Hunger

At your six month check-up you were in the 25th percentile for weight, the 50th for height and the 75th for head circumference.  You still can't (or won't roll) though you relish lifting your legs high into the air and bringing your heels down with great force.  You like to suck on the strings of my fleece hoodie.  When you nurse your upper hand is always reaching--to touch my lips or chin or hair, to feel the texture of my sweater or cotton shirt or bare skin.  You get distracted from nursing now and often fling your arm out and turn your head mid gulp to see what your sister is up to.  Your main form of communication is blowing raspberries or shrieking, you have yet to discover how to say "buh" or "ma" or "da."  You cry when Daddy or I hand you to Nanny Barb and put on our coats to leave.  You smile often but are slow to laugh.  You observe.  Measure people.  Bounce.  You still wake once a night to eat but you also devour solid foods during daytime hours; fruits are your favorites.  You tolerate sweet potatoes too, but on the three occasions I tried to feed you peas you blew them all over the kitchen.  

Perhaps most telling, especially as I think about you compared to your sister at this age (which Daddy always cautions me not to do) was your response after you bit my nipple for the first time.  Thisbe did so as well, around six months, and it took me by surprise.  I told her, rather sharply, "no!" and she released the nipple, leaned back, and gave me a huge, shit-eating grin.  When you bit and I told you "no!" you released the nipple, leaned back, stared at me in shock--and then your face crumpled into sobs.  You are far more sensitive than Thiz--loud sounds, separation, a sharp tone--all of these can move you to tears.  And also, the thing I keep forgetting to say somehow, is how incredibly smitten we are with you. In addition to all the facts I've listed above, you're also the gooey abstractions: sweet, delightful, darling, handsome, etc. etc. etc.  We love you to pieces.

February we love far less.  The weekend made me want to staple my eyebrows.  Daddy and I were home both days, all day, with both of you.  And I feel incredibly guilty that I did not enjoy that time very much really at all.  I played Eye Found It with your sister and Daddy played Legos with her; Daddy took you for a walk in your snowsuit and I held you while I stirred the boiling noodles and the bechamel sauce; I bought yogurt and a pork roast and hummus at Cub, Daddy attacked some ice dams on the upstairs widow's walk; Thisbe decided to sleep without her pull-up and promptly wet the bed; Thisbe developed a 100 degree fever and red spider veins across the whites of her eyes; Thisbe performed a rhythmic gymnastics ribbon-twirling dance while singing "Part of Your World"; you bounced in your exersaucer, shrieked or didn't shriek in your high chair, ate sweet potatoes and apples and peaches; Daddy took Thisbe sledding, Daddy took you to church; I gave Thisbe a bath, washed the sheets, folded laundry; we read Aladdin, Lions at Lunchtime, Afternoon in the Amazon; Thisbe watched Peter Pan and Daddy and I watched Sherlock and Parks and Recreation and a little of the Olympics; Daddy wrote a course proposal and I read Hass' essay on Images.  

I think my favorite moment of the weekend was the fifteen minutes where Thisbe and I lay together on the couch.  She was stroking Dog-Do and I was stroking her hair.  We were half-listening to you and Daddy playing in the next room, half watching the fan orbiting the ceiling, half enjoying the sun glancing off the snow and onto our faces, half thinking our own thoughts.  Thisbe finally said something about the globe sitting on the top of the bookshelf.  Only she didn't call it a globe, she called it "that earth ball" and I liked that.  The pale green of the walls and the red, wool tartan blanket over us.  That was nice.

I love you and Thisbe and Daddy so very much.  I am lucky not only to have you but to have had the privilege to choose this life, the one I'm in.  And I keep choosing it, every day, because it still remains the life that I desire.

But there is something about this time that also makes me want to staple my eyebrows, that makes me sometimes think, when I am alone in the car, of just continuing to drive, onward, until I reach a large body of water.  There is something about this time that makes me feel suddenly old, that makes me feel angry at the friends my age who have chosen not to have children and who suddenly look incredibly vibrant and rather smug about all the freedom they have stuffed in their pockets.  I choose this.  I choose this.  But there are parts of me, parts that like to write and run and read and sit and stare at the ceiling fan, and these parts have been put aside for the moment.  These parts are getting hungry.  Ravenous really.  

We are blessed with gobs of support.  Blessed beyond measure.  Still.  Some days I feel like I am feeding everyone and longing, desperately, to be fed.