First report card

Hugh got his report card last week. They don’t call it that, of course. It’s called a “Fall Assessment,” but you know exactly what it is when it comes in a sealed envelope of seriousness with initials on the corner. (Because make no mistake, mommy WOULD glance into the other caterpillars’ boxes; just to see, for example, what Jemma scored on “demonstrates empathy.”)

There are also no grades, per se, on this not-a-report-card, just an assessment. Instead, there is N (Not Yet Observed), D (Developing), and C (Consistently Demonstrates). Now, come on, you tell me which is A, B, and C. We’re not dummies. (C, D, N).

Hugh received top marks in 3 out of 21 areas. Those were: plays with others; learning to be a member of a group; and fine motor skills. In other words, he plays well with children while holding a pea in his hand.

He received B’s in the following areas: gross motor skills; understands how objects can be used; and sustains attention. The rest of the categories, from “manages own feelings” to “uses personal care skills” were “Not Yet Observed.”

His teacher comments included, “loves to play with a group of children!” and “Hugh hasn’t learned self soothing yet” and “learning to sit still in circle time” and “has trouble adjusting to new people.” I take issue with the last statement because from what I observe, Hugh does great with new people. On Sunday, for example, I went to see a play in Columbia and left him for three hours with total strangers (neighbors of a friend), and they said he never even made a fussy sound, just followed around their 6 year-old son like a puppy dog and smiled.

The self-soothing part I’d have to agree with – partly our fault for not letting him CIO (cry-it-out in mommy-lingo). But these folks at day care are professionals, and he’s getting there I’m sure. The doesn’t-sit-still-in-circle-time I can see as well; he hardly ever sits still, not even when he was in the womb.

Tasha refused to even look at his report card, saying you can’t assess a 10 month-old, and what does it matter anyway? (I know, she talks like a crazy woman.)

All in all, it wasn’t a bad first report card. Plenty of 40 year-olds I know can’t “Regulate own behavior” or “Use personal care skills.” Besides, the prenatal vitamins I took were recalled, so there’s no telling what we’ve got in store for us.

One caterpillar won't sit still (far right).

 

Kitty cat

No one believed me, but I swore he was trying to say the word, kitty cat. He whispers it under his breath whenever he sees one of the cats, and finally Tasha and Amy heard him.

“Keeeettteee-caat.”

So there.

Today is a Twitter in the form of a blog. Some days are like that.

 

Not again

Hugh’s started waking up in the middle of the night. Again. Just when I’d thought for sure that he was sleeping through the night, finally.

This time, I think he is waking up for comfort. How do I know? Because usually Tasha picks up in the middle of the night, sits down in the rocker with him, and promptly falls asleep. I, on the other hand, can’t fall asleep in the rocker. So last night when I went in to pick him up, he fell asleep immediately in my arms, I put him back in the crib, and he started crying. Repeat. Repeat.

Tasha came in to help, and settled into the rocker with him. And, of course, fell asleep for at least an hour. When she came back to bed, I said, “he’s playing us.”

“I think it’s his cough,” she said.

“No, he wasn’t coughing. He was asleep until I put him back down. I could hear his little raspy baby voice saying, ‘But Mama, this isn’t how we do it. See, usually Mama Tasha holds me for a loooong time until we become a big, sweaty sleep pile.’”

“I really try not to fall asleep.”

“I know,” I said. But I can’t really blame her.

Last night, when I held him, his body warm and solid, breath soft on my shoulder, I didn’t really want to put him down. Instead, I narrarated the twitches of his dreams. Little fingers twitching as he remembered grasping the Cheerios, half of them falling to the floor. Toes twitching as he recalled standing on the wheel of his car before it slipped out from under him. Belly twitching as he imagined reaching for the cat. His world is an exhausting array of stimulation and sensation, and if he needs holding now and again…well, we have a sleeping 17 year-old in the adjoining room to remind us of how fleeting this moment really is.

 

Sign language

I spent 5 days in San Diego for work, and by the end, I was miserably homesick for Hugh. When I got home, he was already asleep, and I laid awake half the night waiting for him to wake up. I finally got to look into his eyes in the morning, and when he saw me, his face lit up and he made a little squawking sound and swatted my chest. That’s a hug in Hugh-lingo.

Speaking of Hugh-lingo, I really did have every intention of learning baby sign language. I figured that by the time he was this age, he’d be communicating with me about food and sleep and cats and balls. Instead, I’ve learned his signs. Swatting the chest is a hug. Pounding his hand on the table means more. Wiggling his body back and forth means hello. Twisting his torso means, “I got my eye on something, and I want it now.”

Hugh teaches me, and I teach him. But I want the world to teach him as well. A friend I know is spending 10 months traveling the world with his family, including a 10 year-old and an 18 year-old. They’re in Bali right now. I yearn to make international travel a part of Hugh’s life as well. It will require saving money, saving vacation time, making hard choices, and lots of planning, but the payoff is a kind of aliveness that is hard to experience in any other way.

