The First 100 Days

I'm doing it again, marking the close of this period in my life by declaring at every turn that "This is my last Tuesday morning of maternity leave!" and "This is my last Tuesday afternoon of maternity leave!" et cetera, much to the annoyance of all within earshot. I did it when I was pregnant, this obsessive obsessing over the passage of time, so why wouldn't I do it again now, right? It makes no difference, my awareness that clinging to the millions of little moments as they happen won't make them any more likely to stop, stay, and lie down at my feet like a pack of well-trained Yorkies. Nevertheless, I will try to collect them all, the Firsts and Lasts and Inbetweens, and then name and collar and kennel them in a crate next to my bed like a crazy old lady. Simply trying to write everything down is an imperfect substitute, but it's all I have, so thanks for paying audience to my neurosis.

So, my maternity leave hasn't been what I thought it would be--four glorious months of free time to organize the house and go for a daily jog and document every single second of my newborn's life--and although I have to call it a success based purely on the fact that my baby is still alive and thriving, I do wish I'd had more time to work on the creative projects I'd dreamt up way back when I was as delusional as I was pregnant. To wit: Some mommybloggers are fond of the monthly letter. FEH! I will write a daily letter! Or perhaps instead of sleeping while the baby sleeps (which I was never able to do anyway), I'll write letters during naptime. Yes, a quadridaily Letter to My Son! That I would post to mah blog for all to see! That wouldn't be annoying at all! Nor impossible! That is what I would do on my maternity leave, yes indeedy, in addition, of course, to cooking healthy family dinners each night and knitting an entire closet full of sweater vests and finally learning how to use iMovie such that I could craft poignant video vignettes of my life with Baby, at least one per month. Also, I would listen to foreign language tapes while breastfeeding so that not only I but Wombat as well would emerge from the experience fluent in French, albeit he with a minor Pavlovian drool reflex whenever he conjugates être. Man, maternity leave was going to be awesome! And productive!

Now that we're at the end and no letters to my son about his pastel, Gaussin-blurred babyhood have been posted here, you realize that my maternity leave has been a complete disappointment and FAIL on many accounts. It's been a true gift to be home and responsible for little more than the survival of a brand new human being--no small feat, to be sure--but there are so many other things I wish I'd done, in part to have done them for their own sake, but in part also because that would mean I hadn't watched quite so much HGTV, and reruns at that. Ah well. Bygones.

I've touched on it a little here how easy the actual taking-care-of-the-baby part has turned out to be (he sleeps nine hours in a row at night, people) and that the hardest part of motherhood has been trying to accomplish anything other than simply taking care of the baby. The paperwork snafus alone are mortifying. There was time we got several hundred dollars of vaccines for Wombat only to realize that we had an inaccurate insurance card and would likely be billed for them directly. And then there was the time a bank error made it look like we hadn't paid our mortgage for three months, which then led to our receiving three weeks of twice-daily calls from the repo man, one Intent to Foreclose notice, and one instance of PANTS-SHITTING PANIC.

(A short play:
Moustache-twirler: "You must pay the mortgage!"
Us: "We did pay the mortgage!"
Moustache-twirler: "You must pay the mortgage!"
Us: "We DID pay the mortgage!")

And now, here we are, three months later and without a single Letter to My Son or a poignant video vignette or any greater knowledge of French vocabulary, although THANK GOD also not without a roof over our heads. I go back to work next Tuesday and so officially dashed are my hopes of multidaily letters or producing that full-length feature film of my son's infancy, but eh, what can you do? Becoming a parent for me has meant learning that sometimes I just have to do what I can when I can as best I can.

And so with that I give you this, a missive on the first 100 days with Wombat, all freestyle and willy-nilly and past-due and cockeyed (and in those attributes alone a testament to our first 100 days if there ever was one).

Ahem.

Dear Son,

First things first: Don't ever have sex in March. You might think a Christmas baby would be the Best! Gift! Evar! but you would be wrong. Unless of course you inherited your father's laissez-faire instead of my crrraaaaaazzzeeee, in which case go for it, have all the sex you want, don't mind me, I'll just be over here trying to plan a birthday party that can trump Jesus'. Just don't say I didn't warn you.

I hope you will take my advice on some things, though. Even though you're only three months old, you're so positively brilliant that I'm already worried (see: crrraaaaaazzzzeeee) that you're going to be too smart for me to handle. Once your introduction to solid foods has rendered me useless I hope we can at least still be friends. Maybe you could let me look over your shoulder while you're practicing long division next month?

