Thought for Food

[noraleah-blog]

Scenes from my mehndi party. It all came together last-minute and so beautifully -- I accidentally gave away the special pashmina that my mother-in-law wanted me to walk in under as a canopy, but lo and behold Jane presented me/Ivy with an insane handmade quilt with pompoms, what could be more perfect? ... and would you believe my sister just casually pulled together that outfit at 10 that morning? or that Meghan just plucked that so-perfect-it-looks-fake tablescape from the shrubbery around our cottage? -- which is to say, it was authentically Indian. No one flies by the seat of their pants like they do.

To be frank, I’m not sure I would have ever been satisfied marrying someone who didn’t have something new to offer me -- culturally, I mean. From the first Diwali to the overwhelming shower of love (and emeralds) to mark my seventh month of pregnancy, being an Indian girlfriend, mother, and bride has been one of the most fun experiences of my life. 

I’d never even been to a mehndi ceremony before -- only seen them in movies like Monsoon Wedding -- but sitting on my special chair, decked out in coral silk and gold sequins and the jasmine-like hairpiece that Shelley wore when she married my dad while the artist painted peacocks on my hands (M. = Mayur = peacock in Sanskrit) and my mother-in-law poured champagne down my throat, I felt right at home. Which is a pretty good way to feel two days before your wedding. And I mean Ivy in that Indian dress?? COME ON. I am one lucky duck.

Afterward we stormed the little town of Boothbay Harbor. Causing a scene is pretty much my favorite activity ever so all in all, a five-star day. If you ever get a chance to be an Indian bride in an impossibly picturesque Maine town: take it. 

[noraleah-blog]

Well guys, we did it. We got hitched (ok, technically we were married last year but for people like us -- party animals to the core, not gonna lie -- it’s just not official ‘til the man wears the orange suit, you know?).

I’ve written before about why we chose Spruce Point Inn in Boothbay Harbor (we signed a contract before we were engaged, Ivy still just a glint in our eyes). We were so excited about this fantasy wedding -- a wedding that was also summer camp, with family and friends and kids running wild for the whole week or at least a long weekend, getting to know and appreciate each other in ways that you just can’t plan -- but we were never totally certain we could pull it off.

Man oh man, we did. We had the best week ever with just about everyone we love and dammit, that is what weddings are all about.

Also: Indian jewelry, sexy grooms who arrive via speedboat and surprise-serenade you down the aisle, and sweet, brilliant, freaking blossoming baby girls.

Or at least, that’s what weddings are to me.

[noraleah-blog]

The Disappearance of the World’s Greatest Free Diver - The New Yorker

Natalia Molchanova excelled at one of the world’s most dangerous sports. Now she has vanished in the water.

Hi! Remember me? I used to blog. A lot. And then I stopped. And gosh a lot has happened since my last post, and I swear I’ll tell you all about it soon -- I got married! and it was kinda epic! -- but until then, isn’t this story fascinating?

Molchanova’s technique for concentration was based on a procedure she called attention deconcentration. She said it came from ancient warriors and was used by samurai, and that in Russia it had been adapted and developed for people who held very boring jobs. It involved moving one’s attention to the periphery of one’s awareness, against the imperative of the eye, which is trained to focus. It was a form of meditation. As one advanced into it, the left cerebral hemisphere, which deals with words, grew quiet. This allowed parts of the mind and body more resistant to the frightening stresses of free diving to take over. When she dove, she said she felt as if she had a melody in her head that kept her focussed, “but otherwise I am completely not in my mind.”

In the first forty-five or sixty feet, the diver labors to overcome the buoyancy of his or her body. After that, the body sinks. Divers call it free fall. The task is to fall as limply as possible, in order to conserve air. Attention deconcentration allows the diver to pay close attention, while returning to the surface, to the state of his or her body, to what Molchanova described as “the subjective feeling of empty lungs at the deep.”

[theonion]

“If you had asked me before I became a mom whether I was capable of believing that another person’s life could matter more than my own, I would have said no way. And it turns out I was right, even though Jane is definitely a secondary point of concern for me in most of the choices I make.”

More.

[noraleah-blog]

Holy shit Nancy’s in the Times!!

This is an Ivy League-educated woman who left a money job because she is an artist -- a writer and actor. And of course she’s had to deal with rejection, and of course she waits tables, but goddamn it if she’s not DOING IT.

I love you, Nancy, and I am so freaking proud of you. Cannot wait to (finally) see your performance!

