Giving up

Jack has suddenly gotten fussy in the afternoons. He's also started almost sleeping through the night. One of my friends mentioned that she only used disposables at night so she didn't have to get up to change a diaper and I thought, hmmm, that sounds pretty great. So we tried it and it totally works. Now I just roll over, feed him once or twice a night, and barely even wake up. I think I have even been getting more sleep than Danny because it's my job to take care of the baby at night and Danny's to take care of the cat and lately the cat has been more demanding than the baby. But the apparent trade-off of this sleeping so well at night is that he doesn't sleep so well during the day. Which is to say, at all. So by late afternoon he is not very happy with the world. A few days ago I realized that my trusty fix-it triad (change him, feed him, burp him) was no longer sufficient. It seemed he wanted something more. And you know what? He did. The poor child was bored!

Yesterday afternoon while I unsuccessfully trying to comfort him, I set him down on my lap to put my hair up in a rubber band because I was getting hot and bothered. The moment I took out the little black loop of elastic, he quieted down. He stared at it with wide eyes. I brought it closer and he started trying to grab it. This has been a recent development, and in fact we've hung the little wooden HangerFreund that Alison gave him (in her quest to meet our supposedly stringent criteria for toys of not being plastic and not being made in China) from the handle of his car seat so that he can bat at it in the car. And that has been the extent of his range of motion thus far: batting, and, if I place the item in his open palm for him, clasping. I think I jumped the gun in calling that "grabbing", excitedly reporting this new development to anyone who'd listen. But yesterday he really did grab. He reached out and grabbed the rubber band. And hung on. I was so excited, I quickly took another one off my wrist and held that out, too, and he grabbed that with the other hand. So we played like that for a few minutes and I wish I could've gotten some pictures, but my hands were occupied with my little marionette, choreographing our own little semaphore dance. Eventually I let go, and still he hung on, so I got these less fantastic but still cute ones:

You thought "giving up" was going to pertain to my giving up on figuring Jack out, didn't you. Oh ye of little faith. No, the giving up is in reference to yesterday also being Ash Wednesday. There's still a lot about Christianity that I haven't quite wrapped my head around. Like what praying's supposed to do if there's already some big plan out there that we aren't privy to, or how a cracker and a sip of bad wine is supposed to nourish my soul. But lent I totally get. Even without the religious aspects, it just seems wise and transcendent. From a practical stance, as Danny pointed out, it makes sense that we fast at this time of year because it's time when we're supposed to be running out of food (if we weren't importing apples from Chile and tomatoes from Mexico). It's a nice symbolic gesture of remembering our connection to the land to fast before the spring growing season begins anew. From a personal betterment stance, it's a healthy moral exercise to try out life without something you're used to. Maybe even something that's not so good for you. It's like a new year's resolution, Danny said, except you only have to keep it for 40 days so it's a lot more feasible that you might actually succeed. We discussed last night what we might want to give up (chocolate? Are you crazy, I'm breastfeeding! Ice cream? Ditto! Caffeine? Danny doesn't think migraines will lead to his personal betterment. Alcohol? Um, we kind of just did that for nine months) and decided rather than some food-related item, we would give up being negative. What better way to bring happiness to those around you and your most inner self than to shrug off the negativity that we so often cling to in this society? And it sounds fairly straight-forward, right? Not being negative means not cursing the lackadaisical motorist in front of you because you'll get where you're going eventually so what's the hurry? It means not complaining about a suddenly fussy baby that's really a very good baby and we should all be so lucky. But as we went about our nightly business we realized it's a little more subtle than that. Is it negative to explain why something someone said made me feel bad? Is there a way to discuss the Taliban shutting down girls' schools in Pakistan without being negative? Some things in the world deserve no silver lining, and I'm not sure how to approach them with my new positive mindset. So it will make this an interesting few weeks of discovery.