You may wonder, what is baby Apollo doing these days? March was another intense period for Apollo’s
family, but one that we all rode through quite nicely. We saw a changing of the grandma-guard: my
mother arrived to relieve Jonah’s mother, Carol, as Apollo’s care-provider
during my working hours. I had been
worried about this transition—if you recall, Apollo cried every day for the
first month that I left him in Carol’s care for a few hours, sometimes crying
for all the hours of my absence. Eventually,
of course, he grew to love his “Oma.” He
would happily run to get his shoes for their outings, ran to greet her when she
came in the door, and showered her with kisses and affection all day. I was nervous that we would go back to square
one with my mother. But this time the
transition was not a problem. Within a
day or two of my mother’s arrival, he was laughing at all her jokes, taking her
hand to lead her around, and happy to play alone with her. There was no crying when I left for the
university, and I would return to find them playing peacefully.
This was a big relief, especially because I had to work more
in March than I have yet. The lovely
dean of my wonderful program asked me to handle a series of Intellectual
Property lectures, in addition to the Contracts course I was teaching. I therefore had to find extra hours to
prepare more lectures, and to try to do so in a way that left me time to meet
my domestic responsibilities. I have
learned to find the extra hours where so many mothers seem to find them: I take
them out of my sleep. Because I am not a
late-night thinker, I have developed a routine of rising early—5:30am. But I also go to sleep earlier now, so
perhaps I’ve really taken this time from the end of my day, which I used to
devote to my bath ritual and to reading for pleasure. Our day now looks more like this:
I rise at 5:30. I
have an hour or so to do my morning stretches, consume my morning beverages,
and do a little work at my computer.
Then Apollo wakes and we go through his waking routine, while Jonah
wakes and goes out for a run. We say
good morning to all of Apollo’s body parts, to me, to the different parts of
the room; we open the curtains and say good morning to the street. He runs down the hall to say good morning to
his Grandmama. We play and clean our
room, make our bed. Then he joins Jonah
for his morning routine. Because Jonah
comes home from work after Apollo’s bedtime, their weekday time is 7:30 – 9am,
this morning routine and then our family breakfast. Apollo loves watching Jonah pee in the potty,
take a shower, shave, comb his hair, dress.
He mimics whatever he can along the way.
They dress together and go downstairs, say good morning to the garden,
put on some music and dance a bit or play with toys. At 8:30, we three adults and baby have
breakfast together. Again because Jonah
comes home late, it’s nice to have this family meal and opportunity to touch
base. At 9, Jonah leaves for work, and I
do too—sometimes to the university, but usually just up into my study, where I
close the door and work. Then Apollo
plays with his Grandmama for the morning: they garden together, or go for a
long walk that includes parks and playgrounds; they have snacks and play with
toys. I hear him pealing with laughter
at her funny A-B-C and 1-2-3 games. If
I’m working at home, I’ll put him down for his nap around 12:30 and greet him
when he wakes around 2; otherwise, my mother does. After his nap, I’m with him for the
afternoon.
Sometimes, it’s reversed; we play for the morning, and I
work for the afternoon. By 5:30, I’m
making dinner. My mother has been great
about being around during the dinner hour in case he isn’t contented to play
with pots and pans while I cook, because it is not easy to cook with a toddler
underfoot. The three of us eat at 6:30,
then Apollo plays for 15-20 minutes and says goodnight to his toys
downstairs. Then he takes his bath. As his swimming skills have developed, bath
just becomes more and more fun. He can
float on his back now in our big, deep bathtub—he flips from front to back like
a seal—he blows bubbles with a tune. He
splashes and kicks his legs. I sometimes
jump in with him for the last few minutes to wash off, and this is my bath for
the day. After the bath, he says
goodnight to the different rooms upstairs—gives his grandmother multiple
goodnight kisses—and then we tuck in for the night.
I might not have mentioned the status of our co-sleeping
situation? By the time we moved here, in
November, we were just too squished with all 3 of us in a double bed. But we didn’t feel like Apollo wanted or
needed his own room yet… I’ll save a
“why co-sleep” discussion for another post.
For now I will tell you our solution: we put a single bed next to our
double bed—right up against it—so our bedroom is mostly this giant bed
now. The single is “his bed.” I nurse him to sleep in it. Then I flop over into the big bed. Sometimes I fall asleep straight away. If I have a little energy left, I spend my
last few minutes of the day reading back issues of Martha Stewart Living or
other cookbooks or magazines. I’ve
collected MSL for long enough that I separate out a stack of, say, 5 or 6 April
issues, and I’ll just read through them during April for ideas and
inspiration. I love you Martha!
So that’s our day. An
update of Apollo wouldn’t be complete without a report on his verbal
skills. He recently expanded from a
repertoire of one word: “Hi”—to two words: “Hi” and “mama.” That’s it.
And yet—he has been communicating with total clarity for months! He has taught us all how much a person can say
without words. He gestures with great
effectiveness—he moved from simple signals that we taught him for, e.g., “all
done,” to creating his own signals for, e.g., water, to miming exactly what he
wants us to do or get for him. And,
while his tongue is still too untamed to enunciate for him, he has a strong
mastery of cadence and the intonation of speech. So he applies his sounds, “ah” and “ooo” and
“uh” to the cadence of statements and questions and exclamations and, I tell
you, we usually know what he is saying.
Furthermore—he understands everything we say—everything relevant to him,
at least. We ask him questions, give him
options, issue instructions, and all are responded to appropriately.
A brief illustrative vignette: One night, a few weeks ago, I
was nursing him to sleep. Like many
babies, he tends to prefer one breast to the other, and on this night was
drinking from my fast-flow left breast and neglecting my slow-flow right one,
which was rather uncomfortably full of milk.
I urged the right breast upon him, but he declined. Then he used his signal for requesting a
song. I sang one or two of our bedtime
lullabies and then stopped. He looked up
and signaled again for song. I said
slowly, “Drink the milk from this [right] breast, and then I will sing you a
song.” He looked at me, the breast, he
thought—and then he drank from the right breast. And looked up for the song.
He can’t talk, but he can bargain! I find that amazing.
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