First Bake, First Write

Little Z in moby wrap.

Little Z was born April 7, 2012. That’s two weeks and one day ago, and today’s the first day I’ve baked since she was born.

I’m hot and tired and my back aches, but it feels good to perform such familiar tasks—ones from my life before Little Z. It makes me feel continuous, like a whole and single person, even though so much has changed now that I’m—wow, take a moment—a mother.

I’m hot because babies produce a ton of heat. Their small size belies their heat-producing capabilities. Little Z, at least, is a furnace. Right now she’s strapped to me by a long piece of fabric, so that I can have both hands free for baking. While the weather outside is rainy and chilly, in here the oven is on and Little Z and I are radiating heat.

I have to say, though, that while hot, it’s also wicked snuggly to have my angel baby tied to me. She seems to love it, too—it's as close as she can get to being back in the womb, I imagine.

I’m tired because she decided to make lots of cute noises while she slept last night from midnight til 4, which made me keep waking up to check on her, even though I knew she was totally fine. These are the perils of new parenthood. Then after her 4 a.m. feeding (my turn; Nick and I are alternating) she decided it was time to be wide awake. We stayed up and I watched episodes of Firefly and wished I were asleep. Fed her again at 7 and she was just starting to doze at 8 when Nick woke up and came to take pity on me and send me to bed.

I slept until 1 p.m. It was terrific, but I’m still a little out of it.

The good news is that, with a baby and a bit of maternity leave, there was absolutely nothing I had to do today, so dozing on the couch and reading recipes online for quick breads that I could make from my pantry was totally cool. Little Z dozed in the car seat. We’ve just recently given her a pacifier, and she loves her binky. Every now and then she dropped the binky, and then I popped it back in her mouth and she went back to her snooze.

We’ve got a lot in the way of fruits and nuts around the house right now, so I did some searches for breads that used these. I really liked the  idea of an orange pistachio bread, but I didn’t find any recipes I loved for that. I did find some yummy looking orange walnut bread recipes, though.

And yeah, I could have just subbed in the pistachios for the walnuts, but then I would have had to shell and chop all the pistachios. The walnuts, on the other hand, were in a bag, already chopped on up. These days, my watchword is convenience. Don’t believe me? Come see all the frozen foods that are currently clogging up my freezer. The closest I’ve come to cooking since Little Z joined us was the night when I fried some precooked sausages and served them with a salad (prewashed greens from a bag) and a lentil salad given to us by our friend Olivia.

In any case, orange walnut bread it was. I chose the recipe that sounded both easiest (oil instead of melted butter; no whipped egg whites) and tastiest. Okay, easiest may have been more of a factor, but I have faith that it will also be tasty. I doubled the oil from 2 T to a quarter cup, because fat is what makes things taste good, and I zested the entire orange and added all the zest instead of just a tablespoon. Because orange tastes good.

It’s in the oven now, and it smells delicious. It feels good to be baking again. And, I have to say, it feels good to be writing again, too. These are the first words I’ve typed beyond emails and grocery lists and other such workmanlike items since, again, the birth.

I have no big writing plans for my leave—I’m not going to try to write a novel before I go back to work or anything like that. I’m planning to basically hang out and spent time with my infant daughter, and slowly get used to the crazy idea of being a parent. But I have no intention of letting motherhood take over my self, and two of the things I love to do are bake and write.

It feels good. To bake, to write—and to feel Little Z snuggled against me.