“My feet look like elephant feet.”
As I struggled to get out of the car I dropped something. For the 800th time today. “I’m a mess,” I mumble to no one in particular.
From the back seat Em chimes in “And you can’t stop saying shit.”
Without missing a beat MQD says “You’re already Mother of the Year, only eight days in.”
In preparation for attending Baby D’s arrival in to the world Emily and I have been watching some birth videos. This morning I told her that she doesn’t have to be brave, she can just tell me what she really thinks. “I think I want to be brave, but it might just get too creepy. Like when the vagina just grows and grows… because you know it is going to have to get HUGE.”
Creepy? I’ll give her creepy….. the kid is a shark. She is growing a second row of teeth BEHIND her baby teeth.
But I still made her cookies and let her flop on the couch and watch Annie on the iPad. I mean… it IS kind of creepy. All those HUGE vaginas.
Maybe there is room for me under that blanket…
Posted in Parenting, Pregnancy
Tagged Emily, Labor, live birth, natural birth, Parenting, Pregnancy
Em pulled this ornament from the box and said “Ohhh, this is the one I made when I was a little kid…” It slayed me. It’s not difficult to reduce me to tears (as I have mentioned at least 800 times of late) but this was a different kind.
The nose tingling, eyes watering “I think I am doing this right” tears. I have heard more than a few parents lament that if you”re “doing it right” they need you less and less.
Our "little girl" made this ornament just last year in pre-school.
In the past few months I have watched as my lap grows smaller and smaller and my “little girl” is literally pushed right out of “the nest.” And it pains me.
I have come to terms with the fact that Love is infinite. That I will find the Love that two children require. But I can not deny that both Time and my lap are finite. I struggle to envision how I will share them with two children. Already I feel I do a less than adequate job sharing my Time with only one child between working and mothering. How does one expect to blend another child in to the family without taking from the first?
And then I look at the face in the ornament. She looks so different than the face I see today.
I see her flounce down the stairs in an “outfit” she has assembled. Skinny jeans and a tshirt, her boots and a high ponytail. I eavesdrop as she and her buddy discuss the best way to pass a baby to someone else without “flopping the head.” I watch her practice being a Big Sister to her baby doll. (A baby doll that has recently acquired a middle name. A middle name that we have incidentally settled on for Baby D.) Her teeny little self drags the empty trash can up the driveway without being reminded. Stopping only to have me unlock the gate so she can put it away. She empties the dishwasher while I make dinner, reminding me to check her back pack for a note from her teacher. Last night after her shower her wet towel was hanging from the hook on the bathroom door. Her dirty clothes in the laundry basket.
Maybe she isn’t my “little kid.”
Well, then. Merry Christmas to you, Baby Girl. In spite of this new baby and your big grown up self you will always, always be my Baby Girl.
She hopped in to the front with me while we waited for MQD at the barber the other day. "Look at you in the front seat, Miss Thang!" She grabbed my glasses and began to pose. Apple doesn't fall far from the tree.
In the early 90’s an Amazonian Queen had a perm. And both boobs. And Revlon Rum Raisin lipstick.
“Hippolyta, I wooed thee with thy sword, and won thy love doing thee injuries.” ~ Theseus, A Midsummer Night’s Dream
If that’s the case then Emily and her sidekick are destined for eternal love. The chasing one another with sticks, the beatings that take place in the yard only moments after breakfast on a Saturday morning. The two of them tumble to the grass and roll down the hill, hunting snakes and deer in Kellan’s front yard.
These activities are in stark contrast to the playing of Family that takes place in Emily’s room. It is quiet in her room and I poke my head in the door. Quiet is a signal of distress and trouble when children are in your house. “We are putting our baby to bed, and then we will do Chores.” Chores include putting away all of the games they have taken out of her closet. And arranging their baby’s things carefully on her bed.
