Dear Thisbe...

Thisbe Do It

2011-11-13T17:09:00.000-08:00

Well, it's Sunday, November 13th and Dada and I are ready to throw you out the window.

Why? Well, because currently everything is a battle. Everything. No, that's not true. As long as we let you do whatever you want to do AND pay attention to you while you do it, you are happy as a clam. After your bath, for instance, you scampered naked over to the space heater in your room and crouched in front of it, the warm air slightly ruffling the pages of "Millions of Cats" as you read it aloud. I brought over the lotion and put a little on your belly so you could rub it in yourself. "No," you said, "attempting to grab the whole jar from me, "mine." "No," I said, "mine." You also wanted to do the sticky tabs on your diaper by yourself, zip your pajamas yourself, and brush your teeth by yourself.

In the mornings, we often bring you into bed for a few minutes so that Mama and Dada have a little chance to truly wake up before the lights and barking and whining begin in earnest. you like to sit on top on me, stroke my hair a little, look deep into my eyes, and say "MY Mama." If you weren't two, we'd think we were in the beginning of a stalker film.

You want control over everything and, since you don't really have control over much, you're now trying to manipulate your bodily fluids (your only real arsenal) in support of your will. To wit: last Saturday, during a two minute time out in your crib, you took off your clothes and your diaper and urinated all over the crib and floor. "Mama, come here. Mama, pee-pee," you said. This morning I wasn't feeling well and so, in what I assumed was a move of genius, I instructed Dada to take you to church. (When I'm well, church is all about God. When I'm sick, church is all about free child care.) You were having none of it. You were pissed. Dada wrangled you into diaper, clothing, and even into your car seat. But you were crying so hard that you puked. And that ended the trip to church and Mama's sleep in time. This evening, Mama wanted to use the bathroom without your presence. This resulted in another screaming fit, followed by a time out, followed by puking in your bed.

Now it's starting to sound like we're terrible parents. We're making our beloved child get hysterical to the point of puking. And maybe we ARE bad parents. Suddenly it feels like a war and the clouds of dust and debris are so thick that I can't remember if I'm supposed to be patient or firm or ignore you or show you that I am angry or laugh or re-direct or threaten or have another glass of wine.

The toughest part is that when you are getting your way and we are paying attention to you...you are awesome. Articulate and sweet, full of "thank yous" and "love you toos." When we asked you what animal you wanted to see at the zoo last week, you said "tapir." Your favorite game to play is "Going bye-bye. Look sad, Mama. Back now. Look happy, Mama." I call this the Prodigal Son game. Except when you "go bye-bye," I don't think you're off buying whores.

It's been forever since I've written so of course there is much more to say. The title of the post really says it all though. I know it's typical for a toddler to want to do everything independently, I get it. But it is getting hard to know when saying "yes" is an offer of patience and abundant love, and when saying "yes" is supporting the bad habits of a spoiled despot. And trying to know the difference all the time--well. It's hard. I think I'll have that second glass of wine. But I'll raise it to you, dear darling one. Because you are asleep and so it is easy to say "yes, yes, yes."

Oh Look! It's October!

2011-10-05T08:58:00.000-07:00

Today is October 5th. October 5th and a high of 89 degrees. October 5th and the slide too hot to use, October 5th and I'll consider using sunscreen before I take you to the park. September was crazy. But now suddenly it feels like summer again and my body wants to lounge and my spirit feels incredibly lackadaisical.

Busy how, you say? Well, Dada has been busy applying for ordination (writing essays and taking psych tests and shopping for albs), prepping for his classes, applying for teaching jobs, and writing articles about Kierkegaard and Lady Gaga. Mama has been busy editing a book about vocation and attending Mentor Series events.

And you? You've been busiest by far. You're stringing words together into sentences now. Things like "Thisbe. Eat. Sit. Here. Nana." and "Book. Read. Couch. Now. Babar." and, my personal favorite "Drive. Fast. Police. Car. Come. Pay. Money." This weekend you used the word "the" for the first time and yesterday you said "him" in reference to Dada. Now we're waiting for the little words--the prepositions and pronouns and articles--that can connect your thoughts together. You've mastered so many nouns and verbs, now you're beginning to explicate the relationships between things. Not just meaning but clarity and coherence too.

Your energy is still through the roof. The other night before bed you literally ran over twenty laps around the couch. In a row. For fifteen minutes. Without stopping. Really. Jumping is another favorite pass time (couch to ottoman, ottoman to floor, stairs to floor, etc) but one that Mama is not such a fan of. Also of interest is categorizing people based on their possession of a "penis" or "vagina." As in, "Mama. 'Gina." "Dada. Penis." When we ask you what Luxy has, you say, "butt."

I am having trouble, maybe because I am brain dead from already writing three hours today, at being able to articulate exactly what has changed in you this last month. Mostly, the change feels more intuitive--you suddenly seem like a little girl instead of an androgynous, Godzilla-like toddler. Maybe it's the fact that you insisted on playing "pay for things with fake credit card" for twenty minutes yesterday afternoon. Maybe it's that you ask for "hugkiss" before Dada or I leave the house or maybe it's your longer hair pulled into pigtails or barrettes.

Maybe it was seeing you at the park a few days ago with a four year old girl who clearly wanted to befriend you. "Hi," said the girl, "my name is Olivia. What's your name?" "Iz," you said, pointing to your chest. "Friend," you said, pointing to her. Then you took her hand (and she, thank you Jesus, complied) and you walked off toward the swings together. It's one thing to watch you talk to us--it's another to see you using words to build a relationship with another person. Without prompting or staging, without me hovering nearby. And though my joy was tinged a little with the melancholy of "oh great tomorrow she'll asking her therapist about how to draw more firm boundaries with her mother," I was mostly just really, really proud of the person you're becoming.

[Note: photo is of you and Agnes and Karu from a month ago but I've been lazy about uploading and downloading and reloading and deloading photos.]

Hugging, Sneezing, Going Boompey

2011-09-07T08:46:00.001-07:00

Three things I don't want to forget:

1. You now ask for hugs and kisses all the time. When I leave the house and when I return. "Kiss?" you say. Today you were in your highchair, covered with milk and cereal, as I left. "Hug?" you said. "I'll give you a hug from behind," I said. I did so and began to walk away. "Front. Hug?" you said. At bedtime it's even cuter. Dada and I draw magic circles on your belly and say good-night. You scramble to an upright position as quickly as you can and reach out your arms for both of us. I love that we end the day with a group hug.

2. Whenever you sneeze you say "bless you." Whenever anyone else sneezes you say "ah-choo."

3. Your current favorite story is David and Goliath. You request it a few times every day except that you refer to it as "Dave and Ga-ith." At the end of the story you nod seriously and say "boompey, go boompey" to describe the defeat of Goliath and thus the Philistine army.

On my watch, you've been sleeping in until 7:45, playing sweetly, and proffering truckloads of affection. On Dada's watch, you've been waking at 6:45, throwing numerous tantrums, and pooping on the floor. Maybe I shouldn't be smiling as I write this, but I am.

Thunder

2011-08-31T10:48:00.000-07:00

On Saturday you will turn two or, as you put it when asked, "three." Sometimes, "four." Honestly, I feel like you've been two for months and months already so saying the age aloud doesn't make me automatically press my hand to my heart with a nostalgic sigh. This time of year, however, does always make me think not so much of the day of your birth (which, honestly, is a bit of a blur) but of the first few days and weeks afterward. The corn green and high, the crickets chirping, doors and windows open to let in the last few days of summer heat. I think of the hours and hours we spent on the couch, arranging you in your Boppy, trying to get you to latch, gazing at you while you slept. "Great Hyms of Faith," sung by the St. Olaf choir, worked like magic on your psyche and we played the CD over and over again, especially when you wouldn't relax enough to breastfeed. Now, when I hear the hymns I still sometimes feel like my milk is going to let down. I think also about the first few walks I took with Grandma Ricki (you curled and wrinkled in the stroller) down to the Ole Cafe, my netherparts tender and my stomach soft and bloated beneath my T-shirt. We would buy mochas and scones and then walk back slowly. And the season somehow fit my internal landscape perfectly--a warm haze over everything, nothing quite in focus, sleeplessness causing every moment to feel like a liminal one.

As you shrieked this morning, refusing to let Daddy touch you, hyperventilating until he brought you to the bed where you promptly laid on top of me, you head in my hair and your neck cutting off my larynx, I thought of what a different creature you are now, two years later. You've gone from 5 to 25 pounds, from brunette to blond, from screamer to speaker, from perfect shriveled nut to perfect full-fleshed little girl. And then there are the things that haven't changed: your strong will, your intensity, your mildly bizarre instinct for religious things. I remember being so hungry to know, in those early hours and days and weeks, who you were going to become. And it is blessing to see your personhood emerge, this human being I am so deeply proud to know--but also blessing to see that you have been you all along, that your self was there right from the start, it was we who didn't know the difference between what a baby does and what a Thisbe baby does. Because for us, you were both the first baby we had really known and the first Thisbe we had ever known.

You are still, I must admit, not an easy child. You compose frequent tantrums, instigate repeated battles of the will, demand almost constant interaction from the adults around you. Some of this is toddler behavior, but we are now wise enough as parents to know that some of it is also pure Thiz behavior. You're a stinker. But you're also wonderful. Now, after smacking Luxy in the face with a cup, you'll say (with ample sincerity), "sorry" afterward. You tell the other children at the playground "no" when they climb on the equipment but you're also quick to hug and kiss them if I ask you to say "hi." You know to whom each pair of shoes in the house belongs and you relish bringing them to us when asked. You also love to wear adult shoes around the house; strutting in my flip-flops is one of your favorite activities.

Your vocab is growing in leaps and bounds. "Peace car" you say when you see a law enforcement vehicle (which is either charming or deeply ironic depending on your view of police officers). When we read "If you Give a Moose a Muffin" you say the word at the end of every sentence. When asked to say your ABCs you say "A, B. A, B" When asked to count to ten you say, "three, four, six, eight, nine, ten!" or some such mildly random combination. After one occasion at the Northfield pool when we were made to get out of the water as a result of a distant rumble of thunder, you have become obsessed with the sound and you discuss it often.

At a recent play date picnic, Emily started to call you the "bolter" because, as the other kiddos played happily near the adults on the lawn, you repeatedly ran as fast as you could for the perimeters of the park. I'd turn away for two seconds and look up to see you in the parking lot or the tall wild grass or up to your thighs in the lake. When Gak takes you to Lake Harriet, you "swim" on your belly up and down the shoreline in the shallow water. In the bathtub, you find it hilarious to dump cups of water on your own head. Though sometimes around unfamiliar men you act "fake shy" for three or four minutes (probably a good thing), you're generally not afraid of much in this world. A blessing and a curse.

So, my dear darling one, two years ago today you were preparing for your grand entrance to the world. I have a video from that day that shows only the naked side of my belly and from time to time, you, rumbling like thunder underneath my skin.

Naming Genitalia

2011-08-15T17:54:00.001-07:00

Argh! I've been terrible about updating lately with no real excuse other than general summer malaise. Much has happened. Judy's 90th birthday in Wisconsin, a mini Schwehn-camp weekend in the Dells, forays to the wading pool with Gak and Ampa, etc., etc. You have been quite the trooper, I have to say, and I've been enormously proud of the way you've embraced so many different family members. It was especially fun to watch you and Kaarn hang out together in Judy's yard. You followed your Auntie everywhere, overwhelmed with adoration after she showed you how to pick (and eat) the tart green apples from the apple tree and how to swing on the big girl swing hung from the maple on the other side of the lawn. You were thrilled to receive your first manicure and still occasionally point to your toes and say: "Red. Kaarn."

Your main development continues to be language. At least one new word every day, it seems, and old words lined up side by side to express real, live thoughts. Our favorite combo so far occurred while you and Dada were on a walk through the grasslands. You discovered a dead reptile in the weeds and thoughtfully remarked, "Snake. Bad. Bible." We choose to interpret this word string as the thoughts of an individual attempting to make ethical judgments about daily life (Daddy) or attempting to connect the an individual narrative with a mythic narrative (me). That it could also be the sign of a budding evangelical preacher is not a consideration upon which we love to dwell.

Along with all the delights of language come the challenges of language. I have been thinking a lot about Adam lately, about the challenges he must have faced in naming all those creatures, trying to find the sound or sounds to convey fur or feather, bulk or bone, cuddly or carnivore. And so Dada and I find ourselves faced with the trickiest of all naming ceremonies: child genitalia.

Really, vagina sucks. Vagina sounds like a spice rub for pork. Penis is no better, really, it sounds like a word you'd hear in passing at a lacrosse tournament. Actually, I'm sure it generally is. Anyway, parenting books are big these days on how VERY important it is for parents to create a shame-free environment for children to come to understand and embrace their own sexuality. This is why I nod encouragingly but avert my eyes when you caress yourself during diaper changes and say thing like "is the dolphin exploring?" when you let its bottle nose do some special sniffing around during bath time. As a writer, then, I feel this particular stress about finding a term for your netherparts that will convey a sense of intimacy without sounding like the name of a clown or a poodle. This is more difficult than it sounds.

Hoo-Ha? Va-jay-jay? Poo-tang?

Pee-pee? Wee-nee? Ding-dong?

I've thought about more abstract terminology like "special place" or "private parts" but I don't like using phrases that could also be used to describe secluded gazebos or Superfund sites. I also feel weird calling your vagina by a different name like "Samantha" or "Cristina."

But far worse than all these is the fact that right now when you reach down to pat your vagina during diaper changes, you simply call it your "butt." Your vagina is not your butt, Thisbe, and the only time later in life that you may confuse the two is when you're trying to give birth. At that moment, it might feel that you are pushing a head through your ass. Until, then, I want to give you a word or a phrase that is intimate but also conveys at least a sliver of self respect. I want you to love and respect your own body and I want to give you the confidence to expect others to do the same.

(So, um, for the first time in this blog's history, I would like to ask for help from the peanut gallery. Anyone found phrases or words that seem to fit these bizarre criteria? Help and sarcasm would both be appreciated. Comments, please!!!)

Rejection

2011-07-22T10:46:00.001-07:00

Daddy is camping with his graduate school friends in 95 degree heat. Meanwhile, Thiz, you and I have been attempting to have some quality time. Except we went to Minneapolis and Gak and Ampa took over and then I didn't really see you for 48 hours but did manage to read the first 100 pages of Lolita and write 2,000 words. So that was good.

Last night, when it was time to go to bed, I walked into the sunroom to whisk you up the stairs. You were sitting on the couch next to Gak. The following is a word-for-word transcription of our conversation:
Me (brightly): Hey sweetie, it's time to go to bed now.
You (pointedly): Book.
Me: You already read a book with grandma.
You (emphatically): BOOK.
Me (resignedly): OK, we can read one more book.
[You proffer "Bambi." I sit down on the couch beside you and open "Bambi."
You (archly): No. Gak.
Me (apathetically): OK. Gak can read the book.
You: Go. Away. Mama.

Yep, that's right. Your second sentence EVER consisted of telling me to fuck off. It was the sentence equivalent of "Bup." So I sulked off dejectedly to the computer room.

30 seconds later you came dashing in. "Hug!" you said. "Really?" I said. "Hug!" you said again in a tone that sounded like you were asking for fifty push-ups in glaring Arizona sunshine. "OK," I said, lifting you onto my lap. You hugged. You kissed. "Did Gak make you do that?" I asked. "Yes," you said, "Buh-bye!" And you were gone.

There and Back Again

2011-07-19T18:26:00.000-07:00

We are in the midst of a heat wave. The kind that makes one's glasses fog up when one steps outside. The kind that leaves a sheen of sweat across every inch of one's skin after walking for 2.5 blocks. The kind the makes one stretch lazily on one's bed watching re-runs of cooking shows while the fan whirs and whirs overhead.

When we left Seattle yesterday it was 62 degrees. The current temperature is 90, but with the humidity it feels like 105. It's the kind of weather extreme that makes be both extremely grateful for modern temperature control but also extremely uneasy. I realize that, just as when the temps turn arctic, much of my ability to DO anything comes from the fact that I'm not spending all my time figuring out how to stay warm--or in this case, cool. Daddy is going camping with his friends tomorrow. I am feeling alternately amused and terrified that he will bake into some sort of gruesome human Hot Pocket in the tent.

We spent the last two weeks at Holden. The time was not relaxing but WAS exceptionally renewing. At least for Mama and Dada. I'm not so sure you felt renewed being at Holden. I think you felt renewed when you returned home. You were exceptionally happy today, delighted to chase Luxy around the living room, to buckle your familiar high chair straps, to lug the unwieldy children's Bible up onto the couch. You loved Holden but I think it was also overwhelming for you: the dining hall filled with hoards of unfamiliar people at every meal, the non-uniform surfaces (rocky roads, rooted trails, crooked cobblestone paths) slowing your full-throttle running pace, the loving Narnia volunteers prying your hands from my shirt every morning to engage you in play. These things, I think, exhausted you. And although we were staying in a chalet, we were all crammed into one room, a sheet separating your Pack and Play from our bed, our clothes and books and (clean) cloth diaper inserts scattered on all available surfaces. You ended up in our bed every night (sometimes at 10pm, sometimes at 1:30 or 5:30am) and I think we all grew weary from not sleeping quite fully or restfully.

But then there was the loveliness: hikes to waterfalls, baby deer napping outside our window, eternal washing in Gak's sink, bubble-blowing with Dot, squealing contests with Holden, adventures to the Hobbit House and labyrinth, chipmunks available for chasing at every turn, etc., etc., etc.

And richness for your father and I: teaching people who wanted to be taught, engaging in discussions on suffering and health care, socialism, wilderness ethics, Augustine's confessions, and the nature of hope. There was laughter yoga and dishteam and staying up until the wee hours drinking boxed wine with new friends. Your father preached an amazing mini-sermon on the nature of freedom and I talked with Toni about how to weave together a memoir about the last days of Bethany's life. We didn't relax. But for a few days we got to be parents and friends and lovers and teachers and workers and worshipers and hikers and learners in a place that didn't ask us to separate these aspects of ourselves into separate categories. I sang hymns beside the people who came to my classes, I did dish team with the woman who cared for you in Narnia. In a society that often asks us to divide into a version of ourselves for different occasions, it is a relief to return to a place where the whole self is welcomed, is sufficient at every turn. So we're not relaxed. But we are renewed. I hope, at some level, that you are too, although your main reflection on the trip consists of: "Dada. Pee-pee. Hike." Because while we were hiking, Dada peed while you were in the backpack. And you thought this was worth a sentence.

Holden isn't perfect, by any means, but as people I think we live more fully and completely there, not versions of ourselves, but our whole selves, troubled and imperfect and filled with abundant grace. Or, as you would say, "Dada. Pee-pee. Hike."

Visitors!

2011-06-28T18:32:00.000-07:00

I have been a lazy poster this month. In part because I accepted a summer school course at the last minute so I've been more busy than I thought I'd be. But also because we've had the joy of visitors. First, way back in May, John and Anna stopped by. We walked to the Cow and drank beer and walked back through a lovely rain. At the beginning of June we got to spend time touring boats and ogling tapirs with Grandma Gail and Grandpa Michael. Just this last Sunday, Martha and Sam popped by for a visit. They brought chard from their garden and freshly-picked strawberries. We roasted a chicken and feasted!

So here are pictures, without the stories that should accompany them because I am tired and/or lazy. Love, Ma.

Biba?

2011-06-28T18:04:00.000-07:00

Well, things have turned around. You went from really sick to kind of sick to whiny to well. You are now back to full force Thisbe mode: running everywhere, demanding everything (pool, park, cookie, cracker), and by turns charming or annoying everyone. Your new favorite books are the Bible and Babar. Because you aren't yet exceptionally articulate, these words sound identical when you say them. "Biba?" you say. And somehow the conflation of the orphan who becomes King of the Elephants and the bastard who becomes King of the Jews is lovely.

Also lovely and mildly disconcerting is the amount you absorb every time we read. Let me begin by saying that the Bible is not a text that your father or I have hoisted upon you in ANY way. I have kind of avoided it, actually, in part because the children's Bible we have (thank you, Lorraine and Gary!) is direct and simple but also filled with people who look like they've been sucking helium. Bulgy cartoon eyes, bulgy cartoon hair, bulgy cartoon gestures. Eve's hair covers her boobs. Jonah's beard has five points, making it look like he has a starfish strapped to his chin. Naaman (whoever that is) wears lovely white bandages on his hands to indicate his leprosy. But you LOVE to read the Bible and you remember a ridiculous amount. When we get to the people arguing prior to the flood you say "bad, bad!" You identify the snake and the ark and baby Jesus. Tonight, I kid you not, you identified John the Baptist. Seriously. I think we read the story once. Though I suppose camel's hair is always a tip-off.

Your other favorite book is Where the Wild Things Are. You love the roaring and the gnashing and the rolling and the claws. I convinced you to wear pigtails yesterday and today simply by referring to them as "horns."

Last night Daddy and I made a grave parenting mistake. After Daddy accidentally woke you up at 10pm, you proceeded to cry and poop and cry until, after half an hour, we decided to let you sleep with us. Let that be the last time I utter those words in a VERY long time. Between 10:30 and midnight you slept exactly zero minutes. Instead, you took it upon yourself to remind us that it was dark. Over and over again. This meant you couldn't see us (duh) so you spent a great deal of time crawling back and forth between us in bed like a concerned spelunker (Dada? DADA??? Mama? MAMA???) Just when one of us was ready to hurl you back into your crib, you'd lean down and give the sweetest, most delicate kiss on whatever part of our faces your lips chanced to bump. You also spent some time stroking my hair back from my forehead and rubbing my back. It was the cute show in darkness. And though, at midnight, I made your father return you to your room, I will always remember the sound of your tiny kisses, magnified by the dark.

The Images I Know

2011-06-14T19:02:00.000-07:00

The rain is clicking against the windows and the belly-rumble thunder is distant and occasional. Your eyelids are red and puffy and a blotchy rash is blooming down your back, across your belly, blushing out below your ears and between your fine blond hairs. Your hair itself is matted with sweat and sticky with the antibiotics that we failed to make you swallow. Your body is a fiery machine whose only job is to get better. When you are awake you are barely awake, eyes at half- mast, head rolling back from time to time, moving toward and away from a distant shore. We watch Elmo and Barney. Sometimes you want a book open too. Cat in the Hat or Green Eggs and Ham. The rhymes lull you, I think. You want only to lay on Daddy or lay on me, often squirming side to side for 20 or 30 minutes, trying to find the right position, the one that might make you finally feel better. You repeat "ow. ow. ow. ow" or "no. no. no. no" or "mama. mama. mama. mama." the tone both wheedling and hopeful and pathetic and heartbreaking all at once. You want us to take it away and we cannot and this is what it means to suffer.

We took you to the doctor for a battery of tests today and nothing was conclusive. High white blood count, blood oxygen 94 (lower than it should be), a slightly pink left ear, a ruby red throat--but no strep. No pneumonia. Likely just a virus with lengthy fangs. We put you on antibiotics just in case the infection is bacterial. But so far three days of this and no improvement.

As usual, there is so much more to mention. A visit from Grandma Gail and Grandpa Michael. Trolley rides and ship tours and forays into the wading pool. I spent a fantastic weekend in Iowa. Daddy spent time considering golf clubs and inserting rubber pieces into the wheels of my car so the steering wheel doesn't shake when I hit 70mph. But right now, those events seem like they happened ages ago. Sick time stretches out on either side of us. The wheels on the bus go round and round and round and round.

I also started teaching a class called Women's Writing, a class I kind of hope doesn't exist by the time you get to college. Anyway. We discussed Anne Sexton today. A poem called "Fortress" that describes a nap with her daughter. Here are my two favorite stanzas:

Darling, life is not in my hands;
life with its terrible changes
will take you, bombs or glands,
your own child at
your breast, your own house on your own land.
Outside the bittersweet turns orange.
Before she died, my mother and I picked those fat
branches, finding orange nipples
on the gray wire strands.
We weeded the forest, curing trees like cripples.

