I have to write this down so I don’t forget.

• Matthew is smiling and laughing so much now. Today, when he woke up from a (painfully short) nap, he was whimpering and fussing, and when I peeked inside the room, he was frowning woefully. I came in to comfort him and his entire face lit up into a smile and he gurgled. That was a pretty awesome feeling.
• He’s also discovered himself in the mirror - I like to think he now knows we’re not cheating on him with another baby.
• He is getting much, much better with mastering sleep. We rediscovered the swaddle and now we burrito him up and he sleeps much, much better without his arms and hands slapping him in the face by accident to wake him up.
• Matthew weighed in at 15 lbs and 5 oz at his last doctor’s appointment 2 weeks ago and is probably almost 16 lbs now. My arms haven’t caught up to how heavy he is.
• I can’t keep up with his fingernail length, either. He has long fingernail beds, so any growth just serves as fodder for scraping the shit out of his face. He woke up from a nap once, unswaddled himself, and the side of his face was a little bloody, he scratched himself so fiercely. Gah!

I go back to work next week.

I went up to work today to have lunch with a couple of my colleagues, and while lunch was lovely and nice, it was a little stilted, I think. I was afraid of oversharing because it was the first time in quite a few days that I had someone other than Josh to sit down and talk with, and I didn’t want to bore the snot out of my two lunch mates with stuff about parenting.

I never thought how much becoming a mom would change me. I miss the working environment, and I look forward - eagerly - to be able to talk with other adults about things other than diapers (and why cloth diapering isn’t gross, for crying out loud, but that’s an entry for another time), breastfeeding, pumping, drool, and laundry.

And then I can’t wait to come home and immerse myself back into that little world again, and see the new smiles and the giggles and the discovery (I can’t wait for him to discover his feet!) of new and exciting things. Ahh.

- Matthew, after a night of sleeping from 9pm-5am (bliss!), was Mr. Fusspot McCrankypants, waking up repeatedly and for good around 5AM this morning, and didn’t nap at all until I wore him in a wrap to the grocery store.

+ Matthew discovered himself in the mirror today and smiled up a storm! And then we promptly bathed him, read Goodnight Moon, nursed him into a milk coma, and then he fell right asleep. Thank goodness.

- The grocery cart I got at Dominick’s had a bum wheel, which annoyed the ever living shit out of me as it decided to jerk throughout the entire store.

+ The produce manager saw me struggling with a cart full of groceries and got me a cart that worked and transferred all of my groceries into the new cart. Love. Love.

- Josh and I had a stupid argument about whether or not fresh produce was perishable. SERIOUSLY! Silly argument! And it’s not even an argument because we were both cranky from crankybabywrangling.

+ Diet Pepsi. Ice. Yum.

- While I was unloading the groceries, Ava was frantically licking the air. “Maybe she’s going to vomit,” I said to Josh. He scoffed. This is one argument I wish I didn’t win. The two piles of puke were horrendously disgusting. I suffered mild morning sickness during my pregnancy with Matthew and the urge to puke when I was cleaning up Ava’s vomit was 100x stronger than anything the morning sickness tossed my way.

+ I baked cookies. Josh made portobello rellenos.

- Maternity leave is up soon.

+ I am down three pounds.

And a picture behind the jump.
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On October 5th, I start back to work. I would be lying if I said I wasn’t looking forward to it, because I am. I don’t know how stay-at-home-moms do it. I don’t know how Josh is going to do it without going insane. I love Matthew with every fibre of my being, don’t get me wrong, but babywrangling is hard, hard work.

Anyway, I’m looking forward to going back and regaining some semblance of my life PM (pre-Matthew) but the one thing I won’t be looking forward to? My commute. I live six miles from work and on any given day it can take me anywhere from 35 minutes to an hour and fifteen minutes to get there. Going home is a bit quicker as there always seems to be a red line train waiting to pick up purple line transfers. I suppose this is the price we pay for not owning a car.

Dear Matthew,

Two months ago today you were born. Since last time, you’ve grown so much - not just physically (although, frankly, my arms are tired from lugging you around - you’ve grown so fast my arms haven’t quite caught up yet) but developmentally. Watching you grow and change has been so amazing.

