Making A Getaway

She finally figured out what the presents under the tree were about. We're going to wait until husbands working over christmas arrive to open most of them; we'll see if that works..

Contentment

My heart is not proud, Lord,
my eyes are not haughty;
I do not concern myself with great matters
or things too wonderful for me.
But I have calmed and quieted myself,
I am like a weaned child with its mother;
like a weaned child I am content.
Israel, put your hope in the Lord
both now and forevermore.
- Psalm 131

Thus I have become in his eyes like one bringing contentment. – Song of Solomon 8:10

This year I am thinking about contentment. I am thinking about how easy it is to want things. Material things, like a new dress or designer bag; simple things, like not having to work twelve-hour hospital shifts on Christmas day away from family. Deep things, like a second child. Reasonable things, like knowing where we will be living next year.

To some degree I feel entitled to these things. I feel I need them; I feel if God were good he would give them to me. But none of that is true. I am not entitled to anything. I do not need them to be content. God’s goodness is not conditional, his sovereignty nothing less than complete. To believe otherwise is to lose perspective in light of my selfishness, to place faith in myself rather than in God.

If anyone had right to feel entitled, it would have been God coming into our world. But he was born to an ordinary girl in a stable. I read E these Christmas books, where the sheep smile down at the manger, the doves coo and the donkeys pull a warm blanket over the baby, and I think, what a load of hogwash. The stable probably smelled of manure, was drafty and definitely unhygienic. The hay was scratchy and the manger soaked with dirty water and horse saliva. It would be the equivalent of giving birth in a garage or parking lot.

I look at my sister’s baby lying on her chest. I think about E lying her head on my shoulder. And I think, God, give me a heart that is not proud and does not try to understand more than I can. Give me rest in contentment. He gives us the strength to be content, because he understands our deepest desires, our unspoken sorrows; he sustains us and gives us hope. He has shown us how, even from the beginning.

Then we can become like one who brings contentment, to friends and patients and those closest to us. And that would be a wonderful gift.

Hair

I don’t know what to do with her hair. Around six months she was developing a mullet so I trimmed the bottom. Then I was so anti-bowl-cut that for a while she didn’t have any cut at all, which meant she looked like Justin Bieber on good hair days, and Ashton Kutcher on bad ones. Sometimes after a long nap she would develop a small afro. I finally gave in and trimmed her bangs, and most days I try to clip up the sides or tie ponytails, but she’ll only tolerate that for so long before pulling it out—though she’s always very good about holding on to the ties and giving them back to me. She tries to pull my hairclips out as well as a favor. And she looks so innocent.

Journal Excerpt

Seeing E with her newborn cousin definitely amps things up to a whole new level of cuteness. It’s like taking a newborn kitten, tying a ribbon around its neck, putting it next to a puppy, then watching them cuddle in front of a mountain stream. Sometimes I find myself having to look away.

She likes to go up to him whenever he’s in the room, stick her face right in front of his, and make this excited smiling sound while scrunching up her face into a big grin. She walks around with that expression plastered on her face for minutes afterwards. She likes to rock the chair he sits in up and down, rather vigorously. She pushes the buttons on it for him and wiggles her butt to the music. She likes to point to his nose and feet. She likes to lay her head down next to him when he lies on the floor.

She is surprisingly gentle. I like to think this is because of the million times I have repeated GENTLE- GENTLE to her while she pets the cats, but it probably has nothing to do with that.

Today she brought over a diaper while he was lying on the floor, opened it and tried to stick it on his bottom. She also likes to give him desitin and baby wipes. Why don’t you work on changing your own diaper first, I tell her.

Security Blanket

This is a pillowcase from Ikea she slept on and liked to bunch around her face when she was a newborn. Now she drags it everywhere around the house. She points to it about fifty times a day so we can remind her what it's called (bae-bae in chinese). D bought a whole bedding set just so we'd have an extra one in case she loses it, though we've been careful not to let her see both at the same time, because the universe might just explode if that happened.

Journal Excerpt

Let’s face it: this is a great age. This is the age when you start to think, wow, kids are so wonderful, let’s have five more—which explains why most kids are spaced two years apart. She eats on her own, obeys commands, poops fewer times a day, goes to sleep quickly, and spends the rest of her time waddling around looking cute.

She falls flat on her face every five steps and doesn’t get phased: she just puts her hands on the ground, pushes her bum straight up in the air, and stands up again. I can tell her to go give someone a hug, or to put something back, and she’ll do it. She even dances on command, which is hilarious. Her hair can go in two pigtails, which with her bangs makes her look just like the little girl in “Monsters, Inc.” After she brings me a book she turns around and backs up to sit herself in my lap. When I wash the dishes she comes to tug on my pant leg.

I am fully aware that one morning she will wake up and start throwing tantrums when I don’t give her that extra cheerio and thirteen years later will not want to be seen walking with me in the mall. So I’m just trying to remember everything and be present to enjoy it as much as I can.

It Takes A Village

I’m home for Christmas. I’m wearing new pajamas, in a freshly-sheeted bed with a cinnamon candle burning. My sister is nursing her seven-week old to sleep. My dad put E to bed, which really means he let her fall asleep with him for an hour before finally putting her in the crib. My mom decked out the house, baked a turkey in time for our arrival, and stocked the place with toys and books.

E puttered around the house all afternoon, constantly eating, both the food my mom made especially for her, and the food made for everyone else, until her stomach got enormously large. She would pat it fondly while waddling around. Everyone took turns keeping an eye on her wherever she wandered around the house. My sister’s newborn got passed from arm to arm so we all got a chance to eat, or talk, or nap.

I think we’ve lost this kind of community in the real world. Coming home always makes me realize that children are meant to be raised in community—a real one, not a manufactured series of play-dates so we can tick “social interaction” off our list, or in a daycare where parents rush in and out without even knowing the names of the other kids in the room. Children love being around lots of people who love them. They need to be around people who teach them different things in different ways.

And it’s so much healthier for us too. It’s rewarding to see how much she delights our friends and family. And we need a break, so we don’t lose ourselves; to recharge our marriages. Seeing how other people love her also helps me love and appreciate her in different, new, or deeper ways. Other people bring different things out of her. Other people see things about her that I miss, or that I’m too tired or habituated to notice.

This would be a nice way of life. But in our individualistic, fragmented society, it’s so hard to find, and sometimes it seems harder to find the farther along you get in life. It makes me grateful for times like these at home. And it helps me resolve to be more intentional about pursuing this in the future.

Dress-Up Shoes

Someone gave these to us when she was born. I finally got to pull them out for a holiday party last weekend. Dressing up baby girls is just about as fun as I thought it would be.

Journal Excerpt

I really like the way she hunches up her shoulders while she’s walking, as if she might fall right over if she relaxes too much.

I also like the way she says “www-OW!” if she sees anything exciting. She says it when pointing to fish at the aquarium. She says it when she sees the cats for the first time every morning.

Because she doesn’t talk much I tend to forget that she notices things, until she’ll do something that completely surprises me. Like when we walked by the hand sanitizer, she pretended to squeeze some out and made washing movements with her hands. When she grabs her toothbrush, she’ll also grab the toothpaste tube and pretend to squeeze some onto the brush. When I say “all done” after a bath, she’ll reach down herself to unstopper the tub so water flows out. I caught her trying to put her own socks on the other day, and she also tries to put her feet into our shoes. Seeing her do these things without previous instruction is sort of be like seeing one of the cats suddenly grab a broom and sweep up spilled litter on the floor. It’s rather bizarre.

Noises

The more I talk to other people with babies, the more I get the sense that E is really a pretty loud person. You mean it’s not normal to not need a baby monitor because you can hear her cry in every room of the house? Oh. My mom used to remark on how “resonant” her cries were. And the nurses in the hospital on what a “healthy” pair of lungs she had. Ha.

Sometimes she’ll start to yell AAAH—AAAH—AAAH continuously, usually because she’s bored. I’ll be switching her to different positions in my arms, trying to distract her with things, but she just keeps going. She’s not upset, or crying, or squirming, just sort of yelling. It’s like I’m holding a little car alarm. People start to look over and I’m tempted to leave her there and pretend I don’t know her.

She’s good at letting us know in the mornings she’s awake. She’ll go sequentially through all the sounds she knows how to make, which put together means GET OFF YOUR BUTT AND COME GET ME NOW.

She likes to copy other people’s sounds. When other people cough, she makes little fake coughing sounds back. If I say “mmm, that was yummy” she’ll go “mmmmmm” back. She likes to mutter to herself, with lots of “sh” “ppuh” “pht” sounds, when reading a book on her own. She’s starting to copy our words: “up” is “UHH.” Bubble is “buh-boh.” Banana is “aah-na-na.” Apple is “ah-puuh.”

