Side-Sleeping

She squirms, scrunches her legs up, knees crooked, and tilts to her right. Always to her right. In a little while, she will dig her face into the mattress, twisting her torso even more, but the end of the mattress blocks further rotation and she is, for the moment, stymied. Slow rhythmic breathing attests to the singular fact: all this has been done while she is yet asleep. Soon, she will slowly uncurl; it is barely perceptible in the grey of our darkened bedroom, but you suddenly are sure that her arm has unbent, her hand unfurled like a flag of surrender. If you're unlucky, her frustrated attempts thrust consciousness upon her and she begins to cry herself awake. If you're lucky, she sighs and continues to sleep. But if you're very lucky, she does it all over again while you smother giggles and try to convince yourself to stop watching and go to sleep.

Daddy's Dodger Girl

Al has been taking forever to get to sleep lately, so after a long nursing, I passed her off to daddy to finish the night-night routine. But, a Dodgers game is on, and lo and behold, what do I see but daddy and little girl peeking out around the hallway at the end of an exciting inning. Al had been pretty drowsy, but all of a sudden she realized the game was on and jerked awake, alert to the crucial part of the inning. Daddy!!! It's a half an hour later now, and I hear her sputtering in our bedroom, wanting to watch the rest of the game. I should have just let them watch the game, instead of giving daddy the "are you kidding me?" look and shooing them back into the boring, dark bedroom while the Dodgers took the lead during the 6th.

I guess she's daddy's little Dodger girl. My fault for dressing her in the Dodgers shirt this afternoon.

Laughing takes work

A few minutes after Alison's first laugh, we recorded the following:



Clearly, it was just a one shot-deal, and the first of many times that we realized that while she always laughs in company, she never laughs at what we find funny. Later that day, we did manage to catch her at it, but only with quite a lot of effort on mama's part:



In fact, when we laugh, it tends to startle her into solemnity. So how exactly did she learn how to laugh???

A meets Daddy

Whither my girl?

My chatterbox seems to have gone into hiding. From when she was only a few weeks old, you could hold her head in your hands and coo back and forth with her for ages (ages = 15-20 min in baby-time). Early last week she began to increase the volume of her hiyas, gurgles, tongue-rolls, and ha-uuiuuhhhs, but she's gone strangely quiet of late.

It's hard not to ask myself if I did something wrong. Did I make her more passive by wearing her in the sling too much? Am I not playing enough or engaged enough with her? Am I letting her sleep too long because it's convenient for me? Did we shush her too much? ... I suspect these to be foolish questions driven by my perfectionism, not by her good.

Or is she just becoming more interested in observing the world and therefore splitting her time between quiet observation & playing with lips, palate, and tongue?

I don't know her well enough to say. She is my enigma as well as her own. We stare at each other: I, wondering who I'm seeing; she, wondering at her seeing, but perhaps not yet at me.

The Sea

It seems that sometimes, for her, existence is so overwhelming that it feels like a burden, and then she cries and cries, sputtering, choking, gasping for air like a drowning woman. And I lean over her, wanting to throw her my self as a lifeline, but perhaps offering her only more waves of the sea to buffet her little soul. She stares at me with incomprehension widening her eyes and grimacing her face. She is dry, recently sated with food, and not in physical pain, but she has been gripped by something outside of her control, let alone her understanding. To be held is her deepest desire; all else is the vast, heaving sea: my murmurs and little touches, my fingers stroking her forehead, my eyes locked woth hers, my arm cradling her body in the car seat, all wind and waves to her. But still I must buffet her with my presence, for I have nothing else to give. And since she has been given to me and I to her, I know that is enough to be faithful to the call that is also the gift. I cannot mend this plight, but it is not mine to mend. It is mine to bear with her, and hers to bear with me.

Christmas and other babies

Christmas was low-key - we just hung out with baby while the rest of the family were elsewhere celebrating. They eventually brought us some of the dinner and cuddled Al while we ate it. I cried while listening to Sixpence None the Richer's "Last Christmas". I thought more about the vulnerability of the Son as a wee baby and the incomprehensible humility of that (diapers! spitup! can't hold his own head up!). I thought of the women of the past and around the world who may have lost their baby in the kind of labor I could have had sans drugs, and the blessing of the knowledge we have of the human body and how to help labor along.

