Pity Party

Two birthday parties in one weekend just about did me in. The first was for nephew #2, turning 2, whose mama was still in the hospital and thus unable to dote. Nicholas did his level best to keep up with the big boys as they ran around outside. There were Happy Meals and cake and almost-exclusive Lightning McQueen presents. (Big brother Jack has finally retired Thomas the Tank Engine in favor of the Cars star, so Nicholas is now a fan by default.)

I swear they had more fun than this.


And the birthday boy even found his smile when the cake showed up.


Then we were impromptuly (I know it’s not) invited to girl-next-door’s party on Sunday at 2. Smack dab in the middle of my naptime, but what are ya gonna do? I had fleeting hopes of sending Alex over solo; after all, the party was in the backyard so I could keep an ear on him if nothing else, but at the last minute he decided it would be best if I were there to sweat and swelter and watch him interact with his strange species.

It was an art party; evidently Liddy and family are very artsy. (I was relieved to see from the Happy Birthday banner that I’d made the right choice in deciding her name was Liddy-short-for-Lydia instead of Livvy-short-for-Olivia.)

I parked myself in a pseudo-shaded lawn chair and made decent small talk before the sweat started pouring off me in rivers and I gave up all attempts at pretending to be good company until at least early July, when I’m not carrying around what’s feeling more and more like a small-statured water buffalo.

The kids painted tiles that were all pushed together into one big canvas, and it was a group effort but try explaining that to a sweaty 5-year-old who has just watched some other kid squirt brown paint all over the square he had painstakingly decorated with red dots and glitter. And at some point most of them drifted away but Alex stuck to it like he aimed to salvage the whole drippy, gaudy, blobby, sad-looking piece. He failed, my child, but I give him points for effort.


There was almost a brawl between two little girls, and I was debating whether to mediate or place bets on the angrier of the two when we were saved by the cake.

The cake was artsy, too, and a little bit shocking. I think Liddy made it herself.

We escaped when it became clear to me that my choices were to succumb to heatstroke or go home and try to cool off. Alex, because tolerance for heat and noise and overstimulation is proportionate to youth and not-being-pregnant, went directly out to the backyard to rejoin the party from our side of the fence.

I took a freezing-cold shower and put my puffy feet up and waited for the Lost series finale to punch me in the heart.

Baby Andrew is still in the NICU; jaundice and a less-than-hearty appetite both standing in his way of coming home quite yet. I watched her feed him when I went to visit on Saturday. He’s tiny, his little head the size of a softball, and he looks, in true newborn fashion, like an angry little old man. Absolutely precious. Here’s hoping she can take him home soon.

Little Things

Most important news first: My sister, Kelly, had her baby via C-section on Wednesday. He was born a very-healthy-considering 6 pounds, 1 ounce at just 36 weeks gestation. All accounts have him doing well, although he is in the NICU for breathing troubles—tiny lungs aren’t quite sure what they’re supposed to do just yet. I’ve only seen one picture of him, but from what I can tell it seems we’ve got another Kelly clone. (Her firstborn, Jack, was an absolute carbon copy of her, a startling sight to behold as he peered with her eyes from her arms in his bundle of blankets.)

Kelly’s Boy #3’s name is Andrew Paul (Andrew because they liked it; Paul as a compromise from what Kelly wanted but also my maternal grandfather’s name), and I hope to meet him soon.




In other news, my boy is a preschool graduate. I’m such a sap. I knew I would cry, and I fought it from the moment the director made her speech about how our children had touched their lives but now it’s time for them to give them back to us and blah blah blah other pretty clichés. I’ve known some of these kids since they were babies, and I do have a tendency to get attached, so seeing them walking down the church aisle (the same one I walked down to marry Steven, by the way, which added its own element of sap/sweetness depending on your POV) in their little blue caps and gowns was pretty hard-core.

Here, mine's third from the left:


...second from the top left:


...and second row from the top, second kid from the left:


They sang their little hearts out—choreography included, and even some sign language!—on three songs, two of which made me misty, one that just made me laugh.

But it was really the photo montage that got to me. Set to music about how great kids are, there was a baby photo of each child followed by his/her cap and gown picture.

This one was met with laughter and “awws” from the audience and a fresh wave of nostalgia for me.



In other other news, I’m finished, for all intents and purposes, buying things for baby girl’s room. Now it’s a matter of taking care of a few details like covering my responsibilities while I’m temporarily incapacitated (either by labor and delivery or by that peculiar brand of post-baby shock and awe that can masquerade as catatonia) and finding a way to deep-clean the house without kicking off contractions. I’m seriously considering a one-time maid service. Is that too indulgent?

Everything in her room smells like Dreft, and I think I’ve become a junkie. I’ve been going in there before bed and sitting in the glider to soak in the what’s-to-come and ... sniff things.

A few more weeks. Wow.

No one's gonna read this...

(so I slipshodded it).

Once upon a time my car kept making this weirdly mesmerizing noise that sounded like a bird chirping under the hood. It went on for months, because whenever I tried to demonstrate for someone who might be able to diagnose the sound or at least reassure me that I wasn’t having auditory hallucinations, the bird fell silent. So I finally started turning the radio up loud enough to drown out the bird, and eventually, it stopped. (And people tell me my “ignore it and it’ll go away” philosophy is ill-conceived.)

