March 27, 2004
March 25, 2004
Adjustment
It was easy to write when I was stuck upstairs that first two weeks. It's been impossible since.
I felt so awful after Will was born. I kept wondering how long it would last, because I didn't feel so bad after Aidan's birth. There was one night that Steve wasn't home and Aidan wanted me to play trains with him. All I could do was stand there to keep him company because I couldn't get down on the floor. I was holding the baby and just that much exertion had me in tears. At about two weeks, Steve took Aidan to his mom's house for the weekend and I finally started to feel all right. Now, four weeks later, I feel just fine - and actually better than I felt with Aidan over the long run. I'm just about 25lbs too heavy, but I don't think that's anything that a little yoga and gardening and a lot of nursing won't fix.
Becoming a brother has been a huge adjustment for Aidan. I hadn't given it nearly enough consideration before the event. I think it's on par with becoming a parent when your first child is born. It's a paradigm shift. Aidan was reacting really negatively and just wasn't himself. I have always loved being with him and enjoyed him as a person, but there was some time there when I was wondering what happened to my sweet boy. It was heartbreaking. I felt like I was yelling at him all the time. I wondered if it was him or me.
My relationship to him changed almost instantly. He suddenly looked so huge to me. I find myself staring at him and marveling at the size of his ears and feet and eyeballs. How did he get so big? And when? The past nine months are a blur - a time of temporary situations that transitioned into permanent changes. There is this fog that comes with pregnancy. Now the fog has cleared and my boy has changed so much that I hardly recognize him. Before I got pregnant I could sit him on my lap and put his socks on. Now his legs are too long. Something about that makes me so sad.
About a week ago he started to seem like himself again. Now when we go to bed, he asks, "can we talk before we go to sleep?". Sometimes not much is said but sometimes we have intense conversations. Around the same time, Will started to unfold and seem more like a real person and less like an adorable extra-terrestrial.
Spring is here and we're finally getting to the point where we can do things with the house and the yard. We'll have all of our stuff out of storage by Sunday. It's time to really start creating our home and our lives and that includes both deciding on paint colors for the hallway and becoming conscious of the new relationships in our family.
And some pics for the relatives: Here's Will with Uncle Will and Wes with Will (Will has both peed on the bed and spit up on the dog here) and Superman, I mean Aidan, with Will.
March 10, 2004
Dog Gone
We've been lazy with Wes. We always are, but our strategy since we've been in this house has been to just let him out twice a day, give him treats when he returns and hope for the best. About a week ago it was quite warm and he stayed out for hours. Steve finally gave up on him and came to bed and I got up and waited another hour. I walked up and down the street looking for him while I was still recovering from Will's birth. He didn't respond to whistles or calls but appeared out of nowhere at one-thirty in the morning. I'd love to have a dog-cam and know where he goes.
A couple of nights ago, it happened again but with one significant difference: it was a cold night with a mix of freezing rain and snow falling all night long. I knew he wouldn't voluntarily stay out in that weather. When Steve gave up on him at 1AM, I got up and stayed up until 3. When I came back to bed, I tried to stay awake so I could hear his bark at the back door, but I was more convinced that he had fallen victim to the cars that I could hear on the road or the train that runs behind the houses across the street. Or maybe someone took him. Or maybe he was chasing someone's chickens and got shot. Or he got attacked by a pack of coyotes, which Steve sometimes hears in the distance at night. Or maybe hopefully someone just found him and took him in, intending to call the humane society in the morning.
Steve called the town animal control officer in the morning, who retuned his call at about 10AM. There was a dog in a trap a few houses away that was probably ours. We were both amazed - a trap? I pictured a hole in the ground with grass and hay over it. Steve pictured Wes hanging from a net up in a tree. It was actually more like a giant squirrel trap. The homeowner had reported a vicious stray in the area, so animal control had set the trap. I hope that Wes wasn't the vicious stray that she had in mind.
We were so relieved to get him back and a tiny bit satisfied that he had suffered a bit for causing us so much anxiety. We are not at all confident that he won't walk right into the trap again, so he is on lockdown until we get a fence. Poor dog. He's being introduced to the life of the country dog tied out to a tree and he doesn't get it at all. He won't sniff around and pee on things when he is tied out. He just sits down and waits for someone to come and get him. I never wanted to do that to him.
March 06, 2004
Endogenous Smiles
That's the name for those newborn sleep smiles. William has them a lot, and today I was treated to an accompanying chuckle. Newborns only smile in their sleep, and it seems to me, only during REM sleep. Sometimes, William falls into REM sleep without completely closing his eyes and looks like a maniac with his eyes jumping about while he grins.
What on earth are they dreaming and smiling about? Some people say that these smiles have nothing to do with smiles as we know them - that they are merely reflexive muscle twitches that result in something that looks like a smile. Certainly, it looks like that sometimes - like a fake smile, a polite smile. But sometimes the smiles look real. And who could deny that they dream? Certainly most of their time in the womb is spent in a watery, dreamy sleep. Now that my milk has come in, most of Will's time on the outside is spent sleeping too. It's only interrupted by those new bothersome responsibilities to eat and eliminate.
There's something so magical and otherworldly about newborns. They seem like little ancient creatures as much as they seem brand new. They are still firmly planted in their previous world, dreaming about it, reacting to it. It takes them a couple of months to ever find something to smile about in this world.
March 02, 2004
Another Pic
I'm sorry you can't really see his hair in it, but there's not much anyway. I should get a picture of it though because he has this natural little mohawk.
March 01, 2004
Opposable Toe
We think that William has made an evolutionary leap with the
opposable toe.