Goodness Gracious

Two of my BYU roommates just had babies three weeks apart! This is exciting because birds of a feather flock together and what I mean by that is I'm 39 and they are 38-ish. Heather had a boy whose name has not gone public yet; Mary had her first girl and named her Grace, for whom I printed my four favorite "grace phrases" on the tiniest newborn-sized onesies you ever did see.

  

The onesies have two quotes from U2's "Grace" and two from hymns.* If I hadn't been limited on space I would have made a 5th onesie proclaiming O TO GRACE HOW GREAT A DEBTOR DAILY I'M CONSTRAINED TO BE! from "Come, Thou Fount of Every Blessing".

When I was pregnant with Archer I collected this quote:

“But the last one: the baby who trails her scent like a flag of surrender through your life when there will be no more coming after - oh, that's love by a different name. She is the babe you hold in your arms for an hour after she's gone to sleep. If you put her down in the crib, she might wake up changed and fly away. So instead you rock by the window, drinking the light from her skin, breathing her exhaled dreams. Your heart bays to the double crescent moons of closed lashes on her cheeks. She's the one you can't put down.”  

I would wager Heather and Mary are nursing their last babies. Due to the decade+, medical, and spiritual interventions necessary to bring him to earth I assume Archer is my last baby. I therefore set up a strict plan to not let his babyness (made up word) slip through my fingers.

I should interject an important fact at this point in the story: I yearned for a baby for 12 years so the Lord sent me the most awesome, least snuggly baby ever born. Excepting his first two months Archer has fallen asleep in my arms twice. Ever. He will rest his head on my shoulder for half a second and tolerates being held “like a baby” the same way a cat tolerates a bath. The best I get these days is a full force body slam hug or a bulldozed head into my thigh if I’m sitting on the floor. He does sit perfectly still on my lap if I read to him, so we read a lot. Like more than Harry Truman read as a kid. But back to him being a baby.

The highlight of my baby-getting-bigger days was bottles because I could hold him tightly without defiant, dream-killing wiggles. Every milky ounce helped him tiptoe to The Edge of Big (not to be confused with The Land of Nod) but I stuck to the plan and absorbed all bits of infancy he flagrantly tossed away. Archer turned one, I stopped buying formula, and ignored my pediatrician's advice to only serve milk in sippy cups. I gave him five bottles of warm milk a day, rocking and cuddling my nonstop boy shark who only stayed still for Milkfest. By day he was Tasmanian Devil, by night he was limp with thirst for rocking chair darkness.

At my own pace I whittled him down to one bedtime bottle. RE wanted to kill all the bottles because bottles were clutter; I told her it was my house and to pipe down. Every night I held him I'd tell myself THIS IS THE LAST BOTTLE but the next night I couldn't face the end and would frantically heat up another 4 ounces of milk.

Weeks passed; some nights he was too full from dinner to have an additional bottle. Then he had a bottle more than sometimes but less than usually. Then he hardly had a usual bottle and after some time I forgot about them.

The day I painted my red kitchen back to white I felt liberated by openness. I needed less clutter. RE was right all along, darn that smart teenager. I remembered there was one rogue Dr. Brown bottle in the cupboard I could pack up (because one less bottle in a closed cupboard would solve my clutter issues, ha). I decided THIS would be the REAL last bottle and prepared for closure. I heated the milk and followed my pigeon-toed Boy Man up the stairs to his room. I closed his roman shade, scooped him up, and put the bottle to his lips. He rejected it, Hulk smashed it down to the carpet, crawled off of my lap, and started stacking Fisher-Price rings in the dark.

Archer doesn't mince words; he ripped my baby band-aid off quickly. It hurt. (No wonder there was a line out my front door of people willing to hold newborn Archer, and no wonder parents get excited about becoming grandparents! It's the heart to heart snuggling! Stuff of life, I say!)

Since his blunt announcement Archer has learned to run, somersault, do the actions for "Once There Was a Snowman", jump in leaf piles, ride piggyback, and take Lucy's toy out of her mouth to taunt her. He can stomp his feet in a tantrum while simultaneously signing "please" across his chest if he spies the marshmallow canister and hears NO. He can identify every item on every page of his favorite book, Goodnight Gorilla, but especially loves the pink balloon, mouse, banana, moon, and keys. He can open the pantry, unload the dishwasher, unroll toilet paper, and disappear in half a second. He tells me the stove is "HOT!" 328 times a day and looks left-right-left when I wear earrings.

Grace’s onesies were 6" wide. I’m sure Archer was that small once but he looked like Andre the Giant after I visited her.

Loving his newfound independence but missing my Grace-sized snuggles I snuck in his room last night and peeled him off the crib sheet. He scarcely stirred; there was no break in his heavy breathing. I tucked and folded his big boy body across my chest, ran my fingers through the coarse blonde tuft on his nape, and rocked ever so softly. I held him until I had recharged, till my collarbone was hot from his sweet, sweaty head.

He still sleeps like a baby. While he dreams my bottle-free butterfingers pry open the back door to babyhood and we sneak in for a minute. As long as there is night my baby lives another day.

*Emma Lou Thayne's "Where Can I Turn For Peace" and Eliza Hewitt's "There Is Sunshine in My Soul Today"

This is a really good speech about grace. It helped me understand grace better, not that I'll ever understand it all the way. The other thing that helped is when Blue-eyed Becca compared grace to a big waterfall, like Niagara Falls. That is how powerful and unending the gift of grace is. Peace flows like a river but grace flows like a waterfall!

Quote by Barbara Kingsolver

Pencil drawing made for and given to me by a nice boy at BYU whom I did not marry.