068

wow i had written an entire long blog entry rife with sentimentality and intense candor but then my dumb ass forgot to save it before meandering away from the window so i just lost the whole thing that took me an embarrassingly long time to write.

can’t bring myself to reproduce the effort so in summation, my girl juna elizabeth is 8 months old.

pros

• sleeps 12 hours through the night, every night

• absolute nap queen, crushing 2-3 hours naps on schedule with no more fanfare beyond just depositing her in the crib w/ a pacifier

• v easy to feed, 4 scheduled meals per day (this is 1 less meal than ian) and likes all solid foods

• constantly smiling or laughing uproariously, makes us all feel like we are extremely funny

• she’s so fucking cute i mean just look at her she’s so round and smiley she literally looks like ^_^

cons

• can’t eat eggs or fish (extremely lame)

• loud

• tries to eat momo’s fur when we’re not looking

• bit my nipple w/ her predator razor teeth the other day and honestly i would’ve reflexively thrown her out a window if i had the upper body strength. if it weren’t for the global pandemic i’d stop nursing entirely because that shit was HEINOUS.

067

there is this moment—an agonizing 30 seconds, at the bare minimum—during which something inside me simultaneously speeds up and sinks. it is my fight-or-flight response, but my helplessness is overwhelming. the wave of panic leaves me lightheaded, frantically and pointlessly rifling through baby clothes hangers because i vaguely recall it is an unseasonable 40 degrees outside, and she will need a coat as we take her to the hospital.

in a stroke of bad timing, my poor mother calls as i’m on the phone with the after-hours nurse from children’s medical center and my idiotic thumb fumbles, accidentally answering so that all she hears is my voice rising to a frantic pitch, saying oh my god her feet and hands are turning blue before the line goes dead.

i toss baby outwear at ian, barely noticing what i’m doing as i grasp desperately for reassurance from a stranger on the phone. do we call for an ambulance? will she be okay? do we have time? she is measured and calm but when she says you need to go now it is the weight of the last syllable i hear and then there is a rushing in my ears, an ocean of panic howling this isn’t supposed to happen. i’m not supposed to lose my baby.

it is this refrain that loops in my futile brain over and over again, as i blindly yank a dress out of my closet and cast around for the right answer to give a curious 3 year old. ian is swiftly out the door with juna in his arms, and for a full minute i stand in my bedroom at an absolute loss. the sight of my baby, sleepy-eyed and swollen-faced, lying limply in her father’s arms. the tightening in ian’s voice as he says look at her feet. i know i have to get it together as james chirps, i want to go with abaa, i know there is a checklist of things i must do but somehow i am holding a furry leopard print coat in my hands and for a moment i think corey bought this for juna and she’ll never get to wear it.

there is a lot in my life i am not proud of. everything i wore from 2002 - 2013. every livejournal post i’ve ever authored. the moral calculus behind my entire career. but the weakness i feel so keenly now is how all the mental and emotional structures i built into my mind absolutely collapsed when my baby experienced anaphylaxis. the reality that all my whack brain could muster was a phone call to my sister & brother-in-law to come over immediately and stay with james, followed by a panicked drive to children’s. the fact that it took a single fucking egg for me to think i’m never going to hear her call me mama. the unbearable, inexorable guilt of giving her that egg in the first place. the self-absorbed audacity of even registering that once again, i am in a plano hospital emergency department for the third time. the baby i could’ve had. the baby i had. the baby i might never have in my arms again.

for the first time in months, coronavirus diminishes to a mere afterthought as i rush through the emergency room doors and submit to a perfunctory screening about my travel history and/or potential symptoms. all the fears i had about potential exposure vanish in the exhale of relief i feel to see her still awake and smiling, even through a puffy, hives-splotched face.

we spend the remainder of our saturday in room 12, while she snoozes and smiles her way through a cocktail of epinephrine, dexamethasone, famotidine. and when the razor edge of fear finally wears off my synapses, my miserable brain thinks i should’ve written more about her. just in case.

all these blog entries dedicated to snacks i ate during pregnancy or how we fumbled our way through japan and i never even documented these things about juna.

how she slept so much during the first month of her life i wondered if i’d ever see the color of her eyes. how she smiled so much earlier than i expected, looking for all the world like an incredibly pleased turtle. how she was slower to laugh uproariously than james but so enamored and interested in people, so adept at mirroring facial expressions that her pediatrician remarked about her blossoming social skills. how she loves being sneaked up on for a forehead kiss. how much she adores her brother, even though their chief interaction is a roleplaying game he devised called “superbaby vs bad guy kid,” consisting mostly of him pretending to fart on her head (kids; gross). and how she loves her father even more than that.

and i think maybe the thing about having a second kid is that the sheer novelty of a new personality falls prey to the logistics of keeping two children alive, especially during a global pandemic. but even as we are discharged so many hours later with a prescription for epipen, this thought stays with me. that i should write more about juna, that i should take more photos, that i should do everything in my power to capture the essence of her life. because even though these days are unbelievably long, the years will always remain short. and in the space between a phone call and a heartbeat, they can feel so much shorter.

066

baby juna is 12 weeks old today! i’ve been completely disregarding my blogging efforts, choosing to spend my scant kid-free windows of time just sitting in bed angrily eating chocolate while a spectra pump mangles my nipples. but i mean to keep writing, because i don’t know a better way to hang on tight to these memories, cast a lasting imprint of these long days that inevitably compress to shockingly short years. and though those daylight hours dragged on so blearily and endlessly during the early months of james’s life, in the blink of an eye he’s a chatty, sweet-natured three year old treat boy. so i try to take photos of it all. and in between the pictures, i grope around for the words.

all throughout this last pregnancy, i thought endlessly about postpartum mood disorder. i did not have to re-read my earlier entries to remember that weight on my chest, the suffocating blanket of dread and misery. i remembered how much i sobbed in the early days of august 2016, and worried that a second childbirth would break my brain again—for good.

but the theme of this blog, and my life, is that i am wrong. i am always wrong. i do not know if it is the preparation, the prolonged skin-to-skin, or just the fickle nature of biochemistry—but i do not experience the baby blues at all. even the dreadful physical recovery does not dim the glow of love and joy i feel towards this tiny little meatloaf. even though i know that newborns—even james, in retrospect—lowkey look like shit, my view of juna is softened and blurred by the filter of oxytocin. i want to look at her always.

every time her goofy little hospital-issued hat falls off, ian carefully replaces it. over the three days we spend in the hospital, his priorities are in order: (1) baby, (2) wife, (3) hat.

i feel unbelievably loved and supported to have my husband with me, sleeping cramped up once again on a hospital loveseat for the entire duration of my postpartum recovery. my amazing mother shuttles james back and forth from daycare, cooking dinner and taking care of him at our house each night. my dude bears this change in routine bravely, though we can tell that being away from us saddens him. he visits us for a couple of hours in the evenings, tromping into my recovery room with an armful of jigsaw puzzles and a stuffed animal for baby juna.

mama, did you got hurt? he asks me curiously as i shift around in my hospital bed, wincing.

i got hurt approximately the same amount as last time, but the blood transfusion adds anemia to my collection of grievances. pain management is much better this time around; i do not have to beg nurses for pain relief after the c-section. in fact, i don’t even ask. a sweet night nurse, who tells me happily that she is leaving for a vacation to italy the next day, administers buprenex in my iv (when i google this drug name the search bar autofills ….for dogs). i realize several minutes later that this may have been overkill, and now i am high.

so my body is alight with a warm opioid buzz and my brain is still basking in the glow of this perfect baby, and my father-in-law brings me a deeply craved half sweet, half-unsweet tea to break my fast. i am perched on a small cloud of happiness. i feel like a lakitu. even with the threat of a hysterectomy in the morning and a medical team rummaging between my legs tensely to monitor my hemmorhage, i am feeling good.

this felix felicis carries me joyfully through the first night of breastfeeding, during which juna achieves a latch that is lauded as absolutely perfect by her pediatrician. i am pleased, thinking how much easier this was than initiating james’s initial feedings (a bewildering ordeal during which i was instructed to hold him like a football and my dumb ass felt exactly like that white lady looking at complicated math).

the triumph lasts only a day. i am sitting up alert and ready for the infamous second night cluster feeding. i have a spotify playlist on deck, link’s awakening on my switch, and plan to nurse the night away. but then juna begins to get frantic, desperately rooting, latching, sucking for a few seconds, and popping back off angrily. her frustration mounts and her panicky little efforts feel like a knife in my chest—both physically and emotionally. she is either not getting enough colostrum, or not getting it quickly enough.

a nurse tells me—most unhelpfully—that when baby is getting this worked up, she is losing precious calories in her effort to get them. ian and i exchange worried glances. i try everything i can think of to keep her latched; a night nurse comes in and dutifully goes through her bag of tricks as well. the nipple mangling begins at this point, and any rosy sentimental thoughts i had about nursing in the past two blissfully milk-free years evaporate immediately. i remember that breastfeeding—even a relatively easy journey, as i had with james—still fucking sucks.

the sucking is the issue at hand with juna. her perfect latch falters as she desperately scrabbles around. within hours, my nipples are bleeding, and now i worry that she’s being put off by the taste of blood. baby is frustrated. i am frustrated. ian replaces her hat.

but after a few minutes of grappling with the intensely primitive fear of not being able to feed my hungry child, common sense finally graces my frontal lobe and i remember that i live in the miraculously modern world of formula. i ask the night nurse if i can supplement with formula to allay her hunger. not because i am giving up on breastfeeding. not because i don’t intend to establish my milk supply. but fed is best and and i cannot watch my newborn starve in the hopes that she’ll “figure it out eventually.”

herein lies the insidious nature of the baby-friendly initiative! this is some neoliberal ass nomenclature that i didn’t think about much the first time around. i thought it mostly had to do with encouraging skin-to-skin and letting the baby hang out in that little buffet cart in the room. but the emphasis on breastfeeding is an overwhelming part of the policy that (in my opinion) disregards maternal exhaustion and infant distress. the nurse tries to dissuade me from supplementing, cautioning that it will hinder my ability to breastfeed. she says the world formula like it’s taco bell. i don’t know how to tell her i would gladly place a chalupa supreme in juna’s mouth to keep her from starving.

i am not brand new, so i am not easily scared off. juna continues to frantically root and sob, and i call the nursery for formula. to their credit, they drop off two six-packs of ready-to-feed formula with all the accompanying disposable nipples i need. this is a relief, because i do not want to ask for one bottle at a time like my father unabashedly testing the limits of riscky’s all-you-can-eat beef ribs special. they caution me not to feed her more than a couple of ounces, or else i’ll spoil her and put her off breastfeeding entirely.

juna eats so hungrily, she seems intent to demolish entire bottles. but i dutifully cut her off and continue to offer her my woebegone breasts. at the time, i clearly recalled each nurse’s disapproving frown. nearly three months out now, they just feel blended into one slightly icy demeanor. my bravado and science-minded pragmatism cower under the prospect of disapprobation; i hastily hide the formula bottles behind my bed when nurses check in like i’m secretly doing whip-its with my baby.

lactation consultants make dreaded visits to my room. they also poke and prod their way through the breastfeeding setup to encourage juna to nurse properly. she continues to pop off after latching and wails unhappily, despite everyone’s best efforts. winnie, one of my lactation consultants, is a middle-aged asian woman who manages to smile wisely and talk simultaneously. she pats my hand and gives knowing winks and looks like the absolute paragon of information. she tells me i can pump, but that it’s not as effective as nursing. your baby is your best pump, she tells me with a sagacious little smile. i remember my nemesis, the medela pump, that nevertheless wrested 40 ounces of milk a day from my body. i do not think that even a baby with ian’s appetite could do the same.

so i pump little test tubes worth of colostrum, and feed it to juna via syringe. we subsist like this over the next two days; a painstaking endeavor to give her everything i can, in as many ways as she can eat. her pediatrician stops in to tell us i’m glad you’ve started supplementing. i was going to recommend it today, since it looks like she’s a little over 7% for weight loss. it is still within a normal range, but i am glad to be on the same page as a doctor i admire and trust with both of my children’s health. later, a lactation consultant comes in and tells me again i shouldn’t supplement, because juna is only at 5% weight loss. she is using an earlier weight measurement to make this calculation. it is a very small discrepancy, but still infuriating to feel like i am constantly at odds with healthcare providers.

