This is my favorite picture of the ceremony. The head monk is cutting a lock of Lily’s hair.
My mom and step-dad with Lily in the main temple.
Our little family about to leave for the big event.
Me and the Bean.
We went to Houston last weekend for Bean’s Buddhist Baby Blessing at the Thai Buddhist Temple. Our drive took just under three hours and the way home was even shorter. This is the first time we’ve taken a road trip with the Bean that hasn’t taken us double the expected travel time. It is a milestone of sorts.
Before we left there was tiny dress fiasco. Bean outgrew the dress I ordered online for the event. That’s what I get for buying it two months ahead of time. After driving to baby shops all over town, I found a substitute dress at a trendy chain store that will go unnamed, because it’s not really part of the point I’m trying to make. The point is that the dress I found was perfect, probably better than the original one. It was tunic-ish, like the dress I ordered for her and mostly white with a repeating golden-brown pattern and cotton, lace embellishments. And because it was 40 degrees and raining, she wore white baby legs and her brand new Robeez shoes. She looked like stylish baby royalty sitting in front of the monks as they chanted to bring her a long, healthy, happy life. Her huge, playful baby eyes watched as the head monk sprinkled holy water on her head and snipped exaclty two locks of her precious hair.
We were in a small unassuming room used for ceremonies that reminded me of Ben’s grandmother’s house in Thailand, at least the way the house was when I was there eight years ago for our honeymoon. The room had a kitchen attatched to it and a dining table and couches on the other side of the table, and to me, it was beautiful. It was perfect. It was exactly what it needed to be to get me out of the constant doing-and-doing-and-doing that is this stage of motherhood. While the monks chanted a space opened up that allowed me to offer a prayer to my baby for the life this is before her. I have learned that a mother’s prayer for her child is the most powerful prayer in the universe. So I prayed that she has a life filled with grace and that she always knows her own grace because in grace dwells love, happiness, strength, wisdom and peace.
So much peace.
Our Bean has some really wacky taste buds. The other day I gave her a lemon at a restaurant, with the intention of getting to watch her make a silly sour face. But that didn’t happen. She just starting gumming away on it. She was getting all sorts of attention because who just eats a lemon and likes it? Well, our Bean does that’s who.
Yesterday we went to the Wednesday farmers market. There is an area where the children love to run through because several little water fountains shoot up from the bricks underfoot. Notice that I used the words kids and run, not babies and crawl. All the babies that were there only made a quick appearance in the fountain. One burst of water to the face and they were done. There were babies twice Lily’s age clinging to their mothers laps, and who could blame them. But not Lily.
Lily couldn’t have been happier, unless perhaps Godiva was there. But Godiva would never be there in the middle of a fountain with children running around her. She is afraid of water and children, which was my point. It never occurred to Lily be afraid. Instead, she was on a mission to inspect each and every wet brick, touch every water spout, and pick up all the tiny pebbles she could find. Never mind that she got blasted in the face with water from the fountains or that children two times her size were running all around her at top speed. She had things to do.
I’ll admit that I was slightly envious of the mamas on the sidelines who had babies clinging to them. They were sitting, which passes for resting in my book. I, on the other hand,was dodging children and water spouts, while trying to make sure that Lily didn’t eat any stray rocks, discarded gum or just get trampled on by overly enthusiastic five-year-olds. Each time I picked her up, she would fuss and cry until I put her back down so she could play in the water. We did that several times until she was completely drenched and covered with goosebumps.
But you know what?
I felt a kind of proud to have a such a fearless daughter.
Here is a picture of Lily checking out some rocks by the trashcan. It was one of my failed attempts to get her out of the fountain.
Lily is the one with the giant sunhat. Notice the baby behind her who is over a year old and wants nothing to do with the fountains.
She is cutting her first tooth–one of the bottom front ones. I still can’t imagine what she will look like with actual teeth. She seems to be trying to figure it out herself. Just this week she’s taken to reaching in my mouth with her little index finger and feeling around each tooth while she nurses. It’s weird, but she is my kid.
Get it? As in, if you’re not above the weather, then you must be under the weather. And so we are, me and Bean, hanging out below the weather. We got the sniffles and the sneezes and the occasional cough or two, but we’re on the mend.
Much has happened since my last blog. Lily now has two words in her vocabulary. There is the all important, Ma-Ma and now she says Godiva. First it came out as “Iva,” but within a few days it evolved to “Ga-biva.” Now she likes to have fun with it and add extra syllables by saying “Ga-ba-ba-ba-ba-biva.”
I love that she’s already breaking the rules of common vernacular.
I’ve been away awhile–away from the blog, sit-down meals, vitamins, sleep and rest, and the kind of living that doesn’t feel forced and frantic. My knuckles are white from holding on, but what choice do you have with a baby? The drive to keep myself upright and moving and doing and taking-care-of is primal. I am still holding on, but it feels like Lily’s sleep issues are turning a corner. At their worst she was waking every 45-60 minutes and sometimes she just couldn’t go back to sleep for hours. Hours. In those hours I started slipping away.
Sleep deprivation is the purest form of torture. I don’t know what else to say about it, at least not here. In the meantime, life goes on. It may look dreamlike and hazy, but it goes on. So I am back and with me are the pieces of myself I could salvage through all of this deprivation. A good part of me was lost or destroyed, at least that’s what it feels like. I have faith that what was lost and destroyed needed to be. It makes me think of Shiva, the destroyer, and Jesus, who I found myself praying to all the time because of his compassionate heart and the ocean of love that surrounds it.
Om Namah Shivaya
Wahe Guru
Peace Be With You
In an attempt to pass time and entertain my restless 8 month old, I pulled out my wooden flute yesterday and started playing. I use the term “playing” loosely, very loosely. I’ve never had a flute lesson, but sounds were coming out and they were rhythmic enough for Lily to sing along with like she does when I sing her to sleep. When I picked up the tempo she started bending her knees and bouncing a little. It looked like dancing, but I wasn’t sure. Later in the day we went a friend’s house where Lily found a musical toy. And what do you know, she started bouncing her little body up and down every time she pushed the music buttons. Then today we popped into a nearby cafe to get some juice. Bob Marley was playing and guess who was bouncing her little body up and down and up and down in the baby carrier. The cool thing is that we’ve never tried to show her how to dance, she just knew.
I’m behind on my blogging, but I’ve busy doing everything but sleeping. I feel like a broken record, but if I told how little sleep I am getting, you wouldn’t believe me. I hardly believe it myself. And yet somehow, not sure how, I get up everyday and do it all over again. Seeing friends on the weekdays is a respite from the monotony and the sleep deprivation. Last week we hung out with Patrick and Mica. Lily enjoyed showing off her new standing skills and showed them just how easily she can pull toys from her toy bins.
Lily was mesmerized by Patrick’s glasses and beard.
I love the way she is looking at Mica in this picture.
On Monday Lily turned 8 months. I can hardly believe it. Just last week, I would pull different toys out and set them in front of her. Now she stands at the toy bins and pulls them out all by herself. I can’t believe how fast this is happening. Everyday she looks more and more like the child she is becoming. And soon her little gummy grin will vanish, just like those little newborn fists she wielded at everything during those first few months. Her first tooth is cutting through, and it’s taking its bloody time. The pain makes her different, which is what pain does to us. She can be perfectly content scooting along the floor or nursing in my lap when out of the clear blue she arches her back and cries like she does when she bumps her head on the floor. It’s hard to watch, especially at two in the morning, and then again at three, and later at four, and five…
Yikes! She’s up again. Got to run.
