Honyemoon with Lisa July 30 - August 8, 2005 about romance, a steam engine mother, and wooden trains

	August in California Sid has spent his vacation taking Tom out on short trips, to let me have time for my honeymooning with Lisa

	Summer inversion in Silly Valley

When two people decide to spend the rest of their lives together, they usually go through a phase called the honeymoon. It consists of them never being far from each other, they ignore most of what is going on around them, and they show dark circles under their eyes for they experience nights filled with passion. The first days with a newborn are just like a honeymoon. One cannot abandon a bay who has not yet been used to life; the new mother gazes at her surroundings through a veil of sleepless exhaustion, and her nights are indeed very wild.

Strangely enough, lack of sleep did not bother me much, for the first week, that is. I must have been still under pregnancy and delivery hormones. Quite the opposite, I enjoyed my Lizzy every time I woke up, and every waking hour was a nice opportunity to whisper some tiny secrets to my new daughter, to re-count her fingers, and to principally enjoy being at home with her -- simply a honeymoon.

	Finally I became a steam-powered mother...

	... but Lisa is happiest in her carrier.

True, even from the beginning we had our small misunderstandings. For example Lisa had assumed that I would provide a smooth milk supply. In this area and for the first few days, no one can really excel -- and since we had an ongoing heat wave, I eventually became quite scared. Not only that my unhappy baby kept crying endlessly, she also failed in keeping her planned production of wet diapers. In the end, with the image of my de-hydrated Lisa connected to intravenous hoses before my mind's eye, I condemned all well-intentioned advice of Lactation League, sterilized a bottle and a nipple, and gave my Lizzy some formula. Fifteen milliliters transformed my squealing mandragora into a cute and curious child. It even occurred to me that Lisa stopped to fixate her gaze at my breasts, and has finally discovered -- to her great surprise -- that there is a face attached to the dairy facilities. Then she, exhausted by all the events, fell asleep and slept for till then unheard-of three hours. I fell in with her -- and voilà -- when we woke again, our problem was solved, milk has arrived! And the supply seems more than sufficient -- Lisa was born on Friday, our crisis took place on Sunday, and her Monday doctor's check showed she had regained her birth-weight. After three more days she reached full 9 pounds (4082g) and two weeks after delivery, she had 9 pounds and 13 ounces (4450g).

By the second week, my hormones diluted and with them my enthusiasm for getting up every twenty to forty minutes. I also began to form an opinion that a nine-pound baby should be capable of eating everything in one stretch and let go of her mama here and there. Lisa is awfully cuddly -- in contrast to Tom, who since being newborn, does not like tight embraces and always demanded to be carried so that he'd have the best view to the world. Lizzy is at her happiest when she's snug with her mama. Alas, even her mama is just a human and sometimes needs to go to the bathroom or run a similar unavoidable errand -- and further more, I am not just her mama.

	Thermal inversion over the ocean coast The sun is baking us inland, and fog and cold gathers at the shores.

	Perhaps every child goes through a phase, when he must feed ducks and geese

After two weeks, we may have managed to reduce our nightly interruptions to every two hours, interleaved by sound sleep, as opposed to goofing around and nibbling on mama. Our daily load of squealing and demanding to be held may get solved by a child carrier -- let's just not jinx it -- I shall provide a full report on our successes once we reach any. So far I (hope to have) accomplished to buy a carrier, into which I am able to insert Lisa without the assistance of two or three helpers, and in which Lisa is able to breathe freely at the same time

And what is the popular reaction to Lisa? Her grandmother claims that Lizzy is beautiful. Given the fact that she had claimed it even while Lisa was still yellow like a yolk and in addition to that beset with newborn rash, I don't tend to consider it too relevant. Sid and I feel sometimes that with Lisa, the number of our children has grown in a geometric progression. One would expect that since I used to be in control of the situation with Tom, the two of us would be able to deal with two kids, but it is not so. We always end up missing yet another pair of hands. Our children use power play and exploit our every weak moment. Should Lisa defeat not only her diaper, but also all her clothes, the sheets underneath her, and the changing pad? Then Tom is sure to pick this very point in time to jump from chairs, break my expensive pair of sunglasses, or run out to the street. If a phone rings at the same time or a soup runs over on the stove, you get a home sweet home like no other. Our afternoon sleep time preparations are especially entertaining: to let me any one of my two kids put to sleep, I need at least ten minutes of the other to be quiet -- i.e., asleep. You must agree that such a condition can be only met by creating a time-warp loop.

