Monday, November 30, 2009

Help, I'm Addicted to Sleep!

FATIGUE. It’s starting to give me a bad rap. OK, so I’m sort of notorious for my tendency to take long naps whenever possible, but four hours at a stretch midafternoon after a night of twelve? Kind of absurd, even for me. Yesterday I turned over birthday party detail to Steven because I simply could not face two hours at McWane Center. There’s like seventy-five floors of hands-on activity! It would have KILLED ME DEAD. I was supposed to be catching up on freelance work while they were gone. I napped. Don’t tell Steven. This morning I woke up to pouring rain and the prospect of Monday after a five-day break. Didn’t help that when I went to wake Alex up he asked if it was Friday. I summoned all the faux chipper I could muster and said no, honey, it’s Monday, and you get to tell your friends all about your Thanksgiving, won’t that be FUN? (To which he huffed with bitterness far beyond his years, “No it won’t be FUN. I hate Mondays.”)

Of course, when you’re 4 you’re generally easily distracted by shiny things. He was surprised into grudging delight by the sight of our lit-up Christmas tree (“I forgot our tree was decorated!” he bubbled), and was nudged the rest of the way into a good mood by getting to pour the syrup on his waffle allllll by himself. (I need to scrub the counter when I get home.)

Little one is 11 weeks in utero today, showing no signs of laying off the nausea-making or the exhaustion-mongering even though THAT’S THE RULE, KID, 12 WEEKS AND MOMMY GETS TO FEEL GOOD AGAIN, READ THE HANDBOOK. I look forward to having more energy, to not feeling like a trip to the Dollar Store to buy wrapping paper for the birthday child’s present is going to do me right the hell in. I’ll still probably take two-hour naps when I can because, hey, once this baby shows up I won’t get to do that nearly as much as I’d like to. I’m banking sleep, it’s logical! But hopefully I will soon, again, be able to manage my time like a normal person and not make up an errand for the exclusive purpose of justifying re-pajama’ing and returning to blissful unconsciousness the second I get home.

Maybe we should’ve kept the Mattress O’ Torture.

Monday, November 23, 2009

Is the world ready for Alex the Big Brother?

This week BB graduates from embryo to fetus. I know, how exciting! I finally was able to find the heartbeat with the home Doppler I’ve been ordered to send back for the sake of my sanity and that of those bound to listen to my fretting, and I heard that sound with mine own ears. It’s incredible.

Steven and I had occasion to see a 3-week-old Saturday night. He stared at the sleeping baby for all of five seconds and then said, “OK, now I’m scared. I forgot how little they are.” And I kind of did too. My “baby” has been too big to comfortably pick up for two years now (not that that stops him from diving into my arms occasionally, heedless of my protesting back), and long gone are the days when I had to hold my breath while trimming impossibly tiny fingernails. I’d even forgotten the way they grip your finger with a whole, minuscule and perfect hand, and how their skin is so soft and new it’s almost translucent. (Unless you’re Alex, who had cradle cap on his head and eczema on his legs, but a damn soft belly to make up for it.) I’m sure there’s a host of baby goodness I’m going to rediscover come June.



Alex wants to teach the baby how to walk, and how to hop on one leg. Right away, I believe he plans to do this. I don’t want to poke a hole in his enthusiasm, so we’ll just let things play out as they will. I just learned that my 3-year-old niece Emily is asking how long her new baby brother will be staying with them, and I find that adorably pitiful. My nephew Jack, to my knowledge, still hasn’t stopped asking when baby Nicholas is going back to the hospital, and baby Nicholas is 18 months old now. It’s got to be disheartening, to be so little and to helplessly ride out the cosmic shift of your family as you’ve known it. I think, considering my intense aversion to change, it’s a good thing I was the youngest.

Alex has started declining to hold my hand in parking lots, citing the argument “I’m almost a big brother.” He will hold my hand if I tell him that he needs to keep me safe, as he seems to believe I’m sort of a bumbling idiot who relies on his constant guidance and protection for my very survival, and he says that he will always hold his baby sister’s hand or “actually, I’ll carry her” while crossing streets. (He, like his dad and more than half the general population that has some stake in it, is convinced we’re having a girl.) But I like that he’s practicing his new role. It’s never too early to prepare for a major life change. I don’t know that from experience, as I tend to watch the change coming with a mixture of dumb awe and passive denial, but that’s rarely worked in my favor so I gotta assume Alex’s way is more effective. He even has a plan for the birth. “While you’re in the hospital getting the baby out of your tummy, Daddy and I will stay here and wrap presents.” So far he’s set aside several toys he deems “baby toys,” two chewed-up pacifiers, and three sets of too-small pajamas to bestow on his sibling.

I hope the spirit of generosity holds.

