Well, you think those dreams are dead, anyway, and then one day you discover that they are very much alive in you. And you can’t say that’s good, and you can’t say it’s bad. It just IS. Like the fact that you have green eyes or a hot temper or a certain weakness for guys doing yard work.
You thought it was over. Been there. Done that. You were Wrong. Very, very wrong.
Prosolar Mechanics, WE Fest Wilmington NC 2000
It’s not over at all. But you have no idea what that means.
You’ve been on the outside for seven whole months now, which is nearly as long as you were on the inside. So if you think of it, from zygote to now you’ve probably gagoopled your size several times, not to mention your cute factor. To be honest, I’d really love to credit myself with your good looks, but I don’t know how anyone could buy it. I think I’ll attribute some to your father, some to the innate bias inherent in parenting, and some to science.
Your excellent dispositions, however? All me.
Okay, maybe not ALL me. But a lot me. Or so I like to tell your family, friends and assorted admirers.
As of this week I’ve started to work a little more often, a little harder, outside of the house making some money to keep us all in diapers and dog biscuits. I won’t kid around, it’s been a strange thing to spend fewer hours a day with you. The strangest thing being that I leave you in the morning, am gone for many hours, come home for dinner and baths and you are both different. You are more here. More you. Less mommy appendage.
In some ways this breaks me. In most ways, this is simply the coolest thing I have ever seen in my life.
People who see pictures of you ask me, “Are they total opposites in their personalities?” I don’t know why they’d ask such a thing.
To that I unilaterally answer No. What you are is individuals, close in temperament to myself and your father. I am hoping that since he and I have been compatible for oh, the last 22 years or so, that the two of you will get on similarly well, and perhaps with less bickering over guitar gear, but probably not.
Which brings me to some news. Your father and I have been asked to put the band back together for a special show celebrating the mid-90s music scene in New Brunswick. We, of course, jumped at the opportunity. Why? Because we are totally f*cking INSANE. Insane for sound, insanely eager for any opportunity to have our asses kicked (as your simultaneous appearance into our lives proves) and insanely committed to raising you both to never, ever forsake your dreams or those things that make you who you are.
Mom and Dad bring the rock, 10 years ago
I have done a little too much of that lately, but it’s about to change.
Unfortunately, that means you’ll be having more babysitting. The good news? It’ll probably be your grandparents who will likely let you stay up late and eat ice cream behind our backs. Good for them.
At this point, I feel inclined to include some kind of poignant hand wringing about how fast it’s all going, how much I already miss those tiny helpless newborns you used to be, how precious every second with you is and has been, how my love for you seems to outpace the expansion of the universe and can hardly be contained by human physiology or explained in human language.
Sure, I can go there.
But my darlings, it’s 5pm Friday and instead, I think I’d like to rush home for dinner and bath time, where I can be in it instead of just describing it.
May we spend the rest of our days together more inside the good feeling than outside, remembering how good it was.
And we’re back with another Girl Talk Thursday! Let me just get this out of the way, I’m not participating again JUST to win sex toys from Eden Fantasys. I’m participating again because the topic is about sex, again, and who doesn’t like to write about sex on their blog?
So the question of the day is turn ons, what are yours? The depressing thing is that I had to think long and hard (oh, yes I did) about what my turn ons are these days, because as a new mother (how long are you “new” for with your first kid/s?) of twins, the action over here is sparse, to say the least. Apologies to Mr. Wisermom.
So from what I can remember, anyway, here they are:
Kissing. All kinds of kissing, but mainly kissing full lipped, some tongue (but not too much), face held or a simple full on embrace. Locking lips does it for me, under almost any circumstances.
Also, neck kissing.
And back kissing.
Kissing the back of the neck? That will get you engaged. Or a home cooked meal.
And kissing pretty much any other place, other than the hyperbolic ass kissing. I hate having my ass kissed.
