Babies having Babies

Day 219

O Evabird, life moves so much faster in Oklahoma than it did in Brooklyn. Suddenly, your firsts are all slipping through my fingers; now you've done, done, done. You've sipped on Nana's Diet Coke--when mama wasn't looking!--and tasted cookies and petted a dog and fed yourself Cheerios and been through a carwash and spent all day by the pool and tried to steal a pacifier out of little Helen's mouth and tasted lemon and gone underwater.

I'd think in heat this thick that the world would move so much more slowly, but every time I turn, you're new. Happy seven month birthday, little bird. I promise I'll try to savor all these moments; I've been told it goes far too fast.

Back in the Heartland

Obscenely early:
Wake up.

Ten:
Zumba with mother-in-law.

Noon:
Tie baby to antique highchair with dishrag;
feed her squash and blueberries.

Two:
Stop by great-grandmother's house
to listen to tale of man
whose eyeball was hanging out of the socket.

Four:
Baby gets mesmerized by "Thriller" on the television.

Four o' five:
Baby squawks at Billie Jean.

Four ten:
Baby crawls(!!!) to Elmo.

Six:
Baby is fed
(smelling of apples, apricots, brown rice).
Baby to bed.

Now:
Eat ribs.

[Pictured: Baby tied to chair.]

On Tabloid Junkies

New post up at PBQ.
Read it:
here.

Words that Surprise Me

cantaloupe

(the a; the ou; who knew?)

Day 213

Evabird, on your 213th day, you woke at five a.m., and I brought you into bed with dad and me, and you nursed, and I worried that I loved you too much. All night, I had jolted up in bed, afraid, but then you were with me, and I told you it was okay, and I pleaded with you to sleep more, but you kicked and riled and stared at the fan. Finally, we all woke and had breakfast, and then the nanny, Martha, came and you jumped--fast as a fish--into her arms. I sat in my office and stared out the window at you two, watched you laugh with her, and I couldn't even write a sentence, and I wondered why I ever even try.

Then she brought you in, and I listened through the walls as she sang you the alphabet and fed you green beans and squash and apples. I worried that you wouldn't know that I love you most.

Just after noon, we wandered to the rose garden with dear friends, and you slept and loved and smiled and slept again. O the roses! Thousands and thousands of them: Moonbeams and Keepsakes and French Perfume, Golden Wings and Honeymoons and Silver Jubilee. Dusk was still a long time coming, and we walked home, and I fed you, and you went to your crib where you stared at your aquarium and finally slept (again).

It's not even 9 o'clock, my little love, and already I've gone in to check on you more times that I can remember. Your eyes flutter, and I think of the other roses we saw: Candy Stripe and Lemon Sherbert, Summer Snow and Lady Reading, and I hope, Evabird, that your night is flooded with the scent of them, that you will sleep and dream, that when I go in to check on you again (and again), you will be so deeply peaceful that my hand on your chest is as light and fleeting as yesterday.

Avon Walk for Breast Cancer

Save the birds!!!
(all of us.)
Please.
Go:

here.

Happy Father's Day!!!

Playing House

There are times when it just feels like I'm playing house, feels like my "mommy" friends come over with their "dollies," and we sit around pretending popcorn is bonbons, pretending we're sipping on martinis, and and oh, we say, maybe baby needs a diaper change or uh-oh, looks like baby is hungry!!!

There's working mom (click click clicking on her blackberry) and Pilates mom and single mom and Weight Watchers mom and crazy, lazy mom and oh-too-hungry mom and hippy-dippy-where's-the-sippy mom! (And most of them are me.)

Makes me wonder if playing house is not so different from house itself.

On Walls & Harleys

New post up at PBQ. Read it:
here.

Wednesday Poem

Already half her life ago, but, oh, what a gorgeous poem.

The Hand:

Brightness Falls from the Air

for my daughter at three months

Maybe you thought it was a bird

or some other strange and harmless

creature fluttering in attendance

as you lay on your back in the crib.

But today I watched as you held

your hand inches above your face,

gazed a long, unknowing moment

then suddenly understood its splayed

star-shape was yourself.

