The Start of Something New

Today was my first day back to the studio (in 4.5 months!) without le bébé.  My mom is going to take care of Robert every Tuesday so that I can sneak in some studio time.  I've had a big undersea piece in my head for a while.  It will be interesting to see how the image unfolds, since there will be big, week-long chunks of time between each working session.  One thing's for sure: I have never had a more focused work day in my life.  

When I first walked into the studio and saw a little rattle lying in the otherwise empty Pack 'N Play, I confess, I got a little choked up.  I haven't been away from Robert very much since we brought him home from the hospital.  But I recovered quickly, and after about a nanosecond of basking in my glorious aloneness I was all, "Baby?  What baby?"  

I tried bringing R.J. to the studio with me a few weeks ago.  Including our time in transit, it ended up taking me 4 hours to stretch one piece of watercolor paper.  

My most astonishing feat on that particular day was getting R.J. to nap in the studio:

The nap only lasted 20 minutes, and I spent its entirety trying to quietly cut a piece of watercolor paper from a giant roll.  I've never noticed how loud paper can be......And once I'd managed to cut my piece without waking him up, I realized that I was stuck and would have to wait for him to wake up anyway before I could start rocking the staple gun.

I've been taking these great new mom and baby classes at Isis Parenting.  A few weeks ago one of the other ladies in class said, "I just want to take a shower without someone sitting and crying in a vibrating chair outside the door."  Even though my literal shower this morning did, in fact, include someone sitting and crying in a vibrating chair outside the door, my metaphorical shower was very peaceful and productive;)

Did You See....

the November Anthropologie catalogue?  I've been meaning to post about it since it arrived two months ago!  The art direction was rather fabulous:

A Little Personal Piece

This is the first thing I've created (besides a freezer full of breast milk) since Robert was born.  It's a personal drawing, a re-imagined story of this little fledgling.  

My son had to stay in the hospital for 18 days after I was discharged, and I wanted to make something to illustrate that part of our story.  When the little blue jay bombed out of his nest too early, his mother kept trying to feed him, and would dive bomb anyone who got too close to her chick.  The awful part was that she seemed (pardon the anthropomorphism here) so sad.  She would perch on the electrical wires directly above him and let out these awful, keening cries all day long.

During our early preemie days, when it was time for me to go home and leave Robert for the night, I couldn't help thinking about that mama blue jay.  I probably sounded an awful lot like her too, sobbing my way down the Mass. Pike.  And I would think about her each morning, on the way into the hospital, when I would become almost feverish if I got caught in traffic.  Once I was in the hospital, it took incredible amounts of self control for me to refrain from body checking people out of path on my way up to the nursery. 

But I knew that in the end, my own little early bird was going to be just fine, thanks to all of the high tech equipment feeding him and keeping him warm.

And now he's a little chubbalub:)

Over That Particular Hump

I've come to terms with the fact that life is all about this baby for the next little while.  He's a feisty one, seemingly unlike the mellow baby sidekicks of creative blogging moms out there like Janine.  Robert's feedings are very, very frequent, especially during the night, and peppered here and there with bouts of acid reflux.  I spend one hour sleeping, one hour feeding him and trying to get him comfortably back to sleep, an hour sleeping, an hour feeding, and so on.  Of course, all of this is normal, healthy new baby stuff.  It's not as though we have a sickly or colicky baby.  In fact, he seems to be a sort of super-preemie.  But when you throw in the additional (and somehow unforeseen) necessity of feeding and taking care of myself, it's enough to put my productive artistic life on hold for a bit.  Another reason that I haven't been posting much is that I've been struggling emotionally with absolutely ridiculous, nearly crippling amounts of post-NICU anxiety.  And, ugh, who wants to read about that?  But I'm beginning to feel like a rational human being again.  And I'm ready to start looking around the wide world again too.  Because I trust (without having to check every five seconds) that he's still breathing.

Proof of Life:)

On October 8th I spent the day at the fair.  I LOVE the fair.  And I meant to post all of these photos later that night, but things came up--like my premature water breakage and whatnot.  You can read a nice, concise version of my birth story here if you'd like. 

In any case, October and half of November have flown by virtually unrecorded on Birdwoman.  So to catch up a bit, I spent most of October visiting my brand new, shiny baby in his fancy river view suite at Mass. General.  And when I wasn't there, I was on my way there.  Or on my way home from there.  Or I was home and chained to my fancy hospital-grade breast pump.  Which, despite its fanciness, is not hands-free.  And so I spent most of October unable to type.  And I've spent the first part of November adjusting to life at home with a new baby, which has been hard.  Sleep-deprived is not a good look for me.  

And so here we are.  And here are some animal friends I met at the fair a few hours before all of the shennanigans went down:

So....A Lot Has Happened Since My Last Post....

I'd like you to meet Robert James Able, born seven weeks early on 10/10/10, weighing in at 4 pounds 12 ounces.

He's doing great and making lots of progress every day.  It even looks like he'll be able to come home pretty soon--within the next few weeks!  The story of his arrival is a good one and I'll share it eventually once things settle down a bit.  But for now, I'm heading off to the hospital for some snuggling!

IF: Beneath

Here's a little ink and scratchboard drawing that I made in response to this week's Illustration Friday prompt, "beneath."  I think beneath is kind of a creepy word, don't you?  Creepy swimmy things hidden beneath the waves, slithery snaky things hidden beneath the rocks, etc....  What a perfect word to celebrate October's beginning.  I decided to create an illustration of one of my worst childhood fears (there were many): freaky tentacled things hidden beneath the bed.  I was a terrible sleeper as a kid.  It wasn't until I went to college that I stopped being afraid (I'm talking panic-stricken) of spooky things in the dark.  

In other news, my Etsy shop is almost ready to launch.  Almost!  I just have a few more policies to work out and little things to tweak, and then it will be up.  We've been utterly consumed by birth and baby preparations these days.  And napping.  Well, I've been consumed by the actual napping while Charley's been consumed by the act of continuously telling me to take a nap.