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.
Tuesday, December 15, 2009
Tuesday, December 1, 2009
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.
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.
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.
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.
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.
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.
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.
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.
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