Plenty

Nowadays, our home is plenty of joys.

I. is already mumbling syllables and manages to stand straight with a hand or two on the crib rails. He wobbles and falls, and there’s the occasional bump or two but that’s really the world he is in now. A little portion of pearly tooth is starting to surface in his gums. He likes the sound of crumbling paper. He likes looking at the pages of Dr. Seuss books we read with him. And he can already figure out some of the sorting toys.

Science will probably have accurate measurements of how babies grow in a month-over-month period and it will prove its predictions on how babies behave. Biology would bluntly say that this is how it goes: they would develop motor skills, start eating solids, increase in length, size, so on.

So we speak of the unquantifiable and the intangible: the untold fickleness of what babies do, the complete abandon of shitting in diapers, wailing if they want something, the purity of instincts playing at the top of their game. Science and biology give you all the precision and explanation, but what you’ll see, flatly, are these cute sets of miniscule miracles. You know what is you see, you know what to expect, yet you gasp and remain amazed. Everyday is a renewed fascination as though everything was unintelligible. Everyday is a dream that is happening.

I also got D. an oven for our second anniversary and it’s as though baking is as natural to her as breathing. Our home smelled like a little bakery that used unsalted French butter. It is as though the summer afternoon’s humid air is making love with the gases of baking chocolate-chip cookies or mozzarella-filled muffins and we are driven crazy with a smell-version of voyeurism. And then finally you taste it: all freshly, lovingly baked, solely and soulfully for you.





It must be a sign of getting happier that I gained ten pounds since I got married.

Our house is plenty of joys but we have to be honest about not getting enough sleep that of course make us snap sometimes. So far, we have been fortunate with how easy it has been to vanquish the anger that rises out of exhaustion. It is true that parenthood is a city of sleeplessness. But why sleep on it, now that we already know that it is?

There’s an Eggstone song that goes, “I’ll do my sleeping when I’m dead.” I'm humming now: ta ta ta ta ta ta.