Journal Excerpt

These are the things about her that I’m really getting a kick out of these days:

When we ask her, “where is God?” she cranes her neck back and looks up for a really long time at the ceiling. Then she points up her finger as far as she can, standing on her tippy-toes. Then she’ll look back at us while keeping her finger pointed straight up. The first time she did this, D laughed for five minutes straight.

When I ask her “give me a hug?” she’ll lay her head down against whatever part of my body she can reach and gently rest her hands against me. The first time she did this, it was always to the cats; she would sneak up behind them, lay her head down on them and wrap her arms around them, which was adorable.

She’s starting to walk, but she looks drunk doing it. She has this slow, wide-based gait, and frequently her tummy, which sticks out in front of her, overpowers her balance and sends her plopping down on her butt.

She discovered last week that she has a bellybutton, and it scared the living daylights out of her. When in the bath, she’ll occasionally feel for it, and immediately get frightened and want to be held. Most of the time her belly is so big she can’t see it, which is a good thing.

She can distinguish between all twenty-eight animals pictured on her blocks. I sometimes lay them all out in a grid, then ask her to point out various ones—swan, seal, hen, eagle—and she points to the right picture nearly one hundred percent of the time. The fact that she can’t really speak much yet makes this feat seem more brilliant than it probably actually is, but it floors me every time.

She prefers to eat in a civilized manner these days. If I lay out peas on her tray, she won’t touch them, but if I put them in a bowl and give her a spoon, she’ll patiently spoon up each one. Even if she misses, she seems to find the empty spoon just as tasty.

When we tuck her into bed now, she lies quietly on her back while we fold the blankets around, holding onto her security blanket and sucking her pacifier. She’ll rest her hand against her cheek to sign “sleepy.” Then she’ll take her pacifier out and with her other hand, blow us a kiss. Then she’ll put the pacifier back in and wave goodbye.

Certain Qualities

I was thinking about what I want for her to be known for. Before she was born we read some books that talked about how children are judged so much from an early age by how they look. And it’s sort of true. What else can you really say about a six month-old? (wow, he really makes great poops.) Why else do we fawn so much over cute little outfits? I realized pretty quickly after starting her in daycare that dressing her in the same pajama onesies every day, while clearly the most cost-effective and diaper-efficient method, was not going to cut it. Those daycare babies had real little fake jeans, and socks with shoes. I never really got the point of shoes for babies who can’t yet walk.

D and I asked ourselves one day, if we had to pick the top three qualities we wish she would have, what would it be? Would we want her to be a girl that people would know and think, “wow, she is really good looking”? Or, “she’s incredibly smart”? Or, “she’s an amazing athlete/musician/writer”?

D said he would most of all want her to be someone kind. That of course made me immediately ashamed of my top three, which were somewhere in the vicinity of looks/smarts/the-mad-athletic-skills-I-never-had. It made me realize that the road to caring too much about how she looks or what she can achieve can be a slippery slope.

It got me thinking about the other fruit of the spirit that didn’t make it on my list. What about praying for E to be someone who is patient? Who has self-control? Who is gentle? Who, like her name, is full of joy?

So to remind myself, I posted a list of one quality to pray for, each day of the month. Today was courage. Tomorrow is salvation. We’ll see how it goes.

Expose

It’s strange how having a child makes you see parts of yourself in a different light. My mom is fond of saying, “your children are your mirror.” And I thought that was just supposed to be marriage.

But she said that because I was acting dramatically grossed out by her chopping up pickled chicken feet in the kitchen (they taste irresistibly good, but I can only eat them if they are dismembered such that they look less like hands soaked in formaldehyde). I didn’t realize how I was sounding until I looked over at E sitting in her high chair next to me: she was frozen in fear, hands clutching the tray, wide eyes staring at the chopping board. She probably didn’t know what to be frightened of; just that if I was, she was too.

At this age she is an obvious example of that principle. When I laugh and act excited, she gets excited too. When I lie comatose on the nursery floor because I stayed up way too late for her early-morning routine, she comes over and lies her head down next to mine on the pillow (best thing I ever put in the nursery: a pillow on the floor). She wants to eat what I eat, even if it’s chips and diet soda. She wants to look at whatever I am, even if it’s the internet or cell phone.

And it makes me wonder. Maybe she is learning to snack too much because I do? Maybe she is so fixated on electronic devices because I’m always around my laptop or phone? And later: teaching her not to be performance-driven, to love exercise, to prioritize relationships, etc—these are things I can’t just tell her. I’ll either be showing her or not.

In this way parenthood, like marriage, is the great equalizer. The grand exposer. If you have any hidden bias, nasty habits, habitual idols, addictive sins, they are bound to come out. Perhaps your spouse is discreet, or forgiving; children are neither. Of course, I can’t try to fix myself for her, but I can take an honest look. And take it from there.

Strange Little Person

When she’s done eating, she’ll start sneaking bits of food down under her butt in the high chair, presumably for storage, as sometimes I’ve caught her fishing it back out to eat later. Usually we don’t find out until we lift her out and discover a big pile of mushed-up food in the chair. Or see her crawling around later with a big stain on her bottom.

She’s become quite attached to her toothbrush. And to think I was actually worried she wouldn’t want to brush her teeth. She brushes about ten times a night, which I’m sure our dentist would be very proud of. She’ll bring the toothbrush back with her to her room and periodically remove her pacifier so she can brush a few more times. She generously insists on brushing my teeth for me in between.

She has this sense of internal rhythm that causes her to dance involuntarily, to anything that remotely resembles a beat: a tune I’m humming, a distant radio song. She sways from side to side and if standing wriggles her butt back and forth. When she really gets into it she’ll start head-banging. She definitely did not learn this from me.

Sometimes I look at her and I wonder: what planet did she come from?

Journal Excerpt

She is becoming a veritable poop machine. Her bowel habits are variable and I don’t pretend to understand them, but lately she’s been pooping upwards of five times a day. She’s still hilarious when she does, stopping in mid-babble, holding her breath, and turning five shades of red.

There was a moment yesterday when I was dealing with the kiwi seeds that had made it into her sticky mass of poo. I stood there at the changing table trying to keep her from wriggling away and thought, I cannot believe I am picking kiwi seeds off someone’s bum. When someone asks me what I’ve done with my eight-year degree, that is what I should say.

Bitterness

Get rid of all bitterness. –Ephesians 4:31

See to it that no one misses the grace of God and that no bitter root grows up. –Hebrews 12:15

I was thinking about bitterness. Bitterness happens because we feel entitled to something; because we feel we deserve something, either just from life, or because of what we did, or because of what someone else has. I feel life owes me being born into a happy family, or getting married by a certain age. I feel because I was pure before marriage, I deserve to immediately have an amazing sex life, and popular media tells me that should happen automatically, without work. I feel I deserve higher pay or a certain accolade because I’m better than the colleague who got it.

Bitterness happens when we can’t let go of our hurt or anger. Maybe we feel our hurts were never understood, or acknowledged, or apologized for. Maybe we feel powerless to change anything. Maybe we never acknowledged the depth of our anger. Maybe something big happened once, or maybe it was many smaller things over a period of time, but we hang on to it, and it changes us. We become cynical, jaded, judgmental. It numbs the hurt, suppresses the anger, and allows us to believe we’ve dealt with it.

Bitterness grows over time, and we feed it. Suddenly everything we see on television or read in a book, everything we see in our friends, every new incident or hurt or inconvenience becomes justification for how we feel.

Sometimes it takes me a long time to realize I am bitter about something, towards someone. Particularly if it relates to some deep grief or hurt I have been harboring for a long time. Usually I realize I become easily angry despite trying not to be, or that cynical, judgmental thoughts and words habitually come into my mind. I realize I have started to believe things about that person or myself that are a product of my bitterness and perhaps not the truth at all.

Because the truth is, we don’t deserve anything in this life. Christ, despite what life may have owed him and despite his faultless deeds, suffered the most of all. We don’t deserve an easily perfect marriage; we don’t deserve having babies or loving parents or great jobs. These are gifts in a broken world.

And the truth is, we need to confront our hurt and anger. We need to acknowledge it, and work through it, with God, a friend, a counselor. Being bitter is easy. Seeking help, processing it, is much harder.

And in the end, we can choose to let go of our bitterness. In this way I feel freed a little to understand better what God’s grace in my life means. I feel freed to receive an apology. I feel freed to express my hurt. I feel freed to start working through an issue. I feel freed to begin to learn what God wants to teach me through it. I feel freed to hope again. Because, until I get rid of bitterness, I can’t really experience hope or joy.

