a month ago today

Daniel was born, and to celebrate, he smiled at me for the very first time.

Oh, he's smiled before, but they were more baby smiles and I doubt he had any idea he was doing it. Today though, we were facing each other and I was making faces at him - you know, opening my mouth wide, closing it, opening it, closing it..the usual thrilling stuff...and also for the first time, Daniel was imitating me. Then he smiled - for real - and snuggled his little self into my neck before lifting his head to look at me and smile again.

Meanwhile, my heart is still in a bajillion pieces all over the floor.

About the lifting his head thing. He's been doing that since he was frickin' born, and we're not talking holding his head up for the millisecond it takes for it to come crashing back down again. We're talking holding it up, looking around and then losing it to face plant on whatever it was he was lying on. Usually my chest, come to think of it. Anyway, babies are supposed to be like, at least four weeks old before they can do that.

Today is also the anniversary of his namesake's birthday. My dad, or rather, the Sergio component of Daniel's name, would have been 69 today, so let's have a rousing Hip Hip Hooray! and maybe a chorus or two of the old standard, For He's A Jolly Good Fellow.

He's asleep in a different room right now (Daniel, not my deceased father) and that too is a mark of just how grown up my little man is getting. He used to spend all his time with me, either in my arms or at my side, eating, sleeping, pooping and peeing (preferably in his pants) lather, rinse, repeat. Now that his brain is operating on more than one cell, he needs down time. All that together time we had that calmed him down before, suddenly became time for him to process information, which meant he was processing shit all the damn time, which led to a big ol' case of overload which meant there was the dramatic nightly appearance of High Dependency Boy. No shit, I thought someone was infiltrating my baby's headspace because this freakish little goblin kept appearing at 2am exactly to yell and scream and be inconsolable and basically fuck with my perfectionsist streak. Then exactly three hours later, he'd leave and Daniel would reappear and pop himself right off to sleep, just like that. *snaps fingers* Last night though, and hopefully as the result of our new "Sleep Patterning" practices, Daniel didn't turn into an arsehole. Anyway, the point being that he's snoozing happily right now, twenty feed and one closed door away from me. He drifted off listening to the dulcet hiss of an untuned radio, the little freak, because the lullabies were doing jack diddly shit today, and I'm out here typing this drivel so I don't nip in there and wake him up so he can play with me.

Over the last month, mornings have evolved into the time of day that totally floats my boat. We generally wake up at the regular time, say 6 or 7am, then if The Deebs isn't already in bed with me, I scoop him up and make a space for him under my chin, and then we drift in and out of sleep for another couple of hours.

Having this child is funny, in an interesting funy way, not a funny ha ha kind of way (although there are a lot of funny ha ha's in each day with this little clown. He's so goddam serious about everything that he's as funny as hell, particularly when he farts as that's when he's most serious and that's what makes it so funny) I kind of expected to feel a change in myself because I'd suddenly become A Mother, and in the end, all that happened is that my belly went away and now I have this itty bitty person to look after. It's me with a new job, you know? That's all. Oh yeah, and the new boobs. Yup, motherhood is nothing more than the same old me with a new job and a rack.

Happy one month today, my darling, precious boy.

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I know I should write here more often, and the reason I don't isn't soley because motherhood stole my grey matter. Some, part or all of it is that my mother has been here since I was 35 weeks pregnant, and as the title of this entry suggests, Daniel is one month old today. You don't need to be a genius then to work out that mum has been here for the grand total of Entirely Too Long. I don't write here because I don't want to write each day about how her being here affects me, because what stresses me most isn't her per se, but how I am when I'm around her. I don't want this journal to be filled with diatribes about how awful my mother is. Because she isn't. I'm mad at me, not her, for not feeling all the things a daughter should feel about her mother. Then again, I don't have a fucking clue abut how a daughter should feel because I've never really been one. It pisses me off that she still treats me like she did when I was a kid, and it pisses me off that in response, I feel like I did then, all those years ago. I'm done with the "you're so this, you're so that, you're so whatever it is I deem you to be" because I'm NOT those things, not even because she says I am. I'm done with it but I won't say anything to her about enough being enough, because to retaliate like that, to say to her "now wait a minute missy, it's not me who's like that, it's you" would be to be her, and just because I see her in a certain light doesn't mean that's who she is. I wish she'd learn that fucking lesson and leave me and my personality alone. She doesn't have a clue who I am no, and is operating on who she thought I was then when even then, that person wasn't me, it was who she saw in me with eyes that were damaged by what her mother saw in her. Mostly though, I feel sad about our relationship. Not angry or resentful, but a bone deep sadness, tinged with more than a hint of guilt, and that's why I don;t write more. Because writing more makes it sound like all of the above is all my mother and I are to each other.

and the prince awakens.

the end.