[noraleah-blog]

The New Yorker: How green could New York City be?

Ideally, [urban planner Michael Sorkin] explained, buildings could be repurposed to include vertical farms, with internal greenhouses, exterior scaffolding for hardier plants, and terraces for free-range animals. Rooftops could be covered with growing space, and solar panels could help offset the costs of keeping greenhouses warm year-round. If all of New York’s food were grown within its political limits, the city’s traffic would flow through an ocean of green.

Sorkin’s team has spent the last six years working out the details of this vision. They’ve discovered, unfortunately, that it would take some thirty nuclear power plants to provide enough heat and light for all those urban farms. (You need a lot of agriculture to feed eight and a half million people.) They’re now pursuing a more modest goal: figuring out how thirty per cent of New York’s consumables might be produced within a hundred-mile radius of the city. Some food could be floated in on the Erie Canal; other staples could be imported in a sustainable way. New Yorkers drink more coffee than residents of almost any other city, and Haiti, Sorkin pointed out, grows enough beans to supply half of what we drink. Why not barter: coffee for us, and help with production methods for them? The principles of sustainable development could become one of New York’s exports.

[noraleah-blog]

Sometimes I look at her and I wonder how is she even real?? But I spend every night with her nuzzled next to me, her little mouth seeking my nipple every couple hours, and there’s no mistaking that yes, she’s very real, very human, very mammal (maybe sometimes a little too mammal).

With regards to sleep training, we’ve decided not to decide. I still love sleeping with her, and not long after that cry-it-out fiasco she stopped sobbing in the middle of the night so we don’t have sleep problems per say. Dusk ‘til dawn is pretty calm, so long as she’s next to me. I know that it can’t last forever, and I want her to be independent, but I’m trusting that a natural transition will take place and I’ll recognize the moment when it comes. 

She’s four months old today and I’m feeling those don’t-grow-up-too-fast pangs for the first time (before this every advance came just in the nick of time before we would have lost our collective sanity). But I know from experience that it only gets better: Zoe and Wilkes were so cute I remember worrying I wouldn’t love them as much when they grew up -- only to find they’re way more fun to hang out with now and, of course, I love them even more. I can’t imagine what’s going to come out of her mouth someday (but I can wait for it).

On Saturday we took her to her first swim class and no experience has made us feel quite so much like parents as that. It was her first time making her tiny way in the world, her first time as part of a peer group -- and my first time as one of the moms, cheering from the sidelines. 

I’ve shared many bits and pieces of her development and our life together on Instagram and on this blog but it somehow felt very different to be sharing her -- watching her, talking about her, cooing over her -- with those moms. Probably because it was the first time I found myself talking about her with people who didn’t automatically care about her. The world is, of course, full of those people. It seems impossible, though. 

Let’s see, what else? I went back to work about a month ago and it’s been pretty great. I’m at the office 3 days a week and it gives us the chance to miss each other, you know? (Babies get bored of us, too.) But not enough time for me to miss anything.

And it’s nearly spring, a new season for her to experience, a new season for our family to experience. Make no mistake, I know these are the days. We’ll never be so young again.

[noraleah-blog]

My baby, the treasured plant

So if you follow me on Instagram you know we tried to sleep train on Sunday. The issue we were trying to address is that she's waking up and often sobbing inconsolably between the hours of about 2 - 5 am -- she wasn't doing that in California. It's as though her evening witching hour in Californian has gotten set back about 5 hours. It is, obviously, horrible for us all.

We tried the cry-it-out approach on the advice of our pediatrician, a member of Tribeca Pediatrics, a practice we chose in part because we read about the founder, Dr. Michel Cohen, in Bringing Up Bebe. He and his practice are famously gung-ho about getting young babies to sleep through the night. When Ivy was about to turn two months I got this email in my inbox from TP saying, basically, "what if I could tell you that in 3 days your 2-month-old baby will be sleeping through the night?" At that point I was still in CA and things were going really well. We were (still are) co-sleeping and every night was a wonderful bonding session with generally little disruption (in the form of a fussy baby). But the email from TP warned me that sleep training after 4 months of age was much more difficult; the earlier the better, they said. M. was very much in favor of doing it soon -- his friends have successfully sleep trained their babies at a young age.

I was still loving co-sleeping, so I bargained with him: we would wait until after my sister came to visit over Valentine's Day weekend, since Gena would be staying in the baby's room and that would be disruptive to sleep training.

