two week catch-all

So much to tell. I’ve been sick and busy. An ugly cold greeted me during the day Thursday and I went home early and stayed home Friday. Calvin might have caught it before since he had a runny nose and some trouble sleeping.

Saturday night Calvin pulled himself to a standing position in his crib, fingers cupped over the end of his crib, marshmallow legs holding the whole operation together. It was close to 7 p.m., an hour after his bedtime. Both Shaun and I were tired and wondering what was up with the little mover. After rolling and hoisting his body up and down, he finally just stood up and stayed there long enough for me to cross the house and see his two-toothed smile beaming in the glow of the baby monitor. It was the look of triumph. Then he shifted his foot and lost his balance, landing on his bottom. But of course, he was up again the next day.

The practically crawling and the full-blown standing – all this has seemed to happen in a week. I mean, he’s been on the verge of almost crawling for awhile, but now he’s up on all fours at all hours – yes, at night too.

I feel like Cal is a great audience member for comedy acts of all kinds now. He really gets funny things. Sunday sitting in Cal’s room right before a nap, Shaun wrapped my rose-colored scarf(that I use as my breastfeeding cloak) around his head like a turban, over-emphasizing some cartoonish accent and comical facial expressions, and Cal laughed and laughed. Then Shaun made other hats then some hair, followed by more laughter from us, the peanut crowd.

Shaun regularly hoists Cal upside down, dangling him by his legs and asking comically for his milk money. It’s kind of cute. Although I either close my eyes or issue the warning: be careful now you sillies. Cal smiles a toothy grin and giggles. They play what we call affectionately and plainly “the blanket game” involving any sort of blanket and the basic peek-a-boo premise. Shaun has also taken to walking the house with Cal, holding his hands up while Cal takes steps – left … right … left – in a beautiful and timed fashion, almost like a tiny but incredibly adorable almond-eyed mechanical doll. He’s getting so good at it I can’t even believe it. They started this, what, like a week or so ago???

On Sunday, he showed off his walking at Chevy’s on the River while we celebrated my cousin’s 16th birthday. Calvin wore shoes for the first time – dark brown loafers – and took some aided steps that the crowd lapped up. As usual, Cal was tossed over the huge table, zig-zagging his way up and down, of our party of at least 20, sucking on spoons and eating fresh avocados.

Another thing, Calvin got his first real hair cut two weekends ago. I thought of his hairdo as like an old man’s – the strawberry blond hairs grew lush around the back and sides of his head, and made tiny tents over his ears. There were also long puffs up top. I wanted to keep the sweet wispies, but Shaun insisted we cut it to one uniform length, which was probably a good idea. Shaun drove over Cal’s head with his beard trimmer on the two-notch setting while we sat in the bath. The resulting ’do was a buzz cut fit for the military. It makes him look like a little boy; this is perhaps why I resisted.

Reading "the books" I can’t believe what amazing things are on the horizon: the first shows of empathy, as well as kissing, sharing, signing, and first words, not to mention crawling, walking and running. Oh and also many more falls and rough-and-tumble than a sensitive mommy can effectively handle. That’s where dads come in so handy.

After the Mexican food, we ate cake for my cousin’s birthday on a hillside overlooking the river aglow in afternoon sun. The breeze felt good. A family friend and little girl Sammy came up to me and asked if my repeated attempts to rock Cal to sleep in the carrier, for his much-needed late afternoon nap, were wiping me out. “It's hard work being a mom,” she said. “So why do people do it?” I smiled but was temporarily dumbfounded.

I got my answer 20 minutes later when Cal lay burrowed in my shoulder, fast asleep, with slivers of choclate and carrot cakes ready to eat in hand. Although you might have to wait a bit longer to join the party as a mama, the cake tastes a million times better, and life, spoon fulls sweeter.

nighttime nursing as a blessing

I know I promised no more sleep stuff, but I couldn’t resist sharing what I read a second ago:

A desperate father came to the master for advice. "We cannot go on like this, please give me guidance," said the man on the verge of tears. "We have ten children, and we live in a one-room wooden hut. In the small yard, we have a goat that gives us milk. We are too crowded and the conditions have become impossible." The master responded slowly and confidently, "Bring the goat into the hut," he said. "What?" asked the perplexed man. "Bring the goat in," repeated the master peacefully. The man went home and because of his great trust in the master, and in spite of his wife's protest, brought the goat into their one crowded room. Things went from bad to worse. After one week the man couldn't resist and went back to the master. "Master," he cried out, "The goat in the room is not helping. It is much worse. Please help!" "Take the goat out," said the master. The man leaped with joy as he rushed back home with the great news. The family found that ten children in one room was a blessing. - Mothering Magazine

Similarly Calvin’s two-a-night awakenings, once annoyances, have been uncloaked by trial and error and shown for what they are: blessings, as well. I really could not see this before. Well, I didn't mind them so much but I saw them as something to fix not accept. All I saw was cultural labelings and what experts say about Cal being old enough to go without food for the night. But breastfeeding is an experience in addition to nourishment. It really is a moment in time, a space for us to just be.

