10 Things I Learned in Tolly’s Third Month

​​1. Write it down, Masha. Time has become fluid and hop-scotch; your memory is a rewriteable CD, and if you don’t write down the funny, the amazing, the unforseen things they will be shelved into the attic, to be accidentally retrieved; or never.

2. Like new words that emerge daily, since a new human deserves a new language: Tolly is абрикосмос, Tolly is потягусеница, Tolly is plagued by the twin brothers Многопукакак and Многокакапук.
​
3. Because, Masha, your brain is a sieve made of scrambled eggs and dandelion seeds, and it can seamlessly erase events, details, the thought you had just a minute ago. And Leo’s brain is the same. It’s a gift to make you forget how many diaper blowouts happened in the past twelve hours.

4. Or how Tolly cries when he Is Tired But Why Is Sleep The Only Cure For Tired, Make Me UnTired and Not Asleep, MAAAAAAM!

5. But you got this, you got this. Trust your intuition, Masha. Now that you are slowly emerging from your hermit shell, everyone seems to know what is going on with your baby. Really. People at the grocery store. People on the street. Google, of course, always knows. (Cut! Infection! Septicemia! Death!) Don’t Google. Listen politely. Do what you need to do. It’s okay. People just have latent centers of their brains activated by babies, and they want to fix/touch/comment on yours. Back away, Masha. Bite, if necessary.

6. Your friends will remind you to come out of the hermit shell, and will make everything better. They will remind you to be wild, and take trips, and drink (a little bit) of wine, and take silly photo booth pictures, and do Tarot spreads, and walk for hours, and talk for more hours, and you will show them around your town, and you will make soup of yucca petals, and listen to hail hitting the roof in mid-May, and they will marvel at Tolly, and you.

7. You will marvel at Tolly daily, and this apparently is a thing that will not stop, and will get greater and greater and greater.

8. Everything is balanced in the universe, Masha. Can’t drink coffee in the mornings anymore (gastritis). But have someone sleeping right there who is ECSTATIC about mornings. Tolly LOVES being awake. Tolly HATES sleep. Did we mention this already? Make the Tired Me UnTired Me BUT WITHOUT SLEEP, MAAAAAAAM!

9. Write it down, Masha. The writing is different from before, but it feels less painful, like the great pressure of being perfect has been lifted, and the telling of the story is more important.

10. Know that you’ve got a good partner for this dance. One who can still drink coffee, and thus must be envied. But one who will make you laugh when grumpy, will make you sleep longer when tired (and change that diaper blowout in the meantime), and who will understand why it’s important to go look at the baby sleeping for the upteenth time that night, both because you’re paranoid (still breathing?) and because even though Tolly hasn’t changed much since five minutes ago, he is amazing, and bears witnessing.

I swear, babies are not the only ones who have trouble with object permanence. I need to check, constantly, just to make sure I didn’t make him up inside my head.
​
Picture of dance partner & wood stove, just because.