At midnight last night I got an alert from my phone reminding me that it was Pap’s birthday. It made me sad, reminding me that I wasn’t able to go to his funeral. I wondered if Baba would be able to make a trip out to visit his grave. I then also thought about how 84 years ago today, there must have been a big to-do in the Pennsylvania home of some Czech immigrants as my great-grandmother was preparing to deliver her final child. I don’t know what it was like to have a baby in a coal mining town, but I imagine the household was buzzing. And now there’s only one person alive who witnessed it.
That made me think of all the things that are a big deal in individual lives, how these things are really so small and common and ordinary in the grand scheme of things. But instead of devaluing such events, it actually makes them so much more precious because they are these golden moments to the people who experience them, and they stay with them forever.
84 years after that shining, pinpoint of a moment in time, two very good friends of ours got to experience it for themselves. Ben and Jessica Lambeth went to the hospital to induce labor. After twelve hours, Graelyn still hadn’t appeared, so Jessica had to have a c-section. She came out at 22.5 inches and 8.5 pounds. When Ben called to tell us the great news, Amanda passed on some advice to Jessica for recovery: Take whatever drugs they give you.
So, you remember how we tried stopping Milly’s late night feeding cold turkey and it worked great the first night? Yeah, last night wasn’t nearly as good. I had to go tend to her around 1:30, then at least a couple times after that, and then Amanda got up for her once too. Now, all that said, we didn’t feed her any of those times. I changed her once I think (I was tired and it’s all a bit hazy) and Amanda may have too, I don’t know. Other than that we’d just stick her sweetmaker back in her mouth, turn on the mobile and cover her back up with a blanket.
We stopped swaddling Milly, I don’t know, a week or two ago maybe, and now Amanda just lays the blanket over her. She moves around a lot though, so I’ve taken to setting her on one side of the blanket and rolling her over, wrapping her up like a burrito. The last couple nights I asked her, “Milly, are you ready to roll?” She smiles, so I guess she enjoys it.
During one of last night’s wake ups though, she was still wrapped up pretty tight but she had one arm out and I think that was frustrating her, so I just loosened it up and she seemed happy.
Despite all the fussiness last night, she must not have been too hungry. I woke up to hear Milly talking to herself at about 8:15 and she was happy to see me when I picked up her from her crib. She didn’t start crying until I set her down so I could make her bottle. Of course, she did gulp it down pretty fast.
Milly behaved pretty well today. Amanda called and told me that the girls from work were all going out to lunch and asked if I minded her going too. Since Milly was doing fine and I was getting work done I told her it was fine. I got some leftover cheese ravioli from Elizabeth’s Pizza as a reward. Man, that thing had some good cheese on it. It was too tough to cut with the side of the fork I was using, so I ate the ravioli by itself then had the cheese with marinara by itself. Oh man, I’m literally salivating right now thinking about how good it was.
I worked pretty late today, and I’ll probably do some more work once I’m done writing this. I did stop at one point to walk with Amanda and Milly to the grocery store to buy some milk. We actually wore light jackets for the walk because it was a bit brisk.
After we got back Amanda watched last week’s season premiere of CSI on On Demand. I glanced at it here and there. The show started off with a cool scene. The department was broken into and there was some fighting and gunslinging going on, but they took a 3-D freeze frame of all the action and moved the camera all around it. Amanda pointed out how it was funny that they had Laurence Fishburne frozen kicking a guy, an obvious Matrix reference.
After I put the laptop down for a bit and we watched Heroes. We’re watching that on On Demand now because How I Met Your Mother and House both come on at the same time as Heroes, but the other two shows aren’t on any On Demand stations and we can only record up to two shows at a time, and that’s only if the station is on one of them.
Zach Dotsey