another measure of personhood

when i posted the photos of Cosmo's first smiles on yahoo photos, i sent this in an email:

"For the Navajo, a baby does not become a full person until he smiles, and on that day, there is a ceremony. Yesterday, I believe Cosmo cracked his first smiles. What do you think?"

Well, there is another measure of personhood in this country, or maybe it is called citizenship...today Cosmo received his Social Security card. he is less than 5 weeks old, and he already has his official number

fer reals

when i hear other people pronounce his name--COSMO--refer to him by name, i am taken aback at first. it is as though i am just now understanding that this idea of a person, this creature i have created...EXISTS, not only in my mind, not only as an IDEA, or a possibility, but now, in the minds of other people too. indeed, he now exists IN THE WORLD. he takes up physical space, and affects events with his temprament, his voice...this is hard for me to fathom at times, but i am getting used to it. he becomes more and more real with each day that we spend together, interacting, getting to know one another.

the pink

I spend a lot of time just looking at Cosmo when he is awake. i never get tired of looking at him. When he is asleep, i end up looking at pictures of him... and putting some online. i have a whole series of him on this pink rug, and i think they work well as a series, but i hesitate to put them up, for fear that it is boring to others, redundant, or, worse, seems excessive/obsessive. Cosmo is born into a time where so many aspects of our lives are mediated. i want to spare him, yet find it difficult to resist photographing him. as he has shown signs of changing and growing as time goes on, it dawns on me that "he won't always be like this, i must capture this time in images...or sound recordings." this thought needs to be questioned...resisted.

Today we tried on the baby bjorn. i hadn't even finished buckling it, and he was sound asleep. he really liked it, slept for a couple of hours while i did things like laundry. It felt great--very comfortable and more secure than the sling.
I also pumped breast milk today, for the first time. it is a strange thing, to produce a nourishing substance... for someone else to consume. it is such a different experience, to watch it come out of me, and to fill a container of it, to the 3 oz mark. i produced 3 oz of milk. it is in the fridge-- ready to drink. this, among other things, is hard to get my mind around.

Also, with the holidays i started thinking about family again-- about being a family, creating one. I share in blood family with Cosmo, and we are lucky enough to have another kind of family all around us. I was thinking about how grown kids sometimes apologize for their parents, and i found myself apologizing for my son yesterday when he was crying at someone else's house...then it occurred to me that one day Cosmo would probably apologize for me, his mother. i will someday be a source of embarrassment for my son.