(i do, however, love the nurses who are tasked with maternal health. they breeze in and out without a single care as to how i’m feeding baby, and mostly gush about what an easy patient i am. they also admire my hair and makeup and tell me i look amazing, which i know in my heart is a lie they must tell all the recovering mothers because my legs have swollen to tree trunks, i am leaving blood clots the size of a deep sea octopus in the bathroom, and i have not showered in living memory. one kindly nurse tells me that ian and i look like movie stars and i can only imagine she means the ones in a post-apocalyptic zombie film, but i really love compliments so i will be forever fond of this postpartum experience.)

winnie’s second drop-in coincides with my mother’s visitation, and i am unsurprised to see these two little women magnetize to one another, switching from english to speaking mandarin at a rapid clip. my mother is eager for me to be overflowing with milk, so she is the ideal gratefully receptive audience for a lactation consultant. unfortunately, at some point i overhear winnie recommend green papaya and fish heads to increase milk supply and i sit in bed just mad as hell thinking the last thing i need is for my well-meaning mother to bring me a dang fish head.

i continue undeterred to combo feed my astonishingly hungry baby, and we eventually make it to discharge still within acceptable limits of newborn weight loss and good bilirubin levels. the final lactation consultant visit was shady enough to even attract ian’s attention. i see that you’re supplementing with formula, she remarks while flipping through the chart. is there a reason? the question sags with pointed skepticism. i tell her it was recommended by the pediatrician, but i’m irritated that i even need to explain that the only reason i’m doing anything is to keep my baby fed. why else would i supplement? what kind of question is this? i’m not carrying out a plot to hustle a bunch of similac out of their nursery. ian tells me later that he did not realize how intense the breastfeeding push is at bfhi hospitals until this experience. i mean, thanks for the cool hat but we could’ve done without the guilt trips.

my milk finally comes in over the weekend once we return home, exploding back into the horror show boulders i remember from the first time around. i remind myself never to go big on implants. over the first couple of weeks, as i chain myself back to the pump and start bottlefeeding breastmilk, i wonder if i really have failed juna and deprived us of a breastfeeding relationship. slowly but surely, however, our nursing sessions stop feeling like a futile wrestling match. i get nipple shields, which are essentially structured condoms for tiddies, and they ease her back into staying latched. within a few of these sessions, we dispense with the shields entirely and she nurses with a newfound ease. we fall back into the same feeding patterns we did with james: bottles during the day, nursing at night. everything is coming up milhouse.

later, we switch to formula for a week when i embark on a high dose schedule of steroids to combat a terrible allergic reaction i had to adult diapers. i don’t know why i even typed out that sentence but i hope it makes its way into my obituary. i am resolved in my certainty that formula and breastmilk are equally good and fine, and they are not mutually exclusive feeding methods despite lactivism propaganda to the contrary. so even though like, just five paragraphs ago i concluded that i am always wrong about things, i know i did not err in keeping my baby fed and no new mother should be harangued into watching her baby starve. most importantly, juna tolerates all her feeds well and has grown nice and round over these past 12 weeks. she’s picking up fat folds, starting to look like a stack of biscuits, and i am back to cleaning milk out of these smuggler holdfasts.

but we have, unfortunately, lost that little hat.

065

juna is finally here, and i promised myself i would write her birth story despite never quite mustering up the obsessive attention to blog during her gestation.

i documented my first pregnancy with james in excruciating detail, writing endless volumes about every little symptom and inane thought that occurred to me. by the time juna became a viable little bean, i was already too exhausted to spare much poetic license for the endless fatigue, backaches, and erratic food cravings she brought with her. it was 39 long weeks of desperately longing to be horizontal, asking ian to punch my lumbar spine, and eating so many meatballs that cava ran out of inventory twice during my second trimester.

by the end, my sleep apnea has driven ian away to sleep in the living room and my fingers have grown so stiff and achy that it hurts to grip a ps4 controller. my bones hurt, i tell anyone who will listen. my bones hurt too, james agrees happily. in this sweltering texas heat, i am sporting a sexy new look for hot girl summer: swollen lips, three chins, cankles. i feel like a hastily conjured balloon animal. juna ambles gracefully inside me all the while, pressed up high against my ribs and flopping around occasionally with a pronounced languor that i attribute to laziness. i now understand how mothers of multiples can distinguish twin a from b in utero. whereas james was a constant, hyperactive jostler, juna’s movements are subtle and slow. she hiccups so frequently i picture her posted up in my belly, holding a champagne flute and swaying around tipsily.

we schedule her delivery date for october 8th, at 39+2 weeks gestation. i choose the repeat c-section instead of attempting a vbac in an effort to minimize risk of uterine rupture, but the added bonus of scheduling around a due date is welcome when anticipating maternity leave, a toddler’s routine, and roughly 900 appointments and errands that i procrastinate and put off until the final 2 weeks. i choose baylor frisco this time, and dr. fong, a highly praised ob/gyn who specializes in high risk pregnancy care. i imagine that i will be his easiest patient, breezing in and out of all my check-ups with no issues or concerns beyond my desire to to continue eating all the banana bread, and his tacit disapproval of this plan.

it is such a relaxed, prepared lead up to childbirth that on the morning of my delivery, i still have time to get my makeup done professionally and buy cupcakes for the labor & delivery team. after check-in, ian and i are escorted to a pre-op room where i am plugged into a million tubes while ian dresses in gigantic disposable scrubs and flexes for a fit check. we while away two hours here, posting up for several selfies. when a nurse re-enters the room, ian moves so hastily and guiltily to hide our camera that it appears as though we’ve been up to far more suspicious activity. i tell him an anecdote about a former patient at a healthcare facility i worked for, lowkey my personal hero, who was caught getting head in a pre-op bay shortly before her surgery.

when the nurses finally take us back for the c-section, my cheerfulness drops as sharply as the temperature in this surgical wing of the hospital. the fluorescent lights of the operating room are blindingly bright, the freezer chill permeates my bones and i begin shaking long before the duramorph is injected into my spine. the surgical team is kind and chatty; i try to remember everyone’s name and job role but that pervasive fear washes over me again and i am too nervous to focus. when they ask me if i’m ok, my voice quavers. i sound like conor oberst on fevers and mirrors. dr. fong introduces another obstetrician who will be performing the surgery alongside him. i tell myself that with so many professionals in the room, nothing can possibly go wrong. juna roils around fervently inside me, a visible reflection of my own nerves.

ian is my rock, as always. he sits beside me and grips my hand, telling me how excited he is, how everything will be okay. when they begin the surgery, i find that i need him to keep chatting, to keep me distracted. we talk about podcasts, and i mention popcorn, a teenager from kentucky who is is mostly just known for smoking weed on snapchat and doing jail time. the anesthesiologist overhears us, and chimes in are you talking about popcorn? i am instantly embarrassed. my daughter is on the verge of birth and i am talking about kingpop270’s instagram. god, i hope this isn’t the last thing you ever hear me say, i mutter to ian.

and then, just like in my previous c-section, the idle chatter in the operating room takes a sharper, focused edge; that feeling of pressure and tugging bears down somewhere around my ribs. my nerves are frayed, and i’m alternately filled with adrenaline and dread. the fear must be spelled out clearly in the panicked glances i shoot ian. he moves quickly to reassure me, bumping my face gently with his surgical mask in a kiss. your makeup is great, honey, he tells me. you look very beautiful. if there wasn’t a surgery going on i’d be doing it like your freak patient. and then, as an afterthought, he adds, i hope that’s not the last thing you ever hear me say.

and now dr. fong is telling us it’s time, someone is saying jokingly to my uterus sticking your tongue out at me, that’s a little rude, and ian is rising from his seat, clicking away on the camera. every voice is pitched to reassure, there is an instant feeling of relief and lightness beneath my ribs as my lungs finally expand in full. ian says awww, there she is honey! but i can’t see anything over the gowns that are propped up as a makeshift drape, and all i can think is, why can’t i hear her crying? is she okay? when i finally see her for a brief instant, i have the fleeting impression of a pile of dark hair, floppy arms, and long legs. then she finally bawls, and like an instantaneous, primal reflex, i start crying too.

she weighs in at 6 lbs, 13 oz, with apgar scores of 8/9. everyone in the room agrees that she is very cute. when ian brings her to me, her eyes are still firmly closed and her face seems so unfathomably tiny and delicate. we are so enamored with this fascinating little human being that neither of us overhear dr. fong telling his colleague: it’s stuck.

if it takes longer than usual to close my body back up, i do not notice. i am watching ian hold his daughter close to his face, talking quietly to her, his face absolutely lit with love and joy. even in the post-op haze of relief and pride for my newborn child, a single thought shines through like a beacon. i love this man. it has been exactly 7 years since the first time i met him in a dimly lit sushi bar, and since that day i have never quite been able to stop my heart from leaping at the sight of him, never been able to stop myself from always laughing too hard at his jokes. and though we have made two beautiful little human beings together, he is still—first and foremost—the absolute love of my life.

i feel a wave of lightheadedness wash over me; the dizziness makes me slightly nauseous, and i tell the crna. she informs me that she will give me phenergan, but cautions that it might make me sleepy. it must take effect instantly, because i do not even recall the trip to a recovery bay. i struggle to keep my eyes open, but my head swims and i repeatedly lose my battle against consciousness. it does not occur to me that anything is wrong, and i think that this sleepiness is par for the course. from my bed in recovery, everything becomes mired in fog, moments occurring in fragments like stop motion.

i am basking in the lazy glow of skin-to-skin with juna on my chest, ian sitting in a chair to my left. my recovery nurse checks my vitals and massages my uterus, apologizing effusively, but i still can’t feel any pain. there is a crowd of people around me, focused on something below my waist, and i think maybe they’re checking my incision. a baby nurse coaches me into jamming my breast into juna’s mouth. the same nurse is back, advising ian that he should take the baby to the nursery. ian is gone, and i still can’t feel my legs. i am scratching my face angrily, frustrated that it itches so much. my recovery nurse is back, apologizing again, but this time she is sorry it took so long to give me medication for the itching. i try to tell her it’s no problem, that i’ve just been sleeping and didn’t even realize i had to wait, but my head swims and my eyelids crash down. then dr. fong is talking to me, asking you said that you and ian are done having kids, right? i tell him that i’m fairly sure but we’re not 100% on that decision quite yet. then he is saying something else, and i can only catch the word hysterectomy before darkness drags me back under again.

some time later, i am relocated to a private postpartum room and things become much clearer. with the help of my medical team and my husband, i piece together the details of this hazy post-op experience. my recovery nurse tells me that they’ve inserted a bakri balloon to treat my postpartum hemorrhage. dr. fong explains that after they delivered the baby, he realized my placenta was not detaching easily—that it had, in fact, invaded and grown into the wall of my uterus. that though he had fully removed it and stitched the resultant wound, i began hemorrhaging in recovery and needed a blood transfusion. ian helpfully informs me that when he left my side for the nursery, there was something that looked like a huge bloody jellyfish on the floor between my legs. a night nurse instructs me not to eat or drink, as i may need to return to the operating room for a hysterectomy if i continue to bleed.

i am hungry and tired, and cannot even begin to process the idea that i could lose my uterus at the age of 32. but mostly, the sight and feeling of juna against my chest distracts me from the urgency of recovery. she is perfect. she looks like james, but her features are somehow smaller and more serious. she has my eyes, and i am so bizarrely proud just to see her peering up at me. i love her with the instantaneous ease that was missing from my first childbirth experience. and when james comes peeking around the corner to visit us for the first time, my heart feels like it will burst from the immensity of affection for them both. it is this feeling that persists and triumphs over my postpartum tribulations, driving away pain and fear like a patronus. you’ve been through a lot, several nurses remark to me when they take over a shift and flip through my chart. but i mostly feel like i’ve been sitting in bed, watching james show juna a dinosaur toy he picked out months ago to give her. and i think that i could lose the uterus, could really lose any number of organs, as long as i am able to continue holding this beautiful little family in my arms forever.

the next morning rolls around, and my balloon is deflated. it works; i have finally stopped bleeding. after some observation, i am finally deemed trustworthy enough to move to the less attentive postpartum ward. i fought to have you, i thought you’d be the easy case, my recovery nurse tells me wryly as she bids me farewell. my immediate instinct is to tell her that i have terrible luck with surgeries, but then it occurs to me that it’s quite the opposite. i am, as always, unbelievably and undeservedly lucky. i am awash with appreciation for my stellar medical team and love for my family and friends who keep me in good spirits through the remainder of the hospital stay.

when dr. fong stops by to discharge me on friday, he tells me about a few other placenta accreta cases he has treated. thank you for taking such good care of me, i tell him. thank you for staying alive, he quips in response.

we arrive back at our house in beautifully crisp autumn weather that is a complete departure from the stuffy summer heat that marked my hospital admission. the chill in the air feels like the promise of new beginnings, and it is this optimism that suffuses me as i lie curled in bed with my snugly swaddled little baby. she blinks slowly and seriously at me, a fat little caterpillar stuffed inside a nearly spherical cocoon. she is everything i ever hoped for, another testament to my enduring luck.

welcome home, juna elizabeth.

