I'm Not Allowed To Call Her "Little Beef" Anymore, But...

I promised the families some recent photos of Li'l Miss, so I'll also take this opportunity to give a general update on how she's doing.

Last check, our sweet wee one turned out to be not so wee anymore. In less than two months, she had put on over 3 lbs on breastmilk alone. She has also grown a couple inches. She is LONG, like her daddy. She's gonna be way taller than me one day. I'm going to have to wear heels more often to make my authority role remain credible.

Bryony is looking less and less like a baby everyday (although most people didn't think she looked much like a baby when she came out). Her black hair has given way to dark-chocolately-brown-with-reddish-highlights, and is growing, growing, growing. I can almost give her a ponytail, it's so long. She has just learned to grasp big chunks of her hair (or mine if I'm close enough) and PULL...and she pulls pretty darn hard, especially if she's angry.

Her every-3-hours nursing schedule has made way for every 1 1/2 hours. Since she eats for approximately 30 minutes at a time, this means that by the time she's done eating, and I've got her all burpsed and cleaned up, I've only got about 1/2 hour to relax (or get a chore done if she's sleeping) until she's crying for more milk. My midwife said that a) Bryony is going through a growth spurt, so she's requiring more sustenance, and b) her body is increasing MY milk supply to insure that I'll make enough milk to feed her as she gets bigger. I enjoy breastfeeding, as weird as that sounds. It's fascinating to see how much milk I produce (sometimes I pump just to see how many bottles I can fill up!) and I love that my body not only made this little baby, but now feeds her. It's wild.

Most people (including my entire family) say she looks just like Adam. Often people say she has my lips. I don't see either of us in her. I still see glimpses of my brother and mother in her. Seeing previous generations in the current one sort of makes me feel sad and nostalgic...I really do hope she grows up knowing her relatives.

So far, Bryony has attended her first minor league baseball game...which she slept through...and her first feature film...which (luckily!) she slept through. So Adam and I got to see the newest "Harry Potter" film (all 2 1/2 hours of it) and she waited till the closing credits to wake up. It was lovely!

Below are some of the more recent pix of our little lady. Enjoy....hmmmmm...I hear the beast awakening now...I'd better go!


What's up with all the kisses????


A sweet, quiet moment...


Daddy reading to Bryony and Kika, both of whom seem more interested in what Mum is doing with the camera!


Mum and her baby girl


Bryony hard at work, getting her next meal

Question Day...Leave One or Answer One

One of my Facebook friends has declared Tuesdays to be "Question and Answer Day". You can answer one of his questions or leave a question of your own (that hopefully someone else will answer). So okay, today is Thursday, not Tuesday. But this same friend has declared Thursdays "Cuss Day Thursday", so aren't you f*@&%g glad that I picked Tuesday's theme instead?

So here we go:

1) What the heck is the name of this new genre of music that I hear everywhere?? During the poignant moments of "Grey's Anatomy", on commercials for cars, cell phone service and IPods...it's always a single acoustic guitar with an overly breathy male (or female) voice singing about rainbows, love or something else extremely cuddly.

2) Why do I find 1) so appealing?

3) Why didn't Harry Potter see the thestrals since Year One at Hogwarts, considering he had witnessed his own mother's death?

4) Why does the U.S. still use the English measurement system when the metric system is so much easier and more exact?

5) Why does Greg House still itch and scratch and bite himself?

6) How much longer will the Olsen twins, the Jonas Brothers, Avril Lavigne, and the entire cast of "High School Musical" torture us with their lack of talent and general annoying personalities?

7) Will we one day find out that teeth whitening strips cause gum/lip cancer?

8) Wouldn't it be interesting if everyone mated with a different person each time they wanted to have a kid, just to see how many variations of people could be made?

9) Will the U.S. ever move past its two-party system and actually give folks a bWhetter selection to vote from?

10) Does it say more about me or my husband that he is more into smelly candles, potpourri and facial cleanser than I am?

11) Can horses mate with ponies?

12) When will I be able to eat dairy again?

13) Does anyone else think the love connections on "Grey's Anatomy" have gotten a little too incestuous??

14) Will the public one day take global warming seriously enough to change their lifestyle habits?

15) Where is Adam taking me to dinner tonight?

So I guess I'll leave an answer, too...

1) Yes, of course!
**Feel free to use the question of your choice for this answer...