	Monterey Aquarium the destination of our first bigger trip in four people.

	Tom's favorite exhibit

It appears that Tom is not troubled by her new sister. He occasionally comes to "sing" to her -- wails with a tiny voice over her crib. If we put Lisa in her car seat shell, he rocks it; he hands us fresh diapers when we change her (and does not fail to be amazed how large his own diapers are compared to the baby's) and is generally very nice to her. What throws him out of his balance is Lizzy's crying -- he gets all nervous, watching carefully what we do and whether we oppress the baby in any way. When he concludes that we simply must be absolutely incompetent parents, he takes the matter in his own hands. The other day he even tried to calm her down by offering her his most favorite hippo named Hugo, whom he would otherwise lend to no-one.

Alas, it has not escaped Tom's attention that Lisa can achieve anything by simply crying, and he began to apply the same tactics on us. He had already learned how to ask for everything; how to mime please, and how to explain himself -- now he's back to direct whimpering and whining, and angry screaming, respectively, lest we promptly fulfil his wishes (and we won't, for we try to teach him that we're much more open to a dialogue if he behaves rationally). It's been getting better lately and I submit that his anger may be also related to his age (his so dreaded second birthday is almost upon us); still it sometimes taxes our nerves.

	We try to keep Tom's program unaffected by the arrival of his sister...

	... and luckily, there's a train and a carousel at a nearby park.

In other regards, Tom has been very clever. He keeps extending his communication skills -- still not using many real words, but the few syllables he knows, he connects to sentences, and uses gestures a lot. We were surprised how he remembers his favorite locations in the Valley. The other day we wondered why on our way to a small airport, Tom makes a hooo-hooo sound and circles his hand in front of him. He had discovered somehow that we were going to see some aircraft, and since it is a small airport and only propeller planes fly there, he invented his own gesture for a propeller. With a similar enthusiasm, he recognized the entrance to the Monterey Aquarium, and rushed to the nearest exhibit with fishes. Oddly enough, Tom is not too thrilled by "children's" attractions, and really lasts for long minutes, watching colorful underwater world in regular fish tanks.
He has extended his reading ability to more letters, and can count to two (announcing when he runs into a pair of something -- be it his own hands or perhaps number of pasta pieces spiked on his fork). Getting more self-reliant, Tom often goes to the other room, pulls out some book or toy, and can find himself something to do for a relative long time. To the occasion of Lisa's arrival, he got a basic wooden toy train set, which became the most successful toy so far. Indeed, so popular that he stopped coming and pulling us out of our beds in the morning; instead, he just runs straight for his engine and train cars, and plays with them.

	Our children

	Tom with his train that he got on Lisa's birthday

Apparently Tom deals quite well with the decrease of my attention. Not that he'd be really neglected -- Sid took two weeks off and our granny has been here with us, hence Tommy remains in favor of multiple people. We shall see how he is going to react to daddy's returning to work, followed by the grandmother's departure. I admit that I did not think yet much about how I should operate as a stand-alone mother -- I just hope that by next month Lisa would settle into a routine and I'll be able to combine differences between the two kids' needs into an acceptable life.

I myself feel better now, two weeks after delivery, than two weeks before it. I can walk without pain (not counting my back pain from endless nursing and holding Lizzy); I can pick up and hold Tom, I can clip my own toenails and put on at least my sandals (yes, I have found my own ankles -- among my great new joys belongs that I can not only see my feet, but above all the fact that they resemble the feet that I used to know). In the bathroom, I am again able to sit in the position of a "Thinker". Sleeping is still no joy -- nothing stops me from laying on my back, but instead I became quite obstructed in all other positions. Belly-down position is out of question; my bra size reached the limits of Latin alphabet. I can sleep on my side -- but only on the one I just used for nursing. Finally, Lizzy leads a rather busy night life, and so my situation has been getting better, although very slowly in some aspects.
I hope that in time I shall fit into my pre-pregnancy clothes (or at least into human sizes) again, I shall eat with a complete silverware set (i.e. holding a knife in one hand, and a fork in the other -- not a fork in one hand and the baby in the other), and that I shall have more than two consecutive hours of sleep.

Copyright © 2005 by Carol & Sid Paral. All rights reserved.