Communication

Communication is magical. It’s like being for years with someone who is completely mute, and suddenly they start signing and talking. Or as if an alien who is visiting from another world, where all the rules are different, suddenly starts speaking in your language. A light goes on and you realize, my goodness, she actually understands what I’m saying! I’m not just half-talking to myself anymore!

She spoke her first word today. We were playing on the floor, where she was crawling around on top of me, and suddenly she paused, looked right at me and said “mommy.” Of course I couldn’t get her to repeat it.

But it’s more than her starting to make decipherable sounds. She’s long been obsessed with fans and clocks, but now when we ask her where one is, she’ll stop and point to it. She shakes or nods in answer to questions. I can ask her, “how do you say ‘more’?” and she’ll sign it. Tonight before bedtime I was teaching her to say “sleepy,” and she copied me by laying her hand against her cheek and tilting her head to the side. When I tucked her in she lay quietly on her back with her hand against her cheek as I pulled the blankets up.

On the flip side, she can get extremely frustrated when she’s trying to tell us something we don’t get. She’ll point to something, and I’ll keep handing her various things in that direction, and she’ll keep shaking her head “no!” “no!” and sometimes I never end up knowing what it was she wanted (once it was a cup of water half-way across the room).

It makes me think about how lazy I get with communicating, particularly with those closest to me. I assume my husband, and God, should know how I’m feeling, what I want, sometimes without explanation or context. Most often when I talk it is to talk about myself, or to ask something for myself. E reminds me that communicating is a fundamental need and not something to be taken for granted. It takes time, familiarity, listening and watching. But when done well, it’s probably the highlight of parenting, of marriage, and of being with God.

Journal Excerpt

It’s leaps and bounds these days. Leaps and bounds. If I blink I’m liable to miss her growing another couple of inches. I find it comforting to look at the three familiar rolls of fat on her thighs. Particularly when she’s standing up and jiggling her butt to the beat. The chubby thighs, proof of babyness—that, and her belly that gets absolutely enormous after a meal. When she tries to walk it walks ahead of her and she has to arch her back to stay balanced. The other day we were pointing out each other’s bellybuttons and it occurred to me that she couldn’t see hers because her belly was too big. She just kept looking and looking for it.

Loving

If I speak in the tongues of men and of angels
but have not love
I am a noisy gong or a clanging cymbal

There is still a basic part of me that struggles with the fact that marriage it not about me. Or meeting my needs. It doesn’t revolve around how I feel, whether I am happy, whether my dreams are being fulfilled. The purpose of marriage is for me to sanctify him, for the eternity we will exist in one day, and God has determined that doing this for him is one of the very best things I can do for myself.

It’s sort of like the rest of life, where you at one point knew that the purpose of life involved something pretty huge and selfless, but somehow it all degenerates into everyday tedium. Like feeling as if I spend my entire life washing dishes and rewashing dishes. Or constantly feeling grumpy because I’m tired.

Much of this boils down to selfishness, but in marriage it’s easier to feel this way, because it’s the relationship from which you expect the most for yourself, yet have the latitude to get the laziest about investing in. In this regard it’s easier to be a mother: I don’t expect the baby to give me much, and there’s no margin for getting lazy about giving to her. As a result, I’m constantly giving, and somehow this ties me more to her and makes me love her more, and then in the instance that she does return some affection, I am wildly happy.

Unfortunately, I often approach overcoming selfishness in marriage with a habitual sort of willful confidence: I figure if I try hard enough not to be selfish, it’ll eventually work. Of course, this breaks down, usually at the worst possible time, like when he’s home from a thirty-six hour shift or when the baby decides to have a crying fit.

I usually end up realizing that focusing on just saying or doing the right thing misses the basic point. The part where it’s about more than myself; the part about loving him. This real kind of love is hard to do when we’re both getting by, but it’s more important than getting by. It’s more important than how I feel; more important than me. It’s also completely beyond me, but it’s something I can ask God for. Until I get this, I’m missing the point.

Windy Day at the Park

Cousin!

My little sister had a baby today! A boy, who arrived right on her birthday. He's exactly one ounce lighter than E and arrived one minuter later than the time of day she did. I'm so terribly excited for them. I think I'm going to see him and immediately want another one.

Stripey Pink

She loves this. Snacking in the play area. Things have been silent on the blog front for a while, but I'll try to write a bit more often..

Journal Excerpt

She’s in a friendly, generous mood these days. She waves frantically whenever she can: to the cats when she first sees them every morning. To me if I’m in the kitchen while she’s eating in her high chair. To people walking down the street two blocks away, and to every dog she can find.

And she’s always giving me things, which I find particularly endearing. She figured out today that if she can manage to get me a book, I’ll read it to her, so she’ll grab a page and drag it along, sometimes scooting it in front of her if it’s a big book, and attempt to lift it and thrust it into my hands. In this manner we read through every single book in her collection this morning, starting with her favorite ones first. I’m always on the look-out for new, cheap books, more because I get bored than because she does.

One Year

Journal Excerpt

E's stamina outlasted mine today. She only slept for one three-hour nap that passed all too quickly and was extremely vivacious the rest of the day. She seemed louder than usual. I think she just shouts when she's bored. D says I need to get her out more during these types of days and he's probably right. Instead I dozed on the floor while she played around me for most of the afternoon.

I've been trying to teach her to give things to me, as a way of instilling kindness, and now she likes to bring me plastic coffee cup lids, hair-balls and lint she picks up from the carpet, and empty wrappers. She takes it very personally if I don't actively hold these things in my hand while thanking her profusely. If I happen to drop one of them she will go after it and push it back in my hand. I used to thank her by clapping, so now when my hands are full she just sits there and applauds herself.

Journal Excerpt

I’m pretty sure someone is feeding her large quantities of sugar on the sly. It might be Chloe. She’s always slinky around with a slightly guilty air.

Fan-gazing

Today she was lying on the changing table and suddenly pointed up at the ceiling and started to babble—it was thrilling, the first time she obviously tried to communicate with articulated sounds, instead of yelling or babbling indiscriminately. I often feel like relating with her is like communicating with someone from a foreign country. I try to teach her sign language; she stares back at me like I’ve really lost it now. Even the thought of her quietly signing for more peas instead of screaming at the top of her lungs seems rather ludicrous. I try to tell her in this culture it’s rude to pick at other people’s teeth, or fart loudly in bookstores. She tries to feed me pieces of plastic she finds tasty and stuff her pacifier in my mouth. You just gotta try this thing, she’s thinking (I did once, and it is oddly addictive).

She was pointing at the fan on the ceiling. So we lay down on the nursery floor for awhile, her lying on my belly and both of us gazing up at the fan. She lay very still with big eyes. I made up silly stories about the fan faeries. That’s the good thing about being addicted to books all the time; I have a hoard of stories in my head. She will probably grow up thinking that wood sprites and silkies and talking lions are real.

I felt content, and she seemed so too. She has a convicting simplicity in that way: she doesn’t need much, just someone who loves her and a place she feels safe. She doesn’t care what she’s wearing, how fancy her toy is, what I look like or how much I know. She just likes that I’m there, listening to her and being present with her.

She teaches me a lot about contentment. It still amazes me how little contentment is related to circumstances; even when life is going seemingly perfectly on all outward levels, I’m not necessarily any happier. But this is contentment: being in the mindful present; being in God’s presence, lingering and still, and loving someone else. Making up stories as the air fans our faces. Maybe this is what heaven will feel like, when our contentment is complete; like we could never want anything more.

Journal Excerpt

If I had to pick one word to describe her now, it would probably be exuberant. Motion. Exuberant, constant, motion. She does no thing half-way, leaves no pillow unclimbed, no paper unshredded, no plastic item unchewed or unlicked. If this brings to mind unstoppably activity, that’s about right. Today on the changing table she was yawning, then reached up and draped a forearm over both eyes while lying there, and I thought, me too, baby. It’s too bad she couldn’t be like, hey, you’re looking kind of tired today, why don’t you go read a novel in the bath and I’ll just busy myself quietly and safely here for a while . . .

I caught her feeding the cat today. She would lean over and drop a cheerio off the edge, then I’d hear a crunch-crunch. Pinch a cheerio, lean, over, drop it, crunch-crunch. She’s finally figured out how to get Chloe to come. There’s a life lesson: if you want something, offer a bribe.

Home

I have finally dusted off the ice cream maker we got as a wedding gift—it took a few soupy sorbets to figure things out (namely, that you really do have to wait a day for that bowl to refreeze), but I have finally hit upon an amazing recipe, and we are in love. Homemade ice cream really does taste better than store-bought, and the magic of seeing it form is delightful. Not to mention the flavor possibilities.

I was stirring the cream mixture over medium heat the other night, waiting for it to thicken, and wondering when I last did something that required ten minutes of standing there. Making ice cream isn’t something you can do quickly; it’s probably the dessert that requires the most waiting to make. The only other time I wait for anything is for patients to dilate in clinic, and I’m always getting things done in the meanwhile.

