Skin to Skin

Oh, this girl.

On Sunday afternoon, after a hot, fun-filled time at the church picnic, including loads of pool time, the Hofmann little girls, having conked out during the drive home, were put to bed for some much needed naps.

After tidying up and starting a load of laundry, I decided to maximize naptime and read for a bit in what everyone in our household calls “Mommy’s Green Chair,” my dream reading chair in our bedroom’s sitting area.

I made it through about 2 pages before my eyes felt heavy. I had started to nod off when a pink-cheeked toddler came into our room, holding her seahorse and giving me a grumpy look. Um, yeah. That girl had slept for less than an hour. NOT LONG ENOUGH.

“Come here, Lorelei,” I said, opening my arms wide. Groggily, she climbed into my lap, leg on either side of me, and rested her head on my chest (clutching that seahorse all the while). I was wearing a low v-neck shirt, so Lorelei planted her face right against my chest, skin to skin. Like she did when she’d finish nursing, as a baby. Like she did the moment after she was born.

The skies darkened as a thunderstorm approached. Despite booms and rumbles, Lorelei fell asleep, and so did I. Deeply. I dreamed I was doing a crossword puzzle that doubled as a jigsaw puzzle, and each time I got a piece or answer, I struggled to breathe. Air! Air! Eventually, I woke, along with Lorelei, curls of hair plastered against her cheek, and I realized that the 30 pounds of kiddo on top of me was what was making it so dang hard to get a full breath.

My greenish-grayish eyed girl looked up at me and grinned, then slithered off my lap, MUCH better rested than before. Soon she was off and running, my skin still imprinted with her face.

With no more babies on the horizon, and the fact that 30 pounds seems to be my limit for having a kid sleep directly on top of me before lack of oxygen during REM sleep becomes a problem, might this be the last time we sleep together, skin to skin, all of her weight on top of me, in full-on baby-and-mommy position? She's an excellent cuddler though. At least I have that.

And. . . . here’s what we’re reading this week.

On Lorelei's nightstand: An Elmo look and find book. Every night for about a week! Usually Charlotte suffers through it with her, but tonight she was playing in the backyard with a neighbor, like a normal child on a summer night, so I had to be a real mom and go through each page and its hidden items. I freaking hate that book. The two sentences of text per page do not make it a real book! Fortunately, we read one or two real books after Elmo.

On Charlotte’s nightstand: Charlotte and I are through most of Leroy Ninker Saddles Up, which is freaking adorable. Tonight, Chris read a chapter to her, with a Leroy twang that Charlotte thought was a hoot. It's such a cute story--I LOL'd a couple times.

We also started Strawberry Girl, which Charlotte likes BUT I DON'T. It’s a LONG book, pushing 200 pages packed with text. Written in 1945 and set in “the olden days” of Florida, it’s steeped in backwoods Florida dialect. It’s difficult for me to read, especially aloud, and I cringe when Charlotte asks to read a part, because the grammar is all wrong and spelling is backwoods-phonetic—i.e., “get” is “git," and "sure" is "shore." Oh, and "Carolina" is "Caroliny." Think Larry the Cable Guy. And the grammar is incoherent. Which is probably part of what makes the book so spectacular to the Newberry people, capturing time and place and culture, blah blah blah. But not a stellar match for a budding reader.  Like I said, Charlotte seems to  like Strawberry Girl, so we’ll keep going. When I read, I tweak the dialect to understandable grammar here and there, but my, it takes a lot of effort. It won a Newberry a million years ago, but . . .  yeah, it's just the dialect. I can read Middle English with less effort than backwater Floridian.

Mommy’s nightstand: Since I last posted, I read a YA book, A Room on Lorelei Street, which obviously I picked up at the library solely for the word “Lorelei” in the title. Hey, sometimes you have to select books for totally shallow, random reasons. You never know what you might find! The book actually wasn’t too bad. Overwritten in parts, as our heroine, Zoe, laments her deadbeat mother via internal monologues about Mama, over and over again, I sighed with impatience a few times. But I cared about Zoe and pulled for her.  Apparently on a YA binge (remember? I just finished If I Stay a week ago or so), I just started another YA book, Love and Other Perishable Items, recommended to me by my friend Lauren. That one is on kindle, so I can read LATE without my lamp on. Chris, as you can imagine, prefers me to read kindle books.

I'm still reading bits of The Chronology of Water by Lidia Yuknavitch, which you may recall I'm rationing because of its awesomeness. Of course, I'm cheating. I sneak in extra chapters, especially when I'm feeling a little blue or my "main" books don't appeal to me at the moment. Let's face it: you have to be in the MOOD for YA.