Update to "Unbeliveable"

Raquel, bless her heart, came with me to the photo place. I was a bit apprehensive about the whole thing—my mother had me all worked up that I was going to have to pay a huge sitting fee if I didn’t buy anything (which I wasn’t actually planning on doing), but I decided to go in a behave as if the prices didn’t phase me one bit. When we arrived I found out that, thankfully, there was no sitting fee, and that I didn’t have to purchase a thing to receive the free framed four-picture panel, as long as I came in for all four of the sessions (3 mo., 6 mo., 9 mo. & 1 year). If I decided not to buy anything from the four sessions I simply wouldn’t receive the free four-picture panel deal for the next kid. I’d be able to get the free panel for kid #2 if we purchased $250 worth of photos of the first kid, which would not be difficult to do at this place. The images were quite nice (though I was a bit disappointed at the pics of Lily and me together, which was not the photographer’s fault), but she is always cute so he would have had to be quite the dunderhead to screw them up. I am still undecided as to whether or not we will order anything or go in for the next three sessions. If we did the no-buy deal I would feel like I was scamming the guy.

Unbelieveable

If ever I wanted to spend $11,250 on a portrait of Lily, today I had that chance. Seriously. There are kids starving here in my own city, but I could be the proud owner of a portrait the price of a car.

We got a letter in the mail several weeks ago for a deal with a local “fine” photographer. I knew that this studio would charge more than, say, JCPenny or Sears, but I checked out the website and was impressed with the work (no prices listed on the website, of course). Little did I know until after the session just how much more. I haven’t given any money yet, so I’m safe so far, though I am terribly curious as to how the photos turned out. He took some of Lily, and of Lily and me together, that I know will be killer—you know, the cute "mom holding the naked baby looking adoringly at each other" bit--but it would be monetary suicide to view the proofs. I even took the time to straighten my hair and bathe the baby beforehand. Poop. And, man, did she pull out the cute for him, too. Sigh. What’s a sucker mom to do? Suck it up and go to JCPenny, that’s what.


After the little snafu with the photo session, we went to Grandma's house. She’d invited over some of her friends for fruit smoothies and cute grandbaby. They were attentive and showed Lily the proper amount of admiration and adoration. Unfortunately it wasn’t until after everyone left that she really pulled out all the stops on the cuteness scale. She’s most always winsome and adorable, but I have rarely seen her displays of giggles, flirty eyes, kicky feet, and coy grins paralleled to this afternoon. Julia and I were melting all over everything in gooey love-sick puddles.

Yesterday a woman told me, “They don’t make ’em cuter than that.” I didn’t do anything but incubate her and provide half the chromosomes, so I don’t think it’s tooting my own horn to say that I whole-heartedly agree.


Afterwards, Julia took us to one of our favorite resturants for dinner. Tiger didn’t arrive until after we were done eating (we were much too ravenous to wait), but it was a nice time anyhow. There was some really great people watching there tonight. Everyone who passed was absolutely fascinating. For a while I felt badly, but then I realized I was just checking everyone out. I mentioned this to Tiger, and he said he’d been doing the very same thing. I was wondering if that is what it is like to be male all the time—completely visual, drawn to look at people—almost autonomic.

Proud Grandma?

I might be wrong, but I think my mom enjoys being a grandma. It was the framed picture of Lily in every room of her house--sans the bathroom--that tipped me off.

On Shallow Things, Such as Hair

I’ve been growing my hair out for, I don’t know, 3 or 4 years, since we went to Nice (geeze, has it been that long since we were in France??). It has finally gotten long, not as long as my goal, but very long. And, as per usual, it has been giving me headaches for quite some time now. And, as per usual, before I get to my long-hair goal, I am beginning to fantasize about cutting it short. Really short. But I know how this works…I will obsess about cutting it, then on a whim, go to whoever is closest and hack it off. I will love it for about 6 months, and then I will spend the next 3-4 years growing it out again. Well, in terms of hair at least, I can’t be called boring or stuck in a rut. The same haircut for 5 or 10 years? Not me! The same haircut every 5 or 10 years? Perhaps.

Deeper Love Bears Repeating

I was looking at Lily today, holding onto her foot, and I kept telling her, “I love you. I love you. I love you,” over and over again. Usually when we say something over and over the thing tends to lessen in meaning, or loose meaning completely. For example, when I wrote out my senior class pictures, like you do, after a while my own name took on this bizarre illusive quality until I hardly identified the word with the meaning. Today, however, the more I told Lilly I loved her, the more wrought with meaning it became. With each repetition the feeling sunk deeper and deeper into my chest.

