Coming out of the dark

Our baby is a year old.  This is a landmark that we pointed to and imagined for a long time, yet it often seemed impossibly far off.

Darby still wants and needs our attention almost always, but what kind of attention is changing.  Instead of being literally carried everywhere, she walks.  Instead of relying on us to provide cool objects to play with and chew, she finds her own.  Somehow, it feels (a little bit) like we are getting our lives back.

The first year really was dark. Insulating. Womb-like. As we crawl out into the light, we find ourselves with a small person in our company. It’s going to be a very interesting ride!

Marshall

Just move the foot

Looks like my body is getting ready ahead of time for July. I woke up this morning at 6:30 when the alarm went off (who set that thing?!) I stood up groggily and recognized that my mind was going right away into a pro/con: Do I stay awake and enjoy the still morning, maybe do a bit of yoga, or crawl back into bed with fiance and baby, where it is soft and warm? Hmmm… the eternal question indeed.

Some sliver of wisdom must have penetrated this foggy state of mine, because I reasoned that as long as I was contemplating the issue, I may was well do it while standing in the living room as opposing to getting back in bed and “thinking about it some more” while under the blankets.

After a minute or two, I found myself still standing in the living room. Quiet. First light of dawn glowing through the window. All lights in the house still off. The fiance poked her head around the doorway and looked at me. “Are you going to stay up?” She asked. “I don’t know,” I said “I’m still thinking about it.”

I did stay up. I accepted the possibility of doing a Salute to the Sun. Then I told my foot to move. The brain, still flipping and flopppng about how to start the yoga, whether I was “centered” enough yet to start the yoga… Was I even going to stay up in the first place?!

And the foot moves. Starting the yoga.

This morning was a powerful lesson in simply doing. That even though the abilities to decide and to prepare are important, there’s a time to just say “screw it”, and do it. To notice when mental chatter, even if it may feel important, isn’t getting me anywhere.

-marshall

I don’t know what I’m doing…

Like the Sea Captain said after his raft sank, “Arr, I don’t know what I’m doing.”  But I didn’t repeat that line, Anne did.  And she didn’t say ‘Arr’ first.  And, she wasn’t talking about boats.

She was talking about babies.  Don’t misunderstand, Anne is doing a tremendous job.  I often say that no one on Earth knows how hard she works.  Probably, some other moms know.  She insists that I know.  But I don’t agree when she says that, because… well… it’s really hard work to be mom.  And there’s something precious about recognizing the unrecognizable.  And… our baby is not a boat.  She has not taken on water and sunk.

Instead, she cries.  Only sometimes, but it happens.  And she eats.  A lot of the time.  And she disrupts Anne’s sleep.  A whole lot of the time.  We are faced with a balance between safeguarding baby’s healthy sleep cycle on one hand and actually seeing other adults on the other.  This is all “normal” in terms of raising a baby, and it’s extraordinary in terms of what we knew as regular life.  Everything is new and we have more questions than answers.

We are learning a lot as we go.  Wait, I take that back.  We are learning everything as we go.  And the fun part is that even with thousands of volumes of literature available to inform and inspire us, which we can read at our leisure* and often for free (library), the things that have helped more by far are the brief moments of direct transmission of wisdom from our family.

Being around people who do know what they are doing is like a breath of fresh air.  It gives us confidence and a feeling of support.  It is like a warm hand on the back, reassuring, saying “It’s OK, try this and see what happens.”  It’s something that can’t come from a book.

Being around people who know what they are doing is magic, and it underlines the gift that is community.  To know one another, and learn and grow with one another.  This is what we have to do to make it.  Baby makes us realize this.

* leisure time? HA!

Fire in the living room

We installed a wood stove in our living room last fall.  We haven’t run our heat pump since.

The previous spring, before the stove was installed, a storm blew through Gainesville and ripped a few of the upper branches from a live oak in our front yard.  You’d hardly know it to look at the tree, so massive and sprawling it is, but the fallen limbs took up more room than the two cars in our yard, the thickest parts maybe 8″ in diameter.

The wood is excellent for fires.  It burns slow and makes long-lasting coals.

When the smoke races up the chimney and spreads out above the metal roof, I think about recycling.  It’s a tasty little nugget of “living off the land” (I think that’s what they call it) to burn wood from a tree that still grows outside our front door.  When I think about this, I can’t help but wonder: Does the live oak recognize itself in that smokey air?  Can it tell that its own limbs have been carefully collected and used for animal purposes?  Does the tree know how much we dance and play in our hot, hot living room, thanks to its wood?

A recipe for disaster… and perspective

Darby, our daughter, is 7 months old.  She is developing all sorts of fun new skills.  She still stays (mostly) where you put her, as she can’t full-on crawl yet.  But she can reach, and grab (hard), and throw, and slap, and lunge, and bite like hell.

So, when Darby is in “action” mode, there’s not much room for anything else.  That’s why we decided to get a cat.  I’m being sarcastic.  Not about getting the cat, we really did get one.  I’m sarcastically suggesting that it was a well thought out and duly considered choice.  It clearly was not.

Because cats and babies are in competition for who cares less about your plans.  It’s a close race.  I’d say the baby is winning on average, but the cat gave her a good run for the money on night 3.

I will skip the agonizing details of that night, but let’s say that our baby and our new cat (so far unnamed… suggestions?) took turns keeping us awake until about 3AM.  Just when Darby would fall asleep, the cat would sneak into our room and shake things up.  After seeing that Darby was sufficiently awake, the cat exits and several minutes later Anne succeeds in putting Darby back to sleep.  Repeat. (Locking the cat out of our bedroom might seem like the obvious solution, but let’s remember that the cat can howl.  See, I told you I was going to skip the agonizing details.)

We’ve since moved into a much more amicable relationship with the cat (again, name ideas?), not in small part because she has agreed that the litter box is after all the best place to pee and poop.  The cat has always been very friendly, and now her most affectionate hours are shifting from 1, 2, and 3AM to around 6PM, when we are actually conscious and interesting in playing with her.  So things are getting better, for sure.

And now that the worst is behind us, I’m amused at the perspective it provides:  A cat torturing us in our sleep and urinating on our rugs, under normal life conditions (read: pre-baby), would have stood out as a landmark hardship for Anne and I.  Sleep is important, and we keep our rugs clean.  But 7 months into parenting, this kind of thing just slides right into the narrative.

-M&A&D

Woof

Sometimes, at the end of the day (or at the beginning, even in the middle occasionally), Anne & I will look at each other, collapse a few centimeters in height, eyelids softening, and let out a “Wheeewww” sound.  It reminds me of one of those inflatable “moonwalk” or bouncehouse rides when the air pump has gone halfway out.  The ride is not totally collapsed, but it’s not right either.  Halfway deflated.  So sad.

Maybe, after some precious sleep (I think I see an hour of it on the horizon, I hope it’s not a mirage), the air pump will be running at full-blast again, and we can stand up tall.  And play.

A year later…

Well, baby is born, and grown up 7 months.  Did you know that time flies when you are a new parent?  Well, it does.  Spread the word.

Life is tough, and great, and beautiful, and crushing.  And we are in the thick of it with the most adorable pile of human cuteness.  Although she’s less of a pile now than when new, quite ambulatory.  We tie things to ourselves so as to not lose them when she throws them in a spontaneous outburst of energy.

Nice to talk to you again.  We will update when she’s 20.

-marshall & anne