Spring Ants in the Pants

It's spring. It's so very, very spring, and my baby is at home with her nonna while I sit here in my office with the big, tall windows looking over wildly blooming cherry trees and gleeful daffodils and the sky is blue for once and inside, all I feel is a buzzing urge to make something, write something, do something, make dinner with the first sweet, baby peas, fiddleheads, and sit on the cool porch, barefooted, baby in lap with her own sweet pea puree spooned into her baby-birdish mouth. Dig in the dirt, imagine a trip to Spain, beat the dust out of the rugs, clean baby's windows. Instead I email, schedule, meet, plan, facilitate, organize, "touch base," prioritize, manage, copypastespellchecksend.

I want the last 20 pregnancy pounds to vanish and my summery clothes to fit and my toes to be polished for flipflops and the godforsaken red "you have a voicemail" light to stop blinking on my phone.

Nora is growing ever-chubbier with the introduction of solids (apples, pears, and carrots all make her pucker, zucchini makes her gag, acorn squash, only, is gulped heartily and with giggles) and her fat elbow creases are on display in her shortsleeved onesies for the first time - first time fat, first time in short-sleeves, both. I want to inhale the smell of her drool-slathered fingers and show her how to stack blocks, new sitter-upper that she is.

I want to take a pottery class. I want to take a baby-mama swim class. I want to read a novel. I want to help baby manhandle her board books.

Spring is here. I'm antsy. A whole new mama kind of antsy.