Sweet things

Things that I loved about today: figs & raw honey, a four mile run (!) and a swim in our neighbor's pond. Oh how I love to swim...and somehow I had forgotten this. I don't know why it's taken me three years to go and jump in, the surface rippling green, bluebirds swooping about. How I love the soft feel of the pond bottom underfoot, the way the water is soft on your skin, the way the bubbles rise up when you kick. Bean and I have gone every day this week. We lie like otters on the little wooden dock, and then we swim.

He doesn't know how to swim yet, but he's becoming more daring: leaping from the bank into the water into my arms. His grins, his chattering teeth, his little muscled torso nearly break my heart. He is so lovely, so beautiful, my son. My firstborn boy, so big now: learning to swim.

On his bike he is a terror. He's been riding without training wheels for months and now he purposely seeks out the washed out, steepest places on the driveway, the bumpiest pot-holes to ride over full tilt. He's a mountain biker in the making: the way he skids to a stop, leaps off his bike, swings back on it, all the while grinning, mud splattering up the back of his shirt, his yellow thunderbolt helmet the perfect statement.

Boys. Even though I imagined boys I couldn't have pictured this. The delight and silliness of little boys. The way they play together makes me nearly swoon with pleasure. Bean seeks out Sprout, he wants to be near him, next to him. He 'reads' him books, acts out entire narratives with matchbox cars, sings endless little songs, lies noes to nose with him. And all the while Sprout grins like he's having lunch with his idol. It's the best, the way my boys are together. I want more than anything for them to stay this way. For them to always be buddies and friends, for Bean to always have Sprout's back. For Sprout to always burst into wide smiles when his brother enters the room. It makes me so happy.

Bean asked if he and Sprout could share a room recently. We have 3 bedrooms, so they wouldn't have to necessarily, and it hadn't really occurred to me to have them share. But now I'm wondering, why not? What are the pros and cons? I always had to share a room with one or the other of my sisters, and while I am sure they hated it (sorry I stole all your clothes, sis!) I adored it. Not always, but most of the time. I loved going to bed and having a sister to whisper with, and waking up in the middle of the night and hearing her breathe. But now as a parent I'm not actually sure how to orchestrate room sharing--with boys who are four years apart. How would bedtimes work?

So. Questions: what were the highlights of your day today? And: yea or nay on the shared-bedroom business?

So it begins...

Sprout is teething. Definitively. Soaked through several shirts. Chomping on everything, and he’s miserable. Utterly. Hence we are miserable utterly. Didn’t I just say it’s had been easy? What was I thinking? I was asking for it, that’s what. Don’t you ever wonder about those apparent universal laws? When it rains, it pours… you know, that stuff. The way certain things seem jinxed, fortuitous, inevitable. What’s up with that? And also, why is it that negative energy attracts negative energy so much more powerfully than positive energy seems to attract the positive?

Already here

A little bit of photo booth goofiness for your Wednesday. It's how we started our morning, at the counter and on the couch smooching and giggling, me and my two boys. (Don't you just love Bean's little broccoli top?)

It is already mid June. I can't believe it really. How the time blurs once the days warm up. Buttercups are everywhere, daisies, the first wild strawberries in little glades at the edge of the woods.

The goose is broody. Bean stuck two hens eggs into the warm circle of her nest and there she sits, some patient instinct advising her to hunker down and wait for new life to happen.

The New Hampshire reds we got in the mail a few weeks ago are feeling plucky with a new set of rust colored feathers. They’re in an outside run now, scuttling about, catching bugs. They’re fun to watch. I love the way instinct summons chickenness for them. It’s evident in all the ways that they are: heads bobbing, peeping to one another sociably, grooming their new plumage, and to think they’ve never had a mother.

We’re so different, with our long babyhood, then childhood stretching out for years and years. I watch Bean learn new words. He repeats them, uses them in context. I am utterly enamored with the way he is right now: full of drawings and ideas. His pictures are jam-packed with action: wheels turning, light switches, fire hoses, robots, homes for little mice.

On his bike he’s become a daredevil, skidding to a stop, making dizzy loops around the road, cutting tight corners, riding over the bumpiest of potholes at high speeds. I love watching him ride. I love his yellow thunderbolt helmet and his lightening grin as he passes by, legs going at top speed. He is perpetually dirty this summer. Jam on his shorts, on his chin. Mud on his feet and grass stains. He goes through two sets of clothes a day, easy. Sometimes more.

