Week of June 19, 2002

Owen's birthday is next week, and I'm uncertain what it means to me. I suppose I'm a little frightened at how quickly the time passed. The first 2 months went by in slow motion as I got through each (long) day learning how to care for an infant. I started to feel a little comfortable and then *whump*, I was back at work. It got better at 4 months when Owen became more of his own person, and then by 6 months he was sitting up and hugely thrilled by everything. At 7 months we tackled sleeping through the night, and that took the bleary edge away from our lives. Then in a blink, it's June.

For Owen, it's a meaningless anniversary, perhaps an excuse to have cake or rip some wrapping paper to eat. For me, it's a prompt to think about what it was like to lose my status as an individual person and become a mother. Perhaps those aren't supposed to be separate states but I feel as though once Owen arrived, I suddenly became second in my own life. Everything I think and do effects Owen and a lot of my freedom vanished with his arrival. Much of that freedom was illusory. If you can hop on a jet this afternoon and visit Paris for the weekend, but never do, is it really a option? It's not as though I went clubbing every night, and led a raucous life of debauchery. I had a quiet life before Owen, I just had more time to spend with Scott and the cats. I could veg with a book or the television, or perhaps even go out to the occasional dinner. But now, if I stay up late to read or watch something, I have to cope with being blotto with fatigue when caring for Owen. He deserves my best, even if don't. If I want to spend some time with Scott, I have to do it when Owen is in bed, carefully squished into a chore-free evening. And dinners out? Well, maybe someday.

I love Owen and he's the best thing that's ever happened to Scott and I. I'm incredibly nostalgic, thinking about what I was experiencing a year ago as I impatiently waited for his birth. But it's a strange shift to realize that you truly can't make decisions on a whim without taking another person (or two) into account. Small decisions or large, I have to coordinate everything. I'm an anal kind of planned person by nature, so this shouldn't be much of a change. Perhaps I was just spoiled by being an adult with few responsibilities. Coordinating with Scott was natural. But now suddenly one of us is always on duty, and the number of tasks we have to take care of escalated exponentially. Maybe it's human nature to have different standards for a dependent than you do for yourself. I want the toilet cleaned, the rugs vacuumed, dinner to be nutritious. Coordinating is tougher now that there's so much less free time, and we're more haggard than we've ever felt before. Effortless has become effortful, and perhaps it makes me aware of how much has changed.

Yet Owen is magical. I can't imagine having a child at any earlier point in my life, because then I wouldn't have this particular child. How trite that sounded to me from other lips, yet how completely true from my own! It's HIS nature I adore, his careful deliberation and reckless exploration, his love of water and of sweets, his dexterity and his uncertainty, his eyes and lips, his fingers and toes.

His accomplishment for the week is drinking from a water glass. Scott was moving it to Owen's lips, and he reached for the glass and took it into his hands. It was light, and had only and inch of water in it. To our surprise, he tipped the glass up and successfully drank from it twice! After that, he playfully let it dribble down his front, but he does that with a sippy cup too. He's also arcing quite a bit, looking upside down through his feet. No steps yet, and his standing independently is still just for a second.

Added on 6-20-2002

This time last year, I had stopped working in anticipation of The Birth. Or rather, work was slow and it was hot, and I thought I'd rather go quietly insane at home than in front of other people. I cleaned, I played on the computer, and then 1/2 through this week, I started to despair. He was late. He was never going to come. A week ago this coming Saturday, I had twinges of contractions and we went to see Shrek for a second time, thinking it would be better to pass the time in an air-conditioned movie than at home. Which was true, but at the end of the movie, realizing the contractions had stopped, I got blue. And Sunday was worse. I was beyond blue. We didn't answer the phone, unable to make small talk with all the people wondering if Owen had come. And then next Monday, well, 52 weeks ago Monday, Owen was born. (Well, I guess this year his birthday falls on a Tuesday but you know what I mean.)

But that's next week.

This week is the last of his first year. He's 11 months and 3 weeks, and I can't believe we have the child we were so anxiously waiting for a year ago. We imagined dragging someone around to have breakfast out, but what's startling is that now we know who we're dragging. And it's not really dragging, he loves breakfast.

Owen is smiling less these day, and looking around more. He seems more likely to smile at people if he can be the first one to initiate contact -- but there are some people he just refuses to smile for any more. Which is hard, because he was so incredibly smiley for so long, and there are a few people at Rao's who I think take it a little personally. He's easing out of his cute baby phase, and into his toddler phase. He's still cute, of course, but he doles out the largest share to Scott and I. With us he beams. And there are still a lucky few he'll beam for, but on his own schedule now.

We were in Stop and Shop on Wednesday, buying fruit and stuff at the deli, when
Owen decided he was bored and poked the man next to us. The man handled it with good humor but I thought "yikes, now I have to be aware of Owen asserting himself and invading people's space!" He wants what he wants when he wants it. Like all humans, I guess, he just doesn't know how to mask it. Or, for that matter, have any reason he'd want to.

He still shows no signs of standing, other than arcing and looking through
his legs. He can balance on his knees, which is something, and he loves to stand and hold on to the gate at the kitchen door. If he sees the gate open, he's quick to push it shut. We're not sure if he's trying to correct
it to the appropriate setting (closed), or whether he wants to stand using the bars. So now he closes off the cat water and kitty food all on his own -- the irony!

He is saying "Tat!" for Cat quite often, though I think sometimes it means all animals, not just cats. Though it's the loudest and clearest whenever he sees a real cat (in life or in pictures). Daw = dog (or bird).

We have a little alien magnet on a metal door, and I caught him crawling by, and reaching out with a finger to straighten the magnet. And then he shuffled off on his way again. I can't think why else he would have stopped and reached out to
tap the magnet, other than straightening it, but it gave me a jolt to see another part of myself in him. Yes, I do that to things when they're ajar on the wall. And if I don't do it, I think about doing it. I don't think I've ever done it in front of Owen, though.

Food: Anything with tomato sauce, pizza, blueberries, tomatoes, cucumbers. He's still getting 4 ounces of breastmilk a day, but I fear I'm slowing drying up. I pump often (though I don't get up at 1 a.m. anymore), but Owen is disinterested in nursing and I don't think the pumping works as well to keep my supply up. It was severely reduced when Owen moved downstairs, and I fear the decision about how long to nurse will be made for me. Owen is happy with food, and long ago got impatient with my breasts or his bottles, so it seems like the decision is there, it's just going to be a long, slow walk to the end.

Books: He's still fixated on Zoo, and Red Barn to a lesser degree. We have a Thomas flap book and that has been a hit. And I got a copy of Pat the Cat, and that was an obession until I hid it after he was asleep. (There's a cardboard pencil to mimic "Mummy making a list", and I fear that the "pencil" isn't long for this world. Pat the Cat seems geared to a slightly older baby.) I still can't get over the fact that he loves his books, and that his excitement about booktime makes him ignore his evening bottle.

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