Becoming a good mom, one hour at a time
In the days leading up to Christmas, Peeper kept sneaking glances out the window. “It’s going to snow soon,” she said.
Yet the rain continued, and snow refused to accumulate.
The lack of powder was even more cruel considering a huge snowstorm stopped her Aunt Amy and Uncle Luke from driving down for the holiday. At least Peeper got to see all the snow on FaceTime when we talked with my sister.
Then finally, finally, over the weekend it snowed!
The other morning Kiwi woke up from a nap and I startled when I looked at her.
“You got bigger!” I exclaimed.
I swear she grew in the 45 minutes she was asleep. She has changed so much in the five months since she was born.
Yet some things have stayed the same. Kiwi entered the world talking—not crying—and she is even more of a chatterbox these days. She squeaks, coos, gurgles and squeals all day (and, ahem, night) long. She clearly has a lot to say!
Kiwi is rolling over both ways, trying to sit up on her own and laughing up a storm. She has become remarkably intentional in her explorations of the world. She reaches out her hand to bat at a toy or the Christmas tree, and she turns over or contorts her body to get a better look at what Big Sister Peeper is doing.
The two girls are interacting more. One day while Peeper was sitting on the potty, she yelled “ha!” for some reason. Kiwi giggled, so Peeper did it again—and again—and again, eliciting bigger belly laughs each time. And the other morning, Peeper saw me tickling Kiwi by nibbling her cheeks, tummy and armpits, so she copied me. “Nom nom nom!” she said as she gummed her little sister’s side.
At the same time, I haven’t wished for time to stop or even slow down. The last five months have been among the most challenging of my life. Kiwi is napping much better and starting to sleep more at night, but the ongoing lack of rest has been brutal on me. And my transition to mom of two has been less than graceful. So I smile when I look back on newborn pictures of Kiwi, but I don’t want to transport myself back to those days.
Plus, why stop time when every day brings something new? Kiwi is changing by the minute, or at least by the nap.
We are beyond thrilled that our sweet, darling Kiwi has joined us!
Maxine Elizabeth Griffin Gregory was born Sunday, July 19, though it took us until minutes before discharge before settling on her name.
“Kiwi is a beautiful name!” the pediatrician on the floor reassured us. “You could always stick with Kiwi.”
I spent most of my labor at home, using HypnoBirthing breathing techniques, baking cookies (but leaving plenty of raw dough to eat after delivery!) and trying to sleep. My mom arrived to watch Peeper at the perfect time—just when I knew we needed to head to the hospital. We were a few minutes away from Labor and Delivery when they told us they were on divert, so we turned around and drove across town to another one.
Thank goodness we went on a Sunday and there was no traffic, because Kiwi was born an hour later.
She and I are both healthy, and we were fortunate to avoid complications and interventions. We have been spending the last few days getting to know each other as a new family of four!
Peeper is very excited to be a big sister. She wants to help with diaper changes, watch Kiwi breastfeed and bring toys—though she’s having a hard time sharing some things (e.g. Mom’s lap and the Moses basket, of all things).
Thank you for all your support, encouragement and kind words over the last 40 weeks. I feel so very lucky to bring Kiwi into a world where love, compassion, empathy and love are the rule.
Pregnancy is weird: It swings you from one extreme to the other fast enough to give you whiplash.
Take yesterday. I had just put Peeper down for a nap when I was overcome with energy and inspiration—a rare combo for this nearly 40-week-pregnant lady. I took the surge out on our Forester and cleaned the bejesus out of it. All of Peeper’s 87 books went into a bag; the car toys went into another bag; random things that accumulated but didn’t belong there (several sippy cups, silverware and—um—a ukulele) journeyed inside. And—get this—I vacuumed the eff out of that sucker. I had no idea how much dog hair, bunny crackers and sand (oh the sand!) had coated every surface.