Watching my husband do mundane sorts of manly things, like yard work.
Watching my husband play guitar, though it’s been far too long since I’ve had that particular pleasure.
Watching my husband with his kids makes me want to make more kids.
Okay, as non-controversial as can be, I suppose it’s obvious that I’m attracted to my husband.
Power. Not like all rich and political, though that works too. A simple shitload of confidence will do. Must explain why I love rock guys, and why I’d be a terrible dominatrix, contrary to popular belief.
Strength. Sort of like power, only in the very literal “lifting heavy stuff” sense.
Strength is even better when applied on my behalf, like when my husband carries something heavy for me.
No, I’m not kidding or feeling even a trace of sarcasm.
Hotel rooms. I obviously haven’t travelled with kids yet.
Public displays of affection. Not seeing them by others, though. I know, it’s a bit hypocritical. Oh well.
ATVs. Don’t ask.
I’ve written three endings for this post right now without satisfaction so I’ll end it this way:
Today WM presents three videos. I’m calling this triptych “To pea, or not to pea: The birth of an aesthetic sensibility.”
Above is Doot’s introduction to sweet peas. Yes, they’re organic. No, we didn’t grow them; they’re handy single-serving packs from the big baby food conglomerate and, yeah, they’re about $0.70 a serving, pretty danged expensive when you’re on a frayed shoestring budget. However, they are very convenient, and to New Jerseyans, convenience is everything. (Cue the DKs reference “Give me convenience or give me death.” Yes, I understand the irony.) The other justification I have for my laziness is that while we’re trying out solid foods, I’m not going to buy a bunch of stuff and have it rot in the fridge when they only eat a little bit of it. Their parents already have that problem with the produce intended for adult consumption. I have utopian visions that eventually when all four of us eat the same produce we will eat our way through large heads of leafy green lettuce and buckets of succulent cucumbers. It may be on pizza with lotsa mozzarella, but a boy can dream.
Up to this point, the boys have taken to solids like wombats to sedgegrass. Other than an unfortunate episode with prunes (expelled from both ends in force), they eat rice cereal, sweet potatoes, oatmeal, and bananas. Based on facial expressions and enthusiasm, sweet potatoes and bananas are the favorites. Hello sweet teeth.
Doot is not into peas. Check out his expression. He had downed a bottle not all that long before when he was introduced to them, so we thought perhaps he just wasn’t that hungry. So I tried them again yesterday. He may be a sweet pea, but Doot is not into them.
The development of facial expressions and nonverbal communication at five months is impressive. You can really tell the difference, when, just a couple of minutes later I offer him some sweet potatoes. Yep, the kid is hungry, all right. Ixnay on the legumes, hello beta carotene.
A note of caution: If you are currently pregnant, this story is one you may want to wait and read after you’ve delivered. By reading further you agree that neither the author nor Wiser Mom nor anyone connected with the blog may be held liable for contact PTSD symptoms, nightmares, hysteria or other undesirable effects incurred from reading the following account.
There is a huge backstory leading up to this, some of it was documented in real time on this blog. But for those of you who need a refresher or are new to the story, this post drops into it when Myg was exactly 35 weeks pregnant. She had been in the hospital for a week with mild preeclampsia after a third trimester filled with ER visits and two other hospital stays—one overnight and one five days long. Unexpectedly—we had been told a few hours earlier that it would be another week—the OBGYN team decided on the morning of week 34 and 6 days that it would be best to induce labor immediately and not let Myg’s condition deteriorate. The babies were healthy in utero and would most likely be fine after delivery, whereas Myg would only get sicker and not begin to recover until afterward. We catch up with our protagonists at 4 a.m., January 22, 2009:
Myg is being rolled into the operating room for delivery and I am right behind her in disposable scrubs and surgical mask. Twins are considered high risk, so all twin deliveries are done in the OR, just in case. A Pitocin drip to induce labor was started about nine hours earlier, and she was given an epidural at 11:30 p.m. that worked just as you’d want—she has gone through transition smoothly with not too much discomfort and is now 9 cm dilated. She has also been given magnesium sulfate—known in the medical parlance as “mag”—to control her preeclampsia symptoms. Mag will keep her blood pressure, already high and spiky, from getting out of control. It also has a host of nasty side effects, including the possibility of hot flashes that some recipients have said feel as if you’re burning from the insides and your eyeballs are melting. The other effect is that it is a powerful muscle relaxant. Exactly what you don’t want when you’re about to deliver a couple of babies.
