Before:

After:

- Matthew loves Dixie, his daycare provider, and the other kids whom she watches. We know he likes it a lot, because he’s treating it like home - all the kids now, as they get ready for lunch, say, “Put Matthew in the high chair first!” because if they don’t, he wanders around, taking food from everyone’s plates.

- Today, I took Matthew to get his very long hair cut. He hated every minute of it, but looks quite adorable. The sad part is that he really looks like a little boy now, and not a baby. At what point will I ever stop thinking of him as my baby?

- I am down 4.4 lbs from my first week returning to Weight Watchers and running again. Both parts of the plan (the eating and the running) have gone better than the first time I got serious, and better than I expected as well. I don’t think my weight loss will continue in this dramatic fashion - I think my body’s a little bit in shock. “What do you mean, run? Christ, I haven’t done this in a year. Where’s my chips? Sour cream? Wait, you mean we’re not going … what are you doing?” Things I’ve learned thus far? It feels amazing to me when at the end of a day I have proof that I’ve eaten cleanly (I’m counting every morsel of food that crosses my lips). It feels amazing to me that my endurance with regards to running hasn’t dropped down as much as I thought it would have (perhaps lugging around a 30 lb baby helps in this regard). It feels amazing to me that I am slowly regaining control of my life again - the very sustenance of it.

It just feels really, really good.

Of course, today we ended up eating our weights in dim sum in San Francisco - we met up with some friends in the Inner Richmond and while the food was good, I quickly realized how sane and sensible eating all week long, with one off day last week, really makes a difference - I ate too much too fast and was too bloated. Ugh. It was quite tasty, still, but definitely not repeating that mistake again.

On the slate for tomorrow - the farmer’s market and a run. This time without the dog - she can’t keep up, the lazy slug.

Lately, whenever I read a story about a tragedy involving a baby or child, I get a sick feeling in my stomach. Yeah, yeah, motherhood has softened me, probably predictably. I can’t really help it - it’s like instead of having a baby inside me, after I had him I suddenly grew a heart and the ability to empathize.

In some ways I think I was expecting it - it seems natural and logical that these things develop after having a baby. But I wasn’t expecting a sympathy or empathy in the opposite direction. I read stories and news articles about parents who murder their children or cause great harm and abuse to their kids, either on purpose or not. I was actually going to type and link to the story, but I can’t. I just can’t.

Anyway, what surprises me most about how these stories affect me now is that I feel a tremendous empathy toward the mother of these children, who are killed or abused or harmed in any way. I remember how hard it was to bounce back emotionally after having Matthew - and I can only fathom, briefly, what it must be like to let myself get to the point where I would even consider abuse or violence as an option to handle my son. It scares the hell out of me. I feel the other way too - heartache for the baby, but I feel mostly scared - and an indescribable urge to creep into Matthew’s room and watch him breathe.

Maybe my body remembers what it was like to fuel it healthily and work it hard and with vigor, because today was amazing. I ate clean today, walked almost two miles*, and ran again - this time a little over a mile. Workout 2 of the couch to 5k plan and it went over really, really well compared to even Sunday, so I have hopes that my stamina wasn’t permanently lost in my postpartum struggle to balance things like sleeping with an amazingly unsleepy infant, full-time work outside of the home, and my sanity.

I was telling someone the other day that I run, but I kind of hate it - the actual action of it. I much prefer the feeling I get after having run - when I’m sweaty and slightly out of breath but my lungs are awake and my body is on point and I am in control. I still prefer that, but for some reason, this go-round with running has made me appreciate the simpleness of the action - feet, pavement, feet, pavement, breathe in, breathe out. My mind is a lot more relaxed than it was before I started, for sure.

It is dangerously easy, when you become a mother, to completely lose yourself in the process and the experience. Dangerously easy, because at the end of a long pregnancy, there you have a 5-6-7-8 pound baby who needs every thing you’ve got and then some.

Today I found a little bit more of myself and I’m kind of excited. I ran today (oh, did it hurt) and I ate healthily. I feel more myself today than I have in a very long time.

1. Hi, my name is Matthew., 2. Oh, Baba, you’re such a card., 3. Holy shit!, 4. Top down

Created with fd’s Flickr Toys.

See the other pictures uploaded today here.

Josh is making tortilla chorizo pie for dinner tonight.

Envy me. Mmm.

One of the things I really like about living here is that for the most part, the public transit system is timely. Not today - when I had to be somewhere on time, of course.

We live in Oakland, and I commute daily into San Francisco for work. Matthew had a doctor’s appointment today, and the timing was such that I had to take M in instead of Josh (who works from home). The painful irony is that M’s doctor’s place is 2 blocks away from home!

First, BART was delayed. Then the bus I hopped to go pick up M from daycare had an incompetent driver who got the gate caught on a pole on a street and took her sweet time getting assistance (which all she had to do was lift it sharply, but she was really not even giving a hoot. Anyway, I finally got Matthew from daycare (and while he was happy at first to see me, as soon as I put him in his stroller and started hightailing it for another bus to get to the doctor’s, he was wailing and sobbing. Good to see you too, Matthew!

M’s appointment was at 2pm, except apparently they tried calling and telling me it was at 1:30pm. Oops. Not like I got there at 2pm on the dot anyway! Then they misspelled Matthew’s name (forgot the H. How do you forget the H in Matthew?), and we didn’t even see a doctor until 3:00! Matthew at one point fell asleep, because with the timing of me having to go fetch him from daycare, he didn’t even get a nap today. We didn’t leave the doctor’s until 4pm, after much poking and prodding and me telling the doctor, “Yes, he’s 30 lbs., no he’s not overweight.” In the doctor’s defense, she asked if any other doctors were ever concerned, and they weren’t - well, except my doctor, because he’s so heavy he strained one of my muscles.

I put together Matthew’s new crib and it looks stylin’. Here’s hoping Matthew has some good sleep in it, because he’s been sleeping for crap lately and it is driving all of us absolutely insane.

We recently got Matthew a visor for the tub so water doesn’t seep into his eyes, and for a bit that made bathtime more fun (or at the very least, less tortuous). Now, he really hates the tub! He plays very angrily with his octopus and bathtime just isn’t really relaxing or fun for him anymore. He stands and clings to my legs and gets really cranky. Part of me thinks he’s just really overtired, but another part of me wonders what else we can do to make it stop sounding like we’re shoving razors up his fingernails. Bah!

In other news, Josh made portobello rellenos for dinner tonight and ohmygod were they delightful. We have a habit of quadrupling or quintupling the amount of garlic in any recipe (every week we buy at least two heads, usually three, of garlic) and right now, my mouth has a pleasant tingle of garlic dancing on my tongue. Yum. And because Josh is a fan of garlic, I have no one to offend by my garlicky breath except the dog (but the dog smells way worse than my garlicky mouth could).

Josh is at a concert in the City tonight so Matthew and I are hanging out here with the dog. I take that back - I am hanging out with the dog - Matthew conked out about half an hour ago.

Dinner tonight is something I picked up from the Temescal Farmer’s Market yesterday - spicy penang beef pot pie, from Pot Pie Paradise. I can’t wait to work my way through the other flavors.