This picture has nothing whatsoever to do with this post, but it makes me laugh.

Tuesday, November 17, 2009

My Baby Looks Like a Gummy Bear

Yesterday I went to Dollar General and bought a stuffed horse head on a stick, heavy-duty aluminum foil, and a pregnancy test. I do wonder if I’m the only one ever to have done so.

Pregnancy test, you ask? YES, I say. I realize that I’ve taken sixteen, give or take, since early September, that they’ve all been varying shades of positive, and that all the logic and reason I’m able to muster these days (not to mention friends and spouse and People Who Make Sense) tell me “You’re pregnant, weirdo. Stop testing.” But yesterday was my first appointment, and the morning hours found me utterly at loose ends, and it was just a dollar anyway for a little piece of peace of mind. It was blazingly positive, if you’re wondering. If I didn’t know better, I’d say that stick was taunting me. Jerk.

Part of my anxiety was rooted in the fact that I did something ill-advised for those of us who are generally sweepingly anxious as a rule. I rented a home fetal doppler and tried (in vain) to find Baby’s heartbeat myself. I found mine about five thousand times over until I began cursing its reliability, which is pretty self-defeatist, in retrospect. But I didn’t find BB’s, and that scared me but good. Because, you see, it is VERY difficult to find the heartbeat before 10 weeks anyway, and I started trying at 8 weeks. Why? Just to freak myself out, maybe. Maybe life had been altogether too free of gut-wrenching worry for my taste. Who knows what motivates an incurable neurotic?

So thus was my state of mind going into the doctor’s appointment yesterday. I didn’t know what to expect. I have a new OB since Alex, and a new practice and a new hospital. My old doctor was stingy with ultrasounds. I only got one, and it was at 20 weeks. I did have a nurse friend who snuck me in for a quick peek at 10 weeks, so I knew Alex was IN there at least. With BB, yesterday, all I knew was that all pregnancy tests the world over insist the same thing, but that I was not going to be satisfied until I saw or heard for myself that there was a beating heart or three. So when they called me back and took me and Steven into an ultrasound room, I had to stop myself from throwing my arms around the nurse. No need to scare anyone. And it happened fast, the transition from dark uncertainty to crushing relief. It happened the second the nurse turned the monitor in our direction and I sat up on my elbows and saw our baby. Moving, no less, and looking much like a little gummy bear with stubby arms and legs. Blurry here, but you get the idea. But the best part? The crazy-fast flutter in the middle, the heartbeat, strong and vital, 180 beats per minute.



“Wow,” said Steven, my man of few words, and that just about summed it up for me, too.

Last night, after Alex was in bed and we were sitting on the couch trying to find something watchable on TV, Steven took another look at the sonogram pictures. “It’s weird to know what this is going to grow into,” he said. “That it’ll be funny and crazy and we’ll laugh at it and yell at it...”

“And love it,” I thought but didn’t say because it would’ve sounded cheesy. Then again, future tense doesn't apply here; the love switch has already been flipped. I sensed it before I saw that flutter on the screen; I knew it after.

Thursday, November 12, 2009

Gender Bender

Alex had a dream that the baby is a boy and a girl. Honestly, I’m not sure if he meant twins or a hermaphrodite. Either way I’m kind of hoping he doesn’t have the gift of precognition. No twins in any direction in either of our families, so we’re probably safe there...

Oh, gender. That’s The question of the second pregnancy, it seems. I’m sure I got it a few times with Alex, but not nearly so much. Now people just assume that I’m jonesing for a girl. And yes, having a girl would be nice, assuming I could figure out how to change Girl Diapers, and what to do with hair, once she grew some. (Alex was cue-ball bald until he was 2, and I’m pretty sure Girl Bosche would be too. I was, and my mother used to tease the few strands she could gather up into an Alfalfa ‘do and stick a barrette on it.) I’m not good with hair. My own, and presumably anyone else’s. I mean, look at my poor son’s hair and tell me I’m wrong.


Hair aside, I will also fall just as hopelessly in love with a boy, if that's what God sees fit to give me. If having Alex has taught me anything besides NEVER BE SURPRISED, it's taught me that kids are not their gender. I had it all wrong the first time, knowing nothing of boys and expecting the stereotypical factory standard. Alex is anything BUT the factory standard. And I’d be willing to bet girls don’t fit into their societal gender roles so neatly either. My nieces certainly represent two opposite ends of the spectrum. Anyway, I have a name in mind for either case, and don’t even ask me to tell you because I won’t. It’s hard enough to settle on a name between two people, without factoring in others’ bad connotations. If I’m dead-set on naming my next son Rufus, I don’t need to know that the bully in someone’s kindergarten class was named Rufus. (It’s not Rufus.)

