The way a newborn stretches and arches her back when you pick her up while she’s sleeping, so taut and curved in your hands, and then melts into you when you bring her close.
The way her fists press up under her cheeks when she’s nursing.
The way I have to keep washing yogurt off the back of her head because her brother cannot stop kissing her, even when he’s in the middle of a meal.
I love how they arch their backs that way as well! They make that funny face and stretch their arms, fists clenched by their cheeks when they do it! My Annie is only 6 months but she no longer does the arch thing. Thanks for reminding me!
This post just made me cry. I think that so many women would be stopped by fear or just being overwhelmed from having another baby after a child is born with special needs. You are showing that not only is this new baby a blessing to you and your husband and your girls, but she is a very special blessing to Wonderboy, who will learn and love and laugh and teach so much as a big brother!
“Exploration,” says John Stilgoe, author of Outside Lies Magic, “is a liberal art, because it is an art that liberates, that frees, that opens away from narrowness. And it is fun.”
Yes: it is so, so much fun, and that is why I write these posts all chattery with excitement over this or that connection the kids made today. (Or that I made myself!) I know I get carried away, but that’s the point, isn’t it, that way leading on to way has carried me away?
And yet—and yet—I think we are at once ‘carried away’ and made more fully present in the now, more rooted, by these relationships between ideas about things past and future. The joy of connection makes me want to celebrate this moment, this brief encounter with wild-haired child and broad-trunked tree, bus going by, sign on church wall, Scottish warlord creeping over the tower wall and startling the English soldier’s wife who has just put her babe in arms to sleep by crooning that the Black Douglas won’t get him. Child, laughing, shouting “Dinna ye be sae sure aboot that!” across the courtyard outside the library. How can I not celebrate this freedom?
Every day is complicated, messy, and full of friction. And every day has glorious or cozy moments worth celebrating. I seldom bother to chronicle the friction and the mess because writing time is fleeting and precious—and childhood even more so. I’d rather capture the small joys that I might forget—or take for granted—if I don’t take time to set them down in words.
(Excerpt from this post about Real Life, quoted here because I don't want anyone to be under the impression that things are always perfect around here! Heaven knows we are anything but. Perfect, frictionless, orderly? Nope. Happy? Most of the time!)
Be like the bird
Who, pausing in flight
On limb too slight,
Feels it give way beneath her,
Yet sings,
Knowing she has wings.
The way I have to keep washing yogurt off the back of her head because her brother cannot stop kissing her, even when he’s in the middle of a meal.
What a blessing babies are! Now I’m all nostalgic for the days when I had a 2.5yo and a newborn
Posted on June 3rd, 2006 at 9:15 amIt is fun, albeit exhausting, to have a 2 year old and a new baby. The 2 year old shows such love and affection!
Posted on June 3rd, 2006 at 12:50 pmIt is amazing how you forget those little details–although I’m looking forward to a vivid reminder!
Posted on June 3rd, 2006 at 10:26 pmI love how they arch their backs that way as well! They make that funny face and stretch their arms, fists clenched by their cheeks when they do it! My Annie is only 6 months but she no longer does the arch thing. Thanks for reminding me!
Posted on June 4th, 2006 at 7:58 amThis post just made me cry. I think that so many women would be stopped by fear or just being overwhelmed from having another baby after a child is born with special needs. You are showing that not only is this new baby a blessing to you and your husband and your girls, but she is a very special blessing to Wonderboy, who will learn and love and laugh and teach so much as a big brother!
Posted on June 4th, 2006 at 8:04 pm