The last belly pic
My previous experience with operating rooms is that they are cold. But as Myg is wheeled into the OR to deliver our twins, I don’t notice the temperature. I notice the table. The scene is like something out of David Cronenberg’s Dead Ringers, which should put a chill into anyone who has seen the film and anyone who doesn’t get the reference should be thankful they don’t. The operating/delivery table has padded swivel legs and stirrups that my memory says are stainless steel, but that sounds unnecessarily cruel, maybe they were just worn leather. Like the straps you’d find on an electric chair in Texas. Overhead, a large array of klieg lights dangle at the end of an articulated arm looking oddly like a female mantis with the severed head of her lover held in the caress of her deadly mandibles. A wall made of monitors and other machines that go bing! stacked about twelve-high is teetering dangerously close to the table. The only man in the 11-person delivery team sits next to them in oversized glasses holding a clipboard or notebook or tablet computer. He is unmistakably Hell’s bookkeeper. Other odd apparatus are arranged about the room but my attention is focused on Myg as she is helped onto the table, still strapped in, and her feet are arranged in the stirrups and a flimsy sheet is arranged over her.
Once again, Myg explains to the doctor and the nurses that we’ve had no birthing classes, no Lamaze, nothing, because she’s been on bedrest since week 26 and no one at the hospital could find any resources that would come to the house, other than the midwife/dula team we can’t afford because I’m in grad school and Myg’s on disability and frankly, we’re as poor as we’ve ever been and thought that it was the best time to have twins because we plan everything and it always works out—just not how we plan it, or we would have gone to birth classes in the second trimester when Myg felt well enough to go on vacation—therefore, we’ve only read about delivery. Yes, in a book. Oh, and online, too. (This works for me, give me a book with instructions and I’m golden, not so much for Myg, and she’s the one that has to do it, so I’m nervous but keeping a good attitude.) No, Myg hasn’t watched A Baby Story, because she’s terrified. (Five months after delivery she still can’t bring herself to watch it.) We need some coaching, please. The staff says not to worry and explains that when she feels a contraction she needs to take a deep breath and hold it and when they tell her to push she needs to push like she’s shitting a watermelon and keep pushing as long as she can—they’ll count to ten—and then she can relax until she feels the next contraction or like she wants to push.
And that’s it. Ready for your skydive/bungee jump/moon launch? Good, me too.
I sit at my wife’s head, looking down at the part in her hair. I want to kiss it, but my mouth is covered by the mask. The delivery team sees a contraction begin on the monitors and they all say in disjointed unison like a girls’ rugby scrum: take a deep breath, now PUSH, hold it keep pushing don’t let it out one … two… three… four… don’t let it out keep pushing and Myg lets it out and stops pushing around seven.
She looks at me with a holy shit expression that says this is not fun I do not want to do this but I have no choice oh fuck…
I whisper sweetly into her ear and she tries to relax for the brief couple of minutes before the next contraction. I try to say encouraging things. I hold her hand. I feed her ice chips. And it goes on and on and on. Myg gets tireder and tireder but continues to labor. Labor. The word in its most radical form. She labors.
Of all the things I am in relationship to Myg, at this moment I am nothing but an ice machine.
I am an ice machine.
I am the best ice machine.
That is all.