But then we got back to NYC and her sleep troubles started up again. After a couple nights of dealing with a howling baby at 3 am, M. called the pediatrician. She said that it sounded like there were a lot of hands on deck in CA, and Ivy was used to being held and soothed to sleep (true). She needed to learn to soothe herself to sleep (also true). So on her advice, we decided to go for it. Frickin' CRY IT OUT. Like a boss. Or something.

I was still wary about it -- I wanted those lost happy days of co-sleeping back -- but I felt that when she was sobbing inconsolably in the middle of the night she was begging for sleep training.

Well, she was begging for something.

Obviously, sleep training did not go well. It was a disaster, tbh. She cried for more than eight hours during the 10-hour window that TP tells you you cannot fetch your baby. Don't ask me how I let it go on that long. Waking up and hearing her STILL crying at 2 am, and then 4 am -- it was a goddamn heartbreak. But we said we were going to do it, so we did. When I finally went in to get her at 6:30, oh god, the poor exhausted thing. She was so grateful to see me. I quickly changed and nursed her and then she passed out, nuzzled next to me, for 3 hours or so.

The next day we spoke to the doctor -- she had never heard of a baby crying THAT long. As terrible as it was, I am kind of proud of her. She out-cried the cry-it-out approach. 

I tell her all the time, You're a tough baby, you don't take no shit from nobody (sometime soon I'm going to need to stop using that particular phrase, I know). She really is. The Tribeca Pediatrics sleep-training juggernaut has nothing on her.

But. That still leaves us with a baby who's fussing at night.

I got so much advice yesterday on IG and Facebook from parents -- it was really wonderful, if a bit overwhelming. There are SO MANY METHODS. I got a little stir-crazy about it all last night and started ranting to M. about it. The thing that sells parenting books is certainty. This is the one-and-only fail-proof approach! And obviously that's not what humans are like. (And maybe at least some of those French parents who claim their babies sleep through the night by 3 months are lying.)

Anyway. I'm trying to listen to my gut, and I'm trying to address one problem at a time. First let's solve the middle of the night wakefulness. Then we'll work on reducing nighttime feedings. Then we'll work on sleeping in a crib. Then we'll work on self-soothing. Etc. 

To that end, I'm currently working under the suspicion that the big difference between CA and NYC is that she's not getting enough sunlight here. So I'm putting her in patches of sunlight around the apartment, like a treasured plant. That's her, napping by the window, as I type this.

Um … it's a human experiment? We'll see.

[noraleah-blog]

Thinking about that last post on breastfeeding aides I realized I left out the only one that really made a difference: blind, stupid, stubborn determination.

Breastfeeding is a minefield of guilt, pain, and exhaustion -- and people will not mind their own business about it! Everyone has a goddamn opinion. Our cleaning lady, whom I generally adore but has never had a problem keeping her thoughts to herself, told me I wasn't allowed to eat spicy foods, alcohol or caffeine in any quantity or even avocados! (This right before I was headed to Southern California -- ummmmm nope.) 

And even the people closest to me -- M., my mom, my father-in-law -- at one point said something about breastfeeding that annoyed or even discouraged me, though their intentions were always (of course!) totally good.

I set a goal to feed her solely with breast milk (not ragging on formula! I was formula-fed, do whatever you want/need to do, always and forever), and it took a lot of wherewithal to make it as far as we have -- but we have. 

I think that's the only way to do it. The lactation consultant I worked with told me that breastfeeding has a 3 month training period -- it takes that long for your body and the baby to adjust and do it smoothly. Hearing that at 5 weeks gave me hope (even though I was also like, WHAT I have 7 more weeks 'til I get this right?). She also warned me that my milk supply would regulate to the baby's needs -- which means it would decrease -- by that 3-month mark, and that many women take that to mean something is wrong, and switch to formula. I'm glad I knew that before it happened (which began around 6 weeks), and I'm also glad I'm no longer leaking. For obvious reasons.

And as for diet: you will get SO MANY PEOPLE asking, "What did you eat last night?" when your baby is gassy. And what you will hear is, "So what thing did you ingest to make your poor baby feel this way, you selfish mother you?"

Our pediatrician said the chance that Ivy was reacting to my diet was super-slim. Babies are just gassy at the beginning (babies be babies, as I try to remind myself every day). I could go through a complicated, difficult elimination diet experiment and eventually, I might strike on a food that, once eliminated, seems to improve her gassiness. But, the doctor said, that would probably happen around the 3-month mark -- which is when most babies begin to digest better anyway. (Plus I'd be giving up foods I love at a time when I loved them most!)