In the garden we’re mostly done planting. Bean comes down with me in the morning while Sprout naps, and we get an hour or so in before we hear him on the monitor.

This year's crop: moon & stars melons, sugar babies, lemon cucumbers, zucchini, yellow crook-necked squash, potatoes, rainbow chard, yellow peppers, five kinds of tomatoes, purple cabbage, carrots, broccoli, radishes, four kinds of lettuce, spinach, ashworth corn, onions, parsley, dill, thyme, oregano, basil, rosemary, chives and sage.

As the short growing season heats up, I’ll be planting more flowers, more carrots, more cucumbers for pickling (DH has a ridiculous pickle habit). We never got our act together with the berries, but Bean and I have scoped out a copious patch down by the neighbor’s pond that we aim to visit in a couple of weeks.

We have fun in the garden. I made Bean a tepee out of slender logs. Then gave him a packet of beans to plant, and sunflowers, and pumpkins all around. Today while I was spreading straw he came down to the garden dragging a quilt to hang over the tipi frame. Inside is a quiet secret little boy space full of packed dirt and small rocks, a pine bow for a broom, a magic door. In his bouncy seat, Sprout watches, pleased as peas.

I realize lately that I haven’t written about Sprout much. I expected to have more to say, honestly. I expected it to be harder, to be more of a fight to adjust to life with two boys, but in truth it’s been a breeze. He sleeps. That’s the main thing. And I say this with utter awe and gratitude and reverence because Bean did not sleep so I know. But Sprout sleeps and he smiles and he’s trying to sit up already. He lies on his belly and watches Bean play with matchbox cars and he’s as happy as a little fat clam. He grins and he giggles when you zerber his tummy, and he mostly just feels like he’s been here with us forever. Four of us.

I know this post is all over the map. I've been working on my book every night after the boys go to bed, more words there, less words here I guess. But I have questions for you today. A little bit of informal research.

What does settling down mean to you?

How does marriage change you?

How do children change you?

If you could chose all over again (or if you have not yet chosen), would you stay footloose and single? Why or why not?

Springtime boys

Trying to get focused (and it's not really working)

It’s been like pulling hens teeth to get words on the page here lately. Life is happening full tilt and I’m all over the map. Things are busting out everywhere: dandelions, rhubarb, fiddleheads, grass. We have allergies, Bean and I. We are a display of loud, honking nose blowing, in the morning We eat fresh bread with tahini and honey; drink lattes over ice; and make our way to the mail box, the four of us, Bean on his bike, Sprout on me, and our goose bumbling behind, orange feet fwapping the gravel. We foray out, Bean ahead of us, wearing his yellow thunderbolt helmet, knees going around as fast as they possibly can, sneaker to the pedal. He is a whir, a blur, a sudden mess of limbs splat on the gravel. He gets up, brushes the gravel off hands, grins, rides off chattering.

Along the edges of the road the grass is growing tall. Pollen everywhere. The other day Bean was covered head to toe in hives after playing outside all day long in the windy, pollen heavy air. The kid is still throwing us curveballs with his health. With everything actually. This is a new phase. FOUR. Years. Old. He’s a big deal. “Look how strong my muscles are!” He tells us, flexing his bean-pole biceps. “I’m a superhero!” he yells, as he runs to fetch a diaper for Sprout.

Everything is a big deal. Everything is confusing and complex and full of danger and delight and curiosity. Everything is worthy of negotiation. He has an opinion about everything. It’s exhausting, sometimes. It’s a totally different ballpark parenting a kid than it is parenting a baby. In some ways, it makes the whole baby thing a piece of cake. Things are simpler when they revolve around four things: eat, sleep, poop, smile.

Sprout is three months old and brimming with gummy grins. It happened so fast, these past three months. With Bean I remember practically crossing off the days on the calendar, waiting for the three months, waiting for a time when he would be less fussy and I would get more sleep, but with Sprout, the days have just slipped by. He is a sleeper, a grinner, a delight. He lights up when he sees his big brother. He coos. He rolls over (tummy to back) and grabs things tight in his hands. In his sleep he practices laughing now. His little rib cage rising and falling with giggles about things without words, smiles fluttering about his face like humming birds.

