Pilot and CoPilot

This is what we call Pilot and Copilot over at my house. Once or twice a day, Big Brother will hop on the chair to do some fun PBS games and the Bee will climb on behind him and watch - waiting for Big Brother to let go of the steering wheel, and take over. This has been going on since the Bee was twelve months when he learned to climb on chairs, and soon after learned to climb on tables. This did not bode well for the computer since he likes to climb on the desk, too and sometimes attempts to throw the monitor down when it is not flying in the same direction brother takes it. Big Brother started using the computer at 3 and the Bee thinks, he's ready now. Me thinks this will not fly!

Intimacy Lost

It's been one WHOLE week since I nursed my baby. One whole week, since I lost that intimacy I had with him, and maybe a whole other lifetime before I will get to do it again. That is of course, if I am in the mood of believing in reincarnation, and I make my way back again as a woman. I wonder how I can miss something that I reluctantly did. Something that brought me so much physical pain and consumed every moment of my life for the first year. How nursing my babies hardly ever felt like that fantastic bonding experience people talk about. I wanted to quit nursing everyday, but when the time came to end it, I hesitated. Just one more month I'd say, and now as Bee turned 19 months, we both felt the time was right.

The night before I had set to end our nursing session, the Bee asked for his usual "night, night" nursing session, but as we sat down on the couch instead of the usual rocker and I proceeded to latch. He paused. He became distracted by the TV. He turned around, and refused to nurse after I attempted to relatch, and I didn't fight it. He fell asleep on my lap that night for the first time without having had his usual bedtime snack.

The next night he proceeded to ask for "night, night" again, and I proceeded to tell him we were all done. He responded by patting the boobs and saying "ah dun", and I shook my head to motion yes and repeated the all done. He lay his head on my shoulder and we rocked in our usual rocking chair until he fell asleep. I envisioned having a much more difficult time ending my nursing sessions with him with a lot of kicking and screaming, but it was just as easy as when I uttered those exact words of "all done" with Big Brother, and he rolled over and fell asleep after having missed his early morning session. Both boys gave it up with ease.

Maybe I would have been less sad if they had fought it. Maybe I would have been less sad, if they showed they wanted nothing else but to nurse, and maybe I would have obliged them for just one more month - one more month to have that intimacy only we shared, but maybe it was just time.

I have a new found freedom I am relishing. I have gotten my body back and it is just mine, but that same freedom scares me and saddens me, too. This little person no longer needs me in the same intensity he once did. I am no longer his only one, because what I now provide can be given by others. Yet, I am consoled by the fact that we were both ready. We were both ready to move on to a new phase in life, and that is much better than having it shoved in your face.

The Nomading Life I Lead

I hate moving. In my lifetime I have lived in 20 different houses, in three different states, in six different cities, and two different time zones. I would like to say that I have also only moved 20 times, but that would be too simple, because between moving in and out of dorms, shacks, basements, government housing, my parent's many homes, and my in-laws, the number of time I've moved may be close to thirty. That basically equates to about a move a year, not that I lived in each place a year and then moved.

There were some places I have lived in for a year or two, others I lived in for only a month: 7 months, 3 months, and still others I wished I hadn't lived in for no more than a few hours. My longest has been five years. As a kid, I vowed that I would never move more than just a couple times. I would be in control of my life, and I would be wiser and more decisive than my mother who dragged me across the country on what often seemed like a whim. I was nothing more than a piece of luggage to her then.

Now that I am older and wiser and in control of my life, I have realized that there is only so much control we have. That so many of our choices and decisions are driven by circumstance, by chance, by our bank accounts, by our jobs, by the people we love, by changing attitudes and lifestyles, and by all other mysterious or not so mysterious forces we call life. Nothing is ever black and white, its all a very murky gray. This of course is not a realization I just happened upon today. I am not that naive, although I am one of those people who sometimes needs to learn things the hard way. I have also come to realize that I am not a decisive person and may never be, and I do realize that this has led to missed opportunities and wasted time.

We have gone back and forth on our most recent decision to move about a hundred times already, and every decision has a weighty number of pros and and its equally strong cons, so much so that each decision seems like the right one and the wrong one all at the same time -- a decision that can be easily swayed by our mood. We are at a point where we are trying to prioritize our mental list, but really we are just going to drive forward with our decision to move.

Oh, and do I loathe the whole moving process. The planning, the packing, the carrying of heavy stuff, the canceling of utilities, the renting of a moving truck, the renting of the house we now own, the fixing up the house we now own, the finding new schools, new friends, new tenants, new jobs, and so much more that would just add to an endless list of boring details if I continued on in this manner. But really, wasn't life much simpler when we were childless and out of college when all that needed to be moved could be fit in a small trunk of a Mazda Protege, and the only person that needed to be notified was our mother. Life is about making sacrifices, and we have decide to make the sacrifice of moving and losing our own home so that we can live in the same area code as our family - well, at least part of it.