My Son, the Philosopher

I had my second OB appointment yesterday, and Dr. Awesome perused my file and proclaimed, "You're perfect." Aw, you flatter me, Dr. Awesome. Good bloodwork, good blood pressure (whew), good baby heartbeat, good weight gain (if there is such a thing) at one pound after the nice nurse subtracted one because I was wearing boots. And! He told me that if I come back in five weeks instead of four, we can do my "big ultrasound." So on January 20 at around 10 a.m., barring baby stubbornness or unforeseen events, we will find out if we're having a John or a Jane. And no, those are not the names. It's hard to believe that my next appointment will mark the almost-halfway point of this pregnancy. Makes me feel, comparatively and in retrospect, like I gestated Alex for about two and a half years. This is flying by!

Speaking of the funny 4-year-old, he told us last night that, while he realizes that God gets to choose whether the baby is a boy or a girl, he certainly hopes God was listening when he put in his request for a baby sister. Why a sister? I asked out of curiosity. "Because," he told me matter-of-factly, "Girls are cute."

Less cute, more heart-wrenching was the conversation we had a week or so ago when I was putting him to bed. He went through his whole how-much-I-love-you routine, starting with "I love you ten million" (we never know what units he's using) and going all the way to "I love you up to the sky and around the world and past Heaven." Then, unexpectedly, he said, "I'll even love you when you die." He thought about it for a minute and added, "But that's going to be a looooooong long long time away, right?" After reassuring as best I could on such a landmine-dotted topic, he seemed not a bit soothed. "Why does life have to be like that?" he asked, frustrated.

I think he used to ask easier questions.

He has come up with his own surprisingly accurate theory on the logistics of childbirth. When the baby runs out of room in my tummy, he said, it will start looking around for the door. The doctor at the hospital helps the baby open the door, because, duh, babies don't know how to turn knobs.

The Joys of Being Neurotic

I’m brainstorming. It’s a sight to behold, let me tell you. Notes are scattered in front of me, scribbled on Post-Its of varying sizes, looking important and schizophrenic. Monday 10:45, says one ... I didn’t do anything yesterday at 10:45, so I’m hoping it’s old. I doodle my name a lot, it seems, in all its incarnations. I doodle the baby’s potential names, especially ones I know I’ll never have the guts to saddle the kid with for real. Christmas shopping. One of these Post-Its has names and abbreviations of what I can only imagine were intended to be gift ideas, but I can’t imagine why I would be buying my 4-year-old nephew a Psk CXp bd. I need to get better with my shorthand. Mostly there are random numbers with dollar signs that make me the appropriate degree of nervous: 895 minus 654 equals 241 and even though I don’t know what that 241 is, it seems ominous, right? S: 866.25 with an exclamation point next to it! VBC 715 with a question mark? Baby care, afterschool care, yack! It’s important, too, not something you can just close your eyes and point to and hope for the best ...

I’m a planner. Not because I’m so all-fired organized (Post-Its everywhere attest) but because I worry if I don’t have a plan in place. I worry if I do have a plan in place, but less, and for different reasons. The having of the plan is A-Number-One-Important; the plan can be tweaked and adjusted, reframed and repositioned, but its bones don’t change and that brings me some measure of comfort. Right now there is no plan. Or actually there are several completely separate potential plans, with corollaries, and I’m stuck at the crux of where all the paths branch off, staring down one after the other with panicked indecision. Wishing someone would push me down one, any one, so I can claim PLAN IN PLACE, NO TAKE-BACKS and go on about my business.

So while I wait for something to click, for a decision to make itself (hasn’t happened in my 31 years of life but that’s not going to stop me from waiting), I’m going to throw myself into the things that are fairly controllable and don’t require much in the way of choice. Beginning the slow process of clearing out the office in preparation to transform it into the nursery. Reading about what’s happening inside my body from week to week. Boosting Alex’s burgeoning big brother ego. Working. Freelancing to fill in the holes because my goodness formula has gotten more expensive in the past four years! Hanging with people who make me laugh. Reading mindless fiction (confession: I’m halfway through my second reading of New Moon, yes I am, don't judge me). Writing mindless nonfiction, so that I’ll remember this time in my life, years down the line, when the decisions have all been made and paid and become woven into the fabric of How It Is.

Stop taunting me with your secrets, future.