oh my, what a year it's been

I'm still having a hard time with it, but my baby girl is officially a year old! In my eyes, she is perfect, and the best thing that ever happened to Jay and me. I love her more than I ever thought I could love another human being. Her birthday was great -- after a morning of me falling apart, remembering every exact moment of a year prior as they played out minute by minute through the day, we had a wonderful birthday party for her, with as many of her family and friends as possible gathered around. I went all out and made a ridiculous cake:
and Jay went all out and got us a really good keg and made sure to keep it nice and cold (it was a Smalley party, after all):Maura, generally, was pleased:A few days later, we had her one year appointment with the pedi, where she presented a tiny 18.5 lbs. and 27.5 inches -- roughly the size of an 8 month old. Although we think she is perfect, and the doctor called her "charming," we were instructed to call early intervention to get her assessed and caught up on some gross motor skill milestones she's yet to reach -- namely, crawling normally (not commando style, which is her preferred mode) and standing unassisted. Clearly every child progresses at her own pace, and she was an early roller-over and sitter, and babbles (almost coherently) up a blue streak, but our normally unfazed pedi was a bit fazed this time, and we're compelled to react.

We'd get to it, but holy shit, it's been busy. Although it now seems routine, our schedule of me and Jay never seeing each other is I think the primary reason this year has flown by. That coupled with the fact that my job keeps me literally half-pulling my hair out, we are still getting settled into our house, and oh, we're trying to have another baby--it's a wonder I still remember my name at the end of the day.

The having another baby thing-- well, that's a loaded canon. I certainly don't want to blog about infertility, as there are plenty of (well, hundreds of) others who do that better. And, I'm not technically infertile, since I had a baby a year ago (well, my doctor would disagree, but I maintain that I'm not). However, we are having trouble, and while I'm certainly not the most modest or private person, it's remarkably a touchy subject, even for me.

Secondary infertility (diagnostic term, check!) is rather bizarre, because about 95% of the people I talk to just don't get it, which has caused me to pretty much shut up about it. Most of the people I've talked with, even without giving full details, just saying we'd like to have another child, tell me I should just be grateful for Maura and that she should be enough. This makes me want to jump off a bridge. Having another child has absolutely nothing, ZERO, ZILCH, to do with my feelings of gratitude toward Maura, other than that I'd be grateful to the universe if she could have a sibling. Anyone who really knows me knows that frankly, I am probably borderline obsessed with my daughter, and love her so much it's unexplainable. Let's recap: I see my daughter approximately 2 hours a day during the week, my husband even less, all so we can give her the benefit of a parent at home. We are choosing to sacrifice in this way. On the weekends, I want her to be mine, all mine, but I make sure to prioritize the time she can spend with her extended family instead, who love her so much. If I could hide away with her and Jay forever, I would. I love my daughter without a single reservation. If someone told me today that she'd live a happy full life if I died tomorrow and a miserable life if I lived to be 80, I'd choose to die tomorrow. Tell me again how I'm ungrateful?

This eats at me, bit by bit, until there are moments I really do want to wave a magic wand and transport the three of us to some hidden cave where I have nothing to do and no obligations other than watching my beautiful girl breathe and smile and sleep and scooch myself into the nook of Jay's arm and fall asleep myself. This is when I feel peace, free of the judgment and criticism of my everyday.

I really am, despite all else, so grateful for my life, for the people that love and support us and Maura. I am excited that next week we'll be going to MD to celebrate my brother's wedding. I'm excited that we've got a good plan to get us to having another child. I know we've got it so easy compared to so many others. I think maybe my openness about my life invites people to criticize it, and us, more readily. Maybe a change is in order.

I'll leave you with my favorite picture of Maura from the weekend, which shows her contentment with life better than any picture yet. We must be doing something right.

working on a birthday gift for my girl

Make a Smilebox slideshow

Life's a Beach

The best day...

and the word of the day is...

cheese. Yes, that's right. Cheese. Maura's first word. She says it in this clenched-teeth whisper that just makes you want to eat her up. She has a cheese stick for lunch most days, along with her fruit, and that's the word she's picked up on. She also says "Dada," but it's rather indiscriminate, and she says something like "eesh" when she sees something she likes, but "cheese" is clearly intentional. I could just die at how cute she is.Now that she's approaching one, a lot of people have said to me, "Wow, can you imagine your life without her?" And although I think they're just being polite for asking, I sincerely answer that, no, I couldn't. I don't want to put too much pressure on the poor kid, but Jesus H, she's the best thing in the entire world, and I would literally die without her (hey, wait, wasn't that a Milli Vanilli song??) Wow, I've said "die" twice in as many paragraphs. Lest you think I'm depressed again...

