Seven of Seven, Still Loved

Today, the baby is two.  Specifically, in about 8 hours and 50 (ish) minutes, the baby turns two.  That means we have had two whole years of loving that girl so much, my heart actually aches at the end of the day, and I could not possible be more grateful.

You don't really know Eve, so let me tell you about her. 

Eve Cahill is the youngest, our seven of seven.  She's short and round with reddish hair and the beginnings of light brown freckles across her nose and on her arms.  She has light gray eyes, like her dad, and bright pink lips (helped, naturally, by the fact that the rest of her is so very fair.)  She has a small vascular imperfection on her left side, which always makes it look like he has a bite mark, and two toes on her right foot which are party fused.  She has short, chubby fingers and even shorter legs.  She's got a round little belly, which she sticks out when she walks, and the world's smallest baby buttocks, which she tucks when she runs. 

She is very opinionated and very outspoken.  Being the youngest has made her determined not to be unheard, and she'll repeat herself with abandon, and progressively more loudly, until her point is made.  She likes to roam freely, "I walk, Mom.  I walk.  No, I walk," and  isn't really excited about being told what to do. 

She loves to eat.  And eat.  And eat.  She loves granola bars and yogurt and pasta.  Sushi, seafood, Japanese pho.  Deli meat, bean burritos, cheeseburgers.  Fish and chips.  Breadsticks.  Crudites. Fried chicken.  If you've got it, she wants it.  If you steal a bite, she will attempt to retrieve it from your esophagus.  (I'm really not kidding here.  She will try to reach down your throat and get it back.  We don't touch her food.) 

She loves to take baths, but only if someone is joining her, and usually if that someone is Annie.  She loves bath bombs and salts and foot scrubs.  (Sometimes, the three of us get in the tub together and soak for hours.  I'll nurse Eve and she'll start to fall asleep and I'll try to hold on to the same memory of doing the same thing when she was brand new and I was still healing and leaking and all my parts were still swollen.)

Eve loves her siblings.  Annie, her favorite, she calls "E."  Next is "Eo."  She likes to tattle on Hatch for things nobody can understand, and Patrick is another parent to her, holding her and changing diapers and making sure she doesn't fall down the stairs.  (Once, he had to give her the Heimlich.  I had taken the kids out to eat and three of them had to go to the bathroom.  I left Patrick at the table with Eve and she choked on her food.  He was hysterical when I came out, and people had come to help him, but, damnit, he did it.)

Her siblings love her, too.  In fact, Eve is the family favorite.  She might always be. 

She's two.  Tiny and mighty.  Funny and expressive.  Happy.  Cherished.  Loved with all our hearts. 

The Art of Being Quiet

I title this post, as if I have some insight into this.  Here is the truth: 


I HAVE NO IDEA HOW TO DO THIS.


So, I'm working on it.  This year, especially, I feel a calling to be quiet and to listen.  As I sit and watch helplessly as my loved ones are hurting and faltering, as I wait impatiently for the members of my own house to see me, I just want to scream and tell everyone how to feel and what to do.  That's, in fact, what I am good at.  Rather, that's what I would typically do. Because I don't think anyone is really "good" at those things.  Nobody wins by oversharing.  I'm sure not. I don't know if I ever have.


So, this year, I'm practicing the art of being quiet.  And, I shit you not, this is HARD.  It's hard.  I type and erase text messages and emails.  I compose many arguments in the shower (obviously, I win them all).  I bite my tongue when my instinct is to just. say. something.  Anything.  Make a poignant point.  Point them in the right direction.  Because I'm good at being right, don't they know that?  Don't they know?


Nope, they don't.  Because I'm not.  And this wretched self-awareness is really a buzz-kill, but I'm going to keep trying.  And I'm going to keep this mouth shut, if it takes everything I've got. 

2019

Here it is, 2019.  And here I sit, writing something for my long-ago forgotten blog, one I used to keep up with vigor, and now is a ghost of my past.  And there is almost certainty that nobody reads this anymore, so here, I will type.


As the New Year is upon us, I am so looking forward to a fresh start and a proverbial clean slate.  I can almost feel it, and if wet, white paint and its accompanying fumes had a feeling, that would be it.  New beginnings and habits (haha), new focus, purging of things we don't need, rebuilding things broken long ago, and looking forward to all the good that is coming.  Because it is.


2018 was not our year.  It could have been, I suppose, if we would have made different choices, parented better, communicated better, made any sort of effort to understand each other, and tried our hardest not to just live parallel to one another.  But Adam and I?  We didn't do that.  We spent our twelfth anniversary in a blow-out fight, which is actually perfect because it sums up who we were last year.  Stubborn, arrogant, full of solutions ONLY if those solutions left one of us the victor and the other the wrong-doer.  Oh, hindsight.


And though we weren't heading toward the D-word, for the first time in our marriage, it was easy to imagine us there.  That idea would keep me up choking on my thoughts at night.  And there were reasons we were in the shape we were.  My focus wasn't on us, but on helping family members who needed me more.  I lent out our home and my time and gave away our money the better part of the year, and Adam didn't understand how anyone else could have slid into my #1 priority slot.  I couldn't understand what he couldn't see.  I was giving every ounce I had of myself away, and how could he not see that I needed more from him?  But he was annoyed, angry, unhappy at my distance.  I was hurt, even more angry, and resentful that he couldn't do what I was doing, and slowly, we just quit talking. 


And if you know Adam and me, that isn't like us.  We're loving and affectionate, we talk several times a day.  We send ridiculous texts to each other just to get a laugh. We LOVE each other, in the verb-iest sense of that word.  And I don't know when things changed, probably gradually, definitely peaking and plateauing sometime around July 4th, and finally settled down now.  Now, at the end of the year.  Now, with new beginnings ahead of us. 


It took nothing at all from us.  Mostly a tearful, "I don't want to be mad at you all the time," and something in Adam changed.  It wasn't dramatic.  Not some big talk or resolution.  Just a simple, "I need you to show up."  And so, he did.  Because if there is anything I know about Adam, it's that he loves us.  He does.  Sometimes, he forgets to remember and sometimes he forgets to show it, but I know he does.  And he's shown up every single day.  Sometimes, he'll fold a load of laundry.  Other times, come lay next to me on the couch when he knows I'm already half asleep.  "This year is our year," he said on New Year's Day.  Maybe it is.  "Maybe we should renew our vows," he said. 


And I laughed.  "Maybe we should see how this year goes." 


Happy New Year, to those who will probably never read this.  May your fresh, wet, white-painted beginnings be as beautiful as you imagine. 


Love.