What you like:
- Your Baba. You still love being held and cuddled by Baba and sometimes when nothing else is helping you fall asleep, the sweet spot you find is nestled right where Baba’s neck and shoulder meet. Sometimes you bury your head into that spot as if to say, “Shut the lights off, I am trying to rest here!” Sometimes you throw up a little there. It’s all good - Baba has many shirts. You grab on tightly too - one time you grabbed onto my shirt when I was laying you down for a diaper change, and I didn’t realize it until I tried to stand up and couldn’t!

- Light. You love staring at lights and brightly colored objects, and one such object is a lamp we have in our living room, that has five small lights with colorful covers on it. You stare and stare at the lights. Sometimes you giggle to yourself and coo, and I wonder what you’re thinking about.

- The Boob. We’re still exclusively breastfeeding and you are thriving so well from it. The bigger you get the more you fidget around, especially during the day, because there’s just SO MUCH to do and see. Now that you’ve started smiling, you pop off of my nipple sometimes and grin at me. Melts my heart every time!

- The Nields! I played the Songs For Amelia children CD for you the other day and you absolutely loved it - listening to the music and staring at the ceiling fan!

- The activity gym! You love looking at all of the colorful objects and pretty soon you’ll be grabbing at them purposefully!

- Your fists. You recently discovered them and they are your new best friends forevah. You spend a good amount of time attempting to ram the entirety of your sausage-like hands into your mouth, and even want to nurse my nipple and your fist at the same time. You don’t understand when I tell you, “No. You have to choose one or the other, and I’m choosing the nipple now,” as I pull your fist away. Lately that is what wakes me up at night - your slurping on your fists.

You’re much better about diaper changes and baths than you were last month (thank goodness!), although if we start you off in a pissed-off state, they add fire to your fury. You still cry from time to time with big ol’ tears, and sometimes you can be perfectly calm or asleep and then totally flip the hell out in no time flat. YOW!

What you don’t like:
- Being put down to sleep. It is amazing how soundly you sleep on my or Baba’s shoulders and how INSTANTLY awake you become the moment we set you down to sleep.

- Naptime. See above. Today you’ve taken two naps, which is an all-time record. You are pretty much anti-nap, and think naptime is about as evil as terrorism.

- Shots. Boy HOWDY did you scream when getting shot. You cried, then I cried, then you nursed like crazy at the doctor’s office, at the restaurant where we ate afterward, and then again when we got home. Then you cried some more, and then I cried with you and there we sat, crying in the bedroom together until you calmed down and fell asleep. Poor baby.

You are much better with sleeping at night now! You fall asleep anywhere between 9:30 and 10:30 and wake up usually twice, around 2 and 5, before getting up for good around 8 or 9. A few times the week before you went longer than you normally did, which freaked me and Baba out, so I took you to the doctor to make sure you weren’t sick. The doctor didn’t laugh at me, which was very nice of her.

Ava still loves you. Very much. You haven’t really noticed her licking you to bits yet, but I’m sure you will.

Some notable notes for you -
8/20/06 - your first purposeful smile! We got a mobile for your pack ‘n play and I set it all up and you loved it! So much fun!

8/28/06 - your first flight and first time you were in two other states! We flew to Connecticut via Providence, Rhode Island, to visit my side of the family. Everyone was entranced by you and they miss you very much. You met your great-grandma, spit up on your Auntie Diya, and totally won over Grand Auntie Karen.

9/1/06 - your first baseball game! You were the youngest Giants fan in attendance at the Giants vs. Cubs game on the 1st. Unfortunately, they also lost, so you’re at a 0-1 record with game attendance and Giants wins. Sorry.

9/2/06 - you met your other Great Grandma!

9/5/06 - you stayed with your Great Grandma (and guzzled 9 ounces of milk!!) without me or Baba - we went out to dinner that night without you. And missed you every moment.

Nicknames: Mama’s Eggroll; Baby Guy; Matkins; Fusspot; HRH (His Royal Highness); Sir Cranksalot; Chunky Monkey; Mr. Chub-a-lub.

