The Back Half

My Littlest is six weeks old tomorrow.  I (sort of) took the full week off before his Thursday birth – forced out of the office by ice and snow starting Tuesday.  I’ve been gone from my office for six weeks.  Therefore, in typical American (white collar) workforces, I’d be back into my third day of work today.  Jack was this tiny size when I left him, returning to the nightmare job I was stuck with at that time, driving an hour away from him and feeling like I was leaving behind my two arms, like something precious had been painfully ripped from me, yanked out at the root and leaving a gaping hole.  I was leaving my sweet baby behind so I could work day after day for the CEO who paid himself a six figure bonus in the year that they “couldn’t afford” to give any of us raises, the CEO who told me if I took “one day more than six weeks off” and tried to return to work, I’d be turned away and a man would be sitting in my chair.  (That same year he gave a similarly situated man ten months off fully paid for sick leave.)  My job was unrewarding, my boss hideous, my commute long, and my baby’s needs still so great . . .  Jack’s seventh week was the worst week of my life.  I spent much of his sixth week weeping in anticipation of our separation, which felt so powerfully WRONG, words are insufficient to describe it, except with these dumb cliches.  I can’t do much better for you, on two hours of sleep.  It blew, basically.

Ah, but instead of mourning my lost time during Jack’s infancy – I mourn it again and again, I will until I die – I am making the effort to choose instead to celebrate my “bonus” time with Craig.  He is curled up fast asleep on my chest right now, one arm snaking around my side, and the other clutching a fistful of my hair.  I call him Piglet sometimes, because he snorts.  Goat sometimes, because he makes goaty noises.  Mouse sometimes, when he squeaks, which he does all the time.   Something about him inspires animal nicknames.  We are constantly together, and I love him and sometimes grow tired of caring for him, but we are also slowly, organically growing away from our constant need for one another.  He is learning to be in the world, a little bit, and I am learning to be without him, an hour at a time.  We are easing apart.  It’s a much kinder process, and though I could use six months instead of the three I’ve been granted, I’ll take the three and be happy with them, because that’s the best I can hope for America in 2014.

He still sleeps a lot.  I have about a zillion pictures of him, and 99% of them are him sleeping.

He does still have two big brothers as well, though if you looked at my iPhone photo reel, you wouldn’t be able to guess that.  All the nonsense about “no pictures of the third baby” is thus far proving untrue in this family.  Having an iPhone camera helps a lot.

Liam got hold of my iPhone and took some selfies.

I do still interact with the older boys as well, though honestly their father has been Numero Uno Parent with them lately.  Jack had a Dr. Suess celebration at school at the end of last month, and had a parade that I had to get a costume for.  I bought an orange sweatsuit online and sewed a Lorax face on it.  He was happy with that.

We had some visitors over Mardi Gras.  The Professor’s sister, her husband, their two kids including my tiny peanut of a niece.  Shy of six pounds at birth, she remains a wee little thing at the age of one whole year.  She and Craig are the little’uns, and they met for the first time on this trip.

I have to make dinner, so here’s a couple more random photos that I’d planned to weave into this narrative somehow.  It’s all disjointed and messy ’round these parts these days, but done is better than perfect.