smiling so big (5 months old)

2/7/22

I think one of my biggest fears is that he will one day want something that that i can’t financially give him, and I’ll feel so bad about it.

2/9/22

I kind of just realized I think I like sleeping in the bed with him much more than trying to put him in the crib, not only because of the intimacy of touching all night, but I also realized that I am less anxious: when he’s in the crib, I’m just tossing and turning by myself in the bed waiting for him to cry, but in the bed with me, he just nudges/kicks me, and I know he wants to eat, so it’s not so disruptive to either of our sleeps in that he doesn’t have to get vocal. maybe when he doesn’t need to eat during the night anymore, we can transition to crib.

2/10/22

I think there might be this misconception in our society that once you have a kid, you sort of are doomed or sentenced or finished as a creative individual, or that a child makes you fade into oblivion or lose all your edges or something. And there is that life-draining aspect of keeping a baby alive in the early part, maybe the first year, that I’m still going through (and wouldn’t have survived without help).  But stepping back, what feels more accurate to me about this experience is that it’s like you die and then, through your child, get to start life all over again. It’s like being reborn. If you bond with and love and are close to them, you see everything through their eyes. starting from before they can even talk, when their brains are still forming so  you’re forced to read just the look in his eyes or the slightest change of expression to know what’s happening with him.  You get to see a whole life spectrum unfold before your eyes, right there warm in your arms, every day. You realize things about yourself (and others) you never knew because you were too young to remember at that age. and then this all connects to life, the life cycle, priorities,  You really start to understand/search for the meaning of security, the meaning of protection, what’s best for someone else, and it’s all centered around this now-permanent reaching outside of yourself. like, this reaching outside of yourself- once you have a kid, is now…irreversible; you can never go back.

he’s been smiling so big lately, it actually hurts my face to try and match him.