Something worked!
I got home from work today and you were doing well. Playful. Your Eeshan Kaka was here and you were your compelling, beautiful, natural self which also means you completely won him over and made him your servant and enabler for life. I know. I’ve been there.
But as the night wore on you weren’t quite satisfied yourself. You were eating, enough to fill you up in the short-term but not enough to knock you out and satisfy you for a few hours. You were napping, but you’d snap out of it almost as quickly as you’d fall into it. Everything you were doing, you were doing in fits and spurts.
I feel lucky today though. I want to figure this out and today, I think I can. So I work some options and get you to take 2 ounces at 10. So far so good. You burp yourself into a milk coma. I hold you upright for 15 minutes. And then we swaddle you and drop you off in your crib. All is well. I clean some dishes. Sanitize your humidifier. I even get some work emails out.
At 11, you’re up again. First I see some flickers on the monitor screen. Motions. It’s you doing your darned leg lifts again. (Your core has got to be pretty fantastic at this point, by the way.) After the flickers on screen I hear bleats in stereo, both directly from the room and from the monitor. Surround sound fail on my part.
But you just can’t be hungry. You’re tired. Your diaper probably needs a little changing. So I do that first. Blue line down the front of the diaper means it’s game on and I have you wiped, diaper swapped, and smiling in minutes. I don’t want to feed you though. I don’t think that’s what you want. I think you’ll take a half an ounce; but then you’ll be unsatisfied and I think you’ll wake up shortly again anyway.
So I leave you on the peanut and we start stretching and exercising. You look like Cynthia Cooper before a game — and I’m your trainer. We’re stretching your legs. Stretching out your arms. We’re getting downright PT up in this nursery. And after a few minutes, a beautiful thing happens. Your eyelids get heavy. Another twist of your hips and your eyelids start to look like they weigh pounds. Like keeping them open is your greatest act in defiance of gravity.
I pick you up, I reswaddle you, and then I caress your head lightly. Just fingertips. Every stroke seems to create a slightly stronger seal between your eyelids. Soon enough, you’re out. And I watch you. I shush lightly. I stare deeply. And I don’t know where the time has gone. I really have no idea.
After 20 minutes I shake off the daydream (mostly because my body was falling asleep in weird places and stages.) I take this picture and decide to finish up some emails and then write this post. Here we are, 45 minutes later, and you’re still at peace.
So today, my lovely, brilliant, amazing, beautiful, gorgeous, stunning, outstanding, wonderful daughter, my love for you is briefly satiated. All because I found a way to bring this look to your face. It’s not quite the happy dance you gave your mom last week, but in context (midnight on a work night), it’s downright perfect.
Perfection kind of seems to be your thing, though. Who knew?
Suneet Bhatt 