Firsts

Late last week, Penelope's belly button finally healed, so we gave her her first real bath this weekend. She loved it. Just look at little froggy kicking around in there:

(video temporarily deleted to troubleshoot blog-- it will be back soon)

We were staying at my parents' house while they are on vacation, the house where I grew up. One of my earliest fond memories is of sitting in front of the fireplace between my parents, snug and secure, so it seemed fitting that Penelope's first fireplace experience would be in front of a fire in that same fireplace. She won't remember it, but I will remember it for her-- the dark night with rain beating harmoniously on the roof, the lovely glow of the flames on her round cheeks and deliciously up-tilted eyelids, and the cozy togetherness of my new family superimposed onto memories my own happy childhood.

Our weekend also contained a blustery walk on quaint country lanes, including a stopover to breastfeed while surrounded by old, gnarled orange trees in an overgrown orchard, and a second walk, this time in the rain under my brother's big old Van Gogh umbrella, with Peep looking up in adorable astonishment at the drops hitting the swirls of color on the fabric above us.

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Lest you think it was all idyllic, I should point out that we also faced some of the more grueling aspects of new parenthood (i.e., our weekend was only about 85% idyllic!). Penelope had two bad nights this weekend. Normally, she partially wakes up every couple hours throughout the night-- since we share a bed, I sense her rousing, offer her the breast before she is even fully awake, and nurse her (and myself) back to sleep within 10 minutes or so. Contrast that with Saturday night, during which she woke up every hour to hour and a half, crying, and requiring perhaps 40 minutes of rocking and shushing before settling back down again. Towards morning, we had our second ever mother-daughter tandem cry session. She was pretty gassy, leading Eric to comment in the morning that "we should be careful not to get her too close to the fire, or her little sleep sack could go up like the Hindenburg". I was laughing all day over that one.

Then on Sunday night, she fussed, cried, and screamed until 11:30 p.m., with me running through my toolbox of consoling strategies on an endless loop. She was consolable, but barely, and only for brief stretches would any one strategy work before I had to switch it up. At one point I thought to myself, "If anyone asks what parenting an infant is like, I'll tell them that it is 'more hours walking around your living room in the middle of the night with a baby on your shoulder than you ever thought possible.'" The plus side of this activity is the incredible softness of the back of her downy little head nuzzled against my cheeks and lips; the drawbacks are the fatigue in my hips and legs and the time bomb threat of her renewed cries. After several hours of this, I actually started counting down the minutes until morning: 400, 399, 398... But at 11:30 she was finally calm enough for me to put her into her swing, where she sat with her intense little eyes boring into the darkness for another half hour before she finally succumbed to sleep. She was so upset, it was heartbreaking that there was nothing I could do for her. 

The last time we went through an episode of crying jags was at around 3 weeks. She'll be 6 weeks on Wednesday, and the baby books all talk about a 3 week and a 6 week growth spurt, so we've been chalking her recent traumatic evenings up to that. It seems to help to have an explanation for her alarming behavior, even if we have no clue whether it is the right one. Perhaps when she's 18 and stealing cars to fund her heroin habit, Eric and I will look at each other and soothingly pronounce that "she's in a growth spurt." 

To borrow a quote from N, "The distinguishing mark of true adventures is that they are often not fun at all while they are actually happening" -K. S. Robinson. Apparently this is sometimes true even for Ordinary Adventures. Although, I would not say that even the up-all-night aspects of parenting aren't fun. They're just fun in a very intense, nightmarish way-- something like the enjoyment of watching really good horror movie, or hiking across the Sierras, or studying for your PhD qualifying exam. Or, actually, more like doing all three of these activities at the same time... But in this marvelous adventure, I get to wake up in the morning to the most beautiful little smile in the world, aimed just at me, and it is like a glorious ray of sunlight dazzling my whole life through, melting me to bits.