064

it’s a recurring theme of my bad personality that i often begin ill-conceived projects with unabashed enthusiasm, only to discontinue them almost immediately with equal enthusiasm.

i started this blog when ian and i first got serious about planning a pregnancy, and stopped updating shortly after our joint venture became one year old human being. in retrospect, it’s a shame i didn’t keep up with ~ * ~ mommy blogging ~ * ~ because the years after the initial shock and adjustment period have genuinely been some of the most fun i’ve ever had without video games or alcohol.

james is nearly 3 years old, and i’m proud to say that none of my early agonizing over formula temperature or nap lengths amounted to very much beyond the rapid recession of my postpartum hairline. by the magical momentum of nature and luck, my dude grew to be a happy, healthy little guy who has given us very little to fret about.

and this is where i fall easily into the tropes of mommyhood, marveling over his abundance of personality or rejoicing in toddler-isms that feel so unique and significant to me. i have to give myself a pep talk, remind myself that it’s not feasible or rewarding to parent under a layer of irony and obfuscation, that it’s okay to bask in james’s precocious moments, that falling back on maternal platitudes isn’t tantamount to a complete overhaul of my personality.

aaba, can you read the coco book? can you sit on the bear? can you sit criss cross applesauce? james asks ian while we settle down for bedtime reading. hello my sweetie pie, my honey bun, he greets me brightly as i take off his shoes. when we share an overripe peach, sticky juices dribbling down his chin, he muses slimy, yet satisfying. then adds an aside for my benefit, in case i have not caught the reference: simba says that, mama.

it feels like nothing short of miraculous that the tiny jostling sidekick tucked away behind my ribcage became this bright-eyed pile of cheeks, became this goofy, giggling little boy who can identify animals swiftly and loves slapstick humor. i have loved every minute of this transformation, and i’m incredibly excited to experience it for a second time.

last year, unable to stave off the reality of my withering eggs and a rapidly increasing age gap between james and a future sibling, i opted to remove my iud yet again and embark on the vaguely bureaucratic process of trying to conceive. this is complicated slightly by my unabashed desire for a girl and the pressure of realizing that this may be my last chance to have one because who on this cruel earth can afford 3 kids. so i veer towards the pseudoscientific shettles method of sex selection and also concoct a hairbrained scheme to increase my magnesium and calcium intake. this all culminates in a particularly bleak point of my carefully scheduled timing during which it is go time but i am sidetracked by cursed amazon product photos of men’s underwear with dick pouches.

haha look at these, i foist my phone upon ian. i have truly mastered the art of seduction. yet despite my consistent and total inability to inspire ardor in anyone, a babby is formed.

pregnancy tests turn positive almost immediately, such is the strength of this cursed conception story. and almost as rapidly, symptoms surge. more specifically, they surge out of my mouth. morning sickness, which i so smugly dodged during my first pregnancy, strikes a revanchist and prolonged campaign. it sucks. it is worse than fatigue and sore breasts, worse than my omnipresent sacroiliac joint pain. but i am one of the lucky few—a sugary breakfast immediately upon waking helps mitigate the nausea.

the downside to this is obvious. i have consumed my body weight in banana bread and sweetie drinks, and am now roughly the size of a dwarf planet. i also somehow came up with the boneheaded idea to proceed on a painful course of orthodontic work during this pregnancy, thinking that i’d just double down on my ugliness and get invisalign. this is coupled with a motion appliance and elastics that i lovingly refer to as my adult braces, and the miserable grind of timing all my meals and drinks around the foibles of both pregnancy and orthodontia. i begin every day with the intense aching of my gums and end every evening with the trenchant pain in my sacroiliac joint.

but the prospect of completing our little family, of raising another child with my role model and best friend is worth every ache and discomfort.

10 weeks into the pregnancy, the three of us lie on james’s bedroom floor after trying unsuccessfully to wrangle the kid into an afternoon nap he has no intention of taking. i open my email from sneak peek, an early blood test to confirm the baby’s sex. a gif unfolds the test result like a fortune cookie. ian and james both huddle around my phone to see it.

congratulations, you’re having a baby girl!

clinical non-invasive prenatal testing and ultrasounds confirm this further, and we are beside ourselves with joy. though the truest hope for any pregnancy is a healthy and thriving baby and gender is an arbitrary social construct, i still feel a deep sense of completeness. finally, we’ll get to use the name i’ve been wistfully hanging onto for years.

we tell james about the imminent arrival of a sibling, but his comprehension and interest vacillates. is it my baby sister? he asks, prodding my rotund belly. when i nod, he asks can i get her out? i think that he gets it in these moments, or at least vaguely grasps some concept of pregnancy. but then he taps on ian’s leg and announces i’m knocking on my little sister! and i quickly reassure my husband that his thighs are still looking very athletic and sleek.

delivery is slated for october 6th, by repeat c-section. it’s the day after my 32nd birthday.

a girl in october, my mother muses fondly. just like you.

i hope she is only like me with respect to a full head of hair. i hope in much else, she will be like ian: the best person i’ve ever known. and in some ways, i hope she has james’s intrepid spirit and love of food. but most assuredly—and significantly—i know she’ll become her very own person, with all the idiosyncrasies, strengths, and foibles that i can’t wait to discover.

hang in there, little j2. ian’s brainstorming some cool ideas for ensemble halloween costumes.

063

fushimi inari taisha is kyoto's iconic shinto shrine.  i know it causes great astonishment to the three people reading my blog to know that i am not like, a particularly learned authority on shinto- so this isn't an travel essay on how i alone of all tourists just really *get* this magnificent shrine.

i have, however, mastered the art of waking ian at 5 am and fretting to him about the dire necessity for an early start.  the train ride to fushimi inari station is bleary-eyed but brief. i spend the entirety of it deeply immersed in facebook political strife, the most hateful and pointless activity a person can do while on vacation.

i am initially nervous about the chozuya, a water ablution basin set in a pavilion for symbolic purification prior to entering the shrine.  in addition to studying train timetables with the frenetic intensity of a serial killer, i am also mentally armed with a lot of anecdotes about dumb foreigners who botch this rite horrifically.  i've seen americans actually drink from the ladle, the learned weeaboos of the internet have sneered.  because my brain is just an feedback loop that runs an anxiety track between self-loathing and fear of social faux pas, i wonder if i will fuck up this act in an even worse way.

i saw this lady drink from the basin like a farm animal, they will say on tripadvisor.  and it looks like her husband was browsing best_of_grindr memes.

i'm happy to report that there are literal cartoon drawings of how to perform the temizu properly and no one was around to witness me desperately overthinking it.

fushimi inari is unbelievable.  i think a lot about one of my top 5 favorite video games, okami.  the beauty of the vermilion torii is as striking in person as it is in photos- winding paths crowned with seemingly endless gates.  i feel like i am going to come out to an unexpected landscape on the other side, like i am chihiro in spirited away.  instead, i end up accidentally photobombing a chinese couple's selfie.

even more impressive than the torii are the hundreds of stone foxes everywhere—they flank shrines with proud symmetry but also lurk in small corners and spaces like clever, curious little details.  because i am with ian, we get lost and are soon completely isolated in various nooks of altars and fountains.  i furtively pray over the senseless, horrific gun violence back home in america.  i know that inari is mostly about agriculture and prosperity, but the sanctity of this place verges on magical.  it feels like the right place to pray, and then whisper ban all white men.  coincidentally, ian falls down a set of steps shortly afterwards.

i reach the apex of my high-strung timekeeping here by insisting that we catch a train to nara for the sole purpose of spending less than an hour at nara park before rushing back to our hotel for checkout.  we achieve this feat primarily by running like two insane people in a mad dash to the train station.   it's hard to do this when you're mostly lost and completely out of shape, but we sprint our way past a lovely little farm, a high school, and a sleepy neighborhood.  ian looks back fondly on this pathfinding as one of his favorite detours.  i look back and hope those high school students didn't make fun of me.  they probably did.

but i am in this for the deer.  hundreds of sika deer roam freely around the park and temples and i think fleetingly that they will live up to their reputation and bow to me for treats and i will feed them from my hands like a gentle disney princess and we will all be beautiful and graceful with big eyes and thin legs and at some point this stopped being about deer.

as it turns out, the deer of nara and i do have a lot in common- we're hungry, annoyingly intrusive, disgruntled, and occasionally raggedy.  the deer crackers i purchase enthusiastically at the park entrance are immediately snatched from my grasp by an onslaught of these bold ass deer.  they surround us with hopeful mouths like a swarm of dementors.  long after we've exhausted our cracker supply, errant deer still follow us around and nibble hopefully at my purse.  i encounter only one deer that bows begrudgingly.  ian's pants are muddy from being headbutted so many times.  it is still an excellent time.

we are both starving by the time we head back to kyoto, so we break the social contract and i eat the most delicious box of food on the train.

then finally, after leaving hotel kanra, we board the shinkansen from kyoto station.  we're in an unreserved car, but seating is plentiful and comfortable.  there are outlets and tray tables and a little lady pushing a snack trolley down the aisle like we're on the hogwarts express.  it is an excellent way to travel.  in the blink of an eye, we arrive at tokyo station.  a handful of subway stops takes us to toranomon hills, then at the top of a 52-floor skyscrape: andaz tokyo.

this is japan's first andaz, and it is stunning.  every inch of the property feels like a cohesive marriage between midcentury modern design and japanese aesthetic.  even ian, who can't tell the difference between the four seasons and a mine shaft, remarks dang when we check into our room.  we have a glorious view of the tokyo tower at sunset.  the hotel concierge have surprised me with a thoughtful birthday gift—a very dry, crumbly brownie that i eat with determined gratitude.  

i am on the cusp of three fully-lived decades, and there is no better way to celebrate my adulthood than perching in this room, cuddling up with my love, looking out across the tokyo skyline, finding out that it cost me like a hundred dollars to use the hotel laundry service.

062

kyoto is a weeb's dream of japan—conjuring temples, geisha, and views of mt. fuji—so i am surprised when ian chooses an extra night here instead of extending our tokyo stint. 

our second morning in osaka is lazy and leisurely, with a late checkout and my second-favorite ramen find of the trip.  ramenjikon is our first experience with ordering via ticket vending machine, and here we devise a perfect strategy for idiots: pressing two disparate buttons at random, one of which seems to be the most expensive or special option.  this nets me a shio ramen that is so thick and rich i initially mistake it for tonkotsu.  but this is a chicken-based broth with no oily mouthfeel.  i fish out the chashu and toss it into ian's bowl—i don't fuck with pork.  it is not until literally just 2 minutes ago that i realize one of those pieces was actually smoked duck and now i feel like a fool for giving that up.

we walk to osaka station with our luggage. at this point, i feel much more confident in our grasp on public transportation than my ability to communicate with taxi drivers.  when we arrive, i locate the japan rail travel agency station and exchange our jr pass pass vouchers for the real deal.

like every other tourist who visits japan, i have spent a great deal of time poring over the jr pass situation.  for $256, it is a free pass to ride any train in the japan rail network within a 7 day timeframe.  it is a testament to how many consecutive wine-soaked weeknights i have spent studying japan rail lines and schedules that i can recite a jr timetable more readily than i can recall my own son's social security number.

it is worth noting that while i took endless evernotes on this train situation, ian spent the previous months at home just falling asleep to grim murder documentaries and giving not a single care as to how best to utilize a jr pass.

it is a simple process to exchange our vouchers for the passes.  an agent verifies our passports, gives us forms, and affixes the carbon copy of our completed forms to our passes.  they are infuriatingly clumsy—nearly letter-sized sheets of what seems like inflexible cardboard.  we're not supposed to fold them, so they take up room in my purse and feel like an unwieldy punishment for tourism. 

while in the travel station, i notice an excellent brochure for a travel agency's guided tour through kyoto.  i have no intention of ever opting for a guided tour, but i swipe one because it outlines an optimal itinerary for kyoto sightseeing.  hey let's hold onto this, i hand it to ian.  he loses it immediately.

i am h y p e to ride a shinkansen bullet train.  our jr passes allow us to ride the hikari train on the tokaido line that runs from kobe and osaka to tokyo.  however, because we are traveling to kyoto and there are no bullet trains leaving from osaka station, we end up accidentally taking a perfectly serviceable rapid transit train that still takes us to our destination in less time than it would take me to drive from dallas to denton.  during this ride, we sit across from a japanese man and his children—one of whom is a baby who looks a little younger than james.  the father dotes on his infant lovingly and i think about our own son with a heartsick pang of envy.

we arrive in kyoto station and take the subway one stop to gojo station.  this is a completely barren little platform only one block away from hotel kanra.  this was the first hotel room i booked excitedly for our trip, but it turns out to be just okay.  the cedar wood bathtub is good, but it is no opposite house (still my all-time favorite).  we leave our shoes at the front door and i give ian the briefest of respites before i start yammering about owls again.

