Updates
I wrote up a little thing about her birthday:
And Nikola finally has his own site! Check it out: Nikola's site
Of course.
(File under: daily tiny catastrophes & major miracles*)
It is late morning. The older kids are watching TV, the little one is sleeping (finally). Nature calls and you realize it's an opportune moment to disappear in your bathroom for a while. Of course as soon as you are in the middle of things, the phone rings in the adjacent room, in which - of course - the baby is sleeping (after about 45 minutes of nursing, rocking and nudging). You rush out to grab the phone (note to self: must remember to bring phone to bathroom at all times!) and of course it's a wrong-number-call. You have the usual conversation ("What number did you call? Ah. Yes, it's not SEVEN something something, it's FOUR something something") in your bathroom with your pants down. You hang up and relieved try to resume operations when of course the younger child barges in (love that!) holding his crotch: "Pee pee, mama!" You undress him and have him pee right there in your bathroom, because of course you can't risk walking him back to his bathroom while the baby is still sleeping . You send him out with a threatening admonition to BE QUIET and NOT TALK because the BABY IS SLEEPING. You close the bathroom door confident that you will now finally finish what you started, when of course you hear a loud conversation taking place outside the door. You open the door and of course there is the older child naked from the waist down asking for new underwear ("What happened to your other underwear?" Silence. "Did you pee yourself?!" Nods.) and of course she is all out of clean underwear because of course you have failed to fold the last pile of laundry in time because yesterday when you were trying to do it someone of course came/called/screamed/fell/peed/woke up and...
* baby did not wake up!
Maternal Bliss. It exists.
How I love to look at this baby boy sleeping! The chunky cheeks, the tiny hands across the chest or above his head, the legs finally still. I just want to squeeze him or eat him up or something.. something has to be done, what else to do with my feelings?
I've slept in the same bed with all my babies and while it's often exhausting, I've come to love it more with every one of them. I think right now it's my favorite thing to do with Nikola. He is a solid sleeper, so that helps. Every night when I curl up around him I fall asleep thinking how perfect this is and how privileged I am. His delicious baby smell surrounds us as I listen to him breathing with those typical fast paced baby-sighs. He lies there completely relaxed, stretching occasionally, utterly confident that everything around him is ok. Usually at those times I also have to fight an avalanche of what-if-type thoughts. His obvious trust puts all the darkness of the world on my back. I can spend a long time thinking how to preserve this innocence, how to somehow make sure nothing bad will ever happen. It's not rational, but still somehow, I must...
Fortunately most of the time sleep saves me from trying to come up with a universal solution for suffering. Other times I end up trying to discipline myself from letting fear overwhelm me. Maybe for the time being I should rather let his peaceful trust take over me instead of making myself believe that I can keep the sky from falling. When you sleep with a baby it's hard not to believe that in the end we will all live happily ever after.
Posted at 10:23 AM on August 01, 2008 | Comments (1)