THREE!
Dear Evan,
Today you are three. You are not quite ready to accept this change – this morning I tried to tell you that you are now three (!) years old and you kept insisting, “No, I’m two and a half! I will be three on December!” It is December, sweet boy, and you are, indeed, three whole years old. Or, at least you will be at 10:22 pm this evening.
Yesterday we hosted your first kid birthday party. There was a construction theme, though we went pretty light on the decorations. You and I went to a party store last week and bought some pictures of trucks to tape to the walls and windows, a paper construction cone to put on the table and some of these thingies to hang from the ceiling. We invited 9 toddlers and their families over, ordered pizza and ate cupcakes. We sang to you, you blew out 2 of your 3 candles (your dad got the last one), and you generally ran around having an excellent time. It’s been a hectic week of parties and celebrations. Last Monday, we hosted a cookie party, and then it was Christmas Eve, then we were in Milwaukee for Christmas and on and on … It’s been awesome to have some time off work and to get to see you all day long. (At the cookie party, you were SO HAPPY to have unfettered access to cookies. Man, you were stoked. You basically walked around licking frosting off cookies for two hours.)
In Milwaukee, you and I spent a bunch of time together just the two of us; Dad had to go back to Chicago to work. One day you fell asleep in the car, and I drove to the house where I grew up on the north side of the city. My mom sold that house after my sister and I moved out, but before that she’d lived there more than twenty years. It’s where my oldest sister died. Many things happened in that house, and it meant a lot to me. Some time I’ll tell you more about the pine trees in front, the tamarack and lilac bush in back – the honey locust tree whose diameter I watched grow from beer bottle to lightpost to telephone pole. There’s a part of me that wants to sneak in there at night and dig up the tree and take it to live with us in Evanston. The house is abandoned now, windows boarded up.
One of your favorite Christmas presents is a construction themed play dough set from my uncle Fred and aunt Mary. I think you’d be happy playing with that all the time. We fill a drum with play dough and turn the crank to make gravel. We fill the dump truck and dump it out. “Scrapper” (what you have named one of the machines) pushes the gravel and rocks around. You also got a number of Thomas trains, books, a toy nail gun from my sister and her family.
You’re an awesome kid, Evan, and your dad and I love you so much. You love to read books and talk about how things work – the sewers, electricity, machines – hydraulics and stabilizers and telescoping ladders. Your vocabulary is ever-expanding and your physical self becomes more mature and coordinated all the time.
These days, you like to:
-Put out fires with Grandma. It’s an elaborate script to which you both know all the words, where to go, which vehicles to move.
-Play “running” with me. This is just as simple as it sounds – I run through the house and you chase me, sometimes running in front of me and exclaiming, “I ran right past you!”
-Ask, “Why?” about everything. Ask, “What’s that say?” whenever you see letters written anywhere. I’m excited for you to read.
-You like to have daddy “flip” you out of your towel into bed at night.
-Help with everything (even if assistance is neither needed nor desired.)
There are some big changes coming up in your life. Soon, you’ll go to pre-school 5 days a week, and Grandma and Pop-pop are going to head back to Arizona for a few months. Pop-pop says you will be losing your best friend. I think he’s right, you and Grandma have developed such a close relationship, and you are so happy to see her most mornings. But, I think it will be good to make some more friends who are closer to your age. Also, if truth be told, your Grandma might spoil you a little bit – she can’t say no to you sometimes, Evan. We are all excited for you to go to school and hang out with kids, to explore new environments, new things to work with, etc.
Love, love,
mama
29 months
-The questions you ask slay me. The other day I was crying – just overtired, having a busy time at work, money stress at home, normal boring problems, etc, etc – and as I sat there crying on the couch still in my work blouse, you climbed onto my lap (you don’t crawl anywhere anymore, you climb) and we had this little conversation:
E: You’re sad, mama?
me: I’m just a little sad. I’m okay.
E: You’re just a little sad? You’re not a big sad?
me: No, not a big sad. Just a little sad.
E: You want your mama?
And then, appropriately, I believe, I lost it. Because I do want my mom. I want her so much and sometimes I forget how much I am longing for her in every way, and then it will just hit me. Spring is when I miss her most. I think of everything she is missing and everything she has already missed. I think of all the missed opportunities I had to tell her everything I should have – about how lucky I was to have her, how sorry I was I didn’t ask enough about Eve, how unfair it was that life kept smacking her in the head with a two by four (her words).