I finished my last day of residency yesterday. Four years of taking call, seeing patients dumped by other doctors, returning pages, having no control over my hours or lifestyle. I returned my pager today—I may not even have one this year—which felt terribly odd though wonderfully satisfying.

Being home more has been wonderful. Like making ice cream: time to take my time. Time to think, to do new things, to keep up with chores and sleep rather than playing constant catch-up. Time to be with Ellie: we dance to music, eat new foods, invent games and stories and wave to everything in the house. Time to love on the cats, who are so attention-deprived they rarely leave my side. Time to take care of Dave, who still works a tough schedule.

I begin to see what residency cost. Not so much the work hours as the fatigue, the lack of energy and spiritual and emotional reserve. Now I have time more to remember myself and all the things I liked to do, to think about other people, to feel rested, to practice healthier habits. I don’t regret any of it, and probably shouldn’t underestimate the amount I’ve learned, but boy, am I glad it’s over.

Journal Excerpt

She is becoming more of a preferential eater. She is not subtle about this. If she doesn’t like something I’ve put into her mouth, she’ll reach her fingers in and pick it out, leaving it anywhere else: the floor, her clothes, even smearing it up in her hair. It rarely ends up on her actual bib. If she likes something, she’ll grip the edges of the high chair tray tightly while opening her mouth and screaming at the top of her lungs for more. Then she’ll stuff pieces in her mouth before she has time to swallow the previous one, cheeks puffed out like a chipmunk.

She doesn’t like liver or broccoli. She likes blueberries and grapes. I can’t say I really blame her.

Journal Excerpt

Changing her diaper nowadays is like waging an epic battle. I emerge scarred and sweaty, narrowly having missed smearing poop everywhere, while she half-dangles happily off the changing table in some contorted position with her new diaper half-taped on. Gone is that meek, cooperative little child. I miss her. Maybe she’ll make a reappearance in say three years or so.

E and Me

Yeah, I'll admit I'm posting pictures because I haven't had any time to write lately. June's always a busy time for the medical academic year. Residency finishes next week, and I'm staying on here for a part-time gig next year, which makes me extremely happy. Here we are at my parents', in the kitchen, where food and smiles abound.

On The Move

In case anyone is wondering why there have been fewer pictures lately.

Dwelling

The only thing she’s really addicted to are books. Not a toy or stuffed animal, but books. When she was in daycare, the first place they said she seemed to feel safe was in the book bin, so they’d let her sit wedged in the corner of the bin all day. When we’re reading a book to her, she looks extremely seriously at the pages, as if she understands what we’re reading (which is obviously not true because she’s often focused on the wrong page). She flips over each page with great fervor, and sometimes so rapidly I only have time to read the first line of each page (“little kitten went to see the frogs – she sees mice hiding in the shed – but I’m not an owl”). Makes for an interesting story.

Often when we finish a book, she starts crying, and won’t calm down unless I start from the beginning again. I once read through “Thumper’s Scary Night” five times in a row in this fashion. The best thing about having my family visit was that everyone got to read through “Thumper’s Scary Night” five times in a row. It’s gotten to the point where I have to hide the book from her.

But most of the time, I enjoy reading with her. It forces me to linger, to be present with her, physically, mentally, and vocally. It’s time we spend away from the rest of the world, one of the few times she’s completely focused and still.

I miss this sense of dwelling in my life. I miss lounging with D on the sofa, reading books next to each other without speaking. I miss late-night talks with friends. I miss sitting in one place long enough for both cats to curl up next to me for awhile. I miss undistracted time with God.

Unlike E, no one really demands this from me, but something is lost when I don’t create space for it in my life. The Bible speaks of dwelling more than of doing: God wanting to dwell with Israel; Christ coming to dwell with us; and one day us dwelling in the house of the Lord forever. It is a promise to us, a picture of what home means: My people will live in peaceful dwelling places, in secure homes, in undisturbed places of rest (Isaiah 32).

Intentionality

Having a child means loss of spontaneity. Not being a particularly spontaneous person to begin with, this was not something I appreciated until after the fact. Before, deciding to go out was a matter of getting off my butt and changing out of my pajamas. Now, it’s arranging for a babysitter, shelving out fifty bucks, and enduring her cries as we leave.

I was reading a scene in a novel that reminded me of times when it was just D and I, outside somewhere beautiful, and we felt free and alone and adventurous in the world. We felt surrendered to God, surrendered to each other, like we could face anything together. I still have that feeling in smaller moments, but getting away like that doesn’t happen anymore. At least not unless we make it happen.

In that way having a child is a lesson in what our marriage needs, because we have to be intentional about every little thing. It’s as if I suddenly had to walk a mile to an outhouse every time I had to use the toilet; I’d probably be a lot more aware of how much and when I needed to go than before. And one thing we’ve learned is that marriage is like a bank account: you can’t just keep withdrawing.

D put it well once: “By loving one another, having intimate times with one another, investing in one another, and spending valuable time with God, we put money into the bank. Things like crankiness at home, taking care of E while the other is on call, dealing with parental stresses, worrying about the future, all require that we take out money from this marriage bank.”

Investing in that account simply takes more premeditation than it did before. We have to make an effort to think about the other, to get out, to connect apart from the baby. Parenthood unmasks your marriage for what it is truly made of; reveals how much you are willing to do for it.

Children have this effect on our relationship with God too. My friend calls parenthood a spiritually formative experience: something that forces you to be either more like Christ or less so. Of course other spiritually formative experiences do this as well: intense work, lonely periods, loss of a loved one.

But it is good, to know what matters, and be intentional about pursuing it. Because one day not too far from now, our kids will leave, and it will be obvious whether our marriage was more important to us than our children. One day we will leave each other, and it will be obvious whether God was more important to us than anything else. And when that day comes, I think it will be worth a great deal to look back with no regrets.

Joy

I love how at times she becomes totally beside herself. When she sees Dave, for example, she just cannot contain her joy. When he walks through the door, she yelps and nearly wriggles her way out of my arms. When she sees me in the mornings coming to open the curtains and pick her up from the crib, she turns towards me and grins so wide her pacifier falls right out. When did I last feel such undiluted delight?

This is what I love about her, how she lives so wholeheartedly. If she wants to get somewhere, she gets this zany you-can’t-stop-me glazed look in her eyes as she starts the slow and rather pitiful-looking process of dragging herself there. Her only volume is LOUD YELP. Want more food? YELP. Happy to see me? YELP. Like the cats? YELP. She waves at, well, anything. Lots of times I’ll be trying to get her to wave at some person and find to my embarrassment she’s waving at a nail on the wall in the opposite direction.

She is just as transparent in her fear as her delight. She is completely devastated by the most random things, like a candle flame or the sound of garlic frying in oil. She is clearly going through a period in which she realizes not only that I exist, but that I can go away and not come immediately back, which frightens her so much that at times I can’t put her down without her breaking into tears.

This is something we’ve lost, this transparency and joy. Learning to hide our emotions is part of growing up, but I think about how much of my life I live half-heartedly. I think about her delight in seeing people, in eating food, in a tune or a book, and I think how much I have lost. Because I am rushed, because I am tired, because I take things for granted, because I gave it up long ago on my way to getting somewhere.

This is part of the privilege of being a mother, this re-experiencing of things with her. We experiment with the tastes and textures of food. We play the guitar, dance to music, read books, chase the cats. Her joy is contagious, and even just her bobbing and grinning face in the crib each morning reminds me to stop being grumpy and be happy for a new day.

Walk

Sometimes I look at her and I'm like, gee, I really cannot believe she came from my body.

Change

I was feeling down the other day and realized I was sad because she is changing. She used to be small and still, just present, and with me. She has now emerged from the larval stage to become this totally hyperactive squawking, bobbling, wriggling, scooting thing. She sounds like a noisy seagull and moves like a paralytic determined to drag herself around by the arms. She’s less helpless, more willful. And I sort of miss the way she used to be.

D thinks I’ve gone off my rocker. He says he’s always loved her, but now he’s starting to really like her, now she’s getting more interesting and being her own person. Before she was this thing that cried and pooped. Now she laughs and babbles and squeals when we come in the room. She waves at us (and inanimate objects and total strangers) and shares her pacifier (takes it out, turns it around and jams it into our mouths).

She also likes, curiously, to pick at my teeth, carefully feeling each one with utter seriousness. I complain about feeling like a horse at the market or someone at the dentist’s, but secretly I sort of like it.

I’ve finally weaned her, a process which felt surprisingly natural, but which may be contributing to this sense of basic separation. I look back now, and the last nine months seem a gift, an extension of the first nine months she was inside me, when we basically just connected and hung out together.

