brotherly love

::2 weeks old

the dregs

I have decided that I need an executive assistant to whom I can dictate my blog.  I often think of all sorts of terribly clever and interesting things to relate whilst I am nursing the baby, cooking dinner, driving around town, etc.  However, by the time I make it to the computer, my mind goes blank and we are stuck with the dregs of my brain.  So sad.

I mentioned that everyone was commenting on how big my baby is.  Well, I finally took him to visit the doctor and he really is big!  He is in the 97th percentile for height and 90th for weight.  The means that out of 100 babies (what a cute image) 96 of them are smaller than him.  Wow.  He is super cute.  I should post some pictures of him.

I got my haircut last week and I really don't like it.  I *almost* like it which makes it all the more tragic.  I should NOT post pictures of that.

Okay, that was all that was in there, I guess.

Dreams, diapers, denial...

I have been having the strangest dreams lately, probably because I am half awake all night long. Last night I dreamt that someone called me to come in to update my credit report, drivers license, and health insurance which were all on the same card. I was looking at my credit report and it said things like: March 1986 bought sunglasses; November 1996 left car door open at the mall; May 1998 bought black shoes to wear with a navy dress -- a crime of fashion! The credit report also went back to all our old houses and it turned out that our first house was a block away from a beach and we had never known it.

My baby is getting so big! Everywhere we go people are surprised at how big he is. It is tragic enough without everyone having to comment on it! Yesterday he was wearing his khakis, a polo shirt, and an argyle vest. Ibby said, "He looks like he is going to give bread away." Huh? Oh, he looks like a tiny deacon. So cute. He is especially adorable with his big, fat bottom. He has been wearing cloth diapers. Last night was the first time he wore one at night and he made it twelve hours with the same diaper on. Not that he slept that long, that was just how long it took his lazy mother to get around to it. Anyway, it is the most amazing diaper called bumgenius. I only have one of them because it is expensive. There is a whole subculture to cloth diapers and it can lead to obsession and addiction.  I figure I can put aside the $18 a week I would spend on disposables (scratchy, paper, chemical ridden...) to buy a lovely soft reusable one.  But then there are the accessories... oh my!

I would love to write more and oftener, but there are small people in my life who are saboteurs to my life as a writer. I suppose it cannot be helped, but it is frustrating.

Only yew

Our yew bush is dying. It is very sad because it was thriving beautifully before we decided we should be responsible homeowners and trim it. That happens to us a lot. We really should just let things alone. There were two bushes near our front entrance that had grown quite a bit since we moved in. They were slowly and carefully doing their best to overtake the front walk so they had to be stopped. Unfortunately, I have since found out from my best friend Google that we should have trimmed them back in stages -- a more methodical campaign, as it were. I also discovered that though one of the bushes looks decidedly unrecoverable, it may indeed revive in three or four years. Three or four years! We have to endure its brown blankness for that long? I am quite nostalgic for its greenery... I considered pulling it out and planting something else there, but also read that the roots of this particular bush extend to China.

My baby is doing very well. He is incredibly good-natured for which I am grateful. He sleeps so much! Did all of my kids sleep so much? What was I so stressed about? He does not, however, sleep at night, of course. He loves his mobile so that is where the kids send him when he is fussy.

We are having a garage sale on our street in a couple of weeks so I am taking this opportunity to go through everything in my house. It is amazing to me how things can multiply whilst hiding quietly in a closet. I took a lot of bags and boxes to goodwill this winter, yet am still managing to collect quite a few useless things from the crooks and corners.

I suppose I should go do something else.

