Dear Porter,
Well sweet pea, I go back to work on Monday. It has gone by fast (as I knew it would) and even though there is a part of me that is ready to get some time wherein I get permission to interact with adults for a short period of each day, I would be lying if I didn’t admit that I do feel sadness in realizing that this first part is now coming to an end. Gone will be our shared morning rituals where I strap you into the sling and go about our daily routines – the ones where I inadvertently bonk you on the head while blowdrying my hair, and drop crumbs all over you as I try to eat breakfast. I’ll especially miss those days when I try to coax a nap out of you by gorging you with formula while we sit on the couch watching old reruns of Dawson’s Creek. You and I have spent so much time strapped to one another over the last month it’s as though the birthing process was just a ceremonial way of moving you from the inside of my body to the outside. I’ve turned into a kangaroo that can do dishes.
I am filled with joy and amazement that I have managed to make it through this first round, and I even managed to do it with two of you this time. You have been moderately patient each day as we have to pack up and get your sister at day care, then bring her home and read her two books before her nap. Sometimes you sleep, but more times than not it is all three of us in there, jockeying for position with a bottle, a book a blanket and a carseat (it has proven to be the easiest thing to put you in so I can simultaneously feed you while holding a book in the other hand). And sometimes – just sometimes – I will hit the trifecta of having you nap…in your bassinet…at the same time as Stella. It is these days that I am so stunned that I implode from the infinite options presented before me, and end up accomplishing nothing.
Your father will be taking over once I go back to work, and I can’t really say for certain what the two of you will be up to over the next two months. Even though he will technically be done with the regular school year, he has managed to fill his plate with other projects. Projects that he is painfully optimistic he will actually be completing. I have been trying to warn him that his ability to underestimate the time suckage that occurs from taking care of a baby will be at the core of his demise, but am getting the distinct impression that he just doesn’t take me seriously. That’s okay – it won’t take him long to realize that free time allotments are dolled out on your terms, and your terms alone, and that you have mastered the art of inconsistent scheduling.
In these short months since your arrival, you have already shown me what a sweet little person you are, and I am filled with such love when I look at you. In some ways you remind me so much of your sister when she was this age, and in so many ways you are completely different. I know that much of it probably has to do with the fact that you are a boy and she is a girl, but ultimately I know that it is simply because you are you. There is a persistent temptation to want to compare everything between the two of you, but I am trying hard to resist. You and your sister are two different people and as I see it, comparing you serves no purpose other than to continually point out how one of you did something developmentally before the other, or weighed more, or was harder to potty train, or able to rewire the kitchen toaster before the other one. If anything, I will try to look back at these pages to reassure myself that phases do eventually come to an end, and that new and better ones are around the corner. Mostly though, it will serve as a reminder as to how quickly it all goes, and that if I don’t pay extra careful attention, all of these stages will be gone and I will have missed my last chance – good, bad or otherwise.
Love,
Mom