A birthday letter for Peter

November 17, 2009

Dear Peter,

Today you are one year old! We’ve lived 365 days together since you were born, but the details of this day one year ago are still vivid. I remember realizing as I woke up that morning that your entrance into the world was beginning, slowly but surely. I had enough time to eat a light breakfast, take a shower, and clean up the house. I wore a blue sweatsuit I had borrowed from a friend. Daddy stayed home from work so he could drive me to the hospital, and Grandma came over to take care of Gabriel, because he wouldn’t be able to stay in the hospital while we were there with you. I remember the silly questions the nurse asked me as we checked into the hospital. You were more and more insistent about wanting to come out and be with us, meanwhile I had to respond to questions about if we had stairs in our house, and whether I would be walking up and down them after you were born! Finally we were admitted, and not too long after that–after about 2 hours, and some creative help from our Midwife Wendy–you were with us, wearing your I’ve-just-been-born hospital cap and lying on my chest. Grandma told me it snowed the day you were born. I didn’t know it– you, Daddy, and I were snuggled up together in our room rejoicing that you, Peter Timothy, were finally in our arms!

Thanks to your big brother, I already had practice with the logistics of babies and toddlers. If you were anything like him, you would be happy nursing or being wrapped in the sling or carrier. So I did what seemed best and you were happy, and you shared your happiness with us. The first day you laughed at Gabriel, playing silly games with a baseball cap after dinner, and he laughed back at you, I realized the dynamism that is having another person in our family who can both give and receive joy. Now that I can see this, I pray that someday God will bless us with more children, brothers and sisters for you to tease first smiles and giggles out of, just like Gabriel did with you.

You are your own person, Peter. Gabriel wanted me to hold his hands for three months straight while he was learning to walk; I think I tried that with you once or twice but you preferred to crawl, usually after your brother and whatever exciting thing he was doing. Now that you have learned to walk, you fling yourself into it with gleeful abandon, arms held wide, running towards the next adventure until you lose your balance and plop to the ground. You’re persistent, though. You scramble up, all on your own, and keep going.

The world offers you its treasures and you marvel– yellow ducks, barking dogs, playground slides, bike trailers, tennis balls, sand boxes, and ice cream all elicit exclamations of interest and approval from you. Your smile is contagious, and your hugs (you even pat me on the back sometimes!) are encouraging. I know God sent you to me for a reason–sometimes I can make mothering such a complicated and busy proposition–because without fail your grins entice me to play, to relax, to be. As my second son, my little Peter, you are ushering me into a motherhood of greater fullness–each day I spend with you, I am more aware, less afraid; more appreciative, and less anxious. Here’s to many more years like this one.

Love,
Mommy

(Thanks to Elizabeth Foss for the inspiration to write birthday letters--I can do this, even if I can't keep up with a baby book!)

Come, Mommy!

Smiles have been hard to find of late, but my almost-1-year-old Peter managed to pull one out of me with this little manoeuver. I was attempting to get him to sleep on his floor bed, and he finally decided he had enough of this going-to-sleep stuff. He wiggled off the bed, and took a long look at the crack of light spilling in from the door. I continued lying on the bed, hoping he would take the hint and come back. He glanced back at me, then stood up and toddled precariously over to the door. He edged it open a little bit, then scooched part way back towards the bed. He seemed rather undecided. He made a move towards the door, then finally, he lunged for my arm and pulled me meaningfully towards the light. I got it. He wanted to have his cake and eat it too–adventures in the lit-up hallway, but not without Mommy! He doesn’t say any really recognizable words yet, but he is learning to communicate loud and clear. When I finally dragged my half-asleep self from his bed, and followed him into the hallway, he wanted to go straight for the room where big brother Gabriel (the source of all excitement around here) was already sleeping. Instead we went downstairs, where he rode koala-style on my back while I finished the dishes. Probably not his idea of excitement, but it was all I could muster for 8:30 on one of those baby-should-already-be-in-bed nights.

Peter's great E.C. adventure

During my first pregnancy, I joked, I laughed, and I made fun. I had heard some talk about mothers and fathers who were so vigilant about their baby's elimination patterns that they would dangle them bare-bottomed over a potty when baby needed to relieve himself, rather than using a diaper. "Elimination communication" or E.C. it was called, and it just sounded so outlandish I couldn't even contemplate it. But then I think I inadvertently ended up doing it with Gabriel. He was 8 mos old, he was an extremely regular diaper-filler, and I decided I was tired of cleaning poopy cloth diapers. So we sat happily on his little potty chair looking at books and toys. Somewhere along the way I had glanced at a website about E.C., so whenever I sat him on the potty I also made the ASL motion for "toilet" and gave him a cue sound (a little grunt, to mimic what he usually did while going #2), hoping that someday he would associate the urge to relieve himself with that sound & sign and be able to tell me before he went. By the time he was about a year old I'm pretty sure he was running to me whenever he needed to go #2, although he never really did the sign. I could just tell by the look on his face. I don't think I cleaned a poopy diaper after about the time he was a 16 months old, although he could have been a bit older. I put him in thick training pants just before he was 2, and he seemed fine with us just going periodically to the bathroom so they didn't get wet. He is 2.5 now, and in the last couple months he's gotten pretty independent about going on his own, both #1 and #2.


