A Mindful Life

Update at 6:42 p.m.: It’s 97.4F. I know, it’s not a cyclone or earthquake. Just plain HOT. And only mid-May.

Update at 4:17 p.m.: Am I in Texas again?! It’s 103.8F!

Update at 2:12 p.m.: Temperature is 100.6F. Whew!

Today the high will be near 100. Yesterday it was the mid-90s. Tomorrow is predicted to be near 100. Saturday the highs will be in the 90s.

Gas is also over $4.00 a gallon for regular unleaded now.

Claire seems to have caught another cold. She slept long naps yesterday, and today she is sneezing, congested, has a runny nose, and is taking a really long morning nap (for her). Not even the garbage truck has intruded on her rest.

We’re moving slowly, or not at all, around here.

She commando crawls to the bookshelves and pulls out whatever is in reach. There’s a video on my Flickr site for friends and family to watch if you want.

Yes, we’re terrible parents who applied some of Ferber’s concepts. Actually, the book has great information about the nature of sleep in children and adults. We’ve found that more helpful than the training techniques he suggests.

This post has been updated with an extra link.

I’m not writing as much these days. Never in my life have I been so spent by the day’s end. Mothering has brought into focus for me what is real and what matters. It burns off all that is extraneous. Being used so completely simplifies my options. I must choose what matters, what merits my precious little free time and energy.

But it’s not just how I spend my free time. This has affected my thinking as well. Once upon a time I would ponder past experiences and relationships. I felt compelled to think about why certain relationships I’m in have unfolded the way they have. I psychoanalyzed. I looked for meaning. I rehashed the past — the injustices done, the abuse experienced, the chances lost.

One day I was in the shower and I began to think of a family member with whom I’m estranged. As I waded into my thoughts I had a realization: none of this matters now. The circumstances of how it came to be don’t matter to Claire. She is not me. The pain I experienced growing up and in my early adult life will not be her pain. In order to give her a free life, her own life, I must release my past so I don’t confuse her life with mine. It doesn’t matter anymore if so-and-so treated me badly, and it doesn’t matter how his life experiences shaped him so that he treated me thusly. It doesn’t matter if someone else’s relationship affected me immensely growing up. What matters is how Husband and I relate to one another as spouses and parents. What matters is how I respond to the challenges Claire will face, and how I help her to navigate them. What matters is being here now, keeping company with my daughter as she encounters life. This requires letting go of the past, returning constantly to what’s in front of me. With regard to the broken relationship, I can either attempt to reconnect with this person or I can drop it. Life is too precious to waste on ruminating about it.

I used to need to tell my story. And sure, someday maybe I will. But I’ve got something so much more important and fulfilling to attend to: my life, and my daughter.

Basically, Karen wrote about this last week and then again today; she says it so much better than I.

So, you wonder, what do I do with my free time? After chores (laundry, cleaning, prepping Claire’s food, putting away toys, etc.) I’ve been knitting. I read when I can focus mentally. I doodle. I try to make art. I get a good night’s sleep. I’ve been thinking about writing this post for several weeks, and tonight I forced myself to do it. The more aware Claire becomes, the less important blogging and the Internet is to me. I’ll still be around. Just a little more scarce.
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My first mother’s day was sweet. I received snail mail cards, e-cards, phone calls, gifts. Husband cooked a steak dinner for me with corn on the cob and macaroni and cheese. Since Claire now naps in her crib, I got a chance to go knit with my friends who own a yarn shop. And then I had a nap!

Perhaps I ought to follow her lead.

A couple of readers tell me they are having trouble viewing my blog. These folks seem to be using PCs and Internet Explorer. I’m not sure why it’s not showing up correctly anymore, but I’ve made no changes to the format or code.

If you’re experiencing problems, let me know. I don’t know that there’s anything I can do, since it shows up fine in my browser and I’ve made no changes. But maybe we can see if it affects Apple users as well as PC, etc.

Claire can:

• bear weight on her legs and stand while holding on to something and with light support around her middle.
• feed herself Zwieback or cracker.
• look for a dropped object.
• rake objects with her fingers and pick them up in her fist.
• hold a toy in each hand.
• tap two objects together, such as a small ball held in each hand.
• pass an object from one hand to the other.
• work to get a toy out of reach, and now “commando crawls” to get to it.
• understand and enjoy peekaboo but doesn’t yet cover her eyes.
• creep and commando crawl as well as roll and pivot her way across the room; Stella provides great incentive, since she’s a movable toy as far as Claire is concerned.
• say “mama” and “dada” indiscriminately, as well as “baba.”
• wave hello and bye-bye (though not always on command).
• bring her arms together to clap but doesn’t yet open her hands to make the palms meet; the fists meet.
• understand “no” (which is used rarely such as when she tries to roll over on the changing table).

