We have a tooth!

Finally!  I have not gotten a picture of the little bugger yet, but hope to soon. So, first tooth: 10.5 months. A little bit of a late bloomer, I guess? All of his other baby friends already have some; though what an odd thing to worry about (not that I was worried, really)– it’s not like he would not ever have teeth.

It is on the bottom, and next to it another is surfacing. Razor sharp, these new sprouts! To be dulled only by time and experience, I guess. Ah, life.

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Yesterday (a poem)

Sometimes I scan my blog statistics for meaning that usually isn’t there. But today it was.

In the section of the stats analysis called “Search Engine Terms: These are terms people used to find your blog,” I’m usually graced by such odd concepts as “no teeth face,” “nursery baby monkey,” “how poop is formed,” or “abdomen scheme.” (I wonder what these hapless Googlers thought when they landed on my blog?)

Today, I found this under the heading Yesterday, with this exact formatting:

Yesterday

liver
where is my liver
i find myself a mother
bouncy uterus
one year old in high chair

Yes, that about sums it up.

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Foggy Bits

Foggy is how my brain feels right now.  I am still in a dull state of confusion regarding my blogging life. (see 2 posts ago.)  Also, the days seem built of bits of randomness that haven’t melded together into something coherent enough to write about. Some of the bits are lovely, some chaotic.

Today we went to the Seattle Aquarium with a bunch of lesbians!  Our first “Seattle Lesbian Moms Meet-Up Group” outing.  We saw a real live octopus!  It was a girl. She had the most beautiful suckers that made her strong graceful tentacles cling to the glass. I think she was teasing her visitors. Quite a vision, this undulating creature of the deep.  I am so excited that we’ve bought a membership to the aquarium and zoo. Now Mister Finn and I will be able to drop in and visit our friendly neighborhood octopus whenever we want. I feel proudly privileged to have this magical pass, as though I were rich or something. We will laze the summer weekdays away watching elephants and other animals generally found in Africa.

Today my mother-in-law told Wifey that our son is spoiled. Yes. On the phone. She said the word. Spoiled. Our 10 month old. I won’t write here the long list of unflattering adjectives I presently use to describe mother-in-law in my head because I don’t want to hurt Wifey’s feelers. And supposedly I’m trying to be a more upright citizen-blogger. Though I’m certain that mother-in-law would not ever happen upon my blog because I don’t think she understands how Google works. There. That was already probably too much unflattery.

Anyway, folksies.

I daresay my spoiled nursling is ready for his last milk top-off for the night.

I shall enjoy every minute of it, as I always do.

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He’s Got Rhythm

We’ve got a dancing boy!  A. smiles and bounces up and down when he hears music.  He plays his little piano and bobs, and wiggles like a dolphin when we hold him and dance to his favorite songs. Even the warped, xylophone-esque “music” of  battery-powered baby gadgets will often transform the grumpy boy into a grooving little monkey.  A few weeks ago we brought Mister Finn with us into a store that was playing rap and he did his jig while I was wearing him in the ergo.  There’s really nothing better than a cuddly little dancer.

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The Tangled Web I Weave

People, I have been clumsy.

As I’ve made my way through email accounts, blogs, websites, and facebook, I’ve given a lot of thought to my online identities…. in some ways. In other ways, I appear to have gallivanted about the internet with nary a care for the divide between my private and public selves.  Now my brain hurts when I try to differentiate between these various online identities.

Maybe our children will be not only internet-savvy, but internet-identity-savvy as well?

Maybe the identity boundaries of the internet will be more clearly marked?  Etiquette books written? Classes taught on the appropriateness of using different interfaces to disseminate personal information? Perhaps a textbook?  It would be handy.

I have a primary email account.

I have a secondary email account, for putting out in public and for receiving junk.

I have this blog, which is semi-private, semi-public, and where I am semi-anonymous.

I have a website for my art.

I have a blog that I write about art.

I have a blog for Mister Finn, so that he can share things with his faraway friends.

I started a blog for the building we live in– a community of artists.

I’m an inactive member of an online preemie moms group.

I am on Facebook.

I put photos up on Flickr.

That’s ten online incarnations.  

No wonder I have a headache.

Most of the mess is created by the blurry boundaries I’ve drawn on this blog. I write here as though I were anonymous: I share personal information, I am fairly honest, I write quickly and impulsively and don’t do much editing. Yet, really, I am not anonymous.

I use my first name, and I show pictures in which I and Wifey and Mister Finn are recognizable. I’ve told a handful of “real world” friends about this blog, and I think a few of them read it regularly.