She would have loved you, her grandson. Somehow, there’s a part of me that believes she does love you, despite the fact that you were never alive at the same time.
-Lately you are really into demanding spontaneous songs about everything. We’ll be eating dinner or reading a book or driving somewhere and you’ll go, “A truck song, mama! A truck song.” Or a digger song or a mail song or a batteries song or a swimming song or or or … And then your dad or I will oblige in a simple, uncreative and out of tune way “Oh, I love trucks because they carry things, trucks, trucks, trucks…” and you bob your head and then sing along a bit. “Again,” you say, “again!”
-A couple days ago you climbed onto my lap and took my face in both your hands. “You’re my sweet, sweet mama.” And then you laid your head on my chest. Seriously. You’re amazing.
-On Mothers’ Day this year, you and I took a walk together, just the two of us, in the early morning before heading to the potluck with my motherless mothers group. We just walked around the neighborhood – it was chilly for May. As we walked up Barton and crossed Cleveland, a coworker of mine who lives nearby pulled up in her car with her middle-school aged son. We chatted for a few minutes and after they left I said, “I work with her.” You asked, “You work with the boy?” and I said, “No, the lady, I work with the lady.” You said, “Huh. That’s great.” You’ve used this response a lot lately. I’ll tell you the plan for the day and you’ll say, “Huh. That’s great.”
-We’ve also been talking a lot about work, since your dad and I both leave every day to work and sometimes you get bummed (but not quite as much now that Grandma and Pop-pop are living with us again). Yesterday morning, you asked, “You’re going to work, mama? You’re going to take the train?” and I replied that I was, so you said, “I want to go to work on the train.” I think the train is a big selling point, but you also say you want to work at a school, which is where you know I work. Whenever I say that I work at a school, you say, “For children?” and I say, “For grown-ups.” “Huh. That’s great.”
-Last night before bed you and I were playing with some memory cards in bed. You were in your pajamas already, the ones with the firetrucks. You would find two matching, and then say, “One for me, and one for you,” and you’d hand me one. “It’s a mail! For you. A tiny, tiny mail.” (You love to get the mail.)
-Everyone says the toddler years are hard, and I can see that, but you genuinely delight me every day I see you. You are snuggly, smart, energetic (your dad says, “If it’s farther away than three feet, he’s running.”), curious, loving and adaptable. Approached the right way, you are even not so stubborn. I can’t complain if you are stubborn, though. You’d come by it honestly.
-Last night at dinner with Grandma and Pop-pop:
E: I love you, mama!
me: I love you, too.
E: I love daddy!
chad: I love you, too.
E: I love Grandma!
Gma: I love you, too.
E: I love Pop-pop!
Pp: Love you, too, buddy.
E: I love the house!
Check it out
I have a two-year-old and it is delightful.
Well, not always delightful. If I’m honest (and why shouldn’t I be) there are moments of genuine frustration built into every day. He doesn’t want to put his socks on, or take a bath, or needs to watch another video of garbage trucks, but not that video of garbage trucks, he really needs to watch the blue one. Blue one! Blue one!
But overall, he’s awesome. His speech is amazing. Today, his daycare teacher sent me a message:
We were reading a book from home*. Evan told me that “daddy uses that.” What is it? “A crane.” What is it for? “Beams.”
Evan also really likes to “check it out.” Whatever it is. We’ll be in the living room reading a book and hear the back door open. He’ll look up and say, “Daddy home. Back door. Evan check it out.” and then run over to the back door.
His dramatic play has expanded. The other night Chad lounged side-lying on the couch and Evan pretended he (Chad) was a garbage truck. Legs extending off the couch are a door opening. Climb up, inside the cab. Legs closed, door shut. Make motor noises. Pillows tossed on Chad’s head are garbage bags and his long arm squishing them down is the compacting arm of the truck.
He’s out of diapers. Few to zero potty misses while with me and Chad, usually 1 or 2 a day at daycare. I’m not going to write a giant potty training description here, I’ll just say that we made an attempt when he was 17 months old, and it was too stressful for me to continue. This time, I intentionally relieved myself of the pressure of “success” and it’s been awesome. Also, the book Even Firefighters Go to the Potty was probably instrumental.