So yesterday when I went to the doctor after having a two-day-long Braxton-Hicks-contraction party, I was pretty sure I would leave with a big HYPOCHONDRIAC stamp on my forehead and that people would point and laugh me all my red-faced way to the parking lot. Even though Dr. Pretty Cool (yes, he used to be Dr. Awesome; long story) told me specifically that he wanted to know if I ever had six in one hour, I felt silly when I handed him my crumpled-up piece of paper with a list of times jotted down, front and back, detailing what my uterus had been up to all day.

Forget six in one hour; I’m an overachiever. I had eight, then five, then seven. One of them hit when I was waddling down the crosswalk toward my doctor’s office and took my breath away. Some of them were even kind of painful, although when asked that very question I brave-little-soldiered it and labeled them “a little uncomfortable.”

Also, perhaps because Nurse Always-Has-To-Comment-On-My-Weight-Gain said as she was slapping the blood pressure cuff on me, “Oh yeah, he’s gonna want to do a cervix check for sure; that doesn’t look good,” my first BP reading was high. Not as high as it was when I had pregnancy-induced hypertension with Alex, but high enough to earn a neon-green sticky note at the top of my chart.

So Dr. Pretty Cool came in and said, “Why are you trying to get your blood pressure all riled up?” and I wasn’t in the mood to get that he was joking so I said “I’m not!” so defensively that he chuckled and patted my arm reassuringly (but not patronizingly, which earned him at least one Awesome point back).

And then he informed me that these contractions were in fact “doing something”—I was 1.5 centimeters dilated (hey, less work to do later!). He sent me down for a non-stress test to monitor the contractions and my blood pressure. I was probably lying in the very bed my sister had just vacated, as she had the time slot right before me even though our paths didn’t cross this time.

I have to admit feeling slightly vindicated every time I had a contraction that showed up on the little scroll of paper coming out of the machine. It wasn't in my head! Nurse Carol even praised me for being in tune with my body. (Yeah, well, I’ve known that since I shoved a very-obviously-negative pregnancy test under Steven’s nose and said, “IT’S LYING. Trust me.”)

Nurse Carol, by the way, sat by my bed the whole time, and God bless her I wanted her to go away and leave me to watch Holmes on Homes and the fetal/contraction monitor in peace. But no, she wanted to talk about blood bank errors, incompetent fellow nurses, her two children (both born in March and both fans of Thai food!!!), and winning a third-karat diamond ring in a Cracker Jack box in some McRae’s find-the-diamond promotion years ago.

When she got onto how she’d canceled her subscription to Coastal Living three years ago because there wasn’t enough Gulf Coast coverage, I stopped listening so I wouldn’t snap at her.

After half an hour I’d had five good contractions, baby’s heart rate looked good, and my blood pressure had settled down. Nurse Carol called my doctor and he ordered terbutaline to make my uterus stoppit. That stuff burns like a _____ going in and then makes you jittery and shaky as your pulse rate shoots through the roof. Fun stuff.

But it worked. I had to lie there for another half hour or so with Nurse Carol chattering away as we waited for Dr. Pretty Cool to come down and look at my scroll, write a prescription for the pill form of the magic medicine, and pronounce me “good to go.” He said Nurse Carol had saved me a trip to L&D for IV fluids, so I guess I should cut her some slack for talking my ear off.

I hope my next appointment (scheduled for next week, quite possibly at the same time my sister is having her C-section) is a little bit smoother.

Now I'm under orders to rest as much as possible and drink lots of water. There's water in Diet Dr Pepper, right?

Stubborn independence

Milestone of the millennium: The child who once upon a time screamed bloody murder if you got within ten feet of him holding a bottle of shampoo has started washing his own hair. It’s a miraculous thing, really; up until very recently I had disturbing visions of following him to college in the capacity of official hair washer. (Creepy inDEED.)

He couldn’t have picked a better time to reach this goal, as my bulging belly makes it painful for me to lean over to hold a washcloth over his eyes with one hand and lather with the other and then help him tilt his head back to rinse while he makes pitiful little panicky noises. A couple of nights ago I was doing laundry when I heard something that I can only imagine is what a drowning kitten would sound like.

Before you call CPS on me, let me clarify that he takes showers, not baths, so the danger was more that he’d snorted some suds up his nose than anything more dire.

“Alex?! Are you ok?” I called, starting for the open bathroom door.

“Yes!” [Gulp, sputter, cough, snort, gasp.] “Yes! I’m DOING it! Don’t come help me!” [Gulp, sputter, snort.]

The finesse will come in time, I’m sure.

That independent streak of his springs, I think, from his desire to be like his daddy. Unfortunately for him, he has an attitudinal streak that is just like mine. (Steven points it out frequently. “You can’t get mad at him for that,” he says when Alex stomps away in a huff because I’ve said no to some outrageous request. “That’s all you.”)

This morning I asked him to hand me the milk. He got distracted by string cheese, so I got the milk myself, used it for his cereal, and put it back.

“I wanted to hand you the milk,” he complained when the string cheese lost its hold on him.

“Well, I’m sorry, I’m in a hurry and you weren’t paying attention,” I said.

He thought about it for a second. Then he walked back to the refrigerator, opened it, took out the milk carton, plunked it down on the counter next to me, waited two seconds, and put it back in the refrigerator. Wow. (And yeah, I’d’a done the same thing, maybe.)

Baby girl is running out of room. I get fewer kicks and more shoves, which are decidedly less enjoyable. I mean, I love the kid, but my spleen was there first.

I’ve officially lost my office key card, which means I have no at-will access to the bathroom. This could be interesting. And by interesting I mean utterly disastrous.

Happy Friday, all!

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.