In The Darkness (repost)

If there was ever a morning when a person was justified in recycling old content, this would be it: up with kids four times between 10p.m. and 4 a.m., and never really getting back to sleep, yet too tired to get out of bed.

It seems fitting, then, that this morning I look back to a time almost two years ago, when I was newly pregnant with Nicholas, and unwrap the gift of the two children who, these days, are depriving me of my sleep.

***

“For you, darkness itself is not dark, and night shines as the day.”
—Ps. 139: 12

It’s been on my mind, but I didn’t realize just how terrified I was of losing this baby until I had waited an hour and a half past my appointment time last Friday. It was an unusual backlog, even for a doctor who takes his time with patients and never makes them feel that he’s in a hurry. I wasn’t upset over the delay, but after reading 150 pages of very non-life-giving nonfiction, I tossed the book aside and lay back on the examining table to pray.

When the doctor came in a minute later, I was already on the verge of tears. He pulled out the Doppler with the warning that it’s sometimes hard to find a 10-week-old baby’s heartbeat. And indeed, the only heartbeat we heard, a whisper of a pulse, was mine. I knew that because it was far too slow to be a baby’s.

“Let’s move you down the hall and get an ultrasound,” he said.

Soon, I was prone in the darkness with the wand pressed against my skin, and the fuzzy, silent image appeared. The baby was wiggling…not the trembling, uncontrolled movement that I remember from early ultrasounds, but the measured, deliberate kicking of hands and feet. The baby stretched its back and pointed its tiny nose up in the air. And in the center of the image was a little shimmer of gray, like stardust caught in a single point in space and time, struggling to escape. It was that moment when I fell in love with the child nestled beneath my heart…a child I can see only in shadows and obscurity.

Later that night, back at home, with Julianna cradled in my arms in the darkness, I gazed into her gleaming eyes and hummed a lullaby. I am as familiar with the contours of her face as I am with my own, but in that dimness her features were blurred and indistinct, like those of her unknown sibling. In the dark places of the world, we are known only by the one for whom darkness is light. May God bless my child of shadows, and bring him or her into the light.

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Moms’ 30-Minute Blog Challenge

Published in: on April 20, 2010 at 5:40 am  Comments (6)  
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Partners In Crime

My baby is definitely not a hurried child. No, Nicholas is milking his babyhood for all it’s worth. At 11 months and 20 days, he has one tooth and crawls on all fours…unless he’s in a hurry, in which case he still thinks army crawling is the fastest way to get around.

He’s little enough (meaning he’s still nursing) that I still have to take him with me when I’m gone for long periods of time. A couple of weeks ago, that meant that he got some extra face time with Grandma in Jeff City when I had a meeting about the Children’s Therapy Act.

Too bad nobody loves me!

After three years of fighting for every milestone, as we do with Julianna, it’s a neverending source of awe for me when things just happen. They may be later than they were with my firstborn, but still, they happen. Nonchalantly. No fuss. Just, “Oh, I think today I’ll fold my hands when I hear you say, ‘It’s time to pray.’” Just, “Oh, I think I’ll start cruising the furniture today.”

Not so many months ago, the sight of his big sister was enough to make Nicholas scream in sheer terror. He still screams at her (and at his brother), but only when they’re lavishing an excess of love on him. He likes his personal space. At all other times, he thinks his big siblings are the coolest thing ever—and clearly, put on the earth to be his personal stand-up comedians.

In Julianna’s case, the feeling is mutual. It’s so funny to see how she tries to hold him like a baby, treat him like a baby, when he’s well on his way to being bigger than she is.

And I, as Mommy, stand off to the side and marvel. Because you see, as Nicholas catches up to Julianna developmentally, I get to watch two of my children make the same milestones at the same time. Right now, they are both high-jumping into a new plane of language comprehension. Julianna is learning to respond to instructions: put this in the trash, please, and carry your plate to the table. Nicholas isn’t at that level, but he, too, abruptly began showing his ability to process and respond to commands. As in, Nicholas, no touch!

In fact, in some ways Nicholas is already ahead of Julianna in speech issues. He experiments with far, far more sounds than she does, and says them far more regularly. Of course, in other ways she’s ahead of him—in deliberate imitation (everything comes out “muh” whether it’s supposed to be boo or ball or moon or mom or dog or dad, but she’s trying) and in responding to yes or no questions and making choices. This “he’s ahead-she’s ahead” dynamic means that they are incredibly well-matched right now. I am planning a scrapbook page called “Partners in Crime.” Here’s a preview.