ignited by the joy of witnessing a barn owl get bathed, i spend the entirety of our train ride searching owl cafes and i have my heart set on fukurou no mise's outpost in kyoto.  their website contains a work schedule for each owl and i am overwhelmed by the preciousness.  i must hold an owl and cherish it with all my heart.  my husband has no ornithological interests but acquiesces readily to my fanatical mission.

the owl cafe is located in the teramachi shopping district on the east side of kyoto, and i waste no time in prowling the streets.  this turns out to be rather similar to the pharmacy mission. i enlist several different strangers to point me in the correct direction, stalking up and down the street with intense focus but unable to identify anything even remotely owl-related.  i worry that the cafe will be fully booked, and i will miss my chance.  as it turns out, fukurou no mise is quietly located on the second floor above a shop called SPAGHETTI COLLECTION.

as much as i love spaghetti, i make a beeline for the owl cafe—which turns out to be tiny and relatively barren aside from the family that walks in right before us.  our two groups watch a dvd about proper owl handling and are subsequently allowed to select our dream owls.  i go for a scops that i assume is pigwidgeon.  the next hour is everything i have ever dreamed of.  the owls are unbearably soft and perfect.  they do not even shit on us, though the other family is not quite so lucky and their daughter catches droppings in her hair.  halfway through our allotted time, the owls change work shifts and i am finally united with a barn owl: deko.  he is maybe the most beautiful creature i've ever seen (cuter than even titanic-era leonardo dicaprio).  long after we leave the cafe, and then japan, ian and i reminisce fondly about deko.

afterwards, we eat at a forgettable unadon restaurant that is also another tripadvisor failure.  we trek to the gion district, which i vaguely remember from that problematic ass memoirs of a geisha book.  the only geisha we see are likely tourists in costume, but i successfully locate a kaiseki restaurant worthy of tabelog.  ian has less fond memories of this place than i do, because his hamstrings cramped up from sitting with his legs folded beneath him.  nevertheless, the evening is beautiful and our view overlooks the kamo river.  adjacent to our table, inside the restaurant, a group of tourists laden with pokemon merchandise is getting lit.

i have a hard time sleeping that night, because i am scrolling through work emails.  after two hours of uneasy rest, we wake up and head for arashiyama.

a cursory google image search will always bring up a picture of a bamboo forest.  this is my destination, and i will rouse my husband at 5 am for it if i need to.  an early start is non-negotiable if you want a photo op that isn't teeming with chinese tourists.  i hustle us through gojo station to arashiyama in the west with annoying impatience, pacing in circles when ian takes too long in the station restroom.  it is a rainy, gloomy, grey sort of day, but we are armed with umbrellas from the hotel and my relentless focus on the capture.  when we arrive at our destination, i recall a blog entry about the scenic route and we follow suit.

the rain and humidity coil my hair into a repulsive frizzball and destroys my makeup, but it is worth it.  we are beyond elated to traverse this park, which is nearly totally empty.  arashiyama is beautiful in a way that makes me feel nostalgic for a place i've never even know before. the morning fog rolls in slow, elegant waves over lush mountain landscape dotted with lonely little temples.  even ian, a man immune to natural beauty as evidenced by his love for me, is stunned by the scenery.  i am reminded of a book my parents bought me nearly twenty years ago, a guide to painting watercolor landscapes that came with its own little tray of muted paint colors.  no matter how hard i tried, i could never replicate those delicate mists and mountains.  even decades later, armed with a leica summilux lens, i still cannot justice to the staggering, subtle beauty of mount arashi.  

we stand at that summit view for a long time, watching the fog drift over the river below.  i try to hold the memory of this close, burn it deep into my neurons, so that twenty years from now, i can still recall the lean lines of my handsome lover perched over the railing of this secluded ledge, across this mountain view.  this fraction of a second, this moment in time, belongs to us alone.

before we leave, ian remembers to facetime his parents in order to see mr. james.  our big boi has recently discovered how to climb to the highest point of our house (in the gameroom, above the stairwell, via the sofa) and shouting A DA DA! with unabashed enthusiasm.  his fondness for daring heights is an odd idiosyncrasy given that his parents are both placid cowards.  nevertheless, we get james on facetime and show him the stunning mountainscape.  he doesn't seem to miss us much and fumbles off-screen in search of books and toys instead.

no restaurants in arashiyama are open this early in the morning, so we head back to kyoto station.  here, we accidentally stumble across a well-known ramen hall on the 10th floor of south tower.  it is by the oddest fortune that my husband—king of falling asleep during all my netflix selections—recognizes a small photo of kazuo yamagishi outside the kyoto station outpost of taishoken based off one errant episode of david chang's mind of a chef.  i have always known that ian is my soulmate, but this cinches it.

taishoken's signature tsukemen is the best bowl of noodles we experience in japan.  

the rest of this day is a bit of blur.  we return to our hotel, and ian succumbs to a midday nap while i traipse miles around the rainy city in search of a readily available shiatsu massage.  we visit nishiki food market at night and i finally meet an oyster i don't really like.  i get lit off a grapefruit full of rum and eat a delicious bag of roasted chestnuts.

when we retire to our hotel for the night, my facebook feed lights up with news about the shooting in las vegas, back in the united states of ammunition.  and i think, for a moment, that maybe we should never return.

061

i make three good decisions before ian and i leave for japan.  i purchase a japan rail pass.  i order a pocket wifi.  and i leave mr. james in texas.

it is an accepted universal truth that it is hard to be away from your baby.  but i didn't actually feel torn up about it the first time i went on a weekend trip at the 3 month mark.  there was no mom guilt, no anxious nail-biting or constant facetiming.  and i didn't stress about it even at the 3 week mark, when i was hospitalized for sepsis after my c-section incision burst open unceremoniously and sprayed gouts of blood across the living room floor.  we've routinely enjoyed date nights on weekends when james is happily paraded around in my parents' house.  i feel like i am borderline sociopathic in my carefree approach towards alloparenting. 

but even still, it is hard to depart to the other side of the world without my big boi.  after all, he is no longer a potato.  he is vivacious, curious, animated, talkative.  he is a real dude, not just a flailing ball of fat rolls and eyelashes.  he wears socks and shoes and knows how to climb up on furniture with the aid of footstools.  he is a person with thoughts and emotions, and i worry that he will miss us and wonder why we've abandoned him in favor of takoyaki and timely trains.

i write up an anxious evernote for both sets of grandparents with instructions regarding his meals, sleep, and safety.  ian deems it correctly as fully annoying.

he's gonna have a great time!  my husband reassures me, with his usual dose of placid optimism.

and as always, he is right.  james suffers through the tail end of a cold, but happily soaks up the undivided attention of his grandma, grandpa, aunt bekah, 爷爷, and 奶奶.  he is spoiled beyond belief and probably forgets about us entirely.  when we facetime him in kyoto, he is entirely distracted by a wicker cabinet full of toys and books.

we talk about his ridiculous grin and round belly nearly every day in japan, but we are also perfectly at ease on vacation.

i have never willingly checked luggage.  unlike my sister, who checks multiple bags for the shortest weekend jaunts, or my parents, who fill suitcases with costco candy buckets for their trips back home, i travel light.  it is not a principled stance on minimalism, because i say gross consumerist shit like, i can just buy it there if i need it. i am just not into hauling around baggage.  so i bring a small carry-on and a purse.  ian brings a weekender bag with room for my extra shoes.  i remind myself to take an annoying photo of my passport, headphones, and leica q for a basic bitch instagram #travel vibe.  i immediately forget to do this.

the leica q isn't mine, of course.  i rent it for this trip, because i remember how much i hated lugging around my nikon df and lenses last year in beijing.  despite my poor photography skills, this is absolutely worth the expense—i fill two memory cards and purchase a third in the span of a week.  i seriously consider outright purchasing this camera, but am dissuaded by the possibility of explaining to james that he can't afford to attend college because mom couldn't stop spending on outrageously expensive hobbies like photographing her own butt.

of course, i am sick on day one.  i wake up on our travel day with a sore throat, smoldering its way up with the ominous threat of illness.  when we land in vancouver, i buy a weird canadian version of zyrtec in the desperate hope that it may be allergies that can be kept at bay.

vancouver to osaka is a 9 hour flight, which does not faze me.  i fly back to the prc annually, have very short legs, and am armed with a bottle of xanax.  ian is not as well-suited or prepared for a long flight, and resigns himself to watching the help for 9 hours.  

we arrive at kansai international airport at 3 pm the next day.  our first victory is locating the post office despite having interpreted the airport map incorrectly.  i pick up the japan wireless package that is being held for me—a pocket wifi hotspot with unlimited data.  while i wait in line, i send ian to do a small currency exchange.  i immediately regret this decision, because we make no arrangements for meeting back up.  i momentarily lose my husband in the airport and desperately wonder how people ever lived before smartphones.  

but we finally find each other and eventually also find the exit corresponding to "airport limousine."  this is deceptive nomenclature; the limo is actually just a bus.  we are thrilled with ourselves for figuring out how to buy tickets for this bus, which isn't actually very hard because the ticket machine has an english language option.  still, we high five.  we did the bare minimum— we found our way out of the airport.

the glow of our first success as two idiots abroad is immediately vanquished by the bus attendant, who speaks to us rapidly in japanese and displays a luggage tag printed with a list of hotel names.  conrad osaka is not on this list.  i curse myself for not learning any japanese prior to this trip, out of a weird admixture of this compulsion to avoid any weeby behaviors, along with a fear of disrespectfully butchering vocabulary.  the next ten minutes is an agonizing stretch of pantomiming, feverish googling, and repeating ourselves.  a younger man in line behind us intercedes helpfully with only slightly more english, and i am not exactly sure how the confusion is resolved at all—but our luggage is eventually sorted onto the bus and we sit tight for an hour-long ride in osaka.

we pass a long stretch of an wildly dense and complex factory that looks exactly like the chemical plant zone from sonic the hedgehog 2.

our taxi driver at osaka station also has no idea what i mean by "conrad osaka" but google maps eventually prevails and we arrive at a the foot of a posh skyscraper in the nakanoshima area, a narrow sandbank sandwiched by two rivers to its north and south.  it is not a touristy vibe, surrounded by museums and office buildings, but it's adjacent to some rich people shit and this newest conrad property lives up to its brand. 

the lobby smells really good.  there are also visually arresting custom art installations and incredible city views, but i am mostly still wondering how i can get my hands on whatever air freshener situation they're working with. 

there is a nespresso machine in the room, which i think is also a sign of fanciness.

fresh off a long travel day filled with dejected airline food, i am hype to dig into our first meal; i have endless tabelog aspirations.  we wander north, unknowingly, into the kitashinchi nightlife area.  the city on friday night is the best kind of vibrant—bustling, but not busy.  ian is visibly exhausted and i am stupidly traipsing awkwardly in my kindest louboutins, but we do our best to make our first meal a memorable one.  i want to make it count.

as it turns out, it is hard to find a restaurant you have only previously identified on tabelog, with no firm grasp on kana recognition.  my confidence falters, as gps leads us in errant circles and it dawns on us that one address might house like 14 different restaurants, stacked upon each other and digging into deeper basement levels like a tantalizing layer cakes—every square foot probably delicious but which one are we looking for?

we finally find my first choice, and are rejected politely and immediately.  maybe for lack of reservation, but most likely because we are obviously idiotic tourists in unsuitable shoes.  i despair.  after much anxious ambling, we finally slink dejectedly to an italian restaurant that looks approachable.  there, we drink quietly and scrabble hungrily at a dish of unidentified tapas that are all some form of seafood or potato salad.  it is good, but we are ravenous.  we people-watch the passersby outside the bar and ian finally asks what's up with all these old men with much younger girls?  i protest maybe they're all dads and daughters.  

it is at this point that i discover i've left my wallet—and our yen—back at the hotel.  luckily, cucina cucina accepts ian's credit card.  but we are hungry boys, and a milligram of potato salad does nothing to sate us.  i have my eye on a ramen joint—chikamatsu—that is allegedly nearby.  it takes us an embarrassingly long period of wandering to locate it.  i finally break down and ask a nightclub doorman where the restaurant is.  and by ask, i mean show him the tabelog page and also my dumb puzzled face.  he gestures us helpfully to the building right across the street, and then jogs over to guide us even more acutely when it becomes clear that we are literally incapable of anything.  chikamatsu is tucked away in a nondescript basement level with no obvious signage.  they do not take cards.

we admit defeat.  my feet are in agony.  i am unwilling to face a third rejection from a restaurant and ian is barely awake, so we trudge back to the hotel and only get lost twice along the way.  when we return to the conrad, i break down and order room service.  it costs $100 smooth american dollars for a burger and fish & chips.

