In the afternoons, you can often find Eoin and I home alone, curled up together in the nursing chair as he drinks his bottle. We sit in the kitchen, where the light that pours in from the three windows is softened by the gauzy ivory curtains. Day after day, the buzz of the refrigerator and the sounds of Eoin's swallows as he hums into his bottle, lull me off to sleep. He goes to sleep, too. Mmmm. It's peace.

What is "bonding" really? I'm tempted, before I continue, to look it up on Wikipedia. But I will tell you my definition first: Bonding is something that you hear a lot about during the time before and shortly after the birth of your baby. It has something to do with how the mother and baby (or father and baby) become attached to one another, and recognize the other for what they are: "Mama" or "my precious little baby."

Bonding is very, very important. You have to be very diligent in making sure bonding happens. You certainly do not want to be a mother who is not bonded with her baby. You must guard against that. Did you speak to your baby in the womb so that he would know your voice? Did you have enough skin-to-skin contact with your newborn? Are you spending enough time with your baby pressed against your chest, feeling your heartbeat? Are you breastfeeding your baby, because, as anyone knows, nothing is more intense than the bond between a mother and her nursing baby? When your baby cries, are you at his side quickly enough?

As you can see, there are a lot of things to "do" in order to bond, and you have to make sure that, not only are you doing those things, but that you are doing them "enough." Bonding is very scary. It just seems so easy to mess up.

And then I think a little harder about what "bonding" is, and I realize that it is just another word for love. Oh. I feel my heart un-clench and my shoulders drop away from my ears.

Love? That, we can do.

Chores take so much longer when you have a baby...and are so much more fun!

The hard days...I have been having a string of hard days. Eoin is on his eighth day of his first stomach bug. We are both fed up with diaper changing. I am barely keeping my head above the surface of my laundry pile...Don't even talk to me about the yellow/brown stains over most of the receiving blankets, towels, and baby clothes. Ugh. And you try getting a baby back to sleep at two am after three diaper changes in the course of a single feeding.

I'm exhausted. When Eoin woke especially early this morning, I attempted to sleep with him awake next to me on the bed. Nice try. Lay Eoin on the floor with some toys, and he would be quietly occupied forever, it would seem. Lay him on the bed with some toys while you try to sleep, and he alternates between squealing and crying. He wanted Mama's attention! He's used to having unlimited access to my eyes, voice, and touch, but I was just so tired! Just a little more sleep, Eoin, let Mama sleep just a little longer...

Poor little guy. And poor me. And poor Ashley. Do other parents out there struggle with the evening grind of cooking supper, tidying afterwards, finishing the other odd chores, and putting the baby to sleep? The evening grind is grinding Ashley and I to dust. Of course, it doesn't always feel as unmanageable as it has the past few days. It certainly has been a string of hard days.

The hard thing about hard days with a baby is, after a hard day, there's no such thing as saying, "Shag that," to the housework and jumping into a hot bath with a glass of wine; no such thing as spending the evening in front of the TV or a novel with most of your brain and all of your muscles switched to the OFF setting; no such thing even as packing it in early (at least, not for me and my strict pumping schedule.) In fact, hard days are exactly like every other day (see "evening grind" above)...just harder.

I guess I should look on the bright side. I guess these hard days are, like, making me a better person...right?

Eoin's dad and I love to dole out kisses, snuggles, tickles, raspberries, thigh squeezes, cheek chews, neck nuzzles, and bum pats, to our little baby. Eoin has always accepted this attention with a gracious and good-natured air of entitlement. For a long time, he himself didn't dole out much of anything, besides spit-up and dirty diapers of course. That is changing,though. Ashley and I are learning what it is to be on the receiving end of baby touches.

Eoin's touch can be so gentle. I could never explain the rapture I feel when he explores my necklace. He leans his forehead against mine, and I get to watch his downcast eyelashes as he engages himself at my neckline. They are the loveliest golden blond. I can feel, and see in my mind's eye, the soft, careful movements of his thumbs and fingers as they attempt to close on the flower pendant I wear. His hands are a delicate tickle on my collarbone. Oh, beautiful baby with your beautiful, gentle touches, I love you, I love you, I love you.

He is not always that gentle, I'll grant you. Take for example the other day: Eoin is content, playing on his belly on the living room rug. I lean down for a kiss. For a split second, I see his eyes light up ("Mommy!") with delight, before, quick as a cobra, he strikes. One hand lashes out for a fistful of hair, the other finds and clutches my upper lip, and all I can see is a yawning, pink mouth closing in on my face. I am momentarily incapacitated, kneeling on the floor with my face pinned to the rug: snagged by the hair, hooked by the lip, suctioned by the eye socket. Eoin can be surprisingly strong and dangerous sometimes.

There have been kicks to the adam's apple and scratches to the eyeball, too. But when I pick him up from a nap, his tiny arms will often squeeze around my neck in a baby version of a bear hug. I have felt, as I carried him against my chest in the snuggly, his little hand reach out and softly stroke my inner elbow. Some touches are more pleasant than others. Though, when I think about the necklace caress and the lip grip, I couldn't tell you which was done with more love. Or which one I loved more.

I was so ready to have a baby. My body was crying out to be pregnant, my arms were aching to hold my very own baby. I had a restlessness, a dissatisfaction with things. I had felt that way before, but usually because I wanted to change something in my life. I didn't want to change anything so much as I wanted to add something - someone, actually. I was so ready to have a baby.

I had my cat Pebbles, of course, who I babied. The summer when she was a kitten, I forfeited joining an after-work volleyball league because Pebbles "needed" me to come home and play with her. I spent hours stimulating her growing kitten brain. I made all the requisite vet appointments. If we were snuggling together, I put her comfort before my own, even if it resulted in a neck crick for me. It has been said that I raised her well. She is a good cat, a strong cat. It was also said that she was my "pseudo-baby." She satisfied my nurture cravings for a little while, but by last spring, I was so ready for a real baby.

