Bee the Amazing

This has been an amazing week, Sweet Bee.  Every morning, you wake up laughing, grinning from ear to ear as Daddy fetches you from your crib.  You wake up from each nap with new sounds and tricks.  You entertain yourself with squeals and peals of laughter.  You love to eat your toes and think your feet are the most entertaining toys ever.  You can sit up by yourself and you spring up to a strong stand when mommy holds your hand.  I look at you, my big, strong girl, and I can hardly believe that you have grown into this amazing being in less than 5 months.

A Thousand Kisses and a Thousand More...

When my Lila Bee opens her eyes in the morning, I return her waking smile with the promise of a thousand kisses.  "A thousand kisses and a thousand more, I love you," I say.  And all day long, I shower her with kisses that i store away for the day when she wants nothing to do with me and has no use for my kisses.   I vow that, when the time comes, I will arm myself with sweet forgotten bee stings and embrace her independence. 

Mothering Mantras

The Difficult Feed

My little Lila Bee is doing the best she can.  She is working even harder than I am.  I can nourish her with love and patience.

At 4 am

In this moment, I choose to mother my precious daughter consciously with a tender touch and calm mind.  I will ignore the voice in my head urging me to close my eyes and tune out her wakefulness.

Every little thing she does is magic

Last Friday, Lila laughed. The very first time she did it was in her sleep.  We assumed that like the sleepy half smiles she flashed us as she was falling asleep long before we got an actual full-on responsive grin, it was just a preview for a coming attraction.  But a few minutes later, fully awake on her changing table playing with her beloved fern, she let out another one.  It was a two-beat sarcastic heh-heh.  It was a mocking laugh of one who is not afraid to make fun of her parents.  We're a little scared...

Alas, we didn't capture that on film, but we did finally get her to smile for the camera!  

Hank Bug and Lila Bee

Back in another life, when 4am feed meant grabbing a slice of pizza on the way home from the bar and sleeping through the night meant rest uninterrupted by the amorous sounds of my roommate and her boyfriend, i met an impossibly cute boy with dark eyes and torturously irresistible dimples.  (If I had known then that one day I would be looking at his dimples on my daughter's face...)

Early one morning as we were lying around chatting about nothing, he asked me who my favorite author was.  Too nervous to think (a constant state during those early months - my heart perpetually racing, constantly catching my breath mid-sentence), I scanned the pile of books next to my bed and my eyes settled on a battered copy of the short stories of henry james that i had recently purchased at the used bookstore on bedford avenue.  "Henry James," I said.  And then I joked that my friend Ann called him Hank.  Or maybe it was Allen who said, "good old Hank."

The bug part is harder to trace but easier to explain - I was allen's fidgety, wide-eyed bug.

At some point the two merged and I became Hank the Bug.

Fast-forward eight years or so.  I'm eight months pregnant and dressed up, absurdly, as a bumble bee for Halloween.  Two weeks later when our little girl came out with big eyes, a round belly, squirming limbs and a little stinger of a tushie, we knew that she was our lila bee.