So much to blog, so little time!

Working backwards from today: WAY TO GO CALIFORNIA! I promise not to say anything bad about you ever again. Even if I do feel fat every time I visit. (Ok, really, thats about Southern California. But I’ll still quit talking trash about you, California.)

About 5 minutes after hearing the news that their State Supreme Court legalized same-sex marriage, in a really strong and fantastic opinion, I started wondering when we could go to California to get married.

A few seconds later, I had a brilliant idea: BLOGHER is in San Francisco this summer. I wasn’t going to go, because I’m going to be ~7 weeks shy of my due date and traveling that far that pregnant kinda sucks. Plus flying cross-country is expensive.

But I had a great time last year, and even though my posse the LadyBlogs won’t be going, I would still have a good time.

The idea of going AND GETTING LEGALLY MARRIED became irresistible in about 4 seconds. My fantasy caught fire and all I could think about for the next 5 or 10 minutes was how to convince Jill.

Then I looked at a calendar.

My cousin Kirsten, the last unmarried cousin in my family, is getting married the same weekend. In Milwaukee.

I’m not skipping a family wedding to go to a conference, no matter how cool the conference is. And I’m not skipping a family wedding for what is a super exciting piece of paper, but not for us a “real wedding.”

Our real wedding was February 22, 2003. 

Our immediate families and many of our friends and extended family were there. The only thing missing from that wedding was acknowledgment under the law — and while I certainly want that, exactly when I get it is not that important to me.

We ratified that wedding once through a Vermont Civil Union when we were in New England for Dave & Lizzie’s wedding, but only because we could easily get the exciting piece of paper on Friday and drive to the wedding on Saturday.

So yeah, no BlogHer wedding for us.

Now I’m fantasizing about the 4th of July. Wouldn’t that be cool and symbolic?

(Thought: Is there any chance that being legally married in California would annoy a Georgia court sufficiently to interfere with Jill legally adopting Esmerelda Freugenspeigal? Our civil union was viewed as a good thing, but The M Word sometimes causes strange reactions. Check with the lawyer here before actually doing it.)

YESTERDAY:

Last night, our dear friend Peter Mulvey was in town for a gig. He came over for an early dinner, and stayed at our place after the show.

Noah cracked us all up throughout dinner, and again this morning, with his constant refrain of, “Man? Man? Man!!!” to get Peter’s attention. (Neither “Mr. Peter” nor “Peter” seemed to stick.)

We tried to get Noah to tell his knock-knock joke, and to those of you who know Peter and our mutual friends…I’m afraid Noah’s joke telling ability may rival Scott’s.

Even more exciting than Peter himself, was Peter’s Big Bicycle which parked in our front hall overnight. Noah was beside himself with glee that Peter let him “fix” the bicycle with his yellow plastic hammer and orange plastic wrench.

I got to go to the show, which was fantastic. It’s fun to see how his performance has evolved, and I loved the some of the stories he told. Especially the story about his Dad emailing him stories about a character named Dynamite Bill, and the story about his wife Meredith.

I won’t give away the plot of the Meredith story, except to say that never in the history of the universe has it been funnier to imagine offering someone a sandwich.

The other thing I came to realize in the course of the evening is that I think Peter has the most well-rounded education of anyone I know. I want to be in a book group with him. I don’t know anyone else who reads history, biography, religion, poetry, and apparently astrophysics.

LAST WEEKEND:

Grandma was here! And Noah had a great time. Some combination of Noah and the rest of us went out for dinner, and to music class, and for tricycle rides, and to the zoo, and to see trains.

Noah hasn’t stopped talking about Grandma and her visit since she left. Especially the part about the trip to the zoo, and seeing the elephant pooping. But he loves the toys and books she brought, and he asks about her now that she’s gone.

And Jill and I got to have a much needed date night. We had a nice dinner and saw the movie Baby Mama. It had cute moments, but didn’t live up to the comic potential of the awesome cast. We didn’t really care.

TOMORROW:

Tomorrow is Noah’s last day at Miss Heather’s for day care. He likes it a lot, and we will totally try to use her for backup and/or if there is no space at the church day care when I go back to work after Esmerelda Freugenspeigal is born.