So after attempting to get him to go full nights without nursing, I found that those feedings mean a lot to Cal and to myself and that I don’t mind them, especially when juxtaposed against an unhappy and tired baby and mom and dad. Less nighttime feedings also diminished my supply, something the experts don't mention often enough.

I hold close those gentle and quiet moments at dawn with my son and think that we’ll let go of them when we’re ready. Now that we’re back to our usual nursing times, I get up without a negative thought – for I know these are but fleeting moments in our lives and that they’ll soon become apart of that cherished and elaborate quilt in my mind made up of our fondest memories together.

pain and progress

Restfulness is not underrated. During night two of our new routine, Cal cried a lot less and got himself back to sleep quicker – I could not believe it, around 15 to 20 minutes instead of the 45 minutes or more the first night (I was almost ready to throw in the towel after four of those episodes in night one). I could see him dealing with the problem and casting about for ways to soothe – he sucks on his blanket and pulls its soft edges against his face; he babbles to himself and turns to his side or to his back. After his morning feed today, I left him in his crib to get ready for work and he went right back to sleep, amazing.

I know that big changes can be hard fought and slow to catch on, and that first steps forward many times don’t mean squat, but my psyche revels in the progress of night two. I needed the confirmation that something would give. I take solace in the fact that Cal is not alone in the process, we sit by him, I shhh, talk to him and I trace circles over his soft blankets on his belly. I’m proud of him. And oh it twists my insides to watch him struggle with getting to sleep, but I am also proud of myself for setting limits and guarding our sleep time – mine, Cal’s, Shaun’s.

It feels like one of my first big tests of parenthood in doing something I don’t want to do but that I know is best. It pains me to watch people struggle, especially my small, innocent and bright-eyed wonder boy who depends on me to guard him, and to guide him through most everything right now.

I’d rather struggle than watch; that rings so true because if I was him at least the pit of my stomach wouldn't ache. But sometimes it is not about me. Struggling can be rewarding for the struggler when the obstacle can and is overcome; Cal is capable of this feat. That is one of my great lessons as a parent.

... I'm taking a break from sleep posts; being awake and with Cal tumps really any nighttime development. Next week, I'll tackle Tomales and try to capture Cal a little in words.

getting out of sleep debt

I … need … sleep. The experts say there’s a sleep banking system; if so, I’m in the red and have accumulated debt little by little, spending a little more energy each day than I can replenish by sleeping. I get enough sleep, but not the kind of stone-cold sleep I got before Calvin joined us on the outside, and that’s OK, because all I’m on the prowl for is something like a five-hour continuous stream of sleep.

I’m not normally this tired. Albeit our struggles with getting our son to sleep, I haven’t lost bulk sleep in any real way. In part, I think, it’s because Cal sleeps tucked up next to me and I can meet his every three-hour squawk with a tummy rub or a feed and lull him back from whence he came. I have enjoyed snuggling at night with the baby boy and I’ve adapted to sleeping with an arched arm that swerves over Cal’s head and acts like his own private entryway to sleepland. But my sleep tricks are increasingly met with resistance and have become less, not more, effective over time. And I dare say a couple of times last week I spent several hours bouncing Cal to bed on our exercise ball – jiggling us both into a stupor of sort, my whole body tired and Cal frustrated because we were getting nowhere fast. The thing is that I’ve given my sweet boy no tools with which to get himself to sleep or back – and that’s gotta change. In addition to that, I’m the only one at my house who wields the magic touch at sleepy time.

So this week, I will ease Cal into his own room and use a routine I read about where we stay with him but slowly introduce opportunities for him to soothe himself to sleep, moving further away. I’ve stalled this tack before because I feared the crying, but I, or Shaun, will be right there with him while he learns his new skill (I keep replaying this part to myself in my head). Right now, we’re in the stage where Cal and I sleep on Cal’s floor to get him used to the idea that his room will now host all sleep activities (which is one reason for my lack of sleep today – futon sleep ramped up on anxieties from the upcoming sleep changes, plus my usual rounds with Cal, left me awake, not asleep). But I’m sticking to the idea that this change will be a good thing, and that we’ll all emerge, in some weeks, with bigger bank accounts – and the puffy eyed blues just a mere memory.

back to blogging

I’m dodging this blog like a phone call from a longtime friend. I’ll get back to you tomorrow is what I think with the friend and the blog, but tomorrow quickly devolves into at least three days. There’s so much to discuss its daunting. But it always feels good to get the latest news off your chest and into the world, so I’m here. It’s just that with this small hiatus, I’ve found myself stuck and unable to do justice to the beauty of what is unfolding before me, and then I turn into this tragic irony – an idle blogger with mounds of material. I’m trying to break that chain.

