tiny bABLES

This past weekend, we drove up to the Asheville farmer’s market with Mr. Ables’ parents to pick out our Christmas tree.

It was a beautiful day—sure didn’t feel like the end of November. 

An entire section of the market is given over to tree farmers, and we found one who simply said, “everything is $25.”   Mr. Ables and I are used to buying our tree at Home Depot in Charleston where $25 bought us a four foot crispy fire hazard. It was such a good deal that I still wonder if the guy stole the trees.

How does a person go about stealing a load of Christmas trees?

Anyway, it was great fun and a sweet memory. 

Just about everything is sweeter with Silas boy around.

What’s this?  Oh, just a bad webcam picture of myself chugging a celebratory coffee.**

What’s to celebrate? 

This kid slept through the night the past two nights:

(cameraphone picture of Super Si waking up yesterday)

I didn’t know it was possible.  People asked me all of the time if he slept all night and then they’d look at me with such pity when I’d report his 1:00, 3:00, and 5:00 am feedings.  That essentially means that for the past three months, I haven’t slept longer than three hours at a time. 

Pity me.

Last Thursday, as I wrangled a squirmy, fussy, milk-breathed monster into some semblance of being sleepy, Mr. Ables could tell I was approaching The Danger Zone.  This zone typically makes itself known by me rearing back and yelling “I could use some help here!”  It’s not something I’m proud of.  There are not the finest mothering moments.  But at the end of the day, Silas and I are both tired.  When I’m tired, I want to curl up in bed, shut my bagged eyes and sleep.  When Silas is tired, he wants to turn red, arch his back, and see how loud he can be. 

I rocked, nursed, and coddled my boy into limp-armed sleep only to see his eyes pop open anytime his head touched the bassinet mattress. 

Enter The Danger Zone (are you singing Kenny Loggins yet?). 

Mr. Ables, calm as ever says in his vanilla voice: “Maybe we should just put him in the crib this weekend…”

I think: where am I going to put the baby laundry? 

So we did.  Took down the bumpers.  Set up the monitor (I turned the volume up full blast—you could almost hear that kid’s heartbeat), I told Mr. Ables I missed Silas, woke up every hour to check on him, and generally acted like an insane mother. Yes, friends…welcome to our Friday night. 

What did Silas do?

That kid SLEPT. 

I thought the first time that my baby slept all night I’d wake up with a jolt, positive that the worst had happened.  Instead, I heard him cry, stumbled to the nursery, fed him and then couldn’t believe my eyes when I saw the clock.  I didn’t even enjoy those extra hours of sleep.  They just happened. 

But here’s hoping they keep on happening.  Because this mom is beginning to remember what real sleep feels like. 

Note: if your baby came home from the hospital and slept through the night on your first night home I think you also have a unicorn in your backyard.  No, that’s too cool…I’d want to know you if you had a unicorn.  Basically I do not think you are real.  Better yet, just don’t tell me.

I think they forgot to make my coffee decaf.

*those of you that are amen-ing with me…keep it up.  I know as soon as I publish this, Silas is going to wake up four times tonight. 

**why the coffee if I’m so rested?  Hello, it’s 11:10 am here. 

Silas is sleeping, so I have a moment to write about something that’s been on my mind for awhile now.  I’ve been thinking a lot about blogging: why people do it, why I continue to do so. 

For me, it’s really more than posting pictures of my cute baby.  I’ve blogged before, and there’s probably four or more abandoned attempts left in my wake.  Why did I start each one?  For the same reason most people do. 

We write, we post because we are fascinated with ourselves. 

Don’t misunderstand me.  I am the last person that you’d accuse of having enough self-esteem to actually think my words and small life are significant enough to be interesting…but I’m interested in what’s happening in my life.

We are fascinated with the way we change.

Being pregnant, becoming a mother…obviously, that’s some significant change for me.  Watching Silas grow and learn, discovering my new self as a mother and wife and staying at home…it’s change. 

