Day 23: The Happiness Project
One of the things people keep telling me is to treasure this period of time when Sir Thwacksalot is all tiny and portable and cuddly in a way not unlike a sack full of eels on speed. Because fresh babies are apparently the best babies. They don’t talk back, they don’t climb your bookshelf and eat your paperbacks, they don’t deconstruct the contents of your cupboards. They’re just nice and passive and squidgy.
I beg to differ.
I mean, I appreciate his innate adorable babiness but I’m also ridiculously pleased to note that as he reaches that reportedly golden 3 month mark, he’s giving me incrementally more free time and space to do my own thing. I can put him down on his mat for 5, 10, 15 minutes at a time and he happily abuses the jingly ball and fringed mirror hanging from the foam arch while I, say, take a shower that lasts more than 3 minutes and leaves me with sudsy hair and ringing ears from his nearly dog-whistle howl.
This happy moment was actually a series of appreciative moments where he allowed me enough uninterrupted time to do a ton of cooking throughout the day. I managed to pull together a Moroccan kofte stew, tabbouleh, and a big batch of sweet potato oven fries- all from scratch.
I can’t believe how relieved I am to be able to still do this, even if only in short chunks of time.
It’s very grounding, very sanity-enabling.
Tonight we shall see how he copes with my third fencing class.
As Allen Ginsberg once said, Howl.
I remember how much I longed for Mika to grow up. In retrospect I wish I’d savoured his infancy more but I just couldn’t at the time. With Marco he’s been growing up way too fast for me.