Moving up

This morning Asa learned to climb the stairs. This is sort of a huge deal and a game changer for all of us. The good news is, he moves very slowly when he climbs stairs, which means we will have plenty of time to catch him in the act. The other bit of good news is he's learning and developing right on schedule (or slightly ahead) in all categories. This bit of good news makes me feel both proud and relieved. I can't speak for Jeff but I think it probably does the same for him and maybe makes him feel a little better that Asa isn't in the 90% percentile for weight.

Our little guy is sort of a string bean. He's tall as can be but he is not one of those very round babies with rolls of fat cascading over his arms, belly and legs. He's got tiny little elbow dimples, a few small creases on the thighs indicating an attempt at pudge, and a gorgeous, absolutely delightful round belly that fits in my hand. He also has fabulous curly, sort of strawberry blond hair which I've had to trim twice already. At every doctor's visit we lay Asa on the scale expecting that this time for sure he'll have hit the 20 pound mark and to date the highest we've gotten is 19lbs 10oz.

This is very upsetting for Jeff. Jeff was a big baby! He was top of the charts (maybe even chart busting) for height and for weight. And now today he stands about 6'6" and you can sort of see that yeah, he would have been a big baby. I don't know what my stats were back then but I do know that as kid I was a beanpole. Totally stick thin with knobby knees and dangerously sharp elbows. Pregnancy definitely helped fill me out (as did that dastardly duo, Time and Age) but to date I would say I still rank on the thinner side of average.

So it's no shock to me that I would have an average weight baby with long limbs. It bothers me not that he has never been above the 57% percentile in weight. I am secretly very pleased that he is not so chubby that his thighs prevent his knees from touching (I've seen this on a baby and it's alarming).  I guess I pretty much feel like everything Asa does is perfect and the way he looks is perfect even if his pants are sliding down his thin little hips while his ankles peek out the bottom of the pant leg. I had several years of childhood experience being long and lean (Gap even named a jean after me!) and I'll be there to support him in it if it is his path as well.

Ignorance = Bliss?

Anyone reading this blog is probably a personal friend of mine and will know that I lived in Japan for two years. As they'll also know, I spent my first year in Sendai and that is where I really identify my home-away-from-home as being. The continuing crisis there has been terribly difficult for me to wrap my head around. I see the images, I read the heartbreaking (and too infrequent heartwarming) stories and wait for any word from my friends there.

From what I have gathered a lot of Sendai remains intact. The downtown train station is physically still standing, though I don't think any trains are running there anymore. I watched a brief video that shows young American teachers boarding a bus for Tokyo, abandoning the city after so much devastation. These images should give me some relief but they don't. Instead they serve as a powerful reminder of just how lucky some people are, and how unlucky others were. The tsunami demonstrated nature's ultimate line in the sand: you're either safe and dry or homeless, missing, or dead. Many of my friends lived in those neighborhoods that have vanished. All but one of my friends is still, for me, missing. Perhaps their families knows where they are. Perhaps they are safe in shelter living with other survivors, or perhaps they are part of the some 25,000 people who are gone. Washed to sea. Buried under rubble. Gone.

Part of what I am trying to come to terms with is accepting the not knowing. It may be weeks, months or even years before I am able to determine what happened to them. My Japanese is not what it once was, my contact information on them is sparse, and my fear that if I dig too hard for information it might prove too sad to handle ... these things stall my efforts and force my mind onto other things.

I look through my photo album from those days and see all of us smiling back, totally ignorant of the devastation that would descend on the city a decade later and I realize how lucky I was to be there then, and not now. What a truly magical and trans-formative time it was in my life and what a gift and blessing those friends, my Japan Family as we joked, were. I'm not one for old adages, I think they are too often tossed around at times when maybe it would be better not to say anything at all, but looking at those photos I can't help but murmur to myself, 'ignorance was bliss'. 

I smile at the younger versions of us all smiling back, sigh, close the book and let my mind be distracted by the melodic babbling of my son, Asa, whose names means "born in the early morning" in Japanese. How appropriate that the young light of my life should have a name that beckons the regenerative powers of a new dawn for a country facing a truly dark hour.

Just smile and nod

I can hardly believe it but my son is nearly 9 months old. Time has flown faster than I ever thought possible and I've learned more about myself, my husband, babies and life in the last 9 months than perhaps I had in all the years leading up to Asa's birth.

One of the best ways I'm able to judge how far I've come as a parent is to compare myself to parents with children who are younger than mine. I know 9 months isn't a whole lot and I know all the parents with adult children who read this will probably scoff, but the truth is, I know more than the first-time parent of a five month old, a three month old, a 6 week old, a 1 day old, and I know way more than a girl who is still pregnant with her first. I find that, like most (not all but MOST) of the mom's I spoke with when I was still pregnant, I tend to smile and nod and show as much support as possible for the delusional ideas that newer moms have ...