3 am Playlist

The first week or so after Bryony's arrival, I noticed an interesting phenomenom occurring just about every night. When I'd wake up to her gurgles indicating that she needed to eat, somehow my middle-of-the-night grogginess was overcome by the familiar beats/strums/lyrics of various Top 40 songs streaming through my head. At first it was comforting, as babies don't talk much and so nighttime feedings can get a bit lonely. It was nice to have some tunes to "listen" to. However, it's seven weeks on now and the SAME songs are still prowling the nighttime crevices of my brain. I'm hoping to purge them into the dark recesses by blogging about them...a sort of cleansing of my internal IPod. So, here ya go, the Top 5 songs of my 3 am Feeding playlist...

5. "I've Got a Feeling" by The Black-Eyed Peas (I'm really down with this song, but they've been playing it a bit much on tv, resulting in it playing a bit much in my head)

4. "Midnight Train to Georgia" by Gladys Knight and the Pips (I set myself up for this when I started thinking about a move to Georgia *sigh*)

3. "Heal the World" by Michael Jackson (this one entered the playlist after I looked at his 3-hour memorial service)

2. "Don't Stop Believing" by Journey (thanks to those incessant promos for the new show "Glee")

And the most not-requested, but overly played:
1. "Friday I'm in Love" by The Cure (I actually really love this song, but I'm going to start hating it if it doesn't take a hiatus for a good long while)

Well, I'm off for now...I'm putting my internal IPod on shuffle; hopefully something new will turn up tonight.

That's What Friends Are For

I've been reflecting on friendship this week. The last few weeks have been met with various friends passing through the house delivering scrumptious ready-to-eat meals for Adam and me, cards arriving in the mail to congratulate us on our new arrival, and many phone calls to hear the latest on Bryony's progress. Today Bryony and I met a good friend for lunch, who performed the obligatory friend duty of ooo-ing and ahh-ing over my baby, telling me how beautiful and perfect she is. Friends are good.

Over the years, my friends have validated my distinction of having an extroverted personality. One friend, observing my social antics at a party during grad school, labelled me a "social butterfly." At the time I laughed at the thought, then realized sometime later that she was right. I have a lot of friends. I don't mean that in an egotistical way; I really do have a lot of friends. Some for partying with, some for shopping with, some for sharing long philosophical conversations, some just for a good, raunchy laugh (and some fall into multiple categories). I have been very fortunate to have met many really great people in all the places I've lived in my 31 years. Friends are good.

So I've been thinking a lot about friends this week. Last week I think I lost a good friend, and I'm still reeling from the reality of the situation, trying to figure out how to repair the damage, and saddened at the thought that all is lost. I'll keep the details sparse to be respectful, but essentially my adoring husband left Bryony with a friend against my wishes; not because I don't trust this person or think them perfectly capable of watching my child, but simply because I am not yet ready to leave Bryony with anyone. When I collected my baby and tried to gently explain to my friend that I just wasn't yet ready to leave Bryony in anyone else's care, I thought they understood. Little did I know, I had seriously hurt my friend's feelings, and despite my attempts to apologize and explain myself, the damage had been done. Losing a friend is bad.

I've never (at least in my adult life) been the type to end a friendship myself; I just hate to burn a bridge, or to think of hurting someone's feelings. I've really only ended one friendship, and though it's been a few years, the whole thing still stinks. I hate everything about the process--rationalizing the decision, making the decision, trying to be comfortable with the decision, letting go of the friendship, dealing with the awkwardness that results, wondering and second-guessing that I did the right thing to begin with. I've been thinking a lot about losing friends this week.

And so now I sit and wait to see what happens--has my friend let go of me as I once let go of one of my own friends? Will things ever get back to normal?

I've been thinking a lot about friends this week. Friends are good.

Ferris Bueller Made Some Sense

Okay, I'll admit that I'm a bit of an 80's pop culture junkie, so it's not surprising that I love, love, love "Ferris Bueller's Day Off." Beautiful people, big egos, hijinks, Chicago...sue me.

But I'm thinking a bit more seriously today. There was one bit of wisdom in that movie that has run through my mind a lot in the 1 1/2 years since Shabbi passed away...and to a large extent now that Bryony has been born and Michael Jackson has died. In both the beginning and end of the movie, Ferris looks into the camera and says, "Life moves pretty fast. If you don't stop and look around once in awhile, you could miss it."

Once Shabbi was gone, I realized that all the time I'd had with her had flown by. I'd taken her health and youth for granted, thinking that she would somehow live forever, that we'd always have time together. Death, I suppose, makes you much more aware of life and time. Likewise, now that Bryony has arrived, I'm acutely aware of how quickly she's growing. She's only five weeks old and already she's changing--sleeping through the night, recognizing my face, smiling, rolling over...how can time have passed so quickly and yet I feel as though she was just born?

