Liam gave me a wonderful birthday gift: a good night’s sleep. After the previous night, I must admit that I’m both grateful and relieved. In our house, nobody slept well on the night of October 25. Aside from that glaring aberration, so far we’ve been pretty lucky with sleep. This is partly due to the fact that I’m not back to a regular work schedule yet. To prove this point, David is not doing quite as well as Liam and I in the sleep department. I attribute this to his having a more regular work schedule and to being woken by Liam’s many nighttime noises. And to drive the point all the way home, David ended up with a cold after a week of sleep deprivation due to work and Liam. So far in my life I’ve adhered to the following tenets of how to maintain good health: sleep, nutrition, and exercise. In the early days of motherhood, my attention to these factors is essential for maintaining some semblance of togetherness and over the past 17.5 weeks I’ve done a fair job of it. I’m planning on keeping it that way. So we could say that each little challenge, a few nights of sleep deprivation here and there, David’s cold, the way I fall apart when I don’t do my exercises, to name a few; are all gentle reminders of what is most important. And that if I don’t respond to the gentle reminders, things get worse. Day by day, that’s how I’m tending to the needs of our family of three plus cat.
Another topic that my opening story touched upon is the constancy of change. Inevitably this essential element of all life comes into any worthwhile conversation about parenting. To my way of thinking this is because change is life and life is change and what is parenting but being a steward to another’s life? In terms of sleep, I’m counting on change. On the morning of October 26th I was counting on changing back to a more reasonable nighttime regimen, one that didn’t involve nursing Liam back to peaceful sleep once an hour. Longer term I’m counting of Liam’s natural sleep rhythm revealing itself so that we can support him in having healthy sleep. For the past month or so I’ve been counting on the fact that umbilical hernias repair themselves by the age of two. I’m pretty sure that I hadn’t mentioned Liam’s belly button until now. I’m sure of this because when I realized that he’d developed a hernia I was disappointed that we hadn’t done a thorough job of documenting how beautiful his navel was before that. I know, this may be stretching the limits of socially acceptable parental adoration, but for the sake of posterity I feel that this really must be put in writing: Liam had a a perfect little swirl of a navel for a while. It reminded me of a cinnamon bun or to be even more lofty, the yin and yang ( I know, I’m going to catch some serious flack for that assertion). I’d been planning of noting this little bit of perfection in this very blog until one day I realized that little site of perfection had popped out. It took me a while to figure out that Liam had an umbilical hernia and then it took me a while longer to realize that it was okay. My acupuncturist advised keeping that little bit of intestine in its rightful place inside the abdominal cavity with tape and a cotton ball. I didn’t get around to moving the necessary supplies to the changing area, but I did take to gently holding Liam’s navel in with my finger every diaper change. And within a week or so of doing that, the hernia is nearly completely repaired. A long way of making the point: change is constant and I’m learning to depend on it in these days of wonder.
Other news of note:
Our trip to Michigan was chock full of fun, Liam was in his element receiving visitors with what we’ve come to know as his charming repertoire of smiles and cute little sounds (photos abound, we’ve even got video!). New sounds and new facial expressions offer us regular entertainment. A day isn’t complete without an outing as far as Liam is concerned. He thrives of going out into the world to see new smiling faces and take in the variety of life and activity that our urban environment contains. Liam was a fun and willing companion in my efforts to give David something of a birthday celebration, we’re keeping things very low key this year (you’ll probably be able to guess which photo I’m referring to). I got two really cool books about infant development that are helping me to appreciate all that Liam is doing in this amazing first year. Liam has started swim lessons on Saturday morning. He loves being in the water with David, so far he’s not to keen on the going under part which is pretty much all there is to the lessons at this early stage. On October 24th Liam did two things of note developmentally speaking (at least I think so). He finally noticed the warning label on his car seat and took a good long look, and he reached out and grabbed Sophie the giraffe. So far his arm movements have been undirected and rather spastic which makes Siegfried the Tiger quite nervous, so for us this was an exciting development. David got an iPhone with video capabilities and, unlike me, he actually knows how to make use of it. More documentation to come….
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