Baby Fat Expiration Date

Yesterday, I was lucky enough to bear witness to my next-door-neighbors and friends bringing home their first baby to their apartment. The uncanny thing is that they live in the apartment where Adam and I lived when we brought Alexandra home. The truly uncanny thing is that their baby was born on Alexandra's birthday which made me delightfully happy in a really weird way, like I was watching my life unfold again but with other actors playing me, Adam, and baby Alexandra. But their sweet pea is a boy, so there are some differences, too.  Overall, thought, it was very moving to watch.

Kate, the mama, looked amazing. Granted, she was one of those women who probably gained 10 lbs and had a 7 lb baby. While pregnant, she was her normal stick self with a gigantic belly; she looked truly absurd. I'm not kidding, I don't think I have ever seen anyone stay so the same with such a huge baby bump. When I told her she looked great yesterday, she chortled and said, "You can't see all of me" and left it at that. That's because she has tact, something I greatly lack. I would have elaborated on my flabby stomach and my sausage-like vagina and my ass fissure and the many other ailments that accompanied giving birth to my two almost-10 lb babies. But she has much more grace than I do. I love women like that. Maybe in my next life I'll be given a frontal lobe.

I left them on their stoop to cross their threshold for the first time as parents and took my 5-year-old to the water playground. There, my two mom friends and I laughed about how mortified we were about our bodies after having given birth--oh, the horror, the horror! Kurtz from Heart of Darkness has nothing n a woman who has made and birthed children. Now we can laugh, mostly. But there are some days when we still cringe. I had one this morning.

Today I was getting ready in the bathroom with the company of Nico. I was naked, a towel wrapped around my hair, and putting lotion on my face when Nico asked me if I had a baby in my belly. Of course, I do not, nor will I ever again, and I told him this. I said, "It's just a little chub." He stood there silent for a minute, then he looked at me and said, in a confused way, "But it's not little, it's so big!"

Wow. Thanks, kid.

Needless to say, I am getting myself back to the gym/yoga tonight. I can't really use the excuse that it's baby fat when I no longer have babies. The baby fat expiration date has passed and now it's just fat. As I saw Kate, two days postpartum, I was reminded just how long ago it was when I gave birth. Time to start waking at 5am to workout again. Wish me luck.

1, 2, 3, 4, FIVE

Today my baby girl, Alexandra Osa, turns five.

The photo above was us as a new family. She was about seven weeks. We were still in shock and awe that we were parents. Actually, I am still in shock and awe that we are parents quite frequently! But we have been for five years now. Wow.

For some reason, this birthday is making me sad and nostalgic. I look at the photo above and feel that the summer of 2007 was just yesterday. I remember clearly sitting in the hospital five years ago, a 9 lb 8 oz baby in my arms, exhausted from pushing her and all her chubby glory out, and blissed out by the amazement that my body had made and birthed this little person. I found her to be perfect; I was totally blind to the fact that her head was a complete cone due to the hours of her edging her way down the birth canal and into the world. Her squished face and pointy head were the image of pure beauty to me.

And now she is a little girl. The weird thing is, I remember a lot of being five which means that Alexandra is entering into the parts of life that she will later remember, too. I remember feeling like a big kid, and I remember breaking from my mom little by little. My mom's favorite story of me being just barely five is how she had organized for me to be in a carpool for kindergarten. We lived just shy of one mile from Guilford Elementary School in Sterling, Virginia therefore we did not get bussed. She set it up for me to get a ride, but when the first day of school rolled around I protested. I had already arranged for me to walk to school with a group of older elementary kids in the neighborhood. No way, I was not carpooling--I was walking with the big kids.

And she let me. Yes, it was a different era and I cannot imagine sending Alexandra out the front door here in Brooklyn to walk almost a mile with some 8 and 9 year olds to anywhere, but my mom let me go.  Maybe it was stupid of her or maybe it was brilliant. Who knows. A lot of parenting is like that.

I see that independence beginning to break through with Alexandra, too. Small things, and I can't even recall a concrete example for this post, but I have noted that she is already establishing her separation from us, her mom and dad, in her small ways. Already, and she's only five.

It makes me love on Nico a bit more and a bit harder, knowing that the time they are truly small is very short. I understand that the tension between dependent and independent will be a constant in the parenting years ahead of us, and I understand that even when both our kids crave full independence before it's time (say, at age 13!) that we will have to wrestle them into a hold of sorts, but it gives me pause when I look at my now big girl and realize that she is already laying the path to her own life, even now at age five.

Happy birthday, sweet baby girl.