Bean is ALL BOY now, no shred or scrap of toddler left in him, except for in the secret soft scent of his hair when he wakes up from a nap. He draws detailed robots , and pictures of people with many toes and big smiles. He draws alligators and diggers and suns with bright rays and monsters with many teeth. He writes his name on everything. He knows all his letters. He is obsessed with things that are “dangerous.” “Beavers can be dangerous,” he tells me matter of factly. “Because look at their big sharp teeth.” Other things that are dangerous according to Bean: moose (they can step on you!), monsters, earthquakes, alligators, tornados, bears, and pirates.

When he comes downstairs from a reluctant nap (he still needs them, but fights every. single. one.) his cheeks are rosy, his nose snuffly with allergies, his feet bare. He curls up in the crook of my arm as I type, and notices that I don’t use my left thumb as I write. “Why?” he asks. He asks why about every little thing in the whole world lately, and it’s a challenge because somewhere in the human brain there is a bit of hardwired code that makes a person compelled to answer that word.

On our way back from our walk, we trundle up the driveway hauling Bean’s bike and two day’s worth of Wall Street Journals. We stop at the coop to collect a half dozen smooth eggs in pale blue and brown. The chickens are finally starting to grow in new feathers after molting and looking generally ridiculous. We have more chicks coming in the mail next weekend. New Hampshire Reds and ‘chocolate layers’ that supposedly lay gorgeous dark brown eggs.

Spring is in full tilt. The garden beds are tilled. I’ve jumped the gun and planted some seedlings, and got my comeuppance immediately: the thermometer dipped, and the poor melons, I’m afraid they’re not going to make it. I must have been afflicted by a case of severe optimism to think I could get away with putting crookneck and honeydews in the ground before memorial day. I live in zone 5b after all. Last frost date: May 25. Sigh.

This week I’m determined to get back into posting. I can't honestly put a finger on why the cat’s got my tongue recently. Maybe I hit the delete key too much? I’m editing two short stories, and my time to write comes at me like a bone tossed at a dog: whenever, wherever. I’m not always prepared to gnaw the marrow of new words. I need some inspiration!

What does spring look like where you are? Tell me things. What are you doing this week? What are you planting? Eating? Listening to? Reading?

Smitten

I couldn't imagine this beforehand. How I'd be this head over heels. Entirely smitten. This boy, how I adore him.

2 months old

Things I want to remember about you this month: Your curly eyelashes. The way you thump your feet. How you put yourself to sleep for naps almost anywhere: on the floor on a quilt, on the couch, in bed. Your coos, your grunts like a freight train arriving at a station. The way you suck down milk, gulping noisily. Your smile like a the fluttering of a hundred humming birds among the summer hibiscus. Hiccups. The intensity of your gaze. Today your blue eyes look more hazel when the light shines through your iris. The way your head smells like milk and honey and vanilla.

You are patient and peaceful and I am grateful every day for this. It was so hard to have you in my belly, but now you are a dream. I relish every day. Even the tired ones. I am smitten. Head over heels.

You only cry when you need something and then only until you are sure we get the message (the minute we start removing your pants, you stop fussing, knowing a diaper change is on it’s way.) In the night you only fuss if you are hungry, and even then you mustly grunt and wave your arms about: hey mama, some milk would be great. We both fall back to sleep as you nurse.

In the past few weeks we’ve fallen into a pretty nice rhythm at night—you sometimes even sleep for five hours in a row, which compared to how little your brother slept, feels like a blessed eternity of sleep.

Milestones: You discovered your hands this week. You stare at your balled up fists, almost going cross-eyed. You suck on them like they are some kind of delicious treat. You use them to pull your pacifier to you; to bat at toys; to grab as much of my long hair as you can hold. You cling to it like a monkey.

You also roll over tummy to back, beautifully, like a pro. You were born with this talent, and showed it to us first at two weeks old. Already you hold your head up high and steady. You prop yourself up on elbows and look around the room.

Sometimes I lie with you belly down and look too. I see shoes, legos, cookie crumbs, hair barrettes. I see people’s feet, polka-dot rainboots, the edge of the blanket, logs by the wood stove, the Persian carpet fringe. Your

Little one, right now as I type you are lying beside me on the couch on a sheepskin. You are staring up at me and waving your arms and legs about, thumping your foot down with determination, trying to get me to look at you. When I do you reward me with these otherworldly grins. Pure, pure delight. Your entire face beams, and it makes me feel like helium, like swooping barn swallows, or fireflies flitting in the tall grass at dusk.

