, Mr. Duck.

What little cousin doesn’t see is how amazing and interactive you really have become. You have very definite wants and desires, likes and dislikes. You laugh! You talk! You have genuine playtimes and hold entire conversations. Sometimes with me, sometimes with papa, sometimes with your big toe.

I hereby present the Big List of Things You Like:

BLoTYL:

1) grabbing your feet and spreading your legs WAY open – ala Pamela Anderson. Or Paris Hilton. Or, you know, me on one of your Papa’s luckier days.

2) Car rides

3) Bananas (I don’t know why this particular fruit holds such power over you, but the night after you first ate ‘naners you pulled away from my offered nipple and HOWLED! “NOOOOO!!!!!! Woman, what IS this foul sludge which you offer me? Methinks it is akin to the most polluted pond scum to ever desecrate the universe. I need more NANERS!!!!”)

4) The marvelous singing Koala Bear that your Auntie Panda gave you

5) Tummy Time on the big blanket in the middle of the Living Room floor

6) Your best friend Mya’s pacifier. Or her shirt. Or any toy that she is holding. Or her hand. Any of the above are grabbed and go right in your mouth. But then she clocks you across the jaw and you grudgingly give them all back to her, bowing in grim respect to the 6 weeks of age, 2 inches of height, and 4 whole pounds that she has over you!

7) Mr. Crinkle Cow. Oh, my God. I shudder at the thought of the day when I will inevitably forget my brain and leave Mr. Crinkle Cow on some lone park bench, losing him to you forever. Your passion for him is so great, that I am sure that this would be grounds for immediate emancipation from me, your uncaring and brainless mother.

8) Food. And, food. It’s only been 8 days into the introduction of mushy-why-the-HELL-do-they-call-it-solid-food experiment and you already have the appetite of the average College football player.

9) My hair. My very long hair. Which you grab at any occasion and immediately entwine in a complex fashion between and around and through all your fingers. Um, ow.

10) The animals in the house. Any of them. All of them. You try and grab the cat’s tail. You laugh your ass off whenever the dog walks by. You even gaze at the fishtank for endless minutes with the most wonderful smile on your face.


And now, just to ensure that a fair and just depiction of your complex personality is presented, I feel compelled to create the Not Quite as Big List of Things You Really Hate:

NQaBLoTYRH:

1) Having your chin wiped. Which unfortunately has to happen quite a bit, what with all the sweet potatoes and ‘naners and spit up and dog hair and drool and all.

2) Being swaddled. Just the act of the swaddling itself. Once you actually are swaddled, and a nipple or some other object from the Lucy’s List of Approved Aids for Endless Oral Fixation is shoved in your gaping maw, why you are just as happy as a kipper on a cracker!

3) Sensing that Papa or I are going to be doing anything that even remotely feels like it might somehow in some capacity be in the neighborhood of sitting down. SITTING DOWN! You screech and protest most mightily when we are holding you (which is 99.9% of the time) and we start to try and kind of ease ourselves down from an upright, ambulatory position. It’s as if you are saying “Why? WHY DO YOU HATE ME SO, Oh WRETCHED PARENTS OF MINE? Why do you SIT me DOWN when there are THINGS THAT I CAN LOOK AT IF ONLY YOU WOULD CONTINUE TO WALK ME AROUND AND AROUND AND AROUND until you DROP?”

4) The stationary aspect of nursing. You still love to nurse, but you DETEST that it requires you to remain so still and miss something that might be happening JUST OUT OF YOUR LINE OF SIGHT! You are constantly twisting and turning around, taking a portion of Mama’s nipple with you (thanks!) to make sure that you are not missing anything important.

5) Sitting for too long in the Bumbo Seat. You will acquiesce to remain in the Bumbo for just around 5 minutes before you realize that it is so much better to be sitting up in either my lap or Papa’s.


Other big highlights of the past month include your first “meal” of avacados inside a swank little Sushi restaurant and the first of many, many, MANY shit-filled diapers that required assistance in clean up from the biohazard team at the local hospital plus extensive therapy for Papa afterwards.

