The Long Drive

As I write, Lisa has finally gotten Anna to take a nap. Perhaps after a weekend of being passed from Daddy to Grandpa, from Mom and to Grandma, it was too much fun to hang just with Mom for most of the day, and Anna found it hard to rest. Maybe it was gas. You can rarely tell with these young babies.

We were away up north when our friends Chris and Jenny called from Pasadena, CA, to say that their daughter had been born Sunday morning. When she got the phone message and later spoke to Jenny, her impulse was to fly out and help. My thought, of course, it to take one baby at a time. It's certainly plenty for me to handle. In fact, we have had some 'discussion' this weekend about my anxiety about being left alone with Anna for extended periods.

No doubt I enjoy my time with her, especially now that she's more expressive and more able to interact during play. Then again, certain things have changed as Lisa and Anna have bonded more tightly.

For the first month after we got home from the hospital, I took a certain amount of pride in the fact that I seemed pretty good at walking her around and singing to her to get her to calm down. Lately, though, it seems she prefers Lisa's rocking. More troubling are those times when I do all I can to calm her down, yet she only becomes quiet when I give her to Lisa. At one time it seemed that her advantage in soothing her came primarily from her ability to breast feed. Now it's more general than that.

Anna did no less than GREAT in the car this weekend; She slept most of the way back and forth to Butternut, which is more than 4.5 hours in the car. I imagine that some of that was due to Gene's excellent driving and the fact that she benefited from having Mom on one side of her and Grandma Sue Sue on the other.

So as I find new strategies to cope with the protest cries to come, I'll remember that we're in this for the long haul, and we'll get there one way or another.