Who, us? Pull books down? Never! It must have been that evil Big Brother.

Rattling the cage

Visit Tuesdays Unwrapped for more beauty in the ordinary.

Published in: on March 9, 2010 at 8:14 am  Comments (5)  
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Spreading Their Wings

 

It’s been a while since I took the kids to the Mall. What with Alex’s school and Julianna’s school, we haven’t had the time. So this week, when we landed at Kidz Court, I couldn’t even concentrate on doing any writing—it was too mesmerizing to watch them play on the soft oversized sport-themed play equipment.

It was Nicholas’s first time at the play area since he became mobile. He cruised along the benches; he tried hard to repeat his newest skill at home—namely, climbing up on the first stair of anything and stranding himself there—but all the first levels were too tall for his chubby little legs.

For the first time…um, in her entire life, I think…Julianna responded to my instructions. She hovered, trembling with energy, at the entrance to the play area, poised to vault out into the Mall proper. “Julianna!” I said sternly. “Julianna Basi!” She looked over her shoulder and grinned at me. “Come here. Now.” And giggling, she came tearing over to give me a hug. She climbed the slide stairs and went down all on her own. Multiple times. And when she got confused how to get back to the top of the slide, I told her, “Go around the basketball, Julianna.” And she did it. (Remember what I said about the smallest victories being so big?)

And Alex worked up the nerve to jump from the tennis shoe to the soccer ball, one of which is taller than he is. Always before, he has asked for my help. To see him achieving a new level of independence is very gratifying.

Altogether, the hour at Kidz Court served as a reminder to me that at every moment, they are growing, even though sometimes they seem frozen at a helpless, needy stage. It’s a reminder I really needed.

Published in: on February 25, 2010 at 8:43 am  Comments (1)  
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Repost Saturday: Baby Magic

In the two weeks before Nicholas was born, I wrote a post that was nothing but links to “my favorite posts.” My plan was to publish it to keep y’all reading while I was in the hospital. But you know me, I have a lot to say. So much to say. So little time. It’s been 10 1/2 months now, and that sucker is still sitting in my “drafts” section.

So I’ve come up with a new plan. On Saturdays, I’m going to re-post my favorites. One by one. Today I begin with a post I wrote on May 27th, 2009, when Nicholas was just two months old.

***

They say there’s no such thing as magic, but they’re wrong.

There’s microscopic magic, in the way two cells suddenly, miraculously, become one. The way that those cells gobble up invisible energy to specialize and mature and grow, until suddenly, something that began as a single cell, made up of two, has developed doe eyes and Daddy’s ears and Mommy’s nose and Great-great Grandpa’s chin.

There’s pixie magic, the way that a baby can be the spitting image of Grandpa one minute, and of Cousin on the other side of the family the next. There’s buttermilk magic when, after weeks of hearing how your baby looks like his brother, his dad, his cousin—anyone from the opposite side of the family—the nurse at the hospital gasps, “Oh, my goodness, he looks just like you!”

There’s morning rainbow magic, the first smile. The first ten or twelve or eighteen…dozen smiles, as a matter of fact. So unexpected, so fleeting, a flash of sunlight on a cloudy day.

There’s Astrophysical magic. Put a baby on the floor, and he instantaneously consubstantiates into a Baby Black Hole. You can almost hear the “slurp” as every child in the vicinity skitters helplessly toward the event horizon.

There’s sensual magic, the body-wide thrill of brushing a baby’s hip, impossibly soft—softer than velvet, smoother than silk, a conglomeration of clichés that can’t even come close to expressing the sensation. And the sensation of holding a baby against the chest—the way your breath hopscotches in response to the weight of a warm head nuzzling beneath your chin. And as he calms, you calm. Magic. No doubt about it.

There’s visceral magic, the way that clerks at the party store drop what they’re doing and coo and stare with longing at a baby, even as they try to pretend that all they want is to cuddle someone else’s child, and not to have their own. The dread of three a.m. feedings can’t hope to compete with nature, with the built-in longing to hold, nurture, and love.

