rivka

Colin turned four months old last week, and yesterday he had his four-month well baby visit. He is in fine form: happy, healthy, sociable, strong.

He is such a cheerful, amiable baby. When he wakes up in the morning he just beams at me. He loves to make eye contact and smile. He loves having people talk to him - not just familiar family members, but total strangers. He laughs a lot, an irresistable gurgling chuckle. He rarely cries or fusses, unless we're cruel enough to ask him to ride in the car.

He's a very vocal baby. Still not a great variety of sounds, of course - it's mostly lots of big open aaahhs and ohhhhs, with some /g/ and /b/ sounds thrown in. But he vocalizes a lot. He'll make a lot of noise even by himself, playing with his baby gym, but if you hold him face-to-face he coos away conversationally with great intensity.

Of course at four months he can grab and hold things and put things in his mouth. Baby toys have finally become objects of interest. He isn't particularly adept at handling things, but he does have a killer grip.

He's got great muscle tone. He loves to "stand" on our laps and makes frequent attempts to scale the north face of Mount Mama. When we put him on his stomach, he lifts his whole upper body with ease. He can roll over front-to-back. And he's got a powerful kick. Last night at dinner I had him nursing in the sling, and he kicked out one leg hard enough that it knocked Alex's water glass clear off the table.

Speaking of nursing, it's so easy now. In normal circumstances during the day he nurses for maybe 15 minutes every two hours. He latches himself on with verve, drinks until he's full, and then either unlatches and smiles at me to let me know that it's playtime again or else falls peacefully asleep. I do have to be careful, though, because he is not fussy about the targets he chooses for his remora-like latch and he's been known to give me painful hickeys if he misses the nipple. (I know, TMI, sorry.)

Sleep is starting to fall apart a bit, as we've hit the four month sleep regression, but even so it's not too bad. He usually goes down "for the night" around 9:30. I swaddle him tightly and keep him swaddled until morning. From 9:30 to around 7:30, he wakes only to nurse and goes straight back to sleep after he nurses, and during that time he can usually be easily put down in his swing or the cosleeper. Before the sleep regression he was giving me one 5-6 hour stretch and then sleeping for two-hour stretches until morning. Now, I'd say that I get one 4-5 hour stretch and then one- to two-hour stretches until morning, with at least one episode per night of being hard to put down. Which, again, is not so bad. I think things might go a bit more smoothly when the giant-but-thin-muslin swaddling cloths I ordered arrive - they should be more suitable for a larger baby and for summer sleep.

He's working on cutting a tooth. Or teeth. Drool flows copiously, and he likes to chew on things. He keeps his fingers in his mouth a lot, and chews on our hands and on toys. He hasn't seemed to show a lot of teething pain - just drooliness and chewiness. Let's hope that continues.

He loves Alex. She often makes him laugh, and he likes to lie on a blanket and watch her play. She has a special talking-to-Colin voice - hilariously, she will often repeat things I tell him using the special voice, as if she's translating - and hearing it really makes him smile. Unfortunately, one of the things he likes most about Alex is the way he can grab her hair in a death grip. She is remarkably tolerant of him... although she did suggest to me this morning that we put him up for adoption.

So, all in all, we're having a great time with babyhood here. Yay.

I almost never drive to work because parking is such an issue. But today I had my shrink appointment, so I drove. Came back and parked across the street from my office. This is a major thoroughfare, no rush hour parking allowed, and many's the time I've seen tow trucks lined up at the corner at 3:55, waiting to tow the unpunctual or unwary.

But I figured, no problem, I'd move my car by four. It was the only spot I could find, anyway.

I went in to work. Drama happened. Extensively. I did my best to negotiate around the drama without getting any stuck to me. I pumped. I did some work. At 4:30, I packed up my things and, as I always do, walked briskly to the light rail. I was a block away from the light rail stop when I remembered that I had driven to work, and where I had left my car.

Futilely, I turned around and walked all the way back, just on the tiniest million-to-one chance that it hadn't yet been towed. Of course it had. I trudged back to the light rail. Two trains roared past, one after the other, while I was a block or so away.

I stood on the platform, dejected. As I waited for the next train, the temperature dropped by about fifteen degrees. Black clouds rolled in on the chilly wind. Lightning flickered, first in the distance, then quite close up. The first drops of rain fell just as I got on the train. By the time I got off, lightning was flashing all around, thunder close at its heels, chilly needles of rain whipping in as I struggled to keep the wind from blowing the umbrella out of my hand.

