a thankful note

I know I'm a week behind Thanksgiving Day, but I just felt compelled to remind myself to be thankful.  It seems silly that I would need a reminder, since this is the year I had my baby and I can't even begin to express how thankful I am for him. But this year has also been the most challenging and the past couple of weeks have been especially so.

Last night I visited my new baby niece in the hospital, an hour after she was born into this world. There she was with her little newborn limbs - stretching and shaking out her arms, legs, fingers and toes for the very first time. Oh how great that must feel after being curled up in utero for so many months! Hearing her cry and grunt as she fell in and out of slumber. Her newborn cries were thin and barely audible as the vibrations from her vocal cords hit the air for the first time - these cries will become more pronounced and demanding over time and they will be the cries that shatter you heart or exhaust you. It immediately took me back 10 months ago to the morning Samuel was born.  I felt a warmth rise in my chest and this warmth helped me sleep restfully last night. And I'm thankful for little Lulu's reminder that we should live our lives as graciously as the day we entered it.

{via travel&leisure}

sunnier days

We've just discovered Sam's first favorite song! It's called "Sunnier Days" by Diego Garcia. My husband heard the song on NPR and liked the upbeat melody and simple lyrics.

The other morning, Andrew decided to play the song for Sam and his reaction was akin to that of a Beatles fan! It was hysterical. I recorded his reaction below - admittedly, it was the most tame reaction of the morning, as it was the third or forth time that we played the song for him. Nevertheless, it's pretty awesome - at least I think so, anyway.

siblings

One of the (many) funny things about having a baby is how many people ask you when you're going to have your next one.  Here I am, barely getting into the groove of being a parent for the first time, and - BOOM - the questions: "When's the next one?" "Have you started on #2?" "The trend now is to have your kids 2.5 years apart - how many years apart do you want your kids to be?" Cue the rapid heart palpitations...

There are a slew of hot topics within the discussion of siblings.  There's Child Spacing - how many years apart you want your kids to be - and the financial, physical and familial implications of that, depending on which publication your read. One mom expressed her grief about conceiving too late after her first child because by the time #2 was born, #1 would be 4 years old and they wouldn't be able to go to the same high school and have the same friends.  Another mom had her children 16 months apart and couldn't say better things about it - changing 2 diapers at the same time is apparently a breeze because you just get it all over with.

There's the age old Birth Order discussion - personality traits of the oldest, the middle and the youngest and what all that means to the world. In Japanese culture, Birth Order is very important - there's the exalted prestige that comes with being the First Born Son.  And there are theories on which sibling is the best to marry - according to my mother, you should never marry the oldest. But, she'll also tell you, with her self-deprecating wit: "Never marry the youngest either - trust me, I'm speaking from experience." (Ha! Sorry, Papa)

So naturally, my husband and I talk about it ad nauseam. We are both the youngest in our families - he has a sister who is 5 years older and I have a brother who is 2 years older. We talk about how it was like growing up with siblings, being the younger sibling, what it might have been like if we were the eldest, or the only.  There are the jokes that have now become a part of our family lore and are the stories that we repeat at every family get together.  For instance, we complain about how there are barely any pictures of us because being born in a pre-digital camera age and being the second is definitely a double whammy.  Or how my parents barely remember when my milestones happened. And I recently heard about a second sibling friend of mine whose parents forgot if he ever contracted chicken pox as a child - they for sure remember his older sister getting it when she was 6 years old but what about little Ben... hmmm...

There are also the painful memories of sibling rivalry - name calling and hitting, jealousy, rage, fighting for attention and praise.  Siblingdom is a tough space - the scars you get along the way are permanent and deep.

I bring this up because I had one of the biggest arguments I have ever had with my big brother the other night. It's crazy to admit that, as adults, we're capable of such behavior, but it happened.  There was name calling and insults, yelling and screaming, and threats. It was really ugly and I'm still reeling from it.  And to add to my embarassment - we're both new parents. My brother is a father to my darling 27 month old niece with another baby girl due in a week or so, and I have Sam.

