brace yourself, I’m going to get nostalgic again

So, thanks to Tumblr (which, let’s face it, is where I find these things out), I learned that today is the 7th anniversary of the pub date for Harry Potter and the Deathly Hallows.

On this day (or sometime this week or next) seven years ago, I had a three month old baby with a stomach ache.  I don’t know what I’d eaten, but it (via the breastmilk) had not agreed with the boyo.  There was much use of the Mylicon drops, but what actually worked the best was something my grandmother told me to do:  put him on my chest/stomach, and then put a blanket over him.

We had this weird, fuzzy blue wrap thing that looked like some kind of Flintstones-esque swaddling blanket (it had a spot for his feet, and a hood, and, like, wings that would velcro closed) that my mother-in-law had sent us and that was much too large for a three month old, but that worked really well for this particular task since, because of the wings,  it wouldn’t just slide off when he (or I) moved.

I spent the day in the reclining rocker we’d put in the baby’s room, with the baby draped on me and the cave-baby wrap draped over him. And when I say the day, I mean something like 8 hours.  Bathroom breaks and eating (the blandest food in the house) were fast and usually ended with a fussy kiddo crying as I scooped him out of his crib and got him re-situated on me.

It was a long day.  It was one of those days that sort of makes you a parent.  But it was not nearly as long and boring as it could have been, because I had Harry Potter and the Deathly Hallows propped on the arm of the chair, and when I wasn’t singing to the boyo, I was reading it–mostly to myself, but occasionally aloud to him.

The unintentional symmetry to this story is that my now-seven year old and I have been reading Harry Potter and the Sorcerer’s Stone at night this month.  He will snuggle up to me while I read it to start, but he tends to get squirmy after a while.  I will say, though, he’s always up for marathon reading, so maybe I was doing more that day than soothing his stomach ache.