be a good mom

A week ago, I wrote an entry about how the minute my baby falls asleep in my arms, I’m up on my feet, putting her in the crib, trying to get something a work project, some laundry, returning a phone call done before she wakes up.

I wanted to linger in the moment of holding her, without moving onto the next thing. Tonight, I finally got the chance. We’d gone over to a friend’s for dinner and she’d fallen asleep in the car seat. I took her out, changed her into a sleep sack, then put on some Tom Waits.

I gave her a bottle, but she was out like a light before she’d finished half of it. But instead of jumping up right away, I just held her. Loved sitting in the darkness with her, listening to Tom Waits. Love the contrast of his sweet piano melodies and his scratchy voice singing whisky tinged lullabies.

Which I guess is a metaphor for motherhood itself. All this darkness. All this light. Mixed up in one big fiery rocket of an experience.

Your cheers have been invaluable to me over the past six months and I could not possibly thank you, or the creators of 43 things, enough for giving me this space and this support. Hope everyone out there had a great weekend :^)

Today, I was putting my baby down for a nap and she fell asleep in my arms. I lingered with her on the glider, listening to Coldplay and I lasted about three minutes before I put her in the crib.

I’m so behind on work and the minute she naps, I’m up and trying to do something. But as I listened to Coldplay, I realized that I really want to just spend a morning holding her. To not jump up as soon as she falls asleep, but to hold her, even if it means she wakes up half an hour later and I get no work done that day. (She’s a squirrelly girly and travels all around the crib in her sleep. If you hold her too long, she wakes up because she doesn’t have the room to do her moving thing.)

So this is my goal. Just one morning, to not race around and be in the moment with my little girl.

My husband just walked by and read over my shoulder. Cross that off your list, he said, you’re a good Mom.

But I know what I want—and I’m not there yet. One of the things I want is a morning where I don’t rush her from my arms to her crib, when I linger in the moment of her sleeping in my arms while I listen to Coldplay sing, “Look at all the stars/Look how they shine for you/And everything you do/Yeah, they were all yellow.”

My baby’s been sick—just a bad cold. But it’s been almost two weeks and I had to cave and go see the doctor. I hate going to the doctor. She spent three months in the hospital when she was born, I was in for almost a month and I just feel like if I never have to see a doctor or a hospital again… Alas, no can do. So I took her in and she has a little infection. No biggie, but I got the much needed meds.

We came home and I hoped that she would sleep so I could get some work done. She slept a little, not much. Mostly she wanted to be held. Bawled when I put her down for two seconds. And I thought about how much when I was little and sick, I wanted my Mom to be with me all day and she couldn’t most of the time, she had to work. And even now, when I’m sick, I still long for someone to sit in bed with me and hold me and play board games with me.

So I held her and then we watched a little TV. Amber Valleta is on the cover of Cookie Magazine this month and she was talking (not too self righteously—honestly) about how she threw out her TV when she had a kid. God bless her. But I love TV, so sometimes me and the bambina watch together.

Afterwards, we sang old Louis Jordan songs for awhile. She’s insane for the Five Guys Named Moe soundtrack and I’m pretty proud of that because I think Louis Jordan is an unsung hero of American music—but that’s another tale.

Then when I sensed she was good and tired, I put her down. Gave her a bottle, she fell asleep, then I held her a little more.

Poured myself a glass of wine. Lit a Mama Mio Gravida candle—which I loved when I was pregnant and is still a treat I try to give myself. And I laid in bed to read awhile about women and creativity and how they balance it with motherhood.

Yesterday I had tea with a new Mommy friend. Her kids are older, junior high school age, but our issues are very much the same. She asked me, “Is it wrong to want more than motherhood, to want to be successful at work, to want money and acclaim and washboard abs?”

I don’t think so, I told her. There is so much I want. The challenge I think is to be present in those moments when you have what you want and not spend every second questing for the next thing.

Tonight, despite the fact that my husband had to work late, and there are a hundred things I could stress about including money and my distinct lack of acclaim and my “tore up from the floor up” post pregnancy body, I sat with my baby on the glider and I felt like I was in a Jack Johnson song:

“The telephone is singing, ringing, it’s too early, don’t pick it up. We don’t need to.
We got everything we need right here and everything we need is enough.
When everything you love has got her Papa’s eyes and your whole world fits in your arms.

You know that I know, that you know.”

Those aren’t the exact lyrics. But that’s how I sing them to the baby. And tonight, I really felt it: “Halaka ukelele, Mama made a baby… We could close the curtains, pretend that there’s no world outside. And we could pretend it all the time.”

So tonight, my husband and I took our baby girl, almost a year now, to the museum. They have a regular Friday night thing with music, wine, lots of paintings to see. She didn’t much like being in the baby Bjorn and at 18 pounds she’s getting kind of heavy to carry, but I was happy to be there with her. There’s so many things I’m figuring out in my new life as a Mom. How to do my own creative work, how to model creativity for her, but also how to expose her to things that will inspire her without being the type A parent who overschedules their child like a maniac. I’m not sure the museum did much for her. She squealed at a few paintings, but she seems to like Saturday morning music class much more. But that’s okay. Tonight, I saw a Frida Kahlo painting that blew my mind and it was nice to see it with my bambina in tow. It was a reminder that I don’t have to separate the things I love from the time I spend with her. When things work out, like tonight, we can bring her along and it will be cool. Now if I can only work out how to take her with me on this month long business trip to south America that I have coming up this summer. My husband wants me to go alone and I want to bring the bambina and if I can talk her into it, my Mom as a babysitter. He just doesn’t get how important it is for me to feel that I don’t have to separate my life as a working woman and as a Mom. We’ll see how it all shakes out. In the meantime, there’s this wonderful evening to remember and relish.

I became a Mom this past spring and I love my baby girl ferociously. What does it mean though to be a good Mom? I think “good” works not because it’s vague, but because it’s broad and open to change. What good is will change every day, every week, every month.

There are constants and I’m figuring those out. But I like the idea of leaving this wide open.

Right now, today, being a good Mom - to me - means being patient, taking the time to play with my baby girl, reading to her every day even when I’m exhausted. It also means reminding myself when she screams like a banshee and I just want to scream back that she’s a baby and its my job to be patient. And, month by month, year by year, if I do my job well the screaming will decrease almost entirely.