Stats from the pediatrician visit on Tuesday:

Weight: 15 pounds, 5 ounces (!). This places you above the 95th percentile for weight.
Length: 24 inches (up 4 inches from birth!). This places above the 95th percentile for height.
Head circumference: 16.38 inches (up 0.88 inches from birth).

Next month I go back to work. While I’m excited to go back to work, leaving you is going to be very, very hard. I’m glad Baba will get to stay at home with you. Promise me you’ll nap for him!

Love,
Mama

Everyone knows what happened five years ago today.

This is what you might not know what happened and why, despite the horror of today, I’ll always hold the memories of today in a special corner of my heart. I wrote about it a little bit last year, about how I drove down to New Haven to pick up a battered Josh, dusty from the remains of the World Trade Center, who had fled New York City after being awakened by a plane crashing into the building where he’d recently bought books for class. I remember him telling me that he thought it was a thunderstorm, so he’d jumped out of bed and unplugged everything, before he realized it was clear out. He lived three blocks away from the towers.

I, on the other hand, was safe in my suburb in Connecticut, worried like hell about Josh, who’d just the weekend before spent the weekend with me.

Today, the world stops momentarily to remember the deceased on September 11th. On the internet are stories upon stories of people who died, people who lived, people who have disappeared since that fateful day in 2001. How dare we only stop on September 11th, I want to shout out. Every time I look at Josh and see Matthew, who wasn’t even a glimmer in our eyes back in 2001, I think of how fucking close I was to not having the life I have before me right now. My life would be so different right now, if Josh hadn’t fled New York, and fled into my life for good.

He once asked me when I knew I loved him. It was on the evening of September 11th, as we lay in bed really late that night, after having eaten a crappy Domino’s pizza - the only delivery place in my suburb delivering that evening. The lights were out and we lay there, he in my arms. I don’t remember exactly what he said to me, but his voice was quiet and he told me about his day. I knew right then that I loved him, and that I’d always love him.

So today, I haven’t turned the television on (which, frankly, is less grand sounding than it ought to - we usually only watch the television in order to watch DVDs). I clicked on cnn.com but left. I haven’t focused on the losses on September 11th, because I am one of the lucky ones. I gained a family that day.

I’ll never, ever forget everything else that’s happened on that date, because I have a son, a son who wasn’t alive but needs to know what happened. One day when he’s older, he’ll learn in school about the events of September 11th and he’ll come home and sit on his father’s lap and ask him, “Where were you on September 11th, 2001?” and he’ll need to be ready to hear that story. And then I’ll take him onto my lap and tell him mine.

Josh’s grandmother is in town visiting the baby (and presumably us !) and as a gift, she shooed us out the door with a wad of cash and told us to go eat by ourselves. So, we did.

We headed down to Edo Sushi, a place we’d found when we first moved to Chicago. Because of the pregnancy, I’d been avoiding raw fish (woe) and so as the case may be, the last time we went out for sushi wa s nearly a year ago. It was time to go back.

The first sign something was amiss was when from a block away, I saw a banner hanging up that said “Free DJ” or something like that. We walked in and suddenly, our cozy corner sushi joint became a Hip, Cool place, with new chichi menus and a decor to boot. Our favorite meal (which was reasonably priced, given the amount of fish there was) was no longer represented on the menu. Of course, that didn’t stop us from indulging, and indulging we did.

We started out with miso soup, green tea for Josh (purist!) and diet coke for me (addict!). Our appetizer arrived shortly thereafter, tempura calamari, four pieces of calamari and two veggie. Delightful - not heavy at all, still piping hot from its frying. And then, the piece de resistance - the sushi and sashimi dinner that topped the menu. A dragon roll topped the plate - tempura shrimp roll covered with eel and avocado; six pieces of delicious sashimi, and seven pieces of nigiri. All excellent. Josh and I traded pieces of nigiri - I gave him an eel for a white tuna - and with a few satiated sighs and grunts, we ate. And ate. And ate.

Dessert was a piece of mango mochi ice cream for Josh, and a red bean mochi ice cream for me, drizzled with chocolate. We paid our bill and stumbled out, waddling toward the El.

Perfection.