It’s good to identify this, because it helps me be thankful and move on. They say it’s normal to grieve when you wean. It’s natural she’s changing, and a good reminder that she was always her own person. It’s okay to miss the old baby while I learn how to be with the new one—think of new foods to try, new games to play, new books to read or ways for her to explore the world. This is part of what it is to parent, I guess, to always be changing and learning. Or maybe, I think to myself, I’ll just have another baby.

Journal Excerpt

On a picture board near the nursery door we put up baby pictures of D and I, at the time because I thought it would be interesting to see who our baby looked like, though it’s now a mute point because she looks so much like D that he calls her his twin. There’s a picture of me looking fat and complacent with my hair sticking up while sitting up next to a series of obviously-posed stuffed animals, on a very 1980’s bedspread. There’s a picture of D standing up holding on to the edge of his playpen, a huge grin on his face.

I noticed she seemed really interested in the pictures, always craning her body and trying to crawl out of my arms in that direction. So I held her up to them today. She slowly extended her hand out, then started to wave it back and forth gently while staring at the pictures, as if to say hello, or goodbye. That’s mommy when she was your age, I told her. That one there’s daddy. She stopped waving, looked serious, then stretched out her hand and waved again.

Little Ones

I can barely keep up with her these days. I get tired just watching her, because she never stops MOVING. She twists, turns, rolls. She scoots her way along the ground like a lizard, or like a little crippled person. She has an amazing reach. I’ll think, good thing that’s out of the way, and then the next minute it’s in her mouth. I think part of this is her truly impossible degree of flexibility. Holding her feels like grasping a wriggling eel; she’s always twisting around to get or look at something of interest. Items of interest, in case anyone is Christmas shopping early, would probably rank:

1. Paper, particularly tags.
2. Keys (real ones; I bought her a set of fake plastic ones but she has no interest).
3. Anything that is going in my mouth.
4. The cat’s tails.
5. Anything she can tear cheerfully apart into little pieces, like tissues or flowers.

I think sometimes about all that she doesn’t understand, and it blows my mind. She doesn’t understand that when she rips a tulip apart, it is destroyed. That when she drops things, someone has to pick it up. She has absolutely no sense of self-preservation; that it might not be good to reach for something sharp or lean too far over the edge of a bed. She has absolutely no idea how much we do to keep her well.

It makes me think about my relationship with God in a new way. When I think of God as my father, it’s mostly in the way my father was to me as an older child and adult. I don’t remember much of anything before I was five. But surely God is also a father to me the way we are to E now. I get a glimpse of what the psalmist meant when he wrote that God’s ways and understanding are higher than ours. He sees the things I do that no one else notices. He understands the bigger picture, the purpose behind events, in a way beyond my usual thinking. He provides and is alongside me even when I take it for granted.

And in the end, he loves me. I think about how Jesus said to let the little children come to him, little babies like E who are too young to understand many things, to know how to act. I think about how much I love her despite and because of all that. And I’m a little closer to understanding how God loves me.

Journal Excerpt

She is teething, and with a vengeance. That little bud that appeared and disappeared last December was definitely a fake-out; THESE are teeth, these wide white ridges rearing up from her ridgy gums.

We take our teeth for granted. I’ve learned to maneuver my mouth so I don’t bite my tongue or cheek; so my teeth don’t get in the way of my mouth closing; so they process food efficiently. I’ve learned to make them part of my sounds, of my language and my smile. She hasn’t done any of that. I hear her grinding her upper one against her two lower ones when she doesn’t think I’m listening, as if experimenting.

It must be a rather painful exercise, this bone bursting from flesh. When else does a whole new part of our bodies grow in? It’s as if we grew a third arm one painful joint at a time and then had to learn how to use it. Look, you’ll be happy you have them, I tell her. And I’ll love you the same even if you only have these three crooked-looking ones.

Complacency and Purpose

I've been reading an excellent book by John Piper called "Don't Waste Your Life." Last night, I finally got to the meat of his message: forget entertainment, appearance, and all this other hoopla -- make your life count by screwing the world, screwing what other people think, and following Jesus! How else will you be able to stand before God and look back on your life without regret? How else will anyone who doesn't know about Jesus distinguish the difference between Christians and non-Christians. In our society, the two groups look the same! Except for the small fact that Christians aren't supposed to do some "immoral" things and spend 2 hours Sunday morning in a building with a cross on it.

"Therefore the man who stands before God with his well-kept avoidance ethic and his protest that he did not spend too much time at the office but came home and watched TV with his family will probably not escape the indictment that he wasted his life. Jesus rebuked his disciples with words that easily apply to this man: Even sinners work hard, avoid gross sin, watch TV at night, and do fun stuff on the weekend. What more are you doing than the others? (Luke 6:32-34; Matthew 5:47)"

I’m starting to think Satan’s strategy here is not to frighten us with the supernatural, but to deaden us into complacency and distract us with entertainment. In medicine, the temptation is to seek a life of comfort, because you’re so wiped out from your training and tired of being overworked and underpaid. You watch all your other friends in their late twenties and early thirties make more than you and live normal lives. When you’re actually presented with a choice, you just want to find some cushy job. It’s a strange mixture of entitlement and necessity, to pay back massive loans.

But even now there’s that feeling of deadened routine and pointless leisure. This past week was really long, one of those weeks where you wait for each work day to be over, come home to go through the routine of chores, wind down doing something mindless before waking up to start it all over again.

I was reading through some of D’s old blog entries, which was sort of an inspiring thing to do. He wrote so honestly, with so much of the heart and substance that he still has, but I don’t always uncover in the daily grind. What he wrote above really resonated. I think we all want that: for our lives to be about a greater, truer purpose than ourselves; to be about more than entertainment, appearance, status, or superficial comfort.

Of course, it starts now. It doesn’t start when I’ve caught up on my sleep, or after the baby goes to bed, or when we finish residency and get to wherever we’re going. It starts with the moment I take to be with God, to reflect and listen and relate. The type of boldness and faith it takes to be living a life like that takes a foundation built upon all those moments. For some reason this can be really hard to do. But no one ever said it would be easy.

Calling

People talk about the cost of doing long-term overseas medical missions. And that’s for good reason—it makes us face many things outside our comfort zones.

But sometimes I think too about the cost of staying. I consider our temperaments, our skills and where they are more needed; I think about the great commission and God’s kingdom, and if I take all that seriously, should I not be asking myself why I’m not going? Should I not have just as strong a calling to stay as I would to go?

Because the easier path here would be just that: easier, more comfortable, but not necessarily less costly. In fact, in eternal terms it may be more costly. It would be much easier to let my life slip comfortably by; to allow the years to pass on my own terms, without truly growing and being challenged in my faith, without serving in a way that lasts.

There is nothing wrong with the cushy suburban life. We like house-shopping through car windows as much as the next couple. I just don’t want it to be a default. I don’t want to be there passively, because it’s easy, or obvious. I feel I should be as called to that life as to a life overseas.

I used to think being “called to go” was a big deal. But it’s no bigger a deal than being “called to stay.” It’s not really the going or staying, but the calling, that matters. And that just means being obedient to where we feel God is leading us. If we do end up going, it probably won’t be from some dramatic moment of revelation, but from a gradual sense of leading, circumstances and promptings. If we end up staying, I hope it will be just as intentional a process. Because the cost of not living intentionally for Christ, wherever we are in the world, is too great.

In Sickness And In Health

I’ve only taken one sick day my entire internship and residency, and that was after contracting a stomach bug that made me pass out while assisting in the OR. I remember staring at the open abdomen, the blue sheets going fuzzy as my vision blacked out and my body went into chills and sweats, thinking oh shoot I’m having a vaso-vagal and the next thing waking up on the floor. Luckily I fell away from the sterile field rather than into it. I spent the day on the couch at home downing Gatorade and went back to work the next morning.

I hardly ever get sick, and then I pretend I’m not. This is, of course, part of the Hopkins mantra. Calling in sick is weak. Along with, no one ever eats lunch. As far as I can tell, clinics schedule a fake lunch hour, but overbook so much the rest of the day that in reality no attending actually stops to eat.

But that was before we had a baby. I’ve finally given in to the fact that at daycare, every child has a perpetually runny nose. If I don’t actually see a river of yellow snot running out of both nostrils, it’s because the caregiver just wiped it off a few moments ago. Which means E basically has had one cold after the other for the past five months.

Luckily, for the most part this doesn’t seem to bother her. She likes her snot; in fact, is loath to part with it and absolutely HATES it any time I try to wipe it off her face. Fine, keep your boogers, I tell her. I tell myself she will be armed like a veteran against all those elementary-school bugs, unlike the other naïve kindergarteners who spent their preschool years cooped up at home.

