Bitch & Moan

I maintain I have a pretty sunshiny view on life.  This in spite of the fact that I  am a pregnant woman, hence I am prone to making my complaints known (or as I like to see it making “gentle observations.”)

This morning’s observation:  why in the FUCK does a bagel have to have a hole in the middle?  Delicious whole wheat bagel with your 2.4 grams of fiber why must you complicate matters with your hole? I am a capable woman.  A smart woman.  And yet daily the spreading of my also oh so delicious grape jelly on a bagel is enough to make me want to kill a motherfucker.  Why?  Why the hole?  You serve no purpose! (Incidentally I am a capable googler.) Continue reading

If I knew then….

September is a tough month for me.   Em’s birthday, her due date and the day Jer and I were married are all within a week of one another.  It’s impossible for me to think about one without thinking of another.

I told Em the story of the day she was born yesterday.  And it was hard.  It is equally hard to call her father and hear him tell her that he loves her.  On this day it is harder than any other day for some reason.   I don’t imagine it is a picnic for MQD to hear me tell her about Jeremy, either.  I do my very best to let Jeremy speak for himself. I never speak ill of him to her, nor do I tell her fantastic tales of a man she sees not enough of.  I do what I can to let her love for him carry their relationship.  She sees him with her own eyes, not mine.

I just dug up the letter I wrote Em on her second birthday.  I had no idea just how much her laughter would carry me through some dark days. When I wrote Em this letter I knew what was coming…. but I had no idea where I was going yet. Continue reading

And then she was Six…

Dear Emily June,

You climbed in to bed with me at a little before five in the morning on your sixth birthday.  “Is it the middle of the night or very early in the morning?”

“It’s night time,” I told you.  I am fairly sure I have a limited time left to tell you these white lies in the hopes of buying time in one way or another.  You rolled over and snuggled up against me.  You were quiet for just a minute before you said “I saw all those streamers, Mom.  But I didn’t look at my presents.”

When I was a little girl my mom used to decorate our rooms at night so when we woke up on our birthday we felt special right away.  And really I can’t think of a better way to start a new year.  I hope you feel special every day of this year, little girl. Continue reading

“So Perfect to Hold You”

From my office door

My favorite time of the day is climbing in to Em’s bed first thing in the morning.  She has a morning voice that is both squeaky and scratchy all at once.

I rub her back and kiss her on the cheek.  These days I smile at those long legs sticking out from that tiny pink blanket she insists on sleeping beneath.

“Goood morning, kiddo.  You have to get up in about five minutes, ok?’ Continue reading

My baby’s take on the baby…

“What’s that?”

“It’s like a vitamin, kind of,” I said , stirring the glass of Metamucil.

“What kind?  What is it for?”

“Well, when you’re pregnant your stomach and all of your insides don’t have a lot of room so you have trouble going to the bathroom and stuff.  This is fiber, and that helps.”

“So you don’t only have really small poops?”

“What?”  I asked her, realizing this entire conversation was going to be repeated at school in all likelihood.

“I mean, you just have small poops, right?  The baby poops and it comes out your butt.”

“Not exactly.  We have to leave in five minutes.  Get your backpack.”

It’s easy to feel like I am the only person in the house that feels so pregnant all of the time.  But I have to wonder how much time she devotes to thinking about it… because when it comes up she seems to have a pretty well thought out vision of how it all works.  Right or wrong.  And really there is no telling her she’s wrong these days.

 

 

 

Toys R Us Kid

I had been waiting for the morning that was not so easy.  Em has been a champ about a new school, a new schedule, the school bus.  Knowing all the while she will be changing schools again in a few short weeks when we move.

This morning the tears came streaming down her face when we left for the bus stop.  She was trying to articulate just exactly what had her so upset.  I know she is tired.  She has asked to go to bed early for the past week.  I told her I’d give her a ride to school today, just to buy us a few minutes so she could wipe her tears from her face.

She was pretty quiet on the ride to school.  She stopped crying long enough to tell me that I was going the “wrong way, Mom… are you sure you know how to get there?” But mostly she rode in silence.

We were early when we pulled in the parking lot.   “I just don’t WANT to be a big girl.”  She was climbing out of her car seat and opening the door.  I rounded the car to meet her as she put on her back pack, making my very tall girl suddenly seem so very tiny.  “It seems like I am just gonna be a grown up just like THAT.”