I'll sleep when the baby sleeps.
I'm a stay at home mom, I can take care of the baby and do the chores and look fabulous and still put out for my husband four times a week.
I can work from home and take care of the baby.
My husband has to work so I want him to sleep and I'll do all the baby stuff overnight (as well as all day long).
Being pregnant is fun.
I'm a baby expert because I've read 'some random book that is adding new delusions to the ones I already came up with on my own'.

Having just gone through the newborn days I can say that I almost never got to sleep when the baby slept. I used that time to do little things like eat, or wee, or shower. If I could have I would have eaten in the shower while weeing, but it just wasn't feasible. I generally had to choose between one of the three and then turn my attention to trying to squeeze in some chore or closing my eyes for for a few minutes before the baby woke up. And honestly, I got off easy, Asa was an easy baby. 

Too all those moms who haven't had their babies yet, I'll tell you what everyone told me but what I was too tired to actually listen to: Take advantage of your freedom now. Go out. Run errands. Go away for the weekend. Enjoy getting in and out of your car without having to strap someone else in. Wear pretty clothes (soon they'll be covered in spit-up, baby wee and then baby food). To all the moms who are just a few months behind me, enjoy smiling and nodding at the mom's behind you. To all the moms ahead of me, thank you for smiling and nodding at me, you could give me advice but once again, I'm too tired to listen to you. Plus, I'm sure I know better than you anyway, after all I've been doing this for nearly 9months, how much more could there possibly be to learn??

Totally Random

Saturday Night Live - Iran So Far - Video - NBC.com

Above is a link to a song from 2007 that SNL's Andy Samberg and Adam Levine (of Maroon 5 fame) put together. It's fairly funny but that's not why I'm sharing it. I think I'm sharing it for two reasons: 1) I'm bored and 2) I'm astounded at how impertinent we as Americans can be. I'm not saying that the jerk president of Iran deserves any respect but the man does have a sh*t-ton of weapons and I tend to think it's best not to make fun of people who can literally blow your a** up. What's ironic is that in this song they are making all sorts of homosexual innuendo that might involve metaphorically blowing someone's a** up. I love irony.

Another thing I love is this song that until today I'd only heard a snippet of. The song is called "Fuck You" and I always assumed it was sung by some puny little white guy (PLWG) like the aforementioned Adam Levine. It turns out the song is sung by this huge wide black guy (HWBG) called Cee Lo Green. I learned this last night while watching network television. A commercial came on for some show where people sing for famous musicians who can't see them and have to judge them by voice alone. Some big wide white guy (BWWG) sang the "Fuck You" song and then a HWBG said he just had to see who sung it because that was his song. And I was like, "Wha'??". And so this morning I googled it and sure enough, there's a dude called Cee Lo Green who sings this song and he's the very same HWBG from TV last night.

So the moral of the story is: Don't mess with guys who have WMD's and don't judge a book by it's cover or it's voice. Another moral of the story is that I'm even further behind on my Americana Pop Culture knowledge than I thought.

Here is a link to the very catchy Cee Lo Green song, "FUCK YOU".

Being a Mom is ...

Being a mom is a very fluid experience. Every time I think I know how to define what being a mom is, it seems to change. When Asa was a newborn, just a few weeks old, I would have said that being a mom means never eating a warm meal, or for that matter, a meal of any sort, again. Then he grew a bit and required less frequent holding, rocking, swinging, bouncing, changing, feeding ... When he was a few months old I thought being a mom meant never sleeping more than three hours in a row, though to his credit he slept 5 or 6 hours, it was my damn boobs that wouldn't let me sleep (sorry Jeff, the boobs have resurfaced in the blog again ...). Then something changed and my boobs started letting me sleep, Asa let me sleep, and I found I could get 6 hours of uninterrupted sleep even if I went to bed at 10pm. It was great except that now being a mom (and dad, props to Jeff for being a trooper right along with me) meant waking up between 4 and 4:30am to play with a baby who was done sleeping. That phase seemed to last forever but it was probably just a few weeks. We managed to ease bedtime back from 6pm to closer to 7pm and suddenly we weren't obliged to play peek-a-boo at 4am anymore. Now Asa is nearly 9 months old (I cannot believe it) and I feel like being a mom just means smiling, laughing, occasionally having my patience tried,  but that mostly it's being able to actually see the love we've poured out being returned. He smiles at us, shows off for us, entertains us, impresses us, calls us by name, hugs us, snuggles and nuzzles ... Despite the middle of the night feedings he's taken a liking to again, and his general refusal to take milk during the day (much to the distress of our phenomenal daycare providers and also of course, my boobs) at this point being a mom is just a pleasure and a great adventure. Let's hope this phase lasts a while.