Archive for May, 2007
Protected: Jordan giggling
Published May 30, 2007 Jordan , video Enter your password to view comments.Protected: Frustration!
Published May 30, 2007 Eva , oy vey , photos , Sarah Enter your password to view comments.Protected: Tooth watch 2007, Part 8 (plus long weekend)
Published May 29, 2007 Eric , Eva , firsts , Jordan , photos , Sarah , together Enter your password to view comments.Protected: Tooth watch 2007, Part 7
Published May 26, 2007 firsts , photos , Sarah Enter your password to view comments.I just returned to my computer after holding a screaming, wriggling, back arching boy of about 19 pounds. Now a sane person, if holding something heavy and loud and trying to get away, might release said thing, but instead, I did all I could to calm it. Did I mention I’ve had a headache for the past 3 days?
When I thought about motherhood in the past I believe I focused on the emotional aspects of being a mom. Which are there, and are great. It’s not that I didn’t know that motherhood would be physical to some extent – I knew you had to rock babies and wipe their butts and noses and that breastfeeding is a physical act. But until I became a mother I don’t think I realized just how physical it all is.
And some of the physical stuff is great. I carried these two babies inside me for about 8 months and I loved them then. Sometimes when I was pregnant we would be in the living room and I would feel someone kick (usually Baby B, aka Sarah) and I would caress my belly and say to Eric “I love them so much.” And my eyes would well with tears in some weird soup of hormones and discomfort and exhaustion. So it was very physical from the start, even before I really met them.
Sometimes now I can’t stop kissing them. I will be holding Jordan or Sarah and I feel compelled to kiss him/her, and I don’t know if I can stop. They often laugh the hardest at physical things, like having their bellies kissed or tickled, or playing with their feet, or talking into their necks. So even the humor in our house is physical these days.
But there are other ways that are physical that are exhausting or draining. I wear the wounds of a mama. Sarah and Jordan scratch, and even though we cut their nails twice a week (that’s 40 nails per week) it still hurts. They now like to knead my breast while they’re nursing, and I’m constantly pulling fingers out of me and am covered in little scratches. Just this week Sarah started slapping me while she’s nursing, especially if she’s tired, over and over again. They also like to pull my hair. When I’m nursing I don’t really notice how strong their suck is, but sometimes they suck on an arm, or miss and suck on another part of my breast, and it leaves a black and blue mark. And now, with teeth, they bite. I know they are not trying to hurt me and don’t realize what they’re doing, but it still hurts. I am in a perpetual state of physical exhaustion, and this dates back to pregnancy, too, so we’re well over a year of constant exhaustion. I am constantly sleep deprived, and when I do sleep I’m lucky to get two hour chunks.
But there are beautiful physical moments as well. When Jordan or Sarah is calm and nursing, it is really delightful. I look down at him/her, realize that my body is nourishing my baby. Sarah never stays still, so sometimes will gently reach a hand up to touch my hair, or will kick her little feet. Jordan sometimes cuddles in very close and stares up into my eyes and comes off to smile. And sometimes when I have one of them in bed at night, it is breathtaking. Sarah will rest her head on my breast and keep one hand on the other one. Jordan will sometimes lie next to me, face-to-face, and have one arm on my chest and one leg over my leg. These beautiful moments of them sleeping at night, or napping on me, or slowly dozing off while breastfeeding (notice all the moments I currently think are beautiful involve them asleep) are so physical, so tactile, and so amazing.
Bath time is another very physical ritual we have. I now bathe with each of them, one at a time. Although Sarah can sit on her own she likes to drink the bath water and neither of them realizes yet the dangers of the tub. So I hold Jordan in my lap, swish him around and play, wash his hair, wash his face, wash his body, turn him over to wash his back, rinse him, pass him to Eric, and do it all over with Sarah. When Sarah and I get out of the tub I wrap towels around us, and now she wraps her legs around me to hold on tight, and grins until I put her down for Eric to dress her (she doesn’t stop grinning because it’s Eric — whom she adores — it’s the being put down part that’s not her fave).
I never really thought of trust as physical, but it makes sense to me now. Remember as a kid, the trust game, where you were supposed to fall back into one or more people’s arms? I could never do that. It didn’t matter who the person was, I never felt safe doing it. But Sarah and Jordan physically trust me. That I won’t drop them. That I’ll keep them warm and dry and safe. Even though I sometimes have doubts myself. Tonight after his wake up, I held Jordan until he fell back asleep, and as I was carrying him back upstairs, I saw the level of comfort he had being held by me, that could only be described as trust. It’s such a physical connection I have with these babes. And I love it, war wounds and all.
Protected: Teeth and more
Published May 25, 2007 Jordan , photos , Sarah Enter your password to view comments.Protected: Tooth watch 2007, Part 6
Published May 24, 2007 firsts Enter your password to view comments.Protected: Another day, 4 more photos
Published May 24, 2007 Eric , friends and family , Jordan , photos , Sarah Enter your password to view comments.
Protected: Too tired for words
Published May 23, 2007 daycare , friends and family , Jordan , photos , together Enter your password to view comments.Protected: Bad, bad mommy
Published May 22, 2007 firsts , oy vey , photos , together Enter your password to view comments.Protected: Daddy survived
Published May 21, 2007 Eric , photos , together Enter your password to view comments.Protected: Hanging at daycare
Published May 21, 2007 daycare , photos , together Enter your password to view comments.Protected: More random photos
Published May 20, 2007 Eva , Jordan , Sarah Enter your password to view comments.Protected: Tooth watch 2007, Part 5
Published May 19, 2007 firsts , Sarah Enter your password to view comments.Protected: Dancing
Published May 18, 2007 breastfeeding , firsts , sleep Enter your password to view comments.Protected: Control freak
Published May 17, 2007 daycare , musings Enter your password to view comments.Protected: Bubbie & Papa Bill swoop through town
Published May 17, 2007 friends and family , Jordan , photos , Sarah Enter your password to view comments.Protected: In other news…
Published May 17, 2007 oy vey , photos Enter your password to view comments.Protected: I wonder how Jordan tastes….
Published May 16, 2007 photos , together Enter your password to view comments.Protected: My first Mother’s Day
Published May 15, 2007 firsts , musings Enter your password to view comments.Protected: First hairdo
Published May 15, 2007 firsts , photos , Sarah Enter your password to view comments.Protected: What’s up sis?
Published May 15, 2007 kidding around , photos , together Enter your password to view comments.Protected:
Published May 14, 2007 Eva , Jordan , photos , Sarah , together Enter your password to view comments.In case you’re curious, the Social Security Adminsitration has now published the popularity of baby names in 2006 (you can search or look at the top ones). I used this website a lot when we were deciding on names (data from here were entered in my Excel file… wish I were joking, I’m just not).
My mind is so slow these days that as I was writing the first sentence above, I kept going back and forth… were my children born in 2006? Wait, it’s now 2007… but they weren’t born this year… or were they? How old are they?… What, is 2006 the year I was pregnant but before they were born?
Thank goodness they have my birthday or I’d never remember that (as it is when they ask me for their date of birth, I often give my year, 1968, and people look at me like I’m crazy).
Oh, and for those curious, Sarah stayed steady at 15, Jordan stayed steady at 46, and Jordan still more common for boys than for girls.
The LL Family 
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