Sometimes as a parent I am at a loss.  My heart was saying “Go home, fuck school! Eat candy!  Watch cartoons!!”  But I dug deep and all I came up with was a simple answer.  “I know, Em.  It IS crazy.  I wake up every day and I have no idea how I became I grown up.  I still feel pretty much the same as I always did on the inside.  Nothing really ever changed for me.”

She hugged me.  And she didn’t see me get teary.  But she knew.  She always knows.   “Really?”  She pulled back from my neck and looked at me like she just might roll her eyes.

“Really.  I still feel like a kid.  And THAT is why I am AWESOME.”  And then she smiled.  And shook her head.  I think she thinks I was kidding.

My Oldest

My first child was a sloppy mess from the start.  He peed in the house.

The Baby & his Grover

He whined when left alone.  And he had very sharp teeth.

The Choppers

He ate the corner of my couch.  He stood in his food bowl when he ate his dinner.

My Sloppy Dining Companion

I loved him from the very first night we brought him home. And I was proud of him as he grew in to a big strong boy.

The Handsome Teenager

When I was pregnant with Emily I imagined the two of them fast friends.    Fisher and I would lie in bed at night and I would tell him everything I was afraid of.

Snoozing with My Confidant

When Emily was about two months old I was sitting on the couch with the two of them, tears rolling down my face.  Her dad asked me in that way that a man talks to a post-partum woman if I was okay. “Yeah, I was just thinking that she will grow up with him and then one day she will have to understand what it is like to lose a dog, and it breaks my heart.  I mean she is going to love him so much and he is going to die…”   Through the hormones I could see that perhaps I was getting ahead of myself.

Tiny Pals

There were a million hard things about Em’s dad and I separating.  But the hardest may very well have been pulling out of the driveway, Fisher’s head poking through the pickets on the deck.  I missed that dog every minute of every day.  But as I said to anyone that would listen, you can take  a man’s kid and half of his stuff, but only an asshole would take his dog, too.

My Kids at Play

Fate and a cross-country move brought Fish back to me last year.  He still smells like corn chips.  He still likes to sleep in the middle of the bed.  I still get choked up when I think about the relationship that a kid has with their dog.

First Trip on the School Bus

And now Fisher is eight years old.  I hope that he is around to walk to the bus stop when the time comes to send this new baby off to school.  He’ll be a little grayer, maybe a little slower.  I was thinking about whether or not he will have the same patience for this baby that he had for Emily, if he will be as tolerant with the “pony” rides and the dress up games.  For now I find peace in the fact that he is already forging his relationship with the new baby.  Recently I remarked to MQD that it seems I pick dog hair out of my belly button almost daily lately.  That’s what that means, right?  Fish is bonding with the new baby?

Saturday

Saturday was the most fantastic day of the week when I was a kid.  Two days seemed like an eternity to do whatever I pleased.  Saturday mornings had the promise of cartoons and big breakfast and pajamas.

Saturdays when you are moving in six weeks are not so lazy, they more closely resemble a meeting of war officials.  You round up the troops, you assess your abilities and you develop your plan of attack.

We didn’t quite tear the roof off last night. But we did stay up past one in the morning.  This is not  a small piece of news in our household these days.  So, at least two-thirds of the  troops were  struggling this morning as we were developing the  day’s agenda.  Unfortunately the remaining third is not quite as gung-ho about a trip to Bed Bath & Beyond to measure some blinds or scouring the thrift stores for a dresser for the baby.

This pregnant lady might have only had four hours of sleep.  But she is ready to kick some “We are moving in October” ass this morning.  After a Saturday morning that was more like Saturday circa 1982 than I had anticipated I am ready to take on the world.

Thanks, MQD and Em.  Flowers + Pancakes + Sausage = Happy Mom

Tear the roof off the mother!!

As we were leaving to go the bus stop this morning I realized we were running well ahead of schedule so we opted to hop in the car and run a quick errand.  As we were driving I asked Em “Do you wanna listen to the band that dad and I are going to go see tonight?”

Parliament’s “Give Up the Funk” started filling the car with it’s funkitude and there were smiles all around.  I swear even Fisher was feeling it.

I pulled up to the bus stop and parked the car, turned around to see my little lady with a face full of tears.  I turned down the funk and asked her what was wrong.  “It’s just not fair!! Why can’t a kid see a good band EVER!?  I didn’t know you were going to see THIS band!!!”