But sometimes it gets to her. She’s had fevers and been on antibiotics twice. Both times D and I got sick too; between the hospitals where we work and daycare, it’s hard to know what starts what, but the bottom line is that we’re all miserable. None of us are sleeping; all of us are hacking up gunk and losing our appetites. Our house is a wasteland littered with cough-drop wrappers, used tissues, Tylenol bottles and Lysol wipes.

It’s hard being sick. All the tensions inherent in our lifestyles become obvious when she has to stay out of daycare, and we try to get off work or find sitters at the last minute. D has had to work a number of overnight shifts while sick, which sets him back from recovering. And it’s hard being married to someone who’s sick, hard to be loving when you feel about as good as a dung beetle and the other person doesn’t seem so appealing either.

I think sometimes God gives us sickness to humble us. To make us slow down, stop. To help us understand how our patients feel, even when the disease is trivial. When our spouses get sick, to remind us what it means to love and serve someone the way we promised to do. When our children get sick, to understand the pain that God feels when he sees his children suffer. We are forced to confront our selfishness towards our spouse; forced to yield our children again to God’s care. Sometimes we learn to develop healthier habits for our own bodies. I’m learning this can all be what it means to be with God, and with each other, in sickness and in health.

E, Master Flinger

She is just heart-breakingly gorgeous. Everybody thinks so.

She is also getting to be her own person. Her newest thing is flinging things with great abandon. She likes doing this best from her high chair. She’s a great believer in No Object Left Behind. Everything I see, goes! I don’t think she’s quite picked up on the concept yet that things end up somewhere; I try to point out where things are on the floor while talking about gravity, but she just looks at her empty tray like NEXT? We’ll have to work on the object permanence. That, and the sitting up without falling over.

She also hasn’t figured out how to chew. She acts like someone who does; she goes around tearing great big pieces of food off with her gums, but once she gets them in her mouth it becomes apparent she doesn’t really know what to do next. She just ends up holding things in her mouth, hoping I suppose that her saliva will magically dissolve it, before spitting it out in one big sodden chunk five minutes later.

Sometimes she’ll stop suddenly, in the middle of nursing or playing, and look intensely at my face with a look of great concentration, as if I’ve sprung a third eye on my forehead. As if maybe her real mother has been abducted by the aliens and she’s not so sure about this one. She nearly goes cross-eyed with concentration. It always makes me laugh.

Beauty

People are starting to say she looks more like me as she gets older. Now we are talking subtle things, like her face taking more of an oval shape, or her eyebrows having a slight arch, and they are probably saying that just to be nice, but I’ll take what I can get. It’s strange how I can sometimes see myself in an expression, the tone of her skin. I looked at her arm once and was struck by how it felt like looking at my own arm; somewhat chubbier, but the bone structure was the same.

The one thing I am most glad she did not get from me are her eyelashes. They are so long it’s a wonder they don’t interfere with her eyes closing. They look fake, like the kind you see in mascara ads. They remind me of feather dusters and pastry brushes.

But she is perfect. I could not have imagined how she would have looked before she was born, but now I can’t imagine her looking any other way. She and I both peer curiously at all the other babies. Boy, they look odd, we think to each other. Perhaps it’s because she’s on the lower percentile of weight for her age that they all look overgrown, with puffy hands and large heads.

But I think parents who think their children are beautiful raise beautiful children. I remember when she was younger, and sometimes quite difficult, thinking that my mother, or one of her aunts, made her more beautiful through their love for and delight in her. She could be crying her head off with a face that resembled a squashed tomato, and they would make her seem like the most precious, adorable thing. This is the privilege that I have for her, and my husband: the ability to shape how they see themselves, and how the world sees them.

Dress Up

Out of the Present

Today she rolled over from her back to her belly for the first time. She’s been able to roll herself from belly to back for a few months now, but coax as I might, she never could go the other way. Then it was like she suddenly made up her mind and began doing it, easy as pie. This completes your quest for world domination, I tell her. You can now roll yourself wherever you want to go.

She does this little wriggle-wriggle thing with her hips. Where she picked this up I have no idea; maybe she watches Shakira music videos on the sly. She scootches her hips and shoulders side to side when lying down. Standing in the saucer, she bounces and wriggles, like she’s grooving to some hidden beat. She prefers to do this with one toy clenched in her mouth and both hands busy playing with two other toys. She looks like a D.J., swinging to the beat while spinning tracks with each hand.

She is moving out of the present. She used to just be all the time. Now she’s trying to roll off the changing table before her diaper’s on, crawl her way backwards across the floor. She sees something and wants it. I spend so much of my time out of the present: moving to the next thing, living in the past or future, in ideas or stories. I see her now starting to head places and realize this is part of what it means to be human. To want, to will, to imagine. The change is exciting, enlivening. But I can’t help wanting to hold her in the now just a little longer.

Journal Excerpt

I think she has figured out that there are things that go on while she is nursing, behind her back. The other day she flung her arm back while nursing and bumped it into my book, then madly started to grip and pull at all the pages, all the while sucking peacefully away. She was like one of those people with transected corpus collosums who button their shirt up with one hand while unbuttoning it with the other.

Usually when she flings her arm back she encounters Winnie, whose favorite pastime is wedging herself on my lap and against the baby’s back, and then the three of us rock back and forth. Winnie doesn’t seem to mind E’s hand occasionally poking at her. Those are one of my favorite times of the day, my petting the cat or holding a book in one hand while cradling her with the other, her falling asleep while I stare out at the dusk, the sound of D downstairs puttering around. If they say that God is in the small moments, this is certainly one of them.

Journal Excerpt

This is where I become REALLY glad that we started early on all the habits we wanted her to have, like falling asleep on her own in the crib, taking the pacifier, sleeping through the night. Because she is capable now of a whole new level of crying. I have no idea how she turned from a poor little mewling thing into this screaming, flailing banshee. She can cry bloody murder, and I’ll run in there expecting some horrible tragedy and just discover it’s because her pacifier got lost and she wants it back.

So my advice to new parents: start them early. Early is good. It may seem like your heart is being wrenched from your chest when they’re sobbing because they can’t sleep on your chest every night, but better that than the flailing-banshee scream, or worse yet, the little toddler banging on your door.

The funny thing is, you can tell this is something she is experimenting with. Yesterday she reached a pitch that completely stopped me in my tracks, and then we both stared at each other in silence. She was looking at me like, wow, can I really go that high? And I was looking at her like, uh oh. Don’t you even THINK about doing that in public, buddy.

She’s discovering she has a voice and it can do things. She’s like Eliza Dolittle doing vocal exercises with the gramophone. She sounds mostly like a wounded bird. She hasn’t figured out yet how her tongue and lips play into the mix, though she can now purse her lips and spray her spit out, which entertains her to no end. I do it back at her. Thhhppt. It’s fun times around here. Civil, fun times.

Cherry Blossoms

D has made it his personal ambition to go to the cherry blossom festival every year that we live in the area. I have to admit that it is worth braving the insufferable crowds. Probably. So this year we took the little one along. She looked very seriously at all the plumage and when she got close enough tried to eat it. Typical. We could probably have been in our backyard for all she knew, but somehow it was nice showing her all the monuments. I know D can't wait until she's old enough to get all the history. Whereas I make no secret of the fact that I have forgotten all my U.S. history. When she gets old enough to ask questions I look forward to making things up.

First Easter

Today I was sitting in the rocking chair quietly nursing E while looking out the windows. The windows are one of my favorite parts about her room. My mom made the curtains from fabric we picked out together, a cheerful yellow with animals like froggies and bunnies. There are large trees just beginning to bud outside. We might live in the middle of a city I’m not too fond of, but thank God for the trees around our windows.

Nursing now is about a three-minute affair. In the first few months she would nurse for what felt like hours, and in reality was at least thirty minutes. She (still) doesn’t tolerate much noise or movement while she’s feeding, and I would sit there feeling paralyzed. I read through stacks of books and watched an entire season of Friday Night Lights once I figured out how to maneuver my laptop and earphones.

But now I miss those times she lingered with me, so when she falls asleep nursing, like today, I hang on to her for awhile, and think and rock.

I felt very alone today. I’m proud of what D does, saving lives and all that, but sometimes I wish he were a librarian or cubicle worker. Episodic single parenting. That’s what being married to a resident is like.

I think about the separation and utter loneliness Christ felt on the cross, when the person he’d been in communion with for all eternity chose to reject him. It would be like losing an arm, a baby, being rejected by your fiancé or parents or spouse, but a million times worse. It must have been this that he dreaded, beyond all the physical suffering. I’ve never really felt lonely in that way, in a rejected way.

