{"id":3607,"date":"2011-05-09T00:11:14","date_gmt":"2011-05-09T04:11:14","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/lunardreams.net\/baby\/?p=3607"},"modified":"2011-05-09T00:11:14","modified_gmt":"2011-05-09T04:11:14","slug":"the-weight-of-silence","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"http:\/\/lunardreams.net\/baby\/?p=3607","title":{"rendered":"The weight of silence"},"content":{"rendered":"<p>Two hours after being put to bed Kate coughed a few times. I clearly heard her whining and coughing &#8211; one or two coughs she might do asleep, but after several pauses and then another cough and whine I knew she had to be awake. I put down my kindle, got out of bed, put on my pants, and then stopped. There was no more whining. I gingerly crawled back onto my bed and waited. She&#8217;d put herself back to sleep.<\/p>\n<p>As I talked with my mother on the phone tonight, mentioning off-hand how Kate was in bed and we were reading, how she&#8217;s been sleeping pretty well in the evenings and we&#8217;ve been having time to ourselves without interruptions, I realized how good she really has been. I never had uninterrupted evenings unless I left the house. There were days when she slept a longer stretch, but they were rare and unpredictable. This past while she&#8217;s been going down easy at bed time and not waking back up every hour.<\/p>\n<p>I have been sitting in bed, reading, for the past 3 hours. <i>I have been sitting in bed reading for the past 3 hours.<\/i> In quiet. I am <i>relaxed<\/i>. I think that was what really got to me, the tenseness, always knowing that her waking up was just around the corner. I couldn&#8217;t ever commit to anything, waiting for an interruption. Just handing over the responsibility to Den was like a huge weight lifted that I didn&#8217;t really realize I was carrying. Her sleeping well and not needing him constantly is even better. I feel so relieved. (Of course it is now midnight so she will be waking in approximately 10 minutes.)<\/p>\n<p>I actually feel like I have energy. Some of that is the cold getting out of my system, but some is catching up a little bit on sleep. And the sunshine recently, that always helps. I want to read, and write, and scrapbook, and plan my garden. I want to <i>do<\/i> things. I feel words bubbling out of me again.<\/p>\n<p>Oh my poor garden. I was outside with Kate yesterday and happened to take a look at the garden for the first time in a while. Last year I didn&#8217;t touch it, I was so wrapped up in holding a newborn all the time and soaking up every inch of it. But the garden suffered. It&#8217;s overgrown with grass and weeds, my strawberries have apparently joined a race to take over as many beds as possible, there are leaves and mulch and dead plants wilted across the faded wooden bed frames. It&#8217;s all just very sad. At the very least I need to rake and pull out weeds before Kate&#8217;s party &#8211; I can&#8217;t let people see it like that.<\/p>\n<p>I also noticed a fairly large depression, a <i>hole<\/i>, in one of my flower beds. Not some tunnel but a very large dish-shaped area where something has clearly been digging. I took a picture with my phone, muttering out loud as Kate looked on with an expression of bewilderment. Later that evening I told Den about this large hole, speculating that maybe something was nesting in my garden, something large was digging in my garden! Den looked at me and with a dry voice asked, &#8220;Like the dogs?&#8221;<\/p>\n<p>I stared back at him. &#8220;Oh. Yes. Right.&#8221;<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>Two hours after being put to bed Kate coughed a few times. I clearly heard her whining and coughing &#8211; one or two coughs she might do asleep, but after several pauses and then another cough and whine I knew she had to be awake. I put down my kindle, got out of bed, put [&hellip;]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":71,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[1],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-3607","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-uncategorized"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"http:\/\/lunardreams.net\/baby\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/3607","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"http:\/\/lunardreams.net\/baby\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"http:\/\/lunardreams.net\/baby\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/lunardreams.net\/baby\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/71"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/lunardreams.net\/baby\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=3607"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"http:\/\/lunardreams.net\/baby\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/3607\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":3608,"href":"http:\/\/lunardreams.net\/baby\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/3607\/revisions\/3608"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"http:\/\/lunardreams.net\/baby\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=3607"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/lunardreams.net\/baby\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=3607"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/lunardreams.net\/baby\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=3607"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}