I remembered Eve's "with the help of the Lord I have brought forth a manchild" - not a mere platitude of thanks. She had never seen a baby born before; no experienced mother was available to explain to her how to help her bear the pain and what the process would be like. More and more I wonder if "the help of the Lord" was quite direct and engaged in an embodied fashion of some sort--an incredible mercy in what appears to be the grip of the curse. In Paradise Lost, Eve contemplates killing herself so that she won't spread the curse to other humans born of her, but our God is bigger than mere damage control. Amazing. Still thinking about this - Eve and Mary and the seed of the woman.

You can call her Al

Vital stats:

• DOB: 23 December, 3:26am
  
• 6 lb. 13 oz.
• 19 1/4 in.
• 25 hours of labor beginning around 2am when Ladybug sprang a leak; took 18 hours to get to 4cm and then held there while contractions got stronger and stronger and I got tireder and tireder and Al went nowhere fast; last 6-7 hours were mercifully helped along by drugs with about 45 min. of pushing at the end (because the midwife was slow in getting ready to catch).
  
• copious quantities of light brown hair
• daddy's feet
• long fingers
• can do daddy's raised eyebrow trick
• perhaps right-handed (oh well)

Taking every Hallow's Eve Captive for Christ

One Reformed perspective on Halloween, one BBC Radio4 public-interest story, one mother (mine) who adores the silly-ness of Halloween, and one delightfully stimulating dinner conversation all add up to a question: is it good for our souls to celebrate all Hallow's Eve as a preparation for All Saints' by mocking the devil and showing the his powerlessness after the victory of Christ? Here's a snippet of the Reformed perspective mentioned above by James B. Jordan:

The concept, as dramatized in Christian custom, is quite simple: On October 31, the demonic realm tries one last time to achieve victory, but is banished by the joy of the Kingdom.

What is the means by which the demonic realm is vanquished? In a word: mockery. Satan’s great sin (and our great sin) is pride. Thus, to drive Satan from us we ridicule him. This is why the custom arose of portraying Satan in a ridiculous red suit with horns and a tail. Nobody thinks the devil really looks like this; the Bible teaches that he is the fallen Arch-Cherub. Rather, the idea is to ridicule him because he has lost the battle with Jesus and he no longer has power over us....

Similarly, on All Hallows’ Eve (Hallow-Even – Hallow-E’en – Halloween), the custom arose of mocking the demonic realm by dressing children in costumes. Because the power of Satan has been broken once and for all, our children can mock him by dressing up like ghosts, goblins, and witches. The fact that we can dress our children this way shows our supreme confidence in the utter defeat of Satan by Jesus Christ – we have NO FEAR!

When I first read this I thought that it would be a challenge to get this message across to small children, but the Radio4 story had little girls rattling off without any hesitation that the meaning of Halloween was "the victory of light over dark, which means we don't have to be afraid any more"!

Rather than a Frank-Peretti-style thriller pitching capable archangels against the swarthy powers of darkness, we have here holy laughter and the joy of the Spirit as the answer of Christ's people to the threats and scare-tactics of the devil. We spend many of the days of our year giving the devil more than his due; perhaps it is fitting to spend an evening remembering the joy of the kingdom, the powerless of evil to snatch us from Christ, and Christ's humiliation of Satan by the cross, resurrection, and ascension. Drawn up into the life and victory of Christ, is it not fitting that we too should scorn and deride the pride of the evil one?

This is a truth that can be taught to very young children, and perhaps is a better solution to the "Halloween problem" than harvest parties. I'm still thinking about it...but I have to say, I would love any little girl of mine to have the confidence in God's victory that I heard over the radio.

Eating all by my lonesome

My beloved husband is still in California for the next few days after we flew out all of a sudden for a family funeral. Work constraints have me back in the UK, and I'm faced with the prospect of eating alone for the next few evenings. Now I could in theory invite myself over for dinner with friends (which I may yet do tomorrow), but much as I seriously and actively dislike being without my dear Drumstick, I am rather looking forward to cooking just for myself. Hector, Drumstick's digestive alter ego, seems to require meat in large quantities in order to feel satisfied, whereas I can be happy noshing on bits of this and that. Case in point: when we were apart a couple weeks ago for the same reason, I moved away from spaghetti with meat sauce and starting eating spinach salads with pancetta cubes, chicken liver pate spread on french baguettes, yoghurt, and apples for my meals. Prospective menus (ones which leave Hector still a little rumbly) for this evening include:

• sauted filet of some white fish with pancetta and white wine sauce, served over a bed of spinach with wild rice on the side
• seared tuna, dressed with soy, ginger and honey and served with noodles and bok choy

Leon Kass in The Hungry Soul talks about taking time to dine, to relish a meal, even when eating alone. This means, at a minimum, eating for over more than 15 minutes, not watching tv while eating, and just generally observing the same proprieties one would in company. Part of the point is that one tends towards a particularly human sort of virtue when one takes the time to eat in a way that goes beyond necessity, beyond mere re-fueling and feeding and towards dining. This, I confess, is difficult for me when alone; dining for me typically reaches beyond necessity because it is also time with my husband to discuss things, chat over the day, and generally just talk and talk away until it gets so late that the dishes get left 'for tomorrow'. When by myself, I often turn the radio on or put on a dvd to keep myself company instead of missing Drumstick, paltry as the substitution is. I find reading while dining to be generally awkward, even with a bookstand, and I can't remember if that's even allowable by Kass' high standards. I suppose, though, at the end of the day as with all virtues it's not about a certain list of rules to apply, but about being a certain sort of person. Perhaps the care I take in shopping and preparing for the meal evinces the same sort of human virtue as leaving the dvd on the shelf for the moment, so I shouldn't worry too much about the temptation of watching the first episode of Firefly during dinner tonight.

Update: Menu turned out to be sesame-encrusted tuna, seared to medium-rare and served with a stir-fry of egg noodles, chestnut mushrooms, carrot, green onion, and chinese leaf cabbage (no bok choy at Sainsburys last night) dressed simply with soy and ginger. Drumstick called me right when I was tucking in, so I had a leisurely meal by default :)

Easter feasting

For Resurrection Sunday, we invited friends over for a proper Easter feast, with all generousity and abundance in light of prudential wisdom. We wanted to celebrate together as a family with them, and so planned for a leisurely, relatively painless meal preparation that wouldn't take away from my enjoyment and their comfort by enslaving me to the kitchen. This pretty much went according to plan, minus the roast being a bit more speedy than anticipated and causing a last-minute sprint for me! But the original plan was something like this:

Come whenever after church
Nibble on cheese and crackers, nuts, delicious french pickles, while sipping Kir for a good while, listening to joyful music
Kick-start the appetite proper with pan-roasted asparagus with a warm orange-sherry viniagrette (easy to make!), quaffing the rest of the white wine therewith
Have a breather and talk
Bring out the roast lamb, peas, artichoke hearts, and green onions with lemon zest and garlic, and 'smashed potatoes' and switch to the red wines
Adjourn to the sitting room and eat carrot cake (made the day before)
Read resurrection poetry (largely dominated by Hopkins) over coffee and chocolates
Go on a walk together by the river

And that's generally what we did, resulting in a great time of leisurely fellowship and celebration of Christ's resurrection and our new life in Him.

Later that day, after the walk, friends spontaneously dropped by and we spent the next hour and a half laughing ourselves silly together. Calls to home ended the day, and we woke up on Monday for another round of enjoying resurrected life with our friends: banana pancakes with John and Di in the morning sunshine and later tacos with more friends in the evening, picked up from Cambridge's one and only tacqueria. All in all, a satisfying set of celebrations and delight, all pointing towards and participating in the great feast in New Jerusalem that awaits us and to which we look forward eagerly in hope!

Parenting speculations: behaviorism, sin, and grace

Many thanks to Bourgeois Wife for her thoughts and to those participating in her carnival on parenting styles and theology responding to my forward-looking curiosity. (No, I’m not pregnant, in case you thought that was a veiled hint. Sheesh!) Bribing respected, well-heeled parents to share their wisdom over dinner was a brilliant idea of Bourgeois Wife and Burglar, and I also was heartened by her equipoise, thinking both in terms of the long-term process of nurturing another person and in terms of one stage at a time.

Two notions really struck me in reading the carnival, especially pertaining to the influence of theology on parenting. The following thoughts are the fruit of a discussion with Drumstick last night about it all.

Firstly, as Kelly reminds us, the goal of parenting is not a well-behaved child, but pointing a soul to Christ. This insight launched a discussion between Drumstick and I on the difference between parenting focused on behavior management and parenting focused on creating a space in which a child is encouraged, enabled, and reasonably persuaded to give herself wholly to Christ. Much of what Kelly said really resonated with us, but we had a few comments to add.