I am so in love with you tears sometimes spring to my eyes. I love to nap with you, to hold you close, to sing you silly songs. I love how you smile at your big brother, how you seem to get that he still wants my whole lap sometimes. You wait patiently in the wings, waving your arms, chortling, cooing. I cannot believe I ever doubted loving you. I cannot imagine my days without you in them. My favorite thing is quiet mornings when you are napping on my chest and I am writing. Together we have watched spring slowly arrive outside the windows, going out cautiously under parkas to cut forsythia or collect eggs from the coop. Together we have watched the days grow longer, your first days, gradually filling with light. How I love you.

Happy Happy

Happy Easter everyone!

Boy Band

Words tomorrow. Tonight, simply this. These boys, they rock my world.

1 month old

Sprout is one month old and change today. I keep wishing I could go back to old posts and find out what Bean was like at 1 month, but alas, I didn't start blogging until he was more like 3 months old so I am forced to trawl my gmail archives for the laboriously detailed emails I exchanged with another mom from the birthing class DH & I took.

We've since lost touch, but going back to our emails I discovered that not only did we document every single little thing about our babies, but she also introduced me to blogging by sending me a link for dooce's site.

I remember having no idea what a blog was and finding out felt like a revelation. There were other women out there who were also feeling isolated by new parenthood... and the were writing about it! Astounding! Now of course dooce has gone on to become famous and our entire generation of mamas have been dubbed "digital moms."

How things have changed in four years.

***

I already feel rather guilty comparing Sprout and Bean because I grew up in a household where comparison was regular and toxic. My sisters and I were always in competition, always being compared, always coming up short...and it is my goal to never do this to my boys (overtly pigeon hole them into categories: you are the artist, you, the musician, you the flighty one, you the responsible one, etc.)

But there is something to be said for comparison now, in these early months when what Sprout is capable of is mostly limited to bodily functions and sucking on a pacifier.

It astounds me that I had so much to email about with Bean. My friend and I exchanged almost weekly emails going into extensive details about nursing and pumping and bathing and burping and whatever. Bean was apparently much fussier than Sprout at the same age. He also seemed to have his night and day mixed up, though now, four years later and equally sleep deprived I can hardly recall this.

I do vaguely remember being awake--as in AWAKE and doing things--in the middle of the night because Bean would be screaming...and thus far Sprout is mostly asleep at night, or eating, or performing another bodily function that often involves lots of grunting. In general he's a happy-go-lucky second kid, and is mostly content to snooze on my lap during the day as I sit on the couch and write.

In honor of Sprout's one month birthday and my original discovery of blogs this same time four years ago, I am sharing some links I've found lately that I just absolutely love. I realize I don't do enough of that any more, but Marta inspired me with her blog hunt a while ago.

Here is my version. Will you play along? {Five new links you love.}

1. Loving: Color Me Katie--She makes me want to skip and twirl & wear polka dots and eat lolly pops and do things just for fun, just because. Love her sense of wonder and whimsy and delight. And also, her photographs.

2. Looking : The Blue Hour and Grass Doe--A writer friend sent the link for Grass Doe. The pictures inspire words. All the more alluring since there are no words anywhere on the site...the photos are breathtaking, and tell such a story. The Blue Hour I found while googling for info on Grass Doe. I love going back through Blue Hour archives to see how much he's grown & changed as a photographer. Just goes to show--if you are committed, you can hone your art.

3. Listening: 8 Tracks--Found this via Brian's blog & am experimenting with making tracks & listening to other people's tracks. Extra credit if you make your own track and share it here. Here is one for you, from me.

4. Watching: Improv Everywhere--How can you not smile watching these? I adore the fact that there are people out there who are not nearly as shy as I am who have the courage and the whimsy to make life become art everywhere.

5: Inspiring: i [love life]--She has such an awesome attitude towards life~ and I am totally on board with the whole Niki + iPod + RUN. Can't wait to go buy new shoes!

Finding my way to here

Photo by M.Brott The days soften. The scent of mud reaches our nostrils thawing beneath lacy layers of dirty snow. Icicles fall. My body is adjusting to eating scraps of sleep. In the middle of the night a headache fills the space between my temples, thrumming and groaning like some hungry wild beast, but in the morning there is just the window, the pale light, the rumpled sheets.

There is an hour then, between five and six when the light is changing from gray to yellow and the tall birch outside the glass is filled with birds, that I curl my body around Sprout, milk drunk after nursing. His head smells like honey; like rain on a summer afternoon; like something that is mine.

