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what a year 2010 was!
I don’t think I’ve ever had a single year as full of ups and downs and major life changes. I became a mother. I had a home birth. I had to stay overnight in the hospital once for my own illness and again for the baby’s. I had surgery and had to go to the hospital in the middle of the night twice for pregnancy-related scares. I lost my grandfather, and missed his funeral due to the aforementioned hospital stay. I missed my grandmother’s 80th birthday party due to the pregnancy, and my aunt’s wedding due to the arrival of our son. Each of these things deserves their own post, if not a whole dedicated blog, but the list will have to do. In looking at the tally, the downs seem to outweigh the ups. Really, though, becoming a parent outweighs everything and all the complications and scares and sadness pale in comparison to the wonderful thrill of bringing a new person into the world. We’ve certainly been tired, but I haven’t had this much fun in years.
I don’t expect 2011 to be quite so turbulent: I’m looking forward to the small ups and downs of transitioning from parenting a baby to parenting a toddler. I have no greater wish for the new year than to have the people I love be happy, healthy, safe, and secure. And last but not least, much laughter. Happy New Year!
the holiday is upon us!
I started this post two weeks ago to say that holiday preparations had begun and were progressing nicely. In between now and then the sprout got his first cold and needed to be held all the time, making it oodles more challenging to get ready for Christmas and leaving no time for actually writing about it. So, here it is Christmas morning: I’ve brought Mr. Sneezy downstairs to nap so that my partner can get a bit more sleep before we spend the whole day opening the gifts that have been arriving for the sprout from near and far and I have time to recap all that led up to today.
I know some people put up their Christmas tree the day after Thanksgiving, but I didn’t grow up in that kind of family. I was lucky to negotiate the tree going up for my birthday, and I still consider it a treat to have a tree up in the second week of December. This year the tree went up and stayed undecorated for a good week while we sorted out the lights that didn’t light on one side. Once the lights were replaced or repaired, I decorated the tree in spurts during the day (and then rearranged the ornaments at night, since when you are using tree decoration as a baby-entertaining activity, things don’t always end up where you’d like them). Even with (what seemed like) days and days of decorating, I still didn’t get all of the ornaments up: we use little metallic balls as tree bling (no garland, no icicles, no ribbon bows), and I just didn’t have the time or the desire to group them together on hooks. The tree is still very full, just not as sparkly as usual. Oh well. I also didn’t have the oomph to clear all of the side tables, so all of the freestanding Christmas decorations (the felt penguin, the frogs that croak Jingle Bells, the wooden snowmen) are grouped on the hope chest in the corner of the living room rather than being artfully spread about. I’m pretending it’s a diorama.
The main reason I had little time to spare for decorating is that I was using all the time I had to spare in the evenings to do the baking. Or maybe that should be The Baking, since there’s something of a canon that must be produced each year: roll cookies, spice cookies, meat pies, mince tarts, and cornbread for the stuffing (plus any other cookies I feel like making that year; this year we added jam thumbprints into the mix, using blueberry jam from our trip to Maine last year). I can rely on my mother for fruitcake, so I haven’t had to master those yet. Much of the baking can be done ahead, it’s just a matter of spending several evenings in a row making dough and sticking it in the freezer. That was last week; this week entailed thawing the dough out and actually making the cookies and pies. Despite a few mishaps (very soft molasses cookies as a result of only half the flour, for example) everything was ready for Christmas Eve! With Nana on hand, I was able to make cornbread, cookies, and tarts during the day, providing us with plenty for ourselves, friends, and Santa (who I am pretty sure was too tired to actually eat them before bed, after spending most of the day making runs to the store and wrapping presents while I baked).
Now it’s time to drink the coffee, get the sweet potatoes roasting, and try to get a shower before we all take turns opening the sprout’s (enormous) pile of gifts. Merry Christmas!
a whole new world
Five days after my last post, I had a baby. I knew I was going to have a baby, but having him come three weeks early was a surprise to all of us! After a somewhat challenging 24 hours of labor, I gave birth at home in a birth pool, as planned. My midwives were great, and my partner was wonderful through the whole experience (and after). Since then, we’ve been home caring for this new little person, who is marvelous. Okay, he cries when he’s on his back, pees through his clothes, and poops on us while we’re changing him. But still, he’s delightful, as I’m sure any new parent will tell you about any new baby. Still, it’s nice to have friends and family share excitement about his arrival; I know I’ve been excited about the arrival of the babies of my friends and family members, and having known many previous babies does nothing to diminish interest in each new one. There’s a way in which meeting a person who simply didn’t exist last year (or last month, or last week, or in the case of your own baby, just five minutes ago!) will always be a special kind of thing.
When I started this blog, I didn’t intend to write about anything so personal as a child. I didn’t have a child, and I wasn’t planning to have one down the line. As you can imagine, though, my daily life (which is what I try to write about here) is now oriented around child care and will be for the foreseeable future. It’s my hope that I’ll still cook (and I have plenty to tell you about the mountains of vegetables we’ve been working with around here) and garden and observe nature and go to plays and the like, but I imagine that the most interesting aspects of all of these things are going to become the challenge of accomplishing them with baby in tow. So we’ll see how things go. Right now, the sprout is tiny and life is all about eating and sleeping and bathing for all three of us. Plus the occasional videoconference with grandparents (his and mine) and the perennial question of what to do with seven butternut squashes and sixty pounds of apples.
So, while I am now a parent, this is still not a parenting blog and it’s unlikely to become one. I will, however, continue to tell you what we did with the squashes (tonight we’re having couscous, yesterday I made squash bars, and a few weeks ago we had orzo) and the apples (this year it’s likely to just be pies for the freezer, crisps for us, and fresh apples for eating; no one has the wherewithal to make sauce).
birds : Philadelphia Vireo in the backyard
I just spotted a new life bird, a Philadelphia Vireo, moving through the trees in my backyard, a gift of both the fall migration and the weather being cool enough for me to open the blinds while I sit at the computer. It stayed long enough for me to make it outside with both the binoculars and the book and confirm the identification; two windowpanes and a screen introduce a fair amount of uncertainty into these things.
I had just the other day been trying to determine if I had the oomph for any kind of birding, as it’s something I’ve missed this summer what with the heat and the not being able to walk very well and barely being able to open my eyes in the early hours which are ideal for birding. Now that the migration’s on, though, I could probably make it to the lake around 4pm at least once and just see what’s around. Or, I could continue to just look out the window and let the birds come to me!