Oh, my gosh, the little mite is growing and growing! I continue to be actually obsessed with her. Watching Gran Torino last night it was almost impossible to stop thinking about Peony. She climbs now, which makes every encounter with her mean that you are now her personal monkey bars. It's fun, and silly. I love having a baby so much that I can't imagine not having a baby, and what's more, I can't imagine stopping at two of them. But would it be good for my job, my marriage, my finances and my body to have another one right now? Or to have more than two? Very questionable, I think. It's an odd place to be. My mom says that's when many women get a puppy.

As she grows it seems that she just gets better and better at expressing her love and delight. Her cheeks are huge and beautiful, she hugs and kisses, shes laughs and laughs, and her joy...well, let's just say it's contagious.

Joy & Celebration

We went to Matt and Naomi's really sweet, really wonderful wedding last night. I felt so lucky to be there. The rabbi asked everyone to start by doing this great thing: taking a big breath in, closing their eyes, and exhaling until all the worries and stresses they brought in with them were simply gone. He said, "I want Matt and Naomi to be able to look in your eyes and see only joy and celebration reflected back at them." So, how was it that yours truly congratulated her friend the groom only to have him say, "Are you alright?" Yes, of course, I insisted, hoisting the baby to my other arm. "Are you sure?" he then asked. I can't lie, so instead I chanted back at him, "joy and celebration! Joy and celebration!" and proceeded to tell him how great his wedding was.

Of course I wasn't alright. I don't know why. I closed my eyes, I exhaled, and I still felt the same. I felt tension in my upper body. I felt tired from teaching two hours of fitness classes that morning. I felt worry that my husband wasn't madly attracted to me. I felt sadness that Peony wasn't feeling good and would surely get tired soon, or cry during the ceremony. I worried we couldn't leave before the dinner was served or Matt and Naomi would feel annoyed, and yet if we stayed Peony would feel very tired. I felt badly that I couldn't fit into my dresses the way I wanted to and had nothing to wear and then ended up wearing something that I couldn't easily breastfeed in and made me totally self-conscious.

Weddings used to be the most fun thing ever---drinking, dancing with Blue till all hours, the wearing of all the make-up. During the ceremony, the rabbi said, "In marriage, the first thing you have to do is take care of yourself." Blue looked at me with love and compassion. "I'm trying, I'm trying!" I whispered, hiding my toes so no one could see my lack of pedicure. "The second thing you do is take care of your spouse." Strike two. All I could do was look at the beautiful baby in my arms.

Dance Party

One thing has seriously slipped since my return to work 8 weeks ago: music appreciation hour. I want my baby to participate without self-consciousness or hesitation in that most human, most physical, most connected of experiences: making, listening to and dancing to music.

Looking through my notes in her "First 1000 Days" book recently, I was struck by all the music she heard in her first month. I had to scribble names in the margins so the artists could all fit. But since starting back at work, I've brought her home, exhausted, and never even turned on the stereo. Mostly we've just tried to focus on getting her fed 100% breastmilk as long as possible--and sleeping through the night in her crib (getting there! Last night was the first night when eleven hours of sleep happened with ZERO crying...and a drowsy-but-awake-baby to start!).

As a very young person, she had an astonishing response to great music. She would stop fussing and listen completely to Don Cherry. Her face would transform as different sounds entered the atmosphere, and she would react with her whole body.

In the past two months, her interest level in music has not lessened. But what's she exposed to now? Me singing (good), her teacher singing in Arabic (good), or creepy commercial jingles (bad, bad, bad). Last night while she was nursing, the ice cream truck trailed slowly down our street, sending its transfixing slot machine sounds floating through our kitchen. She tore her little head off the breast to look in that direction and I had to coerce her back to the nipple. When we want to distract her for 30-60 seconds so we can eat or put something away, we push a button on what my husband calls the "nuclear" option: the electronic Baby Einstein music player I am ashamed to have bought her myself (thinking it could soothe her in her crib). This thing is evil: it takes beautiful classical pieces and converts them to dinky one-note lullabies, setting her up for a lifetime of commercial programming. And it effectively distracts my daughter.

Every weekend, I vow to get her both outside AND listening to live music, but usually only succeed in getting her outside. Now and then we get lucky---we catch a cello in the subway or a belly dancer in a restaurant (ODELLA!), but too often, I totally fail at this goal.

