Stackable Milo

So, the reason I thought of the subject of this post is that we have a million pictures of Milo around our house.  We're with him all the time, but we still like reminders of him.  Even when Ben and I are out alone -- like when we went out to the movies, just the two of us, the other weekend -- we whip out our phones to look at pictures of him, like the purpose of the "date" we're on is not to have alone time, but to miss him together.

At any rate, all these pictures made me think about the fact that Milo already is, and definitely is going to be, about a million kids all at once.  The pictures tell the story.  There are already so many iterations of him.  There's tiny baby Milo and the Milo who started to sleep through the night.  There's the Milo that cries when he wakes up from a not-refreshing-enough nap and the Milo that beams at you when you come in to get him from a night of restful sleep.  There's the Milo that's hungry and the Milo that's tired.  The one with the sweetest little upturned lips and rosy apple cheeks; the one who is overjoyed to handle a new (or even old) toy; the one who takes pleasure in making a very high-pitched squeal when he is excited.

And all of these versions of Milo have the other ones underneath, a palimpsest of Milos that speak to how all of us have this accumulation of selves that make up our self.  And parents get to watch this stuff from Day One.  Which is awesome.

The Other Ballgame

Looking like a proud little gnome

There are probably some things about parenthood that you can expect: the sleepless nights; the gobs of excretions; the triumph you feel at your child's victories; the way you can't stop grinning at your baby's smiles and belly laughs.  But nobody prepares you for the ridiculous waves and waves of empathy.

Well, I take that back.  I guess in some ways, a mom is prepared for being attuned to how her baby feels because she can actually feel the kid inside of her -- the elbows and knees, the nudges and kicks.  But when this baby is finally a separate entity, and has a personality and feelings of his own, and needs that he articulates in specific ways -- sometimes adorable, sometimes frustrating and sometimes heartbreaking -- that's a whole 'nother ballgame.

Crankiness doesn't quite count.  Yes, Milo's crankiness when he won't take naps absolutely makes me cranky.  But it's when the cries seem to mean something, when they seem like more than just "I'm hungry" or "I'm tired" and they have this (at least perceived) note of anguish in them that I feel like crying for him; okay, every once in a while when that happens, I get something in my eye.  Like an eyelash or a piece of volcanic ash.  I knew I would hurt for him, but I couldn't have known what that would feel like.  It feels rough.

And I just have to be consoled by the thought that I will also take empathic pleasure in his happiness, in the things that bring him joy.  His big old grins already have that effect on me.  When he cries, I am sad, but when he laughs, thank goodness, I laugh, too.

Baby Pick-Up Lines

I have monkeys on my feet.  Wanna dance?

Brave New World

He got a discount on the obscured seat

Sometimes I think that, with the exception of folks like Barack Obama or Richard Branson or Charlie Sheen, most of us have a routine to our days that is pretty similar.  When I'm teaching, and I'm doing The Catcher in the Rye for the eleventh time in my career, to be sure, there are always going to be new questions -- insane, or inane or incredibly thoughtful -- but mostly it's the same schtick; things in the classroom will usually go pretty much the same way, with the rare exception of fire drills or having to kick someone out of the room; faculty meetings will generally be excruciatingly similar and predictable each and every time, with the same rude person not having silenced her cell phone, which then rings with some loud and ridiculous Klezmer tune and then she has to excuse herself from the room, simultaneously trying to look embarrassed but also like a V.I.P. while saying loudly, "Wait, I'm in a meeting..."

But it's not like that for babies, is it?  Every hour, every few minutes, seems to deliver a whole host of new, amazing discoveries.  Like a truck going by on the street outside.  Or making eye contact with the cat.  Or realizing that you can blow raspberries and drool all over yourself.  And it's probably good that babies can't speak, because what could they even say when every single day is a mind-blowing experience?  When they are just astounded by the silhouette of branches and power-lines against the sky?  Or they realize that clouds move?  Or how incredible it feels when the wind whispers against their face?  They'd just sputter wow, wow, wow non-stop and sound like idiots. 

My Giant

Big Head Milo and the Monsters

OK, so there's obviously some weird perspective at play in this photo of Milo and his grandpa, but I just thought it was so wild that I had to include it here.

RIP, Fezzik

Milo looks like the Yao Ming of babies.  If he were in the Baby WWF, his name would be "The Juggernaut."  Do you think it's worth printing up stickers like this ---->, but with Milo's head on it?

Incrementally Speaking

Gaining mobility, losing hair

So, I've either realized something very, very profound, or I'm the last one to board the short bus in terms of understanding what makes stay-at-home motherhood so exhausting.  It's that there aren't any weekends.  Ta da!