...

I cannot promise very much.
I give you the images I know.
Lie still with me and watch.
A pheasant moves
by like a seal, pulled through the mulch
by his thick white collar. He's on show
like a clown. He drags a beige feather that he removed,
one time, from an old lady's hat.
We laugh and we touch.
I promise you love. Time will not take away that.

I love you, sweetest darling Thisbe. Sickness makes the love acute, and harder.

Narrative!!!

2011-05-30T12:53:00.000-07:00

Today you created your very first sentence. And then you said it approximately 50 times because you were so proud.

On your walk this morning with Da, Luxy ran into a deer and the deer promptly chased Luxy until Luxy got behind the deer at which point the tables were turned and Luxy was the chaser and the deer was the chase-ee. Super exciting.

When I arrived home from the coffee shop, Da prompted you to tell me about your excursion and you said:

Dee. (long pause) Chis. (long pause) Ux.

[Translation: Deer chase Lux]

Daddy and I were slightly elated. So were you. And even though you haven't said any new sentences (you've just been repeating that same one over and over), you are beginning to experiment with saying one word slightly after another, trying to figure out how they make meaning side by side. I have to say, it's pretty awesome. Way more awesome than just a single word, which essentially communicates only knowledge of an object or an action. This was a memory! A story! A sentence so close to being grammatically correct that it could grace the front page of a small town newspaper!

I have been able to complete this blog post with you in the room because you are so obsessed with fastening the buckles on your high chair. I write a sentence while you buckle. Then you sign "more." I unbuckle. We repeat the process.

It's Memorial Day. Heavy and humid and hot. Thick, thick air. You're wearing shorts for the first time this year. Yellow cotton ones that tie in the front. Your onesie is pink with tiny blue and red stars, which is as close as we get to being patriotic. Gak and Ampa Peter are on their way home from visiting the gypsies in France and Gail and Ampa Michael arrive on Wednesday. Tonight I am bringing cucumber salad and watermelon to a barbeque which means I think I can safely, finally say: summer is here.

Picture Roundup

2011-05-16T11:35:00.000-07:00

It's often hard to post more than a few pictures per blog post because the uploading takes FOREVER and then often isn't successful. Anyway. Here are some lovely shots from the last few months, you with Grandma Judy and Grandma Dot and Grandpa Ark. The painting in the Grandpa picture is titled "Yawn" because it is so incredibly boring. Just FYI.

In other news: today you choked on a piece of chalk and then went to a hymn sing at Olaf hosted by Garrison Keillor. At the hymn sing it was revealed that you are not a true Lutheran because you were completely unimpressed with Big G and demanded to go outside instead. Blasphemy.

Also: it's finally beautiful outside! Hurrah!

And: you are developing a complex musical sensibility. In the car, when I start to sing, you interrupt and say "Da. DA!!!" The other day, when I tried to sing your lullaby to you in your crib, you screamed "no!" and then made the sign for me to give you a back rub instead. You better have a good little voice yourself, little lady, because I ain't takin' no criticism from someone who can't even sing "Twinkle, Twinkle."

Hail

2011-05-11T16:58:00.000-07:00

You love to wash. You love your fingers underneath a running faucet. You pull your two-tiered wooden step stool to the kitchen then the bathroom. Today you said Elmo. At the zoo last week, you liked the camels best. When we ask you to sing, you form your lips into postures like your father's lips when he sings but you don't make any noise. You point out things that come in pairs. Two runners, two cars, two orange cones. Two. Two. Two.

The dandelions are up. The tulips are frothing with color. Purple like the saddest heart. Toenail polish red. You call Peter "ampa." Last night a funnel cloud over Lake Calhoun. I decided not to wake you.

Today heavy and humid and gray. The kitchen light flickering. "Would you like a time out?" I say. "Yes," you say. You are heavier. You are taller. We don't notice until all the sudden we do. Some mornings your face seems to have shifted overnight. Your blond hair grown to the bottom of your chin, flipping and fraying. You stir your couscous and tofu like a lunatic. You know A and B and I and O and P and S but not how to put two words together. Each thought is singular. Move. Sit. Wash. Plate. Water. Ball.

We found Bin Laden and killed him. We're testing equality on our ballots. Kate and William got married and everyone said the lace kept her dress tasteful. I am not jealous of the razor-sharp line she'll have to walk every day of her life. I'm glad you're not a princess though I think we have a flashy onesie at the bottom of a dresser drawer that argues otherwise.

Sool

2011-05-01T09:15:00.000-07:00

I should begin by noting some cute shit you've done lately.

1. When we sit down to eat, you immediately hold out your hands to both of us so that we can pray. Lately, you've started to desire further prayer throughout the meal. Daddy and I will be eating our burgers, avocado falling out the sides, talking about frequent flyer miles or tornadoes or book proposals and you'll suddenly hold out your hands and say "pray, pray!" This behavior will be really darling until you join a right-wing evangelical church with a praise band called "His Kingdom Come."

2. Yesterday was Gak's birthday and I casually asked if you wanted to call her and say "happy birthday." And you said "hap-eye birf-da?" I almost peed my pants. We called Gak and you said "hap-eye birf-da" into the phone and she did pee her pants. Then you walked over to your book shelf and returned with the book about birthdays (touch the jewels in the crown! touch the spongy cake! touch the rubbery balloon!) which we haven't looked at since, like, Nam. "Birf-da," you said, showing me the book. I know, I know that babies are sponges, but I always assumed you were ignoring everything I said. It's bizarre to find out that you were listening when we read that book 4 months ago and that you remember it still.

3. Generally you're into words like pretty, baby, happy, etc. Except you pronounce the last syllable as "eye" rather than "ee" so it kind of sounds like you have a southern drawl.

Anyway, the main narrative this week has been the car. We said good-bye to the Honda and hello to a new (used) Saab. Then the Saab started flashing a weird warning so we returned it to the dealer so they could check it out and said hello to an obscenely large SUV. I have nothing against people who drive SUVs out of necessity. Like, they have three kids in car seats or a lumber business or a cheetah. Fine, I get it. But when I see the vehicle parked in front of our house, I want to hurl. Hopefully the Saab will be pronounced well and good and we'll have it back on Monday.

My Dad ("Ark") bought the Honda in 1993. When he was deciding on the color, he showed my teen-age self both options: gold and silver (apparently he was a girl scout at heart) and I pronounced both of them ugly. I was insistent that he NOT choose either of these colors. And he didn't. He rolled into the driveway in a car that was neither gold nor silver and explained that the dealer had another color option when he arrived that day: yun. I was satisfied. Yun was a much more complex and unique color. Plus, I felt really smart when I said it. Yun. I could feel my SAT scores increase every time I used the word. And use it I did, all the time. Knowingly, nonchalantly, condescendingly. Until one day during college when I tried to use it during a Boggle match and my opponent pointed out that it wasn't a word. And indeed, it was not. Grandpa Mark made it up and then USED in in context for the next FIVE YEARS. Cruelty, thy name is yun.

When it came time to choose this car, I told Dada I didn't want a regular, boring color. I wanted something interesting and unique. I am so glad he was able to find a sool colored Saab. Not silver, not gray, but sool. Maybe your prom dress will be sool too. I can only hope.

A Bus for Jesus

2011-04-26T09:50:00.000-07:00

Jesus came back to life (again)! To celebrate, we want to the Chapel of the Resurrection on the campus on Valparaiso University in Valparaiso, Indiana. Grandpa Mark ("Ark") and Grandma Dorothy ("Dot") accompanied us. As did your baby doll, a snack cup filled with Teddy Grahams, a book about baby bunnies, a tiny toy choo-choo, an entourage of quarter-sized animals to ride the choo-choo, and a pouch of gummy bunny fruit snacks. These items amused you for exactly 30 minutes. Then you noticed the backside of the woman in front of us, a backside covered in a speckled silk dress and sagging through the opening in the pew. "Dot!" you shouted, "dot! dot! dot!" As you shouted you also poked at the dots...and I promptly removed you from the service.

You ran around the entryway for awhile and then discovered the wide spiral staircase that leads both up to the choir loft and down to the smaller chapel and bathrooms below. The stairs were high enough that you could go both up and down them on your very own, without assistance from me or the vertical golden rails that wind downward with the staircase. At the very bottom of the stairs, the golden rails create a circular cage of sorts, the bars spaced about 18 inches apart. The bottom of the cage is paved with black rocks and stones, most about the size of a softball, their edges unsmoothed so that walking across the surface is a thoughtful event. In the center of the stones is a baptismal font that looks like it belongs to a different age. It is a cylindrical mass of gray stone, the top rendered slightly concave to hold water. I thought of Machu Picchu, the giant slabs of rock used for ceremony or sacrifice or chiseled so that running water could be diverted into pools, gullies, basins. The stairs you walked upon were stone too, a deep burnt orange, flecked with bits of light and dark. You walked upon all this in your Easter dress, pink at the top, rows of pastel flower cascading to a ruffle at the bottom. Pink tights. New silver shoes with zero traction. I missed the majority of the service but I will carry in my memory the contrast of your small body against the complexity and weight and formality of all that stone.

After church you ate frozen macaroni and cheese and took a nap. The adults sat on the sun porch and drank martinis and ate pastel colored almonds and Cougar gold cheese and matzah. After you woke, Dada and I walked you to the park (still, admittedly, a little tipsy from the martinis) and watched while you tackled the slides and the bouncy bridge and the wood chips. Dot worked on her knees in the flowerbeds and Ark took a nap in the study (below a painting I fondly refer to as "Yawn"). In the late afternoon we watched you play on the porch: blocks and wooden train tracks, your stuffed animal entourage and a plastic ball nearly half your size. Your favorite toy was a plastic school bus with a button you could press to incite the vehicle to offer songs and commentary ("stop and go, stop and go, la la la" or "look at the flashing lights!" or "we're on our way to school!"). The bus passengers included a white girl with frizzy hair and glasses, a happy African-American boy with a book, a Latino(a)-transvestite bus driver, a dog, and a wheelchair. Never has there been a more politically correct bus. Jesus would have loved to drive this bus! Luckily, you also alerted us every time a bus (or something that vaguely looked or sounded like a bus) drove by the house. You sure do love yourself a bus.

Now we are home again. Actually, Dada and I are home and you are with Grandma Ricki and Grandpa Peter. I'm not sure who was the most thrilled with the idea of you spending the night, you, us, or Grandma Ricki, but it's been a win-win situation all around. It's been raining all day and the house is very quiet without you. I both want you home and want the quiet to go on just a little bit longer.

The Village Ahead of You

2011-04-17T17:08:00.000-07:00

When I was in grad school and I needed to write a poem, I'd often give myself a prompt. I'd write from a work of art or I'd give myself a list of words to include in order to spice up my diction. Sometimes I made the limits more rigid: meter, rhyme, number of lines, number of words in a line, etc. Often I invented a speaker and made myself write a poem from the person's point of view. During my first year at Iowa I decided to write from the perspective of a mother who knew she was going to die soon. I imagined a daughter, what I might say to her. I imagined a modern, less-wind-baggy version of Polonius. I wrote the poem on Palm Sunday.

Today is Palm Sunday and I want to give the poem to you. I don't think I'm going to die immanently but being a parent makes me far more aware that I am already in the process of doing so. Lists of advice are futile but comforting too. I'm not the speaker of this poem, Thiz, my list for you would be different, but a part of me is in this poem too. So here you are.

[Note: this poem was published in "The Cresset" a number of years ago. I think I'm allowed to re-print as long as I mention that.]

THE VILLAGE AHEAD OF YOU

I am not sure how this ends. If the body

dissolves or is taken up, if the roof of sky

feels like cellophane or moss.

When I was five I wanted to be a hen so

at a petting zoo I reached below one

to collect an egg. Her quills were stiff

and the vanes were damp and warm, sticking

a little to my knuckles. She didn’t peck

or squirm or try to stop me. There’s something of Abraham

and Isaac in this. You should know

I would never have collected sticks to burn you.

Patty says she’d collect only green ones but Patty

likes to please everyone. I love you

more than God and I do not

accept the parts of the story where

bodies are taken up with a greater

plan in mind. You should love your home.

Lot’s wife did not turn back to watch

fire spitting from the shoulders and hair

of those who followed; she looked back

at her house and at her pasture.

Land gets taken up by fire too and possessions

are not always wrong. Wear something comfortable.

Sleep with my nightgown. Don’t try to look

after anyone else. Every town has a bell, bells

return us to ourselves. The second time

your father left I flew to Quito and was miserable.

It was Palm Sunday so I stood with a crowd

at the back of a cathedral. A girl gave me

a cross woven out of palm leaves, grit

at the corners of her eyes and brown, milky

irises. A basket filled with crosses

hung from each of her arms and she wore pink

bedroom slippers over thick brown socks.

She stood in front of me a long time, I thought

because of blindness. I was too sad to know

I was supposed to pay her. It is difficult to be happy

knowing the way that story ends. The point

is that we sing the songs and lay the palm leaves

down, that we turn to gaze at the man who sits

halfway up the mountain with his head between his knees.

I believe we will know when the time comes

what it means to crouch beside him, using both our hands

to raise his face to ours.

Password

2011-04-10T17:21:00.000-07:00

You have been an explosion of development lately: teeth, words, and the consumption of a State Fair's worth of calories every day. You have become newly enamored with a baby doll we creatively refer to as Baby Doll and you often spend 10-15 minutes carrying her around pressed to your chest, sometimes absent-mindedly patting her on the back, sometimes heaving her down on the sofa or a chair, sometimes laying on top of her on the floor while making a weird humping motion with your hips (that we generally try not to see as a "humping motion").

You have simultaneously developed a mild disdain for books coupled with a hearty interest in letters. We sing the "ABC" song often and you call out "S" in the appropriate place. This weekend we bought you a 17x11 inch magnetic chalkboard with accompanying letters and numbers and you can already identify "O" and occasionally "I" and "S." the identification of "O" may have to do with your favorite sound to imitate which is "oooohhhhh" as in "ooooohhhh, look at that cute kitten" or "ooooohhhh, isn't that flower so pretty" or "ooooohhhh, Thisbe is humping her Baby Doll again." I think it's mostly Grandma Ricki that makes this sound excessively, but I am somewhat embarrassed to acknowledge that I, too, have been known to "ooooohhhh" on occasion. And I challenge you, dear cynical and older Thiz, to go and see that baby farm animals at the zoo and NOT make that sound. Seriously.

The word explosion continues. You were considerate enough to inform us about every truck or bus we passed on our journey from Northfield to Minneapolis on Friday. Each day you experiment with another word or two. Today we went to visit Jamie and Jennifer (and new baby Linus!) and you enthusiastically pointed to the dog entrance in their basement door and shouted "hole, hole!" Later, on a walk with Grandma Ricki, you identified (tree) bark and the dock on Lake Harriet. You are most verbally thoughtful as you try to distinguish "poop" from "toot" and those conversations are perhaps the most common and most meaningful in our household. [Thisbe: "poop." Mama: "poop or toot?" Thisbe: "toot" Mama: "toot?" Thisbe: "poop?" and so forth].

Some of my favorite moments of the last few weeks have been during your early waking moments. Because you have been waking too early (both in the AM and from naps), I often bring you into bed with me (or Dada and me. Or me and the mailman) and tell you that you need to sleep a bit longer. Sometimes you actually fall asleep and I get to feel the weight of your body snuggled into mine, your head tucked into my neck, your fingers curling around my shoulders. I get to feel the tiny shocks that stir your body occasionally while you sleep. My body was once your home and the fact that something in your body remembers this makes all the growing away and out of and into a little bit more bearable. I love you, sweet girl.

Why You Should Travel With 500 Extra Wipes

2011-03-29T17:48:00.000-07:00

So after the Sea Shore we unpacked and repacked. We got into the car to drive to Wisconsin for Alyssa's (Dada's cousin) wedding. You slept in the sun in the back of the car and Dada and I drank mochas in the front. Until you woke and vomited a large amount of egg salad and canned peaches all over your outfit, your winter coat, your large stuffed dog, your small stuffed cat, your car seat, our car seat, and other items I'm not even remembering. Luckily, there was a rest stop 1.5 miles away. I stood you on a shelf in the rest station bathroom and you sobbed (vomit still covering your hands, your face, your front) while I opened our wheeled luggage and dug for clean clothes. There is nothing in the world sadder than a sobbing naked toddler in a rest stop bathroom. Well, OK, that's hyperbole, but it was sad.

Meanwhile, Dada was in a cleaning closet on his knees, using a hose and a swath of paper towels to wash the vomit off your clothes. The maintenance man sat on his swivel chair (in front of his desk in the closet) and would occasionally make a remark ("well, you're not the first folks to wander in here with this kinda situation") or to offer latex gloves. He wore an olive green work suit and a John Deere hat and offered us a yellow trash bag to protect your clean clothes from the vomit we couldn't wash out of the car seat. He was God. Seriously.

I can see that if I describe all of the events of the weekend, this post will become a novel. Other highlights of the weekend included washing explosive diarrhea from your pajamas (twice), drying your apple juice soaked jeans on a hand dryer in the women's bathroom in Perkins, and realizing (as we left the hotel) that the mysterious stains on one of our pillows (one of the pillows at the HEAD of our bed) were poop stains. Not my poop. Not Dada's poop. Your poop.

I know. I'm being such a whiner. There were good times too! You had a blast with your cousin Nora. You raced down the hotel corridors together and practiced simultaneous pool jumps together. You choreographed intricate dances together (as evidenced by the last post) and whined about various food products together. The wedding itself (or what I saw of it--you and I spent half of the wedding in the church basement contemplating a racially dishonest mural of Jesus and the other half in the wedding party's idling Limo Bus admiring various knobs, cup holders, and cushions) was lovely. Alyssa and Jake were lovely. Dada and I got to slow dance at the reception while Grandma Judy napped on the hotel bed next to your Pack and Play. Then (also at the reception) I had a Manhattan and was SHOCKED to learn that your father was not familiar with dance moves such as 1. the running man, 2. the Roger Rabbit, and 3. the lawn mower. Luckily, he is totally familiar with those moves now.

The events were lovely and the people were lovely---it's just that our little family, especially you, well, we were exhausted. We are glad to be home. Today you found three acorn caps and I found three molars, poking their way through your gums. I wish the daffodils would do the same.

(Not through your gums. Through the GROUND).

Love,
Ma

French Film

2011-03-27T18:12:00.000-07:00

Dear Thiz,

Here's what you should do in 20 years:

1. Get yourself a glass of red wine. I, for example, am currently drinking Sin Zin.

2. Put some music on your stereo. Or your i-pad or i-phone. Or i-lab. Or just blink your eyes a few times to turn on the speaker embedded in your ear lobe.

3. The music should be something wordless and French. I recommend the first song on the Amelie soundtrack entitled J'y suis jamais alle. (I'm too lazy to figure out how to add accent marks. Or to figure out what the title means. I assume it's something sweet and a little quirky. Maybe the bad translation is "Happy You in Sunshine Bloom" or "Carousel Strangers.")

4. Sip the wine, listen to the music, and watch the video below. If you have the capacity to turn the video to black and white (via the thorn embedded into your retina) you should do so.

Sea Shore

2011-03-24T07:56:00.000-07:00

You loved the beach. And why wouldn't you? Sand and shells and water. Running and running and running, barefoot and practically naked, people you love running just behind you, laughing enough so you always know they're there. What's not to love?

You ate your oatmeal on a deck overlooking the Atlantic and spent the early evening hours scurrying around the outdoor courtyard restaurants where we ate dinner. You hugged your aunt Agnes every chance you got. You slept in a closet in our bedroom (coat hangers moved out of reach). You frantically tried to escape the Bearer of Sunscreen, usually via a screaming, half-naked, tippy-toed run through the apartment. You failed to nap in bed with Daddy and I. Instead, as we tried to sleep, you would say, in a tiny-curious-mouse-voice, "poop?" And then "Poop?" And then "POOP!!!" You wore a T-shirt and ruffle-butt swim bottoms and a floppy, tropical-fruit bedecked hat during the day, hair damp and skin gritty from the sun. In the evenings, you wore a clean T-shirt and capri pants and sandals, hair wet with comb-lines, skin smooth and soft. You crumbled play-doh and sorted sea-shells and named two tiny Panda bears "Tit" and "Tat." (Tit was the girl and Tat was the boy. Duh.) You gave a lecture to a German couple on the beach and waded through warm, low-tide pools. You were terrified of the waves and then curious about the waves. You permitted us to bury your feet in the sand and you ate as many blueberries as your current caregiver would permit.

Now we are home. 10 degrees when we woke up this morning. Snow on the ground and ice on the car. I am in a terrible mood. I want another week in Florida. I want air you can just walk into--no sweating or shivering--just pleasant air on the skin. I want more green, more flowers and outdoor patios, more silver tongue of the moon on unsettled ocean skin. But you--well, as much as you enjoyed the beach, you seem quite happy to be home too. And I will now sound like a Chicken Soup for the Soul book about the heartwarming lessons children teach us when we least expect it BUT--the truth is, what is in front of you is the only option you understand. I mean, you also understand the option of "the animal crackers hidden on top of the refrigerator" but you aren't plagued by a different version of life that runs parallel to you, you aren't plagued by "what-ifs" or "other possibilities." This morning you had oatmeal and canned peaches and your stuffed cat. Familiar toys. The promise of playing trains with Daddy once the coffee was made. And you were happy.

Adam and Eve always struck me as kind of a silly story. I mean, Eve wasn't supposed to eat the apple, sure, but who doesn't want KNOWLEDGE? All my life, I've been taught how important knowledge is. My parents are teachers, after all, and knowledge keeps history from repeating itself and helps us empathize and makes us better pool players (reflection!). But lately, Thiz, I have been feeling crushed under the weight of it. All this knowing there is to do. I love being in touch with friends on Facebook--but now I check in to see if they've had their babies or published their books or seen "Avatar" in 3D. And then there's the world and its tsunamis and bombings, famines and disease. And then family and immediate friends and colleagues. Jobs to research and parenting techniques to perfect. For the first time in my life, knowledge feels like sin, feels like a kind of darkness. But I am terrified of ignorance too. I want to be a good Mama. A published writer. I want to be well read and kick ass at the Cow quiz night (insert shout out to Emily and Dan here)--but fuck. The tremendousness of all there is to know makes me feel hopeless and impotent too.

For three days I didn't check my e-mail and didn't (really) watch the news. I read a few chapters in a book. Heard about Japan straight from Michael on the phone. I sat on the beach with you and watched water fill up the hole we were digging. I want to learn the way you do. The knowledge that's necessary, that helps me move forward. I want to formulate questions before Google feeds me a million answers, most of which I cannot possibly use.

Packing for Florida

2011-03-17T11:16:00.000-07:00

The words are starting to come.

"Purple, bus, truck."

Maybe, like the rest of us, your motivation has been in hibernation mode.

"Fox, put, car."

This morning you pointed urgently to the top of Dada's closet and said "hot, hot." We rolled our eyes, as we are wont to do, and explained that the ceiling was not a heat source. Then I noticed all of Dada's baseball hats. Oh. Hat. Right.

Two days ago, Dada asked you to say "Ma" AND YOU SAID IT. Just like that. And oddly, oddly, I now kind of miss "Bup."

Most things are referred to as "da" or "dis" or "dat."

In 48 hours we will be on our way to Florida! In preparation, we started to sort through some of your springtime clothing this afternoon. Short-sleeved, flowered onesies, striped shorts, toddler sized khaki capris. As I was ooohing and aaaahing over the clothes in your bedroom, I heard a scratching sound coming from the hallway. I went out to investigate.

You were sticking a fork into an electrical outlet.