Well, now she can sleep through the night. And soon she'll be eating solid food. So the time has come to recommit to music. Real music, interesting music. Live or not. This morning I put on my favorite old track from Basement Bhangra (which made her look around at the speakers to try to figure out where it was coming from). Then she heard Suga Suga by Baby Bash (and I got to ask her, "Suga Suga, How you get so fly?"). Then Walking with a Ghost by Tegan and Sara (which made her bend her knees while standing and laugh). Then Radio Nowhere by Bruce. Then Moon Rocks by the Talking Heads (more laughing...that's my girl). Then...the piece de resistance...The Way I Are. We danced. And then something by Nas, which she found totally absorbing. And then it was time for her morning nap.

The challenge is for me to branch out a little more in my knowledge of layered, complex and interesting music. It takes time, but what could be more worth it than my little dancer?

What a Glorious Feeling

My little beauty is lunging for the food on our plates, putting crusty bread in her mouth, holding her own cup, acting hungry after breastmilk feedings, and in general displaying an unquestionable desire for solid food. Today I read that a baby is ready when she opens her mouth for a spoon, and extremely ready when she closes her mouth around the spoon. Curious, I handed Peony a spoon. She took it in her hand, brought it to her own mouth, and closed her lips around it. OK, OK, she's ready. I get it. But the research seems pretty consistent about waiting until she's six months old; starting earlier gives her a higher risk of diabetes, obesity, allergic reactions, and so on. And the American Association of Pediatricians recommends 100% breastmilk until age six months, so that's what we've been doing.

On her half-birthday, June 22nd, small sweetie will get the rice cereal for which she's been waiting so passionately. And maybe some bananas. It doesn't seem right that her first food be so bland. I might add a little cinnamon. And maybe some kosher salt. And can it be brown rice cereal?

We're finding the right highchair, bowl, and spoon in anticipation of this new chapter in our lives. Highchairs, there are many, and she road-tested the Svan pretty well...but BPA-free bowls seem to be hard to find and then, when found, lacking a little in reasonable functionality. No one needs overkill. I could maybe go for the ThinkBaby set but she doesn't need a bento box, you know?

In the meantime, she's been growing in leaps and bounds, and it's just beautiful to see. She's started sitting up by herself in the last week---amazing! The soles of both feet together in a perfect little yoga pose, and her arms up for a lovely balance. AND she sleeps through the night! Well, she did once, when I mumbled through my sleep to Blue that we should "give it a couple minutes" at midnight, and she cried herself back to sleep. Poor baby, but she did sleep until 5, so she probably wasn't that hungry. We bought Ferber's "Solve Your Child's Sleep Problem" five days ago and it has changed our lives. I think we're about a month and half late on this boat, but at least we're on it.

She also continues her interest in dancing by tearing herself away from nursing to watch George Sampson do his amazing Singin' in the Rain dance on Oprah. Since then we're been watching his dance, which won the final prize on Britain's Got Talent '08, every day on YouTube. You just can't discount those street dancers. He is awesome. I loved his dance so much that I bought the Gene Kelly remix by Mint Royale, and it's great, but listening to it, I realized that the energy in his dance doesn't come from the music...it comes from him. At almost 33 now, I am fascinated by watching certain magnetic personalities sparkle briefly and then age...it really happens, doesn't it? Those closest to you glow and beam and get more beautiful with time as they blossom and crackle with fire and energy and the nature of your intimate connection, but when someone is more at a distance from you, and you can see them shine, then age, then change, it's a stunning thing. That must have happened to me, too. I think I knew it when I was fourteen; I was at a special point that I will never return to again. Mortality: not for the faint of heart! Living long enough to truly grasp aging means an enhanced ability to recognize the power of the youthful peak. I think that's why his music is a perfect foil; there's something bittersweet about how young, strong and vital he is, because it doesn't last---but dance is a fantastic way to express that reality.

Anyway, I'm sure that's what Peony was thinking when she first started watching George. Either that or she just likes the Gene Kelly remix.

Hometown

In a haze this week of excitement and hope: a beautiful house stands by the river in Newton, with a greenhouse and just the right yard, the bedrooms I always hoped to find at the top of staircase, a sunroom, wooded conservation land, the right street. No garage and no shower. Promptly decided we couldn't afford it, but then I couldn't sleep that night deciding in fact this is exactly what we should invest in and take risks for, so we put our own home on the market and got a full-price offer within 48 hours. Which led to another nearly sleepless night. But this time tentatively joyous. No signatures, but contracts in the hands of attorneys.