Develpmental Milestones

Lily rolled over this morning. I’m not sure when babies are “supposed” to, but she is 12 weeks old today. She only rolled onto her side once before this. Oh, man, my life is about to get more complex!

Bizzare Dream

Don't bother analyzing this or anything, but about a week ago I had a dream that I was snorkeling in a murky lake on a very cloudy, potentially stormy day. I began to sink to the bottom, feeling my face and chest sink into the weeds and mud at the bottom. All I could think was, Ok. I’m going to die. I’m too tired to save myself. Then with my right hand I pushed Lily, who was apparently with me, up towards the surface. I woke up a bit disturbed.

Love, Loss, Love

I just read an article written by a woman whose baby died in the birthing process, after her water broke. Oh, God, the amount I cried surprised me. I’ve never been a crier (“never” being before I became pregnant with Lily). These tears came from deep within me from a place I hardly knew existed. To work, and love, and bring forth something—a child—that has been taken from you before its first breath must be the greatest tragedy a heart can know.

It’s funny; when I look at Lily, of course I love her—she’s gorgeous, funny, charming, fantastically chubby—all the things a baby should be. Then there are the moments when I am overwhelmed with this crazy passion for her—a sort of strange, devouring passion, like I want to put her inside of me and carry her next to my heart and never let go. I remember when I first fell in love with Tiger, wanting to put him on like a coat so that I would be completely surrounded by him always, that perhaps our atoms could mix and we would become one being, never to be separated. This mothering feeling is similar in intensity, only now I realize it is me wanting to be the coat.

This woman wrote the article hoping that in sharing it that “you will hold your children that much closer.” And I will.

An Indulgent and Adoring Description of My Daughter’s Physical Person

I want to take the time now to describe my gorgeous daughter so that when I am 90 I can look at my 63-year-old daughter and somehow remember her two-month-old face. Lily is growing and plumping up at an astonishing rate. She is becoming so fantastically chubby that her arms don’t have the usual four rolls, but five, three on her upper arm and two on each forearm.
Lily's face has filled out so much that due to her cheeks, her head is now more square looking, except for this tiny, dainty chin protruding slightly from the bottom of the square. I am absolutely in love with that chin. Who knew a person could love a chin? Above her chin, tiny and round, like a set-in marble, are these fantastic, pouty lips the color of ruby-red grapefruit-flesh. Lips that would make Angelina Jolie consider collagen injections. Her nose is a baby nose, the type called button, but her eyes—oh, her eyes! When they are open they could light a cathedral. Whenever people we know see her awake they behave as if they have seen something fantastic, like an angel or a shooting star. We still don’t know what color they will end up—Julia still has her heart set on blue—Tiger jokes that they could turn the darkest brown and she would still say that they were “linda ojos azules.” Tiger and I might entertain a moment or two of disappointment if they go brown, but I’ve already fallen in love with one set of brown eyes, I will happily do it again. As for now they are a dark graphite blue with a light grey halo around her pupil.
The first few days of her life I joked that Lily's funny little ears were on up-side-down, as the tops taper and curve off and away, not quite pointed, and the bottom of her lobes are quite round, like the tops of ears usually are. When mom brought up baby pictures of me we realized that those were my baby ears and now I reassure her that they will round out when she gets older. Her hands and feet are all me—people exclaim at her long fingers and toes. Tiger says he is relieved that she got my feet and hands (Aunt Pat calls the their side's hands “farmer hands,” and I once hurt Tiger's feelings by saying he had cute hobbit feet), though an Italian woman in a French class we were taking in Nice once went on and on about the merrits of Tiger's hands, so he shouldn't feel too badly about them.
Most often she reminds me of pictures I’ve seen of Carlynn as a baby, with glimpses of my baby pictures every so often. I think she might have Katie’s nose, but I often fancy she reminds me of my Great Grandma. I don’t know if that means that I think she looks like on old woman or not, perhaps it is the cheeks. Either way, my Great Gram was a beautiful young woman, she looked quite a bit like Drew Berrymore, so it would turn out fine.
Lily's belly protrudes in that fantastic way that babies bellies do, and now when she sits topless in her carseat or I hold her naked over her little potty, she looks like a baby-faced Buddha, all rolly and happy.
Tiger and I are completely in love with her, and constantly say to each other, “look at our beautiful baby. Isn’t she gorgeous?” It is a combination of the purest kind of love and utter fascination that this tiny creture is yours. I’m still in denial sometimes, as if her parents are going to show up any minute and my life will carry on as it always had before. But she is mine. I’m a mama. That is a bit too trippy.
I was talking with Anne and we were agreeing that this whole adult business is startling as our minds often see us as 12 or 13. We have these adult lives with adult responsibilities and every so often we stop and think, can this possibly be me? Aren’t I 12 or something?
I’m so afraid I will forget something beautiful and important about her…like the way I was amazed when I watched her eyes dilate the other day, how I was overcome by the fact that she works. Everything about her works. Or how, in the morning, when I hold her over her little potty she beams up at me adoringly with the most amazing toothless smile, and when I do it at night she cries. How when she poops she curls her tiny sausage toes. I want to remember all that.