These days, Evan goes to a small home daycare four days a week. There’s a baby there (she’s 6 months old now) and a couple afternoons a week, another toddler. The transition was hard for us all. Evan still strongly misses his grandma and grandpa (he hugs the phone when we talk to them, kisses their voices enthusiastically) and for the first week of full days, there were tears at drop off. Real, big tears on both sides of that door. But it was short-lived and now he trusts that I’ll be there to pick him up at the end of the day. He’s happy to arrive there, and sometimes too busy dancing or playing to get ready to leave. The teacher has somehow helped him learn how to fall asleep on his own (!) and now for naps, they draw the shades and my son willingly lies down on a cot by himself and falls asleep. I am still sort of stunned by that. I’m hopeful he’ll keep this skill when B&C return this summer.
In December, Evan got sick. Early to mid-December, a good 13 days of high fever, lethargy. He wouldn’t eat, just wanted to nurse and sleep constantly. He didn’t play for many days in a row. Went to the doctor twice, nothing to do but wait it out. In moments like that, I can’t help but think of my mom, of everything she went through with Eve. How to watch your child, your baby, be so sick and in so much pain. To, ultimately, watch your child die. To be genuinely helpless. It has to be something I think about, I have to let my mind go there – because my mother went there in real life, with her body and her child’s body. My mind goes there often, truth be told — and once I arrive, I don’t know what to do or think.
*It’s this Richard Scarry book, one of his favorites.
Here’s some stuff I want to remember:
-For his 2nd birthday, Chad and I took Evan out to Ann Sather’s for Breakfast and then to the Chicago Children’s Museum for the first time. (I’d contemplated having a party, but he’d been so sick in December, I just couldn’t fathom preparing for it. And by the time Evan was better, Chad’s mom was sick, too. We had a lovely day, and I think he liked having us both around all day for him.) He loved the firetruck with the hoses and nozzles and traffic cones, Kids Town with the bus you can drive, mail you can deliver, car you can gas up and wash.
-A couple weeks ago, we had the little girl from Evan’s daycare over for dinner with her parents. Evan was over the moon to have her at our house! “Do this!” he’d say, and lie down on his tummy. She’d copy. “Do this!” he’d say, and he’d roll on his back. I loved to watch them interact. That night, he had a hard time falling asleep, just out of sheer joy. He’d be almost asleep, them pop up and say her name.
-Super Bowl Sunday was day two of naked potty learning. Friends L&T came over for the game and got to celebrate with Evan when he peed in the pot. You know your child-free friends are good ones when they cheer for toddler pee and don’t mind a potty in the living room.
-“Mama do it.” (pulling up his pants, opening a pouch of applesauce, reading a book)
-He plays with my hair while he nurses, small chubby fingers winding, winding, winding.
Recent Happenings
Evan, these are some of your favorite things recently:
- Joe, our 89 year old neighbor. You like to shake his hand, give him knucks, and shout “Doh!” when you see him.
- Trucks. Good lord, do you love trucks of all shape and function. You used to call them all “baba” (a derivation of bus, we presume) but now you can differentiate pick-up, dump, and digger varieties. You call firetrucks “woo-woos.”
- To dump stuff. You dump your food off your plate. You dump your clothes out of the hamper. You dump toys out of boxes. All while joyfully shouting, “DUMP!”
- A bottle of mustard you liberated from the refrigerator. You keep it on the shelf in the kitchen kitchen next to all the cookbooks. “Muhtard!”
- You also like to rapidly rip all the alphabet magnets off the refrigerator so they skitter on the floor (and make a sound that causes me to close my eyes and inhale deeply through my nose to keep from screaming.) You do this often, and I’ve tried to let you know that when we throw things on the floor, we need to pick them up. So, I say, “Oh, are you ready to pick them up and put them back on the refrigerator?” And then I sing this ridiculous song I heard someone sing to their kid: Clean up, clean up, everybody, everywhere…. And so now, you’ve taken to ripping all the magnets off the refrigerator and shouting, “Weddy peek up!”
- You love your stuffed bunnies. Somehow you acquired quite a few of these. One from your great-grandma Helen, one from B&C’s friend Lee. You can’t quite say “bunny” but you say “munny” and you love and smooch these bunnies all over the place. Also related: your abiding love of the Richard Scarry book I Am a Bunny.
