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For many months — since long before Meera was born — Owen has been waiting to feed “his baby” a bottle. I cannot exaggerate how much this has meant to Owen. We don’t know why this has been so huge for him. Perhaps because he himself loved his bottles so much as a baby (and still loves to drink warm milk from a sippy cup each morning when he wakes up)? Perhaps because this symbolizes to Owen that Meera really is “his baby”? Perhaps because he loves everything about babies and he knows that feeding them is an important part of life with baby? Perhaps because somehow in himself he knows that he wasn’t given enough bottles, and wasn’t given them lovingly enough, when he was a tiny baby? Perhaps we read into it all too much and he just simply likes the idea of feeding the baby a bottle? Who knows. We’ll probably never know. But this morning, at 6:15 a.m. Owen sat with me in the sun room while I pumped breast milk, and at 7:00 a.m., when Meera woke up, at long last, Owen fed “his baby” a bottle.

We live in an incredibly beautiful part of an amazing country; in the summer it’s particularly wonderful. Around July it’s perfect. The corn is rising up, the trees are not just green, but full in every way, and the foliage is lush. But like peak color during fall, it’s just a short time of this perfection before August hits and things start to grow past and over grow.

Behind our house there is a tree line from when this area was a farm. I think the trees are around 50, 60 years old, some older, some younger. They too are at that perfect time of summer – when they are still buoyant and lively. And when you look out across the tops of the woods all around us in this area, you can still see the little new growth, waving gently like an undulating sea of health and vibrancy.

I like to stand in the kitchen with Meera in her little chair and stand over her and just stare. She’s just started to smile back when you smile at her. And when she does, it’s like the perfect light at 7 o’clock, when the world is painted in a warm glow – it’s warm, it’s wonderful, it lights up everything around. Her toothless, gummy, not-quite-controlled, but completely unselfconscious joyous look radiates and pierces my heart. I can’t force enough of this memory into my brain, as hard as I try.

And in that moment, I am amazed at the love I feel. And I am also overwhelmed by the connection I feel to almost every father that has ever lived in the world, ever. I think of the men standing in their kitchens, or living rooms, or garages, or fire pits, or huts, or bedroom who have done, and will do again the same thing I am doing. Men with beards, clean-shaven, religious, atheist, light, dark, clad, naked, cold or hot. They stand like I do in wonder. Holding, bouncing, watching, loving, fearing, reveling. Men who work, who don’t, who can’t and who won’t. Men who’s hands dwarf their little charges, but cradle them so gently.

Men who have no idea what they are doing, but know they would do anything.

This timeless forest of kitchens of fathers. Father’s with little babies learning to smile. Even as generations pass by, fathers and their babies remain the same. And we may get lost in the woods, but we are ultimately all in it together, if only for the briefest moment. In July, before things become over grown.

I bought a play mat for Meera. Even though she is only seven weeks old (as of today), I knew that she was ready for it. I set it up and I laid her down on it and immediately her face lit up. She smiles at the dangling toys, coos and gurgles at them, kicks her legs and bats her arms. She loves it. Anyway– once the boys saw that I had set it up they were extremely excited about “teaching” their baby sister how to play on it. The next chance they had they got me to put her on the play mat. She smiled huge, laughed, and cooed at it all. The boys ignored this and were adamant that they would “teach” her to play on it. Of course, I wasn’t going to let on to them, but Meera didn’t need anyone at all to teach her how to play (((this is… by the way… a whole new world for Braydon and I — a baby who doesn’t need to be taught how to play; a baby who has her babyhood in tact and is able to just be a baby and play with age appropriate baby toys — when we brought Kyle and Owen home we spent the first several weeks teaching them how to just be babies and how to play with toys… so our experience with Meera, even at this young age, is new [happy, exciting, good, heart-warming] for us… but alas, this is a subject for another post some day…))) Anyway… so, Meera was on the play mat, and before I knew it:
And then:
And finally:

(click on photos to enlarge to get the full effect)
Even I have to admit: so dang cute!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!

I posted this spring about our “S Day” Rituals. With the addition of Meera, much of our family normalcy (at least what was ‘normal’ pre-Meera) has been severely altered. The boys have adjusted shockingly well to it all (better than me; I seem to mourn the loss of our family of four much more than anyone else around here — but then again, I’m the one whose life has been most seriously impacted by little Miss M. Don’t get me wrong — I love our new family of five and wouldn’t trade it for *anything*, but I do miss what was… and I seem to miss it more than B, K, or O do). Anyway, I would have thought that K & O would be bent out of shape about all of the kinks in managing our day-to-day living. Six weeks in, we are still heavily in the process of getting our ‘new normal’ worked out. But instead of being freaked out, they’ve been amazingly laid-back about losing much of their usual rituals and routines. The “S Day” mornings, however, are still clung to. Kyle, especially, is determined to keep the tradition in tact. For the sake of his sanity (and all of ours, really) we are trying to do our old “S Day” morning ritual whenever possible. Photos from this past Saturday morning.