Awfully convenient thunderstorm. If my life were a book, I would be rolling my eyes right now and muttering about the pathetic fallacy.

We live a few doors down from a kink shop.

It's actually a nice, tasteful, well-stocked shop with friendly and helpful staff, and they're fine neighbors. The only problem is that the shop is at basement level. Which means that their display window starts at ground level, i.e., toddler/preschooler eye level.

They used to regularly have window displays of stuffed animals in bondage gear. It's been a while since I've noticed something like that, so either they've moved away from that design technique or, now that Alex isn't a toddler anymore, I'm not spending quite so much time inching along the sidewalk looking at every conceivable thing there is to see.

But they do still display wares in their window. Alex has asked about it, and I've told her, in my best off-hand voice, that the store sells things for grownups who like to play dress-up. That's satisfied her.

This weekend she got a bag of dress-up clothes for $2 at a yard sale. It's been an exciting new treat; we didn't previously have dress-up clothes at home.

You see where this is going, right?

This morning I explained that this will be her first day of coming home from school at lunchtime to stay with Colin and our new nanny. I encouraged her to be friendly and helpful to the nanny "because she's new at our house."

"Okay!" Alex said cheerfully. "And if she wants to play dress-up with me, she can go to the store that has things for grown-ups who like to play dress-up."

...

...I was so pleased with myself for giving her that explanation, too.

Alex knows our position on marriage equality. We have a sign in our window that says Civil Marriage is a Civil Right, and after she asked us to explain the sign a couple of times she started to be able to explain it on her own.

"Some people think that boys should only marry girls and girls should only marry boys. But we don't believe that, right, Mom?"

Sometimes she will add a bit of her own, suggesting that maybe people who think that boys should only marry girls will come past our house, see our sign, and change their minds. I like her optimism.

A month or two ago, she asked me, "How come Zoe's mother and father have the same last name?" I explained, thinking how cool it was that, to Alex, that isn't the default.

But it turns out that when you're four years old it's hard to really get a grasp on the concept of marriage. Today, in the car coming home from the grocery store, Alex's little voice piped up:

"Some people think that you can only get married if you have the same last name. But we don't believe that, right, Mom?"

Last night we went to our first homeschooling event. It was billed as a "curriculum fair;" it turned out to be a massive flea market for homeschooling families to get rid of old books, curricula, games, software, resources, et cetera. (There were workshops, too, but we skipped them because they didn't seem like a good fit.) Everything I saw was very cheap, and it was nice to be able to chat a bit about how people had used things.

The biggest thing we learned is to get a babysitter next time. It was in Annapolis, which is a long way to go in after-work traffic, and when we got there the church where it was being held was swelteringly hot. Alex alternated between desperately needing everything she saw and whining that she didn't want to look at anything else. I would've liked to have more time to page through potential resources, consult with Michael, and sift through the big bins of fiction books. Oh well. There will be more.

The sponsoring group was a fundamentalist Christian homeschooling group, and, well. Mixed in with the sane resources on the various tables would be things like Astronomy God's Way. There's a good-sized secular homeschooling organization in Baltimore, so we won't be dependent on these folks for an ongoing social network. Which is good, because there's only so much biting my tongue that I can do.

At any rate, we came home with ( loot! )

Yesterday's church service featured the youth who have just completed a semester-long Coming of Age program. They've used classes, journalling exercises, retreats, group discussions, and one-on-one work with adult mentors to mark the passage from childhood to maturity. Ours is a noncreedal religion, meaning that there is no common set of beliefs or spiritual path that we all share. So one of the markers of the passage out of childhood, for Unitarian-Universalists, is that one is expected to take on the "free and responsible search for truth and meaning" for oneself, as an active process.

As the centerpiece of the service, each of the seven Coming of Age youth stood before the congregation and delivered their own personal faith statement: a description of what they believe and where they stand on spiritual matters. Obviously this isn't expected to be the final word, but they are expected to think deeply and make a sincere declaration.

They. Were. Amazing.