Things would be easier, clearer, if I had kept this blog completely anonymous. In at least one instance, the virtual shit has hit the real-world fan as a result of the “semi” in semi-anonymous. I suppose in that instance I should also credit my rather feisty, impulsive personality.

However, if this blog were truly anonymous, I would not have had this opportunity to get to know one of my real-world friends better. We live a great physical distance from each other, but by reading each other’s blogs there is a lovely unexpected closeness. The indirect yet intimate blog dialog feels like a conversation that picks up where a phone conversation left off. I recognize her in her writing, and there is no disparity or confusion about with whom I’m reading/talking/communicating. (I hesitate to tag in this post about tangled boundaries, but M. you know who you are.) I also have a few other thoughtful, genuinely caring friends who I think (?!) enjoy learning more of the sordid details of my fascinating life through my blog. (Likewise, I would be their first devoted readers if they had blogs.)

What’s hard is estimating the perception of oneself in the eyes of strangers and loved-ones alike. I suppose I could “not care” what anyone thought, but unfortunately: I care, therefore, I am. If I did not care I would not be me.

I’ve thought about what it would be like if there was only one blog; if my whole life were an open book for anyone to read, and all potential readers would be offered the same book and same amount of openness, regardless of “real world” standards of appropriateness. For example, people in my art community might read about my baby in the NICU,

and you all might come here one day to find me expounding about art as though before a grad school critique. What would that look like?  I guess the thought of it feels a little scary– really vulnerable.

I admire people who are able to be open and honest and appear to have one Self that they present to one World. It would be a lot easier in some ways. But you have to be a very good editor to pull that off, scrupulously honest, preferably witty as hell, and a very good writer so as to avoid boredom in your readers. (That said, I’d have to add:  Even more dreadful than the poorly-written Christmas letters of Mormon relatives are the carefully crafted, airbrushed “memoirs” that aim to carve a flattering impression of the author in the minds of innocent readers.)

Anyway.

What I want to do is clean up a bit. I want to officially acknowledge that this blog is only partially anonymous and that I hereby must take better responsibility for that. That means that I’m going to delete some posts that might not bode well in my “real life.” I think there are only two or three where I recklessly bitched and snarked.

I’m going to try to be less impulsive, and I’m not going to use this blog as a place to rant about anyone even partially recognizable to anyone who might possibly be reading. Hopefully it won’t end up reading like a Christmas letter from my Mormon relatives or Pollyanna’s memoirs. If it does, I will depend on you all to tell me, my readers dearly known and anonymous alike. Then you can mostly tip my semi-public self off a virtual cliff.

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This Morning

I think I did get out of bed and put on a nursing bra.  Then, I think I did put on a “sports bra” over it.

I think I did wake my puppy from her morning slumber and put on her leash.

I think I did put on my running shoes.

I think I did jog around the park. (!?!?)

I think it was snowing. (If I were an Eskimo, I’d have a more specific word for the stuff, which was rather bouncy like hail.)

I think I did come home victorious. (I have not gone jogging in 9 years.)

And,

I think I did pull a snuggly warm nursling dressed in purple from his crib,

and I did smell his sweet downy head as he took long sleepy sucks.

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In the Beginning, Part 5: Homecoming

A. came home on May 17th 2008, 10 days after his due date.

I guess we were still afraid to get excited and believe that we were really going to bring him home one day, because when they told us on May 16th that he’d be coming home the next day, we were totally unprepared. We had no car seat, and had barely secured our pediatrician.

We were prepared to get excited; we were prepared to be prepared. After many weeks of building anticipation, we were ready to indulge in the frenzy of bringing our baby home.

My mom and dad came down on the 16th and helped us finish his nursery.

The morning of the 17th, we drove to a WalMart an hour away to get the car seat/stroller combo we wanted. We assembled it inside the store, with directions and hardware strewn about.  It was sunny and hot (for the Pacific Northwest), and we were as giddy and nervous as we were on our wedding day.  I was so happy I barely cared that I was at WalMart.

Back at the hospital, we did what we’d been waiting three months to do: We parked in the “discharge only” parking section. (That’s when emotion overcame me and I cried all the way up to the nursery.) We watched our baby pass the car seat test in flying colors. We filled out discharge paperwork. We waved goodbye as we walked out of the nursery– our first time with our baby.

Everyone told me I’d be terrified when I found myself alone with my baby for the first time, as up to this point he had been attached to a posse of nurses and various monitors. I didn’t believe it; I thought I’d feel nothing but contentment. Wrong again! Wifey left for 10 minutes to get something,  and I looked down at this little perfect creature and had a panic attack.

Then commenced several weeks of boundless joy and free-floating anxiety, wrapped up in awe that he was really ours.

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