rice cereal and existentialism

I thought life was passing quickly before, but nothing makes time seem to pick up speed like watching a baby grow and change right before your eyes. He is so awesome and active and awake to the world.

He started rolling for real-real after I went back to work. He could roll before, but he didn't very much, probably because his big sweet head is too heavy. Though even now he mostly kind of rolls around his head. Like a pinwheel, or like you may have seen a breakdancer do. He likes to sit up, but still falls forward after a second or two. I tell him not to worry, his head is just heavy because he has such a big smart brain. Like mama, Phil adds, smart as well.

I bought Hunter a booster seat last week, where he leans nonchalantly and practices picking up rice snacks. He eats cereal and bananas on the regular, and has tried squash and mangoes and apples and other squishable things. But his favorite food so far is avacado, which makes me oddly happy for reasons I can't explain. He gets super excited about it and makes us laugh. He also tried drinking water out of a plastic cup recently, which he first thought was a funny joke, then decided was a mean one.

I love every single one of his facial expressions, and all of the noises he makes, especially when he surprises himself with a particularly loud squawk. He doesn't really chatter, so it feels special when he tries to talk, like he really wants to communicate something important with you.



He has met so many milestones so suddenly that for a few days I was experiencing some level of panic as my own mortality was made abundantly clear to me by way of his rapid development, and I saw his (and therefore my) whole career as a human playing out as if in fast forward on a movie screen in my mind. All I could think was, Holy shit, it's not going to be like this forever. One day he will be an adult and I will be old and then it will all be over and I don't know what comes next. And then my brain would start melting, like, How the hell am I supposed to deal with the weight of this knowledge? Shit, shit, shitshitshitshitshit, holy fucking shit, no stop no, etc.

Usually I have no fear of death and can rationalize the end of my own existence quite well, but I am so attached to this tiny person and his progress is so easy to see and I care so much about it that it throws many of my complacent attitudes into disarray. I think this is a big part of what we are getting at when we say we wish that babies could stay babies forever. It was easier when I had no strong attachments. There were people I loved very much of course, and who loved me, but I knew they could get on just as well or almost just as well without me if they needed to. My son would not get on just as well without me.

And I actually like being alive most of the time now, too, so there's that.

I have adjusted mentally and am doing better, but it was an uncomfortable bout of insecurity to say the least. Thank goodness our minds are generally good at distracting us when things get too intense. Self preservation and whatnot.

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I haven't started his baby book yet (though I did finally purchase one, omg!) so I am using this space to help document his firsts and my personal/parental freak-outs alike. My instagram has also turned into mostly Huntergram since he was born but for the same reason so I am unapologetic.

Seasons, you know?

lust for life

I want a new tattoo, a big one, and I want to go places and have adventures and live an interesting life. I want to be with someone who will pick up with me on a whim and get on an airplane to anywhere without doing the laundry first or making sure the weather will be fine on the other side or that the hotels aren't all booked up already because of a cycling race. I want someone who wants me around all the time, even if there's nothing much to say, just so they can look at me and know that I'm real and as much theirs as anything is anyone's. I want someone who knows what they want and will make sacrifices and take steps to get it, or at least to try to get it. You must always try. Life does not fall into your lap, all neatly wrapped in ribbon and bows. If I've learned anything, I've learned that you have to work and work and it never really gets any easier and no one can really help you all that much and you have to want it and never stop wanting it and -- often most difficult of all -- keep on wanting it after it's yours. I learned a long time ago, too long ago, that you don't wake up one morning and suddenly enjoy doing all the chores, big and small, that make up the hard work of living, you just get up and you do it anyway and that is what is called being a grown up.

I want to make my own traditions and rules and feel however I feel about them and stop doing what doesn't work. I want to climb things and then jump off of them and I want to live beside the ocean finally and I want to dance and swim and breathe. I want to look into the faces of my babies knowing they are the first thing that has ever truly been mine and that they will never be mine at all and that's okay; that's as it should be. I want to move through my life in this world as a force to be reckoned with, as the star, as the heroine, as the main event.

I don't want to sit in the back. I would like to sit in the front, alongside someone else -- sometimes driving, and other times holding the map.