This is her first Easter. It’s a quiet one, just me and her, little fanfare. But I don’t really care about the white dresses and Easter baskets. I just wish I could tell her about this. I look at her asleep near my chest, hope she will never feel rejected and alone, and want to tell her that, because of what Jesus did, she never will have to.

Light At The End Of The Tunnel

Today was a day when our usually-harmless clinic policy of seeing same-day walk-ins backfired. There must have been at least nine add-ons, none of them straightforward. There was my post-operative patient who answered my usual introduction (“hi, thanks for your patience, sorry you had to wait, I’m going to wash my hands now, how are you doing?”) with “I can’t see anything” followed by “April fools!” NOT funny.

There was the lady in hospice with a ruptured globe who refused surgery. The patient with a bleed in her eye whom I neurotically examined and re-examined for an underlying retinal detachment; the patient who kept coming back with elevated eye pressures; the eyelid abscess that had to be redrained; the pink eye.

For some reason getting pink eye is a stigmatic thing for eye doctors, like getting “I don’t wash my hands enough and LOOK where it got me” branded on your forehead. Like a lawyer getting sued or a teacher failing an exam. It also puts you out of work for a minimum of two weeks, which means all the other residents hate you because they have to cover your call. But forget all that. I washed my hands about fifty times just thinking about giving E conjunctivitis.

I came home to her rolling on the floor and squawking like a bird and thought, maybe this work-mother thing isn’t so profound after all. It’s good to put in a solid day’s work, and it’s good to come home and be a mom. Work in moderation makes me a healthier person and thus a better mother. Clearly the operational word is “moderation,” particularly in this line of work, but I no longer feel like I’m playing a game I’ve already lost. There is hope.

Journal Excerpt

Sometimes I imagine what it would be like if she started talking. It would be totally unreal, like reading a book where the main character suddenly reveals he’s a werewolf and you’re like, oh yeah, this is science fiction. I can’t really even imagine what her voice would sound like. I look at the older kids who go around babbling and have a hard time believing she is of the same species. Clearly they are mutants, I tell her. Don't worry if you're not like them.

She is able to sit up by herself now, even wobble down to pick something up and then right herself again. What is striking about the whole thing is her perfectly proper posture, rim-rod straight back at a perfect ninety degrees from the ground, even while her hands move around. She could be doing yoga or balancing a cup of water on her head. One gets the sense that the slightest shift in her center of gravity, and she’d topple right over. I catch myself straightening my own chronically hunched back when she’s around.

Journal Excerpt

Sometimes I imagine what it would be like if she started talking. It would be totally unreal, like reading a book where the main character suddenly reveals he’s a werewolf and you’re like, oh yeah, this is science fiction. I can’t really even imagine what her voice would sound like. I look at the older kids who go around babbling and have a hard time believing she is of the same species.

She is able to sit up by herself now, even wobble down to pick something up and then right herself again. What is striking about the whole thing is her perfectly proper posture, rim-rid straight back at a perfect ninety degrees from the ground, even while her hands move around. She could be doing yoga or balancing a cup of water on her head. One gets the sense that the slightest shift in her center of gravity, and she’d topple right over. I catch myself straightening my own chronically hunched back when she’s around.

Journal Excerpt

I could probably be certifiably psychotic based on all the horrible tragedies I worry about befalling her. D once admitted he got worried about her waking up from sleep. I was like, naw, that doesn’t bother me. I’m too preoccupied hoping she doesn’t get bit in the face by a dog, lose a hand, develop autism or Asperger’s, tumble down the stairs. It’s really quite macabre. I never knew I was capable of such fanstastical fears until now. Whereas I used to watch sad romantic movies and cry, now I watch sad movies about children and cry.

Someone once said, “my mind is a bad neighborhood I try not to walk into alone.” Someone also said, “having a child is like having your heart walk around outside of you.” It’s a bad combination.


I think the cats think she belongs to them. They are always hovering. In every picture or video of her, there are these black-and-white furry forms gliding silently in the back. When she sits in her baby chair, Winnie curls up at her feet. When she’s flailing her arms about, Chloe maneuvers herself so she’s inadvertently petted. They don’t seem to be bothered by her random banshee squeals, or by the fistfuls of hair she pulls from their hides. I figure this lasts until she starts running around pulling on their tails.


Sometimes she reminds me of a very old woman. Particularly when her head flops forward and the lumpy back of her neck is exposed.

Thankfulness

I have discovered how it happens that second children get born. Right around now, babies get so adorable that you forget all the earlier, harder times and suddenly want to have more.

I think I may objectively say that right now E is about the cutest she’s ever been in her life. She’s just the right amount of chubby: not enough to be overly plump but enough to have plenty of softness to kiss. Her cheeks remind me of silken tofu. Her limbs are just active enough to be interesting, but not so out of control as to be bothersome. She can sit up in a baby chair on her own, but not crawl everywhere yet. She’s wonderfully expressive and responsive, grinning and squealing when she sees us, laughing out loud when we tickle her. When D comes home, she beams and beams, smiling and squealing, clasping her hands to her mouth and punching out her belly.

The things that made life harder when she was younger are mostly a thing of the past: she goes to sleep quietly, takes a pacifier but isn’t addicted to it, is quiet when we go out and even when exhausted rarely makes a fuss. I can’t even believe I just wrote that.

Best of all, she is happier at daycare, now the sick season is over and perhaps now she’s older. She sits in the book box flipping through books, plays in paint, eats her food, occasionally even throws in a longer nap. And I get the sense folks there adore her, are getting used to how she communicates, which eases my mind. I spend pretty much every other available waking moment with her, sometimes even toting her to grand rounds so we can hang out longer. Perhaps it’s our time apart that makes those together more poignant. I feel able to truly be present with her when I can be.

I am deeply grateful for these things, in the way one is grateful for sun after a long rain, or the first robin of spring. I realize these things aren’t necessary for my happiness or a result of anything I did, but in it I sense God’s grace to us, and I am grateful.

In Celebration of Spring

Let's face it: bundling her up is a pain. Little baby onesies and dresses exposing chubby, soft, nibble-able arms and feets are adorable. For these reasons alone, I can't wait for spring to stay.

A Post on Poop

This is not a fact I’d care to publish—because it seems disgusting and lest I get saddled with the chore—but I enjoy changing her diapers. It’s something mundane I can do for her. There’s something satisfying in wiping her clean so she doesn’t have to wallow in her poop. She loves airing herself out afterwards, waving her chubby legs and chewing on her toes.

And there’s something relieving in seeing the poop, too. The first time she went a few days without pooping I was seized with worry—pooping means she’s healthy, is physical evidence that the combination of milks and solids we shove in her mouth go to some use. It’s gritty proof of the magic that transforms mushed bananas into longer limbs and dimpled elbows.

And to think before she was born we actually thought changing diapers would be one of the worst things about having a baby. Ha. It ranks way below Never Sleeping In Again, Loss of Spontaneous Date Nights, Getting Mastitis. It ranks somewhat below Getting Strand of Hair Pulled Out (her newest hobby), Not Getting to Read My Novel Uninterrupted.

I wonder if wiping poop for someone else’s baby would be remotely enjoyable. Probably not, in the same way it isn’t satisfying to cut someone else’s nails or pick out someone else’s boogers. Strange I like doing those things for her. Before this, poop was something in a bedpan I was glad I didn’t have to empty, a reason I avoided general surgery and rectal exams. And now, it’s something I laugh with her about. This has to be one of the most unexpected things about being a mother.

Journal Excerpts

She is on the verge of being able to crawl. Adorable for me, frustrating for her. I love seeing her little butt wriggling in the air, but she just seems fed up with never actually GETTING anywhere. She has worked out this ability to torque her body and thereby slowly spiral it around in widening circles. Long way to travel a short distance. I worsen the situation by keeping her toys constantly just out of reach. Early goal-directed behavior. Or just more fun for mom.

It makes me think about how I take for granted being able to get wherever I want without thinking twice. Most of my patients are elderly folks, with cataracts or macular degeneration or any number of other things, who don’t move around real easily either. Today one patient told me, “you looked beautiful walking around so quickly. I kept watching you walk past. I used to be one of those fast walkers.” She had broken her leg years ago and now hobbles places slowly on a cane. You don’t think about it until it’s gone, she said.

But there are a host of skills one develops by going through the world more slowly. E has these. She observes intensely. She notices small details, like a piece of loose thread on my sweater or the tag on her stuffed bear. She rests a lot. And when she does finally get there: unabashed squeals of glee, all around.


She is so tender. She feels like silken tofu, and sometimes I want to eat her up. I’ll have you with ketchup, I tell her, and a pickle on the side.

