What happens when you take an American girl, give her a Canadian husband, a dual-citizen daughter, two Mexican dogs and a German car? Anything goes when it's A Very Good Year!
This weekend, it was unseasonably warm outside (this has been an ‘unseasonable’ winter, really… only one snowstorm!) and so Chris and I bundled up Maia, put the dogs on their leashes, and headed out to the nearest park. Last time she went to the park, she was hardly crawling — things have changed!
We were all so ecstatic to be outside that it was almost laughable. The dogs ran in circles as if they were trying to wear themselves out.
I was most excited about getting Maia back into a swing, because she kind of loves them.
The best thing about the swingset was her giggling and ESPECIALLY her little kicky feet:
I also made Chris get a picture of Maia and I together because honestly, we just don’t have enough of those.
I can’t wait for real spring and summer to get here. We are going to have a blast together!
“You’re much more shy than I expected,” she says, regarding me, “I thought you’d be way louder from your tweets and blog posts.”
I feel my cheeks heat up, and I force myself both to smile and to continue meeting her gaze. “Yeah, I am,” I reply. What the hell else am I supposed to say? I am deeply, almost comically, shy. Particularly in a situation like this, where I am judging myself constantly against women who are supposedly (superficially?) my “peers” — but they’re not. Sure, we’re all moms. Sure, we’re all members of a certain website. But they’re infinitely more put-together, successful, and confident than I am.
I make small talk — wracking my brain for things to say — with her for a few minutes before, blessedly, the waiters start to deliver dinner to everyone and I excuse myself. I’ve ordered a steak — the first time I’ve ordered a steak in many years, since I’ve just begun to eat beef again — but there’s no one to share this fact with. They’re all talking with one another.
I look down at my plate and dig in.
The conversation all around me is raucous and happy, women laughing and joking with each other. There are smiles everywhere — perfect smiles with perfect teeth surrounded by perfect glossy lips — and although I look around, waiting for an opening in a conversation that I can awkwardly thrust myself into, my smile is as thoroughly timid as I am.
And so I eat.
“Wow, that must be really tasty,” says the woman seated to my left. A little cube of steak and half a pile of mashed potatoes are all that remains on my plate, whereas hers looks as though it’s barely been touched.
“It is,” I say quietly. I’m desperately embarrassed that my nearly empty plate has been noticed and remarked upon. I berate myself, silently, for being such a shitty conversationalist and a pig and for thinking that I should ever, ever attend a get-together like this. “How is yours?”
When I see the pictures from this event, I break down in tears right in front of my computer. I had so carefully considered my hair and makeup, and I even bought an adorable black dress to wear for it, and yet… I hate every single picture that I’m in. I look cheap and unsophisticated. I look fat, my skin looks shiny, my tight-lipped smile is uninviting, my hair is frizzy, and the camera’s flash reflects off my glasses.
More hurtfully, however, is the realization I come to as I look through the gallery of photos. There are a few shots of me in a group with all of the attendees, and a few of me alone. But there is not a single shot where a woman there grabbed me and said, “I need a picture with you!” Not once during the night did I make enough of an impression on anyone that they wanted to capture a moment in time where we were together, smiling, arms around one another’s shoulders.
I don’t blame them.
I wouldn’t want a picture with me either.
I want to move beyond being this way. I want to stop feeling so fucking inadequate as a human being and as an adult. I feel like the only things I’ve accomplished in life are finding a husband and having a child, and while those are wonderful and I wouldn’t trade them for the world, having Maia has thrust the sharp, painful awareness of my own shortcomings into the forefront of my mind. There is so very little in me for her to be proud of. Her mother is a high school dropout. A runaway. A college student of one semester. A part-time minimum wage retail worker. A social misfit.
A month or so ago now, we moved Maia into her own bedroom. Prior to that, we’d had her in her bassinet (and then her crib when she became more mobile) in our bedroom, on my side of the bed. But we hit a point where she began waking up and wanting to nurse for just a few seconds every 1.5-2 hours, and I was pretty much losing my mind — especially when I’d lay her back down to sleep, crawl into bed, and the creaking mattress or rustling sheets woke her right back up.
As much as I liked having her in the bedroom, right there when she wanted to nurse, I knew it was time to make our bedroom ours again, and give her space of her own. Maybe, I thought, if she woke up lightly from sleep and I wasn’t lying right there, she would soothe herself back to sleep. And I mean, I missed having conversations with Chris as we snuggled into bed.
The first night was horrible, but in a really understandable way. Having not really slept in the nursery in a long while, Maia woke up and freaked out over not knowing where she was. It looks and smells different in there, and Mama & Dada aren’t right next to the crib… so every time she woke up (yep, every 1.5-2hrs) she would start sobbing in this deep, heart-wrenching, ohmigod I’m scared kind of way. I felt horrible for her, but once I picked her up she would calm down quickly, and she only needed to nurse two of those times.
The second night was still a little rough, but less so; a few less wakings (already a victory!) and more of a complaining, angry tone to her cries (”really guys? you still have me in here?”) meant that overall, we all got more sleep. I won’t lie, the fact that I have to get out of bed and walk into the other room, nurse her, and walk back to my bedroom is an annoyance, but it’s something I’m willing to deal with.
