Benjamin's Christmas bear from Grammy and Grandpa Wilson is bigger than he is.

It's been a whirlwind Christmas week for the growing Smith family.  It started off slow enough:  I probably spent about 7 hours packing everything and getting the house ready to leave for Christmas in east Texas.  But the fun parts went by too fast:  Christmas eve preparations, cooking and eating wonderful food, opening Benjamin's first Christmas stocking, and singing carols with family in Dallas. After Christmas weekend with JB's family and our little shopping sprees at Half-Price Books and Central Market, we came home and had our family Christmas around the tree, opening gifts and enjoying a cheese course we put together at Central Market. We are sad that we couldn't spend Christmas with both sides of the family this year, but we had fun opening packages from the Wilson side.  

The next morning Ellen and Heidi arrived to visit for a few days--they've both moved away, but I'm so glad that they still have reason to visit Waco.  Once again, the extra hands were helpful for holding Benjamin and keeping him happy.  I enjoyed being able to spend some uninterrupted time in the kitchen making curry and scones and roasting vegetables.  Thanks guys!  Everyone except Benjamin liked the curry, but that's another story.  

Yesterday after nursing Benjamin, I put him in his crib to watch his mobile (which he LOVES right now) and found myself with a few extra minutes to sit in my chair to read.  I read a little bit, but I kept looking up to watch him play.  I enjoyed contemplating how far we'd come with Benjamin and how he's grown in the last few months.  He's 11 weeks, and it seems like all of a sudden I woke up this week to a new baby.  All of the issues we seemed to have early on have melted away (new ones to come, I'm sure), and the baby is happy.  He can spend time on his own flailing his limbs at the mobile in his crib, he eats and sleeps on a fairly predictable schedule, he is filling out nicely, and he has big smiles for me every time I change his diaper. 

After thinking about this it was nice to turn to essays in a collection by Alan Jacobs that my dad got me for Christmas.  In the introduction he talks about how the essay, with its "humble mutability of tone," is the perfect form for capturing how our experiences interrupt and change our thinking.  An essay may start out with specific idea, but in the process of writing, the writer may realize that what she has learned or experienced as she writes is more interesting than the original idea she meant to write about.  

Virginia Woolf captures this effect in A Room of One's Own.  She recalls walking the grounds at Oxbridge, an all male school at the time, thinking about a talk she was to give on "women and fiction."  All at once the ideas start flowing in her mind and her body responds by carrying her faster and faster right off of the path and across the lawn.  When a Fellow at the university stops to scold her for walking across the lawn--which is reserved for Fellows and Scholars--she loses the train of her original thought, but she finds this experience of having her thoughts interrupted for being an outsider an interesting illustration of interruption as a theme relevant to "women and fiction."    

I connected with this as I tried to read and found myself looking over the top of my book to watch my baby play.  I started out thinking I could curl up to read like I used to in grad school, but found my interest divided:  the baby and the book were equally appealing to my attention.  So I let my mind wander back and forth between the two for a while.  And I realized that I am just a different person than I was six months ago when I was working in such a focused and single-minded way on my dissertation. My mind is divided--for now--and my reading habits (and teaching preparations!) will have to adjust to this new reality.  And this makes me very happy.  

And now for those smile pictures I've been promising.  I couldn't resist doing another little series.  

grandmas, great-grandma, great-great grandma

Well, Benjamin doesn't actually have a living great-great grandma, but we now have a Christmas tree ornament that she made.  After mom read my last post I received a package in the mail with all sorts of Christmas nostalgia for my tree--some of it more embarrassing than others.  I'm told that I thought this bulb, made by Grammy Bowden lo so many years ago, the most beautiful thing in the world when I was a little girl.  Hmmm...

Apparently I liked to play with the pins, pulling them in and out.  What a nerd.  Anyway...

I just received another Grammy Bowden ornament in the mail from Aunt Kathy, but I haven't gotten a chance to take a picture yet.  I love this about blogging.  People read my posts and then respond!  Aunt Kathy and I would probably never have had a conversation about this, but now because of this blog, I have a happier and more story-filled tree.  Thanks everyone!

On the left are some new ornaments I made a few weeks ago out of cinnamon, applesauce, and glue. Probably not going to last generations, but fun to make.

Now moving backward to grandparents and great-grandparents.  Benjamin's birth means new labels for family members, and I'm having fun putting together our new extended family based on these new relationships.  And I think those involved are having fun too. Here are the new grandparents all together for the first time with baby Benjamin, about a week before Thanksgiving:

One of the primary reasons we went away for Thanksgiving this year was for Benjamin to meet his great-grandmother, Midge, JB's grandmother on his father's side.  She is very special to JB, so it was very important that she get to meet Benjamin as soon as possible.  Before he was born she helped us think about names and she always has wonderful stories to tell about the family of which Benjamin is now a member.  Midge has become a grandmother to me too. 

Next time I have to post a picture of Benjamin's smile--I can't wait to get it on camera.  

For all those in the north on this beautiful December day...

It must have been about 75 degrees here today, so our family spent most of the day outside:  putting up Christmas lights, visiting with neighbors, and reading in the sun.  Benjamin was SO happy laying on  a blanket in the shade with the breeze blowing over his face.  But stringing Christmas lights and getting our tree in this kind of weather still seems wrong to me.   

Starting a family and owning a house has made JB and I do some pretty conventional things these days, and now we can add Christmas traditions to the list.  After staring at the rows of Christmas ornaments at Home depot today after we bought our tree, I just couldn't bring myself to buy anything.  Christmas ornaments when we were growing up were all connected to memories, which seems better to me than anything Martha Stewart could come up with, no matter how ugly the handmade ornaments, no matter how garish the ornament I picked out for my very own when I was ten.  

And yes, mom, I am thinking particularly of the ritual hanging of "old ugly" at the back of the tree.  Old ugly is an unfortunate paper-mache-gone-wrong, mis-shapen yellow bulb covered sparsely with glitter that someone (mom?) made in second grade.  JB and I have a few ornaments we received as wedding gifts, and we did buy a few starter bulbs, but I think making Christmas ornaments is something I will look forward to doing with Benjamin when he is older.  Of course, to really resist convention we could do a palm Christmas tree like the Smith side of the family...

 I love this picture of Benjamin and Brazos in the grass.  Kind of dreamy isn't it?  

Six week portrait

He's looking a little less like a newborn and more like a baby, isn't he?  We're so proud of him (and grateful!) for sleeping for an 8 hour stretch last night.  Now if only we can get those 8 hours to be the same 8 hours that JB and I are asleep....  

Other little accomplishments to note:  I observed his first giggle and smile at one of his 5am feedings this week.  Definitely made being up at 5am worth it.   Also, he likes to scoot across the floor on his tummy! Not on his own, of course, but when I put my hands behind his feet, he pushes off and scoots all the way forward.  Here he is in action at his grandmommy and grand-dad's house:  

Please ignore all of the dirty stocking feet in the background of this picture.  

More to come from visits to and from both sets of grandparents and meeting his great-grandmother for the first time.  An obscene number of pictures were taken, as my readers can well imagine.