I saw the baby move today!

This afternoon, at work, she kicked a spot about 4 inches to the left of my navel, and slightly below. Three times in a row! I could see them, just looking at my belly. I think I actually saw it in my peripheral vision just before I really looked, and that’s what made me look down.

And this evening, while I was resting and hoping that Noah was not going to get up again, she gave a few more thwacks to a spot about an inch closer to my navel.

How much fun is that? I think watching the baby move inside my belly is my favorite thing about being pregnant.

No, it doesn’t make me think about the movie Aliens. Thanks for asking.

In other news, I’ve been doing really well on the fruit & veg front. Yesterday, I had about 2 cups of fresh fruit salad for lunch, and a bunch of roasted carrots & cauliflower for dinner.

Today I had another cup of the carrots & cauliflower, some amazing bread with dried cranberries, walnuts, and orange zest. I’ll probably have an apple or a banana before bed.

The thing about babies and little kids — or maybe it’s just Noah — is that some things seem so innate that the “nature” side of the “nature vs nurture” debate can start looking eerily obvious.

For example, especially around the eyes and nose, Noah looks just like me. And he’s every bit as conversational as I am. He’s a better dancer, but we know the donor was musical, and although Jill is also a great dancer, she doesn’t dance much around the house.
Now that Noah has started expressing himself with sentences and concepts that he generates, Jill’s influence is shining through loud and clear.

For example: On Saturday, as we were driving into our neighborhood, we saw the mail delivery truck. It was pausing at every mailbox, as they do, instead of driving or stopping like a regular car. Noah announced from the backseat, “He needs to watch where he’s going!”

Sunday, we drove separately to church. (Jill & Noah went to Sunday school; I skipped everything but the annual block party after services. Sometimes you just need alone time.) When he and I got into my car to come home, Noah announced, “You need to clean up your car, Mommy!”

I actually asked him if This Mommy taught him how to say that. That question, unfortunately, was just a little too subtle. And coming from a boy who has recently begun hurling objects to register his extreme displeasure, somewhat ironic. But that’s being two, nature, but not in the context of this discussion.

While I don’t think this is nature or nurture either, it is hilarious. Jill has taught Noah a knock-knock joke. We are 99% sure he doesn’t actually get it, but he laughs uproariously while they tell it together. When they told it to me over dinner last night, I fell in love with both of them even more than I had been. Which I did not know was possible.

And speaking of nature — and possibly a little nurture — you know you’re pregnant when bacon cheeseburger hamburger helper sounds like a good idea. (Need I even add that it no longer sounds like a good idea?)

In other news, some of the really fun pregnancy symptoms kicked in this weekend, like round ligament pain and waking up 2-3x/night to pee.

Fruit & Veg Count, 5/4: 1 cup mixed roasted veggies (carrots, asparagus, broccoli), 1/3 cup collard greens, 1/3 cup sweet corn, 1 cup fresh strawberries.

Yesterday I had my regularly scheduled monthly prenatal appointment, with the artist known in my birth story posts as Calming Older Midwife. That name for her is slightly misleading — she is calming, but she is also a spitfire!

My weight is up 10 lbs so far, which is — shockingly — on the low end of the normal range at this stage of pregnancy. Proof positive that no 2 pregnancies are the same!

Odds are that I will gain about another 15 or so lbs, roughly a pound/week but tapering off at the end. That puts me again towards the low end of that 25-35 lb weight gain range most of the books and docs recommend. Will wonders never cease? That’s HALF the total amount of weight I gained with Noah.

I also told the midwife about the extremely irritating conversation I had with the insurance company’s well baby program nurse.

They interrogate pregos about all their health habits and try to “encourage” us to take care of ourselves and go to our prenatal appointments. A fine idea, with room for improvement in the execution. So she calls and goes through her list of questions. At that point, I was up 7 lbs, which made Insurance Nurse very happy. She liked most of my eating habits, but told me that I should cut back from having sugary treats from “a few times per week” to more like just once/week.