The iceman. I’m good with a Styrofoam cup and chips of ice. See? I can get them out of the cup and put them into your mouth where they melt and soothe and if I knew where the crushed ice machine was I could refill the cup all by myself. And when you stop to think about it, what else does one need in life but some ice chips? All your needs can be met with a foam cup full of ice.
With every contraction the routine is the same. It goes on and on. The mag has made it next to impossible. Myg gets tired. I just want to sleep, she says. Can someone else take over for a bit? She tries not to think about the fact that this is Baby A, nicknamed “Doot” in utero, and that after she gets this done she has to do it all over again for Baby B, “Bing.” She’s ready to be a mother. Or, she really wants to be done with pregnancy and wants these kids out of her, at least.
The team all cheer her on with every contraction and it’s annoying. If it’s annoying to me, I know it has to be irritating her. Myg, amazingly diplomatic, says, okay, I only want one of you to count. She points to the resident. You. You get to count. Everyone else has to be quiet.
I know inside she is thinking along the lines of: Shut up, you dumb fucks, I know the routine now. It’s not complicated. I hold my breath, I push for an eternity, the kid doesn’t budge. I do it again. You had to go to med school for this? If you have any suggestions besides “push” and demonstrating that you watched enough Sesame Street to count to ten as a group, then please enlighten me. Otherwise, I’m coming off this table and there will be carnage that will require a SWAT team and weeks of forensic analysis.
The diplomatic tack works for about two more contractions. But now it’s clear that Doot is moving, they can see his head, everyone is more excited and seems certain that he is about to come out on the next push. Everyone but the bookkeeper starts shouting “encouragement” again. Myg looks at me and says, we’re done with this. I nod and agree. If we want more children, adoption, as we have often discussed, will be the way to go. We’re finished with the biological imperative. The Team tells me to come around to look from their angle. Doot is nearly here.
I walk around and look up between my wife’s legs at the mystery of mysteries, the holy of holies, the place I like to think is my playground and not anything that involves spectators. I’m a guy, I love sex. But I’m also a pretty waspy guy who was brought up right and went to church as a kid. Sex works best in the bedroom. Without a team of specialists with instruments and years of expensive training. And I know, I know, this is not sex—this is the end result of sex when all the pieces of the biological Rube Goldberg contraption fall into place. And we’re in a hospital. Everything is sterile and clinical and has nothing to do with my sex life with my wife and OHMYGODWHATTHEFUCKISTHATTHING? An angry red maw of engorged flesh has replaced Myg’s lady parts, and it’s being stretched wide by a red playground ball with wet black hair that I can just see a crescent of—no way is that thing coming out of that hole. It’s not happening. Meanwhile, the Team is grinning at me like they’ve just shown me the fountain of youth.
I admit, the miracle of life and childbirth are beautiful things, perhaps the essence of beauty—but it’s this as a concept, as an abstract. All the great and mysterious things about the universe, they are summed up by these moments but only metaphorically. In reality, it’s a gruesome visceral experience. It’s difficult, painful, and fraught with a lot of danger that modern hygiene and medical technology have mitigated but not eliminated. Sure, I love the primality. Put someone else’s spouse there and I’ll come in with a camera crew and wax eloquent like David Attenborough and win the Palme d’Or. But when it’s my beloved and my immanent offspring, I’d take no pain, no blood, and no risk if it were offered. Something antiseptic and external—stork delivery, even. I back away from the Team trying to appear nonchalant and not like I’m retreating from the mob at Bedlam.
Back around at Myg’s head, I smile and hold her hand. I lie. Just a couple of more pushes, babe. He’s almost here.
Myg pushes again. She has stopped paying attention to the cheering section. They’re doing it wrong. She has figured out that when she lets her breath out during the contractions and pushes not just with her stomach and bowel muscles, but even with her chest and neck, that they scream more encouragement and the baby moves better.
