Gettin' It Done

I love that Sam goes to bed at 5pm every night. It means that we wake up ridiculously early, but I get so much done in the evenings. It's almost 11:30, way too late to be going to bed, but here's what I've accomplished in the past several hours:

Harvested cilantro and mustard greens from the garden
Replanted lettuce and carrots
Planted Sweet Peas
Tucked pine stray under the strawberries
Made granola
Dried, marinated, and baked tofu
Made applesauce
Washed, trimmed, and sliced strawberries to freeze
Packed applesauce for freezing
Took all food scraps to the compost pile (in the dark)
Washed all the dishes
Blogged about it!

If it sounds like I'm bragging, I am. This is hardly usual, but Sam's bedtime makes days like this possible. Oh. I think we also had our first playdate this afternoon. I'm new to this stuff, but I think our visit with Kim and her sweet Olympia constitutes a playdate. After we left Kim's we went to Goodwill for clothes, then home for a walk then a bath then bed for Sam. Whew. I love my life.

To Crawl or Not to Crawl

Until I saw Leo crawling circles around Sam on Sunday, I was only mildly concerned about my son's immobility. Monday found me obsessed. I blamed myself. I rationalized. I became anxious. It was still on my mind early this morning, so I googled "ten months not crawling" and was immediately relieved. I happened upon a parent's board filled with reassurances and stories of children either not crawling at all or crawling and walking at far more advanced ages than Sam's. It was enough to cast all doubt from my mind and I started the day reflecting on all the things that make Sam so special.

Sam and Delilah and Leo - Oh My!

Because I was able to find a full-time baby, Delilah (the baby I've been watching part-time since November) won't have to go to daycare. Yay! The timing couldn't have been more perfect - for me and Delilah's parents. Securing two families in a nanny-share means I'll soon have full-time employment. It's a bittersweet accomplishment considering the paltry compensation, but I'm very relieved. I get to stay home with Sam while earning enough money to cover most of my expenses AND I can quit my months-long job search. This is huge. It'll be interesting to see how this all works out, but for now I'm enjoying the soul-satisfying calm that has replaced the fear and anxiety I've been feeling for weeks.

Karl sent me this link:

http://www.npr.org/templates/story/story.php?storyId=100746963

It makes me want to:

A) Move to Paris
B) Start my own Parisian-inspired daycare
C) Come back as a Parisian toddler
D) All of the above

(The correct answer is D.)

Look at Me. I'm a Nanny

Looks like the little nanny service I've been trying to get off the ground is going to happen. Danielle, Bill, and their sweet 10-month-old son, Leo Luca, came by this afternoon to check us out, see if we might be a good match. We all hit it off from the start and quickly decided to give a go. I'm gonna be a nanny!

Back on Track

Ouch. Five posts in six months. I am ashamed. Rather than dwell on my failures and linger in the past, though, I vow, here and now, to post something (anything) everyday until Sam's first birthday.

My usual excuse for not writing creatively is that writing for money leaves me spent at the end of the day. After churning out hundreds or thousands of precisely chosen words for someone else, I have no words left for myself. Since I haven't had a regular freelance gig since November, that excuse no longer holds water. So here we go.

Sam has grown into a beautiful, sensitive, FUNNY ten-month-old. He is highly verbal, issuing forth a range of sounds that include murmuring, laughing, babbling, and happy screaming. He's started mimicking the phrases "uh oh", "bow wow wow", and "da da". The first time his version of "bow wow wow" left his lips, my breath caught as if I were in a falling elevator. It was like witnessing a miracle. I had the same feeling the first time he really laughed without being tickled, the first time he rolled over, and all his other firsts. Sam has yet to crawl - he hates being belly down - but has started showing an interest in walking. The not crawling thing is occasionally troubling, but I've read that some babies just skip it and go on to walking. That's cool, I think, and imagine that this quirk will someday end up in a best selling biography written about him after he's found a cure for cancer or brought an end to world hunger. In the meantime, we're spotting him when he stands and guiding him as he takes little steps toward whatever it is he wants. In other words, we're all in training, preparing for when the steps get bigger and the falls harder to take.

Miserable

Sam got sick for the first time last week. It was horrible. His face was flushed and slick with tears, snot, and drool most of the day and his glazed eyes revealed the depths of his otherwise uncommunicable misery. He refused to play, longed to be cuddled, held, and carried, and cried like he'd lost his best friend. Karl and I followed Dr. Sears' recommendations to the letter, treating Sam's symptoms with an arsenal of acetaminophen, saline drops, and warm baths, but the cold was stubborn. It was a full week before Sam's easy laugh returned.

I felt pangs of guilt following the worst moments. I thought about past instances when friends' children got sick and how poorly I had responded. Had I known how traumatizing the experience can be, I would have sent flowers, baked cakes, offered massages... Well, maybe not all that, but I would have been far more sympathetic. Now that I know the depths of exhaustion and frustration that are visited upon the house of an unwell infant I feel somehow better, wiser.

Sad, In a Crazy Way

Early this evening, as Sam's bedtime edged closer, I started feeling sad. It took me a minute to realize the feeling wasn't new, that I've felt a stab of sadness everyday this week when I've become aware that another day with Sam was coming to an end. I know it sounds crazy, but I've wanted to cry when I realized the time and what it meant. Eden, my best friend, called when it hit me a little while ago. I did start crying when I told her how I felt, that I was sad that another day with Sam was over, then I started laughing because I heard how crazy I sounded. Eden said, "That's morbid. Like one day closer to Sam's death?" I laughed and cried harder. I told her I wasn't totally crazy. She obviously didn't believe me because then she asked, "Do you get like this when he naps, too?"

When he was first born, I remember being grateful that Sam came several weeks early - and healthy. It gave me more time with him, I reasoned. I got to see his eyelashes and eyebrows grow in, watch his perfectly round, floppy little ears turn into the more ear-like things he has now. Best of all, he was still covered in lanugo, that fine, downy hair present only on the tiniest of babies. It was a treat, getting to see him as he was when he should have still been inside. At the time it felt greedy; I got Sam, but I also got more of him than I should have.

Thinking about it now, it's like my early evening sadness is a reminder that I've used those weeks up, that now everything is all Even Steven somehow. Somewhere between two or three weeks early and four and a half months old, everything got all smoothed over. Now we're dealing with "real" time. No extra bonus rounds. This will probably pass, but for now I'm going to hold onto my sadness, as crazy as it is, because I know I can't hold onto Sam. He has to grow and change and become the person he's going to be, which is, of course, what I want. And like Karl said, we've got lots of pictures.