My partner, Ashley, wasn't quite so ready. He was sure that he wanted a family, but he wasn't sure that he was prepared yet to make the accompanying sacrifices, and he certainly didn't want to gyp anybody. He told me later (when I was jubilantly pregnant) that what had tipped the scales in the baby favor for him, was seeing me so utterly primed for motherhood and knowing that, as my partner, the power to grant my oh-so-earnest wish rested squarely on his shoulders. In the end, what made Ashley ready to have a baby was loving me.

Now he adores being Eoin's father, but he was still incredulous when, after about a month and a half in, I started talking about Baby #2. I don't blame him. I was sleep-deprived, exhausted by my struggle to breastfeed, and so racked by anxiety that I was still, after six weeks, recording Eoin's diaper output with a scientist's precision: 2:20 am - sm. poo, slightly green. 3:45 am - pee + poo. 5:50 am - giant poo. Etc, etc.

"You would do this again?" he asked, mouth agape.

Of course! Yes, being a mom is the hardest thing I have ever faced, but I don't resent it for a second. Nothing in my life has ever felt so worthwhile. It was an affirmation that I was so ready to have baby.

Eoin is almost six months old now. Yesterday was a rough day. I had a read somewhere that, periodically, baby toys should be washed in one part bleach, fifteen parts water. So I did it. I didn't foresee that most of the toys would fill up on the inside with the cleaning solution and, after several rinses, continue to leak the bleach back out. What had I been thinking? I don't have an un-"natural" cleaning agent in the house, yet I Javexed the baby toys?

That was the first thing that happened. At lunch, I was trying to feed Eoin egg yolk. I (thought I) had done my research and learned that, while the whites are allergenic and shouldn't be introduced until after the first year, the yolks are okay (once the baby is eight months old, I later googled). Anyway, Eoin gagged violently and threw up an entire bottle of milk all over himself, me, the highchair, and the floor. I had to strip us both off there in the vomit-flooded kitchen and go straight to the shower.

The third blooper happened when we were Skyping with Eoin's Nana. Ashley and I were chitchatting when little Eoin, who had been proudly displaying his new trick of sitting up unsupported, got tired and face-planted onto the hard edge of the computer. I hadn't been watching him! What was wrong with me?!

My ineptitude as a mother seemed to beat down on me like a garish spotlight. I was cowering in the glare when my baby delivered the final blow to my confidence. I had taken away the tube of nipple cream that he was enthusiastically chewing because I thought the sharp corners might hurt him, and...he cried! Out of nowhere, after months of docilely acquiescing to my will, my sweet little baby was protesting!

Before me flashed battle scene after battle scene: bathtimes, bedtimes, mealtimes; long-distance car rides, can-we-get-a-puppy campaigns, sleepovers at suspect houses; boy-girl parties, homework, borrowing the car. How will I handle it all? I had been doubting my judgment all day, and now I was glimpsing that the challenge will not be simply to do the "right" thing as a mother, but to do it even when Eoin has a radically different, and vehemently expressed, opinion on what that is.

I was frozen by the thought - and it chills me even now - what if I'm not ready for this?

I hope this never changes: Eoin's infallible impulse, when he spots his own face in the mirror, is to smile.

As my friend's mom, Sherry, once told her, "Life is not for pussies, Heather."

"I was being so academic," my friend Carly was saying after watching the Babies documentary. "I felt like I needed to get an A+ in parenting."

It was evening and Ashley was getting a shower. Eoin was a dirty little monkey so I stripped him off and handed him in to his dad. I peaked my head in the far end of the shower to watch my two together, and leaned in to a elicit a drippy baby smile. Then I went to the other side to help Ashley soak Eoin's head. I shifted back to the far end to lather Eoin's head, and then again to the shower side to rinse the shampoo. Over to the far end to soap his bum, back to the shower for the rinse cycle. Then I ran to the kitchen to get the camera. Back to shower end for a few pictures. Ashley and Eoin were so cute trying to grasp the stream of water together. I went to the baby's bedroom to grab his towel. Back to the far end to scoop my slippery little man out of his dad's arms into my terry-clad ones. As I carried him to his bedroom, I smiled at the image of myself that popped into my head: I was like a honeybee, busily hovering around my two favorite flowers, darting in here and there, and drinking in the nectar of my blooming family.

It has been rainy lately. I have barely noticed - only when my dad comments on the weather in Corner Brook, or when I see that the deck is wet. I spend my days flitting from one thing to the next. I haven't taken the time to take in the rain.

Yesterday, I had a couple of errands to run. I was loading Eoin and his car seat into the car when I saw him staring intently over my shoulder. I followed his gaze. Eoin was looking at the raindrops on the car window.

I was instantly transported. I had the impression of sitting in the backseat of the car, as a child, absently listening to the ebb and flow of my parent's conversation in the front, and watching the raindrops on the window...Watching the drops grow fatter until they finally burst into rivulets, snaking their way down the window, intercepting other rivulets, jostling other drops along the way and pulling them into their flow... Seeing the moving green of the trees as a background to raindrops' pattern... Daydreaming, with my thoughts meandering along in much the same way as the raindrop rivulets on the car window. This was an impression rather than a memory. Perhaps it was an amalgamation of memories.

I was filled with the sense that Eoin is only beginning his journey. Ahead of him lie years of discovery. Ahead of him lies childhood. His mind is clear of habits and agendas. There are no clouds of worry to cast shadows. Yet there is rain now. Eoin's mind is open and yesterday, it was taking in the rain.