the next day is a triumphant 180 from the hopelessness and ineptitude of our first night in japan.  well-rested with an early wakeup, we start a long, adventurous day in osaka that makes 12 hours feel like 36.  our renewed vigor coupled with no real itinerary provides us with a string of little gems: a delicious caffe mocha, a detour to the modern art museum, a trendy ramen joint, a hearty bowl of unadon, a leisurely stroll through the tenjimbashisuji shopping arcade, and most importantly, a woman shampooing her barn owl outside on the sidewalk.  the only predetermined destination—a sushi restaurant highly recommended by tripadvisor—turns out to be a long queue followed by an underwhelming experience.

at sunset, we visit the conrad's 40 sky bar: a swanky bar & lounge off the lobby featuring an impressive crystal sculpture and assessing a bonkers cover charge after 7 pm.  we are 40 floors above the osaka skyline at dusk and it is unbelievably beautiful.  ian sips through a whiskey flight while i drink a cocktail that i later discover cost $24.  i mar the elegance of this moment slightly by complaining vociferously about my worsening sore throat.

it feels like i am swallowing glass shards, so this ignites a wild chase through one of osaka's underground shopping malls.  i resort to the clumsy hesitancy of a pocket translation app, keeping my thumb firmly planted on where is the all-night pharmacy? and i have a sore throat.  devoted readers of my pointless blog will remember that i am a grade a tittybaby about ailments, and it should come as no surprise that i divert our romantic happy hour to a pharmacy hunt.  the beleaguered receptionist at the luxe festival tower west office building adjacent to the conrad makes a call and finds the nearest drugstore that is open for the next 15 minutes. she says something that sounds like kokomin and directs us to the dojima shopping mall.  this is one of many long, fascinating stretches of underground retail and restaurants leading to a subway station—in this case, nishi-umeda station.  we race past bakeries and cheap men's suits, but can't locate a drug store.  finally, a kind woman walks us directly to the kokumin, which i initially mistook as possibly a japanese sephora.

i think, for a moment, that i can finally stop being totally inept and figure something out on my own now that i'm facing down a selection of otc drugs.  the shelves are full of packaging festooned with cartoon animals that look upset, but i feel confident when i select a box with a more clinical illustration of a man's silhouette with an angry red target at his throat.  however, a store clerk arrives shortly to inform me, by way of pantomime, that this is for cough.  i end up with a throat numbing spray featuring a vexed hippopotamus.

it is a miracle that at this point, my husband has not served me with divorce papers.  ian is as imperturbable and amiable as always, despite my whining.  after this exciting detour, we finally head to touristy ass dotonbori.

i am immediately thankful that i didn't book the cross hotel in namba for the sole purpose of being close to dotonbori.  this area is a mess.  it is a crushing, swarming mass of bodies and their respective cameras and we do not fuck with this level of noise at all.  the lights are so bright and omnipresent that even at nighttime, the iso required for photography might as well be for broad daylight.  i pay $9 for two small pieces of crab that taste mostly like carbon.  this is what i deserve for being seduced by a giant animatronic crab display.  i take some photos of the famous glico man ad but don't even bother editing them because it is impossible to capture a shot that isn't filled to the brim with tourists.  a hundred thousand selfie sticks, a hundred thousand goofy glico man poses.  at one point, i wait patiently for 12 minutes through several meiji chocolate ads for the chance to see myself on a jumbotron screen, but am immediately swarmed by less polite passersby.

eventually, we struggle out of the light and haze to find ourselves in an empty takoyaki joint that is mostly doing brisk delivery business.  the friendly young guy manning the pan asks us if we are on our honeymoon.  the takoyaki balls are so good—one of my favorite bites in the whole trip—that i am momentarily driven to distraction by the scalding hot, lush batter and unbelievably tender octopus.  wait, why are we on vacation?  i forget about my 30th birthday.  i forget about parenthood.  all i care about are these takoyaki balls.  i swipe ian's portion while he is preoccupied with his gin and soda.

at the end of a very long night, we trek back to the hotel.  i feel like i have mastered the osaka subway system.  i have mastered walking endlessly in flats.  i have not mastered my sore throat or its accompanying harbinger of increasing malaise, but i solemnly promise myself that i will stop whining about it for the sake of my dear, patient husband who deserves better.  ian falls asleep immediately and reliably when we return to our room.  i stay up a few more hours to indulge in my other three loves: a soaking bathtub, japanese kit-kats, and campy historical fiction.

i eat a piece of meiji chocolate that i purchased solely due to the brainwashing influence of those jumbotron ads, but it tastes like crumbly cardboard. 

060

one!  year!  old!  

from my survival in the first year of the wilderness, here is the opposite of an FAQ—in that no one has ever asked me these questions and my answers are both unsolicited and unhelpful.

does it get better?

google probably thought i was a gay teenager for one intense month in 2016 because i was searching the question nearly every waking minute of my postpartum life.  no amount of reading blogs about ppd could've prepared me for the shock, fragility, and hopelessness of the first two weeks.  a year out and far, far away from that glass cage, i still remember exactly how the burnished bronze light of sunset through the nursery blinds fell across my chest like a weight, trapped me like a panicking animal, filled me with a sunday night dread and sadness.  i thought it would never happen to me—no history of mental illness, no issues with hormonal mood swings, surrounded with support from loving family and friends.  but neurotransmitters are real and they fucked me up.

it takes a couple of weeks if you're reeling hard from the baby blues, but longer if it evolves to ppd.  it's okay to cry through every roll of toilet paper in your house.  it's okay to mourn for your former life.  it's okay to not immediately love your baby.  just know that the squall will pass, and weeks will rapidly feel like milliseconds in due time.  your new normal might actually just feel a lot like your old normal, except with ugly nursing bras.  ask for help—from your partner, your parents, your friends who have been through it, your mom groups, your physician.  just know it's not hopeless, no matter how bleak and unrecognizable things feel.  that little tomato-faced catalyst will become your best buddy.  it gets better.  you get better.

how much baby stuff do i really need?

as it turns out, not a lot.  we were blessed with an average baby with average constitution and habits, so i can probably count on one hand the supplies we use daily at the one year mark.  i wrote this entry after the first three months, but the usefulness of those supplies waned over time and we're down to the basics.

i'm not going to proselytize about how baby products exist for parental convenience. when your infant is magenta from screaming and your dogs are licking breastmilk off your calves and you still have to show up at the office tomorrow and pretend to be a human being—you will take any contraption available at any cost to mitigate the pain of being alive.

james is drinking whole milk and water well from his sippy cup, so we'll soon be bidding farewell to the babybrezza, orb bottle warmer, and comotomo bottles.  ian might even finally give up the breastfeeding pillow that he still uses despite not nursing james and not actually needing it for anything.  we are well on our way to becoming a fully decluttered family with only an exhaustive collection of every zara baby apparel item ever created.

special shoutout to the retired but incredibly useful: inglesina fast dining chair (7 months of use, lots of compliments at restaurants), cybex aton q infant car seat (6 months of use, survived a car accident), the and all the white wine selections offered by my local kroger.

what about baby toys?

i don't know.  james prefers to use a bottle of pinto bean seasoning as his favorite rattle.

should we do baby-led weaning?  

i read a lot about starting solids.  more than i read my textbooks during a semester of graduate school.  there are a lot of schools of thought here, and arguments for baby-led weaning vs homemade purees vs directly depositing your carefully masticated food directly and lovingly into your baby's mouth probably.  i chose a balanced approach: a selection of finely curated squeeze pouches for daycare (read: purchased on amazon), and letting james eat whatever we eat at home & restaurants.  as a result, he has a voracious appetite for bread, eggs, and crunchy vegetables and also i have stressed exactly 0% about his nutrition.  we all win, especially those opportunistic bad dogs.

what does it feel like to love a baby?

i definitely googled this line of questioning more than once, because i am mentally whack and incapable of trusting the most basic of human instincts.  from the outset, it seemed like an insurmountable task.  i could barely even hold him properly, let alone love and cherish him infinitely and unconditionally.  i don't even know him, i thought.

but i know him now.  i know that he lights up like no one else in the world when he sees me in the mornings, his face breaking into the most gleeful smile i've ever witnessed.  i know that my heart swells with pride when i see him wobble across the entire length of a room, leading with his belly.  i know that he likes to chase the vacuum cleaner, and purposefully slips around dramatically when i mop the floors.  i know him better than anyone (except ian), and the pleasure of this ongoing discovery is like nothing else i've ever experienced.

it's even better than petting an especially cute dog. 

059

august 1st is rapidly approaching.  how did this happen?  when did a full year sneak past me so unobtrusively?  it feels like just yesterday that ian and i ate hot dogs outside a home depot to commemorate our last weekend of being non-parents.  little did i know that we would still just be eating hot dogs and doing whatever we want on saturday afternoons, albeit with the addition of an unwieldy diaper bag.  

i don't even know why we carry one anymore.  james’s bowel movements are wonderfully routine and he doesn't fuck with toys or pacifiers.  i'd be better off just walking around with a loaf of bread to thwart any fussiness (either his or mine).

baby james will be toddler james in a week's time.  and dang, he is toddling.  he walks like i do after three tequila cocktails, swinging alternating hemisphere of his body with an aggressively uncertain lurch.  he pushes himself up to standing, and squats back down with ease.  i am relieved that this newfound skill might relieve him of constantly calloused knees, but not as excited by his ability to reach the burner knobs on the range.  he continues to be knocked down regularly by an overly effervescent jean-luc.

in addition to mobility, his brain seems to have also unlocked a few new levels.  i keep saying hey he learned a new trick! like i think babies are essentially uglier dogs.  moms and pediatricians and also normal humans will refer to these advances as cognitive milestones but hey i let a stern man sink a scalpel into my uterus for this child so in this household they will henceforth be referred to as tricks. 

one of these tricks is shaking his head when he hears no, jamesy.  he wags his own finger in admonishment and shakes his head solemnly.  as if he truly comprehends the gravity of no, no, no.  but he clearly does not, because he immediately returns to rooting through the trash can for treats.

and yeah, my son tries to eat garbage in his spare time.  this is how i know he is mine. 

his mimicry is pretty good.  he sticks his tongue out when someone else does it, and puts toys on his own head if you start stacking things on it first.  he's a decidedly playful kid, above all else.  curious, intrepid, and persistent.  my mom loves to delight in how he's such a boy! when he does something bold and dumb like bonk his head while trying to tear the baby gate off its hinges. these statements naturally evoke a lot of eyebrow raising and terrible millennial soundbites from me about gender neutrality, but i suppose she just means that he is unlike any baby she has personally raised.  as a mother of two unequivocally femme daughters, she attributes james’s character to boyishness.  

you not brave, she tells me.  you always talking to yourself, reading book.  not exploring.  i can't tell whether she's referring to me as an infant, or me as a 29 year old adult- but the characterization holds up either way.  i am a verbose coward, and james is probably a brave adventurer who likes to fall down the stairs.

tomorrow, he begins transitioning to the big boy classroom in his daycare (12 - 18 months).  he's already the oldest in his current class full of wide-eyed, slightly mobile potatoes.  the teachers tell ian that james presses his face against the door in desperate longing when he sees the older children play outside during the day.  they also tell ian that james is a perennial favorite among all the teachers, due to that particular fondness for mashing himself up against the glass doors between classrooms.  they say he likes to press up against the door and dance, sticking his tongue out and lifting up his shirt to show everyone his belly.  this just sounds like a story about my son being disgusting, but apparently the employees of kids 'r kids are deeply charmed.

these anecdotes are described to ian, because the punishing stress and longevity of my workweeks means i rarely get to pick james up from daycare.  my clinic closes early on fridays, but i work later and later.  this is the albatross of my life these days, because my obsession with doing a good job has left me grappling with the realization that my professional success can't hinge on one job—and my personal fulfillment and happiness can't hinge on my professional success.

i've been thinking a lot about this quote from 1998 disney channel's original movie brink!

i didn't know who i was anymore.  i used to define myself by my job title.  but you wanna know something?  after being laid off for six months, i finally figured out that construction foreman is what i do.  not who i am.

andy, you are defined by the company you keep and how well you keep it.  not by what you just happen to do.

and kids who skate, come on, california is filthy with 'em.  but you- you are andy brinker.  you are a good son.  and you are a good friend- who just happens to skate. and tomorrow, if you never happen to skate again, you are still andy brinker. 

okay maybe that last bit doesn't apply to me, but it's a scene i've carried around in my brain for nearly 20 years.  not just because erik von detten looked particularly fine, sweaty, and dejected in it, but because the line i didn't know who i was anymore is a phrase that my mind casts back to over and over again in my life.  after each degree, each job, each breakup.  i have shapeshifted in the mirror.  i have cannibalized myself.  and every time, i think: i don't know who i am anymore.  and i have loved my job, leaned so hard into my career, carved an identity for myself out of one tenure.  i have said the words when i had nothing else in my life, i had this clinic.

my life is different now, and it's so ridiculously full of love and light.  so i've been retooling my perspective, and redrawing the lines.  i make space in my brain and make time to meditate.  i think a lot about gratefulness, compassion, and relationships.  i am becoming a complete stereotype.  i may even take up yoga.

i've fought really hard against the trope of becoming a ~*~mommy~*~, because i've long maintained that parenting is something i do and not who i am.  and now i'm finally realizing that this applies to so many other passions and pursuits as well.  time and time again, the well-tread paths of change lead me back to the same conclusion.  you can't carve an identity out of roleplaying.  after everything is stripped away, it all comes back to the relationships you have nurtured- the company you keep.

when james celebrates his first birthday, we will do a 抓周 ceremony- lay out a few objects of significance and let him make his selection, ostensibly sealing his future career or personality trait.  i voted for makeup brushes and pokemon cards.  this is a chinese custom, not a mongolian one, so nobody will assign any particular weight to the results.  it's most likely that james will ignore any proffered objects and instead rummage through the nearest trash can.  but for the sake of tradition, we will probably speculate about his future pursuit of knowledge, art, or wealth.  my mother will hope for medical school.  my father will hope for anti-prc activism.  

but i will hope for non-identification.  i will tell james about this quote from a 1998 movie and he will ask why i keep trying to follow erik von detten on instagram even though i'm married and we're 30 years past erik's tiger beat prime.  but i will keep driving home this hard won lesson that the most important thing is not what you do, but who you are.

who are you, mom?  he might ask me.

and i'll finally get to answer-

i'm basch fon ronsenburg of dalmasca!

