Family ties

I've had quite a week and my head is still spinning - aided by sleep deprivation. It's been a month now where I haven't had more than 3 hours consecutively (and that rarely). I find that any sleep I do have is more intense - I still seem to have that extra sense that listens for Noah's breathing, but the dreams are so deep it sometimes seems, waking up and picking him up, that both are happening at once - being asleep and awake.

Which is trippy, but something to be really careful of. I bet those are the moments where people have done idiotic things and nearly hurt their kids.

And I'm clumsy and stupid-tired, some of the time. And not much of an end in sight - although now Noah does sleep in his cosy bassinet thing, he still wakes up about every two hours. But at least there are those hours in between. And I know he needs to do that, because he's still so little. He's gaining, but he started off small.

He's also started spitting up a little bit. The breast feeding seems to be going really well apart from that, and I think that is probably just normal and maybe even a little that he tends to nurse past full (that's just a guess, but I feel it as a strong guess). I think he's learning pleasure as well as food. So am I in a way: I feel relaxed enough to just enjoy the feeds.

This morning we tried nursing in bed lying down for the first time and it was cosy, although I wouldn't want to do it if I weren't fully awake. It'd be too easy to doze off.

Every day he spends longer and longer watching things. I think he's starting to anticipate too, just a little - which means he's associating. He calms down from his rooting before the boob hits his lips - usually when he's put into a nursing position. He looks for his mirror on his change table. And boy does he like the mirror. I'm glad, although that particular baby toy is something I bought for Emily and it sat in the crib afterwards, when we put the plaster casts of her hands and feet and her clothes from the hospital there. I used to go into her room - at our old house - and smell those clothes and cry because I knew they'd loose the scent, and that mirror reflected it all back.

But now it reflects the vibrant eyes and wriggles of my son, and his wailing if we don't warm the wipes in our hands enough.

My sister and her husband travelled 7 hours to get here just for a weekend to see him, and due to complex things I won't go into to get back she is leaving on a bus that leaves at 1 am which goes to show what kinds of relations Noah is blessed with. My sister was a nanny for a newborn and it really showed as she handled him with ease and delight. He seemed to be puzzling over her a bit, and he didn't take a nap between feeds while she was here. I think she seemed a bit like me - person who feeds him - but she clearly wasn't feeding him, and that was what was puzzling him. It's all about the boob, man. :)

Her husband sits and pretends to hate all kids, which I think he partly does, in that way that other people's misbehaving kids really irritate. But he watches him pretty intently and I suspect that some male bonding will happen pretty easily once Noah's old enough to know that he's - well - male. But we'll see. I do know my brother in law would probably have trouble relating to a fae male child (fae as an adjective! Not a race! And not a sexual orientation either!). And that'll take some years to know.

I felt complete embarassment to note only once people were here that my toenails are in totally lousy shape: flaked polish, overgrown. I just haven't been looking down much lately. However I figure a day without poo smeared anywhere is really a good one.

And in a way, it was a distraction from the whole sibling thing. I grieve that Noah won't know his sister either, when I am so glad to know mine. Which is odd because he wouldn't be here if she had lived. And yet they both seem so intensely made to be our family. It's weird.

My mother's been over about every other day this week. I'm glad because I want her and Noah to bond, especially now when it's easy for my mum to relate to him. I suspect that she will have a really hard time later for various reasons. But oh, it's hard because things are rubbed so raw between her and us/me right now. And because of stuff in our childhood, we have a lot of rules drawn up to protect Noah that my mum is not aware of... and we have no idea how that will go down, if they become more clear to her. I admit that I'm sort of counting on her capacity for denial to kick in and protect us all, that way.

If not then I suspect I'll lose my mum over it, and my dad with her, since my dad has ever sacrificed us kids to their shared reality. I really don't want to do that; for all the bad stuff and her flaws there is still a lot of good and we are family. But if it comes down between her and protecting my kid (overkill or not), kid wins. Our system kids are incredibly fierce on this point too, and that's - really good.

Speaking of system kids, we bought Free to Be, You and Me for Noah, at least supposedly for Noah. God I'd forgotten how cheesy it is, but also so reflective of a desire to change things - feminist change. Something in me wants to go create the updated version with songs about being gay and lesbian and transsexual and all kinds of things. But for our system kids it was just bliss. I realize that some of those songs are ingrained into some of the - hope? selves-created ethical world view? - fabric of the system. (And some, like "Parents are People" are treated with a bit of scorn... and what's with the scary "Toyland" song???)

But in particular the title song:

There's a land that I see where the children are free

And I say it ain't far to this land from where we are

Take my hand, come with me, where the children are free

Come with me, take my hand, and we'll live

In a land where the river runs free

In a land through the green country

In a land to a shining sea

And you and me are free to be you and me

I see a land bright and clear, and the time's comin' near

When we'll live in this land, you and me, hand in hand

Take my hand, come along, lend your voice to my song

Come along, take my hand, sing a song

For a land where the river runs free

For a land through the green country

For a land to a shining sea

For a land where the horses run free

And you and me are free to be you and me

Every boy in this land grows to be his own man

In this land, every girl grows to be her own woman

Take my hand, come with me where the children are free

Come with me, take my hand, and we'll run

To a land where the river runs free

To a land through the green country

To a land to a shining sea

To a land where the horses run free

To a land where the children are free

And you and me are free to be you and me

Kids of all kinds make you hokey. They do. Otherwise I cannot explain why so many silly songs are made up to sing to Noah. (I've worked my way through my old camp songbook too, which has both silly and schmaltzy and serious songs, and I would blush to relate how much of my own personal honour code can be found between some of the lines there. Camp was always sort of my place, that way. Both the wholesome aspects of it and the summer experimentation aspects once I was a CIT and a counsellor... mnn hmm.)

When this CD arrived, it was put on for the next nursing with great glee and there was much singing coming out of that nursery. So much that Carl stuck his head in to tease gently that it sounded like the 70s in there.

Well, I wouldn't mind providing a land for Noah that worked that way. Except, I tell you, for the creepy toyland song.

Shandra