-31

Ah, change. 3 weeks have passed, and I've lost more than 30 lbs. The new jeans I bought this weekend are too big already - which is probably only partly due to my forgetting they're not elastic and brutally yanking them down every time I try to go to the bathroom. Leif's hair is growing in, and mine is all falling out. You wait 9 months to get your body back to yourself, and big chunks of it start dropping off. At least I still have all my teeth this time. The wee boy has started smiling, which is freaking adorable when he doesn't couple it with his bulging-eyes poop face, and it delights my vain mama heart to see a dimple in his cheek mirroring my own. He's so cute he melts the brain - I caught myself saying "bootchie boo, doo doo boo, boochie boo boo doo" at him just a bit ago, and wondered if I'd have to go get my doctorate to make up for it. The problem there is that for the time, money, and stress involved I could just go ahead and finish my effing graphic novel. My ego has yet to weigh the two things against each other, so I pretty much don't get anything done at all. I did, however, check out a book on chickens yesterday, so that's progress.

not a hobo

Driving home from Kahului.
"I love Paia," I say, "It's got a hippie vibe mixed with a bit of Lake George. And all the hobos are so young and good looking. Look at that guy."
"He's not a hobo."
"Yes he is."
"No. Hobos don't have cell phones. Cell phone...? Is that... Oh, it's a knife."

I win!


On driving

"I don't know if I want to ask this, in case it's just me being a bad driver, but have you noticed the car trying to drive off the road a lot?"
"Hmm."
"It's like it drifts, it pulls to one side."
"Yeah, our tires are pretty much bald, and the wear from the drive to town, all those hard turns, probably means our right front wheel is about to fall off."
"Oh, whew! Wait... crap."

One of the duties of the library is the retrieval of the daily mail, which entails a drive into town and back with a big white post office bucket and whatever packages we need to mail to other libraries. Lately this is the only time I get all to myself, driving for 3 miles under the mango trees and waving at the cows with Led Zeppelin on the radio. I feel pretty bad-ass, except for the giant knickers and elastic-waist pants. In my office, I pull up Pandora and listen to sad sad heartbroken spinster music on my Brandi Carlile station. In my private heartfelt moments I like to think of myself as a tragically romantic I'll-never-love-again sort of person, which I know I am not exactly demonstrating by being comfortably happy and drawing kiddie illustrations and bouncing a baby on my shoulder, but that is what I like to think. Librarians keep a smile nailed to their face, but what [vair tragic and romantic] darkness lies behind that kindly veneer? Plenty, that's what.

Speaking of librarianlyness, I have been working on expanding my knowledge of our patron base - thanks a lot, FC, for getting this stuck in my head.

In other news, Leif continues to astound us with his easy-babyness. Alas, poor dear, he can not escape all of the plights of babyhood, but he has only thrown up down my shirt once and pooed on my lap twice. :)

edit, one week later: thrown up 4 times down my shirt.

shmoopy night

Kahului on a Saturday. Gavin had been looking forward to the new Star Wars movie for weeks, and ran ahead of us to dance in line outside the theater, too excited to eat the dixie cup of Guri Guri sherbet I bought him (this being a maui specialty, which I used to eat as a teenager on weekends with the swim team). The baby nursed and snoozed through the frenetic animated violence, and Gavin hid his face through the tense dueling. Afterward, we emerged from the theater just as a hula halau took the courtyard stage. A tiny 6 year old girl in an oversized headdress and coconut bra began a Tahitian solo, and Gavin was drawn over, transfixed. After a few minutes he turned with a sigh. "That poor thing, she sure has a lot to jiggle."

^_^

We drove home into the full moon, the pale light casting the sky purple and illuminating the road through the pasture lands, under the bamboo forest, between the canopy branches. When the audio book ended, I put on Andrew Bird and wondered uselessly about matters of the heart. The kids were asleep when we pulled them from the car. Leif was born on his cousin Alexia's birthday. It's strange knowing exactly where we were on that day, two years ago - during that week at Lake George when everything started coming apart - and during those same minutes juxtaposing the birth of my viking son. Maybe there's something to the whole fate thing. I never did take out the new earring; inexplicably, it healed completely when we returned to Hawaii. Maybe the rest of me will, too, then.

I'm happy.

vacancy

With my most triumphant return to the world of weight watchers, I have enjoyed losing 30 lbs in a week. I get 6 stars, mwah ha haha! Yes, I'm a filthy cheater. 20 pounds to go, hoping to be back in my size 6 jeans by my birthday.

I returned to work after 4 days of recovery (ungh) and discovered that my staff had kept themselves busy by weeding all of our popular fiction. After a minor cardiac crisis, I loaded up a rescue cart and spent the rest of the week breaking my own Baldacci rule ("No Baldacci Evar") and getting the Braun cats back on the shelf. The mail was piled up on my desk, and the high school students had yet to taste my wrath. It was a busy week, and Leif was unimpressed from his snoozing spot in his baby bucket.

