I Love My Baby

Sure, it shouldn't come as a surprise that I love my baby, but it's not as simple as you might think.

When I first saw my baby (and I'm not talking about the alien-in-the-ultrasound baby), I had no idea what to think of him. Sure, I had spent the months prior to his birth wondering what it would be like to be a mom, what it would be like to finally hold him and have him in my arms. And I didn't believe the teachers at the baby care classes I went to about the whole bonding thing and that the first moments after birth were important to both mom and baby. I thought, what would be so hard about liking him?

Well, was I in for a shock.

The first time I held my baby was after three and a half hours of labor and delivery, and nearly twenty-four hours practically strapped to a bed (sure, I wasn't strapped down, but they wouldn't let me get up). So I looked at my baby and after thinking, you know, he really does look like the little alien from his ultrasound photos, he was just that to me: an alien.

And truthfully, I wanted nothing to do with him.

I had no idea what to do. Luckily, the nurses knew what I had to do, and soon it was time to feed him. Then everybody left, and it was just the three of us (me, baby, and daddy). The last thing I thought before falling asleep was the first thing I thought when I woke up: I have a baby (with a sense of dread) and I am way too young for this.

Now, almost five months later, I can look at my baby, look at the way he's sleeping so peacefully, and still think I have a baby. But instead of that same sense of dread as I first had, I have more of this calming, relaxing, sense of peace.

Sure, there are time when I still think I am way too young for this (being a mom), but I'm starting to get used to it. I don't know if I'll ever get used to it, but there's no going back. There's no changing what has happened. It's simultaneously the scariest and more awe inspiring thing that has ever happened to me. I worry about the future, and what kind of boy, and eventually what kind of man he'll be and know that that will be a direct result of how I raise him (and sure my husband will be helping too, but I'm the one staying home with him day after day). But then I think of all the work I had to go through to get to this point, all the nights of hardly any sleep, all the difficulties feeding him, all the thoughts of having absolutely no idea what to do with him, and yet, I think, if I can make it through all that, what can't I make it through? Some days, that thought is barely enough to keep me going. Especially when I think that there couldn't possibly be any end to whatever's happening.

But then, the baby falls asleep. And it's like the world is so peaceful, time slows down, and it seems like this should never end.

And those are the moments that make it all worth it.

When you can look at his sleeping face and know that after all the fussing and all the crying and all the not knowing how to help him and all the feeling helpless and not knowing what to do that you know that there will eventually be a moment where it's all over, where he's sleeping, and there's just this sense of rightness with the world.

It's those moments that allow me to realize that everything I do for him, all the stress I put myself through, is just because I love him.

It's those moments that I look forward to. When I look at my baby, think I made that, and smile. Where sometimes I want nothing more than to just let his sleep peacefully on my lap because there's nothing else I have to do with him.

It's Been a Long Weekend . . . And an Even Longer Week

So I was going to post this last Monday (like over a week ago), and am now just getting around to finishing the post. As as aside, I find that I have no problem starting things, like blog posts or a load of laundry, I just have a difficult time finishing things. Especially when the baby's demanding my attention, then I tend to forget about everything else. So here goes the post from last week, with some changes to account for the delay in posting.

A week ago from last Thursday, I got to meet the newest member in my husband's family. Which means my little guy is no longer the youngest grandchild on his dad's family. I knew he wouldn't be for long, but still. There's something about him being only three months old and already having a younger cousin that makes him seem old. I mean he's only three months, and he's still pretty young, but still he seems older somehow.

At least he's still the youngest grandchild on his mom's family.

Saturday started fun. One of my friend's from college who just got married in October had her first baby on July 14. So I finally got to meet him. It would've been more fun to visit him in the hospital, but it was easier to go up on the weekend, given my husband's work schedule.

While visiting her, I realized that there's a lot of difference in my perspective as a mom in just three months. My baby was born at 5 pounds, 13 ounces. And he seemed tiny when he was born. Now he's around 12 pounds. But these last three months, he's just always weighed what he weighs, so even though I know he's getting bigger, he doesn't seem like it. As I mentioned before, he seems to be exactly the same as he was the day before and the day before that. Even though the numbers tell me he's getting bigger and I'm lifting more than I was, you don't really realize how much bigger he is until you lift a baby that about half his weight.

My friend's baby weighs about 6 pounds, 11 ounces (at least when I was holding him). Just looking at him, he seemed pretty small. But that's to be expected. He wasn't even a week old. But when I went to hold him, it seemed like there was nothing to him. He just seemed so tiny. The weirdest thing about it was that he was born bigger than my baby, and I just couldn't imagine my baby being smaller than him. I mean, I knew that's how it was because my baby was born at 5 pounds, 13 ounces. But there's something about holding a baby smaller than him and considering how big my baby is now, it just seems like it was impossible that there was a time where he was smaller.

