Nuala,

It’s been a whole half year since you were born.  Incidentally, I fear the cumulative pressure of teaching, learning, writing, wifing, and mothering has taken its toll on my command of grammar.

I don’t know if it’s hitting this half-year milestone, which is fairly meaningless in the long run, or if it’s a regular effect of the return of winter (sigh), but I’ve been feeling a bit reminisce-y of late.  It’s a good thing, then, that I write this blog, because otherwise I think I’d be sitting around thinking vague thoughts about how you were so wee at one point, and that you used to periodically shriek and cry for no reason that we could ascertain, and that you never used to sleep more than two or three hours at a time throughout the night, without knowing exactly when these things happened, or how long they lasted.  Where the first three months d-r-a-g-g-e-d, the second three months has gone by so quickly I’m not so sure I haven’t experienced some kind of dissociative fugue and come to in the future where you sit up all by yourself, “bah bah bah” all day long, and sleep for six to eight hours at a time overnight.  All that crap I’ve hated to hear from other parents about savoring moments because time flies with a baby in the house, I hate even more to say it’s true.  You know, once we got past the really hard first months.  I digress.

A good bit of my reminiscing lately has been about that first moment when the nurses flopped you up on my chest. I’ve been thinking about being overwhelmed with joy that labor was (finally) over and that you were so, so very perfect and beautiful, but I’ve also been thinking about how no one told me that I might be completely boggled by the fact that you were a human being completely separate from myself.  Why yes, that is one of the dumber things I’ve ever said, but it’s also one of the most profoundly true.  I spent ten months carrying something around inside me, and I thought I knew this thing that was inside me, and then all of a sudden, it comes out and it’s not only a tiny human being, it’s a human being I don’t recognize.  I don’t know whether I expected I’d look into your face and see a miniature version of myself, but I didn’t really expect to think that introductions were in order.  That would’ve been a moment, huh, shaking your little hand and exchanging business cards, perhaps.

I think the reason why I’ve been reminisce-y with that moment in particular is that every day, it is becoming more and more apparent that you’re becoming your own little person.  Some days, to an astonishing degree, like when something tickles your fancy and neither your dad nor I can figure out what the hell it was.  I mean, I guess laying back on a stack of laundry on the bed and looking at us discussing the grocery list is funny in the extreme.  It’s probably inevitable, given your weirdo parents, that your sense of humor will be a little skewed, but it would be nice if it’s the least little bit intelligible to us.

Six months. Where has the time gone?

Love,

Mom

Though it would probably be more true to say “A LOT of people in Louisville love me.”

To work up to that ungodly distance I’m planning on running in the spring, I have to run 3x a week.  Any more, I found out a couple years ago, and my body starts protesting with injuries.  Any less, and I simply won’t be able to make it.  So I’m back on the Tuesday-Thursday-Sunday runs for the foreseeable future.  Tuesday, it was rainy out, and not willing to risk soaking my poor little baby for the satisfaction I would normally derive from running in the slightly damp cold, I dragged the ExerSaucer upstairs and plopped it down next to the treadmill.  I’m sure I violated a handful of treadmill and infant safety standards in doing so, but we both have all our limbs intact, so I’m not going to worry about it.

Nuala was intrigued by the experience of seeing me run in place for a half hour.  It took her a good fifteen minutes to stop staring at me and go back to her regularly scheduled gumming on toys and grabbing at that damn horse toy that taunts her on the ExerSaucer.  And then a few hours later, when we’d come back downstairs and I’d settled her in her ExerSaucer again so I could put the dishes away, I heard this awful racket coming from the living room.  She’s been stepping from one foot to the other for a while, but now she’s gotten really determined and energetic about it.  Of course, I’m tempted to explain this with reference to the attention she paid to me while I was on the treadmill, but does it not look like she’s running in place?

She’s a genius.

So the past several days, Homegirl has vacillated between eating like I’m going out of style and refusing to do anything but snack.  On the snack-y feedings, sometimes I can convince her to keep eating if I change positions, carry her over to a different chair, or lie down on the bed with her.  And sometimes in those sometimes, I’ve found myself doing things I wouldn’t have thought to do a few months ago.  Like sitting next to her on the couch topless knowing that as soon as she’s confirmed that her hands are attached to the ends of her arms, and that her feet can go into her mouth, she’s going to want to find a boob again.  And that she may get so excited about finding a boob again that she’ll actually settle down and eat.  I don’t think I recall seeing a diagram in my Nursing Mother’s Companion that illustrates the angle at which you should recline on the couch with your baby sitting on her knees next to you, draped over your torso like she’s trying to climb up over your shoulder.  But hey, it works.  Until the next feeding, at which point I have to find another unconventional posture that entices her to settle in for a good meal.  Perhaps I should start practicing handstands just in case.