And I am also happily wrong. In just a few pushes, Doot arrives at 6:52 a.m. and gives a little cry as they hold him up and I look at my son—a weird red lizard dripping stringy white mucous, with what appears to be a version of Winston Churchill’s head run through a Play-Doh Fun Factory. They put him on the heat table and begin wiping him off and sticking his feet onto ink pads and making footprints. They put him in Myg’s arms for just a second and she is overjoyed and I’m choked up and she cries a little and then they take him back to the table where they swaddle him up and at the same time the doc is telling Myg she needs to get ready for round two.
Doot chilling on the warming table, 30 minutes old
They break Bing’s water and ask Myg to give a push just to get him down into position. Myg is in a daze. She has successfully delivered a baby. She knows she can do it again, how about in 18 months? It’s about 7 a.m. The doc has her hand inside Myg, a contraction comes and Myg pushes and I see a slight look of surprise on the doctor’s face. I felt the cord, she says. She looks up at the monitor and says, okay, Myg just give me one more push, and I’m going to see if I can get his head into position. Myg pushes. No, I feel the cord. The doctor shakes her head and she gives some unseen unheard command.
The operating room, already burgeoning with attention to Doot’s birth, blossoms. The 11-person team moves in complex synchronous harmony about twice as fast as they had been. What’s going on? Myg asks. The anesthesiologist begins turning dials and jams a mask over her face. Are we doing a C? There is worry in her voice and I realize something has happened, something with Bing and they’re going to do an emergency C-section.
A nurse flags my attention calling me “Dad” and it seems strange but I know it’s me. Follow me, Dad. She leads me out into the hallway with some rehearsed reason for why I can no longer stay in the room with Myg. You might faint, she says. Wait here. She points to a spot on the carpet in front of the delivery OR doors and leaves me there. I do as I’m told. After five minutes I begin pacing. I am worried but have faith in the Team that the C-section will go smoothly. I call my mother and tell her about the arrival of her grandson and let her know that the second is on his way. The doors slide apart and someone notices me as he moves past carrying arcane medical devices. The second baby is out, he says. I am relieved. He doesn’t say anything about Bing’s condition. I assume everything is fine. A manx cat appears pushing a small cart bearing Doot. The cat speaks. Do you want to come with me to the nursery? Apparently, it’s a nurse.
It’s not until hours later that I understand that when Myg pushed and the doctor felt Bing’s umbilical cord that it was a fairly rare and serious situation known as a prolapsed cord. The monitors showed his heart rate had dramatically dropped to 80 bpm when Myg had pushed. He would not have survived a vaginal delivery. Now I go cold when I write those words. On that day, I was supremely confident and ecstatic.
What they did not tell me and part of the reason I was in the hall during the emergency C-section is that because Bing’s heartrate was dropping they had to open Myg up immediately. As in before the anesthesia was in full effect. Myg apologized later to the surgical team for all the screaming. I didn’t hear a thing two sets of doors away in the hallway. Are you numb? The doc asked. You’re numb enough. Myg says the cut wasn’t painful, but that having her guts moved out of the way in a hurry was like having a wild animal pawing at her insides. The doctor knew she’d survive that trauma okay—the important thing was to get the baby out.
Bing joins his brother in the nursery after escaping the womb via a window
Both of our sons arrived healthy and whole. Neither required any time in the NICU. They even made it through the bilirubin spike without needing light table treatment. As of this writing, they’ve quadrupled their birth weights. They smile and laugh and roll over. They grab hold of fingers and toys and eat solid-er food. They’re delighted to see me every time I enter the room. Because of my wonderful sons, these five sleepless months full of diaper changes and spit up and two babies crying in tandem at a 4 a.m. that lasts forever have been the greatest five months of my life.
