Tribes

I keep coming up with ideas for entries but am still too sleep-deprived and small of brain to remember what they were.

The most notable news is that Clara now fits into sleepers that were too big TWO DAYS AGO. She ate like crazy on Thursday and had three (count 'em) thermonuclear meltdowns; yesterday she passed out on the way home from fitness class and slept like a log all afternoon. When she woke up, she was bigger. This infant development is pretty wild stuff.

Moxie says that it's important to find one's tribe when one is a new mother. Other than in the immediate small circle of friends from before the pregnancy, I have not managed to do so yet. I seem to have very little in common with the moms at the midtown fitness class, who pull up in their Volvos and pull their carseats out of the cars and snap them into strollers, and then spend the whole class chatting about cribs and Diaper Genies and afternoons in shopping malls, as the impossibly perky drill sergeant of an instructor demands 25 more leg lifts to the tune of "Itsy Bitsy Spider" and I fantasize about doing unspeakable things with a 45-pound Olympic bar.

Our carseat stays in the car (we had to pay someone to install it), we don't have a stroller or a crib, Clara has never worn a single disposable diaper, I hate shopping malls, I go almost everywhere on public transit with Clara strapped to my belly, and I fucking loathe leg lifts. Loathe them. I am craving the gym, with the squats and the deadlifts and the bench pressing and the weights that aren't covered with coloured vinyl, and even the reminders of how much ground I've lost since I was able to hoist 225 pounds as high as my knees. I've told myself I'll go back in the New Year, when Clara's a bit older and I can leave her with her dad for a couple of hours as he works from home on Mondays and putters around the house or goes geocaching on Saturdays. Twitch. Twitch.

I'm going out this afternoon to the apartment of some friends so a bunch of us chyx can knit and kvetch about the upcoming holidays. The host is childless (so far) but more than child-friendly; she and her husband looked after Clara last weekend for a few hours while Mr. K and I went to a wedding. I need to spend time with the friends that we do have, and not take them for granted.