Time to Say Goodbye to Summer

It’s Friday at twilight and Jimmy has just brought in the chairs and umbrella. It is our last full day at the beach and we intended to spend most of it outside, enjoying the gorgeous weather and soaking up every minute we could. We went in for lunch, decided to have a short quiet time and next thing I knew, the boys were napping. It happens rarely these days, so I let it continue; the result was that we forfeited the rest of our afternoon outside.

It’s OK. We’ve had a great time, spending hours each day outside, taking evening walks and relaxing. I can’t help but feel a bit melancholy. Some of it is due to the usual angst of leaving the beach and ending vacation, especially when we won’t be back for 10 months.

Most of it is due to my worry that we didn’t maximize our time here; you know, sucking the marrow out of our beach week and all that. We didn’t play in the water as much as we would have liked. We didn’t collect as many shells. We didn’t spend as many evenings chatting into the wee hours while the ocean breezes blew. The truth is, we were tired. It has been a busy summer of work projects, home projects and camp, and I think the three of us were relieved to sit (the adults) and dig in the sand (Daniel).

The end of this trip also symbolizes the end of summer. School will start in a little over a week and we will have a kindergartener. Our lives will begin to revolve around a calendar again; June and August will take on significance beyond “summer” and “hot” as “school” creeps in and takes over.

Time passes and all that.

Maybe I should focus on all the things we did do. Daniel had ice cream every night. He tried crab cake and lobster bisque (sadly rejecting both). Jimmy found a sandwich he loved (a bigger deal than it sounds for my sandwich-rejecting men). We added 6 new starfish and a clamshell to our starfish family. We ended each day sandy, salty and tired. It was a good week.

Now it’s time to pack up and go home. Wash the beach clothes and start organizing the back-to-school items. And maybe one day when the nights are crisp, I’ll put on a shirt I wore at the beach, inhale the scent of the beach and find myself back here.

Time Passes

Daniel and Daddy on Daniel's two-month birthday

There’s a line in Virginia Woolf’s novel To A Lighthouse that says simply “Time Passes.” It is the only indication that there has been a transition between one part of the novel to the the next. It is very subtle and easily missed. I’m not a huge fan of Virginia Woolf (sacrilege?), but ever since I read that novel, that line has stuck in my mind, and forgive the pretension, but it perfectly describes this summer.

Daniel had his two-month birthday on Sunday, August 2 and turned 9 weeks on Tuesday, August 4. He celebrated those milestones on Monday by having his two-month shots. Ouch. Poor baby. The appointment was going along swimmingly until the dreaded time came. The shots passed quickly, but he was bleeding and cried and cried. And I wanted to cry too 😦 I couldn’t even comfort him as fervently as I would like because I needed to keep pressure on his bleeding thigh so it wouldn’t bruise. For the rest of the day, he slept and has been a little fussy every since. His stats are impressive, though. He now weighs 10lb, 11oz and is 23 inches long. It is amazing to think that he weighed only 6lb, 7oz when he was born. He has put on over 4 pounds in two months, two of them in the last month!

Post-shot fatigue

Last night J and I looked through all of our pictures of him–quite a few as you can imagine!–and it was quite a walk down memory lane. The t-shirts that swam on him when he came home now strain over his belly. We joke he looks like Homer Simpson when he wears them. His legs have filled out, and he’s so long! He lost some of the hair with which he was born and after I was slightly distressed by the receding hairline he appeared to have a few weeks ago, he has grown new, quite blonde peach fuzz on top. And his eye lashes!!! They are long and dark, and I noticed yesterday that his bottom lashes are coming in. I think he may have been going through a growth spurt a week or so ago, and now I know where it was focused: his hair and lashes. His cheeks are so firm and chubby, and he has a definite double chin and possibly the beginning of a triple chin.

His behavior has changed too. I can now identify several different cries: I’m pissed; I’m annoyed; I’m hungry; I’m wet; I’m kinda mad but not really and just want to get your attention; I’m a poor baby and please pick me up. They really are different! He has become quite chatty and grins up a storm at us. I love it! He and J have fabulous conversations. I swear that he has made sounds like “Momma” and “hi” in response to me. I know that is developmentally impossible, but it really does sound like it! Of course, I also think my cats say “Momma” too.

This week when we put him on his play mat, he has started looking at the dangling animals with greater interest as if he is trying to figure out how to get them but hasn’t mastered control of his arms yet. It’s like he’s observing his world more and more and wanting to interact with it. My brilliant boy!

Being silly

I’m amazed it is August. The summer is almost over. I’ve had 9 glorious weeks at home with Daniel and must start thinking about returning to work in a few weeks. That will be very bittersweet because I feel like we’ve been in our little insulated world while I’ve been home, and I’m re-entering reality. I keep reminding myself that the rest of the year is filled with holidays and time off and will pass quickly. But August???? It feels like yesterday we were getting the call that he was on the way. That first night home is still vivid. But we are fall people in my house. Though I’m not eager for him to grow up too quickly, I look forward to taking him to a pumpkin patch and posing him with pumpkins. I look forward to dressing him in cooler weather outfits and showing him fall colors. I think most of all, it amazes me that this time last year, he didn’t exist yet. We started cycling in August of last year. How different 2009 is. August is a memorable month because in a few days, we will reach the 4th anniversary of when we first started trying to have a family. Four years. Four years ago I never dreamed it would take four years, but I would have taken some comfort in knowing that we would reach our goal. In previous years, I’ve marked this anniversary sadly, hoping next year, some year it would be different.

This year, 2009, it is different. Finally. Time passes. 9 weeks. Four years. We have been blessed with a beautiful, sweet, wonderful baby boy, and we love him so much.

Happy 9 weeks, pumpkin! Can’t wait to see how you continue to change!