Among the items that were significant enough in my consciousness to warrant a blog mention today are:
1. Is Doot beginning to teethe? Oh, please God please God no – not yet, not like this. Why am I concerned he may be? Intermittent screechiness accompanied by voracious gnawing on fingers and copious amounts of drool for about two days. Wait, let me answer before you ask. No, he’s not just hungry. No, he’s not running a fever. And no, I can’t feel any little tooth buds nor are his gums red or swollen or perceptibly sore to the touch. He’s got no symptoms of an ear infection, cold, or any other physical malady that I can tell. I guess that leaves infant schizophreniform as the only logical possibility aside from mo’fo TEETHING.
2. Wednesday morning we’re leaving to go visit my mom and my beloved-but-not-seen-enough-family-from-out-west! And some family from close by who I never see too, still beloved, but just on the same side of lazy as we are. Said reunion is taking place at my mom’s farm in Virginia. I’m truly edge of my seat excited to have everyone meet the brothers. But man, if that teething thing is really starting, it could turn the baby drama up to a whole new level. Imagine 15 members of an Italian-American family and their dogs all under one roof for six days. If you can’t imagine it, imagine the Sopranos in the country without semi-automatics or peach everything interior design. I’m bracing myself for lots of unsolicited parenting tips. My plan? I’m going to smile politely and pretend I’m interested. My problem? Things never go the way I plan them. (And if you’re related to me and reading this now, of course, of course I don’t mean you. I mean those other relatives who always give unsolicited advice. You know the ones.)
3. This list isn’t in order of any kind of importantness (which, for the record, isn’t really a word. I know that.)
4. [REDACTED]
5. My job, the one I was leaving? It got funded for another year when nobody was looking. In a state where the economic downturn has struck so hard that full time state employees are forced to take unpaid furloughs in lieu of layoffs, how does one accidentally get a state funded grant for $50k?
6. Sometimes I think Flash™ wants to make me its bitch.
7. I will never, ever lose the additional 30 lbs I want need to lose as long as Obama allows peanut butter cookies to roam free. And that goes for ice cream and snack chips too. All kinds of snack chips. Snack chips FTW™!
8. Four days as a new mom with very short hair and my internal Stacy and Clinton™ say, “FAIL.” They don’t like how it looks. Of course, they also convinced me to buy that hot pink sweater with the short poofy sleeves that makes me look like a middle aged cheerleader on a date with the gout. So, I’m not saying in the abstract my hair actually looks bad. But I am saying that somehow that lack of hair really points out the excess of flesh in my midsection. Okay, in my ass, arms and thighs too. Don’t know how. Haircuts are magic I guess.
That’s how I thought I’d feel, anyway. It’s a pregnancy milestone, right? The coveted half way point of your average full term pregnancy, a little more than that for us twin carriers. I’d long said to myself, “When I hit 20 weeks, I’m going to feel like this thing is really on.” But the 20 week mark came and went for me without any huge “Aaaaahhhh” moment.
I wonder if most moms-to-be have a particular moment during pregnancy when they go, “Holy shit – this little alien is going to be outside of my body and I’m going to have to deal with it!” I thought since the beginning of pregnancy that 20 weeks would be the point that happened. But if you’ve read this blog for the past month, you might recall that it actually happened at week 16. That was the week I woke up and realized I was going to be somebody’s mom. Two somebodies.
Week twenty did bring with it a surprisingly gruelling ultrasound session, one in which the tech marked down every single length of every bone in each of my boys’ bodies. You know what? That was a pain in the ass. It took like an hour and a half, and then the doctor had to come in and try to get better picture’s of Bing’s heart, because they like to get 8 views, and in his position they could only get 1. “It looks beautiful-perfect-in the one view, but we’d like to get at least a few more.” In what could be a sign of things to come, Bing said, “Screw you guys for interrupting my nap with your pesky technology” and would not offer himself up for a better view. The doctor said better luck next time and not to worry. So for once, I won’t!
At this point, it looks like Bing is a teeny bit bigger than Doot. The doctor said it wasn’t a difference that they were worried about because it’s a very small difference. Do you ever wonder how doctors do it? How they worry so little? They must practice.
