a solution for leaky baby bottles

(First in a series of posts I'm calling Brilliant Ideas at 4am because damn - my synapsis are ON FIRE when I'm sleep-deprived and bleary-eyed, feeding a hungry Max in the wee hours.)




For leaky bottles.


This:

And this:

And you have a little drip-catcher and no longer find yourself cursing a wet and sticky breastmilk-covered hand and pajamas.  I bought a whole pack of the little hairband thingies and keep them with my revolving supply of clean bottles on the counter, and wash the dirty ones in the sink with the dirty bottles.  Easy.

not about the bow tie

I think it is unnatural to think that there is such a thing as a blue-sky, white-clouded happy childhood for anybody.  Childhood is a very, very tricky business of surviving it.  Because if one thing goes wrong or anything goes wrong, and usually something goes wrong, then you are comprised as a human being.  You're going to trip over that for a good part of your life.  -Maurice Sendak

I'll tell you what - I'm tired of feeling like the very sky is falling down around me, raining bits of blue-gray ceiling tiles onto my head.  I'm tired of worrying that I'll look up and find a hole way up there through which a yawning void of nothing threatens to invade.  I'm tired of feeling a clench in my stomach each time I anticipate anything that requires movement.  I'm tired of worrying over the when and the how.

Yesterday afternoon Max slept in his carrier (fresh from a trip to Target) while Alice brought me fistfuls of plastic food.  She made hamburgers and sandwiches and ice cream cones.  Fruit and eggs and maple syrup (for the hamburger, of course).  She ran to me with delight in her eyes and a smile on her face for the sheer joy of seeing me looking back at her.

Maurice Sendak passed away on Tuesday.  I'm sure you all know that, and maybe some of you don't agree with his politics.  And maybe some of you don't even like his books (Where the Wild Things Are, Little Bear, etc.).  But the man had a distinct sense of the side of childhood we don't often acknowledge - and I love him for that.  Because as I'm thinking so hard about the childhood I'm crafting for my own two little people - worrying over their naps and dirty diapers and developmental needs, I often forget how truly messy childhood really is.  And how messy, naturally so, parenthood is.  I try for perfection and really that isn't the best way to serve my little people.  They need the mess.  They need the bumps and bruises.  Because no matter what I do, those things are going to come for them anyway.

So here's to giving our children imperfection and revelling in it.  And here's to Mr. Sendak.  He will be missed.

I don't believe in children.  I don't believe in childhood.  I don't believe that there's a demarcation.  'Oh you mustn't tell them that.  You mustn't tell them that.'  You tell them anything you want.  Just tell them if it's true.  If it's true you tell them.  -Maurice Sendak

rusty

I keep trying to scratch off the rust--- doing my best to return to normalcy and documenting life here at The Creamery.  But the days have been so far from anything normal.  I'm on a different planet.  The topography, the geography, the astronomy--- all foreign.

I face the task of learning the map of this new place, and my location in it.

But for now I do my best to focus my eyes on the small square of earth beneath these feet.  I tell myself I know that there is grass here.  It is verdant green and rich with life.  There are birds singing somewhere in the distance.  And the children - the plural nature of these beings that inhabit this space with me, they are here and present.  Their needs and wants have been the pulse of my existence for the past eight weeks and now I must adjust my sight, try to unburden myself from the darkness and know that yes, I am standing here in this place.  And it's going to feel like home one day soon.




(tomorrow I will tell you why Max was dressed up in his finest; and yes that is a tiny baby bow tie)