I almost peed my pants. Seriously. Scooped you up into an "oh my god thank god oh my god" hug and didn't put you down for a long time.

The situation in Japan continues to worsen. Workers in Wisconsin have been denied the rights they deserve. The NY Times is no longer going to offer news for free. The world is becoming a flat screen that fits inside a purse. The shifts are physical, spiritual, intellectual, constant.
I wish the ordinary could protect us from the cataclysmic.

You will wake up from your nap. We will go to the doctor. You will cry. They will give you Tinkerbell stickers. The ground will continue to reveal itself. We will pack: a ladybug T-shirt, shoes that expose open patches of skin, JIF peanut butter on-the-go packs, monkey pajamas, a bib, a bowl, a spoon. We will try to manage the days as they come. Familiar objects that fit inside a suitcase.

Spring in Japan

2011-03-15T12:31:00.000-07:00

Today it finally feels like maybe perhaps spring is beginning her slow inch towards us. Meaning: one of those winds that swirls, that seems to come from all directions at once, scarves constricting around necks and hair plastered across cheeks. Meaning: sun turning sheets of ice into puddles. Meaning: a down vest instead of a down coat by late afternoon.

In Japan, the details of spring are likely going unnoticed. On Friday an earthquake rocked the north eastern coast of Japan, creating a tsunami that sent a wall of water crashing over huge portions of the coast. The pictures of the wreckage are awful. Fishing boats collapsed on their sides, roads torn apart, factories consumed by fire. On Sunday 1,000 bodies washed up on shore in Miyagi prefecture. Just like that. 1,000 bodies.

On Saturday we will fly to Florida and you will get your first glimpse of the ocean. We will walk along the beach and look for shells and kelp and sand crabs.

Your uncle Michael is in Japan. He is far away from the disaster, in a city called Ogaki, hundreds of miles from the site of the tsunami. He didn't even feel the tremors.

But now there are problems with the nuclear power plants. In the paper they used the word "meltdown." Bits of radiation have made it as far as Tokyo.

Uncle John visited yesterday and as we sat on the couch, watching the season finale of "The Bachelor," he said, "I don't even know what all this means, how radiation travels, what it looks like."

Then on "The Bachelor" we watched the women, one in black and one in white, travel in separate limosines through South Africa. We watched the one with brown hair dip her toes in the resort pool while she thought about her future. We watched the blond say, "I need to know you're in it for the long haul."

You wore your blue corduroy overalls to lunch. You ate alfredo pasta and I ate a salad with Thousand Island dressing. Grandma drank decaf. She wants to bring her baby home but knows she's not allowed to do that anymore, knows Uncle Michael gets to choose how to protect himself.

Today it finally feels like spring is beginning her slow inch toward us. Meaning: proper burials for the dead. Meaning: contained radiation. Meaning: boats rebalanced on their keels, soldered roads, flames finally extinguished.

A Mama By Any Other Name

2011-03-10T18:42:00.000-08:00

Every day, it becomes a little clearer that your unwillingness to communicate using language is due, not to a rare deformity below your tongue (I imagine a small toadstool), but to your obstinate nature.

Luckily, I am patient, understanding, and unwilling to wage silly battles around your linguistic development. Luckily, I am super chill about language. "Dude," I say to myself in my internal snowboarder voice, "the words will come when she's ready. Let her set the pace. Relax. [insert bong toke here]. For now, just think about ripping into that new powder."

It's too bad that snowboarder-voice often gets crushed by hypochondriac-wedding-planner-voice who says "Your child will grow to be a troubled loser who communicates only with stuffed cats. Also, she's dirty and why does your house look like crap?"

I love you, sweetest girl, but I have a sneaking suspicion that our relationship may not always be rose petals and swans and sweet new powder. And that's OK.

I thought having a baby meant that someone would call me Mama. It turns out I don't get to choose the way my child loves me.

(Or it turns out I finally have a reason to have another baby.)

Trees, Walking

2011-03-08T11:30:00.000-08:00

Auntie Martha and Significant Other (aka "Signe") Sam are visiting and you are overwhelmed with joy. You brought them your entire library of books to read this morning, one by one, and Dada reports that as you walked across the room in front of them, you'd tilt your head to the side and give a faux laugh every now and again, just to remind them of the fun they must surely be having in your presence.

While you slept yesterday we ate sushi and Tagalongs and discussed Sam's proposal to produce a Marlowe play about gay King Edward in the studio space at the Guthrie. At dinner we filled tortillas with chicken and black beans and cheese and tomato and salsa and heard about Martha's interview with the head of LVC, how she gave him a run for his money with her questions about the Lutheran tradition of social service.

I'm teaching The Gospel of Mark and the graphic novel Marked in my composition course right now and so today I posted on Facebook my favorite line from the Gospel: "I can see people, but they look like trees, walking." The line is spoken by a blind man when Jesus has healed him only partially. Jesus spits on the man's eyes and then asks the man if he can see. The man responds with the tree line. Then Jesus covers the man's eyes with his hands again and the man's sight is fully restored.

I like this passage not only because I think it contains the most poetic line in a Gospel that's rife with dull, dry reportage on events, but also because it's the one time (that I know of, and I'm no Biblical scholar), that Jesus heals someone half-way. The rest of the time, it's either all or nothing, you're either blind/leprous/hemorrhaging/seizing/possessed or you're all better, full of new life both externally and internally. I feel half-cured today. Half-blind, half-faithed, half-hearted. The world is still shadowed with filmy gray snow. I feel betrayed by people I trusted. I love that there is a moment that describes this state-of-being in the Bible, that I can live in that moment today with hope that things will get better.

For instance. When I brought you into your room today for your nap, you danced. That's the first thing you do now, every time I bring you into your room. You run to the center of your pink elephant rug and quickly lift your feet up and down in one place--your version of dancing. Today you also practiced falling down. Dance, dance, dance, fall backward onto your butt. Dance, dance, dance, fall backward. Then you fiddled with the humidifier knob and fiddled with the space heater knob and fiddled with the stereo that sits on the bottom shelf of your bookcase. While I read "Spot Goes to the Beach" you tried to take the child-proof lid off a bottle of liquid Benadryl so my reading was accompanied by the click, click, click of the top not coming off and the click, click, click of your refusal to accept that particular outcome.

Plateau

2011-03-05T08:31:00.000-08:00

You have slept in until 7:30 or beyond five out of seven days this week. On three afternoons, you took a two-hour nap. Your father and I don't know what to do with ourselves, really. On Thursday we were planning to go to the zoo. Dada came home from work early and we sat on the couch, waiting for you to wake up so we could visit the tapir. No dice. We planned for the same outing yesterday (thinking you could not POSSIBLY take another two-hour nap since you haven't, ever, in the history of your life, taken more than one two-hour nap in the course of a week). We sat on the couch, waiting to take you to see the gibbons. No dice.

You and I continue in what I hope will be the longest snot-marathons of our lives. You seem to be draining in a healthy way and your snot has subsided. Mine is still tinted a sickly green color. According to Mayo Clinic online, caffeine and alcohol do not help to cure sinusitis. In fact, these items are known to worsen ones symptoms. Which may be why you're getting better and I'm not.

We're facing another gray day today. Tis the season for puddles/ice/puddles/ice. When we go for a walk we dress you in wind pants, your pink boots, your too-small pink winter coat, your reindeer hat, and your black REI mittens. You have figured out how to run in the boots and you look hilarious doing so, a little clod of wayward marl, tumbling across the town home parking lot. You've also developed a propensity to scrape snow off the sides of snow banks with your mittens and you love to stomp your way through puddles. We cover blocks and blocks by moving from puddle to puddle, trying to avoid the dog poop that also appears in massive quantities as the snow melts (do people really think it disappears in the snow???).

Looking at photos and blog posts from a year ago, I am amazed at how rapidly you changed from week to week and month to month. Last year, over the course of three months, you went from not being able to sit upright to taking drunk-sailor steps across the living room. Now, the rate of your development seems slower and more opaque. At ECFE last fall, they passed out a chart that mapped child development. At 15 months there was a jaggedy, downhill line to symbolize a lot of "turning inward" and a struggle between dependence and independence. At 18 months, however, the line shoots smoothly upward into the great heavens of childhood genius. I very much admire this line, have been looking forward to its smoothness and incline for some time.

Now that we're there (you turned 18 months on Thursday! hurrah!), I feel a little disappointed. I know you've changed in the last three months, but not in remarkable, "don't they grow up before your very eyes!" kinds of ways. You know a few more words. A few. You're sleeping like a champ. You climb on things. Your manual dexterity is slightly improved. Your pointing vocabulary (i.e. images you can identify in books) has increased. But you haven't learned to whittle or sing American folk songs or put two words together into an itty-bitty sentence. I kind of feel like the line is a lie. That our line is a plateau, the barren horizon, the Midwestern field, all covered in snow.

Then again. Your favorite book right now is "Thisbe's Promise." Aunt Meghan and Uncle Nels bought this book for you after searching Amazon for products with the word "Thisbe" in the title. Surprisingly, it's not a bad book. It's about Thisbe and her Mama gazing out the window and remarking on things like hummingbirds and starfish and butterflies and whales. In the final image, Thisbe and her Mama are swimming with the whales and you like this image best. The catch is that the woman who wrote this book had a daughter named Thisbe who died of a slow, painful, degenerative disease. The reason Thisbe and her Mama are looking out the window is that Thisbe is "sick in bed." And at the end of the book, when Thisbe "feels better" and they "go for a walk" and "swim with the whales" well--well, I know what it means in a way that you don't. So I get tears in my eyes every time we read this book, because our sickness is snot, not malfunctioning nerves, and when the sun gets around to shining we really do get to go outside, and stretch our legs, and walk.

A plateau is a line you can walk upon. We'll take it.

Blah

2011-03-01T08:38:00.000-08:00

You are at lap sit at the library with Dada and I am supposed to meet you in ten minutes, so this will be quick:

1. You know your right hand from your left. Or so it seems at the moment.

2. If someone asks where Mama is, you point to me. If asked to say Mama, you say "Bup."

3. Our first Montessori class yesterday, you clambered all over Allison, backing up into her lap to read stories, bringing her puzzles. You completely ignored me. You adored snack time. You sat on a little wooden chair at a little wooden table and got to pour water from a silver cream pitcher into a plastic shot glass. From time to time you would take a sip of the water and say "ahhhh."

4. I have had a cold for 12 days. You've been snotty for 16.

5. Due to some goings on at work and the snow and the cold and your end-of-sickness crabbiness, I've been feeling pretty depressed. So we went to the Citites this weekend and Grandma watched you while I cried a little and read a book and watched X-Files and bought a new black bathing suit with swaths of fabric over the belly to make me look more svelte.

6. We are going to Florida in 2.5 weeks! Bright light! Bright light!

7. Your father has been wonderful and supportive and lovely to both you and me. He is supremely patient and full of hugs even though he isn't feeling the greatest either.

I could write more but I'd rather walk over to the library and find you playing with a toy and Daddy watching. I'd rather pick you up in my own two arms and kiss your two dear snot-crusted cheeks. I love you, dear one.

"Arrrggggh! You suck!"

2011-02-23T18:14:00.000-08:00

It's 8:40pm and from the couch downstairs I can hear you murmuring in your sleep. Last night Daddy was certain you said "hi" and a few other words in the midst of your nighttime slumber.

The sickness has moved into your lungs and now your cough is loud, wet, often. This afternoon was the first since Sunday that you didn't have a fever. You were energetic enough to balance yourself between the couch and ottoman, to drag the stainless steel pots from the cupboard, to climb the stairs and press your face between the wooden bars of the railing. You said "apple" and then refused to say it again.

Tonight you ate mashed potatoes and bits of chicken and an orange. This was a big step forward; you've mostly been subsisting on juice and apple sauce and blueberries for the last few days.

You still want to be near me, and only me if I'm available. This is both lovely and draining. I love the feel of your arms wrapped around my neck, your head turned to the side and resting on the knob of my shoulder. I try to imagine the future moments when I'll want this back, want you to display this kind of need or affection. I imagine eye rolls and blank stares and "uh-huh"s and "whatever"s, I think of the sound of your door slamming, of some as-of-yet uninvented but horrific tinny-rap-new-age-alt music shaking the marrow of our bones, sometimes I even imagine hearing the already-physically-painful-to-me phrases like "I hate you" and "you suck" and "why did I get such a crappy excuse for a mother, Monique's mother has way bigger boobs, nicer boots, and she lets us drink rum from cups with naked pirates on them as long as we promise not to drive afterward."

You can't talk yet, and this drives me crazy. You seem so willful about not communicating. And yet, so much of what you do communicate is pure, unadulterated love and affection. I should count my blessings. The naked pirates will arrive soon enough.

Empathy

2011-02-20T09:18:00.001-08:00

Here comes the snow again. 10 inches or more predicted today. Daddy went to church to sing Kum-ba-ya (again) while you and I stayed at home and constructed a pile of snotty tissues between us.

On the way to Blue Monday I had to stop for a train that was visible only when I was half a block away. No whistle, no rattling of the tracks, just the blinking red lights and this dark blur moving left to right behind a veil of white.

You don't have much of an appetite because of the cold and when I change your diaper your belly is noticeably flatter. The gray sweatpants I tried to dress you in were too wide around the waist, kept slipping down when you walked.

You love to stand on the couch and grab items from the bookshelf that rests against the back of the couch: cell phone, necklace, wipes, water glass, mail key, brochures--general detritus. While Daddy took Luxy out in the snow, you and I examined the coupons from the Sunday paper. You were pleased by the pictures of grapes and oranges and apples, by the cartoon of the smiling dog and the photo of the monkey dressed in a green scarf and frog slippers.

Yesterday we spent 20 minutes looking at pictures in the Atlantic Monthly together. When we got to the advertisement for a fund that helps children with cleft palette, I wasn't sure what to do. Three photos of children with horribly disfigured faces. The lip of one rising up like the crest of a wave, the front teeth of another adhered squarely to the bottom of his nose. I wanted to turn the page but didn't. You pointed to the places of disfigurement, you knew immediately something was wrong. I said "ouch, those kids are hurt, they have ouchies on their faces." But I let you look. I'm not sure this was the right thing to do. I'm not sure at which point we should let you begin to witness the brutality, the unfairness, the darkness of the world. Those decisions won't entirely be up to us, of course, but sometimes we will be faced with the question of how much to let you witness.

I also know that many disabilities are no longer considered dis-abilities. Instead, many people who look or walk or think differently than the status quo want to be understood as "differently abled." A wine stain on the face is not an "ouch"--it's a cool and interesting difference--but what about these children, in the magazine, the ones who can't talk or eat well because of their contorted mouths? When is difference a lesson in empathy and when is difference a lesson in "we are all unique and beautiful creatures--hurrah!"?

I know this seems small but I saw the way you looked at the children in the magazine and then looked at my face to see how you should respond.

Re-Telling the Story

2011-02-19T08:27:00.001-08:00

Thursday we went to the zoo. You have a cold and wanted to be held and then let go, held and then let go. The crocodile looked like a statue of a crocodile except for its eye, the pupil swinging from right to left in that optical room. You ran through a fake, hollowed tree trunk, Daddy standing in the light at one end and me in the light at the other. The black and while monkey with the long, soft tail looked like a human asleep with his face turned toward us, his features carved out of soft, black leather. The otters were hungry, running to us where we stood and opening their mouths, making plaintive meeping sounds, white teeth thin as hairs from our vantage point. You practiced running, mostly away from us, and when we called out "good-bye, Thisbe, see you later," you raised one hand, a backhanded wave, without looking back.

Now I have your head cold and we are both a little miserable, a little OK. Today before I left to buy Sudafed and Boogie Wipes and a bagel and a latte, you and I read a book about telling time and a book in which Curious George accidentally flies away in a hot air balloon but is miraculously saved by workers on Mt. Rushmore. Then we read a wordless book entitled "Breakfast for Jack" about a boy who forgets to feed his dog in the morning. One of your favorite activities of the day is feeding Luxy and so I think this book struck a particular chord, as soon as I finished reading you signed "more" so I read it again. And again. And again. It took four readings for you to be satisfied that the dog would, ultimately, be fed.

And maybe Daddy and I are not so different. Each year we worry about making money, about classes and grants and how we will survive. Each year we make it though. We do not lack for anything (though a vacation in Hawaii might be *nice*) and yet we continue to worry. We laugh about the toddler's compulsion to hear a story over and over again. And then we go to church, Daddy and I, so that we can hear from a different book that our lives are abundant, that we are unconditionally loved, that we will be taken care of--

Yesterday in class I taught a poem called "Lot's Wife" and when I asked my students who could summarize the story for us, only one student raised her hand. "Do you know this story?" I asked them. And they didn't. Last week we read an article about the relationship between dreams and myth. Humans who are permitted to sleep but not dream eventually go mad. Campbell argues that myths function in the same way for a society--they give us a way to process our shared (but repressed) fears and needs and desires. And while I certainly don't want all my students to become Christian, I worry about the disappearance of shared myth in our society. I think the prevalence of super-heroic films (Spider-man, Batman, The Hulk, Green Lantern, X-Men, Captain America, etc.) is the result of that longing, but I'm concerned about the quality of these stories, the ones that are becoming our common language. They hinge on the same outcome, they often separate darkness from light. They are immediately recognizable and understandable and safe.

It's a bit early, I think, for Leda or Lot's wife, but I hope these stories become a part of you someday in the way that they have become a part of me. Even if you decide not to become Christian, I hope you read the Bible, for the story of Jesus, yes, but also for the stories of people doing strange and weird and inexplicable things as they wrestle with the world they've been given.

True Grit

2011-02-16T18:49:00.000-08:00

There's a red, heart-shaped, Mylar balloon hovering above your high chair, a half-eaten box of Godiva chocolates on the kitchen table, and a few conversation hearts strewn on the phone table (amidst bills and packing tape and pencils with pirate erasers). Ergo: we are in the last throes of the Valentine's Day season, a week which has consisted of anxiety, anticipation and disappointment. So, you know, like pretty much like any other Valentine's Day week. This one just had a little more bitterness built into it.

Last Thursday your father drove to Waverly, Iowa in a rented Toyota Camry and spent 18 hours talking to professors and deans and students and human resource folk about ethics and scripture and classroom dynamics and health insurance options. Then he drove home.

We spent the weekend in a numbed state of waiting. On Saturday we drove to Southdale and Grandma supervised your mall-running frenzy while Daddy and I went to see True Grit. The movie featured a badass, loquacious, neatly-plaited teenager who (spoiler alert!) loses her arm after a rattlesnake bites her when she falls down a mine shaft. I think those are requirements for Westerns (guns? check. rattlesnake? check. bad teeth? check. mine shaft? check. wooden porch with creaky boards? check.). Meanwhile, you rode on the giant choo-choo, ate noodles at California pizza kitchen, and tried to touch the people receiving the 10 minute Chinese massage.

On Sunday Daddy sang Kumbaya in church (a cool version, not a let's-join-hands-around-the-campfire version) and then in the evening we went back to church for the Valentine's Day dinner. I am not really so good at awkward church conversation, but I imagined a small table where your father and I could share an intimate meal. Actually, I was drooling when I saw the words "childcare provided." The teenagers run the V-Day dinner as a way to raise money for mission trips and make-out sessions in tents in remote parts of Montana--and actually, they were kind of darling. The boys in white button down shirts and red ties and fresh teenage acne and the girls in dresses far too short and tight and formal for the occasion. The dinner featured quite good food--but at a table for eight, not two. And we were interrupted just as the food was arriving by a page from the nursery (because we are living in an age when you are given a pager at the nursery)--it was 6:30 and you were tired and cranky (it was your bedtime, after all) and so I brought you into the dining hall and you sat beside us in a high chair, eating mushy carrot rounds and the broken bits of animal crackers I found at the bottom of the diaper bag. Then you ran laps around the church hall (lots of knowing, patient church smiles), giggling maniacally.

I am having a difficult time getting to the point.

Monday, Valentine's Day, was not the best. I won't go into details. Let's just say that if you have all day to get your Valentine some flowers, do NOT wait until 5:15pm when you are on your way home WITH YOUR WIFE IN THE CAR. That is unsexy.

On Tuesday Daddy got the call. No job. Somewhere, a nice, smart woman who has spent a lot of time living in huts in Africa (according to the pictures on her web site) is celebrating. We are not.

You, however, have been a champ. Good sleeping, good eating. Lots of hugs, few tantrums. And the weather turned lovely too. 45 degrees on Tuesday. And when I took you out of the car, you arched your back and screamed "alk! alk!" which I finally realized meant "walk." Or, more specifically, "put me on the ground, dummy, I can see spring edging out the snow."

Light and Salt

2011-02-08T08:43:00.000-08:00

The windchill was -29 when I woke up this morning. When I was younger and I heard adults talking about the windchill, I thought they were saying "windshield," thought there was a scientific test done by measuring the force of the wind against the glass of a car.

Our Honda has no heat. A fact which is, of course, unremarkable in the summer and fall and spring but horrible in the winter. Today, miraculously, the car started but required scraping on both the outside of the windows as well as on the inside so that, by the time I began driving, I was covered in a dusting of frost. After I had driven three blocks, I could no longer see out of any of the windows because my breath had fogged them and everything outside was a ghost-like specter of itself. I thought about the small animals and school children I might kill and then pulled over to the side of the road, turned on the hazard lights, and got back out of the car to re-scrape. When I got back into the car I couldn't shut the hazard lights off, the button stuck or frozen or both, and so I drove home in tears, unable to see but blinking like a warning to everyone else.

I got home and threw the keys on the ground and told Daddy (well, yelled at Daddy) that we are going to get a new car right now. And he sighed and went out to disconnect the lights from the battery because the car was still in the driveway, blinking.

I sat on the couch in my down coat and hat and scarf and cried a little more because it's just that time of year, when everything tastes bitter no matter what you do. You sat facing me on my lap, holding a red convertible, smiling a little, gauging my reaction, then sobering, then reaching forward to touch a tear, something like a chemist, something like a therapist, your static-ey hair side-swept and plastered to your head like a toupee--by which I mean to say, you were a small bright spot, you were light and salt in a season that feels dark and tasteless. And I am grateful for that.

Why I Became A Parent

2011-02-04T16:42:00.000-08:00

Clearly our intentions are completely innocent.

Training

2011-02-04T11:11:00.000-08:00

Daddy's obsession with trains has now met its match: your obsession with trains. I don't think this post needs much explanation per se. I should mention (in case, God willing, by the time you read this we've moved to a different house and you've forgotten the layout of this one) that the train is in the basement and that the basement door is generally kept closed. When you want to play with the train you stand by the basement door and make your desires known. The rest of the photos in this post depict the nirvana that is our basement. In one, you're adding smoke fluid to the train. In another, you're waiting for the train to come out from behind the couch. I should also explain that rubbing your hand in circles over your chest means "please."

On Being An Un-Fun Mother

2011-02-03T11:12:00.000-08:00

Cold and sunny today. Streets getting that bleach-stained look from the de-icing chemicals finally drying up.

I am letting you "help" more and more in the kitchen. At lunchtime you helped me slide the raw eggs into the warm water for hard boiling. Then you got to mash the cooked and peeled eggs in your bowl. In the mornings and evenings, you bring us Luxy's bowl and then help to dump scoops of dog food into it. Often, you like to tip the scoop as slowly as you possibly can so that only one or two pellets of dog food slide into the bowl at a time. You are either enjoying the tinny sound they make falling into the bowl or you are experimenting with the art of pouring or you know it drives me batshit crazy to stand there for FOREVER while you dump a single scoop into the bowl.

Similarly, when I ask you to put your hand into a sleeve, you immediately draw your elbow and wrist as close to your chest as possible as though touching the sleeve will force you to re-live a particularly traumatic event from childhood. You will then outstretch the pointer finger on your hand, little by little, until it is almost touching the opening of the sleeve before quickly yanking it back to the warmth of your chest. You repeat this process a few times until either you finally put your arm into the sleeve or I shove it in.