There’s divine magic, the way a baby transforms a man into a father, and a woman into a mother. The way his mere existence makes them better people.

Holy magic. Baby magic. Powerful. Unstoppable. And in every generation, our hope for the future

Published in: on January 30, 2010 at 8:06 am  Comments (2)  
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The Unexpected Moment

Motherhood Moments

At 8:15 p.m., I was sitting in a hard metal folding chair in the parish hall. I didn’t feel good. Christian didn’t feel good. Nicholas didn’t feel good, and was past his bedtime. He was wiggling on my lap, desperate to nurse and go to sleep. The choir members were flipping through their hymnals. And Christian, as Christian does when he’s not focused, was noodling on the piano. Playing “One Bread, One Body” in ¾ time. “Okay, folks,” he said, “let’s do this.”

“Hon,” I said, “you’re playing it in three.”

“Oh.” He switched styles.

“You’re still playing in three,” I said…and then, I heard it. Not in three, but in compound meter; he had switched the underlying beat to triplets. “One Bread, One Body” in 6/8? I traded glances with one of our altos, a music teacher, and knew she had heard it too. Christian was onto something. What he was doing worked.

It’s amazing how the slightest change in something well-worn and familiar makes it seem like it’s still wet on the page. Ten voices raised to God…two percussive instruments providing form and shape to sung prayer…

I raised my sleepy baby up over my head and looked up at him, singing. He rewarded me with a big, adorable grin. And in that moment, I felt God within me, beside me…all around me.

And we, though many throughout the earth,
We are one body in this one Lord.

Published in: on January 14, 2010 at 6:17 am  Comments (3)  
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Ah, Nicholas

Motherhood Moments
Ah, Nicholas. You wake up in the night for reasons I can’t uncover; you think naps are for the weak-minded; you know the world will end if I walk to the far side of the counter; you ration your colon so that we have five small dirty diapers a day. And yet, all it takes is this…

You heartbreaker, you

And my heart has no choice but to melt, baby boy. Resistance is futile. You are mine, and I am yours. And oh, my precious child, how I thank God for you.

Published in: on December 10, 2009 at 6:15 am  Comments (1)  
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WFMW: Sleeping Through the Night is a Myth

Once again, my baby is proving to me that sleeping through the night is a myth. Some families may get lucky, but by and large, if your kid sleeps through the night, you’d better enjoy it while you can, because it’s not going to last. And “whatever you do, don’t, under any circumstances…” TALK ABOUT IT!

On Monday night, Christian climbed into bed and said, “Hey, Nicholas hasn’t been up at night in a while, has he?”

I pinched my lips shut and said, “Umm…I’m not answering that.”

But the damage was done. That night it was three wakings. I patted him briefly the first two and ignored him the third, and he whimpered and fussed softly until he went back to sleep.

And then there was last night. At 1:20 a.m. he woke up shrieking. I got him out of bed, because he’d fallen on his head earlier in the evening and I was a little freaked out. So he got a pass that time, and snuggled back to sleep on Mommy’s chest.

At 2:40a.m. he was up again. And this time, he was up to stay. I patted him, but that had no effect, and Julianna began waking up. So I took him into our closet, where we have a blanket spread on the floor for this very purpose, and went back to bed to wait until his outrage spent itself. (This sounds terrible, but our closet is HUGE, and I always make sure there’s light in there.) Trouble is, in the last week, he’s really started army crawling with a purpose. So next thing I knew, his voice was getting louder as he scooted his way toward the open door of the bathroom.

Christian changed his diaper, took him downstairs and fed him some yogurt, then tried to rock him to sleep. No luck.

Christian put him in the guest bedroom in the basement so his crying wouldn’t wake the other two kids, and I took over. Shortly, Nicholas’s voice began fading, and I realized he was crawling into the guest room closet. Now, that closet is a catch-all storage space, and particularly in this season of boxes coming in and out, the stacking job is precarious. So I went to rescue him, and we snuggled up together on the spare bed until he went to sleep. Then I took him back to his crib…and off he went again.

By now I was aware that there had been far too much intervention. So I put him in the closet again, and Christian and I laid awake listening to him pull himself around the room, until finally, he subsided into intermittent gripes, and then, sleep.

That was shortly before 5 a.m.

So much for getting up at 5:30 to write.

