Saturday, October 14, 2006

down in the thinkhole

Most of the pictures from Labor Day will never be seen on the blog of course, but this one is kind of special and perfectly suitable for public appreciation, I think. We weren't planning to document the labor and delivery but our doula brought her camera and snapped some wonderful shots. Ladies, when you visit you can ask G for the whole slideshow. Guys, we can go do something else.


Lots of these pictures will be useful in years to come as behaviour-shaping tools for our precious offspring. "Play quietly or we will show you pictures of your birth!"

Should be loads of fun on prom night when he brings his date around, too.

No seriously, the pictures are wonderful and miraculous but I find them too emotional to look at very often.

It's 8:30am on Saturday morning and I am sitting in my basement office (my thinkhole) with the boy in his car seat at my feet. I turned on the dehumidifer next to him and he is sleeping very peacefully with the hum in the warm basement air.

We all had a rough night last night, not much sleep. G has very kindly been letting me sleep on the couch on school nights, and last night I tried to return the favor and let her get some extra sleep, but the boy had lots of complex needs that we did not understand well. He rarely slept for more than a few minutes at a time. I emptied four diapers and bounced him a lot but still there was not much rest had by anyone.

But I've been down here since 6am and the boy is sleeping sweetly and I hope G is getting some well-deserved z's in the meantime.

Rough week at school. I have turned kinematics into a baffling ordeal for most of my students. But they are all very happy for our new little family, it is very touching. It makes me feel bad when I can't give my students an interesting and well-organized lesson, but I suppose it's an accomplishment if we just get through the day together and make some human connections.

3 comments:

Anonymous said...

I am sure it will get better - it must be a such a shock to the system, for all of you!

Chris said...

I gotta say, all things considered, so far it is a lot more survivable than I expected it to be.

My friend Paula told me that when the baby arrives the chaos factor in your life increases unimaginably, but from somewhere you receive the strength to manage. This has been true in my experience.

Also, life is fine as long as I don't worry about anything in the future. That is, it's not so bad being up as long as you don't think about the lessons you need to teach the next day.

So, like many spiritual gurus would tell me, the secret to contentment is to live in the moment. Working good for me.

Anonymous said...

Ah - living in the moment is Arvo's great gift, and one that I am trying to emulate. Spiritual practice incorporated in to a childcare regime. If you could write a book about it, you'd probably never need to worry about lesson plans again :).