Leif still has soft dents in the tips of his fingers where his fingernails, thin as onion skin, had curled over and pressed into them before he was born. Gavin screamed for two months and needed to be bobbled on our shoulders; Leif is quiet and likes to lay on the bed by himself to nap. Like his brother, he can already lift and turn his head, and he studies us very hard. When he nurses, he makes a soft baby groan of happiness and his eyes roll blissfully. He sleeps all night, only rooting for me every 3 or 4 hours to nurse. We hardly know what to do with such an easy baby, he's just slipped right into our normal lives like he was there all along.

Our caretaker dropped off a big basket of fresh bananas, papayas, and lilikoi. If I had a proper straining bag I'd make some passion fruit jelly. Perhaps I'll buy one tomorrow when we venture into town to buy food and see the new Star Wars movie. I'm reading a Maeve Binchy novel, and oozing domesticity. (Also librarian wrath. And milk.)

All in all, good start to the new life. Birth, rebirth!

visit from the milk fairy

goodgiddygods



Mike went into town to drop off my mom at the airport, and I sent him on a mission to bring home gigantoid boob holsters since none of my bras could fit around them anymore. He obligingly came home with a contraption from the Motherhood store that looked like a couple of hats on a strap. I put a cup over the baby and only his feet poked out. Amazingly, the blasted thing fits fantastically.

I am dazzled by my nungas.

fell in love with a boy

Look what I did this week.


^_^

Further pics:
http://flickr.com/photos/tempestpilot
http://flickr.com/photos/deathlylost

All is right in the world. My family is gathered happily in the living room, I'm sitting in the breezy bedroom with the sounds of the forest chirping and swaying outside, my tiny new baby is sleeping beside me on the bed. It already feels like he's always been here with us, it's hard to envision life without him even 3 days ago. He's what people call a "good" baby; I'm proud of my knucklehead colicky Gavin, and it's a new thing to have a baby who sleeps at night and cuddles lovingly. He's golden and strong and - unbelievably - mine. To keep. 2 perfect sons.

Bliss.
Birth story at my pregnancy blog:
http://cornypie.blogspot.com/

spreading out

Our belongings finally arrived via a hugely oversized Matson freight container and slightly frazzled semi-trick driver. After negotiating the narrow gulch bridges and cliffside curves, he had no problem crashing through the foliage up our driveway to dump the lot in front of the house. Our lanai is clogged with boxes, and it is a merry treasure hunt cutting them open to discover what wonders the movers did to our things.

Unloading a box of my clothes, I picked up a gauzy white skirt and held it to my waist - it looked like I had laid a tea towel on my stomach. Mike of the 31-inch-waist accidentally tried to wear my old jeans and was confused about when he had started buying lowrider flares. Bah, and feh. My running shoes are sitting with an anticipatory quiver in the closet. I shall reclaim my former athletic whatsits as soon as my vacancy sign goes back on.

We stuffed the car with just-in-case hospital junk and went into town yesterday to meet Dr. Z (for reals, that is his name - he is a rockstar in a tiny preoccupied middle-aged Japanese body), then spent the day exhausting ourselves in the organizational departments of Home Depot and Walmart. Having all our crap means we need a bunch of additional crap to keep it tidy, maddeningly. Gavin and I hung on the overloaded cart as we waited in line. "Mom, you make my heart sing. It's singing, 'Moooom, I loooove you! Tummy tummy baaaaaby!' What do I make your heart sing?" "Hmmm... 'Wild thing! Dun dun duuun dun, you make my heart sing!'" He grinned and bounced a bit, "What does Dad make your heart do?" I snorked and was spared from answering when he suddenly bounced up and landed on the mirror stuck under our cart, shattering it into pieces. We stared at it, particle board frame cracked in two and shards of mirror reflecting a hundred of our saucered eyes. A bored cashier dragged it off and dumped its carcass at an empty register without making us pay for it. Sign of pride in quality merchandise, that. I was impressed it had actually been made of glass.

It was dark when we finally arrived home. Gavin was slumped sleeping against the foam cooler in the back seat, so for a moment we let him sit and got out to stare up at the clear night sky. Even at the lake there were never this many stars. "There's the milky way," I said, pointing. Mike made a wry noise and touched my arm. We stood for a moment, leaned against each other, nodded in contentment, and popped the trunk to unload.

Today I am up and eating cereal in a real bowl, sitting at my own table, and feeling ready to slice open some boxes and get my nest on. I have a new toy; a gleaming blue label maker with two rolls of white and clear self-laminating tape. Nothing shall escape my librarianly wrath, mwah haha!