Over and out

Are you still there?

Taking a hiatus from the land of Internet can do a girl wonders. A girl might discover that all those naptimes spent blogging and reading blogs could be turned into Writing Time, and thus, one might be compelled to start writing a short story for the first time since, well, one began blogging. (Said story might then be sabotaged by a baby who decides that, hey! Napping is for the birds, forcing one to seriously reconsider how to best use the remaining thirty minutes per day during which one is then allowed to SIT DOWN.)

One might gain a certain perspective that motivates one to STOP WRITING IN RIDICULOUS TENSES and return to good old first person.

Clearly, I am avoiding telling you the news: some time away from Internet combined with a significant decrease in the free time I can reasonably expect in a single day combined with some long-standing ambivalence about the virtues of blogging (in my specific case) has led me to the solid conclusion that, um, I’m quitting.

This might be forever. It might be for right now. Who can say? Whatever comes of it, I’m grateful to all of you who have read and commented and borne with my excessive writing pace and/or month-long silences, particularly in the past year. The entries and comments of the first few months after Lydia’s birth are particularly sweet to me, and I thank you so much for participating in/encouraging me through that bleary-eyed, beautiful, chaotic time.

Rest assured that I am still writing – I haven’t quit that – even if I only manage a paragraph or two before bed most nights. The frequency will probably diminish before it picks up again, I’m sure.

I’ll give you a quick glimpse of where we’re at right now before we part ways: the house is wonderful, spacious, full of people most days of the week. We put that big kitchen to work regularly, though the second bedroom is still serving as a storage closet, and we’re still marvelling in the complete gift this place has been. Every third night or so, I pinch Mitch and cry, “Hey, guess what! We’re eating dinner at the dinner table in the kitchen.” Such things, in our history of closet-sized kitchens, had been previously unheard of.

Lydia is more delightful every day, even if she decided a few months ago (somewhat ironically, given my previous post on her long naps) that naps should not exceed 30 minutes, ever. She is that rare, wonderful creature commonly referred to as A Happy Baby, the sort whose cranky days are mild enough that I feel wretched for complaining because I suspect that other mothers would either ridicule me for being a complete lightweight or stare at me in such a bitter, exhausted way that I would be forced, out of shame and respect, to desist. How this happened, I don’t know, but she’s a good egg. I think we’ll keep her.

Thank you, once more, for everything, O Faithful Readers.

Take care,

t

PS – Here’s one for the road.

Meanwhile, I will miss you

Again, we must move. Again, while moving, we must disconnect the Internet. This means a lull in posts and a lull in my reading of your posts, as we plan to give ourselves a bit of an “information break,” if you will, and take a few weeks off before hooking things up again. Finances play a big part in this decision, to be sure, but also – we’re in no hurry. A rest will be lovely. (And when we’re finally back on, I promise not to lie this time. I really will let you know.)

Meanwhile, please enjoy (what else?) some baby photos.

(Baby + Papa = boundless entertainment)

About those chocolate chip cookies

Remember those?

Well, they were good. Damn good. But, in my opinion, not worth all the brouhaha. Like Molly and Beck, I did not spring for the fancy chocolate discs, but I did use a combo of Valhrona dark chocolate bars (chopped) and dark chocolate chips that seemed to do the trick, while the sea salt on top was definitely a nice touch and one that I shall remember for all of my cookie-baking days. Delicious.

And, okay, I didn’t let them sit the full thirty-six hours because a) the potluck I needed them for happened sooner than thirty-six hours would allow, and b) I couldn’t keep my grubby little paws out of the cookie dough, but nevertheless, they did sit for a good eighteen hours and they were tasty. Very tasty. But not, you know, amazing.

Adios, Long Nap (for now)

Ha! Ha ha! Ha…ha, ha…ha.

Ha.

That would be my slightly manic laughter as I look back on this last weekend, which shall henceforth be referred to The Weekend of Fussiness, or The Weekend of the Diaper Rash. This is particularly ironic when we all remember my recent post about Lydia’s fabulous long naps.

This Weekend laughed at me and cried, “Naps? What naps?”

Until we discovered the source of Lydia’s discomfort (the aforementioned Diaper Rash), we all suffered the discomfort of a sad baby who cried and cried and would not nap and who therefore cried and cried in a feeble, exhausted and hurting way. Oh, my. It broke my heart. And also, my lower back, because I carried and rocked and bounced her all weekend, taking frequent breaks only to apply Butt Paste to any potentially offending patch of baby skin.

Mercifully, around seven o’clock last night, our sweet old Lydia began to make her reappearance, so this morning found the two of us giggling and laughing at our reflections in the hallway mirror and now finds me posting a blog entry at last while she (at last!) naps.