My initial reaction was, which I didn’t say out loud on the phone, was “You have got to be fucking kidding me.” I mean really. I’ve given up alcohol, lunch meat, and soft cheese. My caffeine is down at least 50% from pre-pregnancy levels (1-2 cups of coffee/day). My weight gain is fabulous. I’m eating fruit and vegetables. You don’t want me to have any fucking SUGAR???

I am pretty sure I ate candy, cookies, or ice cream every day for the week after I talked to her, and every single time, I had the thought, “I’m eating sugar! I’m eating sugar! Fuck you BCBS!”

Anyway, I told Calming Older Midwife this story, with fewer details. Before I even got to my own cursing, she shook her head and said, “Fuck that. You aren’t doing crack cocaine!”

And she agreed that she probably would have done the same thing, with regard to defiantly eating sugar.

The we discussed the actual plan for having this baby. She generally agreed that a scheduled c/s was probably the best bet for me, but I got the feeling that she was more open to the idea of a VBAC than Young Midwife had been. We talked dates, and she basically said, “one week before EDD.” Apparently that’s the ACOG and other medical professional’s standard — earlier than that and you risk the baby’s lungs being too immature.

That’s the Tuesday after Labor Day, and now apparently, the last day I’m likely to have this little one. Of course she might take it upon herself to make an appearance earlier.

Speaking of the anticipated baby!

Little Blur, who I have begun calling Esmerelda Freugenspeigel in my mind, is also doing very well. She’s moving around frequently, if still invisibly outside of my body. And she’s measuring right on track, with a healthy heartbeat.

(Esmerelda Freugenspeigel is a joke character my dad used to tease my sister and I with when we were kids. But it suits better than Blur, I think.)

Jill and I are still actively vetoing most of each other’s name suggestions. I think that Esmerelda, like Noah, will not have a name until pretty shortly before she comes out into the world. Also like her big brother, we won’t be disclosing the name to anyone at all until she’s here.

So tell me, how did you figure out this whole baby name thing?

Fruit & Veg Count, 5/1: 1 large banana

Truly, this weekend was positively Alexandrian in stress. Worse.

Friday night, Jill and I got a babysitter and went to see Bruce Springsteen in concert. The show itself was great, high energy and fun.

But we were sitting in a peculiar section made from temporary aluminum risers.

They wiggled.

It was like being on a boat.

Between the reverb from the music, the constant, irregular shaking of the seats, and the stale beer and wine fumes, all my motion-sickness-combating strategies worked for about an hour. I went home and overpaid the babysitter due to miscommunication with Jill about what we were supposed to pay her. Jill and her friend Rob stayed and tried to do some band-stalking after the show, without success.

Saturday morning, Noah fell and split his lip at music class. He cut the inside of his lip against his teeth, falling against a low ledge. In case you were wondering, lip wounds bleed like you would not believe.

We were scheduled to get Noah a haircut after class, and while he seemed to be perking up and ok after about 15 or 20 minutes, I couldn’t face taking him alone, especially in my blood-soaked shirt.

Naturally when I called Jill, she was in the shower. By the time I actually reached her, I was the hysterical one, not Noah.

Still, the 3 of us went to the haircut place anyway, and had Noah’s usual drama-filled haircut, with much crying and clutching of Mommies.

Then it was time for home and lunch and a nap. We learned beyond a doubt that Noah, who will happily eat 3 full-sized containers of yogurt in one sitting, will reject them out of hand the moment he encounters any “stuff” in the yogurt. Like a piece of strawberry, for example.

I was totally drained by the morning and needed a nap too.

Initially, Noah went down willingly. Jill left to run some errands, and approximately 2 minutes later, 20 minutes into nap-time, Noah got up with a poopy diaper. He had a second one 5 minutes after that. And a 3rd major disturbance that I don’t remember the details of, about half an hour after that.

I woke up from my nap around 5:15 pm. Noah was still sleeping. Normally he wakes up around 3 pm.

We got him up, much to his irritation.

It was around this time that Jill had her delayed reaction freak-out over Noah’s busted lip. It was pretty badly swollen, with a nasty laceration inside his mouth. And although it hadn’t been actively bleeding since shortly after it happened, there were a few patches of blood-tinged drool stains on Noah’s sheets.

