year of the baby

This morning the paper told me that the population of our country hasn't grown as slowly as it did in  2013 since the Great Depression. Tough times apparently mean fewer immigrants and fewer babies.

Which makes sense, but doesn't map onto my experience lately: babies are about to be born, being born, and growing like mad everywhere I look. This year brought us Beatrice, as well as a whole lot of babies - first babies, second babies, third babies - to many excellent people in our orbit.

Maybe it's something about being 36 years old. Or having lived in one place for over five years. In any case, as I waited in line to mail out packages that included tokens for some new and precious people this afternoon (having promised myself they would leave the kitchen table before 2014), I listened to a three month old baby wailing while his papa quickly gathered items to mail and thought about how very fertile this moment seems to be.

I also thought about how grateful I was that my baby was sleeping at home.

Holidays with babies are ... well. Hmm. I suppose they are kind of like regular life with babies, except more. More sweetness, more delight, more sleeplessness, more fussiness. More sensitivity (routine disruptions galore), more hand-clapping, more laps and arms to settle into (or not).

These past few days have been mostly delicious, as Mike and I are both on break, and we're all soaking in lots of time together. Of course routine disruptions aren't easy on bigger kids either, and there have been what I will refer to simply as moments here and there that have been, shall we say, challenging. Ah. Yes.

Sometimes my ambitions are unrealistic.

Like when, on the way to Mike's parents after Christmas, we stopped in at some outlets, having decided we both were in desperate need of wardrobe infusions. No big deal, right? A quick shopping trip! We piled into a family dressing room at Banana Republic, plunked the yelling baby (not in distress - just yelling, to yell) on the floor with her nose running profusely, and began peeling off layers to try on jeans and sports jackets. Gabriel was draped on a bench moaning when can we go to Grammy and Poppy's house??? and Frances was asking incessantly if she could keep the rhinestone button she'd found on the floor of the store. As I left the dressing room with the baby in the Ergo (still yelling) and piles of clothes draped over my arm to return, the attendant gave me a look that I can only describe as disdainful.

It said: who are you people, and why in the world did you have all these dirty noisy children?

Oh lady, I don't know. Aren't they outrageous? Excessive? I know! They are. But the surprising thing is, her disdain didn't even bother me. Despite it all, I love our fertility. I love our spilling over, our oozing out. I love our babies, sprouting always towards the sun like so many glorious weeds.

bathtime, round one, nine months

Beatrice has graduated to the big tub - with my ample feet as supports.

The first semester at St. John's has ended. Winter break has begun! I always have Mondays off, during which I tend to squeeze in some much-needed cooking and/or cleaning, but this Monday felt different. A true domestic settling in, a rooting down for the holiday season and the many open days ahead to spend with my family.

The sewing machine is out. Our old friend Thomas is helping us deal with the many half-finished house projects that have been collecting dust since the summer. I made simple lentils and brown rice, roasted brussels sprouts and multi-colored carrots (baby loves them! oh the pleasures of a pre-picky eater!!), and a big balsamicky salad for dinner. It was the sort of meal that makes me so happy, so just-like-myself. When the days are short, something about lentils and warm winter veggies satisfies completely. (Lest you think I am sort some of dietary purist, this afternoon I consumed large quantities of chocolate accompanied by espresso tempered with - I kid you not - a generous glug of eggnog. I confess, I drink two cups of the stuff every morning, and will until the season is past and I have to wait til next Thanksgiving for eggnog to reappear on the shelves. Talk about impure! It's fantastic.)

The point is I have the energy and time to notice again, to relish, to direct some creative momentum towards the nest and my dear little birdies. They do drive me insane, but just now I feel glad we have enough time together to go a little nuts.

And there is Beatrice. Bea, Bee bee, Little B, Baby Bea. After her bath, I wrapped her up, rubbed my nose in her big warm belly, put her in pajamas, nursed her, and snuggled her up in her crib. While I was doing this Mike ran the bath for Gabriel, who waited for me to wash his hair, and his beautiful long body and smile - still so unself-conscious - were meltingly sweet when I opened the bathroom door.

Frances read Lord of the Rings with Mike, and after I did Gabriel's routine she came and climbed into my lap.

Let's talk about what's on our minds, Mama. For five minutes, before I have to go to bed.

So we did. And now they are all sleeping. I still have to make lunches and fold laundry and honestly, I don't even mind. Tonight I am grateful, only grateful, for all of it.

baby grown up/grown up baby

After I put Beatrice to bed, I strung lights with the big kids. Mike had already left to teach. First I witnessed Frances belittling her brother's ability to string properly, then I watched her - not without protest - strongarming him into listening to the story she is writing* instead of listening to me read Igraine the Brave aloud (as the three of us have been doing, with pleasure, these past few nights). Ever attuned to my feelings, ever the go-between, Gabriel asked me if I would please let him listen to Didi's story tonight, and could we read our book again tomorrow?

After I put him to bed and came downstairs, I drifted into the soothing frothy comfort of Facebook for a moment. Frances stomped up to me and said, "This is our special last few minutes together! How could you play on the computer? You can do that after I go to sleep!"

Defeated, I sat down on the couch. She called it.