I’ll never forget the first summer I spent in Japan. I was 16 years old, riding a train with a bunch of other teenagers and a few unmemorable chaperones. I got off at my stop in Sendai and met my host family who greeted me with a red rose, a lot of giggles (which I found out later was because my chart said I was 6′2” instead of 5′2”), and not a word of English. Seven weeks later, I cried when I had to leave and knew how to say, “I’ll miss you” in Japanese.

Dowell is talking about traveling next summer after he graduates from high school, and I’m already thinking of ways to encourage him. I can imagine him with a heavy backpack, a guidebook, and a group of friends trying to figure out where to the spend the night. I can’t wait for him to experience that moment of aliveness in the adventure of the smallest details: finding a cool hostel; eating unidentifiable roadside food; hiking to a breathtaking view; buying a balloon from a child on the street.

Maybe one day we’ll get our ages and timelines in order and travel together as a family. Bali might not be a bad place to start.

 

Missing Hugh

I’m in San Diego at a conference this week. There are 9,000 ENT doctors from all over the world running around in their glasses and suits, carrying briefcases and checking their phones. It’s exotic, their world, and I’m a fly on the wall – representing a nonprofit and hosting a booth where I talk to strangers all day.

I miss Hugh, of course. And I hope he misses me. Tasha says he’s been cheerful, sleeping through the night and laughing out loud, all you could want from a baby. It makes me wonder if he really knows who I am;  if I’m just another warm face who hands him a bottle.

It’s okay with me that he’s independent, that in his 9 month-old brain, he is content to be fed and cared for by familiar hands, even if it is not this set of hands. I think of how Tasha feeds him in the middle of the night, me in the morning, his teachers during the day and Amy in the early evening. He is a man of the world, open and social, and I am already an observer.

But it’s much the same way for me as it is for Hugh. I am enjoying sleeping through the night in a giant bed with soft sheets and fluffy pillows. I run in the morning, drink coffee slowly, find a glass of wine in the evening and turn my face to the sun. Someone brings me my dinner and takes away my plate.

But I still miss him.

I think of how he presses his mouth into my shoulder and clutches my hair with his hand, babbles into my shoulder in a way that is all mine.

Maybe that’s the lesson I learn over and over – that you can be a needle in a haystack and singular at the same time; that I can enjoy my time without Hugh and yet keep him as the center of my universe.

My peaceful room

 

my Day: by hugh

today i woke up early. 5:58am. my mama tasha picked me up and gave me baba and accidentally, i fell asleep. darn! i had plans, but anyway. my day started late. 7:01am.

when i woke up the second time, it was a cat in the window! a shock went through me. i must touch it. but then it jumped and ran away. then i saw my drum! play its song. english, now spanish. haha, that spanish sounds funny. oh look, a cord! i need it. WAAAAAAAWW, why you stop me? WHY?

at school, i rode in the buggy. today, i sat next to natalie. i held her hand. i thought no one was looking but my teacher told on me. anyway. natalie likes me. so does avery. today, we were talking through our cribs, but boring four-toothed jacob was trying to sleep, so they moved me and my crib to a new place. then i barfed on my sheets. carrots.

when i got picked up from school, there was a stuffed pig in my seat! that made me feel crazy happy. then i fell asleep.

tonight we have a cookout. my shorty, covey, is coming. she’s 2. she likes me a lot.

gotta crawl -

hugh

Bench press

 

Just a snuggly morning

No big news.

No adoption, no new teeth, no traffic jams on the way to day care, no new words, no new tricks. Perhaps a little more hair.

Just a nice morning with my little guy who felt particularly snuggly because he got to wear long sleeves and fuzzy pants for the first time this fall. Aunt Sissy thinks he even gave me a hug, though I swear he was just trying to eat my shoulder and climb over it at the same time. Still, I’ll take it.

What you mean, no new tricks?

 

Adoption day

Happy Family

A few months ago, Tasha and I attended a meeting about second parent, same sex adoption and learned that she could have full parental rights by adopting Hugh. That’s right – in South Carolina: the State of Joe Wilson’s noxious outburst; Mark Sanford’s soul-mate dalliances; the Confederate flag waving on the statehouse grounds; and a recently much publicized unspeakable act between man and horse.

But there are fringe benefits to living in a state that values little regulation (lawlessness) – one of them being that second parent, same sex adoption is not banned. Yet. Which is why we are joyful, but cautiously keeping this news under the radar.

Because adoption is a court order, it requires a judge who will grant families like ours an adoption. There is only one judge in the state willing to do this. She’s retired from the bench, but still serves on the circuit, and when she’s holding court, she contacts our lawyer who schedules his same-sex clients on her docket.