Aiming merely at managing behavior treats a child like a beast (à la B.F. Skinner and Pavlov). Whether that is done with threats or rewards, spanking, the “naughty chair”, emotional manipulation, or cognitive therapy (!), the mindset behind it treats the child in a thoroughly materialistic fashion by focusing solely on creating outward conformity and ignoring the soul. This attitude fails to take into account that it is an image-bearing person that you are attempting to control, not an animal. When your strategies for teaching your child manners do not differ much from those you would apply to training your dog—noble as dogs may be!—there is something seriously amiss. To be content with a well-mannered child is to aim too low and consequently to risk feeding hidden monsters of rebellion and pride prowling around the heart.

In contrast, acting in order to create a space for encounter with Christ in a child’s life cannot but presume that the child is a person who images the God who reveals himself personally to human persons. Behavior is managed not only for the ease of social relations (which is indisputably a good), but primarily because doing so can help a child to understand what it means to be responsible to the loving person who has charge over her and calls her into a flourishing relationship with him.

That said, it is still the case that sometimes a parent just has to say, “Stop that right now!” (possibly adding an “OR ELSE!” for good measure) and he cannot immediately do the soul-work part of his role. What do you do when, in the moments when you both are flying by the seat of your pants, you do not have the time or resources to deal with your child as a whole person? One idea is a later breakdown of the day at bedtime (something my parents did with me) where things whether good or bad are talked over with a parent. This could take many forms. Those who are more introverted can be asked to draw a picture of their day or to tell a story about an imaginary character or one of their stuffed animals, while the parent gently prods with questions and offers a Christ-formed perspective and a chance for forgiveness (and any apologies for parental errors!). This is all non-parent speculation of course, but I suppose it could be a way to model with the child a meditative heart before God.

In your anger do not sin;
when you are on your beds, search your hearts and be silent.

Selah

Offer right sacrifices
and trust in the LORD.

~ Psalm 4:4-5

Secondly, Kelly’s discussion of the effect of a theology of original sin on the way a parent regard’s a child’s behavior was interesting, and I would love to hear more on this line from parents. As Drumstick is fond of quipping, “What a cute little bundle of sin!” It seems to me that while parents must begin with the recognition that a child is a gift of God in the form of a person made in his image, parents must also recognize that this little person is marred, whether by concupiscence or original sin. Marred, but not disfigured out of all recognition, and there lies the tension that informs practical decisions by parents. When has the child crossed the line from expressing a proper need to selfish manipulation?

Now add to this tension the complexity of infant persons. Very young infants are taken up with learning first what it means to be in the world and second how to act in the world: what another person is (something clearly not obvious to her, as it takes her a while to realize that pulling Mommy’s hair hurts Mommy even though it doesn’t hurt her), what her own self is as distinct from other persons, how the outside world relates to her, what toes are for, how to move arms and legs and body purposefully, how to drink, what hunger is for and how to deal with it, how to see things properly, how to give something attention, and so forth. The scope for moral action for such a person so taken up with the ins and outs of simply being and acting is highly limited, and thus her capacity for sin is likewise highly limited by opportunity. I don’t think that anyone really attributes manipulation to a three-week-old wailing in hunger or loneliness: both indicate true human needs that ought to be satisfied and she is right to look to others to satisfy those needs as God has designed. For very young infants (contra St. Augustine), it seems reasonable to suppose that sinful actions are at most a rarity and extraordinarily hard to identify, especially since parents too are learning who this little person is and how she expresses her very self. At the same time, a baby’s scope for moral action is slowly but constantly expanding as the infant comes to understand more about what it means to be a person (both for herself and for other persons) and comes to be able to act more and more significantly in the world. The problem of dealing with the concupiscence of your child then, becomes in the first year of her life largely an epistemological one: how do you know that at this instant, in this action, your child is manifesting a sinful heart? (See Rebecca’s post about an incident with her young son, Caleb, as a practical example of this that is very inspiring!)

Drumstick’s summary agrees pretty much with Kelly's: bring all the wisdom you can to each situation, and then err on the side of grace.

We often talk of teaching our children obedience, justice, responsibility, and so forth, so that they can then understand by analogy God’s relationship to them as Lord and King. Surely, then, we ought also to think hard about opening up for our children avenues of grace, for how else can we prepare their hearts to be as receptive to God’s grace as they are to his rule? The role of grace in parenting – now there’s a topic!