However, I know that with twins, you do have to worry about one growing bigger than the other, so I’d rather at this point they were more or less the EXACT SAME SIZE. Is that too much to ask? Ah well, I suppose it’s one of the ways they’re asserting their individuality. No doubt one will have a mohawk in the third grade, while the other will be playing the violin. I do know that during the ultrasound Bing was caught kicking Doot. We’ll have a little chat about that when they get here. No kicking your brother just because he’s a mm shorter!
Other things my boys are up to in week 20:
Growing! I don’t know why, but the ultrasound pics I have include magnification and other tech specs, but don’t put my babies’ size or weights down anywhere. Like, why do I care about Hz? I want to know about them. Internet wisdom and the Mayo Clinic tell my my boys are nearly 6 inches and half a pound each. My insides tell me they’re growing all the time.
They are now noticeable. I mean to me. The movement I feel with them feels nothing like “popcorn popping” or “soda bubbles” or anything cute like that, that most people tell you it feels like. So much different, I didn’t understand I’ve been feeling them move for awhile now because I couldn’t recognize what it felt like. I normally don’t feel their kicks and punches, per se. I have felt them, I think, and can only imagine I will soon feel them regularly. Instead, what I feel is a sensation of my insides moving around. It feels more like my organs are migrating or as though I have indigestion in the wrong part of my body, to be honest. It feels like “there something IN there!” It’s not uncomfortable, except one night when I’m fairly sure Doot kicked me in the stomach and I woke up with a mouth full of stomach acid. I thought I was going to puke. I didn’t. Rah!
My week?
Working SUCKS! I actually have a really nice job. Anyone would envy my job, if only it wasn’t going away. But a large part of my job is to train people, meaning to stand up in front of groups of people and tell them all I know about various subjects. Ego strokes galore, it’s a nice thing for someone like me who likes that stuff. Thing is, my fuckin feet hurt! Who knew I couldn’t think sitting on my ass? Who knew being pregnant and off coffee would be such a drag on my training style? One thing I hate is doing something I love half assed. I’ll cook half assed or clean half assed, but gas bagging? I want to blow everyone out of the water. I can’t do that now, plus, my body really hurts if I stand for too long.
I can’t bend down too well. Oh, and I’ve started to waddle. Hat tip to Cheryl Lage again, who dutifully warns of this in Twinspiration. The saddest part of my newfound physical limits is the toll it’s taken on playing with Mason-the world’s cutest and most amazing dog. I can’t bend down, over and over and over, to pick up the slimy toy and throw it to him. And he has yet to learn how to bring it to me without dropping it on the ground. Good boy! That reminds me, here’s the gratuitous adorable dog picture (yes, from puppy years – I need to take some good new pics):
Mason at 13 weeks old
Emotional. I cry! Wow, do I cry. Sometimes in the middle of the night I cry without any actual good reason. I am also a bit clingy. I am lucky because Alex is nothing if not patient with me and my profound emotional neediness during this time. Okay, writing this is making me cry. See what I mean?
Sleep, I miss you so, so, so, so much. It’s going to be a long year or so for me I realize. I am trying to accept it. I do sleep, but I am not able to sleep as soundly as I once did. And I’m not able to sleep for as many hours either. I have been obsessively worried about sleeping on my back, as I still find that I roll onto my back in the night. I had lunch with a friend of mine today – a mother of 7 year old twins – who admitted she slept on her back the whole time. “It was the only way I could sleep at all.” That made me feel a little better.
And a bunch of other stuff, but my absent mindedness and ever present tiredness prevent me from thinking of what it is. Sorry!
In other news, one of my favorite pregnant bloggers, Amy of Amalah.com had her new baby boy! For super special adorable newborn pics, head on over here. They made me cry, of course. But in a really, really good way. Congrats to you Amy. I’m not long behind!