It seems clear that some other solution is necessary. We can’t just close the door and ignore him, because Julianna is in that bedroom, too. But moving Nicholas doesn’t seem to be working—especially since he is no longer a stationary baby. So tonight, we are going to bring the sleeping bag into our room, and when Nicholas gets up, we’ll bring Julianna in to sleep. Nicholas will just have to stay in his crib, and learn to deal with it, the same as his big brother and big sister did.

Perhaps I’m fudging by posting this for WFMW, since we haven’t tried it yet…but so be it. Will this work for me? Stay tuned for the next episode of….PARENTING MYTHBUSTERS…

Published in: on December 9, 2009 at 10:32 am  Comments (5)  
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Cookie Monster

The house smells like gingerbread this morning, which I suppose makes the seven hours spent in the kitchen yesterday worthwhile: 1 ½-batch of gingerbread, double batch of sugar cookies, single batches of chocolate cutouts and peanut butter ball filling…three loaves of bread…and a chicken and rice casserole.

We were cookie monsters yesterday. Nicholas spent a good part of yesterday sitting in his high chair, staring openmouthed at the bustle in the heart of the home. Julianna “helped” me make the chocolate cookies and the peanut butter balls…I use the term loosely because the second batch took three times as long as it should have, because every time I turned away to get another ingredient, she dove for the batter. She turned on the mixer while the spatula was in the bowl; she picked up the spatula and flung runny peanut butter all over the kitchen…

Definitely a cookie monster!

We resemble cookie monster in another way, too. It seems that Cookie Monster is always hanging around when Ernie is trying to teach a letter. Well, it’s a turning point time in speech/language/reading in our house, too. A couple of weeks ago, we decided that Julianna had her first “proto-word”—mmmm, as in “moon.” But it’s been scattered and hard to get her to do it. Last Thursday during speech therapy, she suddenly made a breakthrough. “Say ‘mmmmmmma,’ Chris said, and Julianna puckered her lips and said, “MmmmmmmAH.” The world went crazy for a few minutes, and then Chris said, “Can you go give that spoon to Mmmmmma?”

Even now, five days later, it’s only half connected in her brain, but this is the first deliberate imitation Julianna has done, and that is a huge step forward in terms of my almost-three-year-old learning to talk.

Meanwhile, Nicholas has good receptive language—he’s been responding to “kiss Mommy” for a couple of months already—but yesterday he had his own breakthrough. I was cutting up grapes for him, and when he finished the first bunch, he started fussing. I turned around and said, “Do you want more?” I took his hands and hand-over-handed him through the sign, and his face absolutely lit up. He finished his second bunch, and I said again, “Do you want more?” He giggled and grinned at the word, and as soon as I touched his hands, he balled them into fists. Yessssss! We really do think that Nicholas talking may be the spur Julianna needs to get talking.

This hasn’t been my most organized post, but I hope I can make it up to you by sharing a couple of seriously cute pictures. Nicholas is a bad napper, and he got up just as I was taking my only baking break to work on writing, so I put him on the floor. A few minutes later, I realized that Alex was beside him looking at the “Killer Dinosaurs” book. “This is the scariest monster of all!” he was telling his baby brother very seriously. “It has the sharpest teeth. You don’t want to get around this monster or his brothers!”

"This is a scary monster. He can run really fast and eat you..."

"My big brother is SOOOO interesting!"

This post is linked with Tuesdays Unwrapped at chattingatthe sky.com, where you can find more stories of the beautiful in the ordinary.

Published in: on December 8, 2009 at 6:39 am  Comments (8)  
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The Strike Is O’er

Hallelu–jah, Hallelu–jah, Hallelu–jah!

In the early morning gloom, I sat in my nursing chair beside the window and said a prayer before gently, oh so gently, drawing Nicholas down into nursing position. When he opened his mouth and began to nurse, I almost cried. Six squares of dawn crept up the wall, brightening from rose to copper to molten gold, and my baby held tight to the breast, drawing peace and comfort from the touch of skin to skin. And I, too, drew comfort from that touch…afraid to move, for fear of shattering a fragile moment.

