18 Years Ago: May 19th--Cocooning

May 18, 1997
(backdrop: Rebecca Cross quilt)

May 19, 1997: Home with our baby! Welcome, little Simon. That's what a 7 pound 12 ounce baby looks like against his daddy. Words like "peanut" come to mind. This photo was taken the previous day, probably by my father, after we arrived home from the hospital. Home felt strange at first. The living room was in a particular disarray. Why was the coffee table next to the sofa instead of over by the window, as it usually is? Oh, yeah, I asked Markus to scoot it over so I could look at the bouquet of iris while I breathed through contractions on the couch. Oh, yeah, I went through early labor in here. Labor is a strange place to remember things from. During the earlier part of my labor, Markus alternated between timing contractions now and then and looking for something useful to do. He cleaned out the fridge!

May 18, 1997
First car ride

Simon slept during his first car ride, and we brought him inside still strapped to his car seat. He slept in the car seat a fair amount, as it turned out. We kept it in the living room and set him down in it sometimes.

As day one at home progressed into day two, I was busy learning from Simon how to breastfeed. He seemed to know what he was doing, and all I needed to bring to the situation was patience and plenty of time. I soon became an avid reader of the New York Times Magazine while breastfeeding. Its wide pages of text kept me occupied without requiring too many page turns. My hands were busy holding Simon in place.

Markus and Simon spent a lot of time together, too. This photo shows Simon in the favorite sleeping position of both our children: snuggled up on Daddy's chest. During the first months of Simon's life, we let him sleep in a bassinet (the same one my father slept in!) and later in his crib. During night-time feedings we often brought him into our bed. I remember Simon's early months involving a fair number of attempts to lay him down in his crib. I can say three things about that. One, he never woke up happy in his crib. Two, neither of my babies ever "slept through the night." Three, co-sleeping with your nursing baby is incredibly convenient and sweet. With baby number two, Miriam, we went straight to co-sleeping, and she'd usually go down for the night, after nursing, on Markus' chest in our bed.

Aside from breastfeeding, figuring out diapers and clothing, feeding ourselves, cuddling, and feeling completely in love with our baby, we didn't do a whole lot more than that.

May 19, 2015: I had a full teaching day (9:00 am - 4:15 pm), and I got to see several of my students who ran the half marathon on Sunday. Their young bodies seemed to be doing fine, although several admitted not having trained past a distance of 6K before attempting 20K. But that's what you do when you're 18, 19, 20, right?

May 19, 2015
Backyard garden, Flein

In Ann Arbor in 1997, the flowering trees were just beginning to bloom (now that Simon was finally there!). Here in Flein, we've been enjoying the bulbs and trees since March. This week the roses are blooming generously, and the clematis has also burst forth. Only the peonies continue to hold their petals in tight fists. The ants are still crawling all over them (the kind of ant--I found out this morning--that stings when it touches your skin). You might want to compare this photo with a previous look at the same flower bed, from the opposite angle, on May 9th.

The flowers that bloom in the spring... (Tra-la!)*


*Ten points if you know the reference!