air.

you've probably noticed that posts have gotten more sporadic around here.

that's because i don't really have any time whatsoever to do this blogging thing.  i used to do it as a sort of procrastinatory move.  but now when maggie is awake, and i'm on the laptop, the only thing she wants to do is pull up and grab at it. so, long thoughtful entries during the day are pretty much out.

and at night, i'm trying to do the work that i can't do during the day or i'm sitting on the couch wishing i had the wherewithal to do anything close to putting a dent in my to-do list.

i'm busy, i guess, is what i'm saying.

lots of stuff going on, lots of which i'd like to talk about/express, but none of which seems blog appropriate, which really tells me that i need to get back to journal writing but please see above situation about lack of time.

i'd like to know how to solve that because i'm feeling increasingly like the early years of my marriage and the early part of maggie's life is only really captured by fleeting facebook status messages--like the fact that maggie was imitating sounds the other day (or so it seemed) and so i said "can you say hi?" and she said "hi dad" and then said, a couple of minutes later, "dada YEAH." which was just hilarious. or the fact that tonight her daddy was tossing her up and around and she was doing the real laugh. not just the baby giggle. like a full on laugh of glee and pure joy. we were laughing too. it was awesome.

so those things seem to slip by me.

or the fact that i have realized something about myself: when i do not get quality sleep, i will break down.  and by break down i mean have some sort of sobfest about something that is just a bit too much to handle. maybe it's the workload. maybe it's maggie's tendency towards fighting naps. maybe it's the fact that i don't have any jeans that fit me. who knows? but it's not crazytown. it's exhaustion. do you know how instructive that is? huge. HUGE. big revelation there.

these are things that might be important to remember someday.

like the fact that our family motto has become "we're gonna make it." and it means so much and is so much deeper than it seems and i love it and sometimes we just say it to each other and some days i have a little internal scoffage like "i don't know how" and sometimes i'm just annoyed to hear it because heyman i'm wallowing here in the fact that i wake up multiple times a night and every dad in america is hardwired to sleep through babies crying but every single time it gets me thinking about the fact that hey. we will make it.  and we will make it together.

that's also good to record.

but in the meantime, i guess i'll just come up for air every once in a while to say "hey guess what happened?" and then i will go back to it because hundreds of papers aren't going to grade themselves and the longer i wait the more there are of them (did someone feed them after midnight? come on.).

but i will say this--i have made a halloween costume for my baby. that's a stinkin' victory right there.

sigh.

back to it. 

letters to my girl: month six and a half.

dear maggie,

i am two weeks late.

i am sort of glad, because these two weeks have been MONUMENTAL for you, and not a little bit so for me as well.

in the last two weeks, you turned a wormy scoot into a full-on crawl.
in the last two weeks, you decided you could do this sitting independently thing and have rocked it ever since.
in the last two weeks, you have learned how to sit up from crawling. next step, i assume, is sitting up from laying down. of course, i can barely do that, but i imagine your abs are significantly more impressive than mine.
in the last two weeks, most astonishingly, you have learned to pull up on furniture and anything stationary (including people!) and have taken your tentative first steps toward cruising along the furniture.

you are extraordinary. when you do something, you do it big.

you love to blow raspberries, try out consonant sounds, and smile all day long. you've started to giggle at me when i laugh at you. it's reciprocal and it's lovely.

you went to the park for the first time.  you LOVE the swings. today, when we played on a swing, you just giggled the whole time. you just seem to take such great joy in it. i so wish we had a yard so you could have your very own.

you are sitting in shopping carts now, beginning to get a little more at ease with strangers, interested in eating anything and everything, and absolutely loving books. 

you're working on more teeth.  you're waking up a lot more at night, sometimes having real trouble going back to sleep. you're eating solids like a champ, learning to turn the spoon over in your mouth to get the last bits of cereal and banana off of the spoon. i'm so impressed by that. 

so far, you really, really like peas, carrots, banana, oatmeal, butternut squash, sweet potatoes, and mango.  apples seem to not agree with you that much, though the jury's out on that.  green beans are not your favorite, but i think you might tolerate them with something else. 

at your new pediatrician, you impressed with great growth: you were 18 pounds, 6 ounces and something like 26.5-27 inches long.  90th percentile all around, and your little head was right on target as well. the doctor gave you a clean bill of health and called your weight great, which was happy for me to hear.

your naps are improving, though only sporadically.  you slept an hour and a half in your bed one morning--it was extraordinary. someday you're going to get those naps worked out. i'm so looking forward to that. i think it will happen for reals when you decide to go from 3 naps to 2.

i love you so much, baby girl. you are so much fun. i knew that you would be, but you really are.  you're learning and growing so quickly that i can hardly keep up. i like watching you grow though. it's like watching you blossom and bloom--it's a gift.  some days we have our moments, especially when you're fussy and i don't know why, but i am trying every day to take great joy in you.  it's not very difficult to do.

i can't wait to see you shine some more, mags.  you are wonderful and we are so grateful to have you.  you already are on your own track and on your own path, and i'm astonished and excited.  i can't imagine what the next month will bring.

love,
mommy.

i don't like mondays.

does someone know of some completely legal, completely moral way to earn tons of money without having to deal with work?

i'm thinking having a rich relative is really the only way, and by rich relative i mean someone who bequeaths you mass amounts of money. or publisher's clearing house. $5000 a week for the rest of my life would be just fine, thankyouverymuch.

i just have days sometimes when i want to quit all of my jobs and tell all of my students to shove it. 

this is one of those days.

oh how i wish i could just stay home with magpie and just...do that.  not have to do everything else related to my jobs.

BUT.

i am grateful that i can. in the long run, it makes life SO much easier (and so much less indebted). 

sigh. but today?

i'd like to pitch them all.

(but not really. so, you know, nobody fire me. because i really do like my jobs. i just don't like dealing with them sometimes.)

knitting.

there's a mellow kind of sadness that comes from realizing that one of the wounds that felt so fresh is now, ever-so-slowly, healing.

maggie had her first visit with her new pediatrician today. it's in the office where i went to see the lactation consultant about, oh, six months ago.  when we came in this morning, there were so many tiny babies there. some were there for two week checkups, but one was there to see the lactation consultant.  5 day old little boy and a mom probably really worried.

she said that he had lost 6 ounces. i told her that was fabulous.  "you must be doing something right!" i said.

i remembered so well that worry--that worry about whether or not you could provide what your baby needed.

not long after, as we were waiting in the room, i heard the lactation consultant weigh that same baby after feeding, just as she had done with me and maggie.  "a little more than an ounce," i heard her say with happiness in her voice.  "is that good?" the mom asked. "for five days? that's wonderful!"

and my heart hurt a little bit, at the same time as i silently cheered that mama.  when we were measured, it wasn't even an ounce.  it was less than a quarter of an ounce. it was not sustaining.

while i was sitting there, i took stock of how i felt. it wasn't the raw, vibrating, resonating pain of failure anymore. it wasn't even the "i should have kept going," though knowing what i do now, i might have made a different decision.  it wasn't the hot regret of what could have been.  it was just...experience.  it was realizing that the finger that you cut a few days ago no longer hurts when you use it. it's knitting together of what used to be separate.

i think i'll always feel that same sense of memory as we go to that same place, though i imagine those memories will begin to be overtaken by memories of maggie making friends with kids in the waiting room, charming nurses at the same time as she screams at them, shots and measurements that indicate tremendous, healthy growth.

it was interesting. it was odd. it was time, i suppose, to let it go a little bit more.

we did what we could. next time, we'll try to do it better.  but nothing we're doing now is anything but awesome for maggie.

and mommy's learning that more every day.