It shouldn’t surprise me that Emily shifts so easily from Warrior to Mother. I like to fancy myself a woman that keeps a foot in both camps. But when I stepped out the kitchen door the other day and caught her running towards the driveway I had to stop her, take a picture. “Whatcha doin’?”
“Fighting.”
“What do you have there?”
“My baby. And some lipsticks.”
And she ran off to get her stick. That’s my girl.
Shooting at the walls of heartache bang,bang!!
I am the warrior!And heart to heart you’ll win
If you survive
The warrior!!~Patty Smyth & Scandal
At first glance you wouldn’t guess that the ornament that says “God made the beautiful skies with stars like twinkling eyes” would rank high among my all time favorite ornaments. I don’t exactly go very far out of my way to keep the Christ in Christmas. But this ornament has something special inside.
A little Kelly, circa 1979, plastic dress up shoes, Raggedy Ann pajama top, Dorothy Hamill haircut. Behind that pantry door was the first and maybe second of what would be many marks indicating the heights of everyone in our family.
On the back it says “Love, The Speedys, Xmas 1979.”
The Speedys lived next door to us when we first moved in to the house I grew up in in 1979. They had two teenage boys and a huge dog. Sue Speedy liked to garden and she did so in a manner that made her appear as though she had just stepped out of an LL Bean catalogue. I remember her seeming so put together. Decked out in the best of early 80s fashion, whale turtlenecks and duck boots. There were snap dragons planted in the island between our yard and theirs and I can remember sticking my finger in and out of the snapdragon’s mouths while my mom chatted with Sue.
This ornament is interesting to me for a couple of reasons. The first, of course, being that it has a picture of me. And if you read here, you know I am wildly fascinated by old pictures of myself. Heh. But this year it took on an even greater degree of interest. Christmas, 1979. My mom was pregnant with my brother. Not very, as he was born prematurely six months later. But she was pregnant.
I remember the snapdragons that spring. I remember Sue Speedy’s duck boots. I remember my brother being very small. (Or at least I think I do. The line between photographs jogging your memory and real memories made up of smells and “brain movies” is fuzzy to me.) But I have no memory of my mother being pregnant. None. I remember the way her perfume smelled, the way she looked in this amazing water-colored silk dress. Her closet. But I don’t recall her being with child. Strange the things the mind omits.
I wonder how Emily will recall this pregnancy. If she will remember the nights I climbed in her bed. Because pregnancy induced insomnia had me pacing the house and her steady breathing and warm little body relaxes me. Last night as I slid in beside her she rolled over, brushed her hand across my face and said “Sleep, Mommy. You need to sleep before the baby gets here.”
Earlier in the evening I was overwhelmed. A sudden rush of “holy-shit-we-are-going-to-have-a-baby” consumed me and I sat down on the couch with a huge exhale, called MQD and said “I can’t make dinner. My hip hurts, I am tired, I just can’t.” Kindly, he said to just tell him what I’d like for him to pick up and he’d get it on his way home. Ever the pregnant woman I was not satisfied with this answer and complained that the pressure of having to make up my mind was making me feel like I was going to cry.
Em sat beside me on the couch. She put her arm around me and kissed me on the cheek. “Just let it out, Mom.” I smiled at her wordlessly. She held my hand. “We can get Mexican food? Yanno, Mexican soup.”
She’d effectively broken the spell of my bad mood. “Sweetheart, I don’t think we have ever had any Mexican soup. Do you mean Chinese food?”
“Yeah, Mexican soup is Chinese food.”
Of course it is.
And so I wonder if she will remember when we sat on the couch, side by side, because she no longer fits on my lap. And she offered me Mexican Chinese soup and held my hand. “We’re a perfect little family.” And my eyes teared up, worried that somehow I was destroying our perfect family of three with the new addition. She continued, “and it will be even more perfect when the baby comes.”
“Which one do you like better,” she asked. “Mine or Mom’s?” MQD had brought us both home an ornament as an early Christmas surprise.
Ever the diplomat MQD answered, “I like them both, for different reasons.”