With 2 years between us, my brother and I were often mistaken for twins. I had a growth spurt early on and was pretty much the same height as my brother throughout our adolescence. I have distinct memories of being that annoying little sister who wanted to hang out with him and his friends and often tagged along with them - my brother has a kind heart and always allowed it, but probably secretly hated it. We were definitely different - he was kind and sort of quiet, not very good in school, but always went. I was rebellious and a tomboy, talked all the time and very loudly, was a bit of a drama queen, and excelled in school - which fueled my rebelliousness ("Sure, I can ditch class today - I aced that test!" - that sort of cocky mentality.)  As different as we are, we have the same sense of humor and those moments when we're laughing over the same things are the moments that I love. The day of my wedding when my brother stood next to my groom to be a witness to our vows - a keeper of the promise my husband and I made to each other - is a day I will never forget and I don't think I would've chosen anyone else to be there.

So what is it about our relationship that continues to be wrought with distress? I read this about children who are spaced two years apart and the impact that has on the eldest child: "... sibling rivalry tends to be at its strongest when the age gap between children is around two years, which has much to do with child development issues.  At the age of two, children become frustrated easily when they cannot control their environment.  This means they are prone to tantrums and jealousy." Was our relationship doomed the minute my parents brought me home from the hospital? Was my mere presence a point of contention for my 2 year old brother who was still at an age when he needed his parents' attention and didn't like to share it? And have I since relished my time in the spotlight a bit too much?

"The New Science of Siblings" is a popular Time Magazine article from 2006. I keep reading the following excerpt over and over again:

From the time they are born, our brothers and sisters are our collaborators and co-conspirators, our role models and cautionary tales.  They are our scolds, protectors, goads, tormentors, playmates, counselors, sources of envy, objects of pride.  They teach us how to resolve conflicts and how not to; how to conduct friendships and when to walk away from them.  Sisters teach brothers about the mysteries of girls; brothers teach sisters about the puzzle of boys.  Our spouses arrive comparatively late in our lives; our parents eventually leave us.  Our siblings may be the only people we'll ever know who truly qualify as partners for life. "Siblings," says family sociologist Katherine Conger of the University of California, Davis, "are with us for the whole journey."

The wound from our recent blow out is still so new and fresh that it actually makes me think hard about Sam and if I would want him to be entrenched in such a strange relationship - it's silly to think that way, I know, but if I let my emotions get the better of me (which they tend to), it's enough to make me pause.

The article says my brother is my true partner for life. How we choose to navigate our partnership as siblings is the part that I'm still, at 33 years old, trying to figure out.

milestones

The first year of a baby's life is marked by many precious milestones - when they first smile, laugh, sit up, crawl, stand, walk. As a parent, you look forward to these milestones and take note of them because each milestone marks a new development and awareness in your child that takes your breath away to witness.

I think it's also important to note that parents meet milestones too. For instance - that time I finally stopped breaking out into a nervous sweat when my baby would cry in public was a huge milestone for me. Or the first time I left the house with my baby all by myself (we drove to his well baby check up - two words: car mirror). Or when breastfeeding finally got easy, the day I decided to wean him, and our last breastfeeding session - all really important milestones.

Last night, my husband and I went on a date - our first real date in 9 months. It was the first time we hired a non-family member to babysit! It was definitely a big deal. But I finally felt semi-comfortable to take this plunge because Sam started sleeping straight through the night. Before then, I didn't feel comfortable leaving the house knowing that he would wake up in a few hours.

It was so fun! My husband and I talked a lot - yes, we talked about Sam, but we managed to have normal adult conversation too! We laughed a lot. And I even got a little tipsy! It felt good. A major milestone that marked a new development and awareness in our role as parents.

halloween

I was born a few days before Halloween so you can imagine all of the Halloween-themed birthday parties I had growing up. This is probably why I've always felt very indifferent about Halloween - I don't hate it, but I don't love it.