- You love to run in circles until you are dizzy and then fall down. When you fall down, you say, “Kaboom!”
- You love to run in circles around any available table, often with people chasing you. You pump your right arm furiously as you do this, and IT IS AWESOME. You run under our legs. You also love to have me hold you tight on my hip with my arms holding you close as I run somewhere. “Wuneen! Wuneen!”
Some stuff we’ve done in the last several months:
- In March, we went to visit grandma and grandpa in Arizona. You were overjoyed to see them, which was a great relief for everybody. Our plan for that week was to swim and hang out, but it was too cold most days for swimming, so we mostly just hung out.
- Around the fourth of July, we went with my sister and her family, and my dad and step-mom to a hotel with an indoor water park. Spent two days having cousin time and playing in the water. You LOVED it. I love to see how much you love the water.
Some awesome Evan pronunciations:
- birdie = booty
- clock = cock
- I know there are more, but I can’t think of them. In the last month, you have started repeated nearly everything we say. It is awesome and terrifying, like a thunderstorm. You say: noodle, butter, peach, plum (“pum!”), banana, ice, water, lots of color words, up, light, wall, window, ceiling, floor, bunny, monkey (and you make an awesome monkey sound), you say kitty (you call ours “Ona” and “Deedle”), puppy (and you make an excellent panting noise for puppy), plane (“pain!”), choo-choo train, pocket, pee-pee. I can’t think of it all. This language explosion has happened in the last month.
Mostly our days are like this. Tuesday-Thursday: You wake up somewhere between 6 and 7, and sometimes I make you breakfast (eggs with cheese and spinach or kale, or some sort of vegetable enhanced banana smoothie – sometimes this is the only green veggies you’ll eat in a day, which causes me a bit of anxiety), and then I take you upstairs to see Grandma and Grandpa, whom you call Namma and Pop-pop. (You are so freaking happy to see them everyday. Despite my quibbles and minor internal dissatisfactions, it is a real gift that you spend your days with them. Adoration abounds in multiple directions when the three of you are together.)
During the day, you guys go to parks, SO MANY PARKS. You climb stuff, you go down slides and swing on the swings. Sometimes you kick a ball, and sometimes you just dig around in the wood chips or dirt. A couple days a week you go to Starbucks and then storytime at a little volunteer library branch on Chicago and Main called the Mighty Twig. Sometimes when it’s warm, you play in the purple kiddie pool in the backyard under the white canopy. Less often, you take the bus to the library downtown and eat at Panera.
You take one nap, usually in the basement on the futon. Grandma uses the stroller to get you to go to sleep – I’m nervous about how we’ll transition to daycare in January, and how you’ll nap then.
Chad usually gets home from work between 3:30 and 4:30 (depending on where the job is), and I usually get home around 5. When I get home, you always nurse right away, at least for a couple minutes (sometimes for 20-30 minutes.) We play a bit, get the rundown on your day, figure out dinner. We typically eat with Grandma and Grandpa a couple days a week. After dinner, Daddy gives you a bath (and I have 10-30 glorious minutes to myself), then around 7 or 7:30, we get you in pjs, brush teeth, read a book, and go to bed.
On my off days, I usually try to get us out playing with other kids your age. You tend to take longer naps when I’m home. We still nurse to sleep at night (and for naps when I’m there.) We changed your crib into a full-size bed, which is where you sleep now. I sometimes spend the whole night there with you, but I’m trying to sleep more in the big bed. You’re still teething, and I think the nursing really helps you deal with that discomfort.
(You never slept in the crib. Mostly you slept in our bed with us. Then for a while, we put a futon mattress on the floor next to our bed, and I tried to get you to sleep there. Then, we moved the futon mattress into your room on the floor. Then, your room just got too crowded, so we opted for the full-size bed.)
I’m recording some of these details because I don’t want to forget them, and I’m afraid that if don’t write it down, I will forget how much I love waking up to your insane bed-head, and how happy you are to wake up. You are a snuggly, delightful toddler. Yes, sometimes you scream “No” repeatedly – but you are generally very easy to talk with about things.We love you so much.
