Early in my postpartum life I joked that I was making a list of songs that made me cry, out of love and overbrimming emotion, while singing to my baby. But let’s get real: It’s all of them, at one time or another.
That said, I was still surprised when I got weepy singing Bein’ Green by Kermit the Frog.
Welcoming Spring
It was a windy March, and now a rainy April, but hey, Spring is here.
Went to opening day at a South Jersey seafood market:
Our favorite water ice spot is open:
Hard ice cream too:
Modest “Goals”
My 5-month Baby Leave (generous for the US, but still arguably not enough for any human parent anywhere) ends May 1, and people keep asking me how I feel about going back to work. I don’t dread it (I love my work and miss the people) or wish it was any sooner, because time with Baby is precious and sweet. I’m trying to appreciate every day for what it is.
I think it is completely missing the point to set “goals” for Baby Leave, and I wanted to let this time unfold naturally. But it is fun to plan excursions! It all depends on the kind of day Baby is having, of course. I wish I had a better word for this: ideas? Notions? Hankerings?
Here are some things I wanted to do and then I did them:
Go to the Beach
My heart longs for the Jersey Shore in all seasons. I want to share it all with Baby.
First Ocean City trip and many more to come, March 2025.
I walked 10k steps 14 times in March. I’m still sore every time, but it helps me sleep and feel more like myself.
Start the Garden
Ordered some heirloom seeds so I can daydream about my garden all day long. Hoping to make basil ice cream and mint pea soup with herbs from my raised beds once the growing season is underway.
I’m not proud of all the lattes I’ve had delivered in the last three months, but I saved the holders and am sprouting seeds in them. Thankfully they are just cardboard!
Become the Host House Again
We stopped hosting in my third pregnancy trimester, and in the first three months with Baby we have had a lot of help from family in keeping the laundry and dishes moving. We still get help and remain grateful. But we are slowly opening up to be the Host House for family and friends again.
Starting with Taco Night:
And then a cold brew coffee, decaf, and iced tea bar:
Easter is coming! Baby will have a fresh fancypants outfit while we host:
Visit the Bunny
Took Baby to his first shopping mall this week, for an Easter Bunny photo. (He didn’t smile, but he was awake and not crying, so I consider that a victory.)
Everything is still so new to this little one. It actually wasn’t his first elevator ride, but his vision has gotten so much clearer since we were discharged from the hospital that it was fun to see a reaction.
Return to the Before Movies, Again and Again
Something about the arrival of spring made me want to watch Before Sunrise/Sunset/Midnight again. I think it was also looking down on my favorite community radio fundraiser t-shirt and thinking of when it was new in April 2022, at a halfway to Halloween haunted house:
And this is the view these days:
I watched Before Sunrise near-constantly as an undergrad, which is so wild to me now. Why was my 19-year-old self so obsessed with jaded 32-year-olds who fight to keep their Romanticism alive?! Twenty years and one failed 11-year-novel that was just two characters walking and talking through Cape Town later, I still discover something new in each viewing. Or I’ve caught up and had enough life experience to relate to these two characters in new ways.
I watched Midnight first though it is the final installment of the trilogy, specifically intrigued by the conversations about parents keeping alive their creative endeavors. (I want to write about this more, but it seems to me like the character of Celine suffers from a cultural myth that women are instinctively mothers and know exactly what to do with a baby; she feels and hides a shame in not knowing what to do instantly. And also doesn’t let her husband help enough because he doesn’t have the “maternal instinct.” I’m definitely doing the Millennial-coparents-learn-together thing, in contrast.)
I watched Sunset yesterday while my infant snored on my shoulder. I really heard Jesse’s confessions about getting married at 28 just to show he believed in an ideal bigger than himself, only to be completely miserable, with new ears. (I decidedly didn’t do that: get married at 36, kids, and have a baby at 38, once you’re totally sure. This is my sincerest endorsement!)
Also, Sunset was filmed in 2004 and I felt so nostalgic for the lack of smart phones in daily life. In the lush scenes of Paris, people in the background (let alone our main characters) weren’t looking down and scrolling in public, in cafes, out to meals together. It’s made me commit to putting my phone down more (err, when I’m not tracking ounces eaten and diapers filled on a baby app). Just looking at my baby is better than anything on the Internet, that’s for sure! Plus, I read fun feature stories from the physical newspaper out loud to him:
I still haven’t re-watched Sunrise. I don’t know if I can handle characters being that young. I can’t standing thinking of when I was so young.
Read a 1,300-Page Tome
My baby was born the day before I was going to be induced—he was warm and comfy, I guess, and loath to leave the womb. I was nervous about induction taking a long time, so I made myself a bargain: I’d read Stormlight Archive #5, Wind and Truth, by Brandon Sanderson, if I was in for a long and tedious labor.
Well, Baby arrived on his own terms and I didn’t read a tome while waiting. But I am reading this tome now! I’m invested in the series and the characters, so at 1/3 of the way through I do feel like I’m flying … but 500 pages is not even 50% complete. I don’t like turning reading into metrics and this is certainly not the book for that! I try not to count where I am at or how much there is to go …
Enjoy the Big Screen (at home)
I have no idea when I’ll next make it to an actual movie theater, but I love the movies. So we’ve been having some classic screenings at home:
Last thought: it cracks me UP every time I see how my neighbors store their Giant Skeleton. Death to winter, spring is here!
Laura Eppinger 