Yep, You Guessed It, A "First Mother's Day" Post

It was wonderful to celebrate the day with my girl.

I never thought much about the holiday before, but it was lovely.


My cousin, Bonnie, emailed me to say, "you have many years of macaroni necklaces and sand paintings to look forward to."

I say, "bring it!" I can't wait to receive those crooked treasures.


For this year, lacking craft gifts, I ordered photo collage mugs for myself, my mom, and our nanny... but I wasn't organized enough to have them here in time. Oh well. I'm excited that I got myself something that I will treasure, regardless of when it arrives.

Four patients, now all graduated, texted me a happy mother's day. I've always appreciated that they did that even before I was a mother. So I'm here to say that it's fine and wonderful to celebrate the motherly women in your life, even if they aren't mothers. Hence the mug for the nanny.

My mom visited for the weekend, which was wonderful. I feel so much closer to her since Calliope was born.

Calliope is our shared passion. It's so great to have someone else be interested in her every tiny development. My mom isn't always a skilled conversationalist, but we can talk for a long time, indeed, about our precious girl.

We went out for lunch and I offered Calliope a pickle and my mom offered her a french fry. The pickle won.

Sunday morning, we went to swim class.

My little girl is a fish! I am ridiculously proud because I've always loved the water (I used to swim "competitively" and I was a lifeguard and swimming instructor as well). Last weekend, Calliope attempted to imitate me and blow bubbles in the water... she tried once and got scared. This week, she tried over and over again. No bubbles yet, but she tried, and came up sputtering, and eager to try again. She stood on the edge of the pool and "fell" into the pool, over and over again, without, actually, seeming to care all that much. She was fascinated by the rubber ducky she was gripping, and didn't seem to care what Mommy was doing to the rest of her body.

The swimming instructor came around twice to do a one-two-three-wheeeee pass from me to her (with her body in the water but her head above). The first time she did it, Calliope beamed. The second time around, we agreed Calliope was up for the challenge... and after the "three" she whooshed Calliope towards me, underwater! And Calliope was fine. She sputtered a bit, but was smiling.

After that, I asked what we could work on during our free time at the end of swimming. She said floating on her back, with me only holding Calliope's head. I immediately tried it.

Calliope didn't seem to notice that she was "floating" on her back with me holding the sides of her head -- she was too fixated on the damn rubber ducky! But she never did complain about it.

She also did lots of kicking -- more of a whole body, dolphin kick than the flutter kick associated with crawl and backstroke -- and allowed me to windmill her arms through the water.

And then we came home and she took a two and a half hour nap! I even got to take a little snooze. Heavenly and desperately needed, considered our recent pattern of 5:30 am wake-ups.

The other thing that happened this weekend... My mom and I went to see some apartments on Saturday afternoon, accompanied by my faithful "roommate." My mom wanted to make a bid on the one I mentioned in my last post... but I realized that I felt like it was really just too small. We saw another that I had seen before, that was great except for a small kitchen and a less-than-perfect address, but not too bad.

And then we went to the one in my friend Emily's building. Emily had asked the owner, on my behalf, if we could see it on Saturday because my mom had to leave before the Sunday open house.

Well.

I walked in and knew immediately that this was the one.

I'm scared to say too much because we all know these things are very, very delicate.

But I made an offer that evening and things went back and forth a couple of times and the offer was accepted!

It could still fall apart so I'm not going to say anymore, except to say... that this was one very memorable Mother's Day!