I realize that my lack of patience combined with my unwillingness to clean up mess after mess combined with my fear that you will do great bodily harm to yourself sometimes makes me a really un-fun parent. Now, at times, I feel like I'm also stunting your growth.

Sometimes I try to be more creative about playthings. A few days ago I let you play with our spice rack, a contraption that consists of about fifteen glass jars mounted on a lazy susan. This was fun until you figured out that you could open some of the jars and spill the contents all over the place. Then I got all un-fun. "Spices are expensive and you might get cayenne in your eye!" I explained as I put the spices back into the cupboard and you shrieked as though you had been basted in hot oil.

Another example of creativity curtailed by my control-freak nature is the garbanzo beans. I read an on line article about creating a "Play Box" by placing treasures of various sorts in a tupperware bin and then adding barley or oats or popcorn kernels and then letting the child dig for treasures while exploring the textures of the barley or oats or popcorn kernels. I thought this sounded like something a loving and creative parent would do and plus we had a bag of uncooked garbanzo beans in the cupboard that was NEVER going to get used so--I proceeded with the Play Box. And you proceeded to sort the beans, pour the beans, dump the beans, throw the beans, and kick the beans. You really loved the beans. I did not love picking the taupe beans off of our taupe carpet. Now the beans sit in a pan on top of the dryer. When you point to them and grunt I say "how about a puzzle? or a book? or another nap?"

Or maybe it's not so much that I'm un-fun or that you're always in need of amusement, maybe we've just reached the point in the winter where all the inside toys look dull and old and all of our outside toys (the sidewalks, the parks, the grass) are still covered by snow. When we got out of the car yesterday I pointed to the ceiling of the garage where Daddy wedged your wading pool above the rafters for storage. You pointed at the pool and looked at it for a long time before looking at me with a stare that I can only describe as "WTF?" I feel the same way, darling girl.

Post-dinner Pigtails

2011-02-01T20:15:00.000-08:00

This video, I fear, reveals more about Daddy and I than it does about you. It's obvious what a diligent-doer-of-dishes your father is and what a neurotic-Tiger-mother-vocabulary-driller I am. You just appear to be the loving, distracted, obstinate, silly toddler that you are. And the footage does show off your pigtails nicely.

Ordinary

2011-01-31T11:05:00.000-08:00

We had a lovely ordinary weekend. On Friday we drove up to the Cities. Daddy and I went to the mall and looked for ties that matched with purple sweaters and drank coffee from paper cups with caribou frolicking on the sides while Grandma took you to Edinborough, an indoor park that can only be described as a child orgasm. Trees, waterfalls, scooters on wide slick floors, slides and climbing walls and bouncy castles and bleachers for parents to sit while they watch their dear ones *almost* collide or fall or break one another's lovely necks. We ate pot roast for dinner and then Grandma and I drank wine and talked about Tiger Mothers and Montessori Mothers and Waldorf Mothers while Daddy and Grandpa watched basketball on T.V.

On Saturday I got coffee and a bob. When I got home (itty bitty hairs still making my neck feel itchy and wooly), you and Grandma and Grandpa were sledding in the driveway. You smiled at the downward motion and then made your "more" sign in your big black mittens (which really just looks like clapping) and then hustled as fast as you could back up the driveway (slightly pigeon-toed in your slightly too large pink boots). In the afternoon Grandma took you to ride the choo-choo at the mall while Daddy and I went to see Black Swan which is a good movie to see if you are interested in Carl Jung and/or examples of very overt symbolism. Or dancing, I suppose. Nevertheless, it was luxurious to go to a movie in the middle of the afternoon--and to follow it up with dinner out with friends! Woot! We went to a new pizza place that has a huge wood-fired copper oven in the center of the room that radiates glorious heat. Daddy and I sat at the bar and drank wine and beer and talked of this and that and watched the fire consume the wood. We had a lovely dinner and an even more lovely conversation with our friends, David and Rachel.

You were mostly a delight all weekend. Your favorite place to hang out is either in the left sink of G and G's two-sinked master bath or upstairs on your standing stool in front of the dollhouse. The dollhouse was my grandmother's (your great-grandmother's) and it contains amazing minutia. There is a cast iron oven/stove and tiny porcelain serving dishes with tiny porcelain lids, there is a highly racist-looking black doll and a paper-thin Oriental rug, there is a quarter-sized tray of appetizers and pillows and blankets sewn with a child's hand from faded, rose-bedecked fabric. A silver switch turns the lights on in all the rooms and opening the roof reveals a huge attic space. You love it and you should.

Now, however, it is Monday and you are awake and fussing in your crib. Yesterday you took a two hour nap. Today you only made it to 50 minutes. Oh well. You have a cold and we are in the midst of a small winter storm so we will likely spend the afternoon cuddled on the couch with "Busy, Busy Town" and "Thank You God, Amen!" and snack cups full of Pirate Booty. And that's OK. Today I have a crush on ordinary.

"Where Is?"

2011-01-25T07:25:00.000-08:00

The weather is warming--finally--and the streets are brown and wet. Daddy has to call the courthouse each night after 4:30pm to find out if he has jury duty. Last night he bought a new drill and leave in conditioner and yogurt and hair bands and child safety locks. Your favorite toy is a house shaped like a toadstool that makes a tinny chime sound when the door is opened. The house also opens, splits in two entirely so that you can place the plastic fairies on the rug or in the bedroom or right beside the dining room hutch which contains a tea pot sealed forever to a hutch. This house is great in earthquakes.

"Up" is your only perfect word. When something goes missing you raise your arms, palms up, and shrug your shoulders and widen your eyes and say "wheys?" meaning "where is?" As in "wheys Dada?" "wheys the house?" "wheys the fun?"

Today is lapsit at the library which mostly consists of "Lift the Flap" books. There is always something fuzzy and cute (bunnies, puppies, kittens, guinea pigs, etc.) hidden behind the sofas, chair, dressers, pillows and curtains. I believe these books give you a false sense of reality. How about some real life "Lift the Flap" books? Huh? What's under the sofa? A bottle cap and a Co-op receipt! What's behind the chair? The wall! What's beneath the pillow? Stale cheerios, a pen, and the remote control! What's behind the curtain? Nothing! Nothing! Nothing!

In other news, you have learned the hokey-pokey. Or rather, when I put the song on the stereo you start to turn in circles until you get too dizzy to stand. Then you fall, gaze up at me, and offer a few half-hearted claps. I find this hilarious so we do the hokey-pokey a lot. It's winter! We call this fun!!!

You took this enormous and glorious two hour nap yesterday but we paid for it this morning since you woke up at 5:15 and then slept/cried/slept/cried until 6:30 at which point I pried myself from the bed, made love to the netti pot, and made you blueberry oatmeal.

I am also coming into my identity as strict disciplinarian. Because you are beginning to push, push, push your limits, we are starting to respond with firm and clear boundaries. Everyone knows that the most f-ed up grown-ups are those that had no boundaries as children so, when you commit "no-no" actions, we respond by firmly saying "no" and them wrapping you in a restraining grip and slowly counting to 30. Then we say "no" and you shake your head "no" to demonstrate that you understand and then we release you. When your father retrains you, you cry and fuss but then obediently follow the limit. When I restrain you, you sit calmly as though you are enjoying the restraint and then immediately re-commit the crime while laughing gleefully. Awesome.

Additionally, you've developed a lovely mealtime limit-pushing behavior. Toward the end of the meal you will pick up a handful of food and slowly, oh so slowly, you will carry the food in the air over the wide expanse of your tray until you are dangling the food over the carpet. As you carry the food, you stare intently at it, but the closer it gets to the edge of the tray, the less able you are to contain your malicious smile. Really. You start out very, very serious and you try to contain your glee but you can't. You finally look up at me with this coy, coy little smile, your fistful of blueberry oatmeal stretched above our rented carpet in what can only be described as a face off. If I show even the teeniest hint of amusement, it's done, released, the oatmeal is immediately licked into the fibers of the carpet by the dog.

So I am spending most of my time developing my badass face. One that I can use as dishonestly as my Minnesota nice face. It's hard work, these calisthenics of the face, and I wish they burned more calories.

Baltimore Pics

2011-01-23T11:40:00.001-08:00

1. Profile of Thisbe and turtle.
2. Family fun at the aquarium.
3. With Popo.
4. Nora, Thiz, and the cell phone.
5. A totally un-posed family photo.
6. Grandpa and his granddaughters.
7. Helping Grandma Gail and Kaarn with the computer.
8. Shopping at Ikea.

Valpo Pics

2011-01-23T11:24:00.001-08:00

1. Grandma Dorothy finds a masterful way to keep you content while toning her hamstrings.
2. Reading with G-Pa Mark.
3. Stockings hung with serious care.
4. Auntie Martha and Auntie Anna take you sledding.
5. Cookie dough cookie love.

Actually, Anyway, Also

2011-01-22T07:56:00.000-08:00

OK, OK, I've been a horrible blog post-person as of late. This is in part due to our busy-ness but mostly due to the fact that I'm trying to do some of my very own writing right now and sometimes I don't have time for both.

Actually, that's a lie. Sometimes I don't feel like writing in the blog in the evening, when I could, and instead of documenting the awe-inspiring, hilarious, touching moments of your growing up I instead watch Damages, a show in which Glenn Close wears a formidable number of button down shirts and manipulates everyone within spitting distance.

Anyway, here are some things that happened:

Mommy and Daddy went away for our very first 48 hour getaway. Here, "getaway" refers to "getaway" from you. Don't worry, I called at least six times during the 48 hour period. Daddy and I went to Lutsen where we skied and sat by a real fire and sat by a gas fire and ate prime rib and played Hand and Foot and almost crashed into a snow plow and saw a wolf eating a deer carcass and slid down the Lutsen parking lot hill six times backward and drank Choco Vine (which your father pronounces "Coco Vin" in a very deep throaty way) and read books and "slept" and slept. On the way to Lutsen we stopped at the GAP outlet and on the way home your father explained the history of the Israeli/Palestinian conflict to me which pretty much sums up the way we roll.

You have started sleeping in a good true awesome way. Generally this means to bed at 6:30pm, a half-hearted wake-up at 6:15am and a full true wake up at 7:00am. In the afternoon you still only sleep for around an hour but sometimes even longer. Awesomeness.

Also, you are developing this lovely sense of empathy that completely and totally breaks my heart. A few weeks ago at playdate, Trish went out to move her Subaru so that we could move our car and while she was gone, Anna became exceptionally sad (which makes sense, her mom was driving off without her in the Subaru) and as she wept at the window you went over to her, without prompting, and rested your hand on her shoulder. In Baltimore, Grandma Gail wasn't feeling particularly well and so spent a lot of time on the couch, resting. You spent a lot of time standing at the head of the couch and trying to engage her in various kinds of play. I know I spend a lot of time venting and complaining on this blog and so I will take a moment to be entirely cheezy and say that when I see this unprompted compassion in you I am just floored. It is this true sense of kindness that comes unbidden from nowhere and gives me hope for our majorly messed up world.

On to other random thoughts--

Our trip to Baltimore was very fun. We went to the aquarium and payed $24 so you could ride the escalators. We went to an Italian restaurant and laughed while Nora chased you (and Aunt Meghan's expensive phone which you happened to be holding) around the empty tables.

This has, by the way, become one of your favorite habits: running in circles. You ran in circles around Grandma Gail and Grandpa Michael's kitchen island with a bucket on your head and you ran circles through Meghan and Nels and Nora's house (at the end of a 3-hour play date) while Nora sat calmly and sweetly on the couch with Nels.

In addition to running circles, you are starting to speak more. Yesterday, as you and I went up and down endless staircases at St. Olaf, you said "stairs" over and over again. "Up" and "down" are also favorites now due to a fairly annoying Elmo video. You still don't say "Mama" much unless prompted. Mostly you makes "s" sounds that vaguely resemble words.

Also, it was -29 when we woke up yesterday morning. Without the wind. We learned, via an informative youtube video, that if you toss a cup of boiling water into -29 degree air it will immediately turn into a cloud.

And there is so much more that I could report--and in a much more articulate and organized way but--oh well.

I put your hair in pigtails for the first time the other day. You looked so grown up that I haven't quite been able to bring myself to do it again.

Baby Jesus Made Some Noise

2011-01-02T12:36:00.000-08:00

We're going cold turkey on your ass. Lots of lovely things happened in the last few weeks, but unfortunately, much of the loveliness was overwhelmed (for me) by a poorly waged battle against your incongruous sleeping habits.

We didn't feel comfortable letting you cry it out when we were with relatives so instead we relied on singing, humming, shushing, rubbing your back, and finally letting you collapse upon us (me) in our bed so that we could all get a few precious hours of sleep between the hours of 5 and 7am. But every nap, every bedtime, someone had to put you down--and here I purposefully use the terminology of pet death since sometimes we came close to desiring to do the same to you. Because sometimes you simply wouldn't go to sleep. On Christmas Eve, for example. The table was spread with a festive tablecloth, with an advent wreath, with candles and silver and scarlet once-a-year-napkins. The china with blushing pears and a delicate rim of gold (or something like gold). Grandma Dorothy made shrimp risotto. A salad with pears and gorgonzola cheese and candied walnuts. There was wine. Manhattans. Orange martinis. It was time to feast! But I was upstairs with you. Because you wouldn't go to sleep. And I could have come downstairs but I wouldn't have been able to taste the food--my taste buds cease to function when you start to sob. So I fumed and you stayed awake and I fumed.

This is not your fault really. It is ours too. You had some legitimate sleeping issues just before the holidays but we feared that we couldn't go cold turkey during our holidays and so we coddled instead. And really, that was probably best.

Because last night you cried for 90 minutes straight before falling asleep. I put you down today for your nap at 12:30pm. It is 2:48pm and according to your father, you are still crying. That's 138 minutes. I am at Blue Monday writing and drinking a latte and this is what makes it possible for me to love you still.

Now that I've finished venting, I have no energy to talk about all the lovely blessedness of the season (such as sled rides with aunts and slinky-time with uncles, a new found adoration of skyways, your very first sugar high, your New Year's stay-awake coup, your "yes" and "juice," your penchant for Bonhoeffer, countless rides on the moving walkways at the airport, cookies fed to you on the sly by lovely grandmas, books read ad nauseum by patient grandpas, mad skilz with plastic blocks, etc, etc, etc.)

At church today, where I was miraculously able to listen to the sermon because (praise be to Jesus) you were in the nursery, Pastor Charlie talked about how Christmas is about getting, not about giving. It's the moment when we receive God, in the flesh, in the guise of this tiny infant. God interrupts our space, said Pastor Charlie, God wails his way right into us. This would have been good for me to remember a week ago--that God didn't come down quietly in the middle of a lovely dinner--God is in the voice that won't let us sleep, that calls on us to look to the cores of our very beings for patience and gratitude and love.

I love you, dear girl, you and your stupendous will.

Effects

2010-12-16T17:24:00.000-08:00

Rather than detailing your behavior, I shall instead list here the effects of your behavior and let you guess about the causes.

1. It is 7:30 and Mommy is on glass #2 of wine.

2. At 5:15pm you were in your highchair, facing toward the T.V. instead of the dinner table, eating cheesy noodles and watching a PBS cartoon show called Word Girl while Daddy and I mindlessly stuffed bad Chinese food into our faces.

3. At 5:30pm I gave you a fortune cookie. At 5:32 I realized that the fortune itself had disappeared. At 5:33 I realized I didn't care and actually had a vague hope that perhaps ingesting the fortune directly might permit a small bit of wisdom to enter your bloodstream.

4. This afternoon, I sat on the couch crying with the vacuum on beside me and my fingers plugging my ears to drown out the sound of you screeching.

5. Intermittently, I considered exactly how long you might last if I placed you snugly in a snow bank. Then I thought about jail and how much time I would have to read books in my cell.

6. I have spent the last twenty minutes googling things such as "sleep disturbance fifteen months," "night waking toddler," and "why won't my child fucking go to sleep." Varying levels of success.

7. I found washing lemon sauce and deep fried chicken bits off our dinner plates to be relaxing and luxurious.

8. I prayed for patience.

Cutlery

2010-12-06T18:08:00.001-08:00

One of the oddest things about life with you is that some things that I never would have previously thought would be a battle are indeed a battle. Things such as: getting you to sit in a car seat or stroller, putting on your coat, changing your diaper, getting you out of the bathtub, peeling apples in the kitchen without you throwing a hissy fit. All of these things are, continuously, battles of epic proportions.

Conversely, things I would previously have thought might require training or coaxing or wrestling moves turn out to be pretty easy. Case in point: eating with cutlery.

One day, about two weeks ago, you simply decided that spoons and forks were the way to go. Now, if we put spoonable or forkable food on your highchair tray WITHOUT a bowl, fork and spoon to accompany said food item, you simply will not eat it. You are not, after all, a barbarian. You have a refined sense of class. That's why you like to scrape the wax off of candles with your teeth.

Nausea

2010-12-03T11:48:00.000-08:00

It's been a week of nausea. Your lovely outbreak of sickness was followed by sickness for Grandma (Monday), Mama (Tuesday), and Dada (Wednesday). Luckily, all of us weren't sick at the same time. Thus, GM Ricki, GP Peter, and GD Xena were all able to come down on Wednesday (and GM again on Thursday) to offer some much needed help.

You have mostly been a clingy and whiny stinkbug. Today I had you in the morning. And we had no plans. And, though I love you, five hours without the respite of a nap when you only want to be held ALL THE TIME is kind of a recipe for Homicidal Mama. In order to defend against my growing homicidal tendencies, I brought you up to St. Olaf so that you could run around, see Daddy, pet the Christmas trees, get roasty (I mean, toasty) by the fire, etc. You refused to walk on your own. It's possible we were playing "polio epidemic" or "fun with landmines" and that's why you wanted me to carry you--but if so, you need to be clearer about the kind of imaginative outcomes you're hoping for.

Last night, however, you broke out a whole bunch of adorable. When we Skyped with GM Gail and GP Michael, you walked in front of the computer screen (and camera) and delivered--literally--a five minute lecture to them complete with finger shaking, head nods, and a flurry of hand waves. Behind you, Daddy and I were convulsing with laughter.

You have learned to blow kisses and, admittedly, that's pretty fucking cute.

Though the stomach bug has passed through our house, my nausea continues. There are many things up in the air right now, many decisions that will be made by others or by us in the upcoming weeks that could have some big effects on our lives. And yes, I'm being purposefully vague. The point is just that it is possible that you're being a miserable witch because I'm kind of a miserable witch right now too. "It seems like you have trouble living with ambiguity," said your father to your mother during their very first phone conversation. This made Mommy think that Daddy was an asshole and prompted a vow never to talk to him again. But it *may* be possible that he was a *tiny* bit right. I have trouble living with ambiguity and you have trouble with me when I'm having trouble with anything.

Oh well, I'm sure the single digit temps and impending snow storm will have us all in better moods in a jiffy.

At least I don't have trouble living with sarcasm.

Golden Delicious

2010-11-28T15:40:00.001-08:00

Last night when you went to bed, you seemed quite well. You've had a runny nose since September and a nighttime cough for the last three weeks or so, but generally you seemed your regular perky self.

Until around 8:15 when Daddy went into your bedroom to give you some cough medicine and found you slithering around in your own vomit. All over your sleeper, in your hair, smeared across Doggie-Do and Mr. Meow, etc, etc. I lifted you up and you vomited on me. I gave you a bath while Daddy cleaned up your crib and I washed your hair and put you snugly into a new sleeper. You vomited again. On me and on the sleeper, of course. So I waited 15 minutes, rocked you a little, sang some sweet songs, changed you into another sleeper, rocked you to sleep in my arms, held you sleeping for fifteen minutes, laid you back down in your crib. And--

Yep, that's right, more vomiting. Well, by this time, more like dry heaving. But with bile. New sleeper, new crib sheets. This time I had Daddy put an old comforter on our bed and I took you in with me and snuggled you close, the smell of vomit still lingering in your hair, the unmistakable coating of vomit on your breath--and we slept--until you vomited again, and again. By 11pm the Great Expulsion of 2010 was complete and we both slept. Kind of.

Today, with the exception of two fairly lengthy naps (YAHOO!) all was back to normal. No fever, no cough, you being your usual sparkly self.

You have refused all forms of sustenance except apples. In this sense, you may share some bizarre gene with your godparents. Which is appropriate since today is the first anniversary of your baptism!

Sometimes we are baptized with water. Sometimes with fire. Sometimes with the Holy Spirit. And sometimes with straight up vomit. Amen! Alleluia! Let advent begin!

In Thanksgiving, Of Course

2010-11-27T11:57:00.001-08:00

Yowsers. The last ten days or so have been quite the blur, Thiz. For reasons I can mention and for reasons I can't.

You are becoming this miraculous little creature. Your spoken vocabulary is murky but your known vocabulary is huge. You tend to speak a word once, usually randomly, and then refuse to ever speak the word again. Your one-night-stand vocabulary includes words such as kitty, juice, bubbles, ox, outside, shoe, car, truck, book, duck, other, cheese, water, etc. Do you use any of these words of your own volition? No. And why would you, when simply by making the "please" sign (rubbing your chest) and pointing at an object you are able to receive almost everything that you need?

Although singular words are of little interest to you, complete rhetorical arguments are of seeming necessity. You are profoundly interested in educating Xena, Ricki and Peter's dog, and during our visit this weekend, you delivered a variety of lectures. These lectures involve head bobbing, hand gestures, and clear shifts in the tone of your babble: instructional to angry to soothing and back to instructional. Your lecture usually ends with an attempt to pat Xena using both of your hands. So filled with energy is your tiny body that you look like you're banging air cymbals.

A few days ago, Daddy refused your clear request to accompany him on a walk with Luxy. Shortly after he departed I found one of his shoes in the toilet. I didn't put it there.

You received your first haircut this weekend (Grandma had to sit in the chair with you--and your hair still makes you look like a Dickensian street urchin). You also had your first dose of true Thanksgiving food.

Last weekend GM Dorothy and GP Mark drove hours and hours just to see you for a day. It was a lovely visit, filled with soup and books and frosted windows (and glasses).

I must admit, it's been too long since I've written and there's too much to say--too many details and nothing feels quite solid in my head right now.

Let me just say how thankful I am for you. How thankful I am for this particular moment in your life when you are so full of joy and curiosity and wonder. How lovely it is to sit with you for up to ten minutes looking at a single book or to watch you push all sorts of wheeled devices in endless circles. I am also thankful for what will be (I think) our last few nursing moments together. I switched back to full strength birth control and my already meager supply has, I think, completely dissipated. The last few mornings your attempts to nurse have been sweet but exceptionally short lived. It's odd that this part of our relationship--which a year ago seemed to be our ENTIRE relationship--is slipping away with so little fanfare. I will miss being with you in those liminal spaces, Thiz, between sleeping and waking, between darkness and dawn. We used to slide into each other a little bit then--but that time is over now. In part because of the nursing and in part because you are becoming a being entirely distinct from your father or myself. This is perhaps when we marvel at you most, when you do something that reminds us of no one else we know, when you are simply being you, a creature who is new to us and whom we love without bounds.

10:20pm

2010-11-17T20:20:00.000-08:00

It is 10:20pm. Upstairs, you are coughing. A new cold, though your nose has been running continually since September. We keep a basket full of old, thin cloth diapers at the ready downstairs and swipe at your face whenever you come near.

My colleague died yesterday. He donated his eyes. Today was impossibly sad.

At ECFE you dipped the wheels of a red truck into red paint and then rolled the truck back and forth across a piece of plain white paper.

While you napped, Grandma cleaned our bathroom. She fed you kiwi and Amy's Macaroni and Cheese.

You are coughing still.

I called Michael about a cruise. He explained the difference between the first deck and the fifth.

