This kid is already a month old, and I can’t even believe it. He’s as sweet as ever. Or perhaps even sweeter now that we know how to calm some of his crazy. He’s an angel, but also very colicky, which means long hours of crying while he tries to work out the gas. Poor kid. We think we mostly have the answer now, though. He doesn’t cry for hours on end anymore, and he’s rarely completely inconsolable. Level up to the next challenge, please.
I’ve had a lot of time on the couch to ponder, and the thing that struck me this month was something I observed when my cousins were born, too; all those little things from your childhood that you’ve forgotten but suddenly come to roost.
Right after my c-section when I was still immobile, my sister came over to visit us. We lounged in my cozy 4-poster, and Cody held Asher, since she never wants to put him down. Asher was fussy, and so we sang my dad’s patented lullaby to him together. The words are variations on “Be quiet and gentle before I kill you.” Bonus points for older kids if you grab them and make them squeal on “kill.” It was a moment it never dawned on me might happen, and there was something magically ludicrous and loving about it.
I was cleaning my ears after a shower the other day and remembering how my mother used to pretend that she found things in our ears when she cleaned them for us. Mostly it was animals, and she’d do the voices.
And then there are the nick–names that seem to persist through the generations. I find myself calling this kid Asherkins and Little One, all things I was called myself at this age. I know that my own mother was Kathykins, and maybe it goes back even farther than that. Virginiakins does seem like a stretch, though.
Its strange, this deep and nostalgic return of old comfort amidst the newness of this child; of this fresh job of Mother. I don’t know what it means, but I do know it adds to the baby-endorphin high I’ve been on. I’ll be riding that for as long as possible.
Casey E. Hamilton 