Tbh I think the way we treat breastfeeding is just another way we makes things difficult for moms. It's ok to drink a couple glasses of wine while nursing. It's ok to eat whatever the hell you want. It's ok to supplement with formula and it's ok to absolutely not. It's ok if breastfeeding is hard for you and it takes weeks or even months to get right. Most of all, assuming your baby is healthy, it's ok to ignore any opinion, from anyone (mine most of all).

[noraleah-blog]

I wrote this when I was in Santa Barbara. Not sure why I never posted it. Probably some baby-related distraction. Though it's only been a couple weeks a lot has changed -- the 'endless cycle' I describe below is much smoother now. But she's started crying inconsolably in the middle of the night again. Two steps forward, one step back. Anyway, here's the post....

Oh, breastfeeding

You know that episode of Keeping Up with Khardashians when Khloe plots with Scott to get new-mommy Kourtney to start wearing real antiperspirant again? Yeah. I am Kourtney. When I started breastfeeding I gave up my trusty Mitchum ("so effective you could skip a day," genius) in favor of more natural, ahem, odor protection.

NOTHING WORKS.

I am sitting here on the couch trying to get some work done (the baby on my knees -- because she won't sleep if she's not physically touching another human or at least within breathing distance -- my laptop wedged in next to her on my stomach, prob not healthy for any potential future babies currently chilling as eggs in my bod but whatever) ... and I can't think because my own smell is distracting me.

I'm currently using a combo of Kiehl's cream antiperspirant (which M. uses and swears by) and Lavanila natural deodorant (rated Allure's best or some such). I still smell rank.

I guess I need to reapply more often, definitely twice a day -- just add it to the endless cycle of our lives, which goes a little something like this:

feed. let her nod off. but don't you dare hand her to anyone, she will cry bloody murder because now it's time to

feed again. let her nod off. if you forgot to swaddle her between the first and second feedings, whoops, now she might not nap

and speaking of napping, you're not thinking of getting up are you? better to just let her nap on you.

ok and now it's time to feed again!

You get the picture.

If I'm not exactly happy with my natural deodorant situation, here are the breastfeeding aides I AM happy with:

This video: Intended to help medical practitioners teach breastfeeding to new moms, but a perfect primer for anyone. I had an amazing RN who was so positive and gung-ho and got Ivy to latch the very night she was born. I'm thankful for her, but I'm also a bit miffed at my hospital because somehow I was discharged without ever being told about the concept of the asymmetrical latch. While Ivy was getting plenty of nourishment, the latch was bad, and within a week my nipples were bleeding and cracked (way more common than you'd think). It took us quite awhile to correct it -- and honestly, it was only half my technique that led to the improvement. Ivy had to change her mouth opening, too (relax and widen).

My Brest Friend: hands-free feeding, phew (as seen in this photo from Ivy's early days at home.) I have a Boppy knockoff in Santa Barbara and it is far inferior.  I don't use it much anymore because now that she can control her head I've switched from cross-cradle hold to a regular cradle hold (she lies in the crook of my arm) but a total life saver in the beginning, especially. (Some women bring theirs to the hospital -- not a bad idea.) Still handy for when I'm eating while nursing.

Milk Saver: when you begin breastfeeding, your breasts produce far more milk than you really need (as a lactation consultant explained to me, your body doesn't know if you had a small baby, a big baby, or twins). This can continue for as long as 3 months (the full breastfeeding adjustment/training period, the consultant told me). The result is that you leak milk, especially while nursing. The Milk Saver collects the milk you leak from the breast that is not currently being sucked on. For the first few weeks, we would save up this milk and every other night, we'd have enough for M. to give Ivy a 2 oz bottle while I caught a few extra minutes of sleep.

Organic cotton nursing pads: speaking of leaking ... at first I used Lansinoh disposable pads and I found them so uncomfortable next to my skin, not to mention hella wasteful. These are so great. I have 12 that I rotate through the wash. (And now that my body has adjusted to her feeding patterns, I only use them at night, when I am still leaking a bit.)

Woven wrap: after two months I attempted (successfully!) breastfeeding in our Girasol wrap. I've since worn her while nursing on hikes and to Friday martini hour! FREEDOM. I googled videos on how to do it and then just sorta came up with my own method based on those. Note: a friend of ours recommended we try on wraps and carriers to decide what we wanted before I got hugely pregnant -- great advice! Caribou Baby is a good spot to do so in NYC.