See, I smile! I need some concealer and an eyebrow wax, but otherwise, I'm doing good. Trying to adjust my attitude about work, since it will be a part of my life forever, and instead focusing on making the future what we want it to be. The house is coming together; I'm looking forward to Maura's first birthday party, my brother's wedding. I've been losing some weight. Looking forward to another baby. Trying not to dwell too much on who I was, what that felt like to be in such a different place in my life in all those past stages that make up who I am now. Honestly, I'm weary from it some days. Can't the evolution of us as people come to an end to give us some fucking peace? I think I mentioned I went through a period when I was pregnant of having vivid dreams about my past, coming to terms with who I was and decisions I'd made and people I'd had in my life. I thought at that point it would be the end of all the comparisons, all the unrest. That was naive. It comes and goes in waves, and I think it will forever.

I think it all comes back to me sometimes when I think about the fact that Jay and I spend so much time apart; he works so hard to take care of her and then works so many hours, and I just miss having normal time together. Am I going to regret this one day? Regret that we just didn't put her in daycare so we could be a normal family who sees each other more than 30 minutes a day? At the end of the day, I know it's the ultimate best decision, but I'm not sure it will ever get easier.

OK, you're as sick as I am of me waxing poetic; I get it, I am too. My babealicious is doing great, and that's what helps me sleep at night.

show and tell

Here I find myself in my first remotely uneventful night so far in many months. I do have to work a bit later, but tonight there will be no unpacking or cleaning, although there is sure plenty to do. But there is lots of good news to share -- first and foremost, we're in our first home! There were many bumps along the way (Hi, Emily? It's Mortgage Broker. Can you get us a copy of the ATM slip from 17 years ago when you deposited your first paycheck from Sir Walter Raleigh Inn? Yes? Oh good. And can you prick the bottom of your left heel with a rusty nail, jump up and down 7.3 times, and then squeeze a drop of blood into a BPA-free petri dish and mail it to us Fed-Ex overnight? Thanks.), but we made it. We moved ourselves in with a few essentials and an air mattress the day we closed (which was bumped back to June 18), all gung-ho about stripping wallpaper and painting. See exhibit A, how naively we approached this painful situation, unknowing on our first night of pizza and beer that this mess would last for days and days:


All told, it took about 10 days, but by the time the moving truck rolled around on the 27th we had stripped wallpaper and painted 4 rooms (no small feat for 2 un-handy people), but not without battle wounds. Maura did not do well. Sleeping in a pack-n-play in an empty hollow room is no picnic, and it showed. She was so unhappy, which she's never been. She usually looks like this:
Or like this:
Or like this:

But instead, she didn't sleep, cried a lot, wouldn't eat, clinged to you one minute and then fought you the next. It's taken 'till now for her to begin to adjust. Another moment where I'm glad her long-term memory is barely developed. Although my child psychiatrist friends at work beg to differ and chide me that she'll be in therapy by 3 1/2. We, too, were flat out pooped. I'm in the middle of a terribly busy time at work with our biggest event of the year coming up next Tuesday, and I was in no mood to fake professional. But I did, and I think it cost me a bit of the joy I should have felt at being in my new home. I need an effing vaca, for reals. And Jay was more exhausted than I've ever seen him. But we're here, and it's amazingly coming together, and we're never ever moving again. Ever.

Here are some pics of where things stand today with the Smalleys Get Settled movement. Please take special note of my new affinity for framing wrapping paper and calling it art, particularily if it has little birds on it. Jay has been a real trooper in letting this slide, and in return, I have promised to never paint anything lavender.


There are 3 bedrooms upstairs that aren't so exciting, hence the lack of pictures. The most exciting is Maura's pink room we painted, but she snoozing at the moment and so no pic can be had.

In other Maura news, she is getting cuter by the day. No shit, I never thought I would be that cliched parent who thinks their child is the cutest, but I do. I mean, seriously. Look at this sweetness:
Every day she does something more amazing. She's unofficially 17 1/2 pounds (which is still tiny for a 10 1/2 month old but whatever), she's pretty much crawling, she stands holding onto things, dances to music, laughs, reaches for you, eats chicken and raspberries, waves hello and goodbye, rubs the back of her head and pulls her hair when she's tired, and is basically all around the best thing ever. She's really great with our family and friends, and blows kisses with the best of them. I love her so much.

I still get these weird flashes of terror about something happening to her, but I've decided that's pretty much just how it is. I almost threw up the other day when I read a story about a mother who ran over her toddler in the driveway with the family minivan, but I think it's normal to feel that way. I had a dream last night that someone tried to shoot her in her crib, but I took the gun away and shot them first. A 7 year old boy in Massachusetts died on Father's Day when his own father beat him so severely he went brain dead. I will incriminate myself now by saying that if anyone hurt her, I would kill them. Send me to jail forever, I don't care.

