Eric and I were just watching TV, and I saw an ad for a Lansing law firm that I am surprised hasn't been pulled off the air since the terrorist attacks on Tuesday. It begins, "The skyline of Lansing is always changing...But there are some landmarks that endure." No kidding.
I guess Scott is not going to San Francisco tomorrow.
Here's a dorky mom thing I do (in addition to the "are you a cat?" game, which goes like this: "Is Mitch a cat? Yes, Mitch is a cat. Is Eric a cat? No, Eric is a baby! Am I a cat? No, I'm a mom!" All in baby-speak, with big smiles and exaggerated vowels). But the dorky mom thing of which I speak is that I talk as if Eric and I are one, or as if he participates fully with me in things I do: "Hi, David. Eric and I wonder whether you can take a break from work to have a cold drink with us"; "Eric and I watched 'An Officer and a Gentleman' on TV today and we thought it sucked." That kind of thing.
I just retired a bunch more baby clothes and pulled out some new ones. There are some very cute warm fuzzy outfits I can't wait to put on him. I have found on recent chilly days that I really like bundling him up in something cosy.
I'm having a low-productivity day, one of those days when you just can't get started. Yesterday was very busy. I taught in the morning, had doctor and dentist appointments in the afternoon, and went to a Mothers and More event in the evening. Perhaps I am reacting to that. Or perhaps it has something to do with the rainy weather, or with Eric's refusal to stay asleep unless he is in my arms. If only I could put him in the sling, but I am still at the tail end of recovering from my back injury and carrying him that way is just too hard on me right now.
I just figured out that I blew off an appointment to have my oil changed and tires rotated, but when I called the mechanics to reschedule, I wasn't on their calendar. Either I both recorded the appointment on the wrong day and blew it off, or they screwed up, too. Either way, I am now rescheduled for next Wednesday.
One of Eric's favorite things these days is to sit in the rocking chair with me, lying on his stomach on my abdomen, but holding himself up so he can look at me. He has gained control all the way down his back, now, and can also support his weight on his legs if you hold him steady, and he enjoys "standing" in my lap a lot, too. He will look at me and chat and coo and laugh for half an hour at a time. Sometimes he gets very intent, as if he is trying to tell me something very important: "Coo...agoo...buh...buh." My aunt Clara Jean (pronounced with only two syllables: Clair-Jean) used to claim that my cousin John wanted to talk at six weeks and got frustrated when people didn't understand what he was saying. Eric doesn't get frustrated, and I don't think he really has things to say, but the pretend conversation, in which we repeat nonsense syllables to each other, is a fun game.
He also loves to play with cloth. He likes to grab any piece of fabric he can and stuff it into his mouth. Sometimes when you try to put him down, he has such a death-grip on your shirt collar you feel like you can't pry his fingers loose without hurting him.
I am a bad mom. Last night at Mothers & More another mother of a three-month-old said she has not been away from her baby for more than a couple of hours, and the mother of a six-month-old described the trauma of being away from her baby for a whole day recently. I did not volunteer that I went away for nearly forty-eight hours last weekend.
Of course, it also seems true that most of these women can't trust their partners the way I can trust David. The mother of the six-month-old had to leave the meeting early because her husband isn't comfortable being responsible for the baby for more than two hours (when she went away for a whole day, her mother took care of the baby). Whereas David and Scott managed perfectly well without me. Scott even took a 2 a.m. feeding (a rare event these days--the feeding, not Scott pitching in). He described having some trouble getting the bottle into Eric's mouth: apparently they first tried the Ocular feeding method, in which the nipple is poked into the baby's eye, and the Topical feeding method, in which formula is splashed all over the baby's face, as well as the Aural feeding method (nipple in ear). It's not Scott's fault. When Eric is hungry he waves his arms in front of his face. I have described getting the bottle to his mouth under these circumstances as being like piloting the Millennium Falcon through the asteroid field, but you could also describe Eric as being like Wonder Woman fending off bullets with her bracelets.
Oh, yes, I did go to the Spiritual Formation retreat last weekend, and had a good time, though I was ready to come home before the retreat ended. It was just a little too long for me to be away from Eric.
So the other night a man came to our door asking to borrow a ladder to clean the gutters on a house around the corner (his cousin's house, he claimed) because he was trying to earn a little money for child support. We said no, of course. I am sure it was a scam. I just am not sure what the scam was. An extension ladder isn't the kind of thing you can just jog off with. David says, maybe he was trying to case the joint. I don't know.
Scott is recovering from the shingles, though last I heard he was having some residual pain. But his good news is that he just signed an offer of permanent employment at the company where he has been doing his internship. He reads the benefits materials like they're pornography, especially the part about prescription coverage, which will save him literally hundreds of dollars a month. Coupled with the fact that the offer also came with a sizeable raise, he is going to have practically more money than he knows what to do with. Until we raise his rent.
Did I tell you about when I went to see my parents' new home site? It's just a foundation so far. The ground is very sandy and apparently construction trucks keep getting stuck. "But it's no big deal," my mom said. "Your dad just gets out his bulldozer and pulls them out." I said, "Dad has a bulldozer?" And my mom said, "Just a little one."
Posted by Su Penn at September 13, 2003 07:01 PM | TrackBack