Finally -- my consultant reminded me many times to relax and drop the shoulders once she latches on. I have to consciously do it pretty much every time I nurse. Makes such a difference. (Though this doesn't mean your partner's off the hook for shoulder massages!)

[fullcredit]

Here is Budweiser’s annual Super Bowl ad. It once again involves a dog and a horse and is effectively emotional terrorism. And now we’re all crying. 

[noraleah-blog]

I am literally sobbing.

May be because I feel like I've already spoiled -- make that ruined -- my baby, and that I (related) slept horribly last night, and that my head is pounding, and that I'm stressed about every last thing I can think of, and that I'm scared I'll never have the time to get back in shape, certainly not by our wedding in July. 

Or it could just be this goddamn commercial.

[gifsboom]

[tastefullyoffensive]

Video: 100 Years of Beauty in 1 Minute (Part 2)

[noraleah-blog]

Ivy Denise's nursery. 

This is the first room I really designed from start to finish, and I love it so much. It has such good vibes, everyone who has slept there says so (which of course does not include Miss Ivy herself, but all in good time). Even the animals think so: they love spending time in there, following us in when we change or feed her (M. calls it the "reverse zoo," where they can observe the human infant in its native habitat). 

A few notes: it was important to me that the room double as a guest room, so we incorporated the futon -- which will also serve as a great cuddle-spot for story time.

The garland, brain child of my aunt Rose, was made by my family and friends at my baby shower in St. Paul. Each elephant has a wish for Ivy from the person who made it. Someday we'll take it down and read each one to her.

The shelf might be my favorite element: a collection of keepsakes, each with a story to tell (for example, just days before she was born, Brett and Meghan gave us the bronze rickshaw/tuk-tuk to commemorate our trip to India together -- looking back I have to wonder the wisdom of riding in a tuk-tuk when I was just barely pregnant, but oh well, here we are).

The vintage curtain and European travel prints were already in the room and informed the color palette and "theme," if you can call it that: flying objects (and elephants). I think in using key items that aren't "baby," the room will easily grow with her.

The Stokke crib was a very lucky hand-me-down from M.'s friends; it expands to full size.

The mobile is one of my favorite pieces in the room. After she was born, my friend Katie gave me an adorable map print with animals that we'll soon hang behind it, so it looks like the balloons are floating over the world. 

Finally, I love that she'll be able to see our garden from her crib. It's all for you, little Ivy.

[noraleah-blog]

This past weekend Laura introduced us to the concept of the wine sweater: the long drapey sweater you sit around and drink wine in (in the Nancy Meyers fantasy of your life). Jane (being Jane) took it up a notch: the wine cape. Santa Barbara didn't know what hit it.

On Saturday we left Ivy with her grandparents and three precious bags of breastmilk (I dreaded the pump until very recently and still avoid it as much as I can) and descended upon the Funk Zone, a terribly named, totally wonderful neighborhood in an awkward spot next to a freeway and a train station that was recently redeveloped and now boasts hip wine tasting rooms and restaurants. I mean if a girl can't wear a wine cape to the Funk Zone....

To wine capes, to weekends, to friends.

[noraleah-blog]

On bullshit & getting loose

You know when the starlet bounces onto the late night talk show couch two months postpartum and modestly credits breastfeeding for her seemingly miraculous weight loss? Bullshit. Which of course I knew — as is always the case, you gotta put in the work, and she was probably gluten-free and vegan straight through her pregnancy anyway — but a girl can dream right? Ugh. 

Anyway.

Here is what is not bullshit:

Motherhood in those first 6 or so weeks is as hard as they say it is. Actually, no. Take how hard you think it is and triple it. That might be about right. I did not experience depression or even the “baby blues,” but I had some of my darkest nights of the soul nonetheless.

None of it made any fucking sense!

Like why do they sell co-sleepers and bassinets if babies never freaking sleep in them?

And how can breastfeeding — the most fundamental and um important form of human contact there is — be so freaking hard to get right?

Looking back I realize what I had to do is get looser. I was too rigid. (And this is funny because at least six people have told me that I’m one of the most relaxed new moms they’ve ever seen.)

I just had a certain picture of things and it was hard to readjust mid-stream (without sleep, my brain a bunch o’ mush).

So when my friend Meghan, who’s 9 weeks from her due date, asked me for advice the other day I gave her a list of products we love, blah blah blah, but above all: be open to things you might not expect.