When you're not being brilliant (e.g., standing, singing, hitting stuff with your hand), you're almost surelygathering information with which to be brilliant later on. You're fascinated with lights and can stare at the one above our bed with such studied intensity that mom and dad can steal another forty minutes of glorious, life-affirming sleep, and for that we thank you. You also love watching lights and trees through the car's sunroof, which again affords mom and dad some much deserved peace and quiet, at least as long as the lights and trees are moving. Heaven forbid the car stops for more than a few seconds, like for a stop sign or a pack of Scouts helping an elderly woman at a crosswalk. You have no time for that nonsense and you get angry, real angry (read: LOUD) because WHY AREN'T MY TREES AND LIGHTS MOVING, and I'm sorry but it's called the law, dude, so just get used to it and please pipe down.

Even though some of your habits are annoying (see above re: ear-splitting displeasure at every red light), your father and I are still 98 percent amused by everything you do, especially the things that give us a peek into your personality. You're a daredevil in the bouncer, a scientist in the exersaucer, and a strongman in the Bumbo. (Note: Bumbos are for sitting, not for standing, young man, so you can stop arching your back and straightening your legs and trying to outwit your container this instant because it's not going to work.)

But when the cruel forces that be (ol' Ma and Pa) are tired of helping you balance on your feet, thank goodness there's something to distract you from the injustice. You have a box full of fancy hand-me-down toys, and your favorites are the ones that crinkle. There's Crinkle Cat and Crinkle Duck and, this week's favorite, Crinklepillar, who has dozens of fuzzy legs you can tug and gum to your heart's content.

Speaking of which, are you teething or something because my god, the drool! If you are teething, I'm sure I'll be the first to know it, considering you will suck or bite (HARD) anything put near your mouth so long as it is human flesh (usually mine). You still don't understand the bottle or the binkie or what the big fuss is anyway because Mommy will always be there for you right? RIGHT? and I hate to break it to you, kid, but those days are numbered so you'd best be learning to love on some sweet BPA-free plastic lest you go hungry.

Yes, soon Mommy will be back at work and you'll have to spend a few days each week sucking the dreaded bottle while in the unholy confines of Daddy, also known as your FAVORITE PERSON IN THE WHOLE WIDE WORLD!!!!111!!!1!! He claims you get excited about him not because you love him more than you love me but because he's novel, but I think it's more than that. I sometimes wish you'd get a little more worked up whenever I entered a room, but in truth I can't really blame you for loving Dad like you do. I totally get it.

There's one thing I do, however, that always manages to earn a smile from you, and it's my favorite part of every day. When you wake up from a nap and I hear you in your room squawking, I can't wait to see you again, so I run to your doorway and poke my head through the jamb and call your name until you look my way, and then I sweep in, arms outstretched, to release you from your swaddle so you can work it aaaaalll out, your arms above your head and your butt sticking out like a little knob. Your eyes are all sparkly and your complexion is a delicious shade of peaches and cream, and when I pick you up and pull back the curtain to show you the sun and the birds and the backyard, where the yellow roses are blooming just outside your window, I say "Welcome back to the world!" and it thrills me that you always look so happy to be in it.

And we're, of course, overjoyed to have you here with us. Yesterday I was in the dining room on the laptop while your dad was in the living room playing guitar and when we heard you quacking from your crib, we literally raced each other to your room and bruised our hips as we tried to fit through the bedroom door simultaneously because we each wanted to be the first to see you. On the other hand, there are times we're praying for your swift descent into Dreamland because golly do we need a break, but know this: that even after the longest, hardest, loudest days, it's never long until we miss you again and are spying into your crib via monitor or else cooing over the day's photos as they download.

Of the three of us, however, you are the best coo-er of them all. You coo, grunt, gurgle, snort, babble, burble, and squeal. Your latest noise is a high-pitched, close-mouthed prolonged squeak that sounds like a transistor radio tuning into an AM station. "Tune in Tokyo," your dad says and tweaks your tiny nipples. You'll understand that when you're older.

You also laugh easy and often, and when you do we can't help but laugh back at you. One of the first sounds you heard when you were born was both your parents laughing and crying at the same time, and the fact that you do this too is how we know for sure you're ours. That and the pointy eyebrows and pointy chin and notched ears and wonky fingernail, not to mention the full-color video footage of your grand exit/entrance. (You'll want to avoid that when you're older.)

Lastly, one of the most charming things you do is something I hope you never stop doing, not when you're two or ten or twenty or one hundred years old. When we hold you up to a mirror, you smile at yourself, sometimes with a big goofy open-mouthed grin and sometimes with a shy smirk, but always with an expression that says, "Hey, you! I like you!" There are a lot of things your father and I enjoy that we hope you'll enjoy too--movies, bike riding, vegetables fresh from the garden--but at the very top of the list of things we love is you, and that's also the thing we want you to learn to love most of all. We hope you always like you because we know without a doubt that we always will.

Thanks for being such a good baby. We love you, kid.

Three days old

wrote Leah at 1:24 PM | Comments (33)