(can you tell i wrote most of this entry while drinking an entire bottle of wine)

057

once upon a time, well over a decade ago, my father told me could have pizza delivered for dinner.  this was an occasion more rare than a total eclipse, with a father so notoriously spendthrift that he regularly washed and reused paper towels.  he posed just one caveat- i had to call and order it.

my love of pizza warred with my abject fear of calling and talking to a stranger.  it seemed insurmountable.  a whole thing.  what do i say?  do i just start off with the order, or wait for them to ask me questions?  do i tell them my address first?  what if they ask me questions i can't answer?  what if i sound stupid over the phone?  i will definitely sound stupid.

papa stood there with his credit card in hand, waiting for me to dial.  i think he knew that my palms were sweating with the anxiety of having to do something unfamiliar.  it was a test, and i failed.

i don't want pizza, i lied.

i still feel that wave of panic sometimes, despite rapidly approaching my thirties and having constructed a career out of taking on the unfamiliar tasks.  racked with self-doubt and imposter syndrome, i muddle through the day buoyed only by google search and dumb luck.  fake it til you make it.   i have made it.  i am a full grown woman who pays quarterly estimated taxes to the irs, cooks well-balanced meals from scratch, and constructs my entire library of breakroom small talk in response to the ubiquitous question: how's your son doing?

my son is a smooth nine months old today.  he has finally been on the outside for nearly as long as he spent squishing my bladder on the inside.  how did this happen?  how many hundreds of times have i fought down that familiar wave of panic over this past year of my life?  the anxiety of anticipating that my whole life would change, the shock of knowing we could never go back, the overwhelming realization that there was no definitively correct textbook way to nurture this tiny 7 lb pile of flubber in my hands, the paralyzing fear of having to constantly learn and continuously adapt in new methods, new habits, new normal.  how will i ever figure out breastfeeding?  how will i ever succeed at sleep training?  how will i ever navigate daycare?  how will i ever do a good enough job for this bright-eyed little guy?

you just...do it.  there's no syllabus for this, no predictable learning curve or pace.  you do what you have to and you rise to the occasions because there's no alternative to growth.  i can't put the phone down, i can't pretend i don't want the pizza.  i lean hard on my family and harder on my husband, and the two of us learn these skills and routines until they become muscle memory.  there's no comprehensive enough guide to this, but the time has flown by in the way that everyone said it would.  slowly at first, so fucking slowly.  so slowly that i still remember every pen stroke of every date on every label of every breastmilk storage bottle.  eight labels a day, etching a tally in my prison cell.  just get through august 12th.  just get through august 13th.  and now it's may and time has rushed by in a blur, with only tinybeans photos and scattered memories as mileposts through this whirlwind.  he has been in daycare forever, right?  was there ever a time when he couldn't crawl?

james feels more like a real kid than a baby these days.  he's discerningly affectionate- he knows me, he actually knows my face and voice.  he makes a beeline for my legs, those little hands and knees scooting with astonishing speed across floors and toys and dogs in his singular haste to reach his mama.  but he still loves ian best, to nobody's surprise.  we coach his incessant babbling with shameless motive, prompting aav-a?  aa-va?  i hope fervently that his first word will be in mongolian, though i know it'll probably be food!   my dude can eat.  it is astonishing.  

you can tell that he's full, but he just keeps eating until someone takes it away, his daycare teacher marvels.  

same, i tell her.  

i read all the articles and blog entries about how to introduce foods, and all the gleaned knowledge promptly fell out of my idiotic brain.  purees and pouches only satiated him for a couple of months, then he rapidly took to inhaling anything we place in front of him.  he eats exactly what we eat, with the addition of some special pastries and treats my mother cooks lovingly just for him.  he has four whole teeth now, and never lets us forget it.  he prefers to use his unwieldy little fists, though he still opens his mouth obediently when confronted with a spoon.  but his absolute favorite method of eating involves enlisting jean-luc or momo to lick his food in between his own bites.  

babies; gross.

056

life seems to exist solely in three disparate blocks of times these days.  we are either at the office, working on our new house, or preventing this baby from killing himself.

this guy can SCOOT.  as if making up for all those lost months spent immobile on his belly, furiously paddling the air, baby james is rapidly becoming the most athletic member of this family.  he crawls.  he climbs.  he pulls up.  he is trying to stand unassisted, testing the lightest possible one-handed grip on a nearby object, swaying like a stubby little tree.

his social skills have now surpassed my own.  he intentionally feeds the dogs, teasing them with handfuls of scrambled eggs before allowing them to feast in his miniscule palms.  his babbling has reached fever-pitch, those nonsensical squawks taking on a conversational tone.  my dude is still wide-eyed and pointless around new faces, like he's trying to make sense of a terrible acid trip.  but around the handful of people in his daily routine- ian, me, my mother, that baby becky at daycare who's always trying to kiss him- he is engaged and excited.  

still, nearly nine months into this endeavor, it is an absolute wonder when i watch him scrabbling towards me exuberantly.  seeing those bright, dark eyes lock in on my face, those chubby little limbs coordinated confidently in rapid movement.  he crawls into my lap and grabs my face for a kiss (or at least his approximation of a kiss- placing his lips on mine and screaming directly into my mouth).  my dumb lizard brain floods with a pure and clear joy that feels like the first thirst-quenching gulp of cool, fresh water.  it lightens my chest, drives everything else out of my mind.  this is what a patronus feels like, i think stupidly.  

in my more cognitively sound and cynical moments, i fully recognize that babies are annoying and mine is no exception.  he sobs when we don't let him eat paper.  he grabs every fork within reach at a restaurant.  he is never quite sure whether he wants to drink water or splash his hands around in the cup.  he refuses to stay on his back for diaper changes and ends up with poop on his knees.  it is a testament to my immigrant upbringing that by eight months in, i am googling when can you start disciplining a baby don't report this search to cps.  and in these moments when he is being particularly whack, i am mostly relieved by the recognition that fundamentally, i am still not really a baby person.

i just like this guy, despite his consistently runny nose and his occasional refusal to put an arm through a sleeve.  

our routines are a lot easier this days, with the infrequent but tedious exceptions when james decides he wants to party for 8 hours instead of napping.  we've fallen into a rhythm quickly in this new home, and it is a surprisingly healthy, sustainable one.  mornings don't feel rushed or tag team, because james can amble around on the floor to entertain himself while we get ready.  some days, i even cook breakfast for him.   this is nothing short of a miracle to a girl who was unable to wake up for 1 pm lectures in grad school and could barely dress herself.  

ian and i have both lost our respective baby weight, which is maybe the true miracle.  like i guess childbirth is chill but the fact that i have been able to stop wallowing in self-pity and no longer eating like i'm being paid per chicken nugget is an even more incredible feat of biology and willpower and being too busy at work to fantasize about curly fries.  and from this side of the scale, the idea of trying for a second babby in a year or two no longer seems like a horrifying threat.

we are not in any rush yet, despite ian's secret hopes for a creepy quiverfull family setup (i assume this is what he means when he says 4 kids would be ideal).  i'd like to get this first goofball out of diapers and into cool hobbies like vacuuming up all this dog fur on a daily basis.

055

i haven't updated in nearly a month, mostly because i've been an ineffective sadboy about packing, moving, and unpacking.  we closed on our new home mid-march and finally left the little house on voss hills after two whirlwind years—the best ride of my life thus far.  i applied for that rental as a cynical, self-absorbed single girl, and i walked out for the very last time as an equally cynical, self-absorbed wife and mother.  and of course, true to form, i've been mourning this transition, the bittersweet pangs of leaving the first place i've really made into a home, cataloging the memories tied into every single space.  the living room, where we decorated our christmas tree to a bing crosby-heavy playlist.  the dining room, where ian knelt down and asked if he could spend the rest of his life making me happy.  the kitchen, where we gingerly brought home our tiny bleary-eyed son from the hospital.  the nursery, where we spent so many of our days watching james lounge, flail, roll, and finally begin to crawl.  the master closet, where i stood alone at night during the darkest depths of my postpartum sorrow and sobbed to u2's "without or with u" on repeat (why???).  

it feels like the most transitional chapter of my life has finally closed, but this is a deceptive narrative heuristic.  after all, we are still the same squad in approximately the same city, living pretty much the exact same life—but in a much bigger space.

and it couldn't have come at a better time.  mr. james is truly a big kid now, and the glimpses of who he'll become as a full-grown dude keep coming into view, faster and faster with each passing week.  he can now pull himself up into a standing position, which is a feat he attempts often on nearly anything he can reach.  he is also finally crawling, after two months of refining a strange and desperate belly flopping momentum.  it is a miracle to watch him, at long last, manage to coordinate all four chubby little limbs into forward movement.  my wonderment lasts all of 45 seconds, until i watch him crawl directly to the first available electrical cord and stuff it happily into his mouth.

everything goes into his mouth now: phones, cables, laptop screens, doorstops, shoes, all the food, and everyone's body parts.  it is less adorable now when he crawls over to me and gnaws on my knee, because my dude has two fully grown bottom teeth and wastes no time in testing them.  genuinely a pleasure to witness when he's munching on an apple or cramming fistfuls of risotto into his face.  not so much when he rediscovers my breasts and tries to chomp on them for old times' sake.

it is the beautiful miracle of biology that i survive this encounter without reflexively flinging him across the room.

i don't mean for this entire entry to make him sound like a blossoming monster, all rapid movement and sharp teeth.  he's also definitely cognitively and socially a more interesting real guy than ever before.  yes this is what development is, you dumb ass.  ain't nobody thought your 8 month old baby would still be as helpless and pointless as his first day out, you might say.  and yes, you are right—but the inevitability still can't dilute the raw excitement that soars in my chest when james makes meaningful eye contact and babbles hopefully.  he knows me.  he wants to play with me.  he repeats actions that make me laugh.  he is almost as smart as jean-luc and definitely smarter than momo.

he still sleeps like a champion and his nursery is so far away now, on the second floor.  but we are long past the middle-of-the-night wakeups, and james snoozes from his usual 7pm to 7 am with astonishing consistency.  it is still our greatest collective triumph and probably my favorite discovery during this new parenthood adventure.  sometimes, you get lucky.  a baby rip van winkle, and a dreamboat husband who lets you sleep in until noon on the weekends.

don't get too jealous, though.  a few days ago james pooped in my new resplendent bathtub and the moment i felt the sliminess flow into my hands was probably the worst full minute of my entire life.