But wait. Hang on. It's not that simple. "Frances," I said. "I think I'm feeling pretty mad at you for the way you treated your brother, and that's why I didn't want to spend this time with you."

There it was. I was so frustrated with her, I prefered the non-company of Facebook. (Kind of fed up with ALL of them this evening, to be honest. Feeling very done-in. Up-to-here. Like my hair should be standing on end in every direction and a smear of red lipstick should be traveling west, past my lips. If I wore lipstick, that is. If I were a deranged mother about to do something rash in an Almodovar movie from 1989 - that kind of up-to-here. But I digress.)

So we talked, and it was great. She's been beset by jealousy for months, ever since Beatrice was born, and she takes it out on her adoring brother. It twists and contorts her exquisite soul. She demands my attention in ways that incline me not to give it. She wants to be a baby, or she wants to be a grown up, and I never seem to hit it right. It is, in fact, impossible. But talking with her candidly made so much of all this sticky muck break up and move downstream, clearing the way for love to flow freely again. Even if it's just for tonight, no matter. It is always a relief to reconnect with my children.

When I finally hugged her goodnight, she said, "Mama. I figured it out. I want to have as much attention as a baby gets, lots and lots of it - but I want you to treat me like a grown up."

"So - the quantity of attention is baby-style, and the quality of attention is grown up-style?"

"Exactly. Okay?"

Well. At least she knows what she wants. 

**titled Heroes of the Fire, about a group of children living in 'present-day Kansas' who battle a prairie fire that threatens their school.

balancing act

What a week.

Last Tuesday my mother- and father-in-law arrived to settle in and help take care of Beatrice, as our child care provider was unable to. Beatrice is newly in the throes of separation anxiety, unable to tolerate being in anyone else's arms when I am visible. Or audible. Or probably smell-able, too, because why wouldn't olfactory experience play into the amazing mysteries of love and attachment?

Anyway. She was also getting sick and in short it wasn't an easy babysitting gig. They persevered and managed to also pay sweet attention to the big kids as well as this author in the form of laundry folding, grocery shopping, and general moral support. 

Weirdly enough, two extra adults in the house who adore her seemed difficult for Frances in some ways. Maybe because they also adore her brother and sister. Maybe it was also because the week culminated in her papa's big lecture, delivered on Friday (more on this later), which occupied him and in some ways the rest of us quite a bit, and was followed by an extraordinary dinner given in his honor by two other adults the children love - but they weren't invited. (Whoopee!)

The long and short of it was my big girl had been very snippy, compulsively contradictory, and borderline rude for days. On Saturday, after Grammy and Poppy left, I was on the phone with my mother. She only had a few minutes to talk and we needed to do some Thanksgiving planning. Frances wanted to talk too; I told her she couldn't this time. Huffing and puffing and foot-stomping ensued. I told her to go to her room. She slammed her door.

A moment later she opened it and hollered in my direction, "You're nasty! You're horrid! I hate you!"

Gasp. Splutter. Rage raced from my heart to the very tip of every extremity in about a half a second.

Good thing I was on the phone and couldn't go tearing up the stairs immediately. As it was I hung up with my mother, went into her room, and told her she was hurting my heart with her terrible mean words. I told her I was very very angry with her, and she needed to think about why, and she could not come downstairs for a long time. 

Her face looked absolutely pale, as if her words had shocked her more than they had me. 

Later, when she was granted permission to come downstairs, she came to me in the kitchen to apologize. "Mama, I don't hate you," she said. "I'm just so jealous all the time."

I sank down with her on the stained orange ottoman in the corner. 

"I'm jealous when you hold Beatrice. And when you feed her with your fingers, and when you change her poopy diapers, and when you nurse her, and when you carry her around because she's fussy and won't play on the floor anymore, and when you kiss her neck, and when you sing her songs. I'm jealous when you give her baths, and when you say, Come here baby, it's okay. I want you to do all those things for me."

I think her list had about seven more specific descriptions of caregiving, and each one felt like another little stab in my heart as she spoke them aloud, because I felt the pain in her voice and recognized the reality of life with a baby. Beatrice requires near constant attention. And instead of finding it irritating, everyone absolutely adores her. I cried, a little. It wasn't just that Frances feels so sad and left out of the mama-baby blissful dyad, it was that she had hit some kind of bottom and recongized the depth of the problem along with her sense of confusion about how to handle it. 

What to do? Sit and hug and talk. 

There's more to it all, especially involving discipline and consequences for the mean words (which have a way of escaping despite her best intentions) and I am still uncertain about how best to support and contain and guide this passionate girl of ours. But it's interesting that the past two nights before bed, she and I have foregone our customary reading and snuggled up with things like nail buffers or special foot cream. We talk a little while I take care of her body, eight year old style. It doesn't fix the problem, but it feels good. 

And one more thing. Mike's lecture was a brilliant success. He did it. I was sort of floating at first, watching him in action, then finally settled into the pleasure of seeing my husband alone on the stage, speaking with honesty, rigor, eloquence, and heart. There was my Mike, for all the world to see.   

What a week, what a week! And now onto Thanksgiving. May yours be beautiful and delicious, gratitude-drenched, and filled with the mysterious movements of love and attachment.