On a more upbeat note, generally all is good. It's fucking rained everyday for the past month, and only once or twice been in the 80s, but that can't last forever unless we've reached the end of the world, which I don't think is possible quite yet. So the bright side is: it's summer, we're in our new home, everybody's healthy, my commute is better than I thought it would be, we got $42 back at closing instead of owing thousands, Maura's adjusting, Etta stinks but curls up next to me and I love on her anyway, and Jay is so close to work he's home at literally 11:06 on the dot. Wishing you all the same.

hey y'all

Or, hey everyone I haven't alienated by not writing more! It's lame to say we've been busy, but it's totally true. We close next Monday (yeah!) and have a house full of boxes and big bags under our eyes. Between packing, momma-ing and trying to not get fired from my job for being overwhelmed and distracted, the days and weeks have been blending together.

Here's my favorite picture from the past month. I only look relaxed because I'd had a giant margarita with an extra shot, and Maura has her fake smile that she does whenever the camera gets in front of her, which usually causes her eyes to close and cracks me up.

One other fun fact is that outside of work, this was the first time in months I put on a clean t-shirt that was actually mine and not Jay's. As much as I hate to admit it, I've turned into a dumpy housewife who wears her husband's t-shirts and thinks it's OK.

I reflect on this a lot. As I was packing I was looking through photo albums and got caught up on a particular old picture of me, taken in DC the fall after I'd moved to Boston. I was visiting. I had on a red leather jacket, Diesel jeans and my favorite bright green weird hand-knit scarf. My hair was cute and short and highlighted, and the person who took it said of me, "Wow, she's got so much style. Dosen't she have so much style?" The picture captures that feeling exactly, but as I looked at it, it seemed like another person in another time. I guess, in a sense, it was. I mean honestly, I had a student come up to me once and remark how he'd never seen me in the same outfit twice all semester. At the time, this made my fucking day, no joke. But I guess, no, I KNOW, I can't get a better accessory than the lady above, right? Identity issues continue, clearly...

Another side effect of moving is that we've Googled real estate listings so much we killed our computer and had to get a new one. It just arrived today. And as I was transfering files, I found other old remnants of my past life. Stories I'd started, but never finished. My God how I used to love to write. And today, for an hour, I did. I'd started this story in October of 2004. What was I doing then? Well, I was with Jay, working somewhere I can't remember and I think, had just moved in with Jay in Taunton that spring. I may have been doing my triathlons, as this was the fall before I attempted my failed run of the Boston Marathon (and I have never set one foot in front of the other to run again). I can't even remember the exact details, but reading this old story, and picking up today and writing a few minutes more on it five years later felt so good, like I returned to something I had been missing but was always there. (Cliche, cliche, I know.) I actually remembered as I read this the ending I wanted it to have, unwritten all these years. I called it "seagulls." One day soon, I will finish writing it. Here we go on the so-far parts:

We were at the beach in Gloucester, Ethan and me, and Elise, the woman from the office. Not mine, not my office, but Ethan’s. She was, or she is, Canadian. This means nothing to me, but it means everything to Ethan. He started working at the office right after we moved here, right after we moved from Virginia to Boston, so he could work at this job at Fidelity and I could be, well, so I could live with him, because I’d just finished grad school in ophthalmology and thought it was the adult thing to do, move in with my boyfriend, even though we’d be conducting our relationship long distance, me in South Carolina in grad school him in Virginia gainfully unemployed waiting for a dream job to fall from the sky—anyway, all he could talk about was this nice woman from work, how she was Canadian, and how they might try to send her back because she can’t hold down a job because everyone is getting laid off and how she was living with this boyfriend but they just broke up and she still has to live with him because it’s so hard to find a place in the city and my God? Can you believe it? No, I said, no, I can’t believe it. So can she come to the beach with us today, I kind of already invited her and it would be hard to back out now? And naturally I was compelled by this Canadian so I rolled our towels tightly and sorted through our sunscreen bottles and said sure, fine, we’ll bring her along.

Not that I was thrilled, I mean really, come on, to Ethan, Canadian’s are exotic. And this one, according to Ethan, has even lived in South America and Australia and London and New York and I mean, can you believe it? No, I said, no, I can’t believe it. And then he leans into me like he’s gonna kiss me but instead slaps my butt with both of his hands and grabs tight and laughs with his head back, his neck long and knotty, and I think, this is the man I am choosing to live with. Maybe the Canadian can have him if she wants.

And that morning we went to the beach is when he said to me the strangest thing he’s ever said, and I didn’t know what to attribute it to, but this is what he said. He said,

I just want to warn you I might not be affectionate today, because I’ll be around people from the office.