We lie like otters and dream. DH’s breath is warm on my neck. My feet press against his shins, heat traveling between us under the tangle of covers. I will forget so soon how this heat takes me by storm in the middle of the night; how I am suddenly drenched with sweat, thrash at the sheets, shove my ankles akimbo over the edge of the mattress. I will forget how my fingers blunder with snaps, milk soaking through my shirt; and how, sitting cross legged on the bed changing Sprout’s diaper in the mostly dark, my core muscles feel non-existent like my middle is composed of anemones winnowing in the gap between my ribs and pelvis.

Then, invariably Bean comes in just as morning is unclenching its late winter fists and the cardinals are marking their territory in scarlet song. Bean is a long-legged colt all of a sudden. He is full of giggles and kisses and knees. He comes in dragging his raggedy blanket and shimmies under the covers. Then the bed is a boat, a space ship, a racecar. We stagger to catch up: hot water, espresso, fried eggs.

***

In the late morning I pull on my chocolate polka-dotted rain boots and go outdoors with Sprout strapped to my chest. The snow is melting. Bean is carrying his hammer. DH has an armload of freshly cut two-by-four planks. We’re heading up the hill, our little family of four, through the woods where the ground is spongy and the snow is sometimes deep.

At the top of the hill, as far back in the woods as our land goes is an old tree. A sugar maple, struck by lightening, hollowed first by fire, then by termites. It is the perfect tree to hide in for a small boy. Bean calls it his “fort.” Last summer I would hike up with him and hoist him into the cool dark of the hollow trunk where leaves made a soft resting place and light filtered down in long dusty motes from above his head. Now, newly independent, he wants to be able to climb in himself so we bring wood and nails to hammer a rudimentary latter to the trunk.

Our pet goose follows us up the hill, and Sprout, tucked into the Bjorn on my chest makes whispering coos as he sleeps. He wears a blue and green hat like a little gnome’s.

The nails sing as they are driven into the wood. Ping, ping, pang, pong, pong. Some bend, encountering knots. The trunk is old. Only a few limbs will have bright green buds and leaves this year.

Later we cut across the snowy meadow past the sleeping garden, following the melting tacks of deer to our neighbor’s house. They are running sugaring lines today, drilling holes for spouts. The sap is running. We cup our hand under the spiles and taste the liquid. It is clear and cold and faintly sweet.

*** I go back to my notebooks from this same time during the early weeks after Bean was born and before, and am struck by how I’ve changed.

I was just twenty-seven. Living in the suburbs. Commuting. Newly married. Every day l imagined a parallel life. Me in a little bohemian flat somewhere above a grocery on the Upper West Side. Thrift store teacups and lampshades, a futon mattress on the floor, nights spent in smoky cafes, up headache late by choice. I was always hankering for a life I believed was more exotic than my own. There was always escape route folded in my back pocket; the bags of my heart always packed and waiting at the door.

This should come as no surprise.

I come from restless women. My grandmother fell in love with her cousin, and, forbidden to marry him, left England on a steamer, broken hearted. She met her husband on that voyage: a German farmer from a good family, and though they traveled around the world together on a honeymoon that lasted fourteen months, sipping tea from brass bowls in Tibet, and drinking camel’s milk in the Egyptian desert, she never really allowed him, or the life he had to offer, to measured up.

I can picture her at the kitchen window looking out at the red dairy barns tucked into the softly rolling Appalachian hills, rinsing plates and resenting every one. She wore stockings and pea coats, when neither was practical; drank afternoon tea from china cups; wrote hundreds of sonnets. Hers was a life of sighs. Before she died she burned most of the poems she had written.

Before Bean, before here, before this, I could never picture myself settled. Houses terrified me. Staying put terrified me. And it was a terror I had learned by heart, handed to me in the blueprints of how to be inked by my mother and her mother before her.

My mother, never quite content, always moved where my father asked her. First to a cabin high in a bowl of the Rocky Mountains where she hung my diapers to dry in subzero temperatures, then carried them indoors, flat as boards to thaw before the woodstove. Then to a house on the hill among dangerously flammable eucalyptus in the Los Angeles suburbs where the Santa Anna winds would make the carpets ripple, and smoke from wild fires obscured the San Adres Mountains. And finally to a low ranch with metallic floral wall paper on a winding macadam road in California wine country where the grass was green in January and dead by April. The seasons were Rainy or Dry, and in spring tractors would spray yellow clouds of pesticides onto the grapes.