For example, I did not expect to have her sleep in bed with us. Friends gave us a co-sleeper (a bassinet that attaches to the bed like a side-car), and it seemed perfect: near but not too near, and no danger of rolling over on her.

But like I mentioned above, she would just not sleep in it, and I spent the first few nights home from the hospital desperately trying to get her to do so. 

Then I accidentally fell asleep while I was breastfeeding her in bed (which is why they tell you not to breastfeed in bed) and woke up to find her kind of slumped over beside me and it scared me to death. I almost killed my baby! I’m a terrible mother! (The motherhood anxiety is always one tiny mistake, one comment from a stranger, one bad vibe away from spiraling out of control.)

But after a couple more nights of agony, desperate to get her to just chill the fuck out ANYWHERE at night, I started to look at it differently: she liked behind held. It was the only time she slept.

What if we … slept with the baby? I asked M. 

It’s stupidly simple. People do it all over the world. It’s part of a whole “attachment parenting” movement. (It certainly doesn’t mean you’re a bad mother!) But it wasn’t part of my vision for motherhood, so I had a really hard time seeing it.

In simply making the conscious decision to do it, I felt, we were defusing most if not all of the danger. We read about safe co-sleeping, we took precautions, and we were (most importantly) conscious of her sleeping beside us (not accidentally letting it happen).

Eventually Ivy and I got good at middle-of-the-night, half-asleep, on-our-side breastfeeding, saving us both a LOT of sleep, and these days, I LOVE sleeping with her. I mean I get to wake up to this….

I love it so much that I’m pushing back on our sleep-training start date (because it would entail she slept in her own crib in her own room). M. is so gung-ho to start. And he’s right. It’ll be better for us all.

But … but …

But I’ve learned what happens when I get rigid. I’ve got to stay loose. And if sleep-training is the next thing for us, if it’s nearly the time to leave co-sleeping behind, that is a-ok.

I can still pull her into bed with us in the morning.

[noraleah-blog]

Open another tab and listen to this while you read this. It came on the radio just after I dropped Gena off at class a couple hours ago. (Her last quarter of college, good god, days into months into years is right).

We went to a dreamy beachside lunch (I’m in Santa Barbara staying with my parents for a month). I had a bloody mary and I should probably warn you that one drink still feels sorta like three to me. Listening to the song, driving my parents’ car in the looping sun-drenched roads around UCSB, I had one of those moments that combine unbearable joy with anxiety and a touch of deja vu. This is my one sweet life. 

THIS is my one sweet life. 

I think I haven’t written here in ages because I am so fully in this life, it is hard on both an emotional and practical level to exit it for even the 15 minutes it might take to put together a post.

And besides, what could I tell you about motherhood that hasn’t already been said?

Maybe this:

You know that deja vu I mentioned? I had been there before: driving a car a little lost around Santa Barbara (technically, Isla Vista), feeling a little looped out, the sun on my face, a song on the radio that could make me cry or smile or both, just me and a car and California, endlessly in a moment…. 

Everything has changed. Before, the anxiety would have been because I was stoned and didn’t know where I was going with my life; now, it’s because I didn’t leave enough breastmilk at home, the baby was crying … and I’m still not totally sure where I’m going with my life. 

Ok, so not everything has changed.

That’s the thing that’s sorta blown me away with motherhood, these past 8 weeks and 2 days. As foreign as this country is, it is so identifiably my life. 

I look at her and I wouldn’t say I wonder, exactly (like, wonder at the miracles of the universe). No. It’s so much simpler than that. It’s maybe the simplest thing I’ve ever known.

She is just so beautifully … inevitable. 

But — she is wonderful. She is a beautiful baby. She has this dimple, she has these eyes… She looks at me like she does in that last photo — she studies me as no human ever has — and I think, of course.

Welcome home.

We’ve been waiting for you.

So I guess what I’m saying is, she wasn’t a miracle pill. I’m still the person I was before this — though I like myself a lot better now (and I already loved myself, so). I’m still a work in progress, forgive the cliche. But now, with a new family member (who sorta feels like a long-lost family member), with a new love for my partner, a new purpose in life (you see what I mean? Impossible to talk about this without retreading words better writers than me have said).

It’s bittersweet, it’s poignant … it’s fucking fantastic.

[noraleah-blog]

Likes: boobs, gas drops, Takashi Murakami, long chilly walks, shocking mommy and daddy by ROLLING OVER at less than 4 weeks (whaaaa). Dislikes: digestion, cold puppy noses, sleeping when it's, you know, DARK out (heaven forbid).