Joy and sorrow

Sometimes it may seem like it is all bad but I assure you that it is not. Even when it is bad, we are grateful for he struggle.

Jaime describes sleeping David as being like heroin. She knows that she is supposed to be asleep too, but just staring at him is addictive.

We have gone out in public a couple of times and if one more person tells me how beautiful he is, my head will not be able to fit through the neck of the t-shirt that I sleep in and I will catch pneumonia and die . . . but we were talking about David.

A couple of times a day he is awake and not in discomfort from the gas and we sit and stare at each other--or he just looks around. He is gaining more control over his face and neck everyday so he has more expressions and each new one is worth a press release.

He grabs my fingers and we do little presses. When I am dressing him, I will put my finger through the sleeve, he will grab it and I will thread his hand through that way.

He rarely complains about my singing, so I sing to him a lot. Our favorites are "Blackbird," "Scarlet Ribbons," and "Awed by the Beauty."

Jaime also says he is a virus, and not in the good way ("cute as a bug" or "infectiously adorable"). She means that one day we find something that works to make him stop crying, but he mutates so that thing doesn't work the next day. He keeps us on our toes.

This week is Great and Holy Week--the week leading up to Pascha (Easter). One of the more beautiful hymns sung at the services goes "Behold, the bridegroom comes at midnight, and blessed is the servant whom He shall find watching." Jaime pointed out that the Bridegroom could come at pretty much any point and we would probably be awake for Him.

Which is true. At times the frustration has brought us both to tears. But we know that we can be joyous even for those tears. This is the "sweet sorrow" that our priest warned us about when we got engaged--the purifying struggle, the cross that leads us to victory over death. David is reforging us--hammering our hearts into a shape that better resembles Love. Not to be grateful for that would be saying "I am fine just as I am, nothing more needs to be done in this heart."

We also take joy in the fact that even when he is at his worse, he is not the worst. I read somewhere that newborns cry an average of three or four hours a day so David is by no means unusual, fussy, or "high needs." This doesn't help when we are an hour into one of his cries and we have done all of the tricks and the best that we can do is keep him to a dull moan rather than a screaming rage. But even then I am very aware that it could be worse. I have seen sick babies. I have seen premies that could fit on my hand. I have friends who have learned that their child has a permanent, lifelong, mental disability. I know people who are struggling with a grandchild born with cocaine in his system. By comparison David is easy. He is just the amount of struggle that we need, no more no less; thank God.