054

i'm driving back from a meeting at the coppell clinic, pulling into the addison parking lot when my phone rings.  it's james’s daycare, and i am fully ready to receive my very first boo-boo report.  maybe james has tumped over in his increasingly desperate attempts to crawl.  maybe he has punched a bottle of milk into his own eye.  maybe his nemesis, that shady little ethan, has bitten him.

instead, the daycare director greets me.  she tells me not to be alarmed, but james has not been doing well.  he's had a low-grade fever all day and he's refusing meals, which isn't like him at all.  he's been lethargic and sleeping all day, we've been able to wake him up but he's not being himself.  he's got a deep cough and is showing signs of breathing retractions.

my stomach clenches and my mouth goes dry instantly.  the fear in my gut is visceral, and i u-turn back onto the tollway so automatically i am slightly surprised to find myself speeding north a moment later.  in an instant, i forget about my meetings, the conference call, the interview, my own appointments.  i call dr. macdonald's office.  i call ian.  i call my mother, and then i fight back tears for the rest of the drive.

and i will always be the first one to shrug it's okay, he'll be fine, babies get sick because cognitively i know that a 7 month old's only forte is absorbing all the germs in the world and transforming them to a free-flowing nose.  for all of his personality foibles, the only thing james really excels at is coughing.  he has been, to some degree, sick for the past two months.  i knew this would happen.  i coached ian on this very expectation.  but still, there is a sickening fear hollowing out the pit of my stomach when i see james looking back up at me, glassy-eyed and devoid of his usual cheer.  he isn't crying or fussing, but i know with an undeniable instinct that he does not feel cool at all.  my baby is in pain, and this one fact sends fear signaling pathways coursing through my autonomic nervous system.  

i speed down preston rd like i'm playing grand theft auto, terrified that the pediatrician's office will close while i am stuck in traffic behind a jetta that is slowly considering every possible right turn.  i normally drive at a painfully hesitant crawl like a blind elderly dog navigating through a school zone, but my babby is wheezing in the backseat and i am filled with a burning hatred for everyone who isn't dr. macdonald and his prescription pad.  

when we arrive at the clinic, james throws up on ian's shoulder by way of greeting.

dr. macdonald detects no respiratory distress, and my own breathing finally eases.  james’s strife and listlessness are the byproduct of a double ear infection.  apparently, that round of amoxicillin he just finished might as well have been cotton candy.  dr. macdonald reassures me, once again, that this is still well within the realm of totally normal things that happen to all babies all the time.  and then his medical assistant promptly fails to call in the prescribed antibiotics.  by the time we realize this, the clinic is closed.

when we return home, ian feeds james a mouthful of baby tylenol.  that was 3.75 mL, right?  i ask.  

my husband freezes.  no, it was 5.  like a sitcom sight gag, i watch him refer to the directions on the bottle only to discover there was a second page revealed by peeling away the first layer.  a page that specifies that babies under 24 lbs need dosing instructions from a physician.  but i am a proud member of a facebook mommy group and i might as well have that infant acetaminophen dosage chart tattooed behind my fucking eyelids for how many times i have gazed upon it during a 3 am nursing session.  

i am pretty sure that james's liver will not immediately fall out of his butt, yet i call the after-hours nursing line for peace of mind.  it reaches a registered nurse at children's medical center, and she asks me if i want to call 911.  only to arrest my husband, i tell her.  she gets poison control on the line.  i remind everyone in this conversation once again that this was definitely ian's fault and not mine.  can you write that in his chart?

poison control lectures me sternly but reassures me that my baby should be fine.  ian is contrite and i am exhausted but james looks pretty pleased with himself.  he babbles happily, blows raspberries incessantly, and proceeds to down 10 ounces of milk to make up for the lost meal.  he is so unfathomably easy, so calm and tolerant that i am left saying who's a good boy?  you're a good boy! over and over again because everything is basically a dog and i have the communication skills of an amoeba.

and now, for the first time in a long time, i am awake in the nursery.  not because james is having trouble sleeping- on the contrary, he is basically comatose and seemingly mad comfortable.  it's just that i can't stop staring at him, stroking his goofy-ass hair that only grows on top, memorizing the impossibly vulnerable curvature of his cheeks.  and maybe for the first time ever, he doesn't just feel like a baby that someone left in my house for me to do a bad job of raising.  he feels like mine, but so much better and more than i deserve.  everything well-intentioned, earnest, or good about me exists in this 19 lb stack of biscuits.

please get better soon, mr. james.  and give me my dang heart back. i'm gonna need it for this hyped up new zelda game. 

052

i am done.

long before ruth in the recovery room showed me how to cram my entire breast into a 2-hour old mouth, my best friend maggie told me once: don't let people make you feel guilty about formula feeding, there's nothing wrong with it.  it hadn't even occurred to me at that point, as far removed from the mommysphere as i was, that formula could induce guilt. 

in fact, guilt is not a state of mind i inhabit very frequently- even as a mother.  i don't mean for this to sound sociopathic, but somehow my brain has figured out a way to metabolize that emotion immediately into either corrective action or a lifetime of self-loathing.  fix it or transcend it.

so why this long eulogy to my breastfeeding experience?  why the theatrics of sobbing in bed, blubbering to ian it just kills me to think that the last nursing session will really be the very last time?  why do i feel the need to write this out, to get this off my chest (get it ha ha i am very funny)?

ian always tells me my autobiography should be titled that was a sad story (that i made up) because i am so habitually swept up in the poetry of loss, the art of morbidity.  i eulogize garbage relationships like a widowed woman who lost her one true love in civil war.  i can't bear to part with ill-fitting items of clothing i wore less than 0.3 times because i distinctly remember feeling an emotion or intent when i purchased it.  my philosophy on being kind and patient with the ones i love is predicated on a dramatic fear that my last encounter with them could be the final one, because of car accidents or murder or savage tropical storms.  when ian leaves for the grocery store down the dang street, i yell drive carefully! in lieu of a normal farewell.  my dude, in his honda civic hybrid, is not doing tokyo drifts in the kroger parking lot.  but still, my palms sweat when i think about goodbyes.   i have spent the entirety of my adolescence and young adult life learning how to write about loss.  it is a masochistic skill to have acquired, even more pointless than learning vape tricks.

so it's this that i grappled with when it came to the end of breastfeeding.  not so much a fear of substandard nutrition, nor guilt for cheating my son out of the absolute optimal meal.  not the worry of being socially perceived as a lazy or selfish mother (i am both of those things all the time).  james tolerates formula exceptionally well, with no discernable variation in his gastrointestinal tricks or weight gain.  maternal igg antibiodies in breastmilk decline by 6 months while an infant is producing his own at normal levels.  ian, consummately supportive and optimistic, encourages me to do what is best for me.  there are so many bags of breastmilk stored in the freezer that he is visibly displeased about what this means for his meticulous kitchen organization.

i am not even excoriating myself for giving up, because i have not entirely tied up my ability to grind to my identity as a mother.  being two sacks of milk is not my character-defining accomplishment.  i suspect there will be more crucial tests of motherhood in the future- though this feels like the first big letting go.  and i know it has to be done one of these days, that he will not be breastfeeding in the car shortly before his freshman orientation on campus life activities.  it's just so...preemptive at the six month mark.

but my supply is dwindling and the fear of precipitously obsessing over my pumping output distracts me from my work, my marriage, my child.  i have survived so many rounds of mainlining fenugreek, power pumping, doing the fucking most and still on high alert for any fluctuation along those ounce markers.  i nurse daily, but it is a less than idyllic affair when james slashes at me wildly with his little claws, distracts constantly, and casually blows raspberries while latched, causing my milk to spray wastefully around us.  i catch myself feeling irrationally annoyed that he is spitting out this hard-earned liquid like a damn geyser. 

i am done feeling so precious and anxious about breastmilk; i am done with the psychological toll; i am done with the physical labor.  i want to set my pump on fire and fling the charred remains into the sun.  there are lots of stances out there on just how hard breastfeeding is.  in my personal experience, it is easier than working in a mine but harder than trying to parse a trump speech for substance.

new orleans, i tell ian.  that's my cutoff.  we'll go on vacation, i won't pump, then i'll be done.

the night before we leave on our trip, i bring james to my parents' house.  while my mom and dad hover over ian anxiously, urging him to eat an entire rotisserie chicken by himself, i sit with james in their master bedroom.  he is tired and fussy, and i take out my breasts one last time to calm him.  and this is the nursing session i will always remember, that will still be burned into my mind decades later when my breasts are no longer a thing that anyone cares about, when james is a grown man who has never given a single thought to his nutrition in infancy.  i will always remember the warm yellow light from the nightstand, the black silk dress i slipped off hastily, his big, dark eyes searching mine while he latched.  one tiny hand gripping my finger, the other windmilling around.  i will always remember thinking this is the one thing that only i can do for him, and fighting back a hot surge of tears.

and i will always remember that right after i choked back a sob, james unlatched and punched me.

when i return from our long weekend in new orleans, my supply has officially dried up.  but my tears have too, and i realize that the sting of the last time is abated by the experience of so many other things.  he is a vibrant, growing, funny little guy and feeding him is only one small part of the equation.  there are a million more memories to make and they will not always be ones of loss or finality.

for example, on valentine's day, he did a poop so horrifying it flowed down his arms.  cool memories like that.

051

we've made it to six months.  ian and i have kept a child alive and happy for half a dang year.

well, mostly ian.  i have been spending most of these six months complaining endlessly about pumping and pretending not to hear the baby monitor at 5 am.

things that my dude can now do:

• eat solids voraciously.  i give him small pieces of whatever we're eating for dinner when it's not taco bell, and he handles this with astonishingly bad dexterity.  he also achieves a poor ratio of ingestion vs mess, but seems satisfied with the journey.  the dogs have never been happier, but i am not thrilled that i have completed yet another annoying evolution.  shamefully, i am now the type of person that delights in seeing my kid with peanut butter smeared all over his dumb face.  what is this genetic sorcery?  why have i become a monster?
• bully his classmates.  james has been officially deemed worthy of moving on to the second infant room.  he is the oldest, the biggest, and probably the worst.  he roll around, keep stealing socks off the other babies.  then he try to chew their feet, one teacher tells me.  we have to grab him, tell him he can't eat other people.  i secretly hope this is just a precious anecdote and not a dropped pin in his life story of becoming a murderpedia.com article.  but the teachers all praise him for being consistently happy and easygoing, fond of smiling and quick to put himself to sleep.  still, it is time for him to move on.  his attempts at socializing with the little potatoes in his class go unnoticed and rebuffed.  starting next week, he'll begin transitioning to the adjacent classroom, where there are bigger feet to snack on.
• begin babbling.  technically, very technically, his first words were mama because he makes those sounds repeatedly while trying to scoot.  it's a trip listening to him really trying it, figuring out how to make sounds with his lips and tongue.  but we won't be calling first words until he actually knows what he's attempting to communicate.  and i'm still hoping it'll be jet fuel can't melt steel beams.
• show signs of starting to crawl.  little man already scoots backward with astonishing ease, but recently he has learned to assume the position- raising himself up to a quadruped pose.  this is a big one, because the idea that my helpless little 7 lb meatloaf can now become a real mobile person is hard to wrap my mind around.  like yes, cognitively i know that babies grow and explore and do things and become toddlers that become children that become taxpayers.  i understand this on an objective level, but i am also acutely aware that these months of development are far too fleeting.  he is becoming impossibly heavier, squirmier, and one day ian will no longer be able to cradle him to sleep for hours in his arms.  one day he will want to move from one place to another and he won't need to look up at me pleadingly for help.  the pains and drudgery of the newborn stage that made me long desperately for development feel like a very distant nightmare, and now i am left with a constant bittersweet taste.  every sign of growth feels like a reminder of loss.  parenting is just one long letting go, my friend from the august 2016 birth month group tells me.  i think about the truth of this daily.  we are only six months in and i am already wistful.  i will be unbearably maudlin by the time james is school-aged.

things that i can now do:

• be an annoying sadboy all the time.

049

in high school, it only took me two weeks to say i love you to the swoopy-haired emo boyfriend of my dreams.  nearly 15 years later, it takes me so much longer to find these words for my son.

but it finally happened.  like falling asleep- slowly, and then all at once.  

james has been sick this week, hampered by a minor cold.  it's not unexpected, given the rapid change in weather and his introduction to the world of daycare germs (i am side-eyeing one particularly sketchy baby what had his nose running like a dang slip 'n slide).  we take an unnecessary trip to the pediatrician, and dr. macdonald confirms that it's clinically nbd.  he also tells me that james looks like robin hood in his cool new booties.

lil man takes after his papa in the most important ways.  the slightest illness will have me geared up to do the fucking most.  i mope, i sob, i buy the entire contents of a walgreen's, i wrap myself in every blanket i've ever owned, i write my last will and testament and think of returning as a ghost to haunt the fools that might have coughed within 10 yards of me.  ian, on the other hand, is somewhere between stoic and comatose.  he makes a hot toddy, sleeps for a full day, and remains a pleasant person.  in this approach, james is his father's son.

he's not himself today, miss jemi at the daycare tells me.  but he's still such a happy baby, only sleeping all day and not much playing.

so i know james is fine, but his big ol' bobblehead is still a giant ball of mucus.  he snorts and coughs through every hour, snuffling like a little piglet while his nose stays permanently running like he's serving a consistent wet mustache look.  and in an uncharacteristic fit of parental anxiety, i gamble with both my sleep and his to bedshare carefully in the spare room.

we've never really done this and i am mentally berating myself with a nightmare ticker tape of sids articles, but my dude lies beside me in his sleep suit and grips my finger with his tiny fist.  i listen to his struggling breaths and feel like my own sinuses are massively congested.  for a wild moment, i think that i must have caught his cold.  then it takes me several minutes to realize that i am not at all sick and breathing just fine- but fuck, his little snorts and coughs somehow physically pain me.  this is a wild phenomenon.  i am not a particularly empathetic person, but here in this moment i know that every neuron in my brain and every fiber of my body is reacting to this little man's desperate snuffling.  please feel better, please feel better i think pointlessly, redundantly.  and i do not sleep until his breathing eases.

another night, before bedtime, we are playing with mr. james in the kitchen in sort of the only way you can play with a floppy 18 pound pile of cheeks- swinging him around and showering him with kisses.  lil dude tries to suck on my chin while ian tickles him- and he can't decide whether he wants to commit to slobbering all over my face or giggling like a lunatic, so he does both and it sounds seriously dumb while i type this out but it was so fun.  legit, present, unabashed fun.  and for one moment i was finally in a beautiful headspace where i was no longer thinking about work or commitments or how i'm faring as a mediocre parent but 100% immersed in my little family and all i could think was, my god i am so in love with these gorgeous boys.

tonight we bring him home from a dinner that he slept through completely, and he is out cold.  he looks like a corn dog stuffed into a very cool new jacket.  when i bring him to bed, hoping for a little dream feed to bolster his immune system, he continues to snooze relentlessly in any position we place him in.  i cradle him in my arms while he grins in his sleep, somewhere between barely nursing and maybe having a fun dream about petting puppies.  i realize that ian and i are both just staring at him, wearing nearly identical goofy and soppy expressions.  and i think i could probably look at him forever, freeze framing and savoring these minutes that have rapidly gained momentum and traction in my life, snowballing into the massive, inexplicable, and unrestrained love i knew was waiting all along.

i literally threw up while halfway through writing this damn entry and i'm not sure if it's because i decided to inhale a metric ton of food and hot chocolate OR because i am the lamest cheeseball and someone should take this blog away from me before all my entries devolve into generic mommy bullshit.