You screamed.

I lifted you up and held you close

and all the while I felt you

falling toward our world.

--Gregory Orr

Day 206

Evabird, you're starting to sleep in child's pose--your bum in the air--and it catches my heart a little because I remember sleeping that way when I was a child. At mama-baby yoga the other day, the sun pushed in through the skylight, and the teacher talked about how you babies are getting older, finding your own center; how we mothers must return to our own center too, and I know it's true; every day you become more independent, more you. 205 days come and gone, little bird, and already so complete, so whole; I'm so grateful to have another day to keep discovering you.

Four-wheeling

So, we went out to Connecticut where they tempt you with their cool breezes and their big ole grocery stores, with their picket fences and their swimming pools, with their four-wheelers and their dandelions...




...and as much as I fear the 'burbs, I thought, hmm...I thought, maybe it wouldn't be so bad. But now Brooklyn calls. Maybe I'm just not ready for the bird to do wheelies.

The Adventures of LuLu

In their second year of marriage, the woman was surprised and (secretly) delighted to discover she had married a man who took the garbage out in his underwear.

On Lilies in Water Bottles

New post up at PBQ. Read it:
here.

Realization #84

It's becoming increasingly obvious from my wardrobe choices (black skirt, nursing tank, T-shirt, Birkenstocks), my hairstyle (uhm, ponytail) and my makeup (a little heavy on the mascara to "open up" the eyes) that I'm begging my friends and family to send over one of those makeover teams to rid me of my "mommy uniform." Now, if they'd just take the hint.

Held

Storms again last night, and I lay in the after-thunder silence, holding my breath, counting the seconds until you yelled for me, but then the lightning came, and in the after-white, the room glowed hard and magical, but still nothing from you, and so I went to you and stood above you and held my hand on your back to make sure you were breathing--will there ever be a night when I don't do this?--and I spoke to you, asked if you were scared, if you needed me to hold you, but you slept so soundly, and I told you how I loved you, and I said, it's okay, and said it again, a bit louder, once more, even louder, but still you slept. Finally, I let you to your dreams, and I went to the room next door and crawled in bed, woke your father, made him hold me until the storm finally passed.

Day 197

Evabird, last night I didn't have the dream where you are falling from some place high and I have to run to catch you, or the dream where we are out on the road, driving under a shaky sky, and when I look back for you, you're gone. I dreamed, instead, that the moon was full--wasn't it?--and that I had a pair of slender silver scissors to cut your hair. I can't believe how much your hair has grown, how much you have grown, how long the days have grown. They will grow longer for a while, get thicker and warmer and longer still, and then, before we know it, they'll turn again. Yesterday, my little love, you ate kiwi for the first time; tomorrow, I think I'll give you honeysuckle, just a drop, from the bush down the street that we keep passing. I sometimes worry that we'll miss it, that if we don't hurry, it will bloom and be gone before we ever get out the door.

On Egg Salad & World Dominance

New post up at PBQ.

Read it:
here.

Roses

Sometimes I forget how much I love them...

Facing the (Sizzling Egg) Music

So, there I was, belly up to the Momofuko Milk bar, getting ready to bite into the most delicious pork & egg bun known to mankind. Zoe & I had just taken the girls to Kundalini yoga, and I was checking my email while we waited for the food. The egg sizzled in the fryer; my mouth watered.

And then I saw the subject of all my emails:

ww?
ww?
ww?
ww?

Not one but two friends emailing me separately about Weight Watchers. Did I mention the egg sizzling? The thing is several months ago when I was getting all wackadoo with the Amanda Carona Challenge, my yoga teacher and my doctor both told me to not even think about weight until the bird turned six months old. Well, guess who's six months old?

I guess I shouldn't get into how the egg oozed onto the bun or how halfway through the deliciousness Zoe said that she suspected it tasted so heavenly because of the visible fat on the pork. Lesson learned: Don't check email when you're out to lunch!!! Now, I'm going to go sup on my zero-point veggies and call it a night.

The Lovely Limón

Get crushed:
here.