The butter is softening as we speak

The first two posts I read last night (from Orangette and Beck’s Kitchen Party blog) tested and reviewed this recipe, with varying degrees of favorable results. What are the chances of that? Obviously, I need to make these cookies right now.

Play, baby!

Suddenly, she finds herself with…free time?

Recently, our daughter discovered The Long Nap.

One evening a few weeks back, when we were handing our hitherto sweet and unfussy baby back and forth like a hot potato because she would not stop crying, Mitch had a revelation. “Maybe,” he suggested, “she’s just tired.”

Ding! The light bulb switched on.

Up to that point, if Lydia was tired, she just fell asleep, but as her world grew more vivid and interesting she began to suspect, I think, that we were throwing parties without her while she slept. We tend to encourage this suspicion by whispering to each other, as we swaddle her up and tote her off to bed, to “get out the party favors ’cause the baby’s going down for a nap!” (Poor kid.)

But really, somehow we ended up with this baby who sleeps for hours and hours, disregarding the heavy construction on our street and the creaky bedroom door to sleep soundly on. Once she made the transition from fifteen minute power naps, scattered throughout the day, Lydia converted to two or three mega-naps, which leaves me standing strangely in the middle of the living room, with my shirt all buttoned up and both hands free, looking around and wondering what to do with myself.

Nap? Put away laundry? Start a conga line with the cats?

After a baby this sweet and mellow, I’m almost scared to see how the next one turns out. (That, my friends, is as close as I get right now to considering “another one.”)

Second reunion in less than a month? Yes.

This afternoon, we basked in the shade at Lake Samish, fretting over misplaced sun hats and delicate toes and burp cloths. We compared diaper brands with four other couples and discussed breastfeeding (or not), sleeping (or not), and who takes a pacifier and who won’t and who never even bothered to try. We told our birth stories, in all their gory glory.

After five months, at last, the members of our childbirth class met for an informal reunion. Funny, how our numbers had swelled by a full third, just like that. Funny, to see women we’d only known at a very late stage in their pregnancy strangely slimmed down and beaming.

When we’d last met, we gave off an air of anticipation – the next time we met, we would all be parents! We would put those breathing patterns to work and shoot those babies right out, wouldn’t we? It would be difficult, delivering, but not that difficult, right?

After telling our stories – interrupting each other constantly with cries of “Me too! Only I didn’t…” or “But I did…” – I was struck by how we all seemed, well, seasoned by the upheaval of the last few months, how the anticipation had burst in one sticky moment and we all found ourselves up to our elbows in the work of caring for a newborn. Ah, the crash course of learning to latch properly and change diapers and soothe the unsoothable and swaddle one-handed and figure out every day who this tiny person is.

Having made it through the woods of the first month, we all emerged from our cocoons only to find that we’d sprouted wings of a lasting, if meek and brand new, kind. Now we can laugh about spit up, sit side by side on a park bench and nurse and buckle the kids into the car seats at the end of the day without wrestling with the straps too much.

Five months ago, this date seemed so far off, on the other side of a seemingly insurmountable wall. But we did it. We had our babies, we made it here. At last.

(Interesting side note: over half of us delivered by cesarean. What the heck is up with that?)

Two months today

On provision

If there’s one thing I’ve learned in this last year – aside from the fact that my belly can, in certain circumstances, double as a coffee table and that bras do, in fact, come in size F – it is that God always provides for us. Whether our needs are tangible or not, he has a beautiful way of handing us exactly what we need precisely when we need it most. Apartments, jobs, medical insurance, a healthy birth – all of these have been granted to us in the past year, even when they’d seemed unlikely, when they looked nothing like we’d expected.

He has never failed to come through for us.

Last Wednesday, a set of circumstances culminated in the disheartening news that we needed to move out of our apartment as quickly as possible. We had no leads on a new place, no idea where to start looking, and with a brand new baby we felt that we had quite enough on our plates without having to worry about packing and moving, thank you.

But.

I got off the phone with Mitch, having broken the bad news to him, and set off with Lydia in the stroller. Every week, she and I take a long, sunny, late afternoon walk to one of the neighborhoods where I grew up, passing by old trees and historic houses, to pick up our summer share from a local farm. As I walked, I mulled all this over, praying under my breath and heaving great, tired sighs.

In all my walk I saw just one “For Rent” sign. The sign had nothing on it but a phone number, and though the neighborhood alone put it quite outside our budget, I dialed the number anyway, just because I felt I ought to try.

Yesterday, I got the news that we’re moving in next month. The old market, converted into a funky house, is beautiful and perfect for us: two bedrooms, big windows, an enormous kitchen (by my stunted standards, of course), space for the cats, a small yard.

It arrived perfectly when we needed it. And it is strangely inside our budget.

Praise God.