Entry 1:

Good morning, Martha. Or is it a rough morning? (Which by now we both recognize as new-mother shorthand for, "How many times were you up last night?") Three for me, which is one more than Noa's usual, but then how can you really have any usual behavior when you've only been alive for a month?

I take it by your e-mail setting up this exchange that you've already conquered the shimmering Holy Grail of parenting: a Schedule. ("We're usually up by 8:30," you explained casually, provoking jealousy and awe from new parents across the land.)

Once I was up and dressed by 7:30 a.m. Now I find it hard to disturb the blissful state of a warm bundle of morning Noa on my chest before 10 a.m. and have to strain to find reasons why I can't stay in bed all day (shame, bed rot, starvation) and then finally drag myself out of bed because, well, nature calls, or in today's case because I have to write this "Breakfast Table."

(Live Schedule crisis: I lift her ever so gently, lay her down in her basket, tiptoe to the computer so I can write my first entry. She's fed, swaddled, kissed--what could be better? Yet somehow she intuits that this is the baby equivalent of a cheater buying his wife roses: I'm being tricked, she thinks, Mommy's about to ignore me. And within minutes Noa begins to squeak, groan, squirm, and finally lets loose.)

OK--I have managed to quiet her by zippering her into my sweater (I'll demonstrate later). I can continue. On to the newspapers. I know the new parent stereotype. We are supposed to skip straight to the Post Families page, scan the paper for car seat recalls, clip Marguerite Kelly's advice column, and save the A section for future papier-mâché projects. I can only tell you that in my case it's worse.

Of course I read that Post Metro story about the D.C. child-care shortage, especially since just Friday Noa became No. 5,771 on that citywide waiting list. And of course I winced when the mother on the Families page described how her precious infant had just morphed into a sullen teen-ager.

But I also find myself reading stories of great national import and wondering only how they will affect her future (the Noa equivalent of "Is it good for the Jews?"). Drilling in the Arctic National Wildlife Refuge: But what if Noa want to be a zoologist, specializing in penguins? The Mercado controversy: But what if the nanny we like the best turns out to be a Guatemalan who insists we don't pay Social Security?

Of course, I exaggerate. Or at lease I promise you the obsession is temporary. I did have some non-Noa-related thoughts, especially about Mercadogate (or Mercadopuerta). It's amazing how the neo-Bushies are constantly redefining compassionate conservatism. In the early part of the transition, it just meant Republican triangulation, as in stocking the Cabinet with Democrats and arch conservatives. Now it seems to represent some sort of bleeding heart vigilantism:

"They don't ask potential nominees to enumerate every act of compassion," Tucker Eskew said when asked why they didn't know that Linda Chavez gave money to an illegal immigrant who at that moment also happened to be cleaning her house.

Good news for whoever's hiding those Texas fugitives.

But enough about the news. Really what I want to know is: How's Elias? How are you? How are you feeling about going back to work? Leaving him in day care? How much does he weigh these days?

Now I must stop lulling my child back into a stupor and sing her a morning song.

XXOO,
H