I never really appreciated nursing as  the gift it is to me. I rear up like a mother bear in its defense; I deliver impassioned orations on the subject… But until a few days ago, the full import never sank in. Not until Friday afternoon, when Nicholas saw me coming and arched his back, screamed, and pushed me away. And repeated the performance at 7:30 p.m. And at 9:30. And in the middle of the night. And Saturday morning, and noon, and afternoon, and evening, and all day Sunday. But long before then, I knew what was going on. It’s called a nursing strike. I knew it from reading Dr. Sears, and it was a textbook case: “They’re not very happy about the situation, but nevertheless they refuse to nurse.”

From Friday evening to Sunday night, I pumped every drop of precious milk and fed it to him in cups. Pumping is not a life-giving activity. Actually, it is for the baby. For Mommy…no. It takes twice as long for electricity and mechanics to draw out the milk as Baby does, and in the meantime, instead of cuddles and soft skin to hold, I had hard plastic, and a baby sitting in front of me screaming, desperate to be held. I called lactation consultants and friends, my mom and my sister, seeking advice. I found myself staring down the next four months, going, What if he weans himself? Am I going to have to spend this extra time every day for the next four months, pumping, and then turning around and having to feed it by cup? I don’t think I can do this!

Plus, there was the emotional toll. I knew he had an ear infection, and it probably hurt him to suck. I didn’t feel rejected…but I felt bereft. I have come to take that cuddle time for granted…to wish it away in pursuit of other activities. But now, as I held him against me, as I felt him growing more and more clingy by the hour, until I felt that I was being strangled by it…as he demanded the reassurance of closeness to Mommy while simultaneously refusing the best comfort Mommy has to offer…

Let’s just say it was a rough few days. There were some expletives. Some tantrums (the adult variety). Not my best days as Mommy. Or wife. Or human being, for that matter.

And so today, two days before Thanksgiving, I am so thankful. The strike is over. Hallelujah!

Note: for other thankful moments in the everyday, see “Tuesdays Unwrapped” at ChattingattheSky.com.

Published in: on November 24, 2009 at 8:54 am  Comments (8)  
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Roly Poly and the Slinky

There’s no doubt about it: in the “Love Languages,” my primary language is “physical touch.” At least, where my kids are concerned. Ever since Alex was born, I’ve been a mommy who craves skin contact…kisses, chews, hugs, wrestling, and horseplay. I have lots of little games I play/ed with each child in turn. Like singing “I’ve Been Working on the Railroad” while moving their arms in and out, up and down. It looks ridiculous, but the kids love it.

You can’t plan the moment when the time is right to introduce the next game; it just happens one day. Yesterday morning, I was sitting with Nicholas on my lap before church, trading googly giggles with him, with his hands wrapped around my thumbs. And suddenly, without thinking, I tipped him backwards over my knees. As he hung there upside down, his big gummy smile said it all.

It’s so funny to see the difference between Nicholas and Julianna, who’s still small enough for this game. Nicholas is such a roly poly. He curls up into a little ball that rolls, Pilates style, but doesn’t unfold. So when he tips over, his little feet go straight up in the air, and his whole body holds a sitting position all the way down. Julianna, on the other hand, our little contortionist—the girl who bends in half, who frequently sleeps with one leg straight up in the air—Julianna arches her back as she goes down, and nearly reaches 90 degrees with her legs still wrapped around my waist. She’s like a human Slinky.

I hate pretend play, but I love those physical games. Those are the moments when I feel most connected to my children—the moments when I feel like a mother, instead of just a caregiver. But best of all is watching the way the other two react when I start playing with Nicholas. They crowd around, one on either side of us, grinning ear to ear as they watch their baby brother’s initiation into the club. I chew on Nicholas’s cheek, blow raspberries into his neck, and as he guffaws, Alex barrels his way in between us, yelling “My baby!” Then, gritting his teeth in a perfect imitation of Mommy, he yells at the top of his formidable lungs, “NICHO-WUS, YOU ARE SOOOOOOO CUTE!”

As a bonus today, how about some pictures? While I went to a birthday party with Alex last night, Christian decided to multitask. As in, bathe the baby while doing dishes.

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Ooh, it's a hot tub!

"Just whistle while you work..." (at cleaning out the pan Mommy made your rice cereal in...)

100_5365

"I'm forever blowing bubbles..." (though you can't see them very well in this picture!

Published in: on November 16, 2009 at 8:28 am  Comments (2)  
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