Then I lay down in bed and ate cherries and read Amy Poehler’s Yes Please for a very long time while Peeper graciously continued to nap.
Another example: I’ll be so hungry that I can literally feel my body breaking down muscles and tissues and important organs to feed itself. Then I’ll look at a sandwich and want to cry because I’m suddenly so full that my stomach is crowding my lungs and I can’t breathe.
The swings can be a little overwhelming, even for onlookers. But somehow I’ve learned to ride the ins and outs like waves. Read more
Our daughter, who just the other day entered our world yelling (or so it seems), is now two whole big enormous years old.
Just writing “two years” instead of “24 months” is a mental shift. It’s like the point when I stopped measuring her age in weeks and switched to months.
We talked a lot about her birthday, and we threw her a party over the weekend with family and a few friends. Peeper still wants to wear her Hello Kitty party hats and keeps asking when her friends are coming over. She’s also asking to open more presents, so maybe we’ll just box up some old things and let her go at it all over again!
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Happy birthday! from Catherine Ryan Gregory on Vimeo.
Peeper has become a comedian in the last month. She thinks poop is hilarious (and she’s right, of course). She actually makes jokes, at least her own version of them. And she makes up silly words to get us to laugh.
It is remarkable to witness someone developing a sense of humor.
Of course toddler comedy brings the house down (except when it doesn’t, like when she’s avoiding a diaper change or bed time). I imagine her funny bone will continue to grow with the rest of her.
Milestones like turning two make me think ahead and wonder what the coming months and years will bring.
Peeper’s second year will be full of changes. She’ll become a big sister—a transition she talks about constantly. I’m starting a new job that will have me working a lot more, though it will be from home. We’ll eventually hire a part-time nanny, which will mean adjusting to a new caregiver.
And who knows what other changes life has in store for our little family!
If I know my daughter, she’ll handle these adjustments well—and with a little humor. We’re sure to deal with some frustration as we all adjust—along with the regular changes that come with being two—but we’re ready.
So far, I haven’t met Peeper’s transition from one to two with dismay: I’m pretty sure no one has heard me bemoan losing my baby. (After all, I still catch myself calling her a baby! Ack!)
That’s at least partly because I love the stage she’s at. She is so full of fun, curiosity, energy and imagination. I wouldn’t trade these days of painting, playing with action figures, throwing rocks, peeking into drains, reading, snuggling, jumping off futons, swinging, swimming, bathing toys and make-believing for anything.
Happy, happy birthday, my sweets. We love you more than you can ever know.
When I worked at College Possible Portland, a nonprofit that helped low-income high schoolers get into and graduate from college, we often ended the week reviewing the ups, downs and what we’d change. Allow me to steal the format for today’s blog!
Ups
Swimming It’s still blazing-hot hereabouts, so we went swimming in the Clackamas River at Milo McIver State Park (yes, still one of our favorite places to be!). Peeper is her happiest in water, and I’m carrying a 38-week-old furnace, so splashing in the river was pretty much the best.
Peeper’s birthday party We didn’t throw a party for Peeper’s first birthday and I knew I wanted to do a little something this year. I considered canceling it (see the downs below) but am so glad I didn’t. Peeper and her friends had a wonderful time painting and playing in the water, and we got to properly break in our newly fenced front yard! More about the party in a later post.
Seeing family Much of my side of the family came in for Peeper’s birthday party, and I’m always grateful when the Ryans are around! After the party we watched the U.S. women’s soccer team beat Japan (in style!), eat pizza and play video games. As we drove away from my brother’s house, I was overwhelmed with the wish that we’d all live near each other permanently. My brother recently moved to Portland, so that leaves only two more siblings to get down here!
