10/3/10: on this day we said bye-bye to mama milk [ bittersweet bittersweet]

file under: a perfectly bittersweet thing:::::::tonight we said bye-bye to mama milk. i think it is finally. we talked about it as finn went to sleep:::i said, you know i love you and will always cuddle you and hug you. and he said, yeah, very softly. i said, mama loves you so much and now it is just the time to say bye to mama milk. and he said, yeah, very softly again. and i said, you understand then? and he said yeah. and we held hands and i cried in his hair as he fell asleep. aaaah bittersweet f-in mamahood.

and right here i'd like to mention this phenomena: do your experience this:::the daydreaming thing as you lie with your child putting him/her down to bed::::this thing can get frustrating! ever since finn has been alive i have dreamed of doing so much that i will never be able to possibly do! are these technically dreams deferred, and if so where do they go? yet i do have the time/ dream-space to dream these things for i am often putting a child down for nap or bed! tonight's fantasy went like this:::well it was actually like i was scheming, putting this blog together all the while along with everything else::::i dreamed this: that the blog post would be all about finn's weaning, and this very perfectly bittersweet thing of my baby disappearing and becoming a boy, a wonderful boy indeed, but not a baby anymore:::;and also! i should help finn more, i fantasized, i should give him a coming-of-age party, a weaning party. . .i should make him a pillow with quilted strips with awesome robot and squirrel fabric on it.. . .and in that pillow i should embroider his whole name. . .and and and i should go downstairs and make some walnut spice muffins while i'm grading papers, and that way in the morning i will surprise him with muffins and talk a little bit more about how grown up he is, help him adjust to this change!! and maybe i'll get the pillow done tonight too. . .and record it all, all of it, on THIS BLOG!!

anyway, no muffins and no pillow yet, but here i am. . .

and it's not over there! he woke up as i was leaving his room (damn creaking futon!) and insisted i come back. i had been lying next to him holding his hand for quite awhile, as is our custom (though last week he went to bed 3 nights in a row on his very own!). and then it turned into one of these i was stuck in his room forever (papers to grade downstairs! papers to grade! and they were calling me, too, with their little baby voices) and he just wouldn't fall asleep and it became frustrating (after an hour and half or so) and so i had to give up and call on the papa, and now here i am, not grading papers, no, but writing this down right here right here (do you see where i am writing it??) right HERE!!! and thus continues our night of bittersweetness, as i tell you more about our day:

finn was apparently delivered in this package from australia, and when he popped out he said TA DAAA!! [he may have inherited his mother's performing gene]


and it was that earlier this day we went on our weekend walk in the gorgeous hickory hill park::::::



and i photographed this baby maple, which was the most glorious blazing thing, standing right in a patch of mid-morning sunlight, the earliest changer in the woods:::::






and now i may go grade those papers///or might just continue reading in "the spirited child: a guide for parents whose child is more intense, sensitive, perceptive, persistent, and energetic":::::::because really maybe i will find the magical sleeping key somewhere, the magical stress-reducer, the thing that makes magic in our lives and makes us magically understand each other's temperaments::::::and lastly i'd like to find the thing that creates more time [maybe that is just called turning your computer off??] bye!

love, b