Yesterday, there were six families in the waiting room – couples with a diversity of stories. A young couple with six month old twins; an older couple with two roughhousing boys; an African American couple with two girls of Indian descent; two dads with two dark-headed boys.

Hugh loved the courthouse. He licked the marble floor and crawled the length of the long hallway. He approached every family and crawled up every pant leg he could find, including the security guard who would later hand us a Jehovah’s Witness pamphlet on our way into the courtroom. He made friends with a curly-headed girl who kept insisting he “get up and walk.” He made friends with two boys whose dads insisted that he wasn’t a dog and need not be petted like one.

Crawling the courthouse floor

Dressed in his best outfit and looking like a decent boy (a disguise), Tasha and I suddenly smelled the worst diaper nightmare. “I’m going to change him,” said Tasha, grabbing him off the floor. At that moment, of course, the bailiff came out and called our name. She gave a desperate look to the guardian ad litem who said, “it’ll have to wait.”

As she carried our disgusting bundle of joy into court, I whispered, “it’s not too late to change your mind.”

The proceedings were warm and easygoing, and the judge laughed out loud when the guardian ad litem said: “Upon observing this very social and active child in the courtroom for the past hour, I can honestly say that he needs two parents. They’ve got their hands full.”

The judge granted our adoption request, then came off the stand and hugged Tasha and Hugh, and handed us a gold coin to commemorate the day. Our lawyer took pictures of us with the judge, and Hugh even smiled for the camera.

On the drive back, I asked Tasha if she felt any different, since she’d been Hugh’s parent all along. “I didn’t think I would,” she said, “but I do.” Then she smiled and said, “I’ve got two boys.”

Playing with friends at my adoption party

 

The paradox of happiness

The New York Times published an article on Sunday about the decline in women’s happiness over the decades, in spite of gains in workplace and household equality.

“Across the happiness data, the one thing in life that will make you less happy is having children,” said Betsey Stevenson, an assistant professor at Wharton who co-wrote a paper called ‘The Paradox of Declining Female Happiness.’ “It’s true whether you’re wealthy or poor, if you have kids late or kids early. Yet I know very few people who would tell me they wish they hadn’t had kids or who would tell me they feel their kids were the destroyer of their happiness.’”

It is an interesting conundrum; one I pondered before the decision to have children, and one I’ve pondered since. On the one hand, I really wanted children; enough to spend the money and time needed to go through the fertility process; enough to withstand the discomforts of pregnancy and the unbelievable pain of childbirth (for all you moms who say the pain is forgotten once birth is over, I answer in return: I WILL NEVER FORGET.)

Anyway. The truth is that parenting is hard. And that life as a not-parent is easier. I used to sleep in on Sundays and read the New York Times for hours (now I get the highlights online). I used to go out for long dinners with friends and not excitedly call it “Date Night!” I used to plan week-long guilt-free vacations (now I plan the week-long, guilty vacations). It was a different kind of life.

Do I regret my decision? Of course not. Does any mom? Of course not. There are several reasons: one, if you’ve made a wrong decision, it’s way too late to say “my bad,” so most people wanting happy ending to their stories, choose to write their parenting adventure as one of happiness and contentment; and two, you desperately, crazily love your kid. It’s unlike any love there is – and God or Darwin made it such so that when you give up late movies and long mornings in bed, you don’t go crazy with regret.

Instead, you rub your eyes at 4:30am, stumble down the hall to pick up a crying bundle. You spend time on the porch watching him discover the magic of leaves while you make sure he doesn’t bump his head. You find a new kind of happiness that isn’t effortless or light, but warm and heavy, tiring and lovely.

Learning to eat

 

Google worry

Since the time Hugh was conceived, I’ve probably conducted over 1,000 Google searches on possible things to worry about – none of which ever materialized. Here’s a sample list: high HCG levels, early ultrasounds and autism, Down’s syndrome statistics, baby moving too much, baby nursing too long, hyperactivity, sleep solutions, popping joints.

My latest Google-as-a-worry-tool is food.

I’m certain that I don’t need to worry about food with Hugh, but here I am worrying about food. Now that he’s learning to eat, I wonder why he’s not eating chunky enough food. Hugh gags if I put the smallest piece of chunky banana on his tongue; and other kids in his caterpillar class eat french toast sticks for crying out loud! So I Google things like “gag reflex” and “babies eating solid food tips.”

Then last night, he suddenly ate salmon, cous cous, and tzatiki sauce. Why’d I waste time Googling about food? I’m not going to do it again. He’s a perfectly healthy nine month old baby who sleeps well, eats well, plays well, smiles well, weighs-in well. NO MORE GOOGLE SEARCHES.

Except for there is that green stuff coming out of his right eye ithis morning. It’s been two mornings in a row, actually. I should probably Google it – just to see.