When you think about all that could go wrong, all that went right to set this little life in motion, whether it’s a he baby or a she baby becomes utterly irrelevant. Right now I just want to hear that little whoosh-whoosh heartbeat and know that HE or SHE, or he and she, or he/she, if Alex’s dream comes to pass, is healthy in there, swimming around and growing all the right things and thoroughly enjoying wearing me down this first trimester.

Monday (first doctor’s appointment) can’t come soon enough. 

Monday, November 9, 2009

Call me Mommie Dearest.

Nothing like a good dose of guilt to kick off a Monday morning! Now, granted, one might’ve expected me, as the adult in the equation, to exhibit a little bit more grace in this scenario. I blame a restless night, and the shameless pilfering of my last ten minutes of snoozing. My last ten minutes of snoozing are sacrosanct, even if you’re 4 and rumple-headed and sort of cute when you’re cranky.

But seriously? When one requests a smiley face on one’s Pop-Tart “Not because I want it to be special but because I want it to be happy,” mind you, and one’s mom dutifully places raisin eyes and a raisin nose and a raisin mouth onto one's toaster pastry, one should just suck it up when the raisins fall off. It’s not a national disaster, it’s not cause for sniveling and seething anger and waterworks, and how the hell did one plan to eat the Pop-Tart anyway without disrupting the raisin art at some point during the process?!

I let him have his little snit-fit while I finished putting on my makeup and drying my hair, and then I kissed him goodbye, told him to have a good day, and walked out the door. I was about to pull out of the carport when he yanked the door open and yelled after me, weeping freely, “I don’t want you to goooooooo!” So I stopped, opened the car door and held my arms out so he could nestle his snotty, tear-streaked face into my shirt, and asked him what, exactly, the problem was. “We didn’t apologize!” he said, and he wasn’t wrong, although technically I didn’t really see what I’d done to apologize for ... faulty raisin-face engineering?  So I said “I’m sorry we didn’t have a very good morning,” which should pass muster unless you’re very picky, and he said, “I’m sorry I been sick,” which was sooooo not the point, and I took him back inside, blew his nose, and bade Steven good luck.

Alex watched me back out of the driveway, waving mournfully as if I were off to the battlefields instead of off to a day of correcting spelling and grammar. “Have a good day; I love you,” I called to him as I put the car into Drive. He was bawling afresh as he yelled back, “I [sob] love [sob] you [sob] toooooooo!!!!” The heartbroken wail followed me down the street.

So, Monday: 1, Julie: 0. The day can only get better. 



Thursday, November 5, 2009

Where Babies Come From

Nothing will get a bunch of veteran moms talking like a spirited discussion of labor and childbirth. These conversations are best when they happen in the presence of a scared first-timer who’s mere days away from having her own story to tell. The veterans seldom notice when the mother-to-be in their midst begins to shift uncomfortably, breaks out into a cold sweat, or turns slightly green. It’s not that no one wants to hear about your epidural-gone-wrong, or your emergency C-section, or your God-help-me tearing. It’s just that when a woman with a belly the size of a bowling ball is present, and maybe just coming to terms with the fact that this child she’s been so proudly growing all these months is going to have to come out somehow, it might be prudent to stick to the good stuff. The epidural that worked backward and succeeded only in numbing you from the midsection UP paled next to the inexpressible joy you felt when you (got the feeling back in your arms and) held your little one for the first time. That recovering from your C was easier than one might imagine, and for many women quite preferable to the alternative. That the God-help-me tear ... healed.

So I won’t tell any newbies about throwing up in a Best Buy bag because the pre-epidural drugs didn’t agree with me and Steven is resourceful. Or about passing out AS they were putting a needle into my spine. Or about pushing for two and a half hours before finally having Alex pried from me with oversize salad tongs. I won’t tell them about the fact that those tongs broke his tiny little newborn clavicle, and that the break was supposed to heal cleanly and instead left a huge calcium deposit BUMP on his collarbone that seems to be growing as he does. That on the second day in the hospital I collapsed into sobs because he wouldn’t eat and I was so sure they weren’t going to let me take him home because of what an unfit mother I was that I begged the nurse to bring me some formula and show me how to bottle feed. That I felt like a big jerk because of that.  

Nah, nobody needs to hear the horror stories. Least of all me. Because, while I’ve done it once before, I’m no expert and I am a worrier. So as far as I’m concerned, this one is going to show up on my doorstep, all snuggled in a blanket in a basket with a refresher list of instructions attached. I’m not too old to believe in the stork.  

Monday, November 2, 2009

I'll always call Skittles Nickels.

Say what you will, it’s darn funny when a little kid mispronounces something or mangles grammar. When it’s your own kid, it’s darn funny and darn cute. And I don’t say this lightly, as I’m not permitted to because I am a Pseudo-Professional and Occasionally Proud Grammarian and a decent pronunciator (Hush, peanut gallery). Who is prone to sentence fragments. For effect. And sometimes laziness.