All in the Family

Yesterday we went out to Andre's parents to celebrate Nathan’s third birthday. What I didn’t realize that this was a “family only” party—counting us in as family. This is the second time in the last few weeks that we have had this honor bestowed upon us (also by Sasha and Mike’s family when we were invited to Mike’s “family only” graduation party). Tiger and I are so blessed to have these two families in our lives. Funny, they both started out as “my friends,” and quickly became “our friends.” I had been praying for some close girlfriends, and God provided not only intelligent, trustworthy, and wise women, but also women who, having children a bit older than my own, can give me sound advice and patient understanding with my own child. A nice bonus is that Elle, Lily, and Sasha and Mike's Baby Girl will all be within a year-and-a-half of each other—built in friends. Excellent.

I’m not sure, but I think Lily must have started lining her diapers with lead, because this little girl has gotten markedly heavier in the last couple of days. Wednesday she slept the entire day away. I am not exaggerating. Then yesterday she was awake nearly the whole day, napping only during our walk (and who can resist that?) and while I made dinner (yes!). She was also in a fabulous mood—laid-back and cheerful, cool with just hanging out, even allowing me eat—I could get used to that!
I also realized that for her to return to her newborn length I would have to cut off her legs at the knee. No wonder she slept all Wednesday. Sam and Ama had their baby, a girl, and Karen sent out pictures of the little cutie. She’s got a fantastic afro already! She was 7 lbs., almost Lily's size exactly, and looking at the pictures, it’s already hard to remember Lily that small.
Lily's begun vocalizing and smiling a lot in the last week or so. It is a lot of fun…I think this might be the most fun she’s been so far…who can resist adorable coos and infectious smiles? This fits into Sasha’s theory that from 3 weeks to 3 months a kid is dealing with “this is where I am now, this is how it’s going to be,” and after that they realize that this place is kind of neat, there are some cool people and cool things, and then they are okay with being here…or perhaps forgot how great the womb was. Either way, it is a fun time.

The Point of Television, First Excursion into "The O.C."

Due to inclement weather and a roommate who buys TV shows on DVD, I knowingly threw myself into the pit of The O.C. First Buffy, then Angel, now The O.C. It’s a good thing he doesn’t own The Office or Lost. I’m only two episodes in, and already I am beginning to understand the draw. I have also come to an understanding about the state of modern TV, perhaps the whole history of TV. The point of TV is to sell products (I used to be less cynical about this thinking it was about entertainment and giving writers a creative outlet, but I am much too jaded to believe that anymore). The best way to sell products is to get the viewer hopelessly addicted to the show, like heroin, so that the viewer simply must come back week after week, thinking about the show in between times, waiting, anticipating when they can get their next fix, scheduling his or her life around their favorite shows.
How do these clever writers and marketers accomplish this? By convincing the viewing audience that they do not have a life. Whatever semblance of a life that the viewer does actually have pales in comparison to the flashy clothes, prefect hair, and witty banter of their TV friends. And that is what the characters become—friends. If the viewer misses an episode they feel as if they have missed out on a part of the life of people whom they know and love. When the show finally comes to an end, there is a sense of loss to the viewer, as if people they have a relationship with have died. So I, the viewer, must come back every week or day or whatever the interval, in order to enter this world that is bigger, brighter, and more glamorous than my own, which causes me to further be discontented with my own relationships/hair/lack of witty comebacks, creating a vicious cycle of needing the show and it’s characters, thereby exposing me, the viewer, to more ads.
It’s brilliant, really.
But I’m onto them. I don’t watch TV shows until they are several years (or a decade, you know) off of the air, thereby missing the ads. I am therefore subjecting myself to the same discontent with my own life (especially feeling that I wasted my teens and early twenties) and false relationships, all without the pressures of mass consumerism. God bless America.

