"You make me want to laugh, you make me want to cry." Granted, Andy was singing about a baby boy, but for the most part, it works.
parenting
Lena Maria
Born Saturday, December 16 at 8:05 am
Seven pounds, fifteen ounces
The most beautiful creature K and I have seen
More details later in the week
Crib
In the corner of our bedroom now sits a new bed: L's crib. Two months to go, and our home is slowly beginning to look like the floor of Babies R Us.
Assembly was a quick enough process, but for once, Dad read the instructions carefully to make sure we did nothing wrong.
And of course, there was the requisite crawling about on the floor. No project is complete without it.
Last night I woke up and looked over at the silhouette of the crib, and imagining a little girl asleep in it was so soothing that I fell back asleep almost immediately.
Reading and Walls
In my "Currently Reading" pile of books lies Prenatal Parenting by Frederick Wirth, M.D. Most interesting so far have been the sections on fetal sensory development, particularly the development and growth of the auditory system. Wirth writes that at "twenty-two weeks of gestation the developing infant will respond to sounds from outside the womb. By twenty-eight weeks the infant responds to sound in very consistent ways." (28) And so K talks to her walk driving to work, and I press my cheek to K's belly nightly and tell our daughter how much we're looking forward to meeting her.
K and I have been playing a little music box for our daughter nightly for some weeks now, but recently, we've added reading to the ritual.
It should have a noticeable effect:
I can always tell which of my full-term newborn infants have been read to. They have more mature orienting behavior to auditory stiumli. I can even tell which fathers have been active in reading to their unborn child. I do this by holding the infant between me and his father while we compete for the infant's attention by calling the child's name. If the dad has been actively involved in the reading and singing, his child will turn his head toward him, looking for the source of the sound. Invariably, when their eyes meet they both react positively. (Wirth, 29)
Often, it's selections from Where the Sidewalk Ends, not so much because L will like it more -- obviously, fetal brain development at this point is not that advanced -- but because K likes Silverstein's playful language.
Tonight, Robert Frost, concluding with one of his best, one of the best, period: "Mending Wall." It has one of the truest passages ever written:
Before I built a wall I'd ask to know
What I was walling in or walling out,
And to whom I was like to give offence.
Something there is that doesn't love a wall,
That wants it down.'
Such concerns seem largely forgotten these days.
Critical Conversation
General Entry
I was reading a little from Luci Shaw’s Life Path and if course I’m thinking, “I should be writing in my journal every single day. Every morning.” I write more in my journal these days about the fact that I never write than anything else. What all could I write about? My job — dealing with the nonsense that goes on there. My continuing frustration with Kali’s “I don’t get it” juxtaposed to her increasing “confidence.” There we go — I’ll write about that for a while.
Kali seems to be almost arrogant with her confidence at times. It’s very strange because on the one hand she complains about “not getting it” with certain things that I have written that I think are crystal clear, and then she seems to say that she can do anything she wants, that she’s the greatest asset our whole company has. I’ve just learned to deal with her on a case-by-case basis and realize that almost everything I give her will be declared completely incomprehensible at some point — one passage, one sentence, one silly word even.
I’m listening to BNL’s “When You Dream,” and it’s making me think about what it would be like to have a child. Originally I wrote “what it will be like,” then changed it to “will/would,” then dropped the definitive verb altogether and just stuck with the conditional. Second conditional in fact — used for things that aren’t the case and probably won’t be the case. Like saying, “If Bolek were a king,” I might have explained in class with last year’s IVB. So it’s almost the middle of September and I still haven’t talked to Chhavi. I still haven’t asked her a short (but not simple) question: Do you really think you’ll ever want to have a child?
And I guess I really need to ask myself beforehand: how much do I really want a child? Would I want one right now? No — certainly not. There’s no certainty in our life right now. We don’t know how long we’ll be living here or there or anywhere. And why would that stop me? Because it goes against everything I’ve always imagined my life would be like as a parent: having someplace that we stay for several years. A place to settle down, to put roots down — all those stupid cliches for which there are no other words, or for which I don’t want to search for replacements. So that’s the situation. I have this preconceived notion of how my life would be — probably an image I’ve had since I first took an interest in girls — once I fell in love and all that jazz. And yet nothing else has turned out as I would have thought when I was 15 or 16, so why should this be any different?
What are my alternatives? If C were to say she didn’t really think she would ever want children, and if — and that’s a huge “if” — I were to decide that because of this I should go my own way, what are my alternatives? Not many as I can tell.
I’ll finish this later today I hope.