That dog on the Peanuts cartoons? Snoofy.

The stuff a bee gets from a flower? Connectar.

The place you stay when you’re on vacation? Hootel.

There is a state, in Alex World, called Ohidaho.

Many Alexisms have, sadly, self-corrected. Wha’ happeen (what happened?). Issat NEWiss (what’s that noise?). Nersh (nose). I have bleed. The endlessly entertaining phase when the consonant cluster “CR” came out “CL” (therefore cricket=clicket, Christmas=Clistmas, and crack=clack. Steven was meaner than I, and often asked the poor kid to say “Chris Kringle crossed the creek.”).

Still, we have “I sleeped good,” “Are you so proud at me?” and “It happened for a long time ago,” among many other gems. I don’t correct him, because I know soon enough he’ll correct himself and it’ll make me sad.

Until then, whenever I need a pick-me-up, I watch the infamous Issat NEWiss video. If you know me (or even select friends of mine) you’ve probably seen it a few dozen times. I’m a little biased, but it’s good for a smile and a maternal pang. What I wouldn’t give to kiss that baldish head again. Click me.

Sunday, November 1, 2009

Hanging up Halloween

Halloween is over, and what do we have to show for it? Two fast-rotting Jack-o'-lanterns, a bucket full of pregnant-lady's kryptonite, and a child who I swear against all scientific probability is still on last night's sugar rush. There was more buildup this year, which may be a sign of the times, in a world where Christmas decorations start sneaking into the periphery before the heat of summer has fully faded, and because of the buildup, the overness of Halloween has that weird hollow feel. It's like the day after your birthday when you're little. So now I guess we focus on Thanksgiving? Not me. I'm going day by day. Tomorrow Baby Bosche will be 7 weeks solid, working each day toward looking less like a tiny reptile (Why does he have a TAIL??? Alex demanded, wide-eyed, when I showed him a picture of what BB looks like right now). Day by day.

So Halloween started with visits to every single proprietor of costumes in the metro area in search of a Batman costume in Small. It would seem that only Small-size people are interested in Batman costumes, which is why every size but was available everywhere we went. (I ended up ordering his online.) Then we did Boo at the Zoo, where thousands of pint-size creatures packed in for games with penny prizes, trick-or-treating, a standard carousel ride (they used to run it backward for Boo, but we overheard the operator guy telling someone that it was malfunctioning that way), and a "haunted" train ride. Alex reassured himself by repeating "It's not real, Mommy," every time we saw a creepy thing in the woods, until a little girl behind us, improbably named Betsy, informed him haughtily that "Even if it's not real, it's still cool!"


Then, my mother decided to spend her birthday night in Hell, so we took Alex and his cousin Jack to the carnival at my old elementary school.


OK, so it used to be a Halloween carnival, now it's just a carnival. I don't know what that was about. The school (smaller than I remember, of course, but it smelled the same!) was packed out. I'm not prone to claustrophobia, but after a fifteen-minute wait in line for the haunted house, I was gearing up to fight my way through a group of giggly braces-clad Pizitz dance teamers and claw through solid cinderblock in a desperate search for fresh air and open space.

Then there was Alex's school parade and party. The parade was cute as always (and a little bittersweet, as it was our last, at least with this kid), and a little cruel. It's impossible not to laugh at the sight of a chubby little cowboy who dissolves into heartbroken wails when he glimpses his mommy on the bleachers, and that sounds horrible but it's CUTE. Don't judge me.

And finally, FINALLY, Halloween night. After an exceptionally rough day, Alex and I both sick to varying degrees and tired in equal measure, I wasn't at all sure it was going to be a successful trick-or-treat outing. But we packed him into layers under his Batman duds and set off into the streets, where we quickly discovered an interesting fact about our new neighborhood. Evidently Halloween night here is a sort of block party with no open-container restrictions. Parents and grandparents holding glasses of wine and cups of spirited homemade concoctions and beers in coozies tailed hyper costumed kids from door to door in a scene that was oddly all-American, fantastically fall, and straight-up fun. Alex made friends with a tiny decked-out Bama player, whose helmet came in handy when he took a header off someone's brick porch steps. Alex wound down about the same time my new lack of stamina began demanding a break, so we packed it in until next year.

Oh yeah, Steven did a great job on our Batman Jack-o'-lantern this year, and valiantly tried to salvage Scooby Doo. In the end the mangled Scooby face was covered by a place mat and a standard-issue Jack-o'-lantern face carved on the opposite side of the pumpkin. They're awesome, and they're making me sick. (BB doesn't seem to appreciate the scent of slightly charred pumpkin.)