Claire has not met a stranger yet. She genuinely enjoys people and readily smiles at and responds when others say hello and talk to her. She’ll sometimes even have “conversations” with them. However, Claire is definitely beginning to experience separation anxiety. If I begin to walk away from her, she cries. She often prefers me to Husband, especially at the end of the day when she is tired. I think object permanence has been established; it’s clear that she recognizes the sound of my footsteps and will coo, whine, or cry when hearing them depending on her mood.

Claire now naps in her crib. She was taking only 30-minute naps three times a day until recently. Since she’s often still tired after only 30 minutes, I was hoping for improvement there. Monday a mother made a suggestion that seems to have worked the past couple days. After she’s been asleep 10-15 minutes, I place a small, buckwheat-filled sack (the kind you heat in the microwave to use as a heating pad, but I don’t heat it) on her back. (She now rolls onto her tummy to sleep.) Tuesday her first nap was 70 minutes and the second was an hour. Wednesday the morning was 40 minutes and the afternoon was 1 hour and 20 minutes. There is a lot less eye-rubbing, yawning, and whining as a result. And we’ve made progress in that I’m no longer her bed! Before a nap I read her a couple of books, and then we say “goodnight” to Mirror Baby and the Mama Moon drawing. Then I rock her and sing four lullabies — the exact same ones in the exact same order — for five minutes. Then I kiss her, tell her I love her and that we’ll play after her nap. She will fuss, sometimes for up to twenty minutes, but usually she relents and allows sleep to come.

Claire’s been drooling to beat the band and chewing avidly on everything, and when I can glimpse inside her mouth, I think her gums are puffy where her two front teeth will appear. She eats heartily and recently has added squash, spinach, and potatoes to her menu, as well as peaches, apricots, and plums. When she drinks her bottle, Claire likes to play with my hair. After the morning bottle, she’ll nuzzle her head into my neck and cuddle.

We go out at least once every day to interact with people (run errands, play date, music class), and I try to get to the park daily too. Claire enjoys the swing so much and will stay in there up to half an hour if I’m willing to push that long. The play group I’m in has coordinated smaller groups of women called Sit-n-Plays. Up to six women who have discovered an affinity for each other and whose children are close in age meet once a week in each other’s homes to develop closer friendships. Eventually when the kids are old enough, they’ll actually play together. Right now they all sit around playing with toys and babbling and occasionally trying to touch or taste each other.

Life is luscious. Happy 8th month birthday, my love.

Patry Francis, who is recovering from cancer, encountered “perfect joy.” Read all about it and then ponder the question she poses at the end.

The only disagreement I have is with the idea of “having it.” I think this may not be possible. Life is ever-changing, and we are inconsistent. I think the real accomplishment is in recognizing when we encounter happiness and savoring it, and likewise when we recognize we are gripping negativity and letting go as soon as we know this. This happens daily for me. I dare say that becoming a mother has awakened me to my habits of negativity, and now I practice with more awareness. Any time I have a negative thought, a judgment — any time I feel tempted to dwell in and spew this — I look at my child and realize I have a choice. Actually, I not only have a choice — I have a responsibility to let go of the negative in order to become receptive to joy.

I may update this post later with my answer to Patry’s question.

I originally knit a baby hat and an adult hat. Decided to see if they’d felt and firm up well, even though it wasn’t bulky yarn. It was good ol’ Cascade 220 on size 8 needles. I used starch to help firm them up a bit. They are now felted bowls! These will be donated to a non-profit event as a prize for a raffle.

[cross-posted Knit Together]

To my readers who have baby-proofed their home, and in particular have installed cabinet latches — the type that you press down on as you open the door so it doesn’t catch:

How long until I stop forgetting they’re there and attempting to open the door only to have the latch catch and practically rip my nail off?

I feel rather stupid attempting to open my cabinet doors now.

Claire’s bedtime ritual includes saying goodnight to the Mirror Baby in her room. (Her closet is a sliding glass mirror.) Then she says goodnight to the Mama Moon drawing I made just before her birth (actually, it’s a small framed photo of the work).

Tonight, she waved at Mirror Baby as she said goodnight.

She’s so cute it hurts!