The introduction of avocados, sweet potatoes, multi-grain cereal, ‘naners and carrots have made you very, very happy and allow you to sleep for the longest stretches of time in your tiny life. But it has also created the most foul looking and smelling substance that I have ever seen. Plus? It feels really gross on the skin too, as I found out the other night when some of it got smeared on your foot and you, in turn, smeared it on the inside of my left wrist (thanks again!)

Your smiles get bigger and your laughs louder and your eyes more beautiful and sparkly with every single passing day.

I spent all of last Saturday alone with you this past week and sobbed with utter joy three separate times while trying to sing to you. I’m sorry about that little bit of watery snot that got dribbled on your head.

I can’t wait to see you grow up, but I never want you to not be the magnificent and joyful baby that you are. Can we have both, please?

Thanks.









Warn sloppy kisses all over your belly,
Mama

My Little Pickle,

This past Friday you turned 4 months old.

…and you decided to celebrate your birthday by getting three vicious intra-muscular injections in the thigh (I know! What a thrill-seeker you are!) and starting the process of cutting 2 teeth.

Wow.

I feel like I could write for pages and pages about all the wonderful and amazing things you have done and seen and been. But then I try and actually write and find that I am at a loss. It’s as if mere letters and words and punctuation are not nearly adequate enough tools to put forth how incredible your very existence is and how much of an impact you have had on my life. How do you find written language to describe the most heart-breakingly beautiful rainbow you’ve ever seen?

But I’ll try…

…you will either greet me every morning with an ice-melting smile and sparkle in your eye or you will shriek like a possessed banshee until a nipple has been shoved in your gaping maw. It’s always a toss-up.


…one of your favorite times of the day has become “Nakey-Baby Time.” This is where Papa and I strip you down to your bare-ass skin and lay you down on our bed (a top layer upon layer of towels of course) and let you wiggle and squirm and squee and coo and flip from back to belly to back and grunt and ggrrrrr in frustration as you try so desperately to crawl. You absolutely adore being naked.

…you have recently discovered the animals that (rule with an iron fist over) occupy our house. They have been there this whole time, but you just now are picking up on their presence. You love the kitties and how soft they are when I run your little pudgy hand down their backs, but I think your favorite is Mr. Harold. Mama’s beautiful, stubborn and completely un-trainable Beagle is gentle as a lamb with you (so far.) He has discovered that if he lays on the bed mere inches away from the farthest that you can possibly reach, you will lie, facing him, grunting and squee-ing and trying to get to him. For endless minutes. And he refuses to move a centimeter closer to you. It’s like the most adorable little game of chess, and so far, he knows that he will always win. He loves it. And so do I.

…every time I am holding you and your father comes up to us to greet you, you dazzle him with HUGE smiles while simultaneously turning your head from him to bury it in my chest. Every. Time. You are so coy and cute – pretending to be bashful. And then you peek out from the sanctuary between my breasts to make sure that he noticed that you are totally flirting with him. And he? Eats it up like ice cream with a spoon.

…you can grab now. And grandpa has an awesome, bushy beard that invariably SCREAMS for you to bury your little hands in and grab and twist. It’s never been so much fun watching my father in agonizing pain.

…you got a little too much sun this past week on one of your daily walks with Papa. And by a little too much sun, I mean a little redish splotch on one of your cheeks. But Papa had to call me at work and confess his horrid failings as a father and you would think that he had callously dropped you into a pot of boiling oil, so sorrowful was he.

…Mr. Blue Raccoon has been dumped. He is gone. He is SO last month. But Mr. Bee continues to be your comrade, your sole confidant. He also must taste really good, because you are constantly shoving some random plastic part of his anatomy in your mouth.



…you really like going over to Katie and Ryan and Mya’s house, but seem to get pissy when Mya (who is 6 WHOLE WEEKS OLDER THAN YOU!) thrusts her bear-like paws into your mouth…or ear…or up your nose. You scream in indignation. And although I always come over to “rescue” you, I can’t help but laugh my ass off. You two girls are the most beautiful pair. Your physical differences make both of you all the more breathtaking when we lay you side by side. One so very fair and blond and blue eyed, and the other so olive and dark and sparkly. Your Aunt Katie and I agree that we are going to enjoy ourselves immensely, watching you two growing up and simultaneously loving and hating each other with every passing day. I can’t wait for the day that I hear,
“MOOOOOOOOOMMMMM! Mya stole my Polly Pocket and she won’t give it BBBBBBBAAAAAAAAACK!!!”