Ever the six year old she asked again “But which one do you like better?”
MQD did not reply.
We ate in silence for a moment.
“Which one of us do you like better?” I asked, ever the smartass.
And all at once, all three of us began to laugh.
It was spring in my old apartment. Em was still sleeping with me nearly all of the time. We had a rule. No getting out of bed until the sun is up and you hear the birds. Some of my favorite times were those early morning conversations. Before we got out of bed. One morning she told me she heard the birds. Only Em pronounced it then (and still does) “boids.” I asked her what they were doing out there. “Havin’ a boid pahty.”
There is little in this life that makes me smile more than a bird party. But the three of us, sitting around the dinner table, laughing. That even puts a bird party to shame. And let me tell you… birds can get down. Merry Christmas, Birds.
Posted in Family, Nonsense, Parenting
Tagged Bird Party, Christmas, co-sleeping, Emily, Ornaments, Party, tradition
The countdown is on. To Christmas. To Baby D. To figuring out how to be a work from home Mom of two with a new house she loves. I fear without a little direction my musings over the next few weeks could be more of a report. There are x number of days until Christmas. The following parts of my body are either leaking or aching. This is what I am afraid of today. And this is what I am excited about.
While that all sounds fabulously interesting I though I might use some of my favorite Christmas decorations and ornaments to tell the story of the 25 days leading up to Christmas. I can’t promise that I don’t sneak in a little “Here is a snowman, see his big fat ass, that reminds me my hip aches and my boobs are dripping” but I am gonna give it my all.
The year my father sold the house I grew up in my brother and I sat on the floor in the basement. One at a time we went through boxes of ornaments. One for me, one for Scott. Together we divided up our childhood, one we shared. I eagerly await the day he and Lauren (and Baby!!) return from Hawaii so we can share a Christmas together, our families. And so I can sneak a peek at the ornaments on his tree, the ones I have long since forgotten.
The first ornament I chose in the Great Ornament Trade of 2005
To kick things off, an all time favorite ornament. I love this picture. This is an ornament my mom made I’d guess 1982ish? Mom and I are wearing clown costumes she made for Halloween in 1981. Later the clown costumes were resurrected for the Clowntastic Event. The Clowntastic Event was an elementary school party rivaled only by the Wild Rumpus the following year.
Kelly, 1982
I am reminded of being just about this age often lately. The other evening Em and I were laughing on the couch, about nothing. The same laughter that I share with no one else besides my mother. There is an easy laughter I share with her; there is nothing unsaid, nothing to question, just pure living in the moment. A moment that brings us both to tears laughing from time to time.
As a kid I thought that my mom did it all for me. That she was a Mother, and a Mother only. And as I lean back against the couch and laugh with Emily I wonder if Em has any idea what a genuinely good time I am having. I look at this picture of Mom and I in our clown suits and I wonder how it is that I didn’t see that smile. Not the smile on my face, but on hers. We had such a good time. We still do.
Someday Emily will realize that while I do love her madly it wasn’t always to put a smile on her face that I suggested we got out for a few, just us. Or snuggle on the couch and have a Ladies’ Night. I just like her. She cracks my shit up. Sometimes I hang out with her for me. I suppose I could just tell her. But that would ruin the whole Mother of the Year thing I have got going.
My clown costume has long since been passed on elsewhere, but Mom's makes an appearance from time to time. Not long before MQD and I were engaged it came out for a night of gin and tonics and dominos.
Looking at this succession of pictures, you can see it happen. How the daughter becomes the mother. In the first picture, there we are. Two distinct clowns. In the second, Mom’s hair bow becomes my tie. In the end her costume has become mine. But I am still wearing the same Raggedy Ann-esque wig from the very beginning. This is either an allegory for something very deep or it is much, much simpler. My mom and I are a couple of clowns.
25 days until Christmas Eve. And I’d guess about 25 more years before Em realizes she is turning in to me.