By the third night, we were down to her waking up thrice a night, and there is where we’ve generally stayed — and yes, this is a victory. Maia goes to bed reliably at 7pm, nurses sometime between 9-11pm, wakes up at 1:30am and 5:30am for a feeding, then gets up for the day between 7 and 8am. I would desperately like to eliminate that 9-11pm feeding, or barring that, the 1:30am one, but for now I’m stumped as to how to do that. There are nights when she’ll skip one of those on her own, and once she even slept straight from 7pm-3am before wanting to nurse, so at least I know it’s something she can do.
My goal right now is to reliably get 6 hours of sleep in a row for myself. I know that’s asking a lot, since it’s happened once and that was the night she wasn’t even home, but I would pretty much fall over myself with happiness. I don’t usually go to bed til midnight, so if she were to wake up at 1am and then 7:30am, that’d be good enough for me.
Overall though, moving her into the nursery has been really successful and we’re all getting more rest, which is important… especially because she DOESN’T STOP MOVING all day long!
That is the word that comes to mind whenever I think of you. And while it is so often a comment on your physical state — your shining, dark eyes, your long, narrow limbs, your perfect round belly — you embody beauty in every way.
Spiritually, you are radiant. The unadulterated joy in you find in everything humbles us. You are just as amazed by the little plastic tab from a bread bag as you are by a balloon. And let me tell you, that’s a lot of amazement; today at the dollar store, we found some mylar balloons and you started squealing, reaching for them, and babbling, nearly tumbling from your Daddy’s arms. When he gave them to you and set you down, you caressed the mylar and patted it, smiling in your wide-mouthed way, your deep dimple visible only when you peeked around the side of the balloon to make certain we still watched you. Of course we did. How could we take our eyes from you?
It’s so hard for me to write this, Maia, because I feel like words are insufficient. I wish I could distill every bit of delight you bring to our lives and put it into this letter, but it’s like trying to catch a waterfall in a thimble — no matter how hard I try, I won’t succeed. But I’ll try.
After I zipped up your pajamas tonight, I leaned down and kissed you full on the lips, then smooched your cheeks and neck and chin. You laughed from deep in your belly in a blissfully helpless way, twisting to and fro as if trying to escape, but your little hands grabbed mine and held on tight. “You’re going to have a wonderful birthday,” I told you over and over again between kisses, “we love you so much.”
I read your bedtime book, and before I even closed it you were leaning back, mouth open, head turned towards me, wanting to nurse to sleep as you always do. And usually when you nurse to sleep, I read, but tonight I watched you instead. I watched the perfect shape of your pink lips, the way the tip of your nose touches my skin, and as your eyes fluttered shut, I felt tears fill my own. My vision blurred. I want it to be 1:07am, February 13th, 2010, because I want to know that you have been here every second of a year, that there will never again be a moment in time untouched by you.
Maia, beauty can be found in happiness and sorrow, joy and bitterness, hope and despair. You will explore all of these things in your life, and I know that you have the grace of spirit to learn from them — and your father and I will be at your back, waiting to support you when you need us.
We love you so much, papaya. Thank you for showing us what it truly means to be beautiful.
I am usually the one who puts Maia to bed. It’s our time to read and snuggle and reconnect with one another, and even though I’m pretty sure nursing her to sleep is a no-no in terms of what I “should” be doing in order to get her to sleep through the night, well, I do it anyhow. And sleeping through the night will happen when it happens.
In any case, before I take her to bed, she must give goodnight kisses to Daddy. I always flop her over in my arms to do this so she’s hanging wildly away from me, swinging towards him with her head upside down, laughing and giggling. She doesn’t kiss him so much as he kisses her and she squeals, generally.
That is, until a few nights ago. She leaned forward to kiss him, then pulled herself up and kissed me. Then back to him, and back to me twice more, AND THEN I MELTED. It was the sweetest thing, as if she wanted to be certain that she got us both with her love.
Moments like that are the highlights of my life. I never thought that an open-mouthed, drooly, sloppy kiss from a baby would be such a wondrous thing, but it is.
She came skulking out of the fitting room, a pair of jeans hanging off her arm. Her red face displayed all I needed to know, but the careless way she flung the jeans on the counter behind me and turned away from them towards her older sister highlighted it. “I’m not eating anything tonight,” she said as they walked away, one fragile hand slapping at her narrow waist in disgust.
They were size 2 pants.
I wanted to scream after her: You would be just as beautiful in a size 4. I didn’t.
Dear tiny teenage girl: I think we’re both cowards.
Maia loves to be read to. It’s not uncommon for her to take a book in both hands, run over to me, and plop her butt in my lap, all the while babbling. She particularly likes turning the pages for me — sometimes before I’m ready for them to be turned! And although I adore reading to her, I like it even better when she brings the books to her daddy. There is something that melts my heart about the two of them with their heads bent, focused on the pages of a board book, Chris raising his voice to princess-ly levels, growling with the ferocity of a dragon, and then adopting a nasally tone for the bum of a prince.
Sometimes, however, when Maia brings us books, she has something more devious in mind than using us. She settles down into my lap, talks to me in her wordless way about it, then as soon as I start reading she stands up, grabs the coffee table, and hauls herself up onto it. Now, I know I shouldn’t let my daughter climb on tables, but the way she casts a triumphant grin at me over her shoulder is kinda charming, and she’s pretty damned proud of herself. And she is apparently part monkey, because you would not believe how fast she climbs up there. I guarantee it’s faster than you read that sentence.
We were all so ecstatic to be outside that it was almost laughable. The dogs ran in circles as if they were trying to wear themselves out.