…actually, I can wait for that day. I am so scared of you growing up too quickly. I have loved every tiny baby-moment of your tiny baby-life. I loved the fresh-out-of-the-oven newborn squadge. I loved the 3 weeks old colicky squadge. I loved the 5 weeks old and can already hold up her head and grin at people squadge. I loved the 3 months old and can wiggle and kinda-sorta-hold things and blink sleepily at me while nursing squadge. And I love, I love, I LOVE the strong, squirmy, smiling, LAUGHING, already developing a captivating sense of humor 4 month old squadge.

Your skin is the softest thing I have ever felt and I can never decide which smell I like better: your just-out-of-the-bath-and-smelling-like-fresh-berries smell or your haven’t-been-bathed-for-a-couple-days-and-smelling-like-warm-sleep-and-milk smell.

I love your unwashed-smelling-like-milk smell. It’s so amazingly compelling. You smell like you belong to me.



Warm sloppy kisses all over your belly,
Mama

My little pickle,

Today you are 3 months old. Wow. That seems so old to me, compared to the little wrinkled squadge-face your father presented me with 3 months (and about 12 hours) ago.

This has been an absolutely huge month for you. You have developed in quantum leaps in the past 4 weeks. You are eating my boobs dry, and I can barely pump enough milk at work on Monday for daddy to feed you on Tuesday while I am away. Some days, he runs out by 2 or 3 pm and ends up slipping you a few ounces of formula to keep you from shrieking until I get home at 5:30.

5:30pm. It’s become my favorite time of the day. I see you for the FIRST time since 7:15 that morning. Yesterday at 5:30 was absolute GOLD when you saw me and grinned that big gummy grin of yours and then…and then…you LAUGHED!!!! A loud, raucous belly chuckle that lasted for 2.5 precious seconds. I will remember that sound for the rest of my life.

More updates over the past month include your ever-deepening friendship with Mr. Bee (who sits to the left of you in your bouncy seat), a continued quiet hostility towards Mr. Blue Racoon (to the right of you in your bouncy seat), the ability to ROLL OVER OH MY HEAVENS SAVE US ALL JOE PESCI and your fondness for patting down my boob as you nurse. Dear, what the fuck are you looking for exactly as you fondle on and underneath my boob? Gold nuggets? An unregistered hand-gun? Spoilers to the first episode of Deadwood (June 11, 2006 cannot come soon enough)?

Fucking Hoople-head honey. Say it with Mommy now…”Fuuuuucking Hoooople-head.”

You also have taken to holding 10-20 minute long lectures about 3 times a day where you stare at your father or I and proclaim any or all of the following in rapid succession:

ooooOOOOoo!!
Uuuhhhhhhhhh!!
Mmmmmmmm!!
allllllll-AH! Alllllll-AH!

It’s this last one that has us pissing our pants with hysterical laughter. There you are, a tiny little daygo baby, so Italian that you probably have olive oil and red wine running through your veins instead of blood, and you frequently like to call upon Allah, the merciful.

We need to talk about the state of your poop, my pickle. You have been, from the time you were hours old, a hearty and healthy pooper. I could count on you going at least 3 times a day. The poop was proliferous and falling from the ceiling, just like it should in a healthy little squadge. Now? NOW? I have no idea what happened, but in the past 36 hours you. have. not. pooped. And you? Are getting very cranky. And dad? Is getting concerned.

Dear. You need to understand that your daddy is nutters. Absolutely barmy at times, and you doing things like UPSETING THE UNDERSTOOD SCHEDULE OF THE DAY tends to make him a bit antsy. When you get older and ask me “why?” I will hand you Webster’s Dictionary and tell you to look up “Obsessive-Compulsive Disorder.”

But seriously, you seem to be getting pretty uncomfortable. So honey, can you just please poop already?

I am at work right now, and I cannot wait to get home and see you. I love you so very much. Working is not getting any easier, but maybe I just have to accept that your existence in of itself has caused absolute emotional turmoil for me. But you know, in a good way. You’re my pickle. My little squadgling. My Lucy-Goose-Juice-Buckets and no one in the universe is more important.

Warm sloppy kisses all over your belly,

Mama

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