150. Sunday

I love giving William a bath. I love feeling his body. He has such a cute face when he's in the water, it does something to him. Water in his eyes does not hurt him, if there is no soap. He looks really cute wrapped in the towel. I love rubbing lotion on him after the bath. After the bath he smells good. His hair can be a little wild after a bath.

Shantideva has a line about bathing the Buddhas in The Boddhisattva Way Of Life, and I thought of William. Nagabodhi asked me how has my dharma practice changed in having a baby. That's a really good question that could have lots of answers. I love being in the moment with him. We were talking today about Shantideva's text, and he writes about being a slave to others if that's what you need. That's what it means to be a Boddhisattva. Some balk at that kind of language, it has some pretty negative connotations. But I think I'm a slave to William. There are other answers to that question. He stretches me, in a way my spiritual life does too. He has helped me to understand more of the world. It's wonderful to just watch someone develop, and maybe that's not part of Buddhism, but you can see how someone is getting conditioned.

Sunday is Father's day. Diana has her class, and I'm often all alone with William. Virginia has helped out once. We're so lucky to have Clema, Virginia, Alex and Aida to help out. Clema takes care of William during the week, in the day time from 8:30-3:30, and then goes to work. She's essentially working 2 jobs, one for free. We owe her. Virginia provides resources like her house and gifts and even raw money. She shares her wealth in a surprising way. She shares her time when possible. Her weekend over night watching of William has given us the gift of uninterrupted sleep many weekends. Alex has watched William so I could go on interviews. Yesterday she brought a bunch of presents from her mom's. A new bath gizmo, a car sun screen, bibs, formula. She's bought many teething items for William which he loves. She's going to take care of William Tuesday through Friday unless my aunt Di asks to have a day. Aida is the least helpful to us, but she's also the one with a child, she's a single mother, and has a housing crisis at the moment. Others help out too, but these are the most I see helping us out.

Today all are out, and I'm feeling a little sick, but I can ignore it enough to take care of William, who is a little congested too. He hates the aspirator which sucks the snot out of his nose. But he wakes up sometimes when he can't breath, making tiredness another problem on top of the stuffy head.

Last night in exhaustion around 1, I laid down and tried to get William to fall asleep. I'd had a few false starts. Luckily Diana did not mind breast feeding him a little, which did the trick. I woke up at 6, right when the sun started to light the world a little bit. He drank a little and fell asleep very quickly. I'm not sure if Diana tended to him before she went off to class, but he woke up again around 9:15. Quite a late sleep.

I fed him breakfast and played. I put him in the swing while I did some dishes, until he got tired of it. I put him in the snugglie the other day to do dishes. He's waving around, trying to grab things. Diana said in one of her anthropology classes they said that the peasants who wrap their children and carry them all the time, make them passive. William is not passive, he tries to grab.

I continue to try to read to him, but all he wants to do is play with the pages, crush them with his hands, put the corners of the books into his mouth. Natasia read to him last night, keeping the book out of reach. She's so sweet to William. She makes him laugh. She went to change his diaper when Alex jokingly asked her to.

William is probably going to wake up from his morning nap soon, so I better post this.