Typical
Last night was a very rough night. I am blaming myself. I had 4 cups of coffee yesterday, which I think caused both myself and E to have a hard time sleeping. He was basically up or restless from 10 pm – 2 am. I slept from 2am-4am while Chad got him to sleep in the stroller. At one point I even tried putting him in the crib, which is, I think, the 2nd time in his life? Did not go well. He just wanted to nurse and hang out and chit chat. Lots of babble.
I’ve been thinking big thoughts about my life lately and, though I am so happy with how many things are now, I would be lying if I didn’t wish I had done some things differently. Taken more time. I feel like the past 4 years flew out out an open car window on the highway, and suddenly I am here, married, with a baby and a job I feel meh about. I ought to have taken more time. Evan is the best thing in the world, the BEST. That doesn’t mean I don’t have doubts.
Hair as Barometer for Mental Health
My mom used to note that we could ascertain the state of my Aunt S’s mental health by her hair. Frizzed out with 2 inch roots? Yeah, things were not looking good for my aunt. For the most part, though, her hair looked good for most of my life and she had fun dying it when the genes kicked in and made it white. Everything kept in check with medication that genuinely worked. My aunt wanted to be happy, and she found something that helped her achieve that. (I believe a lot of mental health issues can be addressed with life choices, and a lot can also be addressed with pills.)
A couple years after my mom died, however, the side effects of the drug wore tiresome. Unpleasant physical side effects that I won’t go into now. My aunt decided to try different medication. And she entered what I believe to be the worst depression of her life. (For all I know there was one this bad or worse before I remember.) I’m not going to go into the details of this depression, but just let you know that she did not meet my son until he was nearly seven months old when we drove to meet her and her family at (of all things) an AMC car show in Kenosha. She was nearly catatonic, sitting there silently, sweltering, while her sons and husband ogled Pacers and Rebels and Ambassadors. Her husband paid a passerby $20 for a care and maintenance manual from 1975. We sat and drank bottles of water out of a cooler in the trunk of my cousin’s electric blue, perfectly restored, impeccably shined 1977 Pacer D/L Coupe. She didn’t seem to care that I was there, that the child I’d grown and birthed, and that C and I had cared for so all-encompassingly for the past seven months, sat happily boucing 2 feet from her. I don’t think she held him.
I remember telling this aunt, when my mom died, that I was going to “need her more” since I wouldn’t have my mom anymore. When she didn’t seem to give a crap that I’d given birth, I (selfishly, stupidly) took it personally – like she wasn’t giving me what I’d told her I needed. I took Prozac for six months in high school, but I don’t really understand depression. I recognize that now. I judged her for her silence, because I wanted her noise to celebrate my life and creation.
Over the next few months, my aunt tried every drug available for depression, and then, she “let them fry [her] brain.” We were worried she would never be herself again – that the creative, Christmas-music loving, dirty-joke telling woman who bought herself gold high heels on a whim was simply gone, sunken to the wrinkles of her brain. This is her phrase – “fried brain” – that she uses now when she can’t remember things. I don’t know if it was the shock treatment, or if they finally found the key medication that clicked, but my aunt is no longer depressed. She is HAPPY. And not a calm, reassuring sort of happy. She is manic. In her own words, on a scale of one to ten, she’s operating at a fifteen. She was always irreverent, but now she’s just plain dirty. And some one bought her a foot massager for Christmas this year. Now she seems to spend her time beading and ordering things for people from catalogues. I have received many books for E, a t-shirt with muppets on it for me, a Ladysmith Black Mambazo DVD, which I suppose could be for all three of us (though E still gets very limited screen time.)
And it’s easy, sort of, to say, “We’ll take it,” to this new aunt, this new sister, wife and mother – because the depression was so bad, and this, at least, is Not Depression. But it’s also not the person we were missing. Or maybe it is. Just changed.
A couple nights ago she called me to ask if I’d been thinking of her, because she believed we were psychically connected that night. She was making The Most Beautiful Jewelry She Had Ever Made and it was because she’d listed to an audio recording of my master’s thesis reading four times in a row. I was her Inspiration. She instructed me to write, no, implored me to write, because I had to. She waved off my bullshit excuses of being a mother, of working, of No Time, and said, “Here’s how you do it, Anna, you do it for ten minutes a day, every day, and then in a week, you have 70 minutes of writing, and in a month, shit, what is that, it’s a lot, it’s like hours of writing. That’s how you do it.”
