By Kim Blakely, mama to ‘Mojo’ and ‘Moxie’
I have a new mantra.
I’m blessed to have a baby girl with such healthy lungs.
I chant it over and over while I bounce and sway all over the house with her in my arms.
Honestly, with as much moving around as I’ve been doing, I should be back in my pre-pregnancy pants already. It seems so unfair that I’m not.
Moxie has … well, moxie. She lets us know when she’s not happy, or when she could be happier. She laughs in her sleep, smiles while she’s awake and screams when she wants something as simple as a change in her position.
I love her deeply, more deeply every hour, and I tell her so while she rants on and on, usually in the late afternoon/early evening, commanding that I stay on the move.
I don’t think it’s colic. It’s not regular enough to be colic, and we can stop the crying if we perform on command quickly enough. I think, honestly, that it’s how she works through all the stress of the day.
As a baby, Mojo liked things quiet and calm, and when things were too chaotic for his taste, he behaved the same way. With him around, no day is quiet or calm, and I think Moxie is dealing with that in her own way.
She seems fascinated by her big brother. Her eyes track him when he comes near, and she stares at him when he talks to her.
He seems fascinated by her, too. He pays attention to her – mostly good attention, telling her about all the superheroes in his books and explaining the ins-and-outs of daily life. I wonder, though, if he’s sad that he has to share his mama now. Sometimes he looks sad to me, and sometimes he asks me to hug him while I have her in my arms. Can you really hug a 4-year-old with a newborn in your arms? I mean, really hug him? I try. We work in lots of snuggling, and I tell him how awesome he is and how things were when he was a baby.
Maybe it’s me who’s sad on some level that he has to share. I’m thrilled, of course, that Moxie is finally here, but I want to be all things to both of them, and everyone knows that’s just not possible.
Still, I’ve had a glimpse of things to come, and I’m excited about the journey. Mojo occasionally asks if he’ll have to share his favorite toys with Moxie, or if he’ll have to get rid of his things to make room for hers, leading me to believe he’s working his way up to some sort of monumental resentment. But then he’ll ask if he can hold his sister or if he can lie next to her. I’ll put her next to him and they’ll gaze into one another’s eyes, almost seeming to share an unspoken language. And I melt.
In those moments, it’s all good.
That position, however, puts them just close enough for some hair pulling action. But that’s a story for a different day …
