A Bed of Clouds

This weekend you were unbearably sweet.

On Saturday we rolled you through the conservatory in St. Paul. You stared at the leaves of the Traveler Tree, at the wide open mouths of the lilies, at the gourd-like sacs of the chocolate plant.
The warmth, the humid air, the koi surfacing from shimmering dark--this is the closest we will come to visiting a foreign country in a long time.

You have learned to blow raspberries and you do so especially whenever I make an animal sound.
"The duck says quack"
"Ssssppppptpttttt"
"The cow says moooooo"
"Ptttsssssstttttppppp"
The sheep says baaaaa"
"bbbbbssssssspppttt"

Today at church you gummed the bulletin through "A Mighty Fortress is Our God" and a sermon on blaming God for allowing misfortune. By the time we left, you had ink from the Satan-tempting-Jesus drawing all over your cheeks.

Your sheets are covered in clouds.

While we ate frozen pizza, your father fed you bananas. You blinked your eyes rapidly and pursed your lips as though we'd given you lemons.

At night, after you go to sleep, we watch the winter Olympics. It is possible that there is no funnier sight than watching the figure skaters practice their routines off the ice.

Thursday with Sunshine

We fed you rice cereal for the first time last night. You were enthusiastic about chewing on the pink spoon. Most of the cereal ran down your chin. I would then re-spoon it into your mouth. Then it would dribble out again. In this way, feeding you a single spoonful took many minutes.

Your father took pictures and then a video. We laughed and ate more cornbread.

Today your grandmother is here, watching you while you sleep and I write. She broke her rib scrubbing the floor of the bathroom so she carries you on the left side of her body, away from the tenderness. She made me an egg salad sandwich for lunch.

Last night, you woke at 11:00. Daddy and I let you scream (horrid, blood-curdling shrieks) for half an hour before daddy went in to soothe you. First I heard him shushing. Then singing. Then your garbled cries as he put his finger in your mouth. Then dinosaur-like shrieks so loud that they startled you out of your screams. But then you began again. Then he shrieked again. You went back and forth like this for some time.

Finally he returned to bed saying, "she just keeps looking for you." And so I went in and fed you. And fed you again at 5am. Because it turns out that 30 minutes is the limit right now, 30 minutes is all I can take.

While I feed you I look at the icicles hanging in front of your nursery window, clear shadows at night and spangled daggers in the day.

I am exhausted. You are glorious. We go on.

This Week

Your father lost his job. Or rather, lost the opportunity to do his job next year.
We lost the opportunity to point out the grope and point of icicles.
We did not call the realtor. We did not make the bid on the house with the new blue counter tops and the built in book shelves with glass doors.

The bartender had to remind me that "dirty" meant with olives.
I watched Keats walk through a door, saggy with rain. I watched his love, Fanny, fall into a puddle of her own skirts out of grief.
I watched you roll from your back to your tummy.
I watched you put your hands on either side of daddy's whiskered face, watched you run your fingers lightly along his jaw.
I stared at sun on snow and branches while my students wrote.
I read, over and over again, "I think this photo was taken during the depression."
"The photographer wants to evoke sympathy for the girls."
"All of the family's belongings are tied to the back of the car. There are buckets and a frying pan and two mason jars. One is dark and one is light."

I ordered artichoke dip. I ordered szechuan chicken. I ordered a medium pizza.
You grabbed and tried to hold between your fingers the skin of my neck, the skin of my cheeks, your father's nose, your father's earlobe.
I dressed you in your "peace" onesie. I dressed myself in gray pants and black boots.
I said, "here are my office hours. here is the tentative schedule. here is the list of questions to ask yourself while you analyze the photograph."

I tied heart shaped balloons to the Baby Bjorn. I draped a blinking heart necklace around your throat. I swirled red icing onto chocolate devil's food cupcakes.

It is Valentine's Day. Requests and dedications all day on Minnesota Public Radio. Jonathan in Chanhassen is dedicating Clair de Lune to Emily and Emily is somewhere listening.

