Ethan is falling asleep as I type this, his body nestled in the baby carrier. Firmly pressed against my chest, his head is leaning to the side on the shoulder strap. His left hand is curled underneath his head like a pillow while his right hand clutches onto the string of my necklace. Ethan doesn’t have a security blanket or a lovee, he has this necklace, or my shirt collar. In the nighttime when I wear tank tops he grip the shoulder strap firmly as he sleeps and sometimes pulls it to himself.
The scratches on my chest are finally healing. Two weeks ago, as he walked towards me he fell and two of his fingers scratched my upper chest as he lunged forward. Ethan has scratched me many times before in an effort to find my collar, but these scratches were the worst he has ever given me. I was worried they would get infected as they hurt a lot and were not healing, but this injury is finally fading. It’s amazing how something that can make you feel so much, so intensely, can leave your memory so quickly.
Diana is away at her exercise class. She is recovering from being sick, and is now going back to class. Some kind of sick bug has been traveling through my family, and it has manifested different in all of us. This is an inconvenience, but none of us have had any symptoms that were that serious. Also, none of us have suffered significantly for more than a day. While being sick is an inconvenience and having sick children is sad, the kind of sick we are dealing with is no big deal, and not worth really complaining about. So many, too many children are in the hospital right now. With this knowledge I can’t feel too sad about what we are have gone through in the last week. It’s really not that bad.
Ollie is really into a collection of nursery rhymes and fairy tales as his bedtime story with me. It’s an improvement from his desire for me to read pop-up books to him, that really didn’t have anything meaningful to read. I’ve been jealous of the fact that Diana has been reading Roald Dahl’s books with him and that Ollie simply doesn’t seem to be into me reading these types of books to him. Ollie has been studying fairy tales at school, so when I suggested this book on a whim, he was really into it. It’s been fun reading him real stories, but I’m worried. These stories reinforce gender stereotypes. While I want him to be exposed to these stories, I want him to not just accept them as representations of what is, and what should be.
At school, Ollie has a spirit week. The practice of dressing up in certain clothing never made much sense to me as somehow expressing “spirit,” but whatever. Today’s theme was “sports.” Diana and I have always found it annoying that boy’s clothing from birth mostly has graphics are car or sport related. We have been very deliberate to have Ollie’s clothing not be these things. He has shirts that have science related image, animals, robots, and one that has a Hamilton quote. We did in fact do a good job with this because the only two options for sports related clothing for Ollie was a Northwestern University shirt, and a shirt that featured a turkey attempting to play football.
I think we are doing alright.
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