There are tabs at the top of the page.  Nothing has changed in the “About” or “Grimsajunior: Pregnancy Edition.”  I’m not 64 weeks pregnant and counting, after all.  I have been posting weekly pictures of Nuala in “Grimsajunior: Baby Edition,” though, in case you’re interested to see how that little face becomes more adorable with every passing week.  Which, of course, you are.

Because I don’t have enough to do these days, what with teaching a class, taking a class, applying for jobs and postdocs, writing a dissertation, and raising the best baby in the world, all while maintaining my usual level of awesomeness, I have decided it’s time to get my butt in gear and start working on that half-marathon goal I have for next June.

“But Grims,” you ask, “isn’t it November, and about to get butt cold?”  A-ha! Good point.  When I started running for real a few years ago, however, I started ramping up frequency and mileage in the winter.  And oddly enough, running in cold weather is really quite nice, at least what I remember of it.  As long as it’s 30º or above, and I have a small stash of Kleenexes up my sleeve, it’s as good a way to spend an hour or so outdoors as any.  It looks like I won’t be dealing with that for a while longer, anyway, since we’re still in the midst of a warm stretch (upper 60s yesterday!).  And anyway, we have the treadmill for truly awful days.

“But Grims,” you ask, “surely this is a terrible idea, what with your packed schedule and many responsibilities?”  Another good point.  But I only need a portion of two days during the week, both of which are relatively light as far as scheduled obligations go this semester, and are about to get lighter next semester.  Weekends are easier, what with Spouse being home.  And Nuala is on the verge of doing some reliably long-stretch sleeping at night (woke only an hour after she went to bed last night, 1:30, and 5:30), which means I’m about to have a little more energy to get my body moving again on a regular basis.  Based on my current level of achiness from sitting and moving rather slowly all day long, I could really use the exercise.  Here’s hoping that weirdness in my hips that comes from walking Nuala around slowly before her naps (what’s up with that?) resolves itself with moving the way people normally move.

I’ve given myself a good long time to work up to 13.1 miles, and won’t go more than three days a week to keep the IT-band crap, and whatever else decides to creep up at bay.  Wish me luck.

You know what I hate? The leaf-sucking truck that comes by right as I’m rounding the corner for home after a walk with Nuala in the Moby wrap to convince her of the virtues of a third nap when her first two were crap.  You know what else I hate?  Not being psychic.

Getting her to go to sleep and stay asleep has been a real challenge lately.  After a few days and nights of perfect napping and perfect sleeping (hey, waking twice a night to eat is perfect at this point), she decided early this week that 2 or 3am is as good a time as any to start the day.  And then, that if she was going to give up the waking bright-eyed and bushy-tailed at 2 or 3, she was damn well going to stay up screaming until she passed out on a boob at 10pm.  She went down relatively easily tonight (asleep for two hours and counting! Damn, I just jinxed it, didn’t I?!), but who’s to say when and how she’s going to wake up?  I shouldn’t worry about this, and just deal with events as they happen, but there is the small matter of an aforementioned boob.  Or I should say, increasingly less small matter.  Because the little booger still only eats on one side at a time for most feedings, I end up going for about six hours between emptying per side, and we’re coming up on five hours now.  Do I pump now and tempt fate with a wakeful baby?  Or do I go to bed and actually hope she wakes in a couple hours to take care of business?  There’s a Murphy’s Law factor in here somewhere, but I haven’t figured out exactly where to stick it in the calculations.

Morning update: I should always assume she’s going to wake up in a couple hours.

In the last several days, Nuala has started making syllables.  It is incredibly cute, and incredibly funny as well, since she draws the corners of her mouth down like she’s a ventriloquist dummy when she does her “bwah bwah bwah.”  I don’t know where that’s coming from.  I especially love the “bwah bwah bwah” whispers, even when it’s 3am and she appears to have no intention of going back to sleep.  I mean, come on. A baby whispering at us in the dark?  How are we not supposed to eat her up head to toe?

Reaching for her reflection in the mirror on the underside.  I guess this is why these things have little harnesses you snap your kid into.

The above is a stark reminder that babies aren’t programmed to like any food but breast milk.  We started with butternut squash, which I personally like as an adult, but I don’t remember liking it as a child all that much.  Now apples, on the other hand, I loved then and now.  A few weeks ago, we picked up a big bag of apples (it being high apple season in the upper midwest), which I made into frozen cubes of puree, thinking perhaps it would be Nuala’s first non-cereal solid food.  I am SO glad I didn’t start with the apples.  I don’t know that I would’ve been able to feed her anything else if I’d seen that face right off the bat.  Fortunately, though, we started with squash, which she took to like a duck to water, and by the time we tried apples, I found all of the contortions and flailing funny rather than disturbing.  I wasn’t even able to focus properly, I was laughing so hard.  This was the best of a half dozen pictures.

So we’re skipping over apples for the time being, and maybe going to sweet potatoes, avocadoes, or green beans next.