And so I am trying.
Here’s somethi…
Here’s something I’ve never written down before, black and white, even if it’s just on a computer screen:
I don’t think my sister is doing her job as a parent. I don’t think she can right now, for a number of reasons, and I want to help, but I don’t know what to do.
We just had a wonderful weekend. My dad & step-mom brought my two nieces to stay with us. They got in town Friday afternoon while I was still at work (Chad was home) and left Sunday morning. Saturday we went to Lincoln Park Zoo, and spent a big chunk of the afteroon at the playground a few blocks southwest.
Eleanor said, “Aunt Anna, do you think I’m chubby?” She just turned 7 and weights 112 pounds. I told her she’s beautiful, what matters is how you feel, and I’d love her if she weren’t beautiful, but it just so happens she is.
When Cecelia realized the closet in the guest room was empty, she hung up her shirts. I wish she had space to do that at her house.
At the playground Saturday afternoon, Cecelia created a very elaborate and awesome scenario in which she, Eleanor, and I were firefighters, rescuing people, cats, rats and dogs from burning buildings, driving to the fire, working the hoses and ladders. After fighting fires, Cecelia needed to “blow off steam” by digging with the little backhoe at the playground. When there weren’t any calls coming into the station, we had to go to “training” which is a lot of following Cecelia while she navigates the playground, up the slide, across the bridge, etc. She’s an amazingly creative girl and I have a feeling she doesn’t get a lot of opportunity to spend the long periods of time outside in active play like that.
Eleanor prefered the swings.
Sometimes I wish I were a fulltime mom and we could somehow afford to have those girls live with us. I keep fastforwarding in my mind to a time when they can move out, and picturing a conversation I’ll have with them that goes something like this, “The great thing about life is that there is always an opportunity to start over and do things differently. Here, this is how you sweep the floor. Here, this is how you make the bed and wash dishes. Let’s cook dinner; this will be a healthy meal. You can do this by yourself. This space is yours. Here, this is what is possible. Let me help.”
My sister is in the hospital. They don’t know what is infected, but they do know she is somehow getting better. Blood cell counts. No insurance. This is not the break she needs.
You make me happy.
Evan, you are one year old! A whole year!
People who attended your first birthday party:
Grandma and Grandpa (they just came from upstairs, so it wasn’t too taxing a trip)
Grandma Peggy and Grandpa Dave
Liz, Rob, Sam, Kyle, Ali
Fred, Mary, Annie, Max
Auntie Gina, Cecelia and Eleanor
Becki and James (and Meg)
Lizzy and Matt
Liz and Mark
Kate
Anna P. and Sam
Cousin Sara
Sara, Brad, David
Beth M. and Mary Beth
I made 6 quiche, your dad basted a ham in dr. pepper. Becki made the carrot cake, Grandma brought a fruit tray, and my aunt Liz brought a big green salad. We had mimosas and beer.
I think you loved your party. You walked all around, checking everybody out. You happily sat in everyone’s lap and let everyone scoop you up. You seem to love people.
I loved your party. I loved having the house filled with people who love you. I am so happy you are here and this last year has been exceptional. I just read an article about how moms and babies share cells during pregnancy; they cross the placenta and gather in certain places. Here’s a quote that struck me:
I feel this. I feel you have nestled into some of the wrinkles in my brain and started a new way of thinking for me. You are all that matters.
You smell warm and delicious, like perfect toast.
We are still sleeping in the same bed: you, daddy, and me. You sleep longer stretches most of the night now, but not always. We mostly nurse to sleep. You’ve decided you are more comfortable nursing when I lie flat on my back and you drape yourself over me to nurse from the opposite side. Acrobatic nursing.
I made it to one year pumping at work and I’ve decided to give that up. We will still nurse whenever we are together, but when I’m gone for the day, you won’t take a bottle. You can have other beverages – we’re starting to experiment with cow’s milk, and you drink water from a sippy cup like a champ.
The good news is, I’m not working so much anymore. I work 3.5 days a week, so we will get at least one full day of mama-Evan time each week. Your grandparents are heading back to Arizona this Wednesday, so instead of hanging out with them all day, you’ll be hanging out with a very nice babysitter it took us a rather long time to choose. But, I feel good about her; I think it’s the right decision. You guys hung out last Tuesday all day, and your grandparents say everything went great.