At least I'm out of the needing to feed my baby every three hours and needing to wake him up even though he's sleeping so peacefully and I'm so tired just because he needs to eat and gain weight. And I don't envy any new parent for that experience. But somehow, now that I'm past that phase, it seems like it didn't even happen. Probably by the time I have another kid, I'll have completely forgotten all about what that felt like.

After visiting my friend, her husband and her baby, we went to a mini going away party for another friend of ours who's going to Japan. Though now he should be there. But it was pretty fun getting to talk to him again, since I hadn't seen him since Christmas time.

It was sometime during that going away party that the "fun" of the weekend started. Back in February, I ended up getting gallstones and they chose that weekend to "attack" me. So we went to the emergency room that night because I couldn't stand the pain any longer. Okay, it didn't hurt as bad as when I was delivering my baby (because I did that sans painkiller), but it still hurt. And worse, I had no idea why it was hurting. After spending the night at the emergency room, they wheeled me upstairs where the surgeon pretty much said, "You can have surgery now, or you can have surgery later." And since I was already there, I went with the surgery now option.

But apparently getting my gall bladder removed wasn't enough, since there was a bit of scare last week about needing to go in for another procedure. So I got an MRI. And I don't know what it is, but the writer in me was like, "I gotta use this in a book somehow. I don't know what I'll do with it, but it would work really well in a sci fi." The MRI came back clear. It's been over a week post-surgery and everything's all better (well, except for the incisions, which are still healing). What's best is that the pain's gone and it'll never be back. At least not because of gall stones.

The only annoying thing is that I was given a weight limit of 15 pounds for two weeks and all of last week, I couldn't even pick the little guy up. I was pretty glad to have my father-in-law around to help me while my husband was at work. But I am definitely much happier now that I can pick the little guy up again. And when you go for a week not being able to pick up your baby, so you're just limited to holding him, you actually realize how much weight he really does gain once you are able to pick him up again.

But still, when you're picking him up on a daily basis, he weighs the same as he did the day before and the day before that.

4th of July

This was the first year I was able to watch fireworks in my hometown in quite a while.

2008 - Yamaguchi, Japan. If you remember, I was in Japan where my husband and I had to buy our own fireworks for a mini 4th of July celebration.

2007 - Gumi, South Korea. I honestly don't remember what we did. Aside from we were in Korea and nearing the end of our stay there.

2006 - Mankato, MN. This was the year we graduated from college and went to visit our friends who weren't into watching fireworks. Even though I thought the Mankato ones were better.

2005 - Mankato, MN. I think we celebrated the 4th at our appartment. Or at least we tried to. Maybe. Honestly, I don't remember.

The last time I know for sure that we watched fireworks here was in 2000, the summer after we graduated from high school and our first summer together. We tried to watch them from a small boat on the river. Unfortunately we had too many people on the boat for its size and not enough life jackets.

But this year we were finally able to watch them at home again. And either I don't remember them being so good or they increased their fireworks budget, but I was really impressed with them this year. Then again, maybe it had something to do with being glad to be home, and glad to watch the fireworks with my husband, my son, and my puppy. Especially since I'm pretty sure Baby Nate enjoyed watching them just as much as we did. And my puppy didn't get scared until towards the end of the grand finale.

All in all, it was a pretty good time.

Also, my husband and I wore our yukata. And one person that we passed while crossing the street on our way to the Levee Park actually recognized them for what they were. And said, "What beautiful yukatas."

Apparently I've Been Busy

Well, I know I've been busy. I mean, I have a little baby who was just a few weeks old when I last posted and is now two and a half months old. But still. I guess you don't realize how quickly time's going by when you think you posted "not too long ago" and find out that it's been over two months since you last posted.

But don't worry because all this time, my little boy hasn't changed. Sure, he's cooing now and playing "Monkey hear, monkey say" with simple things like "ahh" and "goo". And he's grown four inches and gained five pounds. But still, he hasn't changed. I look at him every day, and today he looks the same as he did yesterday, and the day before and the day before that. Even though I know he's gotten bigger. Just like I always know how old he is (now he's just about 11 weeks), so I know how much time has passed. And yet, it doesn't seem like any time has passed.

Next thing I'll know is he'll be having kids of his own, and I'll say, "But wasn't he just a baby yesterday? If he's never changed from day to day, then how did he get so grown up?"

Our New Arrival

My baby boy was born at 9:38 AM on Friday, April 10, 2009. He came about two and a half weeks early, but that was because I got incredibly high blood pressure during the last two weeks of my pregnancy so the doctors decided it was better to induce. On the plus side, my labor and delivery only lasted about three and a half hours. Baby Nate weighed 5 pounds, 13 ounces and was 18 inches long.

