Guess what? There is time to read with a new baby. In fact, I find myself reading more now than I did before, like when he insists on sleeping on my shoulder and nowhere else. There’s only so much you can do with one hand free, besides watch TV. Blah, TV, why do I even pay for cable?

Right now I’m reading American Psycho - I got it as part of a Christmas book exchange last year, and am only just now getting to it. All I have to say about it so far (and I’m only on page 18) is that this man sure does pay a lot of attention to designer names! Silk-satin d’Orsay pumps by Manolo Blahnik? What man would know that? I’m sure the reason will be revealed.

I recently finished Things You Should Know, by A.M. Homes. I am in awe of her imagination, as I was with her first collection, The Safety of Objects. Her stories are just so, well, weird! I love them!

And I’m finally reading The New Yorker that I’ve been subscribed to for most of the year. It comes so frequently that I never found the time before - or, well, truthfully, I guess it was never appealing enough before. But now, when all there is at arm’s length is Glamour, Women’s Health, and The New Yorker, it doesn’t stand a bad chance.

I even read it to Dylan sometimes. He doesn’t seem to mind as long as it’s in a playful voice. Last week we read about blogging as the new American journalism, and then a piece on Hurricane Katrina that had a very interesting history of the lower ninth ward. And from Women’s Health, I read to him about antioxidants and how they might help us live to be 100. We read poetry - he likes Eliot’s “Love Song…”. And of course, we read Dr. Seuss.

I figure, my baby has a huge head, there must be a big brain in there.

He was an angel all day. He woke up all smiles and as the day went on, as evening came, I got anxious, waiting to see when he would start the evening fuss. 8:00 and it never happened. He just smiled, discovered his legs and the lamp glowing in the corner.

Then at 9:00 as we started to have our dinner (this is not unusual - he seems to know exactly when dinner is) he started to fuss, to cry, to scream! Okay, so here it is, we thought. We tried the usual, the bouncing, the patting, the pacifier. Nothing. We tried everything we could think of. We’re in for another one of “those” nights, we thought.

After a half an hour of screaming, Jim says, “Did you check his diaper?”

Ah, the diaper! OH MY GOD!!! My poor baby was sitting in the biggest load of crap I’ve ever seen.

Four wet wipes and a fresh Pampers later, I had my angel back. All smiles and babbling, though a little bitter maybe.

I’m sorry, baby. Vote me in for idiot of the year.

When I was still pregnant with Dylan I imagined taking him camping with us at the end of the summer, at two months old. People told me it would be easy when he’s so little, when he just wants to be carried around, when he just wants to sleep. Or we could walk in the park, walk around the mall (of course I would still need to shop!). I had the illusion that a baby would be something like an accessory I toted around, a new bag, a laptop computer.

And here the illusion breaks down. Dylan doesn’t breastfeed. It’s not his style, apparently. The milk is fine, but not the boob. My industrial strength dual-sided milking machine would hardly be appropriate in the great outdoors. And besides that, I can’t even imagine how I would wash the bottles. The illusion breaks down even further because Dylan hates his baby carrier. Baby carriers are hot. He’s pressed up against my sweaty cleavage in the heat of summer, and he’s already a sweaty hot baby to begin with. And what about his 9:00 fuss? How would the other campers appreciate hearing that for two hours?

You don’t think about these things when you’re pregnant. You don’t think about sleeping in two hour chunks and exactly how exhausting it will be (Dylan slept for five hours, once, the other night and let me tell you, it was heaven!). You think, it won’t be that bad. How can it be that bad? No one would ever have babies if it were that bad. When you’re pregnant you think he’ll just lay there and look cute. You think, motherhood can’t be that hard. If Britney Spears can do it, anyone can!

But then it IS that hard. Motherhood is SO hard. When your family and friends are 100 miles away, and your in-laws are 3000 miles, when after two weeks your husband has to go back to work again and you’re left alone with a screaming baby, you’ve had no sleep for two weeks, and for a moment (or maybe even longer) you might think, oh my God, what have I gotten myself into?

They don’t tell you that part when you’re pregnant.

But then one night he doesn’t have his 9:00 fuss. He just drinks his bottle, starts to drift off at the end of it. You hold him close in your way-too-expensive glider chair and rock. His eyes are closed, his breathing soft and rhythmic (this is how you know he is really asleep). You could put him down now, but you don’t. Not yet. Because he is warm, and the rocking is gentle and soothing, because his eyelids flicker and he brings up the corners of his mouth in what might just be a real smile. You keep rocking, because this moment is so, so nice. And as you hold him you think about all the ways this baby is becoming a part of your real life that you never could have imagined when you were pregnant.