Good Things

It's amazing the difference a week or two can make in the life of a newborn...and his mother. Dean is now the happy, adaptable, adorable baby his big brother was at this age. And...drum roll, please...he has started sleeping through the night. I was going to put that in caps, but I thought it might be tempting fate. Even writing it at all makes me want to knock on all available wood. But for the past week he has slept from his 11:00 pm feeding straight through to six or seven a.m. I feel like a new human being! And although we've been making a concerted effort to keep him on his regular eat-play-nap schedule, his nighttime sleep habits seem immune to the activities of the day -- we dragged him to French Quarter Festival two days in a row, followed by a trip yesterday to a birthday party in Madisonville for Henry's friends, and he still got a good night's sleep. I am so relieved.

And -- more knocking on wood -- I have not had a migraine since I started taking the Zoloft. That's almost three weeks now. I guess my brain really needed the seratonin bath. I still stand by my decision not to take anti-depressants during the pregnancy, but I do wonder what difference it would have made in the migraine frequency and intensity. Oh, well, no regrets, just so happy to be pain-free again for the first time in months.
\
My friend Rachel just gave me a t-shirt that says "Motherhood is not for sissies" and I have been wearing it proudly. It's funny -- motherhood (and parenting) is so commonplace, it is so easy to take for granted what a difficult job it is. And yet I can think of nothing more challenging. Being a parent requires use of all your faculties, all your virtues, and the suppression of ever-so-many vices. Taking care of Henry and Dean these past few months has really stretched my emotional capacities. I haven't been writing about Henry much on here, but I really should, he is undergoing a transformation almost as dramatic as Dean's. A few weeks ago I signed him up for an acting class for preschoolers. Not for the reasons one might guess -- I really don't care if he develops any skill or passion for it -- but just because it seemed like a good way to channel his energies and give him the creative outlet I'm not sure he's getting at school. I was a little worried about how he would adjust -- except for school, we've never dropped him off at any activity before. And my fears were justified -- the first day, when Matthew brought him, he clung to Matthew's legs and would not separate under any circumstances. Matthew and I had to convene once they returned and figure out how to handle it. Certainly we didn't want to force him to do something he hated, and I didn't want to traumatize him with separation anxiety. But we felt confident that he could do it, that he could get over his fears and that he would actually like the class once he got used to it. And we wanted him to have that confidence in himself, too. If we had let him quit, we thought it might make him think he couldn't handle new situations. So I spent a good deal of time talking to him about the class, and about how sure I was that he could do it. He maintained that he couldn't, and that he would not participate, but he did agree that he would try it again the next week. And I thought that was a good start. So the next week I brought him. The whole car trip he kept saying he didn't think he could do it, and I calmly repeated that I thought he could. We did a quick goodbye at the class and I waited to see if the teacher would call if he melted down irretrievably. But it didn't happen. And when his daddy picked him up an hour later, he was actually excited, and very very proud of himself. He's now learning lines to be the "ant" in the play, and the teacher says he's doing great. So score one for Henry.

Henry is so bright and articulate and emotionally in tune with others that our next big challenge is figuring out a balance of adult-time and kid-time. He wants to be a part of all our conversations, constantly asking what we're talking about and even chiming in with, "That's right" and "I know" even when he's NOT being included in the dialogue and has no clue what we're discussing. On one hand, this is kind of cute and I know he comes by it naturally -- Matthew and I have both been told we were more comfortable with adults than with other kids when we were his age. But on the other hand, it can be annoying and seems to verge on inappropriate. I don't want to hurt his feelings, but he has to learn boundaries. His interest in adult things is combined with a quickly developing sense of entitlement that is DEFINITELY not appropriate, and which we are working earnestly to curb. But overall it indicates to me that he is really growing up, really learning to express his own desires and interests, and at this point I am mostly grateful that this maturity allows him to delight in Dean and be incredibly understanding and helpful, rather than resentful or competitive. I hope they are always as happy with each other -- no one can get a smile from Dean as quickly as Henry.

Life seems to be getting into a rhythm and I am feeling so happy about my beautiful boys and my lovely city. There is no place like New Orleans in spring, especially during festival season. The sunshine, the birdsong, the brass bands, the crawfish...it's hard not to appreciate all the good things on a warm day in April.