People do this with blogs all of the time: going to college, traveling to a new place…I know I’m not alone in this desire to sift and shape it into words and find a way to share this part of my life.

Maybe in a way I want to pin down who I am.  Shadowbox these moments.  Allow myself to step back and figure out where the me is in all of this. 

Because when you change, you come unhinged.  You feel like you aren’t you anymore. 

At the beginning of August, I sat in a lawn chair in our new-to-us backyard, huge with child and looked at the trees and the sky.  Periodically, I’d mist myself using the garden attachment on the hose.  I knew how ridiculous and stereotypical I looked, but I was beyond caring. To me, the air seemed a bit thinner, the light was leaning toward Autumn.  Do you know those moments where you can see hintings of the next season simply in the light? 

As I sat, thinking about the change about to occur in my life I couldn’t keep the lyric to “Landslide” and Stevie Nicks’ warbling voice from worming into my thoughts:

I’ve been afraid of changing because I built my life around you

I kept going with that thought.  My life was built around me and that was all about to change—not just shift a bit, but crumble.  Vanish.  For the rest of my days, no matter what happened…there would be a son.  And he would take on a significance that no other physical person ever had.  I’d have to give up a lot of who I’d been, I’d find out just how selfish I really am. 

My sleep, my body, my freedoms, my time, my choices have all changed. 

Time makes you bolder even children get older.  I’m getting older too. 

So for now, that’s why I write here.  There’s significance in this change.  Maybe not to you…but hey—why are you reading this, then?  I post this because I want to reach out in the midst of this rocking and reeling shift in my life and know that I am not alone, that my days matter, that these moments are fleeting.

That there is such gorgeous meaning in this becoming. 

Oh, time…how quickly you are passing.  Here it is, almost Thanksgiving, and here I am, writing about Christmas cards. 

I’m really excited to send out cards this year because of Silas…I think the holidays will become bigger and brighter and newer with him around (just like everything else). So I just can’t help it: I’ve already started looking at cards.  I usually make ours, but they always turn into a huge job and I go from sending out 40 to 20 to about 12.  I love working with paper, so my cards typically include some sort of pop-up element.  In the past I’ve made photo ornaments that spin when the card opens and a three dimensional Christmas tree. 

But this year I’ve got a little boy, and as embarrasing as this is, I’ll finish sending his birth announcements out tomorrow. 

The boy is THREE MONTHS OLD. 

So I doubt I’ll get around to folding pop up cards this year. But then I found these:

(click for link)

I used Tiny Prints for those better-late-than-at-his-high-school-graduation birth announcements, and LOVED them.  They had just what I wanted and it was really customizable.  The quality is like something I’d get at a fancy stationary store.

Go here and look at all the options.  It’s pretty overwhelming, but I knew I wanted three or more pictures so I just clicked that option to narrow down the choices. 

Boom.  I’m doing this.  I’m also inspired by the pictures we’re gonna take for the card.  It’s gonna be awesome.

I love getting Christmas cards in the mail.  It’s fun to see how families have grown through the year, who sends the glitter-covered Thomas Kincade ones…I love them all.  Mr. Ables enjoys clogging the mantle with all of the greetings, but we also have a wire card display that I got on the cheap from Pottery Barn (we’ve always used it for Polaroids and other pictures) that I’m looking forward to using as well. 

As soon as we get these printed, I’ll post the final result.  Or, better yet…send me your address and I’ll mail you one!  Hopefully you’ll get it before Easter.

Silas,

I really truly think I wrote your two month update a week ago.  The cliches and advice and head-shaking about how time passes once there’s a child around are so true.  I live in a vortex where days don’t fly, don’t slip, don’t blur…they just meld.  I chalk it up to lack of sleep now—I’m used to waking up to feed you three times a night.  1:30, 3:30, 5:00.  I am one acquainted with the night, you know what I mean?

