Monday, March 07, 2005

Hello, am I in There? Anywhere?

It's still early, but I'm coming to terms that there's not a shred of me in Gideon. He looks exactly like Chris, is built exactly like him (tall and lanky) and is already showing definite signs of his personality. The most I could come up with is "maybe he has my nail beds." I'm not even sure about that. Not saying this is a bad thing. There are clearly a lot of benefits to not being like me. I'm just, well, surprised. I thought my DNA was tougher than that. Now all I have to look forward to is when his teeth come in -- maybe he'll have my overbite and need braces like I did.

The two of them also have this spooky bond. In the wee hours when he wakes up (every 2-3 hours), I can spend up to an hour and half with him and as soon as I walk out of the nursery it's all screams and brimstone. Chris will walk in, place his hands on him for a few seconds and instantly he's asleep -- for hours, as if Chris used the Vulcan sleep hold. I'm not kidding. What am I doing during that 90 minute stretch that's just not enough? I'm changing him, feeding him, holding him and reading poetry to him. Poetry defintely has the power to put him to sleep, it's just having mixed results keeping him asleep once I put him in the crib.

That's another thing they have in common. As soon as someone starts reading poetry they fall asleep.

OK, that's not really true. Chris only fell asleep at one reading and now that I think about it that was a fiction reading, but it was embarassing nonetheless because we were smack up in the front row and oh the mean glares Jamaica Kincaid sent our way while she read about a little yellow dress.

Like a lot of you, I have this towering pile of books/journals that I add to much faster than I get around reading. Last night Gideon and I finished Jeff Clark's The Little Door Slides Back. He stayed awake and listened to a good part of that. That only took two late night sessions to finish. On Saturday we read the latest issue of Carve which has some great poems by T-Rob that Gid missed out on because they were at the end of the journal and he was already asleep. Tonight we'll start Kirsten Kaschock's Unfathoms. Actually this is the most poetry I've been reading since I got pregnant. I was so tired then that aside from reading submissions and online journals during the day, I maybe read one book every week or so. I'm still tired now, but no longer have the option of sleeping when I want.

So if Gideon wants the poetry to stop, he's just going to have to fall asleep faster.

5 Comments:

At 9:03 AM, Anonymous Anonymous said...

When my oldest son Simon was born--I thought there was much of me in him, until I was disabused of that assumption by relatives on Danny's side who (I am not exaggerating) tagged me as the vessel that re-delivered my husband, and produced picture after picture to prove it. Now that he is five-- despite the resemblance I know Simon is partly mine. Neurotic, teeth-grinding, hyper-sexual... all me. The first weeks are not enough to tell. After he uses sarcasm for the first time--then you'll know.

-Kirsten

 
At 9:54 AM, Anonymous Anonymous said...

Thinking about your last post (comments didn't work there) I wanted to say that for us it's almost the opposite in the soothing dept. Thankfully, the one night Carole Anne was out of town giving a talk, our girl didn't seem to mind. We ate lots, played hard, and when we laid down for sleep we talked about Dora. She went out like a light and slept through the night.

As for "Neurotic, teeth-grinding, hyper-sexual..." Thank god I'm not alone. In fact, my chew toy is wearing out; I need to see the dentist before that so I don't grind them off any further.

 
At 11:37 AM, Blogger Unknown said...

I read somewhere it's common for the baby to start out looking like the father. It convinces the father the baby is actually his and probably has some other evolutionary reason as well.

dba

 
At 12:04 PM, Blogger Kelli Russell Agodon - Book of Kells said...

Yes, exactly what Deborah said.

My husband always says, "Mama's baby, Daddy's maybe." It's nature's way of saying to men, "You know I'm yours and you're not getting out of this."

 
At 10:09 AM, Blogger RL said...

Wow, I'm glad Chris turned out to be the father.

 

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