048

when i pick james up from daycare, his daily report is already full of demerits.  it reads played with bottle :( at his 11 am feed.  playing with nipple :( at 3 pm.  he is too delighted with his own newfound strength to sit still for a full meal.

i'm worried that he'll lose weight, i express to his daycare teachers while simultaneously struggling to pick him up.  he is heavy and dense.  like a fat roasted chicken stuffed with gnocchi. the ladies exchange glances briefly before laughing, and i realize i sound ridiculous as james peers up at me through a mountain of cheeks and chins.  he is as round as ever, despite his daily frolicking and bottle foolishness.

the kids r kids facilities are all equipped with webcams, but some are better than others.  my colleague's facility in north frisco has three different camera angles and records all footage for playback like a damn tivo.  the camera in james’s room, on the other hand, looks like it's just two potatoes fused together with yarn.  it is mad grainy and choppy, but i can still discern my dude with no difficulty—he's the white blob with the mass of dark hair who is boppin' around in a jumperoo like he's on speed.

he is the oldest baby in his daycare class now, so he's a little different from the sleepy little dumplings around him.  he's not like other babies, the lead teacher tells me.  i think that she is about to throw a compliment my way, because what parent doesn't want to think their child has exceptional qualities that would showcase well in a presidential biography?  instead she tells me, the other babies like being held, they relax and sleep in my arms.  but james gets very tense when i hold him, he's just twisting and turning to look at everything.

i type baby not cuddly into google and it autofills ....autistic.

he loves attention, the second teacher tells me on another day.  he doesn't even need to be touched, he just wants you to look at him.  he even tries to get the other babies' attention.  

my dude is not even 6 months old yet and he already seems like an aspiring instagram thot.  people talk about "personalities" at this age and i roll my eyes like nah, all babies are the same drooly dorks until they start reading chapter books, but i might be wrong in this regard.  james certainly has proclivities and interests that could pass for a personality.  he is mad giggly, obnoxiously loud, and fond of grabbing faces with his steely little fingers.

despite his rambunctiousness, he is still sleeping well.  the four month sleep regression never hit; he has sailed through the past two months with no middle-of-the-night wakeups (though recently he has had a few early mornings that ian bravely handled).  i've watched him learn how to connect his sleep cycles on his own by self-soothing, which is fascinating.  almost like clockwork, around 11 pm every night, he jolts into a bloodcurdling scream unlike anything i've ever heard from him.  but before i can extricate myself from a pile of blankets and a privileged dog to reach the nursery, james falls silent.  a review of the nest cam shows that lil man found his fingers, brought them to his mouth, and instantly fell back asleep.  this is what pamela druckerman discusses in bringing up bebe, quintessential pregnancy reading: le pause.  i get more confident in james's own abilities day by day. 

parenting gets easier too.  we have a semblance of a morning routine these days.  ian feeds james while i doggedly pump a few sad ounces out of my capitulating breasts.  i stuff my dude into a too-small outfit like a fat little sausage while ian carefully sculpts his hair for an hour.  we leave james to his own floor play while ian makes a few bottles of formula for daycare and i try to do something about my rapidly aging face.  my two boys trundle off for daycare and spreadsheets and i leave for work shortly thereafter with my dresses only halfway zipped.

and then i sit in a meeting with two overeager sales guys, both of them on the verge of becoming new fathers (not with each other).  they congratulate me on my return from maternity leave, which is a weird time to remember because i feel like i was only gone in a mire of sadness and breastmilk for about a minute.  one of them asks me what it has been like to have a baby, and i know it is just friendly filler conversation before they wheedle me into spending too much money on hr services, but i cannot resist any opportunity to intimate that i am not a suburban mombie with platitudes about living/laughing/loving.  and i want these strangers to know that i am still the same dumb workaholic.  that my heart still beats fast and hard for ian with an all-consuming love and respect that is unmatched by anyone or anything else.  and my life isn't necessarily better or harder or vastly different—but somewhat richer and more nuanced in unexpected ways.

but instead i say something wry and dumb like well i still hate babies but i like my own that was just a nod to a season 5 sex and the city episode but of course these dudes don't get it and we all move on but later i will realize that of course it would have all panned out like this, of course i should've known i was always miranda hobbes.  in life, in love, in my cynical skepticism of mommyhood.  definitely a miranda.

but with a carrie rising.  that's why i keep writing in this stupid blog and wearing unsuitable heels.

047

in honor of james’s first day in childcare, here's an entry about my daycare scramble, alternately titled why don't you want my caucasian money.

first and foremost, if you are expecting—if you are even thinking of expecting, if you have just met a person who you wouldn't mind having children with—start scouting your daycare options.

i started calling and touring daycares during my third trimester.  once, a lifetime ago, i drove past a creme de la creme facility and rolled my eyes so far back i think i glimpsed my parietal lobe.  what a stupid name, i thought.  what a whack place that must be.

fast forward several years, and creme is my first choice for daycare.

have to be the best, my mom despaired.  james has not even been born into this cruel world yet but already she has elevated his potential to the stratosphere.  he is treasure, so small, have to be best safest daycare.  

i've been reading up on creme de la creme, i tell her.  it's literally more expensive than the last apartment i lived in-  $1600 a month.

these are the magic words.  my mother prizes expensive things as the hallmark of quality.  she throws her support behind creme, urging me to abandon any fiscal reticence.  childcare is not where you pinch pennies, after all.  

we tour creme before james is born.  it is not particularly impressive- the air conditioner is broken when we visit and there is a backup unit with some sort of exposed pipe cooling the infant room.  three ugly babies vibrate placidly in baby swings while a caretaker cradles a fourth.  the director of curriculum and i have a hard time communicating.  i keep asking her about their vaccination policy because i don't want some anti-science hippie parent who follows david avocado wolfe on facebook to put my baby at risk.  but for some reason she thinks that i am an anti-vaxxer lunatic and reassures me that i can enroll my child as long as i sign a document indicating my wishes to abstain from vaccination.

we have parents who choose not to, she reassures me.  i want to scream and shake my fists and tell her this is the wrong way for her to pitch her house of disease to us.

but it's supposed to be the very best daycare!  even the babies have an education curriculum!  there are like 1400 security cameras!  look at these adorable uniforms!  i am suckered in despite some misgivings.  i fill out the form to get him on the waitlist.  he's the second one on it, i am reassured by the director of curriculum.  it shouldn't be a problem to get him enrolled in january.  i ask her if she's sure.  she reassures me everything looks good for the projected start date of january 3rd.

i call the center in early september, having heard nothing from them and expecting to fill out a ream of paperwork.  they tell me that they have no record of me or james.  as it turns out, i was never placed on any sort of waitlist.  i guess i just had a frustratingly misunderstood dialogue about vaccinations with this woman for literally nothing.  but we are still 4 months away from january, and i am reassured that looks like an achievable start date.  i rush to the facility after work, pay their nonrefundable registration blood money of $200, and rest easy knowing that my son will be cocooned in the mayonnaise privilege of this disneyland-ass daycare.

i don't hear from creme at all, so toward the end of october i call to confirm that we are still on for january 3rd.  miss lindsey is on vacation right now, i can have her call you back as soon as she's back on november 1st, the receptionist chirps.  

miss lindsey never calls me back.  i try to reach her again at the beginning of november.  she seems bewildered by my need to confirm a start date with certainty, and i am bewildered by the fact that they cannot offer one.  she explains that daycare enrollment is a nebulous, unpredictable game of tetris with children transferring rooms and jumping the waitlist based on an unfathomable algorithm of development and nepotism.  part of this makes sense, but i am staggered at the burden of unpredictability placed entirely on the family.  so, i guess we just hang out and don't make any career moves until y'all work this equation out?

she reassures me again that the january start date for james looks attainable, but sneaks in i can't guarantee like conversational fine print.  

we should know by the end of november, she tells me.  

nobody contacts me by the end of november.  i have moved beyond surprise to a dogged tenacity.  i call again.

i am told that january is now a pipe dream, and we have been shunted to maybe february.  but what about the "second one on the waitlist" thing?  we give preference to parents of existing creme students, miss lindsey explains.  we recommend that you find a backup option.

HOW MANY NEPOBABIES HAVE BEEN BORN DURING THE LAST TWO MONTHS TO HAVE PUSHED MY SON INTO THE DREGS OF THE WAITLIST ROCK BOTTOM?

sounds like they give preference to white people, my sister quipped.  should've had ian do all the work on this one.  

i laugh this off but secretly wonder if i have been too annoying and thereby deemed an undesirable parent.  miss lindsey has been polite and friendly on these calls, but there is an unnerving detachment bordering on flippancy towards a family on the waitlist.  like maybe if there is no contact or update for long enough, i will finally disintegrate into dust and stop pestering them.  i feel like i am trying to get into an uptown club on saturday night but the bouncer has pocketed my $200 and is hell-bent on not making eye contact with me.  

so i frenziedly scout backups.  now it is december and things look dire.  the daycare centers in our area have waitlists extending out to may.  i start thinking that i will need to buy some business casual looks for james and just take him to work with me every day.  his first words might be revenue cycle.

stela in my addison clinic suggests kids r kids.  this name is only slightly less wretched than creme de la creme, but i know for a fact that her daughter has been enrolled at one of their frisco facilities since she was six weeks old.  gisella is now 2.5 years old- confident, charismatic, social, and bright.  i seize on this ray of hope.

when i drop in for a tour, a very kind and professional lady named emily guides me through the two infant rooms.  they are clean, brightly colored, and immaculately organized.  there are live webcams accessible to parents at all times.  the infant room teachers have an average tenure of 4 years thus far.

we only have one unvaccinated student, but they're an older child in a different classroom on the other side of the building, emily tells me.

i am sold.  she guarantees a january 3rd enrollment.

ian and i dropped james off this morning, lugging a bin of carefully labeled supplies.  his teachers are warm and welcoming.  they do not betray the slightest impatience while i explain his feeding schedule over and over again.  james lies on the playmat and is immediately enthralled by a bucket of toys.  he doesn't seem to know or care that his parents are leaving him in a new place, with new adults, and a whole squad of ugly babies.  

he does not cry.  we do not cry.

and creme still has not contacted me at all.

046

my dude turned 5 months old on january 1st.  new year, new mr. james.

things that baby j can now do:

• grab at his chubby feet
• pet the dogs clumsily
• sit unsupported for all of 30 seconds before the weight of his big ass head tumps him over
• hold his own bottle for a little while before he gives up and lets it roll away and dribble into the caverns of his neck fat
• punch anything within reach- a wine glass, a plate, my breasts, my face
• roll around constantly, get his fat little leg stuck between crib rails
• splash and kick around to swim in a bathtub with the help of his otteroo floatie
• grab my finger and gum on it vigorously like he's eating corn on the cob
• grin and giggle when he hears инээд (ineed), the mongolian word for laugh

things that i can now do:

• remain stoic while getting punched in the face a lot 
• say that i've produced roughly 4,000 ounces of breastmilk (i don't really know who i would say this to)
• deflect any and all potentially interested dudes at bars immediately by using a baby photo as my lockscreen