I called home from the restaurant last night. I left a message on our answering machine so that when we arrived home today, sober, we'd remember what we said when we were drunk with hope and possibility the night before.

Leave

Making the "buh" sound has been abandoned in favor of...

Toes. Oh yes, you have just discovered that if you reach your feet high into the air, you can grab those wiggly fleshy little worms. If I put you in the Bumbo seat, you fold yourself in half trying to suck on them. Lint covered, hang-nailed, smelly...the status of the toes does not matter to you. you simply. want. toes.

Also of interest to you is hearing the sound your heels make when brought down from a great height onto the mattress of your crib. Sometimes we think a dwarf is chopping wood upstairs.

Today is my last day of maternity leave. Today is the Superbowl. The men will gallop terribly against one another's bodies (thank you, James Wright) and tomorrow I will gallop terribly away from you.

I have been dreading this new distance between us.

Then, today, you bit my nipple for the first time. And when I said "ouch! no!" and pulled you away from my breast, you smiled hugely.

I never thought I would be grateful for a gummy chomp on my boob, but it was a good reminder that a little more distance might be healthy for the both of us.

Buh

We spent the last two days at Great Grandma Judy's house. The exersaucer rode in the back of the station wagon next to Luxy and only rolled onto her once. When we arrived, I took you out of the car seat and handed you to Judy and she looked at you with such love, her face warbled with wrinkles, and said, "I could just cry," and even as she said it the cry was there, wedged deep in the back of her throat.

We have been touring houses, Thisbe, trying to find one to make into a home. Four days ago we almost made an offer on one. It did not feel like a home when we walked through it. There were cake platters and packages of Ramen in the basement, a Bible with verses highlighted in blue on the dining room table, a three foot tall stuffed giraffe and safari print wallpaper in the bedroom. It felt so very much like someone else's home.

At Judy's house, everything was new to you and so new to me as well: blown glass birds on the windowsills, rosemaled dressers and plates and window shutters, photos tucked into the corners of mirrors and stuck to the fronts of cabinets, a white ceramic vase with stale candy corn and peanuts, a recliner with a grinding motor, a wicker basket with reading materials (The Lutheran, Health, finished crossword puzzles, church bulletins).

Your home is your world right now, dear Thisbe. How much of our detritus, our artwork, our stacks of papers or our tablecloths affects your consciousness? I think about whether surrounding you with cherry will make you feel differently than cheap fiberboard. Real door versus hollow doors; medicinal carpet versus stain-resistant softness; a view of a pond versus a view of a paved parking lot. Will the quality of the things you are surrounded by affect your own sense of worth?

Meanwhile, you have discovered how to make the "b" sound. Up until now your sounds have all begun in the back of the throat--"guhs" and "cuhs" and vowel sounds and shrieks. In the last few days, you discovered your lips. Most beautiful is when I make the "buh" sound and I see that you have forgotten how to imitate it...but then slowly you work your mouth around into smaller and smaller corkscrews until your lips come fully together and then you press a tiny burst of air and bubbles through them: "buh!" You smile then, so proud of your new accomplishment.

Also: If we hold your hands you take the tiniest of steps forward. You like to be upright at all times. Tummy time is for losers, apparently.

In other news: You still have yet to get into the whole rolling thing. You will babble for twenty minutes straight (said Judy today "I have never seen a child of that age go on for so LONG!") but you have yet to take initiative when it comes to physical positioning.

However: You have learned to arch your back and to twist your head upward while laying on the ground...a move which could eventually result in rolling. Or, a seizure.

We ate hamburgers for lunch today at Badger Crossing, the only real restaurant in Cashton. A woman watched, through her owl rimmed glasses, as Daddy balanced you on the table top. As we walked passed her on the way out of the restaurant, she grabbed Judy's forearm: "Is that your granddaughter? She is the most beautiful baby I have ever seen." And you father and I beamed with pride. As though we'd finally mastered the "buh" sound.