My writing group came over and we drank wine. After they left, I put much of the uneaten food (snack mix, almonds, crackers) back into boxes.

You are still coughing.

Any time, really, could be the end. Death reminds us of this.

The next day we forget so that we can go on.

Cars and Trucks and Things That Go

2010-11-12T12:09:00.000-08:00

Today is gray and chilly. The gray has been a long time coming and, I realized today, walking under the saggy sky, how lucky we have been this fall, not only in terms of temperatures, but in terms of sunlight too. Against the gray sky, the brown, bare branches look so much sadder and more sickly. Against blue sky they look dramatic, dark veins or a brilliant idea.

You did not help my mood today, Thiz. On Monday, Wednesday, and Friday of this week (i.e. the days when I am in charge), you have refused to nap in the morning. Today I sat, drinking some luke warm coffee, addressing submission envelopes with a hand going slowly shaky from frustration at the high pitched shrieking coming from your room. As though you had been battered and dipped in hot oil. That kind of sound. So finally I brought you downstairs and tried to address the envelopes anyway but you stood next to me, tugging at my thighs, wailing and bounching slightly to emphasize your frustration. Somehow, this was made all the worse my your outfit (my choice) which consisted of overalls and an orange acrylic sweater with geometric patterns in green and white. When Daddy got home he said you looked like an old woman with mom jeans. In times of extreme distress, your cuteness is the main thing you have going for you--and the fact that your cuteness was marred by an old-woman button-front sweater did not help your cause.

Today is rather out of the ordinary, though. I have spent the last week, in fact, talking about how much I love the way this age (14 months!) looks on you. You're generally happy. In the morning, you give Daddy and I each a kiss or hug before pointing toward the doorway of the bedroom and grunting. You love to read Richard Scarry's "Cars and Trucks and Things That Go" and can identify such things as: unicycle, pig family, fire truck, ambulance, tank, Gold Bug, Flossy the Fox, dump truck, pickle truck, pumpkin car, and broom.

Yesterday, as I read "Curious George and the Dump Truck" (a book which you adore and I find to be only vaguely tolerable) I asked, "what sound does Curious George hear outside his window?" You very solemnly replied "qua, qua, qua." The ducks in your head are French, I guess.

You hate, more than anything in the world, to have to SIT DOWN in your car seat or stroller. Each day, we go through the Stages of Sitting: resistance, bargaining, distraction, force, submission, and acceptance. I hate, HATE physically forcing you into these seats, but if I didn't we would never go anywhere. Ever. You always look so sad and defeated once I do get the harness around you, a single tear glistening (Romance novel style) on the top of each cheek.

But mostly, mostly you are affectionate and curious and full of overwhelming excitement about everything. Here is a video (assuming it will load) of what happened when we put sunglasses on you and told you to dance.

To See Feelingly

2010-11-07T11:45:00.000-08:00

It is lovely outside today. 62 degrees and sunny. Piles and piles of leaves still stiff enough for you to crunch through. Today you and Daddy and I walked around in the grass behind our house. It's not really our yard, more a wide open stretch of green that connects three different town home divisions. You pulled a flap of bark off a tree and chased a lady bug over the back of your hand. Across the yard, in a town home with big, low, windows, another one-year old girl pressed her face to the glass and waved at you. You toddled over (tripping once in a patch of slick, dry pine needles) and pressed your face to the other side of the glass and put your hand up to her face.

Rich, a colleague of mine at St. Olaf, has cancer. His liver is failing and on Friday he decided to enter home hospice care. This Friday also would have been his daughter's 21st birthday. She died years ago, before I moved to Northfield or met your father or had you. Rich's wife, Karen, also teaches in the English department. Last Tuesday she offered to hold you while I tried to scribble in ovals on my voting ballot. She is always dressed to the nines. Always asks how I am. Runs miles with a running group every weekend. She is Catholic. She believes then, theoretically, in God, though I have no idea what she believes right now. I don't know what I would believe if I lost a child and then had to face my husband entering hospice care.

I have been something of an insomniac as of late. I lie awake thinking about Rich and Karen or about cancer in my own bones. I wonder if I've locked the door and I try to decide what I will wear the next day. I hear you cough in your crib and imagine you've stopped breathing. And my rational side keeps my body from getting up to check, but my mind doesn't stop, continues to play out the scene, finding your blue body, calling 911, calling my mother, finding the insurance card. What else would I take to the hospital? What would the realization of your death feel like? What would it be to have my mind simply freeze? I go on and on like this, not sleeping, filled with worry. Then thinking about God keeping track of the sparrows and the lilies being clothed and all that shit. Then I lie on my back and try to take deep breaths. I imagine the color lavender filling up my body. Then I remember that my cell phone probably needs to be charged.

Daddy and I watched King Lear last night. The version with Ian McKellen. Sir Ian was talking about the play, about the character of Lear in an interview after the movie. The play doesn't have a back story, he said, so I had to invent some things about King Lear. I decided that he'd been married twice. The first marriage produced Regan and Gonneril and ended--I don't know exactly--in divorce or the wife getting run over by a carriage, something like that. The second marriage was the love of his life. But that wife died giving birth to Cordelia. And so Lear raised Cordelia on his own. This is why they are so very close.

Then he talked about Lear's relationship to the gods. This extreme devotion to them at the beginning, the way he calls on them to curse his daughters, and the progression, throughout the play, to a kind of unbelief. A reliance instead on human relationships--friendship, love, filial connection (not obligation) to understand the truth of human existence.

I hadn't noticed this shift before, somehow, though I've now read the play a dozen times. I realize, though, that this is perhaps what makes it so devastatingly sad to me. That truth and love are knit up with unbelief, that human and divine are never reconciled, that they spiral away from each other and we are left only with what mortals can offer--jealousy and resentment and greed and deeply flawed offerings of love.

Writing well, acting well, can be a powerful practice in empathy. I have been trying to think about what it means to be Rich right now, what it means to be Karen. To really enter their fear and grief and pain. And I can't. They are, of course, not characters to be inhabited, but still I want to understand, want to know so I can share this walk in some small way. But I feel wooden, feel like if I let myself really imagine that, I would crumble. You are still so new. Your absence would be an abyss that I don't know that I could recover from.

Maybe this is why I practice death and disaster in my head every night. And why I want to remember today and every day. Your small finger pointing to the pickle car in "Cars and Trucks and Things That Go," my cheek pressed to your temple so that I can smell, slightly, the banana and egg you had for lunch. The accumulation of detail as a defense against death. Or so you can remember me when I go.

Om

2010-11-01T14:02:00.000-07:00

I went away from you this last weekend, Thiz. I went all the way to Iowa and stared at balding trees in a valley low and sweet. Grandma Ricki and I got into the car with our clothes and our books and our computers and our coffee, directions scrawled onto the back side of an envelope and winter coats thrown on the back seat just in case. We drove through fields still green and fields with the corn shorn down to stiff, pencil-sized stubs. We drove a road that told us to slow down to 45 and then 30 when we passed through a town, we drove on a road mostly dark and sound and straight. We spent the night in the Country Inn. There was a fake fire in the lobby and a cookie jar with cookies crisp enough to leave a Hansel and Gretel trail on our shirtfronts. I spread out like a starfish in my very own hotel bed. We talked to other writers and drank wine and sat facing a stage, our bags leaning against our legs.

At home, I am told, you did absolutely entirely just fine. You fed Daddy Cheerios in bed at 6:30am and went trick-or-treating through the dorms in your dragon costume; you visited Carsten and slept and woke and slept again. You sat in your father's lap and read Curious George and the Dump Truck and you nibbled on crayons and then spit the waxy bits onto the collar of your shirt. You ran your peanut butter fingers through your hair and chased bubbles in the tub. And when I got home, you did not look at me with surprise or relief or joy. It was just me again.

And I have to be honest here and say that although I thought about you all the time, I didn't miss you in the way I thought I would. I was both ready to come home and ready to stay longer.

On Sunday afternoon, Grandma Ricki and I took you on a walk through the grasslands. The grass stands twice as high as you, brown or golden depending on the weight of the sun. You were wrapped in a pink winter coat, hat and tennis shoes and mittens. I caught a grasshopper and held it out to you on the finger of my black glove. It hopped away and I retrieved it again. Then we walked a while longer. It was a little bit hard, I admit, to suddenly be back in this life, the one with the baby and the husband, the one with burnt out light bulbs and grilled cheese for dinner and my black boots still in my open suitcase, unpacked.

I had ideas, there in Iowa, that already I've forgotten.

You learned to say "come" while I was away. "Om, om, om." And though I know this mostly has to do with Luxy, I like to think you learned the word you needed to say to bring me back to you again.

Zoo

2010-10-24T11:57:00.000-07:00

We dressed you in your leopard print romper and then sent you out to greet the animals.

You ran, we estimate, at least a mile. We don't have to do the slow, barely-moving-while-our-one-year-old-dawdles walk with you because you are incapable of walking at a regular pace.

We got to see some bear training and I'm considering adopting the protocol for home use. Basically, the zoo keeper holds up a big shape (circle or star or square) and the appropriate bear then comes forward, noses at a mesh gate or sits on his haunches below a faux cliff, and is fed. It seems so simple. And the bears clear up all their scraps. They also bathe themselves and spend a LOT of time napping. HINT HINT.

Hi! Wow! Hot!

2010-10-23T08:09:00.000-07:00

Rainy this morning after an incredibly long spate of beautiful fall weather. Now the leaves are turning to mushy brown mulch in the gutters and the smell of their last hurrah is everywhere.

You were lovely this morning. You brought me both your Thomas trains and I sent them careening over the carpet. You brought them back over and over, hurling them quite ungracefully into my lap. You have figured out how to throw now, though not with any accuracy. Your bottom left tooth (beside the two middle ones) is quite visible and your upper left is just beginning to sprout, just a thin sliver of white.

You rub your hand across your chest when we ask you to say "please" and you say "buh" for "book" and "eee" for "eat." Your three favorite words remain "hi," "wow," and "hot." This is appropriate, I think, since you are a child of exclamations not sedentary nouns. In bed this morning we practiced putting my gold barrettes into your hair and Daddy's hair and my hair. When I asked you to give Daddy a kiss, you leaned forward and pressed your soft sweet cheek against his.

It's been a busy week. We spent a few days at Grandma and Grandpa's house so Daddy and I could go away for an evening. You woke up at 5:30am on the morning we were away, but other than that, your behavior was fairly normal. Daddy and I went to Brit's Pub and played pool and darts and then drank martinis back at our motel (well, I drank a martini, Daddy wisely stuck with beer). The next morning we walked to Barnes and Noble and (because the espresso machine was broken in the cafe) had to read our books and magazines while sitting on a cold heating vent by the window that faces Nicollet Avenue. I was reading about WWII Russia so the cold seemed somehow appropriate--and my latte (scored from Panera) seemed ridiculously luxurious.

Yesterday we spent a lovely morning and afternoon with Carlo and Anjuli. You sensed immediately that Anjuli was a safe, loving, and malleable adult and so you spent most of the day bringing her truck books and waving them at her so she would read to you. Carlo was exceptionally sweet, wiping your ever-snotty nose and patiently withstanding your shoe and dog attacks while he tried to sleep. It was lovely to see you interacting with both of them and it made me sad to think about how rarely you will get to do so.

The mood in our house is a little tense these days. Your father has sent out lots of applications to various jobs--so we're now holding our breath and crossing our fingers. Your father feels the stress the most, I know. He wants to make a lovely life for you and me, Thiz, and feels like this is his responsibility (though it isn't) and so the stress of being continually untenured and untethered wears him down. The uncertainty is stressful for me for different reasons. Unlike your father, for me half of the excitement of any new experience is anticipating it. Reality is never perfect, but anticipation can be. But right now none of the jobs, none of the predictable outcomes are exciting to me. Moving to California or remaining jobless in Minnesota are both less than lovely outcomes in my book. So I'm praying for the ability to remain open to possibility, to take each day as it comes, to recognize that I might not know what is best for us, and for the energy and optimism to make the best of whatever happens. Something I definitely suck at.

Last night on T.V. we saw a preview for a movie called Unstoppable. "It's a biopic of the life of Thisbe Agnes Jothen," said your father. And I agreed. Full steam ahead.

Here Be Dragons

2010-10-14T12:54:00.000-07:00

The title of this post refers, of course, to the areas on ancient maps that were unexplored, unknown, unremarked upon territory. The places where the mapmaker would stitch a serpent or dragon into the smooth surface of the sea.

It also refers to your Halloween costume. Since there may be more than one Halloween costume, since it might be too balmy on Halloween to dress you in the costume, since we are often looking for ways to amuse ourselves--we stuffed you into the costume a few days ago and made you run around the house while we laughed. The video should give you a clear sense of what that looked like. (OK, the video won't upload--here's a picture instead. Check back for the video later.)

The What You Do Now update consists of the following:
1. "Wow," you say, all the time "wow, wow, wow."
2. The fake cry. Ah yes, the wrinkling of the nose, the squinting of the eyes, the screechey whine. We're so thrilled.
3. Pure and shiny love of your father. He's a rock star and you're the groupie. I walked in the door after work today and you smiled at me. Then smiled again, more coyly, and hugged Dada's knee. "He's mine," your smile said.
4. The whine and point. This gesture is repeated, sometimes blindly, until Mama picks you up or gives you something that at least vaguely interests you.
5. Given a phone or cell phone, you immediately hold it to your ear. "Hi," you say, "hi?"
6. Eating fiend. Yesterday for dinner: banana, half an avocado, a mashed potato, an adult serving of broccoli, and a bunch of pot roast for good measure.
7. All things truck or vehicle related. Your love of "The Happy Man and His Dump Truck" has almost been surpassed by your love of "The Little Red Caboose."
8. You can run.
9. Two naps today but sometimes only one. Often only one 45 minute nap per day. But by 6:30 or 7:00pm you are done, totally finished, fried, wiped out, a manic mess.
10. You hair is growing thicker and darker at the base of your neck. The fine blond hairs on the top of your head cover your forehead and almost touch your eyes. Their are wing-like tufts of hair over your ears.

A few nights ago, watching you climb the stairs, I got that clutch in my throat. It never happens when its supposed to--i.e. birthdays, holidays, and other theoretically moving moments. Nostalgia and ethical epiphanies are reserved for the mundane times when you're least prepared to care. ANYWAY--you were climbing the stairs and I was thinking about the you we knew a year ago. This blob, this beast, this darling fragile thing. I was thinking about how I couldn't then possibly imagine this creature that you are now, nor can I imagine the creature you will be a year (two, three, ten) from today. And it's supposed to be a normal thing. It's growing up. It's what happens to the living things you push out of your vagina. Duh.

But what if someone else I loved (your father--or my mother my father or Anjuli or Martha or John or Dorothy or Peter or Rach or, or, or), what if one of these people changed that dramatically over the course of a single year? Seriously. What if you father picked up French, reinterpreted his understanding of himself, reestablished how he would relate to each person in his life, taught himself to surf, and unearthed an entirely new philosophy on permanence and impermanence in the course of a single year??? Would I still love him? Yes, of course. Would I be exhausted by trying to keep up with each new development, by attempting to understand his new vision of himself, by coping with the frustrations and disappointments that so much new knowledge inevitably brings? Hell yes.

So yes, it's a big deal this whole growing up thing. Staying in tune with anyone going through this amount of change would be difficult--staying in tune with someone who can't talk is really fucking difficult.

Thanks goodness for humor and grace. Thank goodness that this week you decided to poop in the bathtub on Daddy's watch instead of mine. Thank goodness for grandparents who will pitch in so Daddy and Mommy can go away together for a night. Thank goodness that watching you take shape is also awe-inspiring and beautiful and nothing short of miraculous.

You are a map and here be dragons. Here and here and here. I am so glad. No one likes a map with all the countries drawn just right. Where is there to go?

Walking

2010-10-08T08:14:00.000-07:00

The temperature is supposed to top out in the low-80's today. Our morning walk was beautiful. You babbled happily for almost 40 minutes. I love hearing your voice ebb and flow over my shoulder, cooing and whispering directly into my ear. I asked you to point at things occasionally and you did--tree, car, house, Luxy. You don't have much range of motion from the backpack, however, so you mostly look like you're doing a little "Heil Hilter" salute--or that's what it looks like from the corner of my eye.

We stopped to listen to the wind in the trees. Because it's autumn and the leaves are drier, the trees are suddenly louder and more brittle in their rustling. "Listen," I said, "it's the sound of the wind." But it's not, really. The wind doesn't have a sound of its own; on the other hand, the leaves don't make noise without the wind. So were we listening to the wind or the leaves? And seriously, could I be any more Zen right now?

Anyway, after the wind we checked out some milkweed pods. A group of elder bugs was clinging to a closed pod, all of their little insect arms working the crease, trying to get in. A few of the pods were open so I let you wiggle your fingers into the gossamer fluff.

A half mile behind us, a train was making its way through town so we stopped to listen to the whistle.

I let you pull a red leaf from an oak tree. You dropped it just as quickly.

Then we were home. I read nursery rhymes to you--one about having a sailor for a daddy and another about not beating your donkey but feeding him corn instead. You were still wearing your somewhat atrocious pajamas (lavender, Pooh, white fur collar) when I put you down for your nap.

Now it's an hour and twenty minutes later and I'm not sure what to do--you never sleep for this long. I suppose I will pour coffee from the cold silver percolator and warm it in the microwave. While it's warming I'll move the laundry to the drier and then I'll take my mug, add cream and sugar, settle into the couch, and I will proceed to read exactly two sentences before you--

--wait, I think I hear you now. Scratch the coffee.

Nevertheless: it's a beautiful day. I love you.

Chillaxing

2010-10-03T13:10:00.001-07:00

It's been a lovely weekend, Thiz. The first that we've spent entirely in Northfield in what seems like a long, long time. Yesterday was Homecoming at St. Olaf. We went for a long family walk in the morning. Blue skies, crisp and sunny. All the grasses brown and dry, all the trees on fire. Wind making tiny tears at the corners of our eyes. Luxy panting. You riding on Daddy's back in the backpack, white knit cap and a too-large alpaca coat. The sleeves covered your hands so all your gestures looked large and prophetic.

When we got home I put a chicken carcass in a pot with onions and carrots and parsley and salt, covered it with water and set it to simmer. Your father peeled apples from Grandpa Judy's farm and made a crisp (Betty Crocker, the cookbook with the melted cover). You napped.

When you woke we put you back into your pack and hiked over to the football field. Silver bleachers filled and more students and alumni standing on the track around the field. Black and gold sweatshirts, the smell of popcorn and hot dogs. It was half time. Four people standing nervously and coldly in the middle of the green while a disembodied voice inducted them into the Olaf Athletic Hall of Fame. We talked to Sarah and Steve and Anna; we braved the bookstore and bought you a huge black knit hat with a gold lion emblazoned on the hem; we ate cookies and drank cider and walked back home.

Greg and Carsten came over for dinner: chicken soup and dark stout and canned pineapple. You couldn't focus on eating because you were so intent on Carsten. You followed his every move.

You went to sleep just fine but woke up twice because of teething pain (we think).

Today Daddy sang "Lord of All Hopefulness" in church. You wore a velvet lavender dress, tights, and (because we have no dress shoes for you) your brown sneakers. When I picked you up from the nursery I braced myself for the nursery workers' usual thinly-veiled critiques of your behavior. "She certainly has attitude!" or "Well, she's certainly something all right!" or "She was a little needy but played fairly well for some of the time." Today there were new nursery workers, clearly highly intelligent and far more emotionally sensitive than the previous nursery workers. "She was so terrific," they raved, "she just did so well!" and "We were just talking about how if we ever have kids we want to have daughters just like Thisbe" and "We don't know what you guys are doing, but it sure is working wonders, she's such a great kid." For a while I wondered if I was inserting my own script into their mouths or if perhaps Peder had paid them off. But they seemed sincere.

The afternoon was filled with more mundane things--you peeled off the skin of a yellow onion and then proudly threw a piece of dog poop at me in the park. Then I hid bites of pancake in your wooden mailbox and we looked at a very PC book about babies from around the world. Rwanda baby! Thailand baby! Bhutan baby!

Tonight we'll have frozen pizza. Mommy will go to a book group to discuss "Little Heathens," a book she has yet to read. Daddy will stay home and watch baseball or "Mad Men" or both.

It was nice to just be together as a family this weekend. Sometimes I'm so intent at protecting my "own" time that Daddy and I end up passing you back and forth. Oftentimes the time we all spend together is harried time, exhausted time. We forget to relax together, to putter around together, to read together, to stop worrying about the next thing and who will accomplish it. It was a blessing just to be. Amen.

Keeping Score

2010-10-01T07:33:00.000-07:00

Lots of sunniness and brilliant blue sky action this week. The flood waters are abating. Runny noses are drying up. Homecoming is on the horizon.

I spent the first few days of the week just feeling incredibly blessed. You finally emerged from this cocoon of not-yourself-ness into this vivid, drooling, hugging butterfly. You were smiling like crazy and so BUSY. As you putter around the house you truly look like you have your own agenda in your head, something like:

"Open mailbox door. Put plastic peacock figurine inside. Close door. Turn around. Walk to books. Pick up book. Carry book to ottoman. Bang book on ottoman. Toss book aside. Pick up black measuring cup. Taste. Wave around. Bring measuring cup to mailbox. Open door. Close door. Open other door. Retrieve peacock. Drop measuring cup. Abandon both. Peruse cookbooks. Pull largest one from shelf. Consider recipes. Notice wicker basket. Explore contents of wicker basket. Discover plastic bag. Taste. Grind plastic bag between teeth. Hold plastic bag between teeth while noticing pile of folded laundry. Topple laundry. Choose lavender pants. Position lavender pants on head while still experiencing plastic bag between teeth. Notice water cup on table. Point to cup and whine at Mama. ETC, ETC, ETC"

Somewhere in the midst of all of this, you'll wander over to Daddy or I and hug whatever part of us is accessible. All while smiling or babbling. You say "ot" for "hot" and "ar" for "car." You still don't say "Mama" or "Dada." Mostly you rely on pointing or bringing to us an item that represents your next activity choice (i.e. your shoes if you want to go outside, a book if you want to read, Luxy's Chuck-It if you want to throw the ball with her). You stand by your chair if you're hungry. You point to the kitchen counter if you want a banana.

You eat like a horse. Noodles of any kind are still the running favorite. You have also developed a lovely new tendency which is to run your fingers through your hair repeatedly during mealtimes. The results, while amusing, require immediate attention (i.e. a thorough shampoo) so we have taken to making you wear a winter hat while you eat.

My thoughts are not in order this week. This post clearly lacks a theme or narrative thread. What I wanted to say, I guess, is just that while the week began blissfully, it has ended not so blissfully. Rejection slips in the mail, nap protests, early wake-ups, a childcare opportunity falling through, a messy house, and the never-endingness of it all seeming never-ending rather than simply like the rewards and trials of a life well lived.

You woke at 6am this morning. I nursed you and tried to put you back down. You were having none of it. I told your father to get up with you. He was having none of it. "That doesn't seem fair to me," he mumbled. And later: "why is it that you're always the one telling me what to do?" Finally he took you downstairs. But I couldn't sleep. I lay in the dark, adding up the number of hours that each of us spends with you every week. I turned on a light and scratched my calculations on the back of an envelope.

I know in a marriage you're not supposed to keep score. But sometimes I think the person who made up that rule was a man; he knew that if the scores ever did get added up it would be clear who was getting the short end of the stick.

I'm torn between knowing, deep in my heart, that things even out eventually, that my husband is doing his best, that this kind of intensity won't go on forever--and feeling like if I don't stand up for myself no one will, that it would be easy to get whittled down to nothing, and that the rejection slips will continue to pile up unless I fight, even with the person I love the most, for time with the blank page.