I watched Michael Jackson's memorial service on television yesterday, and felt myself tearing up as the montage of pictures glossed over the screen. I finally realized that I wasn't necessarily crying for him; after all, I never personally knew him to be truly sad that he died. No, I was crying for me, or rather, for the loss of my youth. Michael Jackson symbolizes my youth, my childhood. He was the guy I once upon a time thought I was going to marry. He was the star that so many young boys my age tried to imitate. He was the performer my entire family hovered around the tv set to watch as his latest video hit the airwaves. He was not just Michael Jackson; he was the personification of my (and many others') formative years. He made us believe that our dreams were attainable. And Michael, like my youth, was supposed to last forever. It feels unreal that he is gone, just as it feels unreal that I am 31-almost-32, a wife, and now, a mother. It feels more than coincidental that Bryony was born shortly before my childhood icon passed away. Now I know that my tears, my sadness, isn't just for Michael; it's for the recognition that I've come to the end of an era--my youth.

With this realization, I've stopped wishing away time, stopped "living for the weekend." There's a whole five days of life that has to pass by before the weekend comes...why will it away? Every five days that I wish away in order to get to a weekend are five days' worth of wrinkles on my face, five days' more beats of my heart, five days closer Kika gets to the end, five days older that Bryony becomes. So, I try hard not to enjoy every momment, even the dull ones, even the ones that seemingly have no importance. None of us know how much time we've actually got, so we might as well enjoy the here and now while we have it.

So...good-bye Michael. Good-bye childhood and youth. Hello, Bryony, my sweet darling. Hello, next stage of my life.

Ray Charles and I Have Got Something In Common

Seems as though I've got Georgia on my mind...some of you are aware that a year ago, when Ads was first accepted into the Army JAG program, we decided to put in a request for a one-year deployment. Initially, we were thinking Germany, Japan, Italy...once we were told those assignments were virtually unattainable (much too popular, therefore no way we'd ever get in line for them), we "lowered" our sights to in-country deployments like Ft Carson, Colorado (near Colorado Springs) and Ft Lewis, Washington. We had been wanting to move westward anyway, so why not CO or WA?

Eventually we were given the low-down: the only assignments available to us were Ft Sill, Oklahoma; Ft Stewart, Georgia; and Ft Riley, Kansas. We were disappointed but decided to consider our options. We agreed that neither Oklahoma nor Kansas were options for us; that left Georgia. Oddly enough, Ft. Stewart is the base that I was born at some 31+ years ago. It gave me a bit of a chill to think that like my own mother, I could be moving to Ft Stewart with a newborn and my Army officer husband. Yeesh. I didn't like repeating history, but I also didn't want to let history get in the way of Adam's and my future. So we agreed--Ft. Stewart, GA, it would be.

We kept the news pretty quiet until we knew for sure that the move was a go. We've been waiting for the last month or so to hear for certain; a couple weeks ago, Adam got a call offering Ft Gordon, Georgia, instead. I'm not sure what happened to Ft Stewart, but I'm not spending too much time worrying about it. Ft Gordon is closer to Atlanta (about a 2 hr 18 minute drive) and to Athens, where we have friends, than Ft Stewart is. Adam asked if we could have some time to think about it before accepting, so we've spent the last week deliberating. Deliberating is really a euphemism for "totally going to take it because there are NO jobs in Michigan, but let's wait and make absolutely sure nothing else pops up". Deliberating officially ended last week when Adam formally accepted the offer. Monday he found out that while we were sitting on our hands for that week, someone else became interested in the position, so Adam might have competition for it. After finally coming to the decision that we are moving, it was kind of discouraging to hear that we might not move after all. I hate the back-and-forth of it all; I'm a let's-make-a-decision-and-move-ahead-with-it kind of gal. Well, it seems as though the position has been offered to Adam over the other guy, because the powers-that-be want Adam to be in Georgia ASAP...well, they're letting him wait until 10 August.

We don't know any details yet--whether the family and I will move with Adam right away or wait for him to find a place for us; whether I will find work once I'm down there or be a full-time mum for a year; where we'll go after the year is over. So many things going on...so little information to draw from!

So that's that, I suppose. Ads and I are Georgia-bound. As much as we wanted to head Westward, we are excited to move somewhere new, even if it is back East. As much as I have been wanting to leave Lansing for the past several years, I am tinged with sadness and wistfulness by the idea of leaving my good friends of seven years to move to a place where I know no one. Not to mention moving there with a newborn. Yikes.

And the moral of the story is: Be careful what you wish for!