One Day Old

This is Gibson and his mama and his daddy. He is having his first outdoor-outing. He liked it okay.
What he mostly likes...what he really ONLY likes...is his mother and her breasts. I don't think I've ever met a child who was so preternaturally aware from the get-go who his mother is. He can be asleep and she'll pass him over and he'll wake right up and start gnawing his little hands and then when that proves fruitless, he'll start rooting around all over whoever is holding him and then when that doesn't work, he starts to mewl and fuss and refuses to be comforted until he is handed back to his mother and then he immediately quits crying and she gives him what he wants and he is happy again.
He is a tit-man, for sure.
I mean, they all are but he KNOWS where the tit comes from and that is the only place he wants to be. Which is fine with Lily. She is as natural at this part of the whole deal as she is at being pregnant and then giving birth. I swear. They should give her a grant to be a mother. Maybe something under the auspices of the National Park system. She's that grounded in it, that much a force of nature.

Owen is handling it all pretty well. He kisses his brother now and seems resigned to the fact that yes, he is there but he realizes that his needs are still going to be met and that his mother still loves him and cuddles him and that his father is also there and that, too, is a comfort and a good thing. He seems to have absolutely no love left for his Mer Mer but I understand. I know he does still love me. He just...well, has other priorities right now. Being charming to me is not one of them. "Go away," he will tell me if he has Aunt Jessie where he wants her. "Go back inside."
Sigh.
He'll be my boy again when he comes out here. If his grandfather isn't here. Or his aunt.

Speaking of his aunt, I brought Jessie home with me. I think she is tireder than anyone at this point. She took care of that new little family all day and all night and all day today and believe me- taking care of Owen takes a lot of energy. She's such a good auntie and I'm going to make her some soup and let her relax. I told her not to lift a finger. I think she can handle that.

And all I've done today is make the food for Lily and Jason

(The Official Post-Partum Meal Recipes)

and take it over there and try to hold Gibson and frustrate him and try to get Owen to love on me and frustrate myself. I did take a small ramble into the garden to see that the potatoes are coming up and all of the beans are up and that I need to replant some cucumbers.
So much to do. Always so much to do and none of it of earth-shaking importance, thank god, and yet, all of it god's work, if one looks at it like that and it was lovely today, being alone in my kitchen and making bread and cooking meat and a cake with spices and prunes in it and opening the screen door to throw scraps to the chickens, noting the amaryllis blooming so dramatically. I cut it later and took it to Lily in a blue bottle.

There are more about to bloom so it wasn't a huge sacrifice.

All right. Here's one more picture of the newest boy, happily asleep. In his mother's arms. Of course.

He is still wearing the shirt they put on him after his birth, which was one of his mother's I think. I know I dyed it. It was either hers or Jessie's. I told him, "Gibson, you haven't changed your clothes in your whole life."

He didn't care.

Not one bit. And we don't either. We know that clothes don't make the man. Titty milk does.

Amen.