Life updates

Since this blog is serving as my only (lame) attempt at a babybook-type chronicle of the first years of my kids' lives, I know I'll really regret it if I look back in a few years and see it trail off to nothing, so I'm resolving to pick up the pace a little bit, even if it's just totally un-literary lists of what's going on.

Susanna is 6 months old. She has seemed about 5 seconds away from crawling for about a month now; she does the downward facing dog back-and-forth rocking that I can remember Lea doing just before she crawled. She honestly seems puzzled as to why that motion doesn't get her anywhere. The key is to figure out the pairing of the right hand with the left leg, and vice versa, moving together. Once that clicks, she'll be all over the place.

On a related note, I keep hoping that what I hear about impending developmental milestones interfering with sleep is true, because otherwise I have no explanation for the fact that Susanna is such a bad nighttime sleeper. Last week I would've told you that she just gets lonely, but for the last 3 nights, she just moans and fusses whether she's in her crib, in one of our arms, in the bed between us, anywhere. It's exhausting. She's not sick, and in the daytime hours she is perfectly pleasant and content, and even a very reliable napper. It's weird. Especially because she is just so, so different from her sister. By 5 months, Lea was on a rock-solid and totally predictable schedule: bed at 7. Nurse at 11 and go right back to sleep. Nurse at 3 and go right back to sleep. Awake at 7. Period. I think that Susanna's longest stretches of sleep these days are about 2.5 hours. Just writing that makes me deliriously tired.

What's funny, though, is that I'm actually handling the tiredness so much better than I did when Lea was a baby. I napped when Lea did almost every day until Susanna was born. Now, it's not possible to nap at all because Lea doesn't take one anymore-- but it's actually FINE, and I almost never feel like I'm about to crumble to the floor with exhaustion, which is how I felt for most of Lea's first year.

Part of it, I think, is that when it was just Lea, I was kind of socially exhausted, if that makes sense. Because with a young baby, you give and give and give from your social-energy reserves, and get almost nothing back the way you do when you have a conversation with an adult or even an older child. Which is why I have told myself so many times, and told so many other struggling new parents, that I think being alone with a baby can be lonelier than being alone. You can't just get lost in your own thoughts-- you have to direct your mental and emotional and social and physical EVERYTHING at this other person, and let's be honest-- the payoff, at least in terms of recharging yourself, is kind of minimal for most of the first year.

But this time around, even though Susanna is in that stage, Lea is around too, and she is social. We have conversations, and she's funny. She's infuriating at times, and every day she tests me, and yes, still, it's sometimes pretty lonely to be on my own with the girls. But it's so different. I am in such a better mental-health situation than I was two years ago. And I thank God for this time with my kids, hard as it may be on a day-to-day basis. I look at Susanna and I KNOW this time how fast it goes, because I have evidence of how fast it goes-- Lea, the not-at-all-a-baby-anymore-- right there in the room with me.

Of course, the other big difference is that they are different kids. Obviously. But I still find myself surprised and amused when Susanna shows signs of having a very different personality than Lea does. From day one, Lea was Miss Independent, and didn't much like to be held, slept best on her own, wanted to be down on the floor or next to you, but never in your lap. I remember going to a breastfeeding group meeting in Bryn Mawr when she was a newborn, and noticing with some sadness that when other babies cried, their mothers' first response was to pick them up and hold them close, but that I had already learned to do the opposite. When Lea cried, it meant she wanted to be put down.

Depending on my mood, I describe Susanna as alternately very snuggly or very clingy. She loves to be held, and she always cries out if I leave her line of sight. Overall, it's pretty easy to keep her happy during her wakeful hours; just hold her in a lap and let her observe the world. I do suspect that her snuggly/clingy nature has at least something to do with her lack of consistent nighttime sleep though, so that's definitely the downside to an otherwise pretty mellow personality.

I find myself thinking about birth order a lot too. It suddenly makes all kinds of sense that there would be some pretty consistent and pretty fundamental differences between oldest children and everybody else. Of course the stimuli a baby with a toddler in her house is exposed to will be vastly different than those of a firstborn. I have no idea exactly what that does to a little developing psyche, but I'm sure it's something. Susanna's routine, and what she sees and hears and does all day long, are so different from Lea's. It will be interesting to see how their personalities develop from here on out.

My girls are also physically very different. I think I've said on here before that at birth, they looked like different species. Such different faces. And also, Susanna was so skinny in comparison, which is hilarious because as of yesterday, she weighs more than Lea did at 13 months. She also has bigger legs-- they wear the same size diaper, and it fits snugger on Susanna than on Lea. Strangers routinely come up to comment on her ankle rolls. She's a chunk. I love it.

Life is pretty good right now. Abingdon is the perfect place for our family at this point, except for the fact that it's so far away from family, which is a drag. But in all other ways, I can see us staying here forever. We've made some wonderful friends, and fill our days with low-key activities that I feel so good about shaping a child's life around: walks on a trail, rocks thrown in creek, horses observed from the roadside, vegetable gardens tended and explored, bluegrass on the radio, good friends and a circle of acquaintances ranging from authors and artists to activist ex-nuns. Very cool.

In other news, I take the first step in my should-I-be-a-midwife journey this fall: Anatomy and Physiology I, one of three prerequisites to nursing school. If it goes well and feels right, I'll take the other two (A&P II and Microbiology) in the spring, and begin the official nursing program the following fall. Which makes me an RN by Spring 2012 and a midwife two years later at the absolute earliest. Whew. It's still a huge question mark in my mind, but I figure the only way to really evaluate if this is a path I'd like to travel is to take the first concrete step instead of just wondering. Besides, it will be fun to use that part of my brain again, and for the couple hundred bucks of community college tuition, there's really no downside.

So. The summer's been a blur of travelling, first to PA/NJ and then most recently to the Smokies. Brian has had a really busy time with work, working on issues that have resulted in one big victory on the local level (keeping a truck stop from being built right next door to an elementary school) and a long, drawn-out fight on the national level (fighting for health care reform). Both issues have drawn some pretty ugly attacks. It's no fun to be harrassed at the farmer's market by a guy you thought you were friends with.

But. Our sidewalk is being built and a mountain autumn is just around the corner. My kids are healthy and gorgeous and make each other laugh. No complaints here.