Dress rehearsal

Last night was chock-full of nightmares, and ones so vivid and plausible that they weren’t even fun. Getting yelled at by two different editors at work because everyone believes their copy is the most important and time-sensitive copy that ever copied. My water breaking while standing in line at Chik-fil-A (to be honest, the scariest part of this one was the alarming realization Oh no, I didn’t get my waffle fries!). Walking through the empty halls of Former Place of Work and finding bodies piled in every corner—ok, perhaps not so plausible from a literal standpoint, but boy do I get what my subconscious meant.

Between dreams, I got up to go to the bathroom four times, tripped on a dog three out of the four times, chugged a half-gallon of water around 2 a.m., rearranged Alex in bed (he’s taken to sleeping sideways across the bed with his head and legs hanging off opposite ends), popped some Tylenol for my back, and pondered the mysteries of the universe. All in all, a night of productivity. Does that mean I can sit and stare catatonically at the wall today? That’s the plan.

Kindergarten orientation went off without a hitch. I fully expected hitches. Especially when they ushered us inside the school and without warning funneled parents down one hallway, kids down another (“Let them go, Mamas; you’ll have to do it soon enough,” announced the principal—encouragingly??) and Alex turned around and fixed me with Those Eyes and gave me a trembly smile that was so utterly and obviously aiming for brave that a little piece of my heart broke off and shattered right there on the floor outside the cafeteria. Dramatic? Yes. True? Trust me.

It struck me during the parents’ portion of the meeting how very fish-out-of-water I feel in this little microcosm of society, and that’s a little bit surprising considering I’ve lived in it for the better part of my life. The other parents are very nice, and I chatted with a few of them and even saw a few familiar faces, but wow—I’d say there’s a mere three degrees of separation working in this community.

Oh, and my what-the-hell moment came when one of the cheerleaders from my own middle- and high-school days came out to ... do a cheer. For a second I could not have told you what year it was.

The kids who were herded into the lunchroom by the kindergarten teachers to reunite with us did not look older and wiser than the ones we’d watched wander confusedly down the hall an hour before. Their little faces registered some relief, some bewilderment, some pride ... but most notably they just looked very, very small.

Mine could not wait to tell me how he’d shared the crayons with a boy without even being asked and that he’d been a little bit scared at first but that he didn’t cry and then he’d made a friend and he’d talked to a grownup and used his manners and made a monkey and danced to a funny song that he didn’t remember and and and ... !!!

An almost-5-year-old’s excitement is infectious, I tell you.

I took him to Publix and told him he could pick out whatever he wanted as a treat for doing so great. He picked orange-flavored Tic-Tacs.

Moving Along

Baby girl is, as I type, jabbing me with a little—elbow?—and making my stomach lopsided and lumpy. It’s fascinating. I’ll miss this part of being pregnant. (Not that I’m doing the almost-end-of-game wrap-up, OH no, not yet.) I’m 32 weeks along now, and she is measuring right on target. If I can keep my blood pressure in the normal range for the next few weeks, I will hopefully avoid induction or C-section.

Walking down the hall just now, I was greeted by the office receptionist with an unmistakable “Oh my God you look huge” gesture involving arms held way out in front of an imaginary giant belly. This same person once insisted—to the point of arguing with me about it—that I was pregnant before I was pregnant, so, okay.

We did the 4D ultrasound even though I’d said I was going to skip it this time. It’s expensive (not covered by insurance), and there are no guarantees that you’ll get a good look at the baby’s face if she decides, for example, to hide securely behind one arm and one leg. Ours did that, and I was duly impressed by her flexibility—knee to nose, no kidding—but we got some good shots, too. Enough to tell that she has chubby cheeks, a full, pouty little mouth, and (!) quite probably not a single strand of hair. (I am a sucker for the baldies.)

In other news, this:

is about to start down the path of Formal Education. I enrolled him in kindergarten yesterday. People keep telling me how emotional the process of sending your first off to kindergarten is, and I am a pretty sentimental sap. Mostly my twinges are of the “Will he miss Clay J.?” (I will!) and “Will he be upset when I leave him that first day?” (I will!) variety. Maybe because he’s been in full-time care since he was 3 months old, some of this is old hat to us. Routine, following directions, working with other kids, listening to teachers, all that stuff is (should be) in the bag.

But be gentle with me on August 13. (And August 14 for that matter; that’s my birthday.)