To be fair to me, we’ve been really busy – Cal went to his first Tomales, which happened to be a very memorable one. I’m going to dedicate an entire blog to our adventures there. We also picked blackberries along Scout’s creek the weekend before, for Nana’s birthday. And especially in the last few weeks, I’ve felt like a single parent with Shaun’s hard days and late nights at work, leaving me the sole evening and nighttime parent and only resident housekeeper (thank goodness from some outside help from our nanny). I can’t imagine doing it like this forever. I am grateful for our support systems. And finally, work has been busy and I’ve taken on a handful of new writing commitments to quiet that little voice in my head that says: write! So far so good.

Lately I’d say the theme to Cal’s evolution is boy on the move. Cal pounces on his prey, which is usually some form of kitchen utensil, without a speck of hesitation. From a sitting position, he lunges forward and ends up on all fours then grunts and whines with furious frustration at his inability to really get going. If you are sitting beside the little man, he uses you for climbing architecture. Cal becoming mobile will surely be a heralded day, but we are waiting on bated breaths for when he can sail across a room because then we’ll have to get off our butts ourselves.

In addition to his menu of breast milk (he has gone on a permanent strike from formula, which he’s only accepted a handful of times before), our little buggy eats regularly now, mnostly backyard squash and a little farmer’s market avocado. But his newfound food fetish is wonderfully spiced and beautifully tart tomato soup, as discovered by happenstance at Tomales. His Uncle Ry made a tasty soup to pair with our grilled cheese and, on a whim, Nanna Anna gave him a lick. He wanted like 20 more licks. We had to move him to basically prevent him from licking the bowl clean. I made him a soup yesterday from our Romas and Big Beefs that I hope he’ll enjoy one inch as much.

He was seven months old Sunday. This sounds way older to me than six, so I have to gather myself up a little because I’m already mourning Cal’s babyhood, which is far from over. And of course Cal seems like a toddler, tenacious and big for his age as he is. Now that he’s older, he doesn’t always smile when I do, and I have to be much cleverer to get him to laugh. Although, when he’s really tired he’ll laugh when you just stare blankly at him. Cal’s also way more absorbed with the world than my face (OK that was bound to happen) and is only happy with peek-a-boo for a few rounds. On the flipside, his awareness makes him sensitive to sounds and movement (he cries when I drop things or when the little dogs bark) and he still requests to be held most of the time, and knows who’s doing the holding. So although I’m not his whole world, I’m an integral stage hand, which works.

“Dada” is by far Cal’s favorite phrase. He says it as a song, a question, a statement, and a monologue. My favorite is when he whispers it into the breeze and you can barely hear him over the hum of life. You can tell the “dadadadadaaaaa” has different meanings depending on context and tone, but the two letters used is constant. To say the least, the resident dada likes this.

Cal definitely has teeth now. Two kernels on bottom – they look like little nubs of corn. He’ll only show you when he has the hugest most wonderful grin on display, which completely melts my heart like butter.

That’ll have to do for now.

tomales, tomales

I started writing this last year because I missed our yearly camping trip. I finished it last week. It's more for Cal than about Cal. Cal will go to his first Tomales this Thursday.
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When I was a kid, my brother, sister and I would sing our own version of a song from Annie. “Tomales, Tomales, I love you Tomales, you're only a day away.” We sang it once we reached the hills near the gritty bay and smelled Eucalyptus trees, inserting the time increment for how far away we were from our yearly affair with the bay.

My family clan and some lucky friends gather on a Tomales beach most summers. We’ve returned yearly for more than 40 years.

Our bond to the bay and each other is so unique and compelling in this spiraling, quick moving world. The bay stays on our smelly breaths long after the sun sets on that last Saturday night. Our hairs persist of campfire smoke, a full and nauseating smell, through triple lathers. When we open our camping bags, sand slides and scratches uncomfortably in the vinyl cages. The aftermath of unpacking is so daunting that it almost assuredly gets put off … and put off. But all these annoyances are small beans compared to what Tomales Bay is for us.