Things you love right now – holding your own spoon, eating EVERYTHING, bringing books to the big people in your life and crawling up on our laps to go through the book, crawling up the stairs to grandma and grandpa’s house (finally some crawling!), playing a little game of chase where I crawl around the corner – and then you come find me (oh, how you squeal and giggle at this one). You also love everything electronic, which I’m not super happy about – we’re trying to keep you away from tv and the like as much as possible for the next couple years. You love to stand in front of the open refrigerator and just look at everything. You love to open all doors, drawers, etc. Your great uncle Bob made you a little broom for Christmas and you love to carry it around. You love to empty things out, for example if there’s a laundry basket with neatly folded clothes, you’ll squat down next to it and take each item out one at a time and throw it behind you. Same with a bag of blocks.
Daddy always gives you your bath – that’s your special time with him and something just for the two of you. I love to see you with your father. I’m so glad he’s your dad.
Babbling. You talk so much. You still purr like a wookie when you’re happy. You say, “Booka booka booka booka booka,” and it is awesome. We are still not sure if it means “book,” but sometimes books are around when you say it. You have said, “boom” when you fall down and recently added “ba” to your bye-bye wave. You’ve been waving bye-bye for a long time now.
How things are now
How things are now: not as expected.
I am still working full-time, which I was hoping would not be the case. It is still so hard, every morning, to leave him when every atom in my body just wants to stay and stare, nuzzle, play, nurse, make goofy faces to get him laughing.
Chad is still not working, but has been assured work is coming soon.
Chad’s parents are living with us, have been here since June 19th. They are the swiftest moving AARP-members I’ve known. They are buying a two-flat in Evanston and we will move there next month. Details still need to be worked out. For the most part, Chad and I will pay the mortgage. The building is in the first truly residential neighborhood I will have lived in since moving out of my mom’s house on 37th street in Milwaukee. The residential neighborhoods, I should note, are quite different. It is a ten minute walk from metra and el, on a one-way street with mature trees. There’s a million-dollar mansion on the corner and several decaying farmhouses on the street, one of which has a rainbow flag flying. It has a yard, a basement, a garage. It has a new kitchen and original, 1920’s hexagonal tile in the bathroom. There are transom windows in both kitchens. It’s a great building, and I do love it, but I am nervous about how all this is changing my life, how it feels almost like my life is becoming Not Mine. Even though I have complained about the cost and congestion of living in Chicago since leaving Montana, I guess I wanted to leave it on my terms, and this doesn’t feel that way. This is not the time in Our Life (Chad’s, Evan’s, mine) when we would decide to re-locate.
We looked at many buildings in our current neighborhood, not one of which Chad’s parents liked.
It is hard to see Chad’s parents with Evan every day and know that my mom never got to meet him. It makes that pain more pronounced. I can’t forget for a second how awful it makes me feel that she is gone when I see them with him. It is hard to see his parents with Evan every day when I want to be with him more than anything. I don’t want them to parent him; I want to parent him. I want them to be grandparents, like grandparents you see often but not every day. Sometimes Chad’s mom will mention things about Chad’s early childhood or babyhood that strike me as completely foreign. Like she didn’t potty train him herself, Chad’s grandma would take him into the bathroom, and she never knew what was going on in there. I cannot imagine for a second being okay with that sort of distance from my child, and I know it sounds like I am judging her, but really. I guess I am.
Someone recently pointed out to me that I feel guilty too easily. I am trying to properly address that fact and determine how I feel about it, what to do about it. I am trying, specifically, right now, not to feel guilty about moving out of the city proper, even though it has upset certain people in a way that would normally make me feel excessively guilty.
Evan, you are amazing. You sit up by yourself, you roll over, you eat [avocado, broccoli, watermelon, sweet potato, and once a small bit of chicken], you grasp everything in your small chubby fingers. You have rolls on your thighs, and fat little wrists. Last time you were weighed at the doctor, you weighed 18 pounds, 10 ounces, and I am willing to bet you are up to 20 pounds by now. You occasionally giggle with a body-spasm that is the manifestation of joy. Things that make you laugh: peekaboo, Dad making monkey noises and slapping his shaved head, anyone dancing, Mom raising her eyebrows and making motorboat noises. Sometimes when we are nursing lying down, you will get into a downward-facing dog type position, your tuckus up in the air, feet planted on the mattress, and your impressive latch intact. You are now a rather acrobatic and vocal nurser, cooing and making “mmmmm” noises frequently.