The evening was blessedly uneventful, with Noah eating 3 cartons of smooth yogurt for dinner.

We put him to bed half an hour or so late. From 8:30 pm to 12:30 am, Noah got up out of bed crying at intervals between 5 and 60 minutes.

At 12:30 am, Jill got up and took him downstairs for a snack and to try to burn off some of his wakeful energy.

She reached the end of her rope at 1:15 am and handed him off to me.

When he declared at 3:15 am that he wanted to play baseball, I realized I was close to losing it too. No baseball, and in spite of vigorous protests, I restarted the usual bedtime routine. Minus This Mommy’s ordinary role, which also added to Noah’s agitation.

Three stories later, Noah willingly went to bed, and slept until 7:30 am.

I had to teach Sunday School yesterday, and took Noah in early with me.

Unfortunately, our new paid caregiver agency blew it’s last chance to keep our contract by sending only 1 person, not 3. And she was late. Our preschool coordinator was out of town, so no one had the agency’s phone number to get hysterical at them. Also, no one had unlocked the doors to 4 of the 5 rooms. The only unlocked door was to the room with what I can only describe as peculiar and sensitive lighting. When I arrived, the coordinator’s 4 year old daughter and her mother in law were sitting in the one well-light corner of the room, behind a curtain, wondering what to do.

I left Noah with them and went to deal with all that, plus set up my room and get ready to teach.

Did I mention that up to this point, I also hadn’t eaten anything? BAD idea for a pregnant lady.

Eventually, we got the doors unlocked, combined the preschool and pre-K classes, got the paid staffer and her 6 year old daughter set up in the baby room, and had Sunday School.

I even made it to “big church” (aka the regular service) on time, having gotten the extended care volunteers settled in and able to identify all the 2-4 year olds.

It was Youth Day. All 4 high school seniors active in the youth group got to deliver sermons.

In the middle of Sermon #3, one of the extended care volunteers appeared at my elbow. “Noah is crying hysterically. We haven’t been able to distract or calm him down for 10 minutes,” she whispered.

Jill had driven separately to church, in case that isn’t obvious from all the above. I turned to her and whispered, “I’ll go get him and take him home. See you later.”

Indeed, he was still hysterical, sprawled on the floor and sobbing when I arrived.

Eventually Noah calmed down, although he had a relapse when I abandoned him in his car seat to get in the driver’s seat of the car without him. Fortunately, my stash of Fig Newtons helped quiet the situation.

When we got home, I took him directly upstairs for a nap.

Hah!

Although Noah did play quietly in his room for about an hour, there was no napping. He and I finally dozed off in front of the tv — some totally unfamiliar baby boomer cartoon program involving racing to Hackensack — around 3:30.

Again, we woke him up close to 5 pm, because we had dinner plans with the 3 other families with whom we are splitting season tickets to the new Atlanta WNBA team.

Fortunately, the other kids in those families are 3, 3, and 5, so no one wanted a late evening. And the hosts had a train table, so Noah played happily the entire time we were there. He paused for less than 5 minutes to inhale a hot dog, and was diverted for another 5-7 minutes by a cool trampoline with handlebars and buttons that played music.

Bedtime went almost as badly as it had gone on Saturday.

Finally, I just curled up with Noah on the mattress next to his bed. We snuggled quietly for almost 45 minutes, with him patting my face, arms, or neck almost the entire time. Finally he was willing to get back in his Thomas bed alone, where he fell asleep quickly.

I went to bed about 10 minutes later.

In the background to all of this, and on a good note, Blur has been kicking up a storm. I’m pretty sure she gave me a solid head-butt yesterday as I got into the shower.

I’ve been thinking a lot about rituals lately, especially as they relate to babies and welcoming them into the family and community.

I’ve always felt that rituals were important. That’s a big part of why Jill and I had a big(ish) wedding that was very traditional in most ways.

When Noah was born, we knew that we wanted to have him baptized. That was something that drove our decision to find and join a church.