So needless to say, with balancing taking care of our newborn, round the clock feedings, doctor's appointments to got to, not having enough time to eat and sleep, and still needing to clean our bedroom to make room for all the baby's things and all the stuff my husband brought back from Japan with him, I've had no time to write. Of course I knew while I was still pregnant that I wouldn't have much time to write once the baby was born, which was why I wanted to finish Butterfly Mask before he was born, but I just didn't realize how little time I would actually have once I got done with doing all the baby things.

I still want to finish Butterfly Mask and send it out into the world to get published, but it'll have to wait until I have a little more free time. If I'm lucky that'll be when the bedroom finally gets cleaned. If I'm not so lucky, that won't be for quite some time.

Though something I can find somewhat amusing is that I wanted to go to grad school and be a student again because so I could keep a busy schedule and better manage my time. Because when I had so much stuff I needed to do, like all the classes I needed to attend and all the writing and studying I needed to do for those classes, whenever I finished my schoolwork, I was very eager to work on my book, even if it was for just five minutes before my next class started. And I think I just realized that with how busy my schedule has just become with the little guy, I might start taking advantage of those precious five minutes a lot more often than I used to. And who knows, maybe I'll have my book done in no time.

The only set back is that I can't do much typing or writing for the next couple weeks. Not that I'll really have time. But, due to the high blood pressure, I retained a lot of fluid in my fingers, especially in my right hand, so I have to wait for that to go away before I can go super gung ho with the typing. I just hope that by the time the numbness in my fingers goes away, I'll have a little more time to slowly work on my book.

More Death

My dad's family hasn't been doing too well this year. First, in October, my grandma died. Then within a week, two of my uncles died. Both of cancer. 

The first uncle was my dad's brother-in-law. From what I understand, he wasn't diagnosed with cancer until Friday, February 20th. Then he had to go in for emergency surgery that Wednesday night and didn't make it.

The second uncle was my dad's brother. He hadn't been doing too well for a while. My mom called me tonight to tell me that he was in a coma and they weren't waking him up or something, then as I was on the phone with her, she got another call from my sister saying that he died.

It's one of those times where, as a writer, I can imagine emotions for different characters to feel. And depending on the character who dies, I can imagine how different characters would react. But right now, the only feeling I have is no feeling. And I think it's this no feeling that some of my characters would feel, but as a writer, you think, but characters are supposed to feel something, without realizing that not feeling anything can be a perfectly reasonable feeling.

Well, a Lot Has Happened

Well, a lot has happened since I last posted anything, so I'll try to be brief, but still cover a lot of ground.

1. Well, I'm no longer in Japan. I had already been planning on taking a one-week vacation in October to go to my friend's wedding, but when I got a phone call that my grandmother passed away, I went home a week earlier. And I've been here ever since for various reasons.

2. With my grandmother's passing I finally acquired a dining room table set. This is a pretty big deal for me since I've never had one of my own. At the last apartment my husband and I had during college, our dining room was more of place to keep all our bookshelves.

3. My friend's wedding was interesting. It was sad because I wasn't able to go to it with my husband, since he is still in Japan, but my friend was happy that I could make it.

4. With staying here for two months and counting, I finally decided I really needed to get a job. I've had a couple interviews and am waiting to hear back. But I've definitely been enjoying my time not needing to work.

5. Part of why I wasn't really motivated to get a job was that November was National Novel Writing Month. This was my third year participating, and my second year not getting to the 50,000 word mark. But I don't care. I absolutely love the book I started in November, and am anxious to finish it in December.

6. In addition, my husband is coming back around December 20th. So we're both pretty excited to be together again. Though it won't be for long since he'll need to go back to Japan in early January. But he'll be coming back again sometime in March.

7. Lastly, my husband challenged me to have a book ready to submit by the end of the year. Of course logic says I should go back to Kitsu's book and wade through the massive amounts of rewrites I have for that, but my heart is telling me to work on the new story I started in November.

8. The new story is called Wolf Eyes. It's a teen werewolf romance about a girl named Nisus Asano and the boy she likes. I'll try to post more info about this story later.

9. I'm also trying to get my husband and I ready to go to grad school, starting August 2009.

All things considered, I should be staying pretty busy for the holidays.

Some Writing and a Much Needed Vacation

For the time being, I've set Kitsune aside to work on a submission for a YA book I started a while ago. Hopefully, it's just a short distraction, and then a really good motivator to finish Kitsune so I can work on this other story (called No Leaf Clover).

