Sunday, July 27, 2008

I am sorry. There are no new pictures, because Kagan takes them with his new iPhone.

It is a sunny Sunday morning in Mississippi. Annaliese just went down for her morning nap, quietly so far, though I doubt she's asleep yet. She has two soft stuffed animals in her crib, a pink sock monkey from the GAP and a black-and-white Newfie dog purse, and she likes to roll around with them.

I often find her with the monkey draped across her chest and a leg hooked through the newfie purse, as if sleep smacked her down right in the middle of a wrestling match.

K. too is (still) sleeping. Sundays are his day to sleep in, and Wednesdays are mine.

So this sunny Sunday morning is all mine, and for the first time in a while, I feel like I've slept enough.

A note on Annaliese's sleep habits: after a PISSPOOR beginning, she's now what I think other people's babies are usually like: she goes to bed around 8, 7.30 if she had a poor late afternoon nap, and then she takes usually 3 naps during the day, generally about an hour a piece, at 9, 1, and 4-ish. She wakes up at 7 and has 1 night feeding. And she's easy to put down now... no more endless rocking.

There are always exceptions, but that's the standard-- and thanks to her beginnings, it never ceases to amaze me. I now have no one to blame for being tired other than myself. And K., what with his nightowl ways.

Annaliese is turning into such a little person, and K. and I just love her. The grip-your-gut, Thank-God kind of love. I said the other day that I thought we should have another one kind of soon to spread that feeling out, because it's on the edge of too intense, and without asking what I was talking about, K. just said, "I know."

(Of course, the funny part is when you think you can actually PLAN a family. You can plan to stop. Not really to start.)

Now for a long story that will eventually get to a point:

There is another couple that is roughly in our peer group at church. He's a lot older, but she's our age, they have a child about a year older than ours, blah blah, and she told me the other day that she loved watching K. and I in church because she could see things in us that reminded her of her own marriage back when it was young.

"How long have y'all been married?" I asked, and she said, "Three years."

Our third anniversary is in September.

I did some quick math and figured out that she got pregnant around 3 months into their marriage, while K. and I had a full year-and-a-half of childless, pregnancy-free matrimony.

But here's the thing: I don't really remember it.

I asked K. about it and he does.

"Did we have fun?" I said, and he said, "Yeah, we did."

Sure, I have memories, but not really eighteen months worth. It seems like I was always pregnant, like we've always had Annaliese, and yet it ASTONISHES me that she's nearly 7 months old and I still don't have rock hard abs (which will CHANGE. When school starts, our babysitter will walk to our house three days a week after school gets out and watch Annaliese so I can run errands and go to the gym and man, I'm glad school starts early down here because I got to get in a bikini, people, SOON.)

I am now busier than I've probably ever been. I've got a 20-hours+ job to which I take my infant child, I'm still writing, I've got a house and 2 dogs bent on destroying it, a garden full of tomatoes, peaches spread on my counter waiting to go into our new chest freezer, a husband who is home too rarely between his various commitments, and then I've got fun projects like knitting and quilting and that damn slipcover THAT WILL GET MADE, all in the company of a baby who can amuse herself for about 10-15 minutes a time.

But you know, I am pretty sure I felt just as busy when it was just me, in the house, with one novel. Expansion and contraction of time and happiness and franticness is not so much linear, ya know?

But here's the point: I want to keep putting K. and me first. There is so much else, always, but he is the most precious thing that has ever happened to me. Even though Annaliese is a miracle, K. was the first miracle, and I do not want to lose knowing that.

I don't ever want to tell someone that my husband and I used to be in love too.

1 comment:

D'nelle said...

reading your post came at an inopportune time for me, but regardless it made me simply ache.

I love you guys.