thematically fickle

It’s so pathetic. Why in the world I ever thought I could be a blogger, SHOULD be a blogger, is beyond me. I’ve never been any good at keeping a diary so to think I’d actually write a blog is laughable. My deepest apologies to those of you who may have actually linked your blogs to mine. I am so, so sorry. I look back at my last entry almost daily, since I use my blog as the stepping off point from which to arrive at Sam and David’s blog, from which I jump to Mary and Paul’s blog. Don’t ask why I haven’t simply bookmarked their much better and well-kept journals. Instead, I persist on routing through mine. I do glance quickly at it in passing and each time think “jeeze, I really should update the blog” but I never do it. There must be some subconscious undercurrent at work here. I’ll explore that with my therapist.

At any rate, Ruby’s sleeping now, Sam’s at work, my visiting mother has gone to her own quarters (located a safe distance down the road so as to head off any possible altercation) and I finally have 15 minutes to myself. Not that I don’t grab time to myself on a daily basis—to suggest otherwise is completely fallacious— but feeling uninspired, I generally use that time to read. Instead, tonight, I’ve decided to write something. Anything. If only to be able to see a new date at the top of the screen each time I use my blog as the slow lane to another more captivating site.

Ruby is 8 months old now and life is flying past. I hold my growing girl in my arms and begin sentences with things like “when you were a baby…” or “I remember when you were little”, this despite her current status of being both a baby and little. I hardly realize how she’s grown until I am around my friends’ babies who are 4 and 5 months old and suddenly it occurs to me that Ruby must have been that tiny at some point, though I can barely remember it through the fog of sleepless nights we had in the beginning. I think I understand now why people have more than one child: they forget. They forget that, the larva who joined the family was an organism of NEED. Constant need. Little Larva needed feeding, needed burping, needed diapering, needed cooing, needed swaddling, needed your blood, sweat, tears and seemingly unending attention and THEN, when you were running on the evaporated fumes of fumes, they needed MORE. Oh my GOD it was so…MUCH! But now, from this vantage point, everything has changed and it’s dangerously easy to forget that there were those endless nights of pacing around the dining room table, shooshing until I couldn’t stand the sound of my breath. I am thankful to be out of the Larval Stage and into the Razzing-Food-Out-Of-The-Mouth Stage. As gross as this may sound, it is by far preferable to have my glasses and work clothes splattered in rice cereal. There is so much more personality now and much, much more sleep.

At this point, we’re about T minus 3 weeks from crawling and while I cheer my daughter on with each forward-backward thrusting combination she completes on all fours, I’m a little apprehensive of this next phase. Of course we haven’t childproofed anything beyond the light sockets. We’re turning out to be more of the Wait Til The Last Minute type of parents versus the Two Months Worth Of Baby Food In Case Of Catastrophic Event type of parents. We’ll get it all done but it will be while we simultaneously chase our kid down. I’m trying to look at this new developmental stage for Ruby as an all around exercise program for me. I can’t WAIT to fit into those skinny jeans. I don’t own any skinny jeans but maybe I’ll be able to purchase some in the near future. I’ll be finding out shortly.

That’s all for now. I don’t feel like writing a book about the organic cheerios that are being picked up with thumb and forefinger pincer grasp and successfully placed on a tiny pink tongue or the way our dog is endlessly, happily screeched at each morning. Suffice to say, I’m loving every second I get to spend with this magical child and as difficult (aka tiring) as it may be at times, it’s amazing to experience my life in this new way.

Until next time (whenever that may be).