With Gabriel I hadn't really read anything about toilet training...we just sort of did what seemed fun and natural and it wasn't until friends talked about it that I realized that normally one doesn't start doing this sort of thing until much later, when a child seems "ready". I am quite glad I didn't wait until later, because Gabriel has developed into the strong-personality type A toddler that would probably still be insisting on wearing diapers because that's what he is used to.

So now the big experiment is to see if the process that we went through with Gabriel will work for Peter, or what we did wasn't really that important and Gabriel just had a quirky love of using the potty at an early age. For now, I prop 5 mos old Peter on the potty and sit with him after his "wake up nurse" in the morning and after naps. We've saved a couple diapers so far, and he seems to like sitting on the potty because it actually helps him balance to play with his toys and laugh at himself in the wall mirror, instead of rolling forward onto the floor, which is what happens if I just sit him on the floor on his own. I've also been feeling a little bit disconnected from him because of all the focusing I've been doing on books and activities with Gabriel, and the potty time has provided the perfect "special time" for little Peter.

I'm sure everyone is as excited as I am about my children's "elimination story" (ha ha) so I will provide updates and anecdotes as appropriate, and field questions should they arise. :)

Baby Peter's Christmas Debut

After many protests on my part, Peter made his debut on the big stage on Thursday night in the Christmas pageant at the school where Michael works. Yes, he was "Baby Jesus"! I had my doubts--picturing hordes of winter-germ-laden kindergarteners petting Peter on the head, or a crying Peter bound to a manger of straw for a half hour. But after much encouragement from Michael, I reluctantly agreed. It all turned out okay in the end--Peter cried for half of his part--which was only about five minutes at the end of the show anyway. Then he settled down and seemed to be making happy faces at "Mary" for the second half--he must have been doing something cute because the young girl who played Mary was smiling down at him--genuinely. At that point I was glad I had finally agreed despite all of my "mommy fears." It seemed like a powerful "pro-life" moment, if only for the girl who had the opportunity to hold him in her arms and marvel at the beauty of his littleness and newness.

I've often thought about the pro-life movement as I have been pregnant and mothering in the past two years. I have never been very active in this movement in the expected ways, but I have often hoped that my presence and witness as a mother play some small part in advancing the respect for unborn life in our country/world. And so I try to be somewhat put together for the day, rather than in sweats and sneakers, even if "all I do" is stay home or pop into the library. I try to have a positive, joyful attitude when I address my children in public, and avoid negative comments about them in the casual conversation I have with the person in the grocery store check-out line. Recently all this has been harder, what with the challenges of being a mother to two, and the challenges of Gabriel's two-year-old-ness. I will continue to try, however, because I know how powerful and encouraging it has been for me when I have been having tough times as a mother to see other moms exhibit cheerfulness, creativity, and joy with their children...often in small, simple ways that they probably don't even realize I notice.

Now I remember...

Our late autumn gift, our new little Peter, has been out of the womb for three weeks as of yesterday. Slowly I am beginning to recall why I started this blog soon after Gabriel was born. With the arrival of a new baby, my physical, emotional, and spiritual life had turned upside down and inside out. What this meant with my first child and what it now means with my second is quite different, and yet there remain a few similar themes, and I think these are what drove me to start recording my mothering experiences. First, there is a constant storm of “second guessing” accompanying every choice I make as a mother–what will this lead to? what habits am I ingraining now that will be hard to change later? am I being too lenient? too strict? etc. etc. Second, there is an inner struggle with negativity towards myself, a negativity I attribute partially to post-partum hormones, partially to exhaustion, and partially to an insidious power that is trying to attack at the heart of where the initial bond with God is formed.

Certainly cultivating one’s prayer life is the first weapon in the battle against all this, and I have been trying to take some steps back towards stability in prayer in the last few days. Could the blog be a second line of defense? Perhaps. I have doubted the value of this blog recently, and have several times come close to abandoning the project completely. But I think amidst the hazes of new motherhood, good will come from drawing near enough to certain thoughts to define them, from articulating the beacons of goodness that flash through this fog and are often quickly forgotten.