Monthly Archive for November, 2009

The Co-Sleeper Is Gone … And Time Marches On

Published
by
Melissa
on November 30, 2009
in balance, bed time, change, daycare, discomfort verus pain, inner peace, intentions versus goals, letting instead of making, motion, sense of self, the bigger picture, trust and you can't control everything
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3 Comments

Next to my side of the bed there is a large, clean(ish) patch of floorboards.  On the other side of that large, clean(ish) patch of floorboards there is room to open the drawers on the left side of my dresser.  In between there is space for my discarded shoes and socks to breathe without having to tussle with Mike’s.

What is not on my side of the bed any longer is the co-sleeper.

For those unfamiliar with this piece of modern baby-raising apparatus, the co-sleeper is a not particularly attractive crib-like thing that attaches to the side of the bed.  The idea is to more or less sleep with your baby while theoretically eliminating the risk of inadvertently crushing her.  (Couldn’t one still throw a sleep-heavy, errant arm on top of the innocent sleeping child? I wonder.  Best, I suppose, not to contemplate the possibility, as I’m not a limbs-flinging sort of sleeper anyhow.)

Given my love of the middle road, the co-sleeper is the perfect invention, a detente in the polarized sleeping-with-baby debate, a way to hush Lily back to sleep in the middle of the night without ever having to leave the cocoon of my down duvet wrapped around me in the hours since kicking Mike out of bed for snoring.

Just as Lily has grown up with the scent and sound of me sleeping a foot away, I have come to love the feel of her within arm’s reach.  I have become certain that there is nothing better upon awakening than propping up on an elbow to watch my angel sleep.  Except, perhaps, that moment when her eyes pop open and she greets me with a big, sunny morning grin.

Only now the co-sleeper is gone, the victim of increasing baby mass and the fact that I have been dying to get to those dresser drawers for eight months now and just can’t wait any longer.

And in that once longed-for space is a big empty hole.  Sort of like the one in my heart.

Continue reading ‘The Co-Sleeper Is Gone … And Time Marches On’

Jake and I Go to the Dentist (and Have Fun)

Published
by
Melissa
on November 18, 2009
in Mommy time, being in the moment, chattering mind, friendship, letting go, practice, school, social life, stuck at home with a child, too much to do and work
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0 Comments

On Sunday I climbed the curved ladder to the top of the play structure for the very first time.

Jake beat me to this milestone by several months and four decades.  But that didn’t cheapen the fun of climbing, rung by rung, up and then, a little at a time, over until I crouched horizontally over the ground gazing at the mulch beneath me in giddy, defying gravity (sorry, stuck in my head from last week’s episode of Glee) motion.

It was yet another 75-degree November Sunday, surely the last of the year, and I had cheerily left Lily at home napping with Dad while Jake and I headed to the park for what I felt certain would be another morning of Mommy socializing.

Surprisingly, it seemed that all of our friends had something better to do with this glorious day than hang out with us for some impromptu playground partying.

For a while, I followed Jake around, dutifully pushing him in the swing as I scanned the faces of the other adults in attendance for some spark of familiarity.  We headed for the play structure, and I settled myself on a nearby bench while Jake headed down the slide by himself.

This was, I thought smugly, far preferable to the days when I was obligated to accompany Jake on the play structure, him being too young to, oh, slide by himself without possibly flipping over the side or failing to stop at the bottom, instead landing in a heap of mulch and tears and possibly a few stitches.  How lucky I was, I thought, that my child was old enough to entertain himself.  I performed a few quick mental calculations to determine whether Lily would magically be old enough come spring for me to escape the awkward Mommy-on-the-play-structure phase entirely.

Except that my continued hopeful gaze at the faces of strangers — like a puppy at the pound hoping some nice person would take me home and love me — reminded me that I was, frankly, bored.  I mean, it was nice and warm and sunny and all.  But I was mostly checking my cell phone every few minutes to see if it was late enough to call friends on the west coast to distract me from what I was treating as a chore.

A chore.  Hanging out with my beautiful son on a beautiful sunny day.  This was, I began to fathom, not desirable behavior.

That’s when I headed for the curved ladder, casting aside habitual vestiges of self-consciousness, fear of falling, and adult-acquired reservation.

It was time to play with my not-quite-three-year-old.

Continue reading ‘Jake and I Go to the Dentist (and Have Fun)’

A Truly Scary Halloween, or How I Crossed Over

Published
by
Melissa
on November 10, 2009
in aging, being in the moment, change, letting go, motion, opening your heart, practice, social life and trust
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3 Comments

On Friday, Lily will be the same age Jake was when we moved to Asheville two years ago.

Just typing those words is sending me into a shower of I-don’t-know-whether-to-explode-with-joy-or-cry-uncontrollably emotions.  For months after Lily’s birth I had to consult Jake’s old baby pictures to remember  what he was like at her age.  Now, however, I have stumbled into a landscape littered with mile markers that make Lily’s every new trick — waving good-bye, handing me toys, figuring out how to remove the Robeez boots I dug out of the bottom of a pile of Jake’s old clothes — into a reminder of just how little Jake once was and how soon I will lose both of my children to time.

This makes me more than a little sad at how quickly indeed the time has passed.  And then even sadder because missing baby Jake makes me feel as if I am wishing away the remarkable boy Jake is right now.  Not to mention the potty-trained one.  Why on earth would I ever go back?

Mostly, though, putting eight-month-old Jake next to eight-month-old Lily collapses two points of my life, like a Wrinkle in Time tesseract.  And while it makes me a little bit seasick to contemplate how unstable I was in the first round of motherhood and how not exactly solid I am now, it also allows me to see how comfortable I am with the whole “I’m a mother” concept.

Which, honestly, is a good thing.

Until I take a step back and wonder how the single yoga gal going out drinking with her friends turned into the mom who thinks Sunday morning on the playground is a big, hot social hour.

Continue reading ‘A Truly Scary Halloween, or How I Crossed Over’

H1N1 Pays a Visit

Published
by
Melissa
on November 3, 2009
in Mommy time, being in the moment, change, compassion, expectations, forgiveness, grace, illness, letting go, practice, school, structure and stuck at home with a child
.
1 Comment

Actually, I don’t really know that it’s H1N1 with whom we’ve tangoed over the past week.  But I’ve been told that right now anything that looks like flu must be of the swine variety.

Like most of the H1N1 lore I’ve been hearing, there’s no telling how accurate this information I’m spreading around is.  But no one is going to confuse this site with the CDC’s and, besides, H1N1 makes for a timely and eye-catching title.

So, full disclosure:  No bodily fluids, no soaring temperatures, no stories about persevering despite record-breaking dehydration here.  Just trying times and trying to be mindful.  And yoga.

Continue reading ‘H1N1 Pays a Visit’

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