This up was a little bittersweet, though, because Eric’s parents were meant to have arrived this weekend, too. They had to delay their trip out to deal with some health stuff (good thoughts/prayers/internet love to my mother-in-law much appreciated!), which is important and necessary, but we still missed them. In fact we re-sang Happy Birthday to Peeper so we could record it and send it to them! Peeper didn’t mind. 😉
Downs
Fireworks Ah, the holiday my noise-phobic toddler and high-anxiety dog love the most! Happy 4th of July! Call me a grump, but I hoped every single boom was the last. We will not be spending Independence Day in town next year. You can find us running away to the mountains somewhere fireworks are illegal.
No sleep Ironically, Peeper slept a few hours through the fireworks and woke up shortly they were finished—and wouldn’t go back to sleep. It was horrible. She hasn’t had a night like that in… oh, a year and a half? We finally left her to cry herself to sleep and she passed out around 5:30, a half-hour before I’d set my alarm to prepare for her party.
Eating struggles I should apologize to all my friends who have to hear the latest tale about how Peeper just doesn’t eat. Not that she’s picky in a I’ll-only-eat-chicken-nuggets kind of way, but in the sense she’s completely uninterested in food. It was worse than usual on Saturday, which led to my redefinition of a meal on Sunday because hey, at least Ritz peanut butter sandwiches and ice cream are calories!
Change
Here’s where I mess up the format. I wouldn’t change anything (except maybe the fact I got 2 hours of sleep on Saturday). Every experience, both good and bad, shapes me as a person and a mother. I learn from some of it (leaving town on the 4th!) and revel in the rest (treasuring the memory of Peeper “getting the baby wet” in the river).
How about you? How was your holiday weekend?
Friday morning, Peeper and I were playing on the floor when Eric walked in. Barely taking his eyes off his phone, he asked, “Did you hear?”
The news he was talking about—the Supreme Court’s decision that overturns states’ bans on same-sex marriage—the “justice that arrives like a thunderbolt”—bowled me over. I of course began to cry because I’m a giant ball of emotions these days. I immediately thought of our same-sex friends whose marriages were now recognized by the federal government, the people in states like Ohio and Kentucky can now enjoy the legal benefits and social recognition of marriage, and the plaintiffs who fought for harrowing years in Obergefell v. Hodges case so that gay and lesbian couples nationwide could marry, too.
Peeper, being the empathetic little bug she is, gave me a hug. “Mama feels better now,” she said.
Indeed, Mama felt wonderful. Read more
Peeper has found a new passion.
We were out to dinner in Seattle (at Mama’s in Belltown) this week, and Peeper was teetering on the edge of Meltdown Canyon. She had been going to sleep much later and skipping naps altogether in our few days out of town, and I was beginning to think that a sit-down dinner in a restaurant was simply asking too much. But we’d already ordered, so we made a go of it.
That’s when the music started.
About a month ago, I tooted my own horn spoke the truth about how I am a really, really good mother. Well, the same goes for Eric, my forever person and father to our wonderful Peeper and Kiwi.
I know him well enough to be fairly certain that he’ll feel all embarrassed by this post (just as he was extremely awkward when I shared with the world that he’d been awarded the educator of the week—something especially noteworthy, I think, because he teaches special ed and this is his first year as full-time teacher. Heck yeah, I’m proud!). But he can just deal, because I’m going to sing his praises anyway!
Ten ways Eric is a wonderful father barely scratches the surface, but these reasons give a glimpse into how lucky our family is to have him. I couldn’t ask for a better partner in the crazy and rewarding whirlwind of parenthood.
Happy Father’s Day, my love. Read more
Lately I catch myself staring at Peeper. A lot.
I look up and there she is, and suddenly I’m overcome.
After she goes to sleep, I lose myself scrolling through my Instagram feed or flipping through photos on my phone. I can’t get enough of her, and then I realize I’ve been smiling at her pictures for the last 30 minutes.
Perhaps it’s a side effect of knowing our second child is on her way. The coming arrival of Kiwi makes me savor this time with Peeper even more.
But my absorption with her goes beyond soaking up these last minutes of her as our only child. She is just so damn wonderful.