Saturday was Meera’s first time in the pool! We had all been looking forward to this — Kyle and Owen especially. I had cleaned K & O’s old baby pool and filled it with some water for the sun to warm up. After her afternoon nap Braydon got Meera all suited up, ready for the big plunge.

She was cold at first, but not upset

The boys were all about it

And wanted desperately to get her soaking wet… which she wasn’t thrilled about

The baby pool was a lot better

Even when splashed

Meera is always pretty content in Kyle’s arms

Well, usually always

With Meera’s crying in the baby pool the boys were done and back to their own pool fun

She calmed right down in her Mama’s arms

While the boys jumped and swam the rest of the afternoon…

Meera was fast asleep under the umbrella… exhausted

P.S. Our baby, who has never slept more than 3-4 hours in a row slept for 7 straight hours that night! 😉

Last weekend my family came for the 4th of July weekend here in Pennsylvania. It has become an annual tradition that MorMor and MorFar always come from New Hampshire for the 4th. Sometimes my sister and her family join us from Maine too — and we are always hopeful each year that they will — so we were were really happy that they came and we had everyone here this year! It was especially special because Auntie Stina, Uncle Tim, and Cousin Sadie met Meera for the first time on this visit. I was so happy to see my sister holding our new baby. And now Meera Grace has officially met all of the members of her immediate extended family. Other highlights of our 4th included:

• MorMor and MorFar gave Kyle, Owen, and Sadie each a remote control motorboat to play with in the pool (HUGE HIT!!!)
• Lots of time in the pool
• Kyle, Owen, and Sadie’s first sparklers and ‘snaps’ (those things you throw that make a pop when they hit the ground)
• MorFar’s dramatic fireworks display in our back yard
• Lots of time spent by everyone holding and doting on Meera
• A Saturday morning trip to open bounce at Bounce U
• On Saturday night we went to Tinicum Park for the annual Riverside Symphonia “Concert Under the Stars” for our second year in a row — picnic dinner, great concert, and awesome fireworks (in the massive crowd Meera appeared to be the only representative of the under-age-one demographic… but she never even flinched during the booming fireworks display)
  
• Great food and drink with everyone pitching in
• Stina, Tim, and Sadie left Sunday morning but MorMor and MorFar stayed an extra day… and MorFar brought K & O to their first real baseball game — The Lehigh Valley Iron Pigs!!! Braydon tagged along too, but this whole baseball thing is really a big thing for K, O, and MorFar (baseball, and Red Sox Baseball in particular, is K & O’s current obsession… will have to post about that another time)

As always, click on any photo to enlarge.

Today Meera and I went to Doctor Alex’s office for Meera’s 6 week old Well-Baby-Visit. Meera now weighs 10 pounds 11 ounces. She’s 23 inches long. She is in the 75th percentile for both height and weight. She is doing great physically and developmentally. Dr. Alex says that Meera is “extraordinarily alert and interactive for a six week old.” Here’s Meera Grace, in a photo of her on the changing table in her room last night, laughing so hard she could barely breath:

Kyle and Owen seem to be competing with their baby sister in the growth competition — they appear to be in some sort of crazy growth spurt right now. Non-stop hungry (you’d be shocked if you could see how much they ate for dinner tonight) and they seem taller than even a couple of weeks ago. Our bathroom scale says that they each weigh precisely 45 pounds. I find it both bizarre/bewildering and amazing/amusing that they continue to both weigh the exact same amount. Recently they discovered something that they find very exciting– they can now touch their feet together under the kitchen table when seated across from one another.

…and its not just Meera and me…
K & O have been regularly having their own spontaneous nursing sessions with their own babies… often while I’m nursing too…
So at any given time in our house you might just find the six of us (me & Meera, the 2 boys & their 2 babies) sitting in the family room nursing nursing nursing —
I gotta say — it is such a riot!!!!!!!

Soon I’ll post about our 4th of July weekend.
Soon I’ll post a big post re-capping the past few weeks.
Soon I’ll post Meera’s birth story.
Soon I’ll figure out how to make time to blog real posts and not just pictures! ;0