After having my son sam, the question on everyone's lips since October 1st has been - "What's Sam going to be for Halloween? His first Halloween!" I seriously didn't realize a baby's first Halloween was such a big deal! And my response of "Well, I'm not really into Halloweeen..." was met with shock and horror! I had one friend tell me - "Well you better get into the spirit! It's a BIG DEAL for children." really? it is?

I get it. It's about imagination - a night where you get to celebrate ghouls and monsters and things that go bump in the night, to dress up in costume - the mystery and the slight fear. The world to a baby and a child is cloaked in shadows and the unknown. Everything is new and sort of scary and there are things they can't understand or explain. Taking one day to celebrate it, to make all of those things ok and to actually participate in it, is satisfying - not to mention fun and filled with sweets! 

So i've made Sam's first Halloween costume - well part of it. And he will participate in his daycare's Halloween parade - it's going to be fun and SUPER CUTE! Maybe I'll really get into the spirit and dress up myself! Crazier things have happened...

PS. This Halloween costume definitely puts the one I made for Sam to shame! Yowza.

the glow

I love to visit The Glow when i'm feeling uninspired. I discovered the site when I was pregnant and I would daydream about what my foray into motherhood might look like. I have to admit, the site is aspirational and I can't say that my life always correlates to the mothers featured (for instance, I would love to say that my go-to maternity uniform was a Rick Owens t-shirt paired with a pair of stretch jeans from The Row, a la Ferebee Taube... but it sure wasn't!) BUT, one can always indulge right?

The most recent post featured Molly Guy and her darling daughter Sunny. Molly Guy is the beautiful creative director of the popular "anti-bride" resource Stone Fox Bride and this is what she said:

I was very ambivalent about becoming a mother. Once she arrived, the love was like a drug. But that whole passage of time was also really colored by an intense sadness. Embracing the responsibility of motherhood was a real mindf*&*ck. No longer could I get away with being a selfish, disorganized, chain-smoking negligent who bounced checks left and right and hit snooze a hundred times while dirty dishes piled up in the sink and never answered to anyone.

There are some mornings when I'm cutting up my daughter's grapes into fours after three hours of sleep while the sun is coming up and I'm in a flannel granny moomoo and NPR is on and I'm like, "Where's my cigarettes, where's my naughty Saturday night fling and ripped black lace lingerie and I just wanna call in sick to work and take Klonopin and google all my exes and only eat Gummy Bears all day." Falling in love, becoming a mother and growing up in general has this sort of beautiful "deal with the devil" vibe to it. The amount of wisdom and love you gain is directly proportionate to the vanity and ego you're willing to lose.

My personal transition into motherhood was similar. I don't know what Klonopin is and I was never a chain smoker, but the sentiment is right on. And it's a "mindf*&*ck" because this sadness and yearning for your past life happens as you're falling madly and deeply in love with your child - it's difficult to reconcile, to exist with two such opposing states of being simultaneously. I've never experienced such a bizarrely beautiful thing before. 

As the days and months go by and I've gotten into the groove of being a mother, that sadness and yearning has dissipated.  The day to day of motherhood becomes all I care about. So the transition becomes easier and I start to feel settled in and my love for my baby continues to grow and I believe it knows no bounds.

Sometimes - only sometimes - when my head is hitting the pillow at 9pm because I'm exhausted and know I'll be up several times during the night, I'll remember when 9pm was the start of my night, not the end, and I'll smile.

{via the glow}

a full time working mom

When I was pregnant and my mom-friends tried to tell me that I should join a mommy support group, I vainly scoffed - why would I need the support of complete strangers? Wouldn't I just go to my own mom or ask my mom-friends for advise? I was clueless.

And here's where I gingerly take my foot out of my mouth - I am on an online mom support group now and it's been my saving grace. It's like Craigslist but with just local moms. I've sold numerous things through this board - both mom/baby related and not mom/baby related (like my upright piano, for instance). I also bought things through this group and got things for free (like a few unopened cans of the very expensive hypoallergenic formula that my son has to drink). 

Above all else, the stories I read on this board, the advise I receive and the general knowledge about motherhood that I've become privvy to through this group has been immeasurable. I am grateful for this type of support and community. 