Post-partum Issues

I’m having a hard time with body-image issues right now. I’m surprised at how much I think about it, and I am ashamed to admit it because I’ve never liked to be a “typical” woman, and I have always hated to hear women, especially attractive women, complain about their bodies, especially their weight. Aside from when I was actually pregnant, this is the largest I have ever been, which makes sense, but it also makes things hard for me mentally. My mind’s eye sees me as how I looked last summer, probably the best I have ever looked in my life (IMHO), and then I look in the mirror and, damn, what happened? Obviously my gorgeous daughter happened, and while she is more than worth it, I have to remind myself over and over, This is temporary (though I fear that it is not). You just had a baby 9 weeks ago. The right-away-skinny people are the freaks. Heck, lots of women look like you who have never even had children! But I think about it all the time. Way too often, and in too great a quantity. I am also embarrassed at how vain it shows me to be. It also doesn’t help that the two things that were the most affected, my skin/face, and my stomach, are the two areas of my body that I am most self-conscious of. My stomach, which for the first time in my life I was okay with last summer, now resembles a bizarre squishy cantaloupe. Emily even asked me why it was stripy, which it is, a big red and white cantaloupe. My face, on the other hand, which looked horrific at Christmas time but was cleared up by what seemed to be a miracle, Murad, is now just as bad as ever. My only consolation is that I apparently the motherhood “glow” is able to shine through several layers of makeup. But again, I hate being so heavily made up. I find it embarrassing. Not as embarrassing as going anywhere without it, which I haven’t been brave enough to do yet. By the comments people make about my “nice skin” either they are unobservant or lying. I look like the “before” picture of zit-cream ads. All this I am obsessed with. Tiger says this obsession is just a part of the hormone shift, which has hit me quite hard in the last two weeks or so, and perhaps he is right. The truly sad part is that even with all of my self-absorbed whining, I still receive attention from my looks, and I am occasionally reminded that in the grand scheme of things, I am quite well off aesthetically, despite falling short of my ridiculous standards for myself.
I was at the post office the other day, thinking about some new makeup that perhaps would make my face appear less like a flakey pizza and trying to suck in my gut when a young woman came in. She had a look to her physical person of one whose physical deformities also suggested mental slowness as well. I realized then what a bastard I was. Here I was, moping about how “bad” I looked (I still had a guy in line check me out), and this poor young lady may never have had a guy give her the time of day. I hope I am wrong about her, and that my even thinking all this proves what a jerk-face I am, but I also know that people are cruel and that we judge on the physical even when it is completely unfounded and unmerited. I want to be the type of person who looks not at the outward apperance, but at the heart.

Baby #2???

TIger is already talking about when we will have another baby. Lily is 9 weeks old. I know that we want to have the kids close together, but the question is: How close? The midwives suggest waiting a full year before getting pregnant to allow your body to heal, and I understand this concept, but part of me thinks, why bother going to all the trouble to get back into shape, back into my old jeans (if that will ever happen again) only to get the same old stretch marks and flabby stomach right back again? Might as well get it all over with and then let my body really heal.
Loni’s mom and sister’s were at her house for the birthday party today, and Loni’s mom’s first three kids were one year apart each, and then three-year gaps. She advised having the children close together, as did Loni, whoes first two children are a year apart. Her sister said she wished she’d had her children close together (the three are widely spaced.)
I do want the kids close together, not for my benefit, but for theirs—I want them to be able to play together well, unlike Katie and myself, who did not get along until after my wedding. Loni said that as long as they are mobile, let them be mobile together, and I see the wisdom in that, though I am afraid of not giving either of the children the attention they deserve, and for myself, missing out on their babyhood. I’d probably want more kids later simply because their babyhoods went so darn quickly.
One of my main concerns is that with Lily, I was profoundly tired throughout my pregnancy, but especially the first trimester, and I am worried I wouldn’t be able to take care of her properly, or at least the way I would want to take care of her. Then there is the subject of my youth; I suppose it would be best to get all my kids out of the way before I am 30, but I want to enjoy being young. There I go again, believing the television lie that I can’t have fun and enjoy my youth with my children. No, I must be out clubbing and sleeping around in order to live out my youth fully, so I screwed that up long ago.
Of course, it might take me longer than a year to become pregnant anyway. Or, like Tiger's cousin, I could end up preggers tomorrow (though I am nursing; I don’t know if she nursed). Too tierd, too soon to make these decisions. Blah.