Posted in Family, Parenting, Pregnancy
Tagged Christmas, clowns, Decorating, Emily, mothers and daughters, Ornaments, Parenting
In preparing for Baby D’s birth and planning a birth at the birth center I am hoping to avoid many of the common interventions in a hospital birth. But to be plain I am trying to avoid the hospital all together. I am committed to keeping our birth out of a hospital unless medically necessary (and while I might have some narrow views on what constitutes a “medically necessary” birth) I am not anti-medicine across the board.
Almost eleven years ago I walked in to a hospital to apply for a job. Applying for a job is nerve-wracking but couple that with my almost phobic fear of hospitals and it was a tough morning. Ultimately, I had the pleasure of working at The Outer Banks Hospital for five years. With only twenty-one inpatient rooms it was just the right size to help a girl like me get past the fears. That institutional, terrifying smell of clean was somehow less frightening in a hallway that is only twenty some yards long. A small hospital. A relatively small group of employees. Soon enough I grew to feel safe and comfortable inside that building. My skepticism surrounding modern medicine was trumped by my faith in the individuals I met that put everything they had day in and day out in to helping people.
Since moving to Chapel Hill I have been to UNC Hospital twice. Both times to see new babies and their parents. The fears I was accustomed to feeling as I walked through a hospital’s doors had all but left. I chalked it up to a great experience at the hospital in the OBX. I thought maybe I wasn’t afraid anymore of those big buildings with their orangey bleachy smell and the white coats hurrying from one place to another.
Night before last Em was sick. Sicker than I have ever seen her. Granted she has been very lucky in her six short years. She has had an ear infection, a rotten cold she can’t shake. But never had I held her little body in my arms as she vomited for hours on end. Barely awake, her eyes would flutter as she tried to fight sleep. Rolling her on to her side time and again, replacing soiled towels with clean ones and holding her hair out of her face – a parent rises to the challenge.
If you are me, a parent also has a sense of humor. Behind her in bed I would rub her back. Jumping up at her slightest movement to grab the trash can from the bedside table. I couldn’t help but chuckle as I imagined the following morning, the dark circles beneath her eyes. Would I tell anyone that they were not from lack of sleep at all? But from being repeatedly hit on the bridge of the nose with a small plastic trash can as I aimed her face towards the trash can, and away from my new white carpeting?
I was worried about her. But a stomach bug is a stomach bug. This one was vicious but I assumed it would pass.
Late the next morning I picked up the water bottle from the bedside table. I had filled it at least twelve hours earlier. There were less than three ounces missing. I started to contemplate the possibility of dehydration. I tried to convince myself that I could just take her in to see her pediatrician if she needed fluids or some high test anti-nausea meds.
When the nurse at her doc’s office called me back and said she thought I should take her in to the ER my eyes welled up. I was afraid. And I had to be the mom. I jumped in the shower. I had been awake for 30+ hours and I needed a quick cry and to clear my head. I was going to take my baby to the hospital. But she would be fine. Stomach bug. Worst case scenario was IV hydration.
I called MQD. I refrained from sending hysterical text messages. And off we went. From the back seat she looked so tiny. Her voice so weak. “Mom, I did make it to six before I ever had to go to the hospital, Mom.” I smiled. She sure did. And so did I.
An hour later when MQD walked in to her room at UNC I exhaled. She told him she had made it to six and a half. We joked her about fudging her age a bit. Some Zofran and another hour later she’d had a Popsicle. And kept it down.
Not long after that I saw a smile. The nurses and docs never asked about the dent on her nose from the trash can bludgeoning. This morning we are 18+ hours puke free. Sipping Gatorade in bed. Watching movies. Milking it for all its worth.
I am still kind of scared of hospitals. But that smile was worth a million scary walks through automatic front doors.