But I also know it’s more than sleep deprivation…it’s you.  I’m lost in watching you change because everyday there is growth and newness, something to discover, something to try, something to learn.  When we place you on your stomach now, no longer do you face-plant there, drooling on the floor, now you hold your head and shoulders all the way up so that you can look around and find us.  You reach up and touch my face (and Papa’s too…it’s pretty scratchy these days because of No Shave November—he asked me yesterday, “what if the baby doesn’t like me with a beard?”), you reach and play with the forest animals on your activity mat.  You suck on your hand more than the pacifier.  You are trying SO hard to roll over by doing this hip thing that is like a sideways pelvic thrust…sort of an Elvis move. 

Most of all, you are happy.  You love people, you “talk” to them and if someone smiles at you: man oh man watch out for the face breaking, eye squinching smile you give back to them.  I pray that this love of people, this joy you have continues…you make a whole lot of people really happy, little boy.  What a gift. 

This happiness makes my “job” bearable.  You’re sick right now—came down with your first cold on Saturday.  I cried and worried and sat up with you and annoyed Papa with a million what-ifs…I was a total mom.  I’ve spent the past two nights sleeping on the couch, you in the swing by my head, two humidifiers chugging away.  I wake on and off and just listen for your breathing and pray a lot.  And it’s just a cold!  But I feel guilty: I feel like I’ve broken you (I’m the person that kept the protective plastic on my Christmas gift camera for months just to keep it new!), this gift I was trusted with. I didn’t ask people to wash their hands enough, I didn’t do enough sterilizing, I didn’t keep you away from public places long enough…this guilt is new to me, but I’m figuring is part of who I am now.  So you make me feel better each morning by opening your eyes, focusing on my face, and breaking out one of your smiles.  I don’t think you know you’re sick.  You’ll cough this rattly old man cough and then look up and coo. 

You do not like:

• saline drops in your nose and the bulb suction maneuver I have to do: snot sucking, well—sucks.
• when I drank a latte with milk last weekend (thanks for the projectile spit up reminder on that one) Message loud and clear: no dairy.
• going to sleep at night (your new move is not to cry but to smile and wiggle and flirt your way out of sleep…and it works)
• actually, one of the only times you fuss (screaming with tears and read this: nothing is more heartbreaking than baby tears) is when you are tired…I think you are afraid you will miss something

You like:

• your nightly baby massage (still).  Once you figure out what’s going on, your face gets all intense and your eyes are huge and you start kicking and squealing making it sort of impossible to give you a massage.
• being outside (first hike was this month and we can’t wait to take you camping next Spring)
• people…you’re really social and nosy. Everyone says you get this from your dad (if he says a few people are coming for dinner he means 8 not 2, and the first time he came over to my apartment before we were even dating he casually went into my kitchen and opened every drawer and cabinet….just because he was curious).
• my singing is still making you happy.  A new favorite is “You Are Not Alone” by Michael Jackson…I find myself singing that when we’re in the car and you start crying in your carseat. Just imagine that scene: baby wailing, me busting out an MJ falsetto. 
• you are a hungry baby.  You like to eat.  A lot. 
• I have a feeling you like your papa more than me.  That’s okay—I knew that would happen. 

This month I’ve had moments (usually fleeting) where I think: I’ve got this, I can do this thing.  Mr. Ables said he wants to line our basement with bunk beds and fill the house with babies.  Watch out, Duggers. 

“Just look at her!  She’s just so sweet.  I’ll take her until she starts talking! (laughs) She’s just so pretty, I can’t get over it!”

—saleswoman at the Verizon store regarding Silas.  I didn’t have the heart to correct her, but whoa pronouns!  I mean, he wasn’t in blue or camouflage…but he sure wasn’t sporting a hairbow either.

Thanks to my friend Mandy, Silas is the proud owner of a Blabla doll (Lemonade the Dog)…I love those things.  So sweet, old fashioned, and soft.

Today I noticed a new blabla that I think Silas should have:

Wink the Owl!