Recently, a mom had posted that she was about to return to work full time and she was nervous/sad/anxious about leaving her baby at daycare.  I immediately responded. It's a subject that hits home for me. I went through the same anxiety - and still do - about being a full time working mother and leaving my 8 month old at daycare. It was - and still is - one of the hardest things about my journey into motherhood and I'm constantly seeking that perfect work/life balance.

This is what I wrote:

i was in your shoes 4 months ago! it gets easier - it's what all of the working moms i spoke to told me and i didn't believe it at the time, nor did i believe it for weeks afterwards... cut to now, 4 months later, and lo and behold, it has become easier.

i'm not trying to sugarcoat it like it's now a walk in the park - it's just that i don't cry everyday in the parking lot after dropping him off like i did before so i consider that a vast improvement! i do get pangs of guilt sometimes. and sometimes i will come home late and he's already in bed and i'll cry quietly as i sit by his crib and watch his sweet sleeping face, because i miss him.  

on the other hand, if you were a career driven person before baby, that person will come back and you will find some comfort and relief in knowing that at work, you know what you're doing, and it's actually a cake walk compared to being a first time mom.  and you will smile at yourself when you're sitting in a meeting because you'll catch a glimpse of your old self and it will feel nice to have her back, if for just an hour. 

there will be days when your brain is mush because, if you're baby is like my baby, it may take a few more months for him to sleep through the night and waking up 3-4 times a night, then getting up to work a 10 hour day is the definition of torture.  just thank your boss and colleagues for their kindness, and they will cut you some slack.  (and if you were a bit of a control freak before, let this be a major lesson in delegation!)

your baby will get sick - it's inevitable.  and if you don't have back up care, you will have to take more time off to stay home and take care of him.  on the one hand, it will be nice to be at home with him again, but a sick baby is the saddest thing in the world so you'll feel bad that he got sick and probably got it at daycare.  just have peace of mind that he's building up antibodies early and have a baby comfy nose on hand!

regarding "milestones" - just smile politely when the caregiver tells you he's done something that you've never seen him do before.  i'm a firm believer that it did not happen until mom sees it happen. it flat out doesn't count.

from the baby's perspective, i truly believe babies love being around other babies.  my son is in awe of the older babies around him who are already crawling and standing and walking - he himself started crawling at 6 months and stood up at 7 months (which i'm told is on the early side) and i think it's because he's been watching the other kids doing it and he learned from them.  it's the sweetest to watch him interact with the other babies and i feel good that he's in a safe place with his peers.

coming home to see your baby will be the best feeling in the world.  and because you won't be spending as much time with him, the quality of the time you will spend with him will be richer - you'll make sure of it.  you'll constantly strive to find balance and be at peace with all of it and more often than not, you may feel out of whack.  but it's ok. and cut yourself some slack - trying to juggle everything isn't easy and some things will fall through the cracks but again IT'S OK.  we're all a work in progress and nothing puts that into better perspective than becoming a mother. and your sweet baby is already lucky to have a mom who cares enough to reach out for support because you love him that much.

{via xi pan}

labor

I had a natural, unmedicated childbirth - by choice. My husband and I trained for it for 12 weeks, via the Bradley method, and we felt like we were training for a sporting event (our fantastic bradley instructor Kate Movius described it as such). When the day arrived and i went into labor, it felt every bit like a marathon and my husband was the best coach in the biz, coaching me and supporting me through every contraction.

Since then, it has been difficult to describe how I felt about my labor. It's hard to describe the pain and the emotion because I wasn't really my human self - in my labor, I was pure, raw, animal.

I love this article by Wendy Plump. It put into words what I've had such a hard time expressing. It brought me to tears to think about my labor in this way - to have an article so accurately describe what I went through: "I slogged up a mountain of pain to bring back my children alive." No matter what kind of labor a woman endures - natural, medicated, c-section, vaginal - this sentiment is valid across the board.