Posted in Bad Mood, Family, Parenting, Pregnancy
Tagged Chapel Hill, Emily, Fear, hospital, OBX, Outer Banks Hospital, pediatrics, UNC
On Tuesday evening I walked around my house like a hormonal pregnant woman, bitching that it was hot. In my defense it was 78 degrees in the living room at 5 pm. The afternoon had been in the upper seventies, maybe even low eighties. We opened windows and turned on ceiling fans and I couldn’t get cool enough. We had chicken and a big salad for dinner.
A strange day for a November in North Carolina but I embraced it. In fact, I was moved to paint my toenails. Barefoot and pregnant in the Cackalackey. November, be damned. At nearly 32 weeks pregnant it was a thrill to reach my own feet. Even if I had to bring my feet and toes up in to my lap, contorting myself on the couch seems preferable to just leaning down lately. However it had to be done, it happened. I painted my own toenails. And Thanksgiving and Christmas and The Baby seemed a million miles away.
Last night I snuggled up on the couch. Under two blankets and I kicked the fireplace on. Em and I looked at recipes for Thanksgiving and planned out potential holiday desserts. (She continues to campaign heavily for donuts, silly kid.) I sent Em up to pick out her books for bedtime. Among the books she chose was last year’s copy of “T’was the Night Before Christmas.” This morning the sheets felt cool when I slid my legs over the side of the bed. There was frost on the ground and the last of the leaves have fallen from the crepe myrtle. Warm socks and corduroys and turtleneck sweaters. Tonight I will make meatballs for dinner and we will snuggle up as a family and watch a movie.
Our first Friday night in the new house, just the three of us. Eight more. We have eight more Fridays between today and our due date. Eight Fridays. Thanksgiving, Christmas, New Year’s and a few birthdays in there somewhere, too. Two Charlie Brown specials and Jimmy Stewart’s “It’s a Wonderful Life.” Order plantation shutters and get them installed. Bring down all the Christmas decorations, put them all up and then take them all down and put them back in the attic. There’s a lot to do in the next eight weeks. Plenty of time. But only eight Fridays.
Eight nights with my feet in MQD’s lap , my skinny-mini little girl curled up next to me. A movie we have seen a thousand times playing on the television. I don’t get to hold her in my arms often anymore. I’d watch anything just to hold her, smell the back of her neck, feel her freezing little feet up against me for 90 minutes.
Nine Fridays from now my arms will likely be full. Of a brand new baby. And as prone to the drama as I am even I must remember that Em won’t be headed off to college. She will be glued to my side, quite likely. Falling in love with her baby brother or sister just like me and MQD.
The eighth Friday is January 13th. Seven years earlier on January 13th I found out I was pregnant with Emily and my whole world changed. I was going to be a mom. And now I will be a mom all over again.
They say no two kids have the same mother. I hope I like being this kid’s mom as much as I have loved being Em’s so far. Emily’s mom is strong and unafraid of change, in spite of all of her insecurities and her best efforts to get in her own way. Emily’s mom became MQD’s wife.
This kid better turn me in to Wonder Woman to top all that.
I should see it coming by now. The way she draws me in and holds me close. And then drops me on my ass. Last night Em told me she has been having trouble sleeping. That she wakes from a bad dream and then she has trouble keeping her mind on her pleasant brain movies. We talked for a while.
I was sitting on the floor next to her bed. Leaning over to kiss her has become an Olympic event, as has climbing out of her bed over top of her, so it is easier if bedtime rituals take place with me on the floor, next to her bed, our faces right next to one another. Nose to nose almost.
I said “I like to think about what Baby D is going to look like when I can’t sleep. Sometimes I think we will have a baby that looks just like dad. And sometimes I think the baby will look just like you.”
She smiled. “I hope the baby looks like you, Mommy.” And she smiled some more. The one that melts me. This is when I should have kissed her good night and walked away.
“Well, if the baby looks like me, honey, he or she will look like you, since we look a lot alike.”
“But not exactly alike,” she says. “I don’t have those lines.”
Perfect comedic timing. She pauses. “What? What?? Well, I don’t.”
Jerk.
Excitement on the side 