Reunion

2010-09-25T09:34:00.000-07:00

A dreary Saturday. All of us still a bit under the weather and the weather under and beneath and around all of us. In Northfield the banks of the Cannon River haven't held. The water has overflowed, crept into basements and fields, over the riverside sidewalks and the parks at the river's edge. E-mails for emergency sandbagging attempts. The radio station shut down after Excel Energy cut off their power. I took you downtown yesterday morning and by the time we headed for home all the downtown streets across the river had been closed. I brought you down to the edge and we watched the water. Dark and fast, foam cutting slivers of briny white into the churning fabric. Fast and with purpose, a different kind of river. The wind whipping around us, raising the fine blond hairs around your face.

Before watching the river we sat on a couch at Blue Monday. I fed you bits of blueberry scone and we listened to a man from Greece talk about following his dream to build Nascar auto parts. His one-year-old had open heart surgery. She was an unplanned pregnancy but in Greece, "we don't terminate" he explained. "I mean, you know, the babies." He showed pictures of his family on his cell phone.

Then we watched the river. And then we drove home. And then we drove to Minneapolis. You ate mountains of macaroni and cheese for dinner. I tried on different shirts and said things like "does this one make me look too dull?" "does this one make me look like I'm trying too hard?" "does this one suggest a more zesty personality?" "does this one suggest too much boob?" Ricki and Peter played along. Your father sat in the armchair in the sun room, reading a paper and rolling his eyes.

Then we left you and went uptown and ate a grand amount of delicious Thai food. Daddy had a beer and I had a pomegranate martini that smelled exactly like the cough syrup we've been squirting into the back of your throat for the last three days.

And then we went to my ten year college reunion. And what a homogeneous bunch the class of 2000 truly is. White and upper middle class. And I was so torn, Thiz, between wanting to look like I belonged and desperately wanting to look markedly different. Which sadly means that maybe my 31-year-old self is not so different than my 21-year-old self.

Or maybe I'm not being fair. One classmate lost a leg to the Light Rail. Steffan lost the use of his left arm to a stroke. He put down the beer in his right hand to give me a hug. Nikki used to design sets but is now training to become a landscape architect. Nick was almost unrecognizable; he's lost so much weight that a sharper, far more distinct face has emerged. In the center of the room were huge plates with thousands of pieces of cubed cheese. The side of the room with the bar on it was considerably more crowded than the side with tables.

I cried a little in the car on the way home. Mostly grief for everything that I thought I was going to accomplish by now--and haven't. And maybe won't ever accomplish. They give awards and a full page spread in our college magazine for the man and woman who have accomplished the most in these last ten years. I won't lie, of course I wanted to be that woman, I wanted a glossy photo of my face framed by a white collar, not a single slick hair out of place. But I know the man who won the award--he is teaching physics at Oxford. He has a beautiful wife. And he was drunk beyond belief. The kind of drunk you get when something crucial is missing. I know because I was that way at the five year reunion.

Which isn't to say I wasn't drunk this year. But it was a different kind of drunk. A ten year reunion is really just an excuse to grieve a little for the person you didn't become.

But there is nothing missing from my life. Sometimes I don't get around to everything that's important. Sometimes things are out of balance. But there are no dangerous and dark absences, the kind that can pull you into affairs or suicide or Kool-Aid cults.

And I have you and Daddy to thank for that, Thiz. You fill up my life with presence--the true, difficult, maddening, vulnerable, hilarious kind of presence. I haven't accomplished what I thought I would, but---well, that just means the write-up for the 25-year reunion will be that much more fantastic.

The Good Kind of Breaking

2010-09-19T14:27:00.000-07:00

So as of 2:30 this afternoon, dear Thiz, you had no fever. No fever without the assistance of Ibuprofen or Tylenol. Your father wept. I felt like my body melted into the floor in relief. These are not exaggerations. We went for a walk altogether in the late afternoon September sunshine and the world was glowing.

Now, back home, we're feeding you bits of banana. We're letting you watch the Vikings and dial random numbers into the phone. You look a little like a burn victim now that the rash has spread to your face, but you're personality is back, somewhere behind the blotchy red and the slime-trails of snot. The Thiz is back. We're so glad to see you again.

Fever, Day Six

2010-09-19T07:21:00.000-07:00

Still holding steady at 102.2. The rash is in full bloom on your chest and back and neck. Our sheets are spotted with spilled breast milk and Ibuprofen liquid drops and snot and urine (you like to pee when we take your temp.) Your eyes look bleary and you've got snot crusted around your nostrils. You're wearing your pink pajamas with the panda faces on the toes. While I read "The Happy Man and His Dump Truck" or "Thank You, God!" you tug absentmindedly at the panda ears or at a tuft of hair above your left ear. You don't have much interest in your choo-choo or your mailbox or your dump truck. Sometimes I can seduce you with my wallet and its dozen plastic laminated cards. But this morning you just wanted to read or to lay on the floor with Mr. Meow. I keep hoping this is the kind of exhaustion that comes with getting better. I am tired of this worry. Tired of pressing my lips to your forehead a thousand times a day. Tired of making sure I know at every moment where the Ibuprofen and thermometer are located.

Fever, Day Five

2010-09-18T12:15:00.000-07:00

So today the doctor put a catheter in you and said, once it was in, that then your crying helped, it made the process faster. Daddy and I stood near your head. I held your face so close I could smell my own breath.

While we waited for results Daddy read a magazine with NFL on the front and you slid the face of the fireman upward to reveal the firetruck.

Your smooth bare legs are almost exactly the length of my thighs. Your toenails are small and jagged. The doctors still don't know what's wrong.

Probably a virus. But also if it gets worse we should take you directly to Children's Hospital in Minneapolis where they specialize in taking blood from the veins of babies who are toeing the death-line.

Last night we rearranged the furniture. Luxy now sleeps below a shelf of plants, giving her the appearance of a jungle animal. Then we ate spicy nacho Doritos and watched "The Young Victoria." When Prince Albert died, Victoria continued to lay his clothes out every morning. For the rest of her life, for 43 years, she did this. It makes me sad to think of all those empty shirts waiting for a body to fill them.

This morning, after we gave you Ibuprofen, you had a bit of your usual spunk back--wrinkling your nose and smiling, swirling your fingers through Luxy's water dish, attempting transport the word "hot" from the back of your brain to the outskirts of your lips. And I realized as I watched you do these things how much I've missed you this last week. I keep remembering your infant days, back when you were just a small, sweet body, back before we really knew you. Sickness brings forth these same sweet infant tendencies--nursing round the clock, falling asleep in our arms, burrowing into our necks--but now we also feel the absence of you--your sass, your spunk, your curiosity, your constant motion. Each day you arrive more fully within yourself, and with each day your absence becomes that much more unthinkable. Be well soon, darling girl.

Myth

2010-09-15T18:01:00.000-07:00

Pouring down rain and the thunder rumbling. You, a feverish sweat-mess, sitting on my lap in the rocking chair, rubbing your nose back and forth against my T-shirt, finally falling asleep, your little furnace body pressed against my heart.

A masking tape tag with your name in black block letters on the back of flowery corduroy overalls. The woman at ECFE telling me to put my coffee on the shelf in order to respect the safety of the children. As if she knew that only an hour earlier you'd pulled Daddy's mug of hot coffee onto yourself. Your small foot below the bathroom faucet. The coffee-drenched toe of your sleeper now soaking in an ice cream bucket filled with water and Oxy-Clean. Still, I wanted to punch the ECFE woman in the face.

Poems about Leda. The rain comes and I write notes to myself for discussion tomorrow: "What words does Graves use to mean rape?" "What kind of person is Zeus in the poem?" "How is the poet reinventing the power dynamic of the original myth?"

Your father is singing in church. Joining his voice to other voices while the rain comes down.

When you are sick the power dynamic shifts. I know how much you need me. I remember that it is possible to lose you. Your body is hungry for my body in a way it hasn't been since you were small. It may be selfishness more than selflessness that makes me pull you close and rock you until your limbs grow heavy and you sleep.

When I Walked Out of the Kitchen

2010-09-10T13:15:00.000-07:00

Today Grandma Gail and Grandpa Michael and Great Grandma Judy will arrive for a weekend visit. Of course we are very excited. And of course having guests always takes a certain amount of preparation: grocery shopping, cleaning, laundry and the like. And of course Daddy and I often wait until the last possible moment to do a number of these things. In part because we are procrastinators and in part because most cleaning is undone by you within a matter of hours and sometimes minutes.

So today, when Daddy headed off for his first day of classes, I knew it was going to be a busy first day on the home front too. I, however, was determined to meet my lengthy to do list with energy and grace.

To that end, you and I left the house at 7:15am, you in your fuzzy pink pajamas, brown tennis shoes and winter cap and me in running garb. I had you in the stroller, I had Luxy on a leash, I had a plentiful supply of Cheerios and plastic bags. And we were off! Cool crisp autumn air, early morning sunlight, your bobbing, capped head in front of me...and a small boxer-pug mauling Luxy. What could be better? I didn't let Luxy off the leash for fear of Luxy killing the other dog; I did try to maneuver away from you while also not letting myself get trapped between the warring canines. You looked on without much concern, rolling backward slowly but surely. Stroller brake be damned.

Anyway, the owner finally approached and we were off again, Luxy's ears folded to her head, Mommy's heart pounding, and you looking highly unperturbed.

We had some oatmeal and mashed banana and then I got you dressed. Notice how I waited to dress you until after breakfast? I'm sly like that.

At 9am you looked tired so I put you down for a nap. You cried for half an hour so I got you up from your nap. I brought you downstairs and began looking for your shoes so we could run some errands. Then I heard you laughing a little maniacally. I stepped out of the kitchen and realized I couldn't see you. The laughter continued. I finally realized you were sitting at the top of the stairs, waiting for me to become aware of my POOR parenting skills.

We ran our errands and returned home. I went into the kitchen to prepare your lunch. I walked out to find you gleefully holding my empty coffee mug. The rest of the coffee was on your darling outfit and the floor and the leather ottoman. More bonus parenting points for me.

You ate lunch in your coffee stained, garden-themed overalls. I took the clothes off you so I could redress you for lunch. Then I changed your diaper. And I discovered a horrible, terrible diaper rash. At 9am your butt-skin was perfect. At noon you had blisters on both cheeks. The best treatment for diaper rash is a little air-dry time. So I decided to let you play naked for 5 minutes while I did a few dishes. Then I would diaper you and dress you and put you down for your nap.

Except that when I walked out of the kitchen after washing TWO BOWLS you were standing next to Luxy's kennel holding a handful of your own excrement. There was a little on your belly and another dollop on the door of the kennel. The rug featured poop footprints. I thought briefly of that cheezy poem about Jesus and the beach and the carrying. And then I swore. And then I laughed. And then I spent the next 15 minutes picking up globs of poop from the rug and squeezing bits of poop from your fist and then bathing your tiny naked self in the bathroom sink.

Finally, FINALLY I got you clean and diapered and dressed and down for your nap. And then Daddy walked in the door. And then I realized it was only 12:30pm and that it was going to be a very long day.

Toddler Bath

2010-09-09T17:42:00.000-07:00

Ever since you began to walk, you have refused to sit down in the bathtub. You totter resolutely from one end to the other, a jar lid or medicine dropper or travel-size bottle of shampoo held in each fist. Small butt. Round belly. Aghast at the thought of sitting.

So I decided to start bathing with you again, something I haven't done since you were small. I thought of doing so a few nights ago when I had an entire half hour long phone conversation with my friend Miriam while she was in the tub with her 18-month-old daughter, Ursula. So now I fill the water a little higher and make the temperature a little warmer. I try not to think about the hunched curve of my spine or the swells of belly fat at my waist. I lean my back into the faucet so you won't hit it with your head. Tonight I added bubbles. You were baffled. I could feel your muscles relax when some of the bubbles cleared a bit and you could see your toes in the water below. You quickly forgot about the bubbles and focused on a Dasani water bottle instead. You sat facing me, your legs pressed against my thighs, and practiced putting the blue cap on the water bottle, over and over again.

Sometimes I know, when a moment is happening, that I will long to return to it when you are grown. Like tonight. The warmth, your slick skin and dark lashes, the barely noticeable echo of our voices, the sound of Daddy finishing the dinner dishes downstairs, Luxy nosing the door open from time to time to peer in on us, the bubbles silently dispersing (a soft fizzing sound I can actually hear when alone in the tub), and your absolute focus on a small blue lid and the place you know it belongs.

Backward

2010-09-07T18:18:00.000-07:00

Really, Thiz, as if walking FORWARD wasn't enough!!! Geez. Soon we will train you to ride small lions with crimson flowers braided into their manes or we will teach you to blow singing bubbles out of a kazoo the size of your arm. Then we will sell you to the circus and retire. Or maybe we will bottle your energy and intensity and sell it to a rural village in Transylvania. And then retire.

Or maybe we will wax poetic about this new development--how lovely it is to watch you move into the unknown and unseen, into all that empty space, without fear or hesitation. Your faith in the universe is infinite. We are taking notes. We are still hoping to retire.

Then Comes Marriage

2010-09-07T17:55:00.000-07:00

Oh, what a weekend! So much, so much, so much--best captured in list form:

1. You turned one. We put a candle in a cupcake and sang to you. I put frosting on my fingertip and shoved it into your mouth. I thought you would be pleased. You were disturbed.

2. John and Anna got married! Anna wore a lovely dress with an ivory sash around her waist. John walked around in his fancy suit, lime green tie, matching handkerchief--and a bottle of Gatorade in his hand. They were both dear and beautiful and sincere. Supposedly, babies don't remember anything that happens before the age of two, but I wish you could keep this wedding tucked into your memory, Thiz. There were a lot of tears; there were Subway sandwiches in the church social hall; there were carafes of wine and sparkling glasses on a green, green lawn beside a lake; there was orzo and salmon and kale; there were truffles that undid themselves inside your mouth. I slow danced with you next to the band. The saxophone player held the horn out to you and you retreated into my shoulder. After you went to bed, Daddy and I drank too much and slow danced close together and stood outside and let the stars fall down around us.

3. You have been tough. Shy. Needy. Pale with a glowing red nose. On the way to the wedding, I knelt on the front seat, back to the windshield, and poured a tiny white pellet of camomilla into the cap of a tiny homeopathic bottle. I fed you the pellet, hoped it would calm you, said a little prayer.

4. You and I wore dresses that felt a little like crepe paper.

5. You received: a birthday bear from Margaret, a jacket and doll from Becca, a CD from auntie Martha, books and a darling outfit from Anjuli, a book and pail from Trevor and Angie, and crabs from John and Anna. Crabs donated in your honor to a rural village in India. Later, you will understand why this is funny.

Happy Birthday!

2010-09-03T05:12:00.000-07:00

Your birthday has arrived and with it the cold. It's blustery this morning, drizzly and gray. You woke at 5:45, ready to celebrate.

All the cliches are true--it's impossible to believe you've already been around a full year (i.e. how time flies!) and impossible to believe you've ONLY been around for one year (did life exist before Thisbe?).

Soon I'll dress you in a fuscia onesie and flowered overalls. We'll pack you into the car along with a cooler full of hard boiled eggs, three bushels of apples, a beanbag toss game, diaper bag, suitcases, and a slick garment bag filled with fancy clothes. We'll drive to Luthercrest Bible camp in Alexandria, we'll unfold ourselves from the car, and we'll hug your Uncle John and Aunt Anna, who will be married tomorrow. Tonight we'll put a candle in a cupcake and sing to you and think about 7:45pm last year, the moment you emerged into this lit, breezy, Kodachrome world.

It's only now, one year later, that I can see how remarkably our worlds (mine and Daddy's) changed along with yours. The world we live in now is full of a kind of gravity and richness we didn't possess before we met you, Thiz. All the big words (love, grief, suffering, faith)--they mean something new and different to us now.

Tomorrow at John and Anna's wedding, I will read these words:

"You will go out in joy
and be led forth in peace;
the mountains and hills
will burst into song before you,
and all the trees of the field
will clap their hands."

May your life, dear one, be filled with joy and peace; may you be given ample time to burst into song and clap your hands; may you explore wildly (yet carefully) the mountains and hills and fields; may you be given moments that deepen, enrich, and re-start your life the way that the moment of your birth (and the moments that followed) have deepened, enriched, and re-started ours. We love you so.

Only Glee

2010-08-31T20:05:00.000-07:00

With all the stress (good and bad) that is quickly approaching AND to celebrate the end of summer AND to remember how supremely awesome so many A.T.* moments truly are--here is a series of images devoted entirely to glee.

*After Thisbe

Cannon Falls to Red Wing to Republicans

2010-08-31T19:18:00.000-07:00

We biked over 40 miles this last weekend, Thiz. You rode in the Burley (a trailer that attached to a bike) and we pedaled and groaned about the soreness seeping into our rears. At the half-way point (Welch Village) there was a snack stand, some restrooms, and (of COURSE) an 82 -year-old man dressed in leiderhosen playing the accordian. After playing Edelweiss, the man was also up for talking about the difference between Jews in Hitler's Germany and blacks in the present-day U.S. "She, for instance," he kept saying, nodding his head toward Agnes, "will never be equal in this country. People think it's this way but it's not. It won't ever be." He claimed to be disgusted by racism but he also never addressed Agnes directly. So, you know, it's hard to say.

The hotel was sketchy--smoke-scented nonsmoking rooms, a drunk guy in the pool area, and no hair conditioner supplied with the shampoo (really, what could be sketchier than that?). To battle the sketchiness, we devoured German food--well, I had saurbraten and everyone else had American food served in a German restaurant. Auntie Agnes knew the bartender. They had drinks.

While the rest of the family bowled (there was a bowling alley attached to the German restaurant. Duh.), I took you back to the room and nursed you to sleep. The next morning we biked to Perkins for breakfast and then biked back to Cannon Falls. It was hot but beautiful. The trail is an old railroad bed--flat, paved, well-maintained. For the most part shaded. Farmland and forest and creeks and boggy swamps. Butterflies flitting across the path. I even got to see one of my very favorite things. Minnesota grows a lot of corn and soybeans. Farmers rotate the crops and so sometimes, in the middle of a field of soybeans, you can see corn stalks poking up and out and through this perfect mass of green. I love that. Gorgeous imperfection.

Now we are home again. Preparing for the semester and for John and Anna's wedding. I get teary every time I think of the wedding and anxsty every time I think of the school year. You've been getting anxsty too. An awful neediness these last two days. You're independent and happy with Daddy--but when I come home you wrap your arms around my legs and look up and me and sob. I take you in my arms and you arch your back and scream to be put back down. I put you down and you crawl over to me, the saddest wounded soldier, and hold your arms out as if to say, please help me, please, I'm dying here. This kind of behavior makes me shrug in consternation and then (20 minutes later) makes me want to unwind a roll of duct tape. Seriously. When in doubt, however, we resort to our favorite refrain: "maybe Thisbe's teething!"

I have no idea how we will explain your behavior once you have all your teeth.

("maybe Thisbe's on drugs!" "maybe Thisbe's having an existential crisis!" "maybe Thisbe's joined a cult!" "maybe Thisbe is possessed by Satan!" "maybe Thisbe's become a Republican!")

Some Fragments Before I Forget

2010-08-27T17:39:00.000-07:00

You have spent today turning in a circle and then plopping down on your butt when you get dizzy.

Yesterday, you discovered your shadow.

We go on long walks. Long not because of distance but because it takes us a long time to cover a very short amount of space. You like to check out sticks and leaves and rocks. You like to pick at pits of tar and scratch at the anthills thriving between pavement slabs. Sometimes you hold my finger or Daddy's finger while you walk but most of the time you are just your own breathless force, trying to run, almost-tripping with every step but then righting your self and continuing.

You've been needy, extra needy.

You nurse twice per day, morning and night.

Maybe this is why you're extra needy.

You're still beautiful while you sleep.

You love cheesy noodles.

You like other things if you don't know the cheezy noodles are available. Once you become aware of cheezy noodle availability, you drop clumps of other foods off the side of your highchair.

Last night I made Greek stew: spinach and cheese and onion and garlic and potatoes and black olives. You liked it OK. You liked it better once I mixed in some noodles.

I forgot to say in the last post that at the potluck you were a disaster. You hadn't slept for 7 hours and if Daddy or I would walk out of sight you would burst into tears.

Your only truly consistent words are "hi" and "ay-yai-yai" although every day either Daddy or I claims you've got a new one mastered. Today Daddy said you knew "boy." And maybe you did at 11am. But not at 6pm.

Tomorrow we leave for an overnight biking trip with Ricki and Peter and Michael and Agnes. Not sure how you'll do in the bike trailer. Hoping for the best--bracing for the worst.

In the mornings I work on syllabi and think about submitting poems and stories to journals.

I have gray hairs. Did I tell you this yet? Yours are growing in blond and mine are growing in gray and sometimes the circle of life just kind of makes me want to puke.

I have terrible allergies. I am drinking pinot grigio from a box and sneezing.

Today you and I walked downtown together. You rode in the hiking backpack. We got iced coffee at Blue Monday and then checked out shoes at Rare Pair. We stocked up on string cheese and some suspicious-looking Gerber instant meals at Econo Foods and then walked back. Over the river. You were content the whole time and cried when I took you off my back.

Potluck

2010-08-27T17:20:00.000-07:00

On Wednesday we had a potluck with the play date group. The play date group is pretty much the best group of Mamas and babies that has ever existed in the entire history of the universe. We have talked about everything from health insurance to post baby sex to homemade baby food to marital communication mishaps to carpet choices to books about circus elephants. When we first started to get together, you and the rest of the babes lay like lumps of fleshy clay on the floor while we drank coffee and ate brownies or animal crackers or grapes. Now we have to converse while stuffing grapes into your gaping mouths while simultaneously shielding our beverages from your sticky, grabby hands. In the winter, when the weeks seemed endless, their was a respite every Wednesday from 2:00-4:00. In the summer, it's been a delight to watch you guys dip your toes in wading pools and roll around on porches and attempt to poke one another's eyes out with various utensils.

I don't know if you will know these women when you are older, Thiz, but I hope you do. If you don't, I hope you are surrounded by women like them, women who are full of wisdom and patience but also honesty and vulnerability. Smart, talented women who want to be good Mamas but who admit things are going shitty when things are going shitty.

Your dad will start applying for jobs soon and the jobs will be in places far away. And while I won't be too sad to leave our town home and while I wouldn't mind some mountains a little nearer to our doorstep, it grieves me pretty deep to think about having to leave this circle of friends--my friends who have never known me without you and my friends who would never want to subtract you from me in order to know me better. We are lucky duckies.

(Note: photos totally ripped off from Donya, a Mama who knows her way around a camera)

Getting Hi

2010-08-16T15:50:00.000-07:00

Today I was holding you in the library, browsing for books on motherhood, trying to keep you from squirming out of my arms and prevent you from disturbing other library patrons at the same time. Just behind where I was browsing a woman was sitting with her 7-year-old son, working on phonics. Quietly. Ca-ca-ca. Bu-bu-bu. You arched your back and I pressed you closer. Ca-Ca-Ca. Bu-bu-bu. Quietly, like the books were murmuring among themselves. And then:

Hi!
I ignored you. Chose a book by a mother with a PhD after her name.
Hi! (again, and louder).
The mother glanced your way. I chose a book with a woman on the back flap who looked like she was pretending to know something sly and secret.
Hi! Hi!
Finally, the woman, stationed on a plastic chair far too small for her large frame, said Hi.
Hi! you said again, emphatically, although this time to close the conversation.
We made our way quickly out of the quiet section of the library.

You have also developed, in the past three days or so, the Cutest Behavior in the World. Just one week ago, you barely tolerated having a book held in front of your face. Books were static and you were the epitome of dynamic. To, fro, back, forth, around, down, under, beside. You were just a bunch of prepositions housed inside a 28 inch frame. But now--if I say "do you want to read a book? can you bring mommy a book?" you go to your book shelf and bring it over to me and hold it out, smiling and shivering with excitement. We read the book and then you go back for another and another. I can see how this behavior, like any other, may grow annoying at some point in the near future, but for today it remains the Cutest Behavior in the World.