Somehow deep within my bones I memorized this message: houses were discontent. Settling meant just that: settling for something, for something less. I distrusted the process of committing to growing a life and growing a family because I assumed it would make me like my mother: restless with regret for a life she had never had and could never quite imagine.

But somehow I managed to say yes to it, despite the bucking of my heart. I have a good man, and maybe this is partly why the terror has gradually been dissolved by joy. Knowing I was like a spring-broke filly always threatening to run, DH promised, and promised again: we can go anywhere, and will if we need to. This place is just for now, for the time being.

But in the time being, I have begun to spend the time, being.

*** It is early evening and upstairs DH and Bean are napping. Everyone is trying to catch up on sleep whenever they can around here. Bean spent the night at his grandparents and didn’t go to bed until nine. When he came home today his huge eyes were glassy and the skin below his eyes was pale and almost purple. When he looks tired like this I want to scoop him up and tuck him into the pocket of my heart. My little boy.

On the couch, I sit with my legs up, Sprout on my chest, his fuzzy head pressed to my chin. I am smitten. Even in the moments when his crying makes me crazy I am smitten. I had no idea this would happen. This love. This wild contentment.

5 days:: due date

The late winter sun shines through the windows with tangible heat. It makes geometric patterns on the floor, shining through the slats of chairs and the mullions on the windows; it refracts through the glass jar on the table filled with fragrant eucalyptus and tiny purple flowers; it dapples the rumpled sheets where Sprout lies in the buff, his feet curled up behind him the way he was for so long in the womb.

On the couch, three loads of laundry, fresh from the dryer, a snarl of unfolded cotton. On the floor, the riff raff that has fallen off the logs stacked by the woodstove. People’s boots leave wet tracks by the door. This is a life. This is my life, now, these moments like light shining through a jar of amber syrup.

I try to let everything be. I try to let it all be despite the fact that it creates a turbulence in me: a voice whispering your life is out of control. Whose voice is this, yammering softly at the back of my head?

The morning is quiet, even with both boys at home today—a first. Bean goes out to play in the snow. I watch him from the window—lanky, even in his blue snowsuit. He carves a tunnel in a mound of icy snow, then drives a digger through. When he comes in, I foam milk and drizzle molasses over the top. He gulps it, all grins, his bare feet tucked up under him on the stool.

When I look in the mirror my eyes are pale blue. They get this way when I am tired. They are the color of the sky outside: a milky late winter sky awash with sun, snow thick on the ground but melting steadily in a staccato of drips from the eaves. Below the bird feeders this morning I encountered another set of eyes: a doe’s with soft brown fur. She stood, lured by the black sunflower seeds fallen to the ground. For her, the winter is long. For me, the nights are. Sprout nursed for an hour in the early morning, then fussed while the sun rose. Sleep became a fracture in the dawn. A hairline figment of what I'm used to, but here I am.

I watch her swivel her ears, then dart away, startled to see me behind the glass. In the mirror I startle too, getting used to a new silhouette, my stomach returning to its former shape, softness bulging where the firm hard curve of my belly was, swollen with Sprout. I hold him to my chest and already my mind can hardly slip backwards to the hours of his birth. How is it possible that this babe, this bundle of tiny limbs and sweet breath and little hiccuped sighs and porpoise whispers was in my belly just five short days ago.

Every night is still different, sleep sewn together in fragments, but it is peaceful. This baby boy is calmer than Bean, and I am calmer too. We navigate the nighttime softly, and in the morning I awaken feeling like a thousand piece puzzle shaken in a box, but I am somehow still contained. The nights don’t terrify me like they did in the early days with Bean.

It’s the small things that make the days whole. The extra effort to be tender towards each other even when we’re feeling fragmented and sharp. I reach for him in the dark; he pulls me to him at the bottom of the stairs, kisses me full on the mouth hard, and with unexpected passion, the baby between us. I come up behind him when he’s rinsing plates at the sink, press my belly into his back, wrap my arms around his muscles.

Now it is night. The house windows show us ourselves. The firelight is orange. Sprout fusses intermittently as DH walks him around the living room humming. Bean and I sit at the dining room table. He is drawing fireboats, talking as he does so, around him a sea of markers and snippeted papers.

A day. A life. This is us, right now.

3 days

Sprout is three days old. It is snowing outside, and has been all night long, and our house is tucked into a snug blanket of silence and whiteness.

He is beautiful, and when he smiles in his sleep his dimpled grin makes this tiny world of mine explode with sparklers.