My days are mostly like this. Evan and I sleep together in the bedroom, Chad’s parents are on the futon in the green room, Chad is on the couch in the living room, or occasionally with us. Sometimes Evan will wake up just two or three times between 7 pm and 6 am, and sometimes he’ll wake up 4 or 5 times. He always nurses back to sleep. Sometime between 5:30 and 6:30 am, Evan will wake up for real, and we’ll stumble out of the bedroom (at this point, he is all smiles, and so I am, too) and at some point after six, Chad’s mom will take him and entertain him while I sleep for a half hour more and get ready for work. On good days, I get ready quickly and have time to nurse or play a little before leaving for the train at 8:00. Work is work, blah, blah, sometimes stupid stressful, recently very busy, but I really try not to take any work home. Hopefully leave work and get on the 5 pm train. At home, Evan and I nurse, then I get something together for dinner for me (if Chad hasn’t done that already) and then Evan and I sit at the table, he in his little red latch-on-to-the-table chair, and while I eat dinner, Evan plays with appropriately-sized chunks of food, sometimes even chewing and swallowing little bits. After that, bath (either an actual bath with me, or a shower with dad), into pjs, and in bed, nursing by 7 pm.
Americans love talk of sleep.
Tonight I sat in our darkened bedroom watching Chad dance Evan to sleep. Actually, he just tried to dance him to sleep; eventually Evan demanded I nurse him to sleep. I wanted to freeze that moment, Chad with this baby who seems so big, but is really still so small and sweet, swaying in circles, softly shushing, his lips brushing against Evan’s silky (sparse) hair.
Evan is now four months old, and I am now thirty years old. I lingered in the mirror yesterday morning, squinting my eyes and watching to make sure the crow’s feet disappeared when I relaxed my face. Wrinkles. Who cares.
My days are mostly like this. I sleep with Evan in our bedroom while Chad sleeps in the office on the futon. I miss being the little spoon, but love baby snuggles, especially since he’s actually big enough to snuggle me back. His feet stamp on my thighs. Usually around four or five or six in the morning, I tire of nursing Evan back to sleep every couple hours and instead pick up the squirmy baby and carry him to his father. I try to sleep by myself until around 7, then I scramble to get out the door by 7:59. Have to be clean, look professional, eat breakfast, pack lunch, and most importantly, not forget any of the 27 small plastic things I have to bring to work to pump. Bottles, lids, tubes, flanges, ice packs … Lug it all to the train. Work until 4:45, the whole time thinking about Chad and Evan, texting Chad to send me pictures, did he pee, did he eat, was it a big poop. I could make an entire day of getting to work, getting settled, answering email, getting ready to pump, walking over there, pumping, washing up, walking back, getting settled, answering email, etc. I come home, so tired, but so eager to hold Evan, and it is the best part of my day when he smiles at me after work. Nothing in my life has ever felt so right. We nurse. While he eats, I vacillate between staring into his blue eyes, stroking his cheeks with my fingers and scanning the apartment looking for Things I Really Need to Get Done Tonight. Clear off that table. Sort those papers. Pay those bills. Purge those newborn clothes. Dust those shelves. Sweep those floors. Find those recipes. I rarely get anything done besides nursing, bathing the baby, eating, washing 27 small plastic things and falling into bed again.
I took Friday off work, mostly because I felt bad for myself because my closest friends were all out of town for my birthday, and in general my own birthdays make me sad, especially when there’s no one to make me feel better about it. But Chad did make me feel better about it. A day of some of my favorite things, most of them edible. Steep and Brew coffee, French-Canadian beer, chocolate cake with caramel and cool whip, aged cheddar, a massage therapist with dreadlocks. I went to the gym and did a 5K. I sent Chad out of the apartment with Evan and watched girly tv. I went to dinner and ordered the duck.
Things we need to figure out soon.
-Do we need to sign another lease here?
-Is Chad going back to work?
-Daycare? Center? Home? Nanny?
-Do I work part time? Where do I look for work?
lucelips
luce lips 
leave a comment