Liesel at 4 months

Liesel's mornings

Someone recently asked Tim what changed the most about his life with fatherhood and he replied: "I love mornings now."
It's true. We used to lolligag around our mornings and desperately reach for the coffee to wake us up, but now we have Liesel. I get up once during the night to feed her in the nursery, but when she's ready for her next meal at about 7am, Tim gets up and brings her into bed with us. We have our sweetest times together when she first wakes up.


Liesel's Morning from Tim Tabailloux on Vimeo.

That's Tim playing the background piano music, by the way. While we were dating he wrote me this lullaby called "Berceuse pour Bethany" (lullaby for Bethany). Still makes me all swoony.

Hero

Tim calls me Liesel's hero. Sometimes she runs him out of every soothing idea he has and she's still sad, so he hands her to me and she quiets down. It's sweet to hear him say that, and I need to hear these things for when I run out of solutions too. This bond we have grows stronger daily, and next to my love story with Tim, it is my greatest treasure. My favorite thought.

One evening she woke up sad. I was brushing my hair or something so Tim went to pick her up and laid her on the changing table. She really lost it then. It sounded like she was hurting or terrified or some other awful thing so I dropped what I was doing and ran into the nursery to find a bewildered husband and hysterical baby. We couldn't figure out what was wrong (an unfortunate but regular occurrence with little babies) so there was nothing to do but hold her close and rock.

When you're a parent, you never know which moments are going to sneak up on you and etch themselves in your brain and set a seal on your heart. It'll probably happen when you're exhausted and still wearing yesterday's smeared eye makeup. But thank God these moments come and remind you of the only important things in this world full of stuff and nonsense.

settling in

It's April now and we're doing fine. We've been traveling a lot, fitting in visits with family members before wedding season sets in solid and keeps us in Chicago all summer. Most of my family is in the South, so we're enjoying the warm weather where they are while it continues to snow in Chicago.

My mother in law assured me that at 3 months, babies just settle, and I've found that to be true for Liesel and me and our new life together. It's just getting easier every day. A lot of the ease is because I'm letting go of some expectations I had and just letting our family find its own pace apart from other models and schedules I was trying to copy.

We have our very own dynamic in the Tab house. Unless it's a wedding day, Tim and I are both home working together to juggle baby needs, business needs and household needs. I run the gamut of being a working mom, stay at home mom, and work-at-home mom on any given day. Some days Tim's workload is heavier than mine so I take care of Liesel's needs and on other days I get behind on my own work and Tim takes over with Liesel. It's not a regular schedule or a single-minded task. It wasn't before Liesel either. I tried really hard to get her on a predictable timetable early on but after a couple of months of that not working I've just relaxed into flexibility, because that's the only thing that works and doesn't result in a crying baby, crying me, and stressed out Tim.

I've been so pleased to experience the good changes that have come to our marriage with the addition of our baby. We have a new glue. A new joy. We are stronger together but incomplete without her. She is a new reason to love each other and work together for her good. Part of me was a little afraid that adding a baby would stress out my marriage, and we do have our moments of stress and difference of opinion, but overall we just have this grand new common obsession to experience together. 

I'm so proud of the man I married. When we were dating, I thought once or twice that he would be a good dad and moved on. I had no idea how precious he would be with her. I can't picture these things in my mind before they happen in front of me. Liesel loves him so much. The sound of his voice still makes her stop and reach out, like she did before she was even born. I'm so thankful that I get to parent with him for the rest of our lives.

I'm sinking into my role as a mom with comfort. The stroller pushing, spit-up wiping, baby rocking, nursing, kissing, dressing, diaper-changing...I'm good with this. I know I may struggle in the future, but this is meaningful work for me now and I'm humbled and grateful that I get to feel this way about it. She is an important person. Her life is so valuable and I get to be her caretaker and role model to get her ready to work in and impact her world. But before all that, this time of littleness while she's still all mine is so precious to me.