Grandma Dot and Grandpa Mark were here for another whirlwind visit this weekend. We walked to the park and watched baseball and ate tuna steaks and mango salsa. Grandma Dot brought you some lovely purple socks (courtesy of her very own knitting needles) and a lovely Farm Animals flap book. You displayed your new-found ability to point to desired objects with marvelous dexterity. In order to quell your interest in the salt and vinegar potato chips and the gin and tonic, I gave you a tiny taste of each. You then pointed excitedly toward each--again and again. If later in life you become a fat alcoholic, you can look back to this moment as the time when it all began.

We are trying to transition you to one nap per day. Yesterday, this worked beautifully--you slept for 2 hours and 15 minutes. In a row. Today you slept for 35 minutes. One nap, 35 minutes. At 6pm you were walking around with the the lid from the caper jar, giggling maniacally, while Daddy and I looked like we'd been run over by a slow moving bulldozer.

This is also perhaps because, after a sudden temperature shift (75 degrees and no humidity!), fall suddenly feels palpable, within grasping distance. And so Daddy and I are already growing more testy, more protective of our work time, more likely to quibble about issues of responsibility and resentment.

Usually I don't resent you, Thisbe, but sometimes I do. I say this so that if someday you feel the same way about your own offspring, you don't feel bad. I love you every second, but some days I long for the buffers of time your father and I used to enjoy. Time usually not well spent, but time that was our own, that we possessed--now I only have two or three hours a day that are truly my own. This is a gift. Some moms get none. And so I feel like those hours should be enough. That I should return, always, to the house and you and Daddy feeling satiated and present and full of self-generated energy. Some days this is true. And then there are the days when I think about turning left instead of right on highway 3, when I think about where I could go and who I would be when I got there--Horrible but Free--and then I turn right, the way I am supposed to. I return to the life I'm supposed to be living, but sometimes I'm not sure who I am by the time I get here.

Eleven Months and one Week

2010-08-09T18:37:00.000-07:00

You are eleven months and one week old today, Thiz.

In my mother's Page-A-Day journal, her entry for eleven months and one week after my birth reads: "Today we went to Susan Still's to plan a puppet show for the PSN meeting tomorrow. Susan showed Kaethe a lion puppet, and Kaethe walked up and kissed it. Her 4th tooth, the upper left incisor, broke through."

What I love about this entry is that the breakthrough of the tooth seems so directly connected to the make out session with the lion.

It was hot today. Too hot in the shade, too hot to be outside. In the morning I drove to Mapleton and met Phoebe Joy, my friend Joleen's new baby. She was adorable and alert and tiny. I remembered, Thiz, what it was like when you were that small, when we never put you down, when you were connected to us--it seemed--at every instant. Now you walk around the house in a very business-like manner. Carrying flashcards featuring gnus and kangaroos you walk from the living room into the kitchen, down to the far end where the dryer rumbles, then you turn and enter the living room again. You stop and bend and grab hold of the door of Luxy's kennel. Or you brush your palm against the leaves of a potted plant. Or you steal a cotton sleeper from the bin of clothes next to the changing table and drape it over your head--and then you walk around, blind as a bat, giggling.

Now you are asleep. Daddy is having a beer with Pastor Charlie at El Ranchero, a supper club that is not Mexican. Instead there are checkered tablecloths and frosted mugs with dark German beer and relish trays with pickles and olives and miniature corn cobs. I am at home, listening to the whir of my computer fan and the drone of the cicadas, audible even through the closed windows. Summer is beginning its long good-bye.

It will be the last summer we spend in this townhome, I think. Even if we stay in Northfield, I think our time in this particular space is limited. And though when the time comes I will be eager to leave, I will always have a fondness for these rooms. The oven that never told us the correct temperature. The kitchen light that won't turn on in the humidity. The gray carpet that turns the tops of your feet black from all the embedded dirt. The furnace room with the boxes Daddy stacks so neatly to make space for his trains. Your nursery with the elephant rug Grandma Ricki found in an alley and the bookshelf Daddy found in an alley and the nightstand Daddy found by the side of the road. The dressers and desks and armoires that line the sides of our bedroom like monks waiting to offer a benediction. Our bathroom sink with the crack I always think is a hair. How the front door sticks in every kind of weather. How the air conditioning never offers complete relief and so we sleep with the sheets tangled around our calves, too hot to touch completely, just our fingers knotted together or my palm upon your father's chest or the back of his hand, flush against my thigh. I concentrate on that warmth, Thisbe, and fall asleep.

Tantrum

2010-08-05T14:10:00.000-07:00

It had to happen sooner or later.

It's happened sooner.

You are tantrum-abled. That is, you have the ability to throw a hissy fit, a hurricane of displeasure, an mangled opera of dis-ease. We have moved past the days when, given a new object, you could be distracted from the old (potential to do harm and/or fragile and/or belonging to Luxy) object. No longer.

The first point of contention, real contention has been Luxy's water dish. Daddy and I have uttered versions of "no," "uh-uhh," "that's Luxy's," and "stop that" so many times that the plastic mat wherein the water resides has become a sort of ceremonial center.

Next, you moved on to Luxy's kennel. The kennel is made of metal that is flaking bits of rust. The kennel has pointy places and hinges and edges and lots of potential for disaster. You love to play with the door (open, close, open, close). This seemed deeply hazardous. Well, not deeply hazardous, not like piranhas or sharks or COW'S MILK!!! but kind of hazardous. So we shut the door. But then Luxy got anxious. She likes to go inside the kennel to relax and I don't blame her. It's her space. So then we left the door open but we blocked it open with the newspaper rack so you couldn't swing it around. Then you decided you would like to go inside the kennel. Into Luxy's sacred space which happens to consist of a skanky, skanky blanket and a sheet of metal. So we told you "no."

Disaster ensued. By disaster I mean a torrent of tears, a howling of Lear-like proportions. We tried distraction. We tried lifting you up and dropping you on the other side of the room. To no avail. This is something my words cannot capture so I shall post the video. And let me explain that the video only captures the end of the tantrum--to truly understand how long this went on, you'd have to watch the video seven or eight times in a row. And you should, Thiz, you really should. Let's practice empathy. For your parents. My favorite part is when you attempt to put just your toe inside.

Addendum: the morning after this tantrum occurred, Daddy reported that the first thing you did upon arriving in the living room was to grab your favorite book from the book shelf, toddle over to the kennel, and drop it inside. Then you turned to look at him, just to make sure he'd noticed.

Luckily, you're still young enough that we mostly find all of this to be exceptionally entertaining. In a few weeks, our reactions might not be quite so congenial.

Attitude

2010-07-31T06:57:00.001-07:00

I don't have anything really specific to write today, only that sometimes I lie awake (lay awake? why can I NEVER remember!) at night thinking of all the Thisbe quirks and mannerisms that I have not written down that might vanish at any time and be gone forever. Sigh. Here are a few of my favorite things (besides girls in white dresses with blue satin sashes):

1. You know you're not supposed to climb the stairs without Mama or Dada so if we forget to put the baby gate up, you toddle as fast as your legs can carry you over to the stairs, you put your hands on the bottom step and then you look over your left shoulder to make sure we see you and you laugh your pants off. Then I yell "oh no you don't!" and I rush over to you while you furiously attempt to climb as many steps as you can before I reach you peanut-sized frame and kiss your neck and bring you back to earth. Or rather, to the stained and skanky carpet.

2. You are now walking everywhere. Quickly. You must ALWAYS be carrying something with you as you go. You prefer: black plastic measuring spoons, your orange bib from IKEA, your dollar-sized koala, a column-shaped wooden block, or metal lids from organic baby food jars.

3. If you're in the right mood, you're capable of bringing me the following: lion, frog, duck, giraffe, koala, bunny, monkey, and book. If you're not in the right mood, Mommy can forget about it.

4. You love to look at a set of flash cards I got for you at Walgreens in preparation for our trip to Holden. I'm a little embarrassed of the cards because one might think--one who comes to the house without knowing us really well--that Mommy and Daddy are already trying to home school you, that we are hell bent on teaching you words like "tea kettle," "flamingo," and "octagon." This is not the case--though truthfully if you wanted to bust out with "octagon" in the middle of the grocery store, I wouldn't be SAD about it.

5. Unfortunately, I think you've got Mama's sweat genes. When you wake up from a nap you cry to let us know you're awake and you'd like to be taken out of this god-forsaken crib five minutes ago. By the time I get to your room (two minutes later perhaps), you've been crying intensely enough to have worked up a sweat, your blond hair stained brown at the temples and around to the base of your neck. Walking also makes you sweat. When I finish nursing you there is usually a slick sheen on my forearm where your head has been resting. You're a furnace.

6. At mealtimes you exert strong preferences about food. Rather than spitting it out, however, as in days of old, you now simply feed unwanted food to Luxy. So, for instance, if you have bits of apple and squash on your highchair tray, you will put a bite of apple in your mouth and then take a bite of squash in your hand and dangle it leisurely over the side of the highchair (like someone in a gondola trailing her fingers through the current). Luxy licks the food off your fingers and you giggle uncontrollably. Daddy and I should probably do something assertive and rigorous but instead we shrug and laugh..

7. Have I mentioned that when we say "no," you laugh? Your friend Leo understands the word. When his Mama, Bonnie, says "no" sternly, Leo WEEPS. He gets it. My greatest fear at this point it that you DO get it and you're just, well--unconcerned about our desires. Or, as the nursery attendant informed us on Sunday: "she's sure got a lot of attitude." "It's good to see," she then added hesitantly. And most of the time, it is good to see, dear Thiz, though we might think differently in another year or two.

Photo Shoot

2010-07-27T18:55:00.001-07:00

So, we've been a little lax about getting any professional pictures taken of you. We've more than made up for this shortfall, however, by taking five thousand million billion pictures of you ourselves. Nevertheless, guilt finally overcame me. So we hired a professional. Well, kind of a professional. We paid a good friend and recent high school grad, Thomas Dunning, $25 to come over and point his fancy camera equipment in your general direction for an hour. We are, I must say, quite pleased with the results. I'm posting a few of our favs here.

A Summer Day

2010-07-23T13:12:00.000-07:00

It's a lovely summer day. Sun and blue skies. Birds chirping. The distant tinkle of the ice cream truck. I mean really, the whole nine yards. Even lovelier is the fact that we seem to have settled into a summer routine. FINALLY. Today, for instance, you woke around 6:45am (having forgotten to wake at 5am to eat. Woo-hoo!). I brought you into the bed with us and you stood and groped and rolled around on us for another 30 minutes. You love to play with the elastic waistbands of our undergarments and to repeatedly pat us while making cave-woman grunting noises. This is one of my favorite times of day: the deep shadowed quality of the room, the smell of our bodies and your body, pale and tender flashes of skin. Sometimes now you'll actually pause for a second or two in your tumbling frenzy and curl against me and let me touch the soft skin just under your jawbone. I call this your coma zone because when I stroke your skin there your jaw unhinges slightly and you get this faraway look in your eyes and your breathing slows and deepens.

Anyway, after you tire of the bed, Daddy takes you downstairs and I get dressed and head to Blue Monday where I write or plan my classes or stare listlessly out the window. Today I was working on an essay about loneliness. At least, I think that it's about loneliness--it might actually be about something very different.

I return home around 10am and wait for you to wake up from your first nap. Then all of us head out for a walk. Today we went to the library. Sometimes we stop for mochas or for a little swing time in the park.

After we walk, we lunch. Today I accidentally gave you Amy's Organic Macaroni and Cheese rather than Amy's Organic SOY Macaroni and (fake) Cheese. Whoops. I was wondering why you were shoveling handfuls of the stuff into your mouth as quickly as possible so I tasted it, thought briefly about what an incredible job folks are doing with soy products these days, and then realized it was cheese. Which we're not supposed to give you until you turn one. Because apparently, on September 3, 2010, the Lactose Tolerance Fairy will come and sprinkle you with Lactose Tolerance powder so that we can safely begin to feed you dairy.

Clearly today is a day of tangents.

Anyway, after lunch Daddy goes and works at the St. Olaf library. Sometimes I call him on his cell phone and I feel like he is a secret ops guy because he whispers so quietly into the receiver. While he studies, you nap. Usually for about an hour.

At 4ish we are all reunited again. Today I will spend some time getting pizza toppings in order. At 5 we will go to the Cow for beer or wine and a relaxing game of Try Not to Let Thisbe Eat Popcorn Kernels, Bottle Caps, or Other Bar Detritus.

We will bring you home and I will read you "Goodnight Moon" and "Open the Barn Door"--an unfortunately named "Peek and See" book that features little doors that you can open and shut with farm animals hiding behind them. You might say "duck." More likely you will begin to nose at my bosom. I will feed you and put you in your crib.

Daddy and I will momentarily contemplate "getting some work done" or "reading something highly educational" but then will give up and pour ourselves some wine (mine in a wine glass, his in a mug) and we will watch some senseless television and listen to the sounds you make readying yourself for sleep that come to us, crackly and breathless, over the monitor.

Cousins

2010-07-18T06:51:00.000-07:00

On Friday, Uncle Nels, Aunt Meghan, and Cousin Nora all came for a visit. We had a delightful time. You and Nora didn't exactly know what to make of one another though you did enjoy many of the same pursuits: banging puzzle wooden puzzle pieces together, sucking on spatulas, and helping to unload the dishwasher. Nora, being 6 months your elder, is also capable of a variety of other tricks: walking capably, signing "up" to get out of the highchair, saying words like "no" and "uh-oh," etc. It's also clear that she understands a lot more of what is said to her than you do. Although mostly the two of you interacted by taking things away from one another, it was sure fun to see you both together in the same room. Taking a picture of two mobile children is practically impossible--above are a few that succeeded in capturing you both as more than just blurs.

Note: I gave you both rubber scrapers to chew on. You immediately dropped yours and grabbed Nora's. She grabbed it back and gave you a little nudge with her foot. I managed to catch your graceful fall on film (above).

For Realsies, Part Two

2010-07-18T06:47:00.000-07:00

For Realsies

2010-07-13T17:32:00.001-07:00

At one point does one proclaim to the world that a baby is officially walking? Probably only after the baby has achieved a certain amount of balance, a certain trust in her lower limbs, a certain obviously recognizable ability to get from point A to point B while remaining upright. Are you, according to this definition, walking? Well, not exactly. But almost.

10 steps in a row tonight. But more importantly, you finally GET it and you WANT it. Up until today, your ability to take steps depended on your lack of intentionality about the whole endeavor. You did it randomly, mindlessly, haphazardly. Tonight, you realized you could WALK places and now you're on fire. The main problem is that now you get so excited to try that sometimes you don't fully get your balance (while upright) before taking the first step. You then look as though you're at sea during a hurricane.

I'm posting a photo and a video. The video doesn't show your full range of capabilities--a measly 4 steps when you're capable of 10--but I think you'll get the idea. The photo shows you at the end of a parade of steps; you began next to the wicker basket that sits behind you in the photo.

Also, I am becoming more and more aware of my identity as an obnoxious mom. Because seriously, if a bumper sticker existed that said "My Baby Took 10.5 Steps Today," that shit would be plastered on the back of my Honda. I guess that's the way I roll.

At the Seams

2010-07-12T17:28:00.000-07:00

Two weeks have gone by and there is far too much to say in a single post. I will do my best.

On the way out to Holden, you were a champion traveler. You took a few more steps at the bus station in Wenatchee (before ceasing to take steps altogether once we arrived at Holden) and you tolerated heroically the sketchy Pack N' Play at the Apple Inn in Chelan which featured holes in the side netting which looked (I kid you not) like cigarette burns. During the course of the trip, you developed the ability to kind of say "kitty." Mostly, you developed the ability to imitate Grandma's intonation of the word "kitty." "It-ee!" you said to the kitty in the "Dick and Jane" book. "It-ee!" you said to the photo of the bear on the ferry boat. "It-ee!" you said to the man stumbling down the road in too short running shorts. Later in the week, you said something that sounded a remarkable amount like "cougar." Your aunt Martha will swear by this verbal development. The rest of us remain doubtful.

Though most of your sounds have come and gone and the jury is still out on whether we consider any of them your official "first word," you certainly saw, heard, smelled, tasted, and felt a variety of things at Holden, including, to name a few:

1. Lentil soup, smoothed to paste in the Cuisinart.
2. Deer.
3. Hummingbirds.
4. Swallows.
5. Martha and Sam singing "1952 Vincent Black Lightning."
6. Candles lit and glowing in a box of sand.
7. The coil of a baseboard heater--which left blisters across your palm.
8. Grace and Sonia, who taught you where a nose is located.
9. Warm, fresh bread, broken into fingernail-sized pieces.
10. Grandma Dot and Grandpa Mark, who showed you Ginny's corner.
11. Uncle John's face, contorting into silliness to distract you during Vespers.
12. Buckskin, Copper, Dumbell.
13. Cool mountain water in a black plastic sled.
14. Grandma Ricki trudging up Chalet hill with a pile of clean cloth diapers slung over her arm.
15. Auntie Anna kneading bread on the other side of the silver counter.
16. Gin and wine stained voices drifting down the hall.
17. The metal edge of a school bus window.
18. The soft knit of a Grandma Dot lavender sweater.
19. Chippys (chipmunks) eating leftovers from a white ceramic bowl in the grass.
20. Railroad Creek, rushing always behind every word we said.

We are both glad and deeply disappointed to be home. Today, you were bursting with energy, wanting to crawl everywhere, touch everything. You took five steps in a row. You attempted many more. It's as though everything you absorbed at Holden has become pure energy, pure growth inside you. You are bursting at the seams.

Postscript

2010-06-23T20:09:00.000-07:00

Then tonight you took three steps.

The rain and clouds were leaving and cool air was blowing in through the windows and the front screen door. Sun was stretching down the hallway and you had your right hand on the wicker box in which we keep your Bjorn and your Ergo and your sweaters. I was just a foot away from you, holding out my arms.

And something in you decided to let go.

Three tiny, stuttering steps and then you collapsed in my arms. Daddy got a little teary though maybe he'll deny it. We love you so.

Farm

2010-06-23T07:55:00.000-07:00

Dear Darling Thiz,

We are in the midst of a crazy time. Last week was spent at the Farm with Great Grandma Judy, Grandma Gail, and Grandpa Michael. You were busy: picking strawberries, eating grass, shaking your arms in frenzied excitement at the barn cats, reorganizing Grandma Judy's lower shelves, eating copious amounts of oatmeal, dragging Great Aunt Lisa's beaded purse around the living room, standing unsupported for brief periods (while Mommy and Daddy anxiously held our breath), giggling with Gail and Michael, riding in Michael's old stroller around Norskadalen, and napping for shorter and shorter periods of time (sigh).

You and I left the Farm on Sunday so we could come to Minneapolis and see Auntie Martha and meet her wonderful new beau, Sam. By the time we got home yesterday, you were fried. You were a delightful baby all week: full of smiles and giggles, joyously plucking dead bugs from windowsills and lint from heating vents, pulling yourself up to standing against my body, your small hands using my thighs, my breasts, my shoulders, my chin for balance. But last night you hit the wall. You didn't want to eat, you didn't want to be held, you didn't want to crawl or play. I put you to bed at 6pm and you woke today--happy, smiling, well rested.

Today is humid. Storms are threatening the horizon and my head is filled with everything I have to do before we leave for Holden. I am trying to think of everything you might need--distractions on the plane, clothing for cold and heat, Benadryl, finger nail clippers, bulb syringe, sunscreen, bug repellent, sun hat, bathing suit, baby monitor, baby soap, Tylenol, Ergo carrier...blah, blah, blah. So my mind is in a whirring pragmatic, instead of reflective, mode. I promise better posts when we return.

Canine Companionship

2010-06-13T17:37:00.000-07:00

It seems impossible that I have not yet dedicated an entire post to your relationship with Luxy. Impossible because Luxy is essentially your favorite being on earth. If Luxy could produce milk, I am convinced you would ignore me altogether.

What has prompted me to write about Luxy today? Well, you have moved vocally toward a new syllable, one that sounds an awful lot like dog. Well, actually it sounds like "deg" or "dek" and kind of like "dick" but we're going to encourage "dog." Though secretly I hope that "dog" isn't your first word because "doggie" was your dear friend Eleanor's first word and it would be kind of sad for you to toally rip her off like that. I mean, I can understand wanting to be like Eleanor, she is cool: she pushes a lawnmower, eats chocolate cake, and walks. Who wouldn't want to be like Eleanor? Still, no one likes a copycat (copydog?). But then again, I guess I'd rather have your first word be "dog" than "dick" so maybe I should count my blessings.

And maybe I should just start a whole separate blog called "Your First Word" since every other day Daddy and I spaz out about it being something different.

But back to Luxy. When you first started to crawl, Luxy was wary and even a little nippy (well, she threatened nippiness). But she's adjusted now and has become the Dog of Tolerance. Some of your favorite pastimes involving the Dog of Tolerance include: batting at her collar, pulling fistfuls of hair from her haunches, and crawling though her legs. Dog of Tolerance's favorite pastimes involving Thisbe include: curling up at Kaethe's feet whenever Thisbe is nursing, shaking collar loudly outside Thisbe's room at 6am, and licking Thisbe excessively if she starts to get a wee bit too enthusiastic. I pray that your future friends will be equally accommodating to your intense, impatient, and passionate spirit, Thisbe.

At church, Pastor Tim ends every sermon by saying "God loves you, and so do I." Let me end this post by saying: "Luxy loves you, and so do we."

My Office Became Your Nursery

2010-06-12T07:36:00.000-07:00

I am sitting upstairs at my desk for the first time in a long time, humid gray air leaking in through the windows and the sound of you bouncing in the exersaucer leaking up from downstairs. Daddy is talking in a quick and lilting tone and you are responding with fussy bursts.

Anjali left this morning after a piece of toast and mango tea. It was hard for Mommy to see her go. While she was here I felt on the cusp of being a writer again. We exchanged stories and offered criticisms, we drank beer and brainstormed inappropriate titles for bestselling books, we walked around the lake and talked about dialogue assignments and short stories that deal with violence. She was kind and loving to you, but most of all, took you in stride, like it was perfectly normal for you to exist at the periphery of all our discussions.

Downstairs, you just fell and bumped your head. So I left this writing and took you in my arms and brought you upstairs (singing the Nap Time for Thisbe song) and set you down gently in your crib and administered kisses via Mr. Meow. Now I am back at the desk and you are shrieking and I can barely concentrate on writing these words and I am feeling huge levels of impatience grow within me, fill me up, not just impatience but real rage that you won't stop so that I can focus--and now, now that you have quieted a little--a real sense of sadness that for me, the real work of writing--the creating and revising--can never be done, really done, in your presence. Maybe some parent-artists can successfully manage this, but I can't, and it makes me feel a little desperate that these two passions, these two small planets of work, have to exist in separate orbits. Of course, when I am with you I am gathering material for writing, I am honing my observation skills, I am paying attention to the way that language develops, etc. But I cannot write, really write, with you near me.

Last night, re-reading Woolf's "To The Lighthouse," I marveled at the length of her sentences. I am thankful for the permission she granted women to find a space of our own, room enough to let images proceed until their own ending, not the ending created for us by a cluttered house, a ringing phone, a wailing baby.

Safety First

2010-06-11T19:37:00.000-07:00

Mommy is very careful about buckling you into your car seat (except for that one time back in December or January when I forgot). I am also very good at reminding Daddy to do it correctly. I say things like: "Are you really sure you buckled the base in tightly?" and "Did the seat click into the base? Did you hear two clicks, the front click and the back click?" and "Did you pull the strap tightly? It might need to be a little tighter than you'd think."