I tried not to smile.  I really did.  But man, oh man, I was swelling with pride.  “Baby the first time I saw George Clinton and and the Parliament-Funkadelic I was twenty years old.  I promise you that I will take you to see them before you are twenty, okay?”

She seemed to think that was sufficient.  “Okay… fine.  Can you just turn it back up, please?”

Em has been bringing the funk since she was very small.   I hope I can make her proud tonight.

 

Day 87: Morse Code

Tonight, send a message in Morse code from your window.  See if anyone responds.

This was a fairly simple task. I wake up anywhere from four to nine billion times in a night so a couple of days ago I looked up a Morse Code translator  and saved a quick message to my phone.  Saturday night was a tough night for me what with the freaky dream and impending hormonal meltdown so when I woke up Saturday night it didn’t seem like the right time to bang out a This Book Will Change Your Life challenge.  And for some reason I had made up my mind that this would be a late night missive.  I think everything that happens in the middle of the night is open to greater interpretation.  No one plays Bloody Mary or Light as  Feather Stiff as a Board (with any success anyway) in the middle of the day.   Where is the fun in that?

Sunday night I woke up several times.  My neighbors across the parking lot  had decided that Sunday, the night before the first full day of school, would be a most excellent night to sit on the porch and drink cognac and listen to their car stereos.  And since I hadn’t saved the Morse Code message “For fuck’s sake, can you turn down the bass!” or “Remy Martin from a brandy snifter beats the shit out of Hennessy from an orange juice glass!!” I didn’t really have an appropriate message planned out.  On the off chance they even heard my message, tapped out on my bedroom window.  But really…. if you were ever inclined to think someone was sending you a Morse code message –  half lit on cheap cognac and three blunts deep is the time.

(And lest you think I am being presumptuous with regards to their choice of beverage, our walk to the bus stop takes us right past my neighbor’s recycling bin.  They make keep late hours and have little regard for potential noise violations, but they seem to take their recycling quite seriously.)

So, Monday night.  It was on.  I hopped in bed with MQD at a reasonable hour. Fish snuggled between us both, his head in MQD’s armpit.  I read for a short while, the snoring from their side of the bed a kind of lullaby, I quickly decided to hit the hay.  It usually takes me in the neighborhood of 45 minutes to fall asleep but last night I was out by about 9:30.

Pregnancy Wake Up Round One was not until almost 1 am.  Almost a full four hour sleep cycle, who is the luckiest girl!!??

Standard routine:  Wake up, assess need to pee.  Need to pee is urgent.  Wiggle feet around until I am free from the shackles of dogs and cats sleeping on the blankets between my legs and stumble in to the bathroom.   Pee.  Flush. (This is a change to the routine.  (We were formerly an “If it’s yellow let it mellow household”  but the cat pee frenzy of 2011 has put a temporary ban on that plan.)  Throw the animals out of the bed.  Reclaim some bedding and my Snoopy if MQD was sneaky enough to snag it.  Assess level of sleepiness.    Check email or read RSS feeds.  Listen to a chapter of current audio book if that doesn’t do the trick.

Last night’s routine:  Wake up, assess need to pee.  Need to pee is urgent.  Note that Fisher is still in the middle of the bed.  Quick trip to the bathroom, throw the animals out of the bed.  Wide awake.  Remember I am not listening to any kind of a book right now and wonder what I am going to do to kill time for the next half an hour.    Remember the Morse Code message.

(600+ words later and I got to the point of my story!  Record time, Kelly.)

..  .-.. — …- .  -.– — ..- I tap out on the window.  Morse Code for “I love you.”  A good positive message to send out to the Universe.

I waited, let my mind wander.  Mentally wrote an outline for this scintillating post in my head.  And just before I fell back to sleep.  BOOM!  That incredibly loud one note blast of a sound that I generally associate with a big power generator blowing or a single clap of thunder.  As I wondered to myself if that was Universe Morse Code shorthand for “Go Fuck Yourself” I got distracted.

……………  Tap tap tap tap tap tap tap, parental Morse Code for tiny kid woken from sound sleep by loud ass noise hauling ass down the stairs to your bedroom.  “Mom?”

I pulled my covers back.  She climbed in.  The Universe did not respond to my message exactly as I had hoped.  But I got a late night snuggle with a little lady that is growing up way too fast for my liking.  So, I am calling Day 87 a success.

Emily June, six weeks old. You know the sappy hormonal woman is going through old pictures lately, right? That was predictable.