Today is Valentine's Day, a holiday Nate and I don't really celebrate because, well, we love each other all the time, not just today. I usually make a Valentine CD for all my friends with a mix of off-beat love songs, but I've been a real slacker of late. Last year I was too tired (first trimester of pregnancy gave me a slight case of narcolepsy) and this year...this year I have a kid, dammit. Haven't you been reading? When do I have time to worry about the nuance of a perfect mix? I don't even have time to brush my hair.
Darling C. and I spent the day together, and she is by far the best valentine I've ever had. I let her wear a dress today since I get lots of criticism for not dressing her girly enough, and it has apparently had a great effect: she's had several good naps, and I've been able to get a lot of work done. Of course my house looks like it was sacked by an invading army--every book and toy we own is out, strewn among the still packed suitcases from the weekend and piles of unread newspapers I refuse to part with because I swear I'll get to them soon. I hate to say it but darling C. is seemingly really mellow and relaxed (despite a few freak outs), and I can't help but attribute it to all the good attention she's getting from having me at home (vs. a full day of crazy daycare). I'm not doting or anything (still trying to work, you see), but I am here and responsive and I don't let her cry herself to sleep when I think she needs a nap. I know this horse that I'm flogging is dead, dead, dead, but I continue to dream of ways to spend more time with my kid without conpletely giving up on working. What is the answer, world?
After our lovely morning, we ran out to have lunch with a friend and on the way I stopped to pick up Hamell on Trial's new CD "For Parents Who Enjoy Drugs." Clementine fell asleep on the way to my next errand and instead of waking her up, I drove around aimlessly looking at houses where I'd rather live and listening to some of the funnier tracks over and over again so I can memorize them and repeat them to my friends. They're not all great, but some of my favs include a song about whether or not he'll tell his kid the truth when he's asked about doing drugs, having premarital sex, stealing, etc. and another vulgar one about Ann Coulter's snatch.
While I hammered at my keyboard and sat on a conference call this afternoon, I watched all of darling C.'s new tricks. These include thrashing around when propped in her Boppy until she's looking at the room upside-down, straining to sit up and then doing a face plant as she tries to get on all fours. If the face plant isn't enough to start her wailing, she'll get up in crawling position and rock back and forth like a sprinter in starting blocks but eventually give up and army crawl toward whatever piece of paper has caught her eye. Toys? Puh-lease...this chick only wants the good stuff: paper to gnaw and disintegrate and a phone to make out with. Her new trick is to whine with increasing urgency when she can't quite reach said goals. Sometimes she'll even escalate into mini-meltdown. My solution? Move it just a little bit farther away and then giggle at her. She sure doesn't know what to make of that.
We're off for a very romantic dinner with our friends and their kid. I think parenting is the great valentine equalizer. It's hard to be mushy when there's a thirteen-year-old there to roll his eyes or an infant to bat the food out of your hand.
2 comments:
My Brooklynite best friend also went kind of narcoleptic when she was first pregnant (with one of the children who are on my list of potential mates for Clem, depending on how her orientation runs when she's older!--I never believed in arranged relationships before you all started having kids, and now I think, "Wait, I know all these rockin' cool people who have babies that are roughly the same age. Why shouldn't these kids get a head start on knowing other potentially freakin' cool people their age? Why not?!"). So, when I visited her when she was at about 3 months, we had to walk slowly everywhere, and she had to take a nap after basically every meal. It was amazing. She'd get up and eat breakfast and then sleep for half an hour and then we'd walk slowly to someplace where we'd eat again, and when we got home, she'd sleep again for an hour. She grew a pretty lovely baby with all that work, though, as did you.
Now that Julian can actually crawl everywhere he stopped doing the meltdowns and fit thing he had going on for a while. Not sure which is worse, watching that or chasing after him like a mad woman. That's so great you are getting to spend extra time with her!
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