Journal Excerpt

She is getting sturdier and starting to look like a real baby. She is acquiring this expression of great shrewdness. When she sees new things she becomes gravely quiet, her eyes get big, her mouth purses tightly. No messing around here. That vacuum cleaner. Looks sneaky. Those grandparents. Not sure I’ve seen them before so better be on the careful side. Unfortunately her chubby cheeks and the bald spot on the back of her head make it hard to take her entirely seriously.

Rediscovering Work

“Absolutely. The argument for medicine extending the goodness of God in the world is far less tortured than the one for teaching and research. While sin and death are part of this side of heaven, the will of God is for life and wholeness. You may feel your work is mechanical and impersonal, but that is just you. The restoration and maintenance of sight is so important it's documented several times as miracles performed by Jesus. Defeating disease and degeneration is a manifestation of God's work and will. It's a good thing.” – friend and mother A.M.

“Since my cancer diagnosis, I have experienced more friendship from more people than at any other time in my life. I've experienced not just a quality of medical care but a kind of medical care, humane medical care delivered by humane and decent people, that seems Christ-like to me. I don't know the religious convictions of all the people who have treated me, but I certainly believe that they are used by God in ways that are really quite extraordinary to bring blessing to people who are in circumstances that lead them to hunger for blessing.” –William Stuntz, Harvard Law professor

Having a baby has forced me to confront how I think about work. For a long time, nearly as long as I can remember, work has been the defining centrality in my life. I think I started off somewhere naïve and enthusiastic, in ninth grade biology when for some reason I figured if I liked dissecting pickled frogs I should become a doctor. Very strange how I can be indecisive about what outfit to wear but never a moment questioned that ambition.

During the next eight years, that evolved into a drive to reach a goal, because it was intellectually stimulating, because it was hard to get. I arrived at the top medical school, went through a minor identity crisis when I realized I had no practical idea what medicine was like, then emerged to immerse myself in clinical training: I think because I discovered I honestly enjoyed it. I loved working with my hands—in this regard the pickled frog had pointed me in the right direction—I liked understanding the body and disease, and working with a team. Without really intending to—and perhaps the nature of medicine did not give me a choice—it became everything about who I was, what I did.

Then somehow I ended up in ophthalmology. I still look back at this with surprise. Without a doubt it was the smartest decision I made; or rather, not going into general surgery, as I nearly did, was the smartest decision. Getting married, realizing there was more to life and that required making a conscious choice, had a lot to do with it. Ophthalmology still allowed me to operate, and to specialize.

But the drive was still there. I arrived at what was then the top ophthalmology program, and the years that ensued were the most difficult ones of my training, not just because like every other doctor I basically knew nothing about the eye before I started, but because of the achievement-worshiping, sink-or-swim culture of the place. For the first time I looked around, particularly at the women, and really saw where I was heading. If having a certain reputation and prestige meant have few kids and not seeing them much, I didn’t want to go there. So I decided not to apply for a formal fellowship, and instead had a baby.

And since then any residual ambition I had has disappeared entirely. Lately I view work in one single negative: it keeps me from being with her. And that colors everything. I am also rustier than my colleagues after three months of being away, and am tempted to think I don’t have as much to offer. Sometimes it’s difficult to look back on all the years of training and not believe it a waste.

I’m trying to rediscover why I work. Because I still believe that, at least for now, I am called to work, to finish what I started sixteen years ago. My heart’s not in it the way it was before, but maybe this is good, because it allows me to refine my motives, to see what’s left when I no longer work to define or glorify myself. I have to work for a better reason, I have to make every moment count in a deeper way, because of what it costs me, and what it costs her.

And so, in oddly backwards fashion, I am now trying to find my purpose in medicine. I am asking that God redeem a lifetime of ambition and years of difficult training for his good. I am asking for motivation to study, to believe God has given me a skill set and kind of care to offer that is unique. For the first time in my life, believing this does not come naturally. But perhaps this too can be good, can lead me in a direction I would not have naturally arrived at. Because in the end, what I really want is for all of this, working and mothering, to be about more than myself, about more than whatever it is I feel I want at various stages of life. For that it would be worth going through anything.

Watching the Snow

Feeding

“You are the greatest mom I ever know to pump breast milk faithfully even in very difficult environment. You have given E the best she needs.” –my mom

There is no clearer illustration of what it means to be separated from her at work than this whole feeding thing. When I was home with her the first three months, things were how they should be: I made milk according to how much she wanted. She would latch on and eat to her heart’s content. I never had to wonder how much; I could take her anywhere and know I could feed her enough wherever we were.

Then I went back to work, and instead of feeding her at natural intervals, there are the pumps, pump parts, bottles, bottle parts, freezer bags and storage bags. I rarely had time or place to pump during that first hard rotation, and despite all I tried to make up for after it finished, I couldn’t keep my milk supply from dwindling.

And then there is packing her milk for each day. I don’t really know how much she needs, because I’m not there when she’s feeding. I’m only pumping about a sixth of what she could probably be eating each feed, which affects how much I can afford to pack. And in the end, how much and how often she eats varies depending on what the day is like for everyone at daycare.

There’s no sadder feeling than feeding her on weekends and realizing she comes away still hungry. Not being able to go out without having some solid food around. I just can’t will myself to make more milk than I do.

I realize in the big picture things will be fine. We are starting to supplement with formula, which is fine. But I think there is a part of me still grieving something. Sooner or later, this would have come—but having to go through it earlier than I would have chosen is hard to accept. It seems silly to say, but some version of the stages are there: denial, anger, bargaining, depression, acceptance.

It’s a lonely experience. I know hardly any mothers in the same work situation, and even then it’s difficult to express how it feels. But I’m trying to feel that it’s okay. There is nothing about doing this that is perfect, or sometimes even in my control. And that’s okay.

Journal Excerpt

The child's foot doesn't know yet that it's a foot,
and wants to be a butterfly or an apple.
- Pablo Neruda

I love how her feet are so soft and lumpy on the bottom, like little bits of dough left out to rise. Her toes curl down instead of splaying up like grownup ones do. I think about all the places they will take her in the future: but right now they are just decorative little floating lumpy things, there for me to enjoy.

Yucky Kiss

2 Chronicles

“Joash was seven years old when he became king, and he reigned in Jerusalem forty years. His mother's name was Zibiah; she was from Beersheba. Joash did what was right in the eyes of the Lord all the years of Jehoiada the priest.” -2 Chronicles 24:1-2

“Amaziah was twenty-five years old when he became king, and he reigned in Jerusalem twenty-nine years. His mother's name was Jehoaddin; she was from Jerusalem. He did what was right in the eyes of the Lord, but not wholeheartedly.” -2 Chronicles 25:1-2

“Uzziah was sixteen years old when he became king, and he reigned in Jerusalem fifty-two years. His mother's name was Jecoliah; she was from Jerusalem. He did what was right in the eyes of the Lord.” -2 Chronicles 26: 3-4

Quite often, being a mother feels mind-numbingly boring. It sounds awful to say, but there really are only so many times you can read the same book or push the same button on a toy before feeling your brain turn to mush. Sometimes I look at the clock and think, how am I going to make it through the next three hours until her nap? Usually this is worst at six A.M., which unfortunately is when her mood is the best but mine is the worst. Frequently I lie on the floor like a zombie making half-hearted attempts to hand her toys while she squeals and rolls around next to me.

I’m the only resident in my program who is the primary caregiver for a child. Sometimes I look at the people around me at work and think, they don’t really understand. They don’t understand how making it to lecture is not just a matter of pushing the snooze button, but of getting up hours earlier to nurse or having to pump an extra time and pack an extra bottle for daycare. How staying at home on a snow day off is just as exhausting as a regular day of work. How going to mandatory evening sessions is not possible because it coincides with her bedtime. How leaving on time is not just nice, but imperative, when D is on-call and no one else can pick her up from daycare.

And for the most part, I have nothing to show for all this, other than being able to accessorize at social events with a cute baby. I don’t have research posters, or deep rapport with my colleagues, or the ability to ever sleep in.

In my tracing of the word mother throughout the Bible, I paused at 2 Chronicles. In a book where genealogies generally only list fathers, it’s striking that the author is basically like: there’s this king who reigned this long. This was his mother, and where his mother was from. This is how the king was in the eyes of God.

These men were the legacies their mothers left on the earth. They did big things, good and bad things, and it was clear to God where their heart was. It was clear to God who their mothers were. Their mothers changed the world.

Every night, after she falls asleep nursing, I hold her a few moments before putting her in the crib and pray over her. May she be someone who loves you, God. May she do something really awesome for your kingdom. May she sleep peacefully. Amen.

It’s good to know all that matters. All of it, the prayers and the poops. To a God who cares more about my heart than my CV, who sees every small thing I do, it matters. And that is good to know.

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This post is part of an ongoing series I am writing along with the author of Souljourn Cafe