I don't know if I'm going to do NaNo this year or not either. It depends on if I finish both Kitsune and No Leaf Clover. And if I can figure out what to write about. So if I get the other two books done, I might work on book 2 in my vampire trilogy, so we'll see.

Other than that, I'm on a much desired vacation, but don't have much time to work, since my mom and my husband's parents are here and my husband and I get to act as tour guides. It's kind of amazing how much more I'm understanding or remembering just by being here long enough, and how the different parts of history connect.

So far, we've visited the house where the Mori daimyo (feudal lord) lived in Hofu, Yamaguchi and we went to Hiroshima Castle that was built by Mori to be a very defensive castle. And tomorrow, we'll be going to Shoin Shrine in Hagi, Yamaguchi that's dedicated to Yoshido Shoin, one of the people that Mori signed a death warrant for.

Writing this makes me think of my trip to Brazil and how learning about the history there just fascinated me. While in Brazil, I had one of my good friends (who's from Brazil) explain the history to me (well, he translated what the tour guide said in Portuguese to English). And when we go to Hagi, one of my students who's a volunteer tour guide and has spent a lot of time studying the history of Hagi will give us a tour.

May You be at Peace

What really sucks is that last night I went to bed an hour later than I meant to because I was really excited about my story and learning who my main character is, only to wake up this morning with one of those phone calls you wish you'll never get, and now I'm trying to figure out how I can get back to the States on really short notice. As a result, it's kind of drained all my energy for writing.

My grandpa died. I don't know when exactly due to the time difference, but my father-in-law had been trying to get a hold of us for at least three hours before we finally woke up enough to answer the phone. Of course the first thing I said was, "Which one?" when I've only had one grandpa my entire life. (My other grandpa died before I was born.)

The second thing that happened to me was exactly like I was a character in some book (the main character too, since this is *my* life). After hearing that he got a brain hemorrhage (just like how my friend's mom died last summer, or the summer before) and went into a coma. And I think my family (I don't know who) basically decided to pull the plug. My mind tried telling me that they hadn't actually pulled the plug yet, that there was still time. Only to remember that the first thing my father-in-law said was that my grandpa died.

The first thing I thought was how it was unfair. Not to me, but to my grandpa. Some years ago when I was still in college (I think my second year), my grandma was in a terrible car accident. (And at the time, I tried to use my emotions in a poem for my creative writing class.) The accident had been so bad that no one thought she was going to make it, but eventually she managed to pull through. During that time, you could see how much my grandpa really loved my grandma because he waited by her bed with her, only leaving when the nurses forced him out, or when his children told him he needed to eat. Because to him, nothing else mattered than to by by her side. So I thought, after he went through all of this for my grandma, it was unfair of them (because I don't think my grandma would have made this decision on her own) to not even give him the fighting chance. And okay, so I know if you get a brain hemorrhage, the chances of survival are practically non-existent. But they could have at least given him the chance.

Part of me is more than just sad that I'll never be able to talk to my grandpa again, or to hear any of his stories about how difficult it is to butcher a buffalo (from a farm, not a wild one, and he had permission or whatever for those of you who may be worried) or even his travels in Asia, which I only recently learned about how much he actually did here when I got back from Korea (last summer). Just last week, I thought about asking him more about his travels and where he went in Japan so I can go there too, and experience some of the same things he experienced.

But really the most important thing, and the one that makes my life seem most like some character in a book right now is my "backstory" coming back to haunt me, more likely it's guiding my actions. The summer after I was in 9th grade, I went with my friend and her older sister on vacation to Georgia, Kentucky, and Ohio to visit their relatives. And while I was in Ohio, I got the call saying that my uncle had just died. I tried going back to Minnesota early, but "cost too much" to change my ticket or it was too difficult, and that I should just stay and enjoy myself when all I really wanted to do was be with my family. Now my family isn't close or anything, and I wasn't even close to my uncle, but my family just kind of flocks together when there's a tragedy, It's almost like there's this calling inside each of us and we just know when and where to go.

So I guess really because I didn't get to partake in this almost pilgrimage when my uncle died and I was only a couple states away, I'm a million times more determined to get back home now, even though I'm halfway around the world. Plus, I knew my grandpa a lot better than my uncle, he was closer related to me, and I just want to be there for my mom (because its her father).

I'm also reminded of something my sister said back when my grandma was in the hospital, and that's, "Because the two of them were so close and loved each other so much, that one wouldn't be able to live without the other. So if one dies, the other will soon follow." And its sad because you don't want either of them to die, but I think it's also very romantic (and the stuff fiction is made of). It goes with what my grandpa told my sister the first time she was engaged, that he "loves [my grandma] even more today than the day they met," and he will continue loving her more each day.