Anyway, there will be more time later to blog about a bat house, a river boat, a bike trail, a place where I can write my heart out and raise my children. Something else has been drifting up through the ether, though, through the blissful run of projects at work, my baby and her loving caretakers, trying to remember if we fed the cat, midnight nursings, and it's actually outside of all this. It's the Globe. Yeah, the precarious life of the Globe, close to death, revived for the moment, but having bled out all these years, and it makes me really sad. In college I read the Globe as much as I could, but when I moved to Boston I started reading the Times instead. It seemed more substantial. And it was, in fact, because the Times ate bought the Globe and made it a series of reprints and ads. But even though I stopped reading it, I didn't stop mourning it.

A community paper with smart writers (so, sigh, that excludes the Herald) is so valuable. In the wake of the Globe, who will keep the Meninos of our time honest? Who hunts down wrongdoing and makes it transparent? Where does transparency live at all, in fact? Bloggers? Fine, but which one relaces the Globe? Because I still get all my news from nytimes online and let me tell you, I never read about Boston.

The Philosophy

I always knew I had a parenting philosophy, but it wasn't until we pulled Peony from one daycare center and placed her in another that I was able to put it into words. The new center asked for one, for one thing, which is a damn good sign. So here's what I wrote:

Provide gentle challenges--reward persistence and achievement and trying
new things--aim for more than just "safe and happy." Lots of love and hugging.
LOTS of outdoor time and natural stimulation. Minimize electronic stimuli,
plastics, commercial influence, as much as possible. Respect her body
completely.

I'm happy with that. We'll see how it stacks up when I have more than four months of experience as someone's mama, but so far, I think it's right. For me there is a big emphasis on respectfully moving out of your comfort zone, every day if possible. That's how I live now. And that's probably why I like being a fitness instructor: I get to do that for other people all the time. Probably not every child loves to live that way, but when Peony was three months old, she watched a train roar by ten feet away from us, giving her little body a huge jolt in my arms, and afraid I'd overdone it, I asked Blue to look at her expression. "She's smiling," he said, and I knew I had a child a lot like me: OK with getting out of her comfort zone because new things, sometimes, new things really pay off.

Back to Work

As if I ever stopped working. Having a baby is 24-7 work, such a test of endurance and patience for a nursing mother that you can't even imagine it until you've experienced it. Going back to work is a little bit of a break from that, much easier and more comfortable, but none of that mattered on Monday, when I was a forgone wreck. My husband called me at 9:40, after we'd left our baby with strangers. "How is work?" he asked. "I don't know," I said. "Are you not inside the building yet?" No, in fact, I was sitting, nearly catatonic, inside my car, doing nothing, thinking nothing, trying not to cry. I could not believe that I was going to be away from her, and worse, that this was the beginning of being away from her all the time, and how insane it seemed.

Underneath my big-picture angst was another, more immediate problem: the care wasn't good. I could tell immediately. A new general manager was on the premises, and she was irritable and laden with attitude. She seemed not to know that Peony was starting that day. In fact, no one seemed to know, even though we'd just stopped by a couple weeks before. I wanted to tell someone, anyone, about her needs, like her blocked tear duct and her hemangioma, or the things that make her happy, like standing, but I couldn't communicate with any of her caregivers, who speak little to no English. I went in a few hours later, to nurse her on my lunchbreak, and she was crying her heart out. No one near her was going to comfort her; she was just sitting in a swing, alone. That was a heartbreaking moment, especially given how good it had felt to be at work: hugs from everyone, warm faces, a new desk by the window, real clothes that actually fit, blow-dried hair, makeup, and strategy, projects, and details to consider. I was just starting to feel excited when I found her crying: hey, this could work. And then seeing her: wait, this isn't working at all.

So now, as we seek alternate care, there's so much to consider. You stipulate to everyone that you don't want plastic toys and instead amass a nice collection of wood toys painted with organic dyes, and then she spends most of her time in day care with cheap plastic toys that she jams in her mouth. You research Exersaucers and decline to have one since they are proven to delay walking, but at the day care there are four of them, always filled with babies. You strip the lead paint from your windows, but she spends most of her time in a place about which you have no knowledge or control of the levels of lead paint. A family day care we considered has a TV time during the day, even though we try to limit the TV she sees. A nanny seems wonderful or dangerous, depending on how secure you are with letting your baby be molded by someone else. I want a 1:1 ratio, sure, but I want it with someone fabulous or no one at all.

Stressful.

I think before we actually met our baby, we just didn't know how to evaluate caregivers. We followed questions that other moms provided, but didn't know why we were asking questions like, "Do you hold the babies alot?" Now I know why. She's an alert, sentient being who we treasure more than words can describe. Not a little blob who sleeps all day, but a vivid and aware person.

A person just now waking up from her nap.