To cross the Tomales Bay and lay claim to our sandy cove on the other side, we need a boat – enter the newly restored Tomales Tomato and Capin' Beth and second mate Abe. The bay itself is 12 miles long and a couple miles wide and relatively shallow, occupying the west end of a rift valley created by the San Andreas fault.

During the day, we keep busy chatting as we peel off clothing layers, like super ripe bananas, as the sun peaks then sinks in the sky. By night, we wrap ourselves in blankets and squeeze around the campfire, always on alert like birds of prey for breathe-easy areas and meditating on songs from the past, laughter circling from the fire to the sky, hours dense with honesty, guitar melodies, and sun-recovering faces lit up by smooth flames. We stoke the fire and tend to it like it’s our collective child. If it’s clear, you better believe the stars are out and bright.

There is an elaborate cooking schedule at Tomales, with each of us taking turns threading together beach-wide meals, which are really events in themselves, rotating people and cookware in and out of a camp kitchen that operates like a Rubik’s Cube – the food is gourmet, but camp style, and there’s lots of it. No one goes to bed hungry. There is much preparation before we even go.

Packing for Tomales starts weeks before. We max out our cars with food, clothing, books and games, but we only use about a tenth of it. Yet a collective anesthesia promises we’ll bring the same truckload of crap next year – although we try to consolidate things. To account for the camping largesse, we certainly do our best to help unload boats (or feign sleep) and share leftovers, giving of our food as we give of ourselves.

There are famous Tomales lores – like when cous Esa ate sandwiches with snail-track slime, the adults staged a discovery of shark bone jaws for Ry, and the many myths shrouding Hog Island. There’s also those way-back days when our hippy elders showed us their white behinds through photos (now imprinted like search lights in our minds), partied through the night, and camped on the beach in garbage bags, getting slicked from dewy mornings.

Then there are the carefully etched memories – gray whales caught in the bay at night singing under a bright moon; high tide one year kept us awake as it flirted with the faces of our tents and singed the fire and sent us scurrying like frantic mice on a sinking ship; weddings and love celebrations; Aunt Beth fearlessly swimming to Hogs Island; an eager troop of hikers temporarily lost while taking a “short cut” and young Abe, suffering from stinging nettle’s prickly wrath, asking us to leave him behind; the time I peed in the soap bucket; Shaun asking my family if he could formally join it; Aunt Scout’s discovery of an entire male elk that died close to campsite by a creek; the time when Tomales tomato shut down and left some in the middle of the bay and others freaking out; the artful picnic table we embraced with paint and left at the campsite and used it for years; and my dad flipping and piling on pancakes until lunchtime – in addition to countless other warm memories.

And don’t forgot those hazy but juicy sweet childhood memories – pretending to be black beauty by cantering along the rubbery wet sand; sitting on the warm, lighted night ground against my mom’s legs; Mill’s bucket aquariums; cous Erick covered in slimy bay bottom; collecting starfish and Ry naming the kinds; Captain Kirk as more myth than man; hours spent folded in half at the knees to get close to animals; running in the pack of wild cousins; and getting goose bumps from those huge crab claws making guest appearances from fractures in the rock – we felt brave as we prodded them with sticks until they pinched in response, sending us flying.

Finally, there are the perennial items that we can always look to – black seal pinheads bobbing in and out of the horizon like mirages; barnacles and stranded jelly fish as enemies of our bare feet; Nick’s Cove; bird songs coming and going in the morning; pelican beaks; swaths of seaweed salad; pouty-lipped anenomes; a cool, gray start to the day; games played with passion; politics and emotions; day hikes; the shit hole; the cafeine/coffee vultures; a jovial clan around the fire; music; cuddling with honeys; slick hair and natural smelling bodies; guac gone a second ago; belly laughs; and lots of shared stuff and memories.

I have this funny question: what if our real life is Tomales Bay and the rest of it is how we keep busy? So our livelihood consists of sandy tents, smoke smell that clings to jackets like small hands, the vague uncomfort of salt lips and damp pant legs, no clocks or phones, days of brilliant restlessness, the real work of establishing shelter and making food, hiking through the thick of what nature has including prickly grasses and poison oak just to see an inch of the ocean, and nights where warm, sand free socks bring us a world of comfort. That sounds pretty authentic to me. Our life beside this estuary is something to behold. It is something to bequeath to our children.

All of this is why those first adventurers boated over, and why we still do. If we skip a year, so be it. It’s not a perfect tradition, but it’s ours. No matter how you play it, we hold in our palms this sacred possibility and this silent magnetism that asks us, despite the daunting task of preparing like mad people and only barely dealing with the aftermath, to return.

If not tomorrow, than Tomales, Tomales, someday soon.