My days with Halle have acquired a lazy sway. We wake up, she nurses, I eat, we listen to NPR, we bathe, she nurses, we clean, she nurses, we cook, she nurses, we take rainy walks, she...you get the idea. Chronic sleep deprivation lends each day the kind of fuzzy picture quality used on old Hollywood starlets--all of the hard edges are softened into a hazy beauty.
The endlessly gray, rainy weather aids in the unreality of these days. It seems like it has always been winter and Halle has always been my baby.
Still, the days are not so identical that I don't notice her already "growing up": she looks around the room now with bright, alert eyes, smiling at what pleases her (Toulouse-Lautrec, hot pink, a purple teddy bear with a breast-like nose, and her bedroom curtains); she enjoys watching the cats; she clearly recognizes me and Tom; she bats at toys; she tries very hard to hold her head up (and sometimes succeeds); and I've had to put away her preemie and newborn clothes, because she's literally doubled in size in 9 weeks.
It's an exciting time because all of the sudden, and yet slowly, all of the love we've poured into Halle over the last two and half months is being reciprocated. And all of the sudden, and yet slowly, we can read her signs. Halle, Tom and I are beginning to work as a unit. Sure, the unit suffers daily organizational and communications failures, and everything we own is covered in breast milk, but nevertheless we're becoming a family.
When I woke up early this morning with a hungry baby in my arms and Tom rolling over to put a comforting hand on my arm I thought, this isn't easy but it is happiness.
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