Labor, Love

I’m looking for a part-day nanny for Baby A. More like a parent helper, really--the plan is that I’ll stay home and write while they entertain baby for three to four hours. But I die a little bit each time a woman says she’s able to watch my baby since her baby goes to daycare.

_

Fried Eyeball

A splash of boiling oil to the right eye. Excruciating. Pain.
Big A gave me some Erythromycin goop that helped immediately and thanks to percocets I’ve been having dreams with incredible parades of long-ago, long-lost friends.

Friday Update: Saw the doctor who says I’m ok, won’t go blind, and don’t even need glasses yet. (sigh on that last one : / )

Friday night update: Awesome how the body heals--the burn mark on my eyeball has completely disappeared! Still *bleeping* hurts everywhere else though.

_

(Whisper) Hallelujah!

Baby A has begun to grudgingly acknowledge that there is such a thing as bedtime. I used the genius Pantley no-cry sleep solution (mostly, anyhow--I nixed the journal, for instance). So now she’s quite reliably asleep by eight or nine in her crib and stays that way (with a couple of half-asleep feedings around 1 a.m. and 5 a.m). Niiiiice!

Up until a couple of weeks ago, she’d wake up at 2 a.m. and be all, “Dude! Party @ my crib!!!” and I’d be wincing/thinking/saying, “Babe, please just go to sleep, already!” Now I have cuddle time with Li’l A at his nine p.m. bedtime and cuddle time with Big A at… I don’t know--let’s say, 3 a.m., which is when he’s been getting home this past week.


_

A Dark and Stormy Night

L’il A’s writing a book. It’s called “Out Grown.” Chapter 1 is called “The Thing in the Sky.” The first lines:
Blue and Red and Purple lights flashed 8 times, thunder 16.
(Sorry if you thought me counting was geeky.) It wasn’t a normal
night.

Last night as he climbed into his loft bed, he shot me a smile over his shoulder and said, “I want you to be my editor.”
Ohhh!
Awww!

STFU, Bulwer-Lytton Contest Organizers--sometimes there really are dark and stormy nights.

_

JULIET (II)

White-bellied moths
throw themselves
on the wall

I have the lamp on

You’re out like a light
as they say--
the father says

Meanwhile I keep the lamp burning
burning

Light like a wave
in my chest
pulse like touch
palms burning
radiate
desire

_

Adventures in Breastfeeding (II)

We’re pretty certain that Baby A is a fledgling butch dyke, so we’re eager to have her learn, at least before she starts dating, that she ought to look at women’s eyes when they talk to her--not their boobs. I was trying to tell her yesterday, but all she did was lunge at me. It would’ve been scary if she wasn‘t ten times smaller than I am.

*******

Baby A’s pretty versatile in the looks dept. When she wears gold ornaments and belly-button-baring cholis and pavadais, she’s a tote tewt princess. But put her in the determinedly-gender-neutral clothes we favor, and she mostly looks like (the older) Mark Wahlberg (see fledgling butch dyke ref above). And since I have no special fondness for said Wahlberg, it’s quite disconcerting when I’m feeding her half asleep, first thing in the morning, and look down to see his face at my breast.

*******

Also, it’s probably what I get for watching the telly while preg, but just before she latches on, Baby A makes this “heh-heh” sound that sounds like George W. Or rather, Jon Stewart doing an imitation of the W., which makes it pretty giggly.


_

ANNIVERSARY

I noticed things
about you
those

first few moments.
Afterwards
there was never

again
a
time

when I could
judge you
dispassionately

or even
see you
objectively.

I believe in you now
not knowing if its true
not caring if I’m wrong

Just knowing.
Caring.

__