Calliope is Better and Mommy is A Little Worse

Okay, Calliope is absolutely better. She's still coughing up (and sneezing out) some thick mucus now and then, but she only took two naps today (unfortunately, one was cut short by an ill timed dirty diaper... girl, I offered you the potty, why didn't  you use it before your nap???) and still did great until she fell apart only fifteen minutes before bedtime. She is gradually eating more. She was active and cheerful and even entertained herself while I exercised on the elliptical, with only one interruption to my workout -- I build a wall of couch cushions plus an ottoman to keep her from getting too close to the elliptical. She only scaled it once, and was easily redirected.

She learned how to open the cube with all the different shapes inside. Before, she could only slam it shut... and then be disappointed that she couldn't play with the shapes inside. But if I opened it again, she couldn't resist closing it back again. But now, she can open and shut it independently. So that kept her occupied for the second half of my workout.

We've been doing a lot of "gravity work" lately. She drops things, over and over, and will pick them up herself, if she can reach, or else look at me expectantly, as if to say, "Um, are you paying attention? That thing? It's on the floor. And I need it. (So I can drop it again, as soon as you return it to me.)"

She has started nodding and shaking her head decidedly these last few days, and most of the time, she uses them correctly. I can't imagine where she picked them up, since I don't think I would use them around her, given that we are usually by ourselves. It's hilarious to see her so opionated. Another step closer to the infininite destination of getting to truly know her.

We have a new game where she presses a button on a toy cube to make a sound, and each time she does it, I "startle" and act surprised while she chuckles delightedly.

When she stretches out her hand to me, I reach my hand out to her and we flutter our fingers at each other, prompting gales of laughter.

And when I leave her in one room and go to another, I hear her making slow progress through the apartment, palms slapping noisily against the floor as she crawls to find me. I call out, "Calliope? Where are you? Where's my girl?"

And then she pokes her head around the corner and I say, "Oh, there you are!" and she chortles delightedly.

It's beautiful to be the sun around which one little planet orbits.

So I don't know why I feel squirrely. Because I have no idea when we will close on the apartment, I haven't been able to make any real travel plans for the summer. And since I don't know my travel plans yet, I haven't made much in the way of plans to be here, either.

So on July 4th, we had nothing planned. Calliope took three long naps, sleeping the entire day away, it felt like. When your baby is only awake for an hour between naps, sometimes less, it's hard to get out. Finally, when she woke up from her final nap at around 4 pm, I slung her into the Beco carrier and set out determinedly for the bus to Prospect Park.

Although we were only there for thirty minutes, being out and engaged with the world saved my sanity. Still, I was a little saddened to see all the families and friends, filling every corner of that huge and beautiful park, celebrating together over barbeque grills and picnic baskets. It was hard to not have Fourth plans of our own, to not be part of a group, even if we might not have been able to participate much, given how tired Calliope was from her illness.

Today, once again, we had no plans. Well, we had tentative plans to go to the playground with a neighborhood mom and baby, but they fell through due to nap schedules and tired babies. Calliope and I went to the playground anyway, by ourselves, after her nap. We actually had a great time. I met a lovely lesbian couple we chatted for quite a while as we sat in damp puddles by the toddler water play area, nursing our babies. That was great.

Then we came back home and Calliope's nap, when I was planning to work out, was quickly derailed by the aforementioned dirty diaper. I kept sitting around, waiting for her to go back to sleep, but finally retrieved her from the crib and worked out anyway.

Later in the afternoon, once temperatures had cooled off a bit, we went to a different playground. This one is closer, but without a toddler area, and let's just say it draws a different crowd, less like me than the other playground, so it has fewer possibilities for conversation, and today, I didn't even speak to another adult. Then Calliope threw her hat out of the stroller on our way home, forcing me to retrace our steps nearly the entire way back to the playground, and making both of us cranky and tired.

I'm so everlastingly grateful to not be working right now. I don't know what the problem is. I think it's the lack of plans and especially, the continued lack of information about when I will be moving, that is making me crazy. The hot weather isn't helping. I feel isolated and lonely and at the same time, amazed my lack of productivity. And I know that getting things done -- the tidying, the opening of mail, the filing, the completion of errands -- would help my anxious brain feel better. But it's still not happening. Instead, my apartment is cluttered, which drives me crazy. But I lack the motivation to fix the problem.