This week Jocelyn turned six months old. The time has passed so quickly, but it seems almost impossible to imagine a time without her.
So here she is, in all her adorable glory!
For comparison purposes here I am at roughly the same age.
And here’s Matthew in back in his sweet baby days!
I think she got all our best features.
*I reserve the right to use this post title again, as I don’t think I’m original enough to come up with something new for her next milestone.
Today is our third wedding anniversary. In the last year, we’ve expanded our family with our happiest addition.
I love you both soooo much!
More about Wordless Wednesday here.
As I watch Jocelyn rolling hither and fro, pivoting on her belly to reach this toy, stretching out her arms to grab the kitty’s tail, I ponder what her life will be like. What will she remember about her childhood? Though there are a few exceptions, it seems remembering things before age three or so is pretty rare. As she jabbers away, exercising her verbal muscle, growing by the minute, I can’t help wondering, when she grows up, what will be her earliest memory? This of course made me think of my earliest memory. There are two that I think must have happened around the same time, so I’m not sure which is the earliest. The first is really more like a snap-shot in time, I’m not quite three years old and I have a pair of cow-boy boots I love to wear, but they’re too small for my ever-growing feet. Undeterred, I wear them on a walk with my Dad. Of course they hurt my feet and soon I can’t walk, so my father lifts me up on his shoulders and carries me the rest of the way, I remember looking down at the top of his head my cow-boy boot clad feet dangling over his shoulders. This memory has a strong emotional component, whenever I think of it, I feel safe.
The second memory is in my bedroom at about the same time (at least I think it was). A neighbor girl who is a little older than me is playing with me in my room, and she finds a pair of safety scissors. She uses these scissors to cut my hair, practically scalping me, as she cuts in big chunks down to the roots. I remember my mother’s face, pure horror, when she finds us. Apparently I took the hair and hid it before we were found, stashing the evidence beneath my favorite blanket in an old stone crock which my mom didn’t find until some months later. I guess even then I knew I was in trouble. When I think of this memory, I can’t help but laugh, I know my mom was very upset when this happened, but now as an adult, it seems comical.
Since I know Jocelyn isn’t going to remember this part of her life, I’m busy trying to build memories for her. Taking lots of pictures, breaking out the video camera, just letting her be a baby. And I’ll keep remembering moments, like when she had her first solid food and the melodic sound of her sweet baby laugh.
Facebook is a dangerous thing. All those top 5 lists and notes are great time wasters. When the favorite books lists started to appear, this one was on the top of one of my friends. Since it was available at the library and I needed something to fill a little time each day, I decided to give it a go. The story of the Land family, Peace Like A River follows this family through tragedy and miracles. Narrated by the middle child Ruben, a child keenly aware of the value of breathing because of terrible asthma, the Land family becomes embroiled in a feud that has dire consequences for all involved. There’s some thing unusual about Ruben’s father, his touch seems both miraculous and dangerous, both a gift and a curse.
This story is difficult to review without giving away too much. Set in the upper plains states in the 1960’s, cold permeates the novel, as it mostly transpires during the winter. The Land family crosses the barren landscape searching for the oldest child Davy, abandoning all they know to bring the way-ward son home. They find much more than they anticipate, but loose more than they ever imagined in the process.
I enjoyed this book, though the micraculous aspect might be off-putting to some. My favorite character was the youngest child, and only girl, Swede. She’s got amazing strength, courage, and literary flare befitting a different century. Her epic poem about outlaws and bountyhunters of the old west was my favorite part of the book and makes this book a worth-while read. I couldn’t help but think all that the children in this book seemed wise beyond their years, though not completely immune to the foibles of childhood. This book requires a pretty serious suspension of disbelief, but the closeness of the family, their love and sacrifices are moving. This book is not particularly light-hearted, dealing with serious subjects though it has humorous moments. The writing is quite good and I enjoyed it.
We’ve been thinking about child-care for Jocelyn for a long time, before she was even conceived. Pondering the pro’s and con’s of one type versus another has occupied many an hour, and a good deal of sleep has been lost trying to figure out what is best for us. I know a lot of people will say the best thing is for the parents to stay with the child, and I agree, but for us it is not possible, for a number of reasons. For the past nearly three months we’ve been doing a split schedule of child-care that has been very hard on both of us. We hardly see each other, and except for some time on the weekends, have practically no time when all three of us are awake and together. It’s pretty similar to working two full-time jobs, and equally exhausting. Splitting time between two such demanding things generally means neither gets done as well as it should, and that’s definitely how I’m feeling about work right now.
We’ve been looking for good quality child-care for some time. Either the waiting lists are forever long or the openings are immediate. They’re all too expensive, not that we don’t value the time of child-care providers as they have an extremely important job, it’s just that our employment provides us with rather meager compensation, all things considered. We even encountered one home day care that we’d never even consider, because the woman obviously smoked in her house and was trying to cover it up by burning candles on ledges that were way to easy for a baby to reach (she wasn’t even cheap). She obviously cared about the kids and they seemed happy, but that’s just not environment we’d feel comfortable with for our baby.
A few weeks ago we went to an open house at a family based day-care, liked what we saw, and liked the center director. She seems genuinely intelligent, which I regrettably can’t say about any of the other places we explored. She wanted to be able to stay home with her children, so she converted the lower story of her house and the back-yard (a rarity around here) into a day-care center. She has helpers and children a variety of ages. We decided we would be comfortable with Jocelyn going there, and the director was willing to be flexible. We didn’t want Jocelyn in day-care full-time. It’s important to us, though perhaps a bit impractical, that Jocelyn spends more time with Matthew and I than she does at day-care. Jocelyn will go three full-days a week, so we’ll still split schedules a couple days, but we’ll be able to eat dinner together five days a week, which is important to me.
We’ve been trying to ease her into this new environment. I was afraid she’d have trouble adapting as she doesn’t always react well to strangers. Matthew took her for a play date, then left her a couple hours, and today she was there half the day. And it’s going well. And I’m relieved, I kept picturing her crying, tears streaming down her face in a strange place, and I’d tear up just thinking about. Now that it seems she’s adjusting well I must confess to being a little sad. I thought we were so bonded that she couldn’t possibly tolerate so much time without us around. Part of me is glad it’s not true, but a little voice in the back of my head says “What if she loves them more than you?” The rational part of me wants to dismiss this out of hand, but my emotional half is torn between wanting my daughter to be happy and wanting my daughter to love me. A number of mothers have told me that their children still loved them best despite being in day-care full-time so I know that I really shouldn’t worry. But that guilt nags at me, the belief that we should be the only ones caring for our child. I know that what we have chosen is truly what is best for us, and will allow us to be a happy family, instead of an over-worked couple of strangers with a child. 
I know day-care will be good for Jocelyn’s socialization, having kids of a variety of ages around her will be more like a family environment and will get her used to children of other ages as well as her own. And yet when I was rocking her to sleep for her nap, I held her much longer than was really necessary. As much as I want to see her grow up and see the person she will become, frequently I would like to stop time, to freeze her in this moment, as a beautiful smiling baby dependent on me for everything and me protecting her from the evils of the world. But the clock ticks past that moment and she grows everyday. Another tooth is coming, and she’s working on getting ready to crawl. Soon we’ll start her on solid foods. And as my mother said, the next thing I know I’ll be dancing at her wedding!