People? I said. Only the Canadian will be there.

so we picked her up; she lived in the North End, in a small walk-up above Mike’s Pastries, and she was waiting out front of there with the nice little blue and white box tied with string they give you, and she had a whole bag made out of macramé that was filled with food, a bread loaf sticking out near her shoulder, apples settling on the bottom, like a fucking cornucopia or something. We pulled up next to her and Ethan is waving and I got out to let her in the back and Ethan says, “Honey, babe, you wanna let Elise sit in front?”

I looked at him and then looked at her and she smelled like pastries and I should have known then.

So we’re on the beach, and she’s got this spread around her, and we are three across on an old quilt, Elise in the middle, and I get bits and pieces, literally, of everything. My bagels don’t go over big; we are eating brie and grapes from her macramé bag. But she and Ethan each take two, maybe even three, bites for themselves before they even offer me one. I am watching this family to my left, a big family, not in quantity but size. The biggest family I’ve ever seen. And I watch them, the mother in a green amazon print tank suit and stained pink knit shorts, bunched up high in her inner thighs while she sits in her umbrella chair, her calves fat and touching, leaving her feet a full two feet apart buried in the sand. Okay, maybe that’s an exaggeration, maybe they weren’t that far apart, but you could have fit a rubber ball in there, at least. Her ankles were this perplexing salmon color, and I wanted to tell her, don’t be stupid, put some sunscreen on those feet.

Ha! That's a far as I got. But I know how it all turns out and will write it. I will. It has to do with seagulls, eating sandwiches.

well, hello there...

Where to begin? Look at Miss Lady Girl! She sits! She sticks her tongue out! She has chub! It's unbelievable how cool she is. She's 8 months already, and just the best thing ever. Lots to update on: she's 16 lbs. now, moving up to the 23rd percentile. She eats all kinds of fruits and veggies, and if you let her, will roll from one side of the room to the other. She can sit up, and sticks her butt up in the air like she's gonna crawl, but I think she's just being a tease. She's got the rolling down pat, and it is much more efficient than trying to scoot, at least in her mind. She is a true blabber mouth, talking all the time. She'll wake up at 5 a.m. and just lay there talking to herself for an hour, totally content, taking the occasional break to suck on her feet. She's remained the absolute happiest baby, still only crying when she's exhausted. Still sleeping through the night, about 7 pm to 5:30 am. Two long naps (two to three hours) during the day. Not enough hair yet to do much with, except this pathetic attempt at a faux-hawk.


She has discovered the multiple uses of her tongue, which includes her personal favorite, "pretending to eat my food but instead spitting it so far that some lands on my forehead."

But I can't resist this face, even when I smell sweet potatoes on me all day at work.

In other exciting news, I'm writing this from jail as I recently got arrested for arson for burning down this house:

Just kidding, of course. While not as scandalous, I'm equally as excited to report that we bought our first house!! This has been a big part of what's kept me away from blogging -- all of my old pastimes have been replaced by HGTV. I can't believe we did it. It's about a year before we thought we would, but our pal Obama and the $8,000 first-time home buyer stimulus rebate were too much to pass up. And interests rates are SOOOOO low, and housing prices are finally reasonable (at least in Massachusetts, where two years ago you would have needed $350,000 to buy a trailer.)

It's back to the City of Champions for us, good ol' Brockton, MA. It's a beautiful Cape on a corner lot, 4 br., big back yard, MUD ROOM (my favorite, reminds me of Maryland), totally renovated kitchen, baths, roof, hardwood floors, totally move-in ready (sans some nasty iridescent wallpaper), a big basement waiting to be finished. We're just thrilled. Jay and I, who rarely agree on anything right off the bat, both walked in and knew this was the house. We close June 15! It's been very stressful, mainly because we pretended for a month or so that it wasn't and then the reality caught up with us. And, we still struggle with our work schedules and the fact that we never actually get to see each other (still). Honestly, in the course of a work week, we see each other for a total of one waking hour (if that) four days out of five, and then on Tuesday, our night together, we get maybe 4. It's tough, really tough. Tougher than I thought. But we make it work.

All in all, things are great. My post-partum depression has radically subsided, although I still have many moments of panic and sadness at the thought that one day, something might happen to me or to her or to Jay. Inevitably, something will, and I'm getting used to the idea that that's just the way life goes. Work is fine (eh), although I've had two colleagues, totally great people, who've passed away in the past two weeks, both way too young to die, both tragic. I'm trying hard everyday not to internalize things like that, but it's hard for me to feel OK with just a quick moment of sadness. But I'm getting better.

Not pregnant with triplets, or even a singleton, and I haven't reached the point yet of wanting to shave my head. Check back again next week...