I recognize that working outside the home is obviously tiring in its own right, but I remember that even when I had stacks and stacks of papers to grade, essay questions to write, lesson plans to make and e-mails to respond to on the weekends, at least they were two days that were different from the rest of the week.  As God intended. 

Now, don't get me wrong.  Weekends are still pretty great.  Ben is around and often lets me have an hour or two extra in bed in the mornings.  He makes nice breakfasts.  We do fun stuff.  Or: we do the same stuff I do during the week, but we do it together, which makes it feel like fun.  We see family.  I get to take a load off more and sometimes even leave the house for extended babyless periods to have brunch with friends.  But weekends are really just variations on a theme, which gives a Groundhog Day quality to my life at present.

Motherhood appears to be very much about measuring time differently.  In the really early weeks, when Milo was a teeny baby and woke up all the time to eat and cry and he couldn't sleep more than an hour or two at a stretch, max, catching a forty-five minute nap felt sort of luxurious.  When he started waking up only two or three times a night, it felt like a victory.  And now, he's doing a great job of sleeping through the night; the kid even takes about three naps a day, although they vary in how substantial they are.  I mean, he is pretty much still wired to only be awake and alert for about two hours at a time, which means that a cycle of activities can happen and re-happen: diaper changing, feeding, playing on the floor gym, bouncing in the jumperoo, etc.  And each activity probably lasts for fifteen minutes, tops?  It reminds me of the character, Will, in Nick Hornby's novel, About a Boy, whose father wrote some stupid Christmas song, the proceeds from which have made him so indescribably wealthy that he has never had to work, yet he is so bored that he measures his days in half-hour increments.  

 

But so I always feel -- slightly less so on weekends, but, yes, even then -- like I'm waiting for a timer to go off, a timer that can often have a very jarring effect -- and I never know quite when it's going to sound.  And it's that waiting, knowing, anticipating -- one's ear always turned towards the baby monitor or waiting for the cute noise that turns into the feed me howl -- that can drive a person craaa-zy.

Not-So-Instant Karma

A baby, two enormous cats and an unmade bed

So, in the last post, I was all, "Yeah, we're tough; we're the nap police; a little crying never hurt anybody.  Attachment parenting be damned!  Boo yah!"

Yeah, well, in an overzealous fit of trying to enforce some nap justice for Milo (after a day of crappy naps), we let him do a cycle of crying, muttering, falling asleep, crying, etc., which ended up in me going in to check on him because of his pretty oversized wailing. 

Turns out, he had spit up: down his neck a bit, somehow in his hair, on his sleeve.  Not like a Jimi Hendrix kind of dangerous throw-up, but the kind that roused him from his near-sleep state and, what with being overtired, got him very worked up, indeed.  So, instead of changing his onesie immediately and then rocking him like I should have (I didn't quite understand the extent of the puke-spread), I calmed him down with some difficulty -- which is not, luckily for us, a trend; he's usually easily consolable -- and gave him a bit of bottle. 

OK, but then, I realized that he needed his outfit changed.  And as soon as I put him on his changing table, he began screaming bloody murder, enough that Ben came in.  And he just wouldn't calm down -- Milo, not Ben.  Like, he wasn't in pain, but he was clearly overwrought.  And finally, once his crying did peter out, I gave him a bit more bottle.  Which was a bad idea...because he was still on with those jagged, breathy little hiccups that kids do when they've been crying hard.  But he seemed to want the bottle!

Well: lesson learned.  He started up crying again and then proceeded to make a noise that Ben and I had only heard coming out of his behind before.  In fact, Ben whispered, "Was that a fart?" and just as I said, "No," out came the vomit.  With some amount of speed.  Right down my shirt.

It wasn't projectile vomit.  But it was something.  And after that, the nap police punched out for the day.  We just chilled out with him until bedtime.  He slept through the night, though, God bless him.

And it's all kind of ha ha now.  What a story!  But really, it's hard to articulate how, when your child is upset about something, you can be filled with this combination of intense pity and sympathy and adoration and knowledge of your own relative futility, and how you just want to do something, to be of some use in consoling him, and even after we put him to sleep, and late into the evening, I was still so upset on his behalf.  I just can't help but look years ahead, to his not making some team or getting chosen for a solo in chorale or getting rejected by a girl, or a woman, someday, and me not being able to do much to put those protective instincts to good use, because I won't be able to nestle him in my arms or kiss his head or pet him and tell him everything will be alright.  I look at my parents (and all parents) with such a different kind of respect and understanding now.  The phrase "You can only be as happy as your saddest child" holds a kind of resonance now that it didn't when I was only someone's kid.