I am delirious. The second night with him was rocky.

He cried for the first several hours of the night, uncomfortable, gassy, something—a squeal uniquely his own, like a baby dragon. There is a learning curve to all of this for both of us, even if it is the second time around, and it took half the night to figure out what he needed.

The tiredness didn’t hit until yesterday morning. Then it was massive. Tiredness in my bones, my muscles, my ligaments.

I have always wished that people would write about their first week home with a new babe, because it is such a fragile, isolating time. You wonder, invariably if anyone else goes through the same things: the stupendous heights of new baby love, and the rocky catapults to below low . I’ve always wondered what it is like for other people. I imagine, now that I am in the thick if it, it is not because they don’t intend to write, but because the tiredness takes hold of their fingers, and the moments become wrapped in a protective bubble of forgetfulness.

I don’t want to forget.

I want to write even though the tiredness feels like an animal in the room with me: large and soft and voracious. I want to write so that I can remember what these moments are like: new, and precarious, with snow falling in huge fat flakes outside.

I go to do something, the intention in my brain firing at normal speed; and then I arrive at the place where I intended to be and have no idea for a moment why I am there. I nearly put the half & half into the freezer this morning, having randomly picked it up while trying to get ice. It made me laugh out loud into the quiet of the house. This is the silly crazy of sleep deprivation that so up-ended me with Bean.

Sprout is asleep on the couch, tucked into a corner, dreaming, wearing a hat his big brother wore, and in it, the two look so the same.

I am sitting in my favorite place: the dining room, where windows go on three sides. It is here, in front of the windows, that I have hung bird feeders, and during snowstorms especially, the birds come steadily to peck and flutter, and for some reason this makes me unspeakably glad. The blue of the jay’s feathers is cobalt bright against the snow. The cardinal, so red. The finches, small flecks of yellow and brown, that arrive by the twos and threes to split sunflower seeds.

Birds in the snow, like the orchids blooming on the living room windowsill, fill me, even when I ache and am beyond tired.

Yesterday I was so tired I couldn’t sleep. The difference between doing this the first time around and doing it a second is that there is a resident four year old in the house who sounds like a herd of energetic hippos as he moves from room to room following his Daddy about as they do “projects.” Even when he is being quiet, he stirs the air around him like an oar dipped into the smooth surface of a pond. His little self eddies out and fills the space: exuberance, thundering feet, the sweet high music of his voice.

Yesterday all this noise made me startle over and over again so that I was neither awake nor deeply asleep, as I tried to nap in the morning. Some internal tuning shifts with giving birth, so that every noise filters into my brain differently. I am always on the alert for Sprout’s breathing, his slightest whimper, his smallest sigh. When I sleep next to him, I breathe in synch with his breath, and the rhythm of us breathing together is like the complex jazz score and anything else, any other sound, disrupts this and makes it harder to sleep.

It isn’t like I am just tired. Not like the tired you feel at two months or three months when the babe stubbornly won’t sleep and you wake up feeling like a hologram of yourself but you can still laugh. This is a different kind of tired that originates in my organs, my muscle tissue, my sore, sore body. Everything hurts. And where adrenaline made the first day and the second a soporific rush of moments; the trauma of labor catches up. My body is stunned.

Finally I asked DH to rally the in-laws to take Bean on an excursion yesterday, then handed him Sprout and toppled into a torpor-like sleep, my head buried under pillows to block any noise from filtering into my jagged-edged brain.

This is something we’re doing better: communicating what we both need. Making it about the needs, not about the emotions that bubble up, misguided and inaccurate.

It’s so easy to fall into a place of reaction when you’re this tired. When your mind rolls around like a marble in a jar it’s easy to misconstrue and point fingers and generally become a monster. I remember this from Bean. I remember how DH and I would crash into each other’s emotions in the night, become frustrated, snap, and it would leave us feeling both fragile and alarmed.

This time both of us expected the inevitable tears, the inability to make a decision, the tenderness, the enormous, fragile need for sleep. This time we talked about it ahead of time, earmarking patience for when the riptide of hormones began to yank me under.

And he has been amazing. Steadfast, tender. Sometimes he is distant, matter of fact, all muscle and action and I want to suck him in close as though I am a starfish extending the membrane of my heart around his heart.

But I also know that he is riding his own rollercoaster. The provider instinct in him is in overdrive now.

