43

I am supposed to be working right now, while you are downstairs in the kitchen with your father. But I am stealing a moment to update your baby blog. Today I am 43 years old. I would never have predicted, when turning a nervous and pregnant 42 this day last year, that I would celebrate this birthday in self-imposed quarantine for a worldwide viral pandemic. But I could have predicted, if all went well, that I might celebrate this day by watching you eat your very first pureed avocado.

You are getting bigger, and still smiley, and we have thrown sleep training on the window on "pandemic rules," which means that all three of us are sleeping better, since you and I get to snuggle all night. Your smile is the first thing I see when I open my eyes every morning. I could not ask for a better gift.

I really must do some writing for work, while you are occupied downstairs watching your father mash avocado. In a minute he will summon me to come downstairs too. I can admit to missing having long unstructured blocks of time in which to think my own thoughts, but I also know that that time will gradually return as you become more and more autonomous. I also remind myself that you are only a baby for a very short time, all told. In two weeks you will be six months old. Half a year, in other words. Halfway to being a toddler. Now is the time of your babyhood. Right now. Today. When you are still small enough to carry and to nestle into the crook of my arm and to need nothing else but that to fall asleep.

Eating in Exile

Today I strapped you into the K'tan and we went roaming in Marblehead. I showed you some of the secret pathways in town, and we had a long, albeit one-sided, discussion of the pleasures of secret pathways and exploring and we saw crocuses and spring is coming, even if we cannot go near any of the neighbors we should happen to meet.

Then, this afternoon, you ate a puree of banana and breast milk and a little nutmeg. You sort of buried your face in the spoon and now, because I am me, I am worried you aspirated some banana. You recoiled in horror and then immediately went for more, which was fascinating. Not long after you were finished you flipped out crying, and we don't know why, but we hoovered out your little baby nose and nursed a minute or two and then you were fine.

I'm rather sorry the second half of your babyhood is taking place under such bizarre circumstances. Not least because you will get to meet and enjoy so many fewer people than otherwise. I hope it will not make you shy of strangers when the constraints are finally relaxed. Whenever that may be.

But for today, right now, you have banana breath for the very first time. A banner day for my Succotash.

Decameron

Well, Succotash. Where to begin?

First I will say that usually, when your father is paranoid, I tease him relentlessly and it winds up not being a big deal. But here we are, barely a week since I last wrote to you, and we are holed up in our house in Massachusetts with you and our dog, hiding out with two weeks' worth of groceries during a worldwide pandemic of coronavirus. At the moment, my reason is rebelling that this is really happening, and that we could have fled NYC ahead of a city-wide quarantine (which has not yet been called, but which probably will be, as there is one in place for the Bay Area). I have no adjusted to the fact that millions of people could die as a result of this, and certainly I have not processed the knowledge of the coming global recession (depression?) that will result.

What I have processed is how big you are getting, and how smiley. You have now at long last seen the Atlantic Ocean. You have sniffed the batter of my first ever mediocre attempt at pumpkin bread. You have finally outgrown your baby stroller and are now riding around in a big boy stroller. You are sitting up by yourself for moments here and there. You are desperate to try our food, and as your second high chair arrived today (your first having been abandoned in NYC as your father seized the last Jeep available at the rental place to get us out of town last Friday), we will probably give you some of your own in the next week or two. You think you are on a grand adventure, and are a bit perturbed that we are asking you to sleep in a pack n play in our bedroom in Mustard House. To be fair, you don't know that we have lived here for thirteen years. You can be forgiven for thinking that your whole life would unfold in the den in New York, since that is where most of it has been spent up to this point.

The Decameron is a classic text, by Boccacio, that your father and I read in college. It is about a group of young people who flee the Black Death into the Italian countryside, and pass the time in a country house by telling each other ribald stories, most of which derive their ribaldry from the idea that members of the clergy might be sexual beings. As I write this, all of Italy is in quarantine. Honestly, the only saving grace is that the disease is widely considered not serious in children and infants. It is deadly to people over the age of 70. One of the more tasteless nicknames for this event is the "boomer remover."

Anyway. We shall see. You are living through the first global pandemic since Spanish flu in 1918. It's something.

5 Months

Sweet Succotash, you are in the worst mood ever today. But it's not your fault. We got home last night from your first trip to Texas, during which you endured not only an hour's time difference, but also daylight savings time, and so I think today you are having jet lag. You are fussy and out of sorts and squealy and hard to please. But we love you.

We learned that you dislike car rides and love loud restaurants. You fell asleep on my cousin and that night smelled of her perfume. Your dog was delirious with joy when we returned with seven (seven!) suitcases and an air of defeat. You received books and a stuffed armadillo and several vintage 1970s toys that once belonged to your mother, and you are giggly and smiley and give hugs around the neck and wet, drooly open mouthed kisses. As I write this, feeling down on myself about a book project on which I am behind, you are lying on your whale blanket on the floor wiggling your arms in anticipation of going on a walk with your Manamana and your dad and your Milo dog.

On Friday we have rented a car because your parents are irrationally worried about the coronavirus pandemic and we are driving to Massachusetts to hide out. On the way up we will stop over in Newport to meet your new friend Peter, who was born I think exactly fourteen weeks after you. I don't know when we will come back. I feel like, two weeks. Your dad is saying next fall. Perhaps the truth lies somewhere in between.

I am not going on the walk, because I need a few minutes of quiet. But I know that the second you are out of the door in your pram - which you have very nearly outgrown - I will miss you.

And that is how things stand, two days after your five month birthday.