One of them flatly asserted that the physical world is all that there is, and that there is nothing that cannot be explained in material terms. One of them explained how she came to identify human love as a transcendent higher power. One described her belief that, because matter and energy cannot be created or destroyed, she is made from dinosaurs and will live on forever as components of living creatures to come. One said that the only thing he was sure he believed in was the search. One said, straightforwardly, that he'd watched all his friends have insights over the course of the class, but he hadn't, and he still didn't know what he believed.

Every one of them stood up, head held high, in front of a hundred and fifty people, and had the self-confidence and self-knowledge to articulate their faith. It was inspiring to hear them. It was wonderful to see them radiant in the light of the congregation's enthusiastic applause. And it's a bit terrifying to think that in about ten years, my daughter will be standing in the pulpit and Coming of Age herself.

I love my religious community. I have so much respect for these youth - four of them were in my OWL class last year, and I can't believe how much they've matured over the last year and a half. And I am in awe of my friends who helped them on their Coming of Age journey this year, including acceberskoorb and lynsaurus.

I don't interpret dreams, as a therapist, but sometimes even I have to admit that my subconscious is talking to me with a twenty-foot-tall neon sign. Last night I dreamed that mice infested our fridge and chewed holes in the bags of breastmilk I have stored in there. There you go: most of my current inadequacies rolled up neatly into a two-minute dream sequence. Our dirty house, our mouse problem (of which I am incredibly ashamed), pumping, Colin being okay while I'm at work...

I don't know why I've been treating this like a secret, but.

I have a postpartum anxiety disorder. It mostly manifests as intense feelings of guilt, shame, and inadequacy, with a lot of focus on other people probably thinking I'm horrible and some tendencies toward obsessive thinking.

I am in treatment, and coming up on the point where the Prozac is supposed to kick in.

Right now it's very hard for me to use my LJ. I'm pretty caught up in the inside of my head, and the last thing I want to do is write about that, but the truth is that whenever I think about posting something I picture people disapproving of me or judging me for it. So I'll post about the kids because it's a safe topic and then I'll think that most of you probably despise me for being so wrapped up in my children that I've erased my own life from my LJ, or else you think I'm a horrible mother who puts academic pressure on Alex because I posted about teaching her to read, and I could write about the new nanny but then what if she leaves like the last one did and that just proves what a failure I am and... well. You get the picture.

I feel ridiculous even saying all this but that's where things are with me right now.

Me: Can I have six of your shrimp?
Alex: If you eat six of my shrimp, then I'll have none.
Me: And that's not okay?
Alex: No. (eats two shrimp.)
Me: Can I have four of your shrimp?
Alex: (fixing me with a clear, earnest gaze.) Mom, you should treat others the way you want to be treated. Would you like it if someone asked if they could have four of your shrimp?
Me: That does it. No more Sunday School for you.

I haven't been posting very much about my life lately, have I? I'm here, and okay. I'm just feeling quiet.

I never wrote up the trip I took last weekend, and tomorrow we're heading out again. We're going to Memphis to introduce Colin to Michael's father.

Have a good weekend, everybody. Maybe by the time I get back I'll have something to say.

Tonight Alex cried her eyes out because Edouard Laboulaye is dead.

We've been reading Lady Liberty: A Biography, which tells the story of the Statue of Liberty's conception, construction, financing, and installation in a series of first-person narratives. Laboulaye was a 19th-century French university professor who first had the idea that the French should comemmorate America's hundredth birthday with a monument.

There's a line towards the end where Bartholdi, the statue's sculptor, says he's sorry that Laboulaye didn't live to see their dream realized. Alex asked me why Laboulaye didn't live to see it, and I told her that he died while they were building the statue.

She burst into noisy sobs. "Ohhhhh, I'm so sad!"

"What's wrong?"

"I'm so sad that Laboulaye is DEAD!"

I thought she was putting me on, but genuine tears were pouring down her face. I made the mistake of trying to reason with her.

"But honey, the people in this book lived a very long time ago. More than a hundred years ago."

"Are..." her voice quavered. "Are most of them still alive?"

"No. They lived such a long long time ago that they're all dead now."

More howling sobs.

"Alex, most of them lived long lives, and they were so proud to see the statue they made. And the Statue of Liberty is still here, and people will always remember them when they see her."

"But I wanted to HUG them." She collapsed on the bed, still crying. "I never got to know them! I don't even REMEMBER them!"

It took forever to calm her down. It really seemed like genuine grief.