Parenthood - The New Frontier

I realize that I haven't said a lot of positive things about parenthood yet. The first 3 months are a bit dicey as we move around in a sleep deprived state of adaption. It's all about survival. But as we arrive at the end of the 3 month stage, I wanted to share some thoughts I've had as I neared the end of my maternity leave and in the blurry mornings before work this week. Below is something that is uncharacteristically sappy - something I never quite pictured about myself - but it rings true just the same. I don't feel the radiating love or mush that some people talk about, but I feel this.

Knish has changed from a sleepy newborn to a giggling baby. So much change yet so much the same. She is still so new yet has always been here - as if our lives have been saving room for her. We are still learning how to listen to her, and how to comfort her, and how to make her giggle. But we're all getting better at living together.
From the very beginning, Knish will raise her left eyebrow from time to time. My mom did the same thing - with the baby pictures to prove it. When Knish does it, I see so much of my mother in her, and it's almost like a reassurance from beyond.

Knish's smile is infectious (what is it about baby smiles??). She can now recognize Hubs and me, and will smile when she sees us almost every time (that won't last long, I know). She smiles at toys and at nothing at all. Everything is wonderful and entrancing to her.

I'm back at work this week and I'm very lucky to have been home for so long (by American standards), but I'm still struck by how time can be so slow and so fast at the same time. Days full of tedium and endless new experiences. Knish is still so new to us yet she fits right into the family. I am amazed at the duality of every feeling - nothing is simply anymore. Complex feelings of love and guilt and freedom and dependency. 

And as much as I had wanted a baby, felt the achy love of what could be, it was still always hard to picture myself a mother. I never felt like my life was incomplete without a baby, much like I don't feel a different "completeness" now that she's here. I'm glad she's here and she's definitely ours. But there are some parenting cliches that are hard for me to identify with. And yet I am so amazed by this baby. From her neck rolls to her sweet yogurt breath; the way she sleepily looks at me and slowly recognizes me before smiling in the mornings; from her eyelashes to her Johnny Bravo cowlick. It's all so familiar and new and sweet.

The Fog is Lifting

How is it already February? I feel like everyone says that, as if the fog from the whirlwind of the holidays has finally lifted, and suddenly everyone realizes they've been back in the real world for a month already. Thanks to maternity leave, and the fastest 12 weeks I have ever in my life experienced, I get to rejoin the work force just as this fog lifts for everyone else.

On February 15th of this year, I sat down to my second lunch of the day - a bowl of pasta carbonara. There was an ice-pack stuffed into my sports bra (the twins HURT) and I was feeling restless. The night before, Valentine's Day, after a negative pregnancy test, Hubs and I had a fantastic dinner out, complete with cocktails, wine, and too much dessert. February 16th I would get a positive test.

My irrational craving for Hobbit style meal day (I think I ate 7 times that day), was my first hint I might be pregnant. Or hungover. And today, as I sit at home watching a snoozing baby, I searched my bare cupboards to find all the fixings for another carbonara. So I sit here, munching on a fully loaded carbohydrate lunch, confessing my need to go grocery shopping to the entire internets, and hoping Wee One doesn't wake up before I can finish my grocery list and watching Love Actually. (Edit: she woke up before the list, hot dinner, or blog post was finished). I’m feeling a little bit sentimental, chowing on the same pasta.

2015 was exceptional. Not necessarily in a good way. Losing a parent and gaining a child in one year is an experience without words. I have tried. But there is nothing to say. There are lots of little stories to tell. Happy and sad.

• Weekends in Portland with our nephew.
• Passover in LA when my parents and husband got drunk enough to jump a fence (yes, parents).
• My 29^th birthday – I was on a work trip in Utah and my mom was supposed to meet me there. Instead, she was home on pain medications, waiting for what would be her cancer diagnosis, but too lost to actually talk to me.
• A work trip spent looking more at my phone than my computer screen.
• Her funeral.
• Friends moving.
• We’re having a girl!
• My last work trip – halfway around the world at 24 weeks pregnant.
• Girls weekend in Minnesota.
• Weddings.
• Baby Showers.
• Ferris Buller’s day off (Seattle style).
• Babymoon.
• Crafting with my aunt.
• Baby arrives.
• *Enter baby fog*
• Then the holidays happened and suddenly it’s February and I’m as confused as everyone else.

Once I have some time in the office, I hope I can share some of my insights from The Sisterhood of Crying in the Daycare Parking Lot.

Happy New Year!