My baby is getting so old! He will be five weeks on Friday and the time is really flying by! I still haven't managed to take him to the doctor to be checked. I was told to take him at four days to check for jaundice, but I decided that surely a woman who had just given birth was not expected to get dressed, let alone drag her baby out into the cold, cruel world, just to check for yellow-ness. I looked at him myself and he looked quite pink through my bloodshot eyes, so we stayed in our cozy bedroom instead. I did make an appointment for his two week check-up and even arrived at the office on time and showered, but that is when things took a turn. I arrived and the receptionist informed me that they had changed the appointment to be with another doctor that I didn't like. Fine. Then as we waited and waited, my baby wanted to eat (after all it had been more than 20 minutes since he last ate and couldn't possibly have been expected to survive much longer). I asked if there was somewhere that I could feed him since the reception area was filled with coughing old men. I was told that I could go stand up in the bathroom. Thank you so much. After I fed him we then waited and waited while he continued to be fussy. I was walking around with him and my back started to ache. I could tell that I was becoming emotional about the situation, but told myself that it would all be over soon. I slowly read all the posters around the room and learned quite a bit about Irritable Bowel Syndrome and STDs. Then this guy who had arrived quite a bit later than we did was called back and I couldn't take it anymore. We had been there for 50 minutes! I quickly left the building and started crying when I got to my car and I arrived home still bawling. Matthew was very alarmed that I would return from the baby's appointment so overcome and instantly assumed that a horrible condition had been discovered, but quickly realized that it was just his tired wife. I cried all day and had to keep telling myself that surely I wouldn't be arrested just because we missed his two week appointment, right? Since then I have been trying to change doctors, but heavens, it is complicated and I just cannot handle much. So, no check-ups as yet.

Matthew's parents came for a few days and that was fun. Charles was ordained a deacon and we blessed the baby. I was stressed out so no pictures of that, just like the baptism. We are really bad about those kinds of things and then it comes back to haunt us. Lulu had to do a time line of her life with photos and it was hard to find some. There are periods of her life when we haven't had a good camera at all, so that is sad. Last week I found an old piece of paper I had written something silly on and then saw that it was the exact same date just four years earlier. I always look for meaning in coincidences like that, but rarely find any. I just read a wonderful book, "I Capture the Castle." Just like when I am eating dessert, I wanted more while I was still ingesting it. I was inhaling it to find out what happened in the story, but I would like to go back and savor some of the wonderful ideas in it. One topic that was mentioned was that most of the arts -- literature, art, music, etc. -- are peoples attempts at finding God. I think that is really true. Everyone is looking for meaning and truth and some way to express themselves.

I have been shopping a lot lately and eating. It is my way to cope with fatigue and anxiety. Unfortunately, I don't have the funds to support such habits. Luckily it is spring, so I can get busy in my garden and deep cleaning the house -- just as soon as I finish shopping for spring things,

I Will Survive

We seem to have survived the first day of baby without my mom being here. I had worried that we would either explode or implode, but things went pretty well. I guess that is the nice thing about life, it keeps on going whether you are ready for it or not and thus you have to survive.

This morning I decided to have a photo shoot with little Phin and he did not like it one bit. He really was good, but I wanted some sleeping ones and he didn't like being put down. So we went through several rounds of me feeding him, him going to sleep, me sitting there for a while just to be sure, then putting him down, him squirming so all the pictures are blurry, him screaming so all the pictures are not sweet, me feeding him, him going to sleep, etc., etc. He was good for some of them, but there were a few problems, such as: I need to be a photographer, I need to have a better camera, I need to know how to use my manual settings, I need better light. Alas, I am destined for a life of mediocrity.

Baby has been woken by yet another well meaning person wanting to hold him and he believes that if he is awake he should therefore be eating, Gotta run!

Hello Again

I was getting too depressed to write for a while. There was nothing to say or do or think beyond still being pregnant. Now we are doing much better. The baby is so sweet! His skin is impossibly soft and he has the sweetest rosebud lips. The smell of Tucks takes me back to when my other babies were born and I now realize it reminds me of falling in love. The recovery has been going smoothly, mostly because my mom is here to help. She has been doing everything and it has been wonderful to have her here. I don't remember being so tired and sore in the past, but then the first week of all of my children's lives is a blur. I hope that someday we can go back and watch the video of them as babies. It goes much too quickly!

Matthew has left for Iowa for a music festival. All of these things sound great when they are in the distant future, but then when the day arrives you realize how insane it was to plan an event for so soon after the birth of a baby. He has been practicing today, but I don't think he really feels ready. The biggest problem from our point of view here at home is that we only have one car, it is a very little car, and Charles and Ella both have places to be at the same time, I still don't know how we are going to work it, but I have very nice friends whose boys are on Charlie's team so I think it will involve them somehow.