Today as he gets back from dropping off Bean off at his grandparents, the house is suddenly full with his noises: doors opening and shutting as he fetches an armload of wood; the clunk of his boots as he knocks snow off; the sound of metal on metal as he lifts the stove lid and adds wood; espresso being ground. His jaw is set. In his office, the charts are up on his monitors, graphing the volatility that is the stock market of late.

Outside the chimes that we hung on the lilac tree in summer make their metal music in the wind. Juncos and chickadees and nuthatches gather in its branches. I nurse Sprout, then bring him to the table and nestle him in a laundry basket next to me where he sleeps, his arms above his head.

I love him. I love him unimaginably, and feel almost surprised by this sweetness especially when Bean climbs into bed beside us and my love for him makes my heart flutter. Next to Sprout, his legs and arms seem remarkably large. He nuzzles in, nudging next to Sprout and me, our cheeks together in the first light of morning.

Bean already loves his brother. He has yet to show any jealousy, and instead has been full of tenderness and sweetness—running to get us diapers, asking a thousand questions, trying to memorize every contour of his brother’s face, every function of his small body. “I love you,” he said softly last night at dinner, perched on a chair next to me, looking down into his brother’s briefly open eyes.

Every day is different. A wonderment, a thousand sighs and tears and laughs.

He's here...

The little Sprout is here. Born at 10am on Friday. 7lbs 14oz, 20 inches.

I am currently attempting to remember the fine art of one-handed typing.

It makes everything so much easier to have already done this once. People probably told me this, but I somehow I didn't hear them. Things are so much easier this time.

DH and I both get all the little signals and whimpers and coos. Together, we're a rockstar baby-caring team this time around. We're not shattered by the urgent sound of newborn crying or the gas or the poop. We know things will be okay, and because we know this, everything seems so much more enjoyable. This is not to say I wasn't entirely shocked (and had forgotten completely) by the vast number of diapers a newborn produces in a day. Holy poop.

But also, the little guy seems to be remarkably mellow; perhaps because he got to hang out on my chest wrapped in warm towels for nearly an hour after he was born--before he was even weighed. Maybe all that snuggle time with mama made him a chill babe. That, and the fact that he weighed a good pound more than his brother at birth.

Labor itself was so much shorter--7 hours all told (compared with Bean's 24.) And even though the actual giving birth portion of the program hurt like hell (Worlds Greatest Understatement. No drugs.) I felt much less traumatized afterward, and we went home the same evening after being given the green light from the doctors.

(Perhaps more on that in a separate post. I am a little peeved at doctors right now. And I am totally convinced they are out convince women into thinking they are going to be incapable as mothers. The attending pediatrician asked, after conceding (unwillingly) that there was no reason we needed to stay at the hospital, if I had had any trouble breastfeeding last time because really, I should consider either spending the night at the hospital or picking up formula to supplement with on the way home, just in case I didn't produce enough milk. Um. Right.

With Bean I was scared shitless by all of this, and it totally made me doubt my instincts. With Sprout, I just shrugged. Tried hard not to roll my eyes. And of course he's been a champion nurser and the sweetest little peach. My boobs are the only ones who have forgotten what it was like to have a full time job. Ouch.

All in all I am smitten. He has a dimple when he sleep smiles in his right cheek, and eyelashes as long as Bean's were--but totally different eyes and nose. He smells yummy. And I'm not pregnant. And suddenly, food tastes divine. And Bean is the best big brother ever.

Small orbit

I want to write, but every time I sit down I feel my energy evaporate like moisture on hot pavement. Five months pregnant, and my orbit has grown small. Small so that it only encompasses my growing family. As small as the round circle of the milky white moon climbing rung by rung into to the heavens through the branches of the tree. As small as a dinner plate.

At the end of the day I curl up on the couch with a head full of daydreams. Suddenly I've been having images of paintings I want to create. The slightest whisps of glimmers for stories, like the first hint of smoke in the autumn air.

I am content to wait. Content to let making minestrone soup from scratch and cornbread muffins be enough accomplishment for the day.

Guess what?

It's a boy! I'm thrilled. I've always pictured myself being the mama of boys.

Exhibit A: Bean will clearly be the world's best brother.

Exhibit B: Indubitably boy. (His leg is tucked up under him. It's a direct crotch shot...which I thought twice about posting on the Internet, but then I thought about the 5 months of nausea and general malease he's caused and I felt perfectly fine with it.)

Gratuitous cute ultrasound pic: thumbs up!