This was written October 1, 2001
Eric has been sleeping for a long time; about an hour ago, he got fussy in his sleep, and I figured he'd be waking up to eat lunch soon, so I made a bottle, scooped him up, and fed him. I think he ate the whole 7 ounces without ever actually waking up all the way. Silly baby.
He has spent the last two nights in his crib. I've been taking muscle relaxers at bedtime to try to get over this back trouble once and for all, and haven't wanted to sleep with him while taking them. Could there be an easier baby? On Saturday night, he stayed up even though he was tired because Carrie was over. Eric loves Carrie. He thinks she is the most hilarious person on the planet; we've been joking that she should embark on a career as a comedian for four-month-olds. Because he got over-tired, he was fussy when we tried to put him in his crib (as soon as Carrie left, he dropped the Mr. Charming act). I lay down on the bed with him and cuddled him up to me in the usual position, and he was asleep in four seconds, and then I was able to put him in his crib, where he stayed until David got up to feed him about 6:30, and then again until it was time to come into the big bed for Family Fun Time.
David and I used to lounge in bed on weekend mornings cuddling and talking. Now we lounge in bed with Eric, passing him back and forth and trying to get him to laugh. I don't know how people who get pregnant really soon after the first baby do it. Even with the Miracle Good-Sleeping Baby, I have only occasionally been able to even imagine summoning up the energy to think for a moment about possibly having sex.
I asked David the other day whether he thought we would be as delighted with a second child as with Eric. I worry about it; here everything Eric does is new and thrilling ("honey! the baby is breathing! how adorable!") but with #2 we'd have been through it before. I wanted David to reassure me that #2 would be a whole new person whom we would find thrilling, but he was silent. Finally, I said, "Don't worry, I'm not wearing a wire, I'm not trying to trick you so I can get you on tape saying 'We'd be delighted with a second child.'" But he doesn't trust me.
We had a wonderful morning yesterday. After Family Fun Time in bed, we went to East Lansing and had bagels for breakfast (when we proposed going out for bagels, Eric said, "agel!" very clearly. But I'm sure it was just coincidence), then went for a pleasant walk on the MSU campus. Not long into our walk, David spotted a chipmunk in a tree. We stood and watched it grabbing seed pods, cracking them open, and eating the seeds until it got too wary of us and ran down and away. We were surprised because neither of us had thought that chipmunks climbed trees. So we figured it was some kind of mutant chipmunk, until a few minutes later when we were sitting on a bench in the horticulture garden (is "horticulture garden" redundant?) and David heard a bird he couldn't identify chirping in a tree nearby. He followed the sound to see what it was...and it was a chipmunk, sitting in a tree and chirping like a bird. "Curiouser and curiouser," we thought. And then David said, "Maybe it isn't chirping...it's chipping." I said, "And it's called a chipmunk because it sits in trees like a little monkey. 'Chipmunk' must be short for 'chipping monkey.'" We are sure this must be true; we are born naturalists.
I threatened to drop one of my students who has missed more than the maximum amount of class time and turned in a completely unacceptable first paper...and, in response, got a letter from his mother begging me not to drop him because he's usually such a good kid. On her law firm stationery, no less. She says he has a medical condition that she would rather not disclose details about but that was interfering with his performance in school and is now controlled with medication, so everything should be fine from now on. I guess he didn't tell her the same things he told me, that he missed one class because he got beat up in a bar and that his paper was completely unacceptable because he had left all his materials at his girlfriend's house in Grand Rapids. Oh, well. He seems like a nice little guy and I will let him stay as long as he doesn't screw up anymore. But it's beyond me what a college student is doing having his mother write letters to the teacher.
Another of my students missed a couple of classes because her family was receiving death threats (I'll let you guess the ethnicity), and one of my students told me today that he missed Wednesday's class because he had a meeting with his parole officer. When I was teaching at a Mott Community College extension center in Lapeer, I had students who were actually in jail, and were let out for a couple of hours at a time to attend classes. Ya just don't get that at the Big 10 University down the street.
Posted by Su Penn at December 8, 2003 03:43 PM | TrackBack