A week ago I was asking Daddy some of these questions (or maybe all of these questions, repeatedly) as I got into my car and he put you into his car. Finally, he gave up and put you where he thought you'd ride best (see photo above).

You'll be pleased to know that after shrieking and covering my face with my hands, I was actually able to laugh a little and whip out the camera to take the picture. That's right, Thisbe, I pushed down my desire to whisk you to safety so that the moment could be captured on film forever. Personal growth and good parenting do not always go hand in hand.

Stairway to Heaven

2010-06-09T13:18:00.001-07:00

Yesterday you climbed all the way up the stairs. Twice.

You stood alone for 8 seconds. 8 seconds is a long time.

Today you contemplated taking a step. I could actually see this in your eyes. You considered. And then you plopped down onto your butt and crawled wherever it was you were wanting to go.

I will post pictures soon. Of the stair climb. It is hard to capture contemplation in a photo.

Raspberry Beret

2010-06-08T07:56:00.000-07:00

She wore a raspberry beret / the kind you find in a second hand store / raspberry beret / and if it was warm she wouldn't wear much more / raspberry beret / I think I love her

Well, Prince said it first, but I think you exemplified the idea best.

She wore a raspberry beret / the kind Mama got at a spring garage sale / raspberry beret / it was warm and she smeared them all over herself /raspberry beret / I think I love her more than myself

A Busy Weekend

2010-06-08T07:24:00.000-07:00

The last few days have brought many adventures. We drove, with Ricki and Peter and Agnes, to Heather's wedding in Spicer, Minnesota. You wriggled in your sundress through most of the service. We observed the exchanging of the vows from the entryway of the church where you crawled around furiously and sucked on a pink plastic spoon. On the way to the wedding we drove through miles and miles of farmland. Over one green field were a pair of thin white clouds, one slightly below the other, that contained a rainbow inside of them. Red, orange and yellow in one cloud and green, blue, indigo, and purple in the other. We craned our necks and "wowed" a lot while you attempted to break the skin of a bagel with your two bottom teeth.

Your appetite is currently either enormous or nonexistent. When you're not hungry you turn your head away or spit the food out or wrinkle up your nose. When you are hungry you open your mouth and lean forward in your chair and make the grunting sounds of a tennis pro deep in your throat. Yesterday morning, Daddy could barely convince you to eat three bites of oatmeal. In the afternoon, Grandma Ricki fed you half a sweet potato mixed with tofu, yogurt mixed with an entire peach, and half a banana for dessert. You are growing more and more fond of solid food and more and more fond of eating when we eat. Daddy calls you his little Mimetic.

On Saturday, Grandpa Mark and Grandma Dorothy came for a visit! It was rainy outside but we had a lovely quiet day inside. You showed off your crawling skills and your one-handed standing ability, you fondled Grandpa's mustache and went bat-shit looking at a photo of yourself on Grandma's camera. While you slept we talked about John and Anna's wedding and Martha's new boyfriend and Peder's job prospects; we drank wine and good gin Grandpa brought from England; we ate steak salad and warm rolls and cherries.

And you slept on---all the way until 6am. You did this again on Sunday night and again last night. That's right, Thiz, you are finally sleeping through the night! Hurrah! This achievement didn't come without a little pain--I spent a few nights last week on the couch in the basement, curled in a sleeping bag that smelled of boy-sweat and campfire while you cried upstairs and Daddy slept on.

There is much more, of course, there always is. How you can now stand for 2 or 3 seconds on your own, how you crawled all the way to the front door when I left the house yesterday and watched me drive away with big solemn eyes, how close you are to using language to name things, how when we walk around the lake you always sit forward in your stroller, gripping the little tray in front of you. The other babies we pass are always reclined, relaxed, asleep or eating Cheerios casually or sucking on a pacifier. You lean forward, alert, determined not to miss anything, every fiber intent on soaking in the world. You still don't yet know to prioritize objects--the baby gosling is as important as the sailboat is as important as the tree's shadow is as important as the metal clasp on the side of your stroller. I wonder how much I have learned not to notice. It occurs to me that instead of squatting by the side of your stroller and repeating "goose" over and over again until you pay attention to the thing that I think matters in the landscape that I should be following your eyes, your line of sight, so that I might remember all of the nuances of the world that I've learned to forget.

Shorthand

2010-06-03T07:32:00.000-07:00

Dear Darling One,

We've been stealing. Internet that is. Not, like, actively. It just came to us. It just was always there, ever since we moved in. Now it's gone and we have no internet in our home. This is, in many ways, absolutely lovely. Instead of watching you with one eye and checking the weather radar with the other--or helping you balance with one hand and scrolling for a dinner recipe with the other--now both my eyes and both my hands are focused on you. We also moved the TV out of our bedroom and into the living room. In the three days since we did that, I've read 600 pages. Unfortunately, the 600 pages were out of a book called The Girl With the Dragon Tattoo.

Anyway, all this just to say that I don't have as much time to post blog updates right now (or at least until June 10th when the internet returns to 1138) so I'm going to sum things up quickly, in shorthand, so I don't forget. Here we go:

You haven't said "red" again (Mama: she didn't say it. Dada: yes she did). You can pull yourself up and plop back down and crawl FAST. You had your first trip to the beach. You tried to eat sand and I hovered over you, pouring water over your hand to wash the sand away. Then Grandpa Peter took you walking through the shallow water. You love to shift your butt across the bottom of your wading pool to make a squeaking sound. You love puffs (cheerios-like things that dissolve easily in your mouth) and you love trying to use a sippy cup. You go ballistic when someone offers you a water bottle. Changing you has become an Olympic event--you are able to flip and crawl halfway off the changing table in two seconds. The only hat you will tolerate is your beret. Daddy says that makes you a snob. The last three nights you've slept 7:30-7:30 with only one feeding at 5:30am. We've let you cry through the other feeding time. I go to the basement so I can't hear you. We had a play date at our house yesterday. It is hilarious to watch all of you: pushing one another out of the way, accidentally sitting on one another's laps, biting one another, poking at one another's eyes. Yesterday also, when you approached Luxy's slobber-covered stuffed soccer ball, I said "no" and you didn't touch it. I felt proud. Three hours later you went for Luxy's water bowl. I said "no" and you laughed. You also laugh if, as you crawl away from me, I say "come back here! I'm going to get you!" This makes you laugh and crawl faster. Which makes me think you understand a lot more than you're letting on.

Red?

2010-05-25T19:28:00.001-07:00

It was steamy hot again today. This evening a thunderstorm swept through and brought the good rich wet earth smells up and out of the ground. The smells were hanging in mid air when I emerged from the New Mom's group meeting at the hospital. Your father is at a Twins game with Grandpa Peter--or rather, they are at the stadium waiting for the game to resume (the very first rain delay in this stadium's history!). Luxy and I are all alone in the house tonight for the very first time since you were born. It is terrifically odd. I opened the windows so the good rich wet earth smells are getting into the house and I should be writing something horribly profound in my little red moleskin notebook but your absence makes me feel anxious and on edge. Like I have left the house without putting on my underwear or I have showed up to class without doing any prep work. So I'm compromising--I'm sitting in bed, drinking a Moose Drool (that's beer), looking very cool and collected, and writing--to you and about you.

But really, the point of today's post is this:

I got home from grading today, mouth a little dry from all the caffeine and sugar, little beads of sweat sprouting along my temples, computer bag slung over one shoulder, grocery bag with cookies for students in the other, car keys dangling from my lips, and your father--all casually--says "Thisbe said 'red' today." I put down my bags and put my keys in the bowl and then was like "WHAT?" The story goes like this:

You have a favorite book. Well, you have a few favorite books but this was your first favorite book. The book is creatively titled "COLORS." The first two pages feature an orange goldfish and a big slice of an orange. Daddy showed you these pages, noting the featured color in (I would guess) a patient and slightly distracted way. He turned to the next page (featuring a sporty car and a gigantic apple) and before he could say anything you said "red."

Or so he claims. I was skeptical.

So I sat you down in front of your favorite puzzle (which also happens to be your only puzzle). This puzzle features shape/color cutouts with knobs attached. You love to grab the knobs, pull the pieces from their resting places, and toss them in various directions or bang them together to make noises. Today I pulled the rectangle/red piece out of the puzzle. "What's this?" I said. You put the puzzle piece in your mouth. I looked at your father with raised "I told you so" eyebrows. Then I got up to fetch a lime bubbly water from the kitchen (lime bubbly water was really needed on a day like today) and as soon as I turned my back you said "red."

OK, maybe it sounded more like "reh." And the truth is, I still don't really believe it. You are quite a bit too young for first words. But the weird thing is, you make sounds all the time and NONE of them begin the the "r" sound. You can da-da-da until the cows come home but I have never heard you say "red" or its relatives "reh" "rah" and "rih." Yet I still don't quite believe.

The mythology and surmising has already begun though, let me tell you. I told Grandma Ricki on the phone today. "But that's an ABSTRACT term," she said, "that's AMAZING." Then we both meditated for some time on how we believe you have a very "red" personality. Passionate, stubborn, intense.

You'll have to do it a few more times before we'll truly be able to determine whether this is your first word. What's mostly been proven today is how hungry we are to understand you, to glimpse into that beautiful, luminous head of yours.

"Maybe she meant she had already finished the book, Peder. Maybe she was, like, checking it off her list. Read this. Read this. Read this. Maybe that's what she meant." Your father rolled his eyes at me. You give our lives meaning, Thiz, and we, in turn, love to create it around you.

Clap On, Clap Off

2010-05-24T17:27:00.000-07:00

Hot and humid. When I kissed Daddy's jawbone this afternoon it tasted like salt. We spent an hour wandering around Target today, enjoying the A.C. and avoiding grading. We loaded up on organic baby food and big tupperware bins to store all the clothes I've bought for you at garage sales. It's only 7:30pm but I feel limp, feel like I should be drinking a mint julep and staring our at the wide expanse of a field of cotton. I feel southern. I feel made up of words like bayou and molasses and gumption.

I am pleased to report that you have mastered "go boom." You adore attempting to pull yourself up on any surface (couch, ottoman, dishwasher, wall, exersaucer, etc.) with somewhat limited success. The wall, for instance, has not proven to be hospitable.

The next venture seems to be your hands. When you get excited, you do a kind of clapping motion. This excites us. Then, we'll say "Thisbe, clap, clap!" and you'll look at us blankly. As I spooned chicken-vegetable puree into your mouth this evening, I caught you staring at your hand as though it didn't belong to you. There were your fingers, clutching into a fist and then releasing. Clutch, release, clutch, release--like someone was drawing your blood. It's the motion you'll use to wave "bye-bye" so of course, as soon as you started doing this, Daddy and I started waving "bye-bye." We did this through most of dinner. This is because we are exceptionally sophisticated people. Exceptionally.

(Note: the video below is a rare exception. The fact that you are clapping has NOTHING to do with the fact that I am asking you to clap. It is a rare coincidence that I managed to capture on video in case I need bragging rights later. You know, in a parent bragging competition.)

Go Boom!

2010-05-20T13:27:00.000-07:00

You have kind of exploded.

It is warm here in Northfield, not warm with the cool behind it but warm with the warm behind it. Summer warm, not spring warm. The leaves are big and full and everywhere on campus girls are laying on their bellies with i-pod buds in their ears and their hair fanned out mermaid-like around their crisping skulls. Finals have begun and so everyone is running "extreme"--extreme stress, extreme tension, extreme celebration, extreme nostalgia. Students who haven't been concerned about their grades for the last 15 weeks are suddenly VERY concerned and very good at sending e-mails expressing this concern. Meanwhile, professors are walking around with pinched looks on their faces, as if staring permanently into an abyss of yet-to-be-graded papers. I am full of longing to feel relaxed. I am full of desire to smear sunscreen on my chalky thighs. We are all just ready to be done.

You, however, are in a permanent state of "go." You've now mastered the crawling thing and you're feeling better and better about crawling out of sight--down the hall, into the bathroom, around the couch. You're also beginning to love pulling yourself up to a standing position. This morning, I turned to say something to your father and in the blink of an eye, you'd crawled all the way to the front door, pulled yourself up, and begun to engage in a massive make out session with the glass.

Unfortunately, you haven't yet learned how to get back down after pulling yourself back up. Two nights ago, you screamed for 45 minutes at bed time. Turns out it was because you'd pulled yourself up in your crib and didn't know how to get back down. This happened again during nap time yesterday. The first time, it broke my heart. I set you back down and rubbed your belly and gave you Mr. Meow to fondle. The second time I wrinkled my brow in concern and mumbled something about "my sweet baby girl." The third time, I videotaped.

It's hard for a poet-mom not to see the bigger parallel in all this. Daddy and I have both spent many years learning to do what we do and we feel pretty smart and strong about these areas of knowledge we have (tiny areas of knowledge in the scheme of things). But right now, this whole spring, we have been sad and confused and terrified because we hadn't learned, still haven't really learned, how to back away from that, how to let go.

So I've begun to practice with you. While you stand I hold onto your hands and say "go boom! go boom!" and I tug backward just a little until your knees bend and you flop down onto your diapered butt. Then Daddy and I cheer for you, loudly, because learning how to to fall, to undo, to "go boom" gracefully isn't easy.

I pray for the courage to be able to learn to do the same.

Oui Oui

2010-05-18T20:03:00.000-07:00

Did Mommy get sick? Oui.
Did we dress you up in a beret and mustache to make Mommy feel better? Oui, oui.
Did it work? Oui, oui, oui!!!

Medicine

2010-05-14T17:53:00.000-07:00

On the first day, there was the teething.
On the second day, there was the snotting.
On the third day, there was the screaming.
The fourth day brought two ear infections.
The fifth day was Mother's Day and small birds danced and sang.
On the sixth day, a rash emerged.
On the seventh day, a fever joined the rash.
Then screaming returned for good measure
and the snotting sang back-up through all of it.

What I mean to say is: it's been a rough week.
You had an allergic reaction to the amoxicillan so it did not turn out to be our knight in pink armor as I had originally anticipated.

Today, finally, you were back, really back to your old self again. I said that same thing in my last post, on Mother's Day, but it turned out to be a big fat lie. By the following day Dismal Fussy Sick Thisbe had returned. This was not a happy return. Plus, it was 50 degrees and rainy all week which didn't really help matters.

But today. Today is different. Today the temperature reached for--and almost touched--the 70 degree mark. Sunglasses appeared on the tops of people's heads and the residue of warmer layers manifested themselves around people's waists.

Now confident in your crawling abilities, you have returned to language. You spent much of today repeating "da-da-da-da-da-da" as many times as possible. The syllable doesn't yet have a signified (i.e. your father), it's more that you have finally discovered how to make the sound, not by accident but by design, and you want to emblazon the memory on your tongue. "Da-da-da-da-da-da"--while crawling, while sitting, while standing and pulling on the couch cushions. "Da-da-da-da-da-da-da." And cutest of all: on the way to Minneapolis this afternoon, you began to fuss in your car seat. I handed you "Where is the Green Sheep" and you held it in your hands like the holy grail and then you began to talk to it "da-da-da-da-da" only because it was a book, it seemed very much like you were reading to yourself. You kept on this way for quite some time, banging the boardbook against your seat belt buckle from time to time for good measure. I flipped through an "Entertainment Weekly" and your father talked about courses and perspective and shame. And the sunlight swam across his face and onto my lap and the green of late spring after heavy rain rushed by on either side of the car.

Dada's Day / Mama's Day

2010-05-09T12:21:00.000-07:00

To use one of your Grandpa Mark's favorite phrases, Thiz, this weekend has been filled with highs and lows.

Saturday began on a low note. You woke, fussy and rather inconsolable. I suspected an ear infection. We drove, the two of us, to the clinic and spent two hours pacing the waiting room, waiting for our five minutes with the doctor. As long as I was holding you, as long as we were moving or looking out the window, you were relatively content--but if I tried to sit down, to let you play on my lap or on the floor, you were full of reproach. Two hours later we left, with a diagnosis of an infection in each of your ears and a prescription for amoxicillan.

After you took a nap and we fed you your first dose of that Pepto-Bismol pink medicine, we all proceeded, through traffic and some random errands, to the Model Toy Train Museum. This was Daddy's chosen birthday activity and we figured that staring at the choo-choos might distract you from the pressure pulsing against both your eardrums. We were right, more or less. Daddy carried you in the Baby Bjorn and explained to me the difference between various gauges of train track and the hypocrisy that exists within the Model Toy Train community. Those who collect trains "built to scale" apparently fancy themselves a little better, a little more refined, than those who collect Lionel trains. To the naked (aka my) eye, the Lionel trains do not appear to be much different in size than the scale trains. I made sure, however, not to make this observation known within the confines of the train museum. I feared I might be tarred and feathered.

To be honest, Thiz, I had been dreading a little bit the excursion to the train museum. And it was actually OK. Much more peaceful and frenzied than many kid friendly places. Perhaps because the energy of the kiddos (mostly little boys) is tempered by the presence of the 60-years-plus men. It was kind of lovely to see these older men crawling on their hands and knees below the train display so that they could pop up in various locations, surrounded by track and miniature trees and houses and cars.

In a different building, where the Lionel trains were housed, there was a display that permitted the viewer to push buttons, thereby setting into motion the arm of the train crossing guard or turning a light on in a tiny model home. One button made a tiny harmonica play in a "hobo camp" display; another opened the door to an outhouse, permitting a glimpse of a man crouched on the toilet, reading a newspaper.

We ate Culver's for dinner and then watched Betty White host Saturday Night Live.

Today is Mother's Day. When I walked downstairs this morning, there was a vase of flowers and a card waiting for me on the dining room table (nice job, Daddy!). I spent the morning drinking coffee and grading papers at Blue Monday. Then you and Daddy and I walked to the Ole Store for brunch. After brunch we took Luxy on a walk through the natural lands behind St. Olaf. You rode, facing me, in the Ergo carrier. I like to be able to look at you this way, like to be able to easily kiss your forehead and whisper sweet words in your ears. It's chilly today, maybe 55 degrees, but sunny too, and everything green and still new.

This funny thing happened at brunch. You started to laugh. To giggle. On the walk you kept craning your neck to see Daddy so you could flash him a smile. We didn't even realize these things had been missing from you the last three days. I mean, to a certain extent we did--you were fussy--but also so focused on crawling--so determined! Seeing the joy come back into you today was the best Mother's Day gift. I would love you without this, of course, if you were a more serious or somber child I would love you all the same. I have loved you deeply these past few days even though your joy (or as Daddy says, your "mojo") has been absent. But what a gift to see it return to you, what a gift to walk through trees with new leaves, hand in hand with a husband whom I love, a panting dog whom I love, and my baby girl, smiling up at me, all troubles, for a moment, at bay.

Mobile

2010-05-08T16:23:00.000-07:00

Yesterday was dark and stormy. After a wake/fuss/wake/fuss night you slept until 8am. So did Daddy and I. None of us were quick about anything. Groggy showers, groggy Luxy-feeding, groggy coffee making, groggy cereal eating. I groggily wiped dried snot crust from below your nostrils and groggily set you down in the middle of the living room rug.

And then you started crawling. And Daddy and I were not nearly no groggy anymore.

You are now officially mobile. And today, you truly figured that out. Yesterday you learned the physical motion, but today your face showed knowledge of the new autonomy. You are capable of moving from one place to another: from the table legs to the dog's water bowl, from the comfort of my lap to the rigidity of the kitchen floor, from the foot of the stairs to the ottoman's edge. You are migratory.

Ironically, unlike linear, path-oriented you, a mobile (the noun, not the adjective) is capable of moving on only elliptical paths, around not toward. In this way, the earth is mobile and Mars is mobile and the moons of Jupiter are mobile. You go to sleep under a mobile. A yellow lion, a brown bear, a tan and white striped zebra, a blue elephant: these creatures revolve around a stuffed replica of Noah's Ark. And the revolving is meant to soothe. A mobile's motion is predictable--your motions are not.

And I can't help thinking today, at this point in time, of the other Mobil. The gas corporation. And though it's not their oil, not their fault, I can't help thinking of the millions and millions of gallons of oil that are leaking into the ocean at this very moment. That motion, that movement, is not linear or circular. I imagine the oil's motion as the rhythmic shoving of the waves or outward rippling of a drop of blood fallen into a warm bath. Dispersing, digressing.

I am so proud of your new mobility, Thiz. I have taken approximately 23 videos of you crawling in the last 48 hours. Thisbe to duck, Thisbe to dog bowl, Thisbe to ice cream container, etc. I announced your new development to my friends, to my classes, to the Facebook universe. And yet, in watching this new motion rise out of you, I am already longing for stillness. For you, for me, for the world. I hope that I don't push you forward too much, too fast, too hard. I pray that I honor your need to pause--to watch the afternoon light play on the silver Mylar balloon, to lick the leaking snot from your upper lip, to pick at the dog hairs in the carpet. I hope that in our effort to teach you motion, we do not forget to teach you how to honor its absence--I hope that you learn stillness of mind and body and heart.

Next: the Triathalon

2010-05-07T15:23:00.000-07:00

I Would Be Glad To Help You With That

2010-05-05T20:10:00.000-07:00

Today was Daddy's birthday. He is 38 years old. Your favorite parts of the day were the balloons and the cake. Also, the wrapping paper. And the box the cake came in. I am too tired to write any more today but I wanted to post a few pictures. Happy Birthday, Peder!

Feels Like a Fang

2010-05-04T20:06:00.000-07:00

For two days I was feeling a little high-and-mighty.

"Oh," I was saying to imaginary mothers in my head, "your child is fussy while teething? You're having a terrible time? Huh." At this point in the imaginary conversation I would shrug while also looking supremely compassionate. "Thisbe didn't seem to be bothered by it."

And God saw that conversation in my head.
And God was like, "Ooooooohhhh reeeeeaaaaalllllly???"
And then the shit hit the fan.

It is difficult to tell if there is more liquid coming from your nose or your mouth, but cometh it does. Much of it. We went through 5 bibs today so quickly that I had to put them in the dryer. Without washing them first. That's right, I dried your snotty bibs and reused them.

In addition to the liquid overflow (you vomited tonight, just to add to the orifice expulsion fun) there is your refusal to nap. You gave us a mere 30 minutes this morning, a mere 15 minutes this afternoon. I pray you sleep through the night.

But just in case God is still in "ooooohhhhh reeeeaaallllly?" mode, I've purchased a bunch of infant drugs as Walgreens. And I'm not afraid to use them.

Catching Hummingbirds

2010-05-01T17:15:00.000-07:00

Today we went to the zoo. The wind was before us and between us and around our legs and twisting wind mustaches over our faces and curling wind tendrils of hair behind our ears--but we persevered. The bears were asleep today but the leopard was not. He sat on a rock in the sun and stared directly at the children on the other side of the glass. There was a rock ledge in front of the glass and so I let you bounce there and the leopard saw you bouncing. He watched you carefully. And every so often he would twitch; I swear I am not exaggerating when I say that I could see the reflex rise up in his body (the reflex to pounce, to prey, to continue forth with his existence in the way leopards should), and he would twitch and then continue staring.

Later, we went to Menards. We bought a battery for the smoke alarm and safety locks for the cabinets. The irony was lost on me. Safety is always relative.

I am writing to you again today, not because something of particular import occurred, but because you are moments away, you are so close, you are just on the cusp of crawling. Tonight, as Daddy and I ate frozen pizza, you practiced on the carpet near the dining room table. Belly to hands and knees and then sometimes up onto your tippy-toes in a sort of Downward Dog Yoga position and then tonight you moved one arm and then one knee and then collapsed.

The cheers Daddy and I internalize at these moments--so as not to frighten you or interrupt your learning--are outrageously loud. We do arm pumps in the air and silent high fives and open our mouths wide enough to catch small hummingbirds inside.

We are rooting for you, as we always will, every step (or half-step) of the way.