It's worth reading the whole article but here is my favorite excerpt:

What you do, if you are smart - whether you are enduring "natural" labor or whether you use every labor drug in the arsenal - is retreat inward to concentrate. Some women scream or curse, but this is foolhardy, as any mountaineer knows. At this height energy is sacred and squandering it, reckless. The bolts of pain come on until they are like a summit storm so howling loud that everything else is wiped out. And all the while the pelvic bones are shifting. They are cranking open, you see, like a vise. 

It is pain beyond. It is existential pain. For me, logic and advice wavered and went blank. My human identity shrank and then vanished. I was no longer wife, reporter, cyclist, bungee-jumper. I became an animal and I leaned into the long, atavistic trail to find my way. I functioned with supernatural efficiency. I couldn't pull myself up to that height as a normal human, but as a laboring woman, caught up in the extreme, I could.

Every extreme adventure reaches a point of no return, as does labor, proceeding irrevocably through its own keening wilderness.  Eighteen hours in, I started to shake. I felt hypothermic. I was run over with pain. I threw up after all - does any of this sound familiar? Hello, Ed Viesturs? Up to that point I had tried not to think about it, but eventually I did. I might die. My baby might die. I braced my foot on the bedrail and it twitched like a horse's flank. The muscles were spastic and wrung out, which was too bad because I needed them. There I was and there I would stay unless I did something really effective immediately. I snapped to and, up to my knees in my own bile and blood, awash in the ecstasy of that extreme moment, I climbed. I slogged up a mountain of pain to bring back my children alive.

Is a summit ever beautiful on the way up? If it is described at all, it is because the athlete has already come down and is dreaming back to an epiphany he may never duplicate. So when each of my sons broke through and was handed wet and warm up to my arms, he was beautiful. Nothing would ever be so beautiful. Men cry on summits. They weep out their hearts. New mothers do too, and for the same reason. We are tested on the way up, and not found wanting.

I don't have to tell you how this ends. It's the same with any extreme adventure. You can spend the rest of your days chasing a crescendo that comes anywhere near this one. You may find it on another summit. in the middle of the southern ocean, in another baby. The triumph lingers. That is why combat veterans and mothers and extreme athletes talk about this stuff so much. We are trying to figure out how we can ever again be that wonderful.

{via national geographic}

humans of new york

It's no secret how popular the blog, Humans of New York, is.
Without fail, every time I visit the site, I get sucked in.
This post struck me - because she's the type of mom I want to be.

{via humans of new york}

"hurry up"

I admit that I'm guilty of this.

"Hurry up" aren't the words I use - I tend to be passive aggressive so "hurry up" can be read in my facial expressions, hand gestures and body movements.  I will sweep right past my husband, avoiding eye contact, to make sure he knows I'm in a rush.  My movements are more jerky and abrupt - loudly banging the cupboard doors shut or stomping my feet as I move from room to room. I also sigh a lot - loud audible sighs as I bang and stomp. It's not the cutest picture - but that's me, usually in the morning, when I'm feeling overwhelmed and pressed for time.

And after having my son Sam 6.5 months ago, I find myself having less time than ever and more things to do than ever. I've noticed that he sees his rushed, overwhelmed mom - he stares out from his high chair with Sophie the giraffe in his mouth, observing me quietly as i sigh, bang and stomp. and I've now caught myself sweeping past him a couple of times and it makes me cringe to remember that I did that.  

My husband is a lot better than me at slowing down.  And even if he's in a rush, he rarely lets me know it. And he definitely doesn't let Sam know it. No matter what he's doing, he'll stop and bend down and smile at Sam, or tickle him and try to make him laugh. I'm thankful for his slower pace that offsets my hurried one, as I work to adopt some of that patience for myself. 

It's incredible to realize how much of yourself you want to work to change when you look at yourself through the lens of your child.  

Oh and the passive aggressive thing - yeah, working on that too.

{via huffington post}

noted, thank you

I'm a pretty nostalgic person, so remembering is something that suits me - but I have a horrible memory, unless I write it down. 

So here it is - these are the bits and pieces of the thoughts that fill my life that I want to remember - to read and enjoy, to consider, later on.

welcome.