My fourth nephew (my sister’s third child) will most likely be joining us much earlier than his due date of June 17. She’s on bedrest now for pregnancy-induced hypertension and they’re talking about scheduling her C-section for mid- to late next month. Please spare a good thought or two for her, imagining how impossible it must be to rest and keep calm with a 5-year-old and a 2-year-old running around the house.

Anteshocks

A wonderful and staggeringly talented friend of my mother-in-law’s who has made the crib bedding for all the babies in the family has finished our girl’s. I got pictures yesterday. Wanna peek?

Oh, wait. You can't. Because I'm not ready to tell you her name yet. =)

Baby Jane Doe gave me my first real scare yesterday, or maybe it could be more accurately classified as a prolonged period of paranoia and baseless, free-floating anxiety. Decreased fetal movement after 29 weeks. If you ever get a hankering to do a Google search on the topic, think twice—there are terrifying stories to be found and very few that will make you feel an iota better.

So yesterday I was a nervous wreck. I tied knots in all knottable objects within reach, I called the OB nurse in the hopes that she would tell me I was being ridiculous, I called one of my best childhood friends, a very GOOD nurse who delivered Alex (and who said to calm down, drink a Coke, and that if the OB nurse told me I was being ridiculous she was just a straight-up bad nurse and I should tell her so). I poked and prodded my belly relentlessly until I elicited a faint, sluggish bump, breathed a sigh of relief, and then faced a wave of fresh worry because sluggish is a terrible adjective!

Finally, gradually, in the midst of all this inner turmoil, baby girl decided to stop tormenting me mentally and return to the good old physical kind. Bouncing on my bladder, testing the elasticity of my ribs, doing that squirmy thing that induces nausea. She’s at it as I type. And I am intensely grateful.

Last night we went on a tour of the hospital where that whole birthing deal is going to happen. It made me excited, and nervous, and speaking of nausea, the C-section prep room smells like surgery and if I have to go there they won’t even have to give me a spinal because I’ll just pass out and save the anesthesiologist a trip. The tour was a barrage of words and images and memories of fear and giddiness. After-hours maternity drop-off, L&D rooms, stirrups, epidurals, skin-to-skin, rooming-in, visitors, nursing, BABY ... oh my.

Yes, indeed. It is perfectly excitifying.

Easterrific

Long weekends. The idea of them always sounds heavenly, exotic somehow, laced with promise and possibility and adventure. In reality, more often than not (in my world, at least), there are long periods filled with indecision and motivation-gathering and pro-and-con weighing, resulting in more time spent trying to figure out what to do than doing it, and then needing a nap. Flightiness is hard work.  

This weekend started on Thursday. There was an Easter party/egg hunt at which I was made a fool of by thirteen 4-year-olds who have no business being so good at Pin the Egg on the Bunny. (I overcompensated for the fact that every single one of them nailed that game by making the next one—Toss the Egg in the Bucket—excessively hard. I never claimed to be merciful.)



Then there was a trip to the mall with my son, mother, sister, nephews, and visiting aunt and cousin that resulted in a waking nightmare that only just turned out OK, and from which I am still reeling, four days later. Suffice it to say that my almost-2-year-old nephew might have a future as an Olympic sprinter. Or a kamikaze pilot. And that even in my third trimester of gestation I am capable of running and screaming in public when the stakes are high enough. (Such as preventing a baby’s suicide-run at the escalator, hypothetically.)

Then there was Easter itself, including a church service so packed out that we couldn’t even get in and had to watch it on a big screen in the small chapel next door. There was too much candy and not enough self-restraint. There was ham and casseroles and a coconut cake that never did finish cooking in the very middle. There was a little work, squished in between overeating and overnapping, while the hubby showed everyone up by taking little girl golden on a 10-mile hike.  

All of it wrapped up with a sugar-induced meltdown over just one bedtime story, oh the humanity and a much-needed marathon of The Office with one of my favorite people.

This morning Alex was not at all thrilled at the prospect of returning to school. He asked me to do my best to pick him up before naptime, please, and then wanted to know if he could have a couple of Peeps for breakfast. (I said no to both requests because I am MEAN, MEAN, MEANNESS PERSONIFIED.)

But here we are, at the head of another week, well rested if unprepared to buckle down and get stuff done quite yet, craving raw vegetables and mineral water to counteract the nutritional damage we’ve done the past few days.

Baby girl is 29 weeks today, giving me heartburn at every turn and making me work for the oxygen (they tell me she’s the size of a butternut squash now). Tomorrow we tour the hospital so I can start having flashbacks to Labor & Delivery 2005, and find new and time-consuming things to obsess over.