But in the chaos of new motherhood, it slipped from “important ritual of welcoming and acknowledgment” to “when can we check this off of our to-do list?” We didn’t even think to invite our families, and we were honestly stunned when their feelings were hurt.

It really wasn’t until the actual experience of the service and the baptism that we got in the moment and realized what we were doing.

Our church doesn’t do individual Godparents at baptism. The entire congregation agrees to take responsibility for each child baptized into the community. The other children play a special role, promising to help the new child when he or she falls, to play with them, and to be their brothers and sisters in the church family. And at the end of the baptism ritual, the minister walks the baby through the congregation, so that everyone has a chance to “meet” or at least see the newest member of the community.

Seeing and experiencing that as a visitor to the church was one of the things that drew us to joining. (Although that was below the church’s very public commitment to gay and lesbian civil rights, the fact that we knew a couple of current members, and that there were a lot of other young families and children around Noah’s age.)

Of course in our family, there will be another big welcoming day, a vitally important legal ritual: When Jill’s parenthood of the new baby is legally recognized through adoption.

Last time, our plans were thwarted and made insane. Where we originally imagined a beautiful ritual to be celebrated with family and friends, instead we found ourselves forced to move to a new county, to incur thousands of dollars of unexpected costs, and to deal with a much more delayed process than we expected.

While dealing with that, the last thing we wanted to do was plan a celebration — again, until it was actually happening. The reality of the moment was beautiful, and we wished we had our family and friends there to celebrate it with us.

Obviously, there are a lot of lessons learned from our experience with Noah — we want to make sure we don’t forget the celebratory welcoming aspect of these rituals as we go through them with little Blur.

I’m just not sure how to keep all those chaotic and exhausting feelings sufficiently at bay to remember. Any suggestions? (Bear in mind that you can’t file a petition for adoption until after the baby is here, so we can’t schedule any of that part in advance.)

Also, am I insane for fantasizing about doing both in rapid succession, ie, seeing if we can get the adoption hearing scheduled for a Monday or Friday and then scheduling the baptism for that Sunday? (Obviously we would only do that if we got assigned to a good judge in our current county of residence, not if we have to move again.)

We’ve been super-busy and I am extra-tired lately, so here are some extremely short versions of the posts I have been writing in my head:

• Book Review of Big Green Purse:

This is a great resource on how women’s “power of the purse” can be used to help contribute to a healthier, more sustainable way of life. And in many cases, it actually saves money to do it that way! MacEachern very helpfully lists some top “bang for your buck” suggestions in each chapter of the book, so that if a reader wants to test a few simple changes, figuring out some options is easy.

We read this as part of the local Smith Club Book Club this month, and most of the other women at the meeting agreed. The top changes people are considering after reading are joining a CSA and switching cleaning products.

Full disclosure: I did score a review copy of this book, but this review was not otherwise compensated.

• Noah seems to have contracted Fifth Disease. It appears to be not serious, at least for him. I’m hoping that my utter lack of symptoms means that I, like most adults, had it as a child and am now immune. Because naturally it is dangerous only to people with compromised immune system and fetuses. And for some reason, my midwives haven’t returned my phone call about it.
• No bug sightings since Saturday!
• I am officially out of 90% of non-maternity clothes. I freaked out last week because I hadn’t gained any weight in 2 weeks, and I’m in prime weight-gain time for pregnancy, the second trimester. But don’t worry, I made up for it and am up 2 lbs since my freakout last Tuesday. Happily, I am still not on track to match last pregnancy’s 50 lb weight gain.
• I joined a food swap. About a dozen other toddler moms and I are each making a bunch of sets of felt food items, and then doing a massive exchange, so our kids get a variety of safe pretend food. I’m making fried eggs — I did the first one last night, while watching election returns, and it turned out adorable!Considering that his cooking toys currently rank 3rd behind trains and cars, I think Noah will like the bounty due to arrive in early June.
• I’ve been falling off the fruit & veg/healthy eating wagon lately. So I’m re-instating my daily fruit & veg reports here. Fruit & Veg Count, 4/22: Big fat nada, unless you count the amount of strawberries in a cup of strawberry yogurt. I’m going to go eat a banana.