Three

Snowden will be 2 weeks old tomorrow. I can’t believe we have only had her such a short time. It seems like she has always been here. The routine, or lack of routine, is all new still: the waking up at night, nursing her for every meal she needs, spending an hour just holding her when she’s tired but not yet sleeping. But actually having her with me all the time seems as natural as all my other familiar daily tasks. Needless to say, I love her. I think she is fabulous and enchanting. I find her beautiful beyond compare and love being her mother. I love to watch her wake up and drift off to sleep because her face goes through infinite expressions in these intermediate states of consciousness. I love to feed her and watch her wide open eyes stare into the pattern on my blouse as she concentrates on eating. We call her wide open expressive eyes her “beauty eyes”. I love how she will settle down to sleep against my chest or in the crook of my arm; all is right in her world when she has her mom that close. Snowden seems as content and as comforted as I feel when I nestle my cheek and lips into her hair on the top of her head.

So far I think that life isn’t that hard with her here, her infant days aren’t that demanding. She is an easy baby to take care of. She has a loud, demanding cry punctuated sometimes by shrill bird-like shrieks, other times by ear piercing screams but these cries signal just a few needs: either her diaper is wet (which she won’t tolerate for even 5 mins), she is hungry or she wants to be held in order to fall asleep. I am starting to feel like I can differentiate between the cries but I think more realistically, I just run through the past hour of caring for her and think of which needs were taken care of last.

The baby book that I’m reading is the Dr. Sears baby book about attachment parenting. The book says that crying is a late sign of hunger. At night I can wake up before she does because I here her smacking her lips and sucking her hands and know that she is hungry even before she registers she is, but during the day it’s a different story. She can be peacefully watching my face or dozing in her basinette and then all of the sudden launch into her cry. She can appear frantic for food before I can even move from one chair to another where I am more comfortable feeding her. Once I am ready for her she will struggle and fight at my chest, turn her mouth everywhere but towards the nipple, continue her open mouth wail and I am forced to sit her upright against my chest, under my chin and comfort her before returning her to to my lap to eat. This is the most difficult part of parenting her right now: having exactly what she wants, what she needs literally pouring out of my body and running down her face while she turns red with frustration, too upset to relax and latch on. When she calms a few seconds later and realizes the milk is already in her mouth she draws in close and fast and eats with that sweet expression, beauty eyes gazing straight ahead. The metaphor for Christian life, our relationship with Christ is embarrassingly obvious. I don’t like to think that the lessons I am learning as a parent point to my own spiritual immaturity, reflect my own infancy but then I step back into the role of parent. I have so much love for Snowden because of and in spite of her infancy; I want to see her grow and learn but I also love her unconditionally, just the way she is right now. I can tolerate and even relish the parent/child-Christ/believer metaphor as I never have before.

This podcast has a couple of stories from the wartime era. I hope you enjoy it.

Bakka’s Life - Episode 2

I know that this first post-birth post should be about life with a daughter, but that will have to wait. We took Snowden to visit her Great Grandma Vera and while she was meeting Snowden I recorded some stories she told of her life. I have called my Grandma Bakka for as long as I have been able to talk and will refer to her as this at points in this post.

Bakka was born in New Leipzig, North Dakota on December 12, 1917. Her Father and Mother immigrated to the United States from Finland and met and married in the United States. My Grandma’s story tells the tale of the modern American west. She grew up on a farm in the midst of the Great Depression, moved to a mining boom town high in the Colorado Rockies. Her husband, 10 years older than her, enlisted in the Navy during World War Two. His age would have prevented his conscrition but he did not feel right staying home when men with children were being drafted.

My Grandma came out west to Seattle to live with her sister and brother-in-law who came to work at the Boeing Plant. I will post some stories about Boeing life I have recorded soon, suffice to say that my Grandma, all 5 feet of her, wielded a rivet gun with pride as she worked to rivet the bomb bays of B-52 bombers.

After the war she spent time in a sanitorium recovering from Tuberculosis, lost a lung, had a daughter, lost a husband and lived life as a single mother in the 1950’s. I plan to tell her fascinating story in more detail.

The podcast posted here tells a couple of tales from her early life on the farm. One I had never heard and another which, along with the goat that ate the prom dress, has a longstanding place in the oral tradition of my family.

I hope you enjoy the stories.

Bakka’s Life - Episode 1