February

A poem about Sava

Sava is the single most amazing person in the universe. Really- i look at her and it takes my breath away. A whole person dropped from my body, alive and functioning, with all the capacity to grow and think and love within her already. She is almost impossibly soft- there are no sharp corners or jagged edges to be found. Ankles and wrists are opportunities for the most egregious voluptousness. Her forehead as round and polished as a seastone.

She has recently discovered her hands: that they can be agents of change, and she is constantly stretching out to the world through them. Either they are clasped in her lap and she is staring down at them in studious concentration (what marvels, these hands!) or they are flying about her in haphazard frenzied orbit. She pummels her thighs in excitement. She sticks them deep inside her mouth, chews each digit thoughtfully. She nurses and her hands are in constant balletic motion.... curving through space in wide s-curves, curling and uncurling fingers, or stroking my chest with the most heartbreakingly loving touch. I am being petted. I am being told, "there's a good mommy". A few days ago, while we were at the local pizza joint enjoying a hard-won beer after a fiercely competitive racketball match, we had our first Sava/hand/engendered accident, when she stared at his beer, calculated trajectory and swiped, knocking it effectively all over his lap. We were awed and amazed. And wet.

February 2, 2009
Your first real cold, and you smiled bravely at us through swollen eyes and a burbled throat. In the bath, a new obsession with leaning over and trying to suck on your toes. I understand completely- they look very inviting to me. In fact… I am gonna gobble them up right now! Other new interests: looking at Nico and smiling and laughing at her. Spatulas- waving them around in the air. Hitting things with them.
February 4th
Your first doctor’s visit in our new town… we met Dr. George Sproul and found out that you are 16 lbs and 25 inches long. 90% percentile for length and head size, but only 50% for weight per length. In other words, you are an immensely healthy, long and lean (okay, maybe not so lean) wonder. You got your first vaccine shots, one in each chubby thigh, and you hated it… cried and cried and I nursed you and you finally calmed down. But it felt horrible to let them poke you and cause you pain.

February 9th
In the past two weeks you have discovered your feet and now when we are in the bath, you sitting like a corpulent little buddha, one of your favorite things to do is to lean over and stick your open mouth around the big toes and chew reflectively. Your face is becoming leaner and more defined… I see the beginnings of an elegance in your nose and eyes- a refinement in the bridge of your nose, so that you are even more heartbreakingly beautiful. I love seeing glimpses of the face that is to come. We place you facing outwards in the sling now, and you really love facing the world and checking everything out. Your fat little legs just pump in excitement, like you are trying to kick the machine into gear. I just found an exersaucer online for you to use as you are just now old enough to stand in one, and you love playing with all the little twirling gadgets and spinning around. You aren’t so sure about the jumperoo thing in the middle of the doorway. Hands are almost constantly stuck fist deep into the mouth.


Feb 14th- 24th
You are 5 months old and already you have flown in a plane to the San Juans for Thanskgiving, and now- from Washington D.C to SF, and from SF to Honolulu, and from Honolulu to the Big Island, and then back again. That is a lot of plane rides for such a small munchkin. You are an amazing traveler (I had people come up to me after almost every flight, to thank me for having such a well-behaved baby). I just strap you into our baby carrier, and we stride through the airports like Amazonian villagers lugging three bags and eliciting happy awestruck expressions from the other people in the terminal. Our strategy for happy flights is 1. Nurse upon takeoff and landing (helps with the ear popping during altitude changes 2. Bring lots of toys (our favorite traveling companion is Mr. Burroughs the burrowing owl, who is a hand puppet who can fly and he followed us across the entire continent, and then over the pacific ocean, and every time you were starting to get grumpy, Mr. Burroughs would finally catch up to us and land, panting, to whoo-whoo at you in a very deep and winded voice and ask “what, my dear, seems to be the problem?” He is a bit of an armchair psychologist. You would squeal in joy and grab him with both chubby arms and do a face plant onto his nose, and start chewing away.) 3. Walk up and down the aisles looking at all the nice people faces in all the rows, and meeting all the other babies (there were at least three or four of them on the flights to and from Hawaii).

You, miss Savalu, are an absolute magnet. People see you and just swoon. I have had many people tell me that you are one of the most loveliest babies they have ever seen. And then they go “I mean, all babies are beautiful. But yours, yours is realllly beautiful. Look at those eyes…”

This is the standard dialogue.

“Oh what a beautiful baby! How old is (she? /he?)”
- She. She is (x) months...
“Really? Wow! She’s big for her age!”
-Yep. She’s a big girl.
“Oh my goodness, LOOK AT THOSE EYELASHES!!”

So we just got back from our trip to Hawaii…It was nice and warm, a welcome change from the frigid winter weather of Virginia. It wasn’t too sunny, which was good because I fretted about exposing your tender peach-olive skin to the blistering rays. It was like an overcast, warm grey bath that we got to swim in for a week and a half.

We basically just hung out with the grandparents and enjoyed being warm, in a condo right off the ocean and a pretty busy street. Graham and Joy came to visit us from the other side of the island and they took us to the cool, secret beaches. We had neighbors next door in the condo who were loud and liked to party, and I hated them because they disrupted your nap and sleep schedule. (I couldn’t believe that I was getting mad at 50 year old grownups who were partying like college students. What a strange reversal for your mother, who at one point was used to having the shoe on the other foot).

I don’t think you really understood much about the trip- you are still pretty much taking the entire world in as if it was a foreign planet, and so why would it be much different for you- to be looking at tropical foliage vs. bare winter shrubbery. To be hearing the chorus of coqui frogs vs. that of winter birds.
Although…… Sand.
Sand was a pretty amazing revelation. We had some nice times sitting on the beach, with you stuffing your face with it. You were baptized in the ocean for the first time, the great Pacific ocean that laps at the great state that your mama was born in, but I don’t think you understood the portent of the moment, but only that it was COLDER than a nice warm bathtub, or for that matter, Harbin Hot Springs.

pix