the stuff i do not want to forget
it’s starting to set in that these last few weeks before i give birth are our last few weeks as a family of 3. i’ve thought about that concept, but i don’t think it’s really sunk in until recently. and even now, i’m still uncertain it’s really hit me.
as a result of this revelation, both paul and i have been spending extra time reading to jackson before putting him to bed. relishing the time that is still just us. cuddling more. rocking off to the land of slumber.
“and now we can snuggle more?”
“yes baby, we can snuggle some more.”
and then i adjust myself in the rocker, large and round with baby, and jackson wraps himself around me and his little sister, breathes deeply, and asks me questions…
“does pickle come out of your belly soon? like tomorrow?”
“do the pelicans live here too, or just at gigi’s house?”
“how come there’s no school on sunday?”
“when does daddy fly his plane far away?”
“will your belly get much bigger?
we rock and sing and breathe together. my favorite times are shortly after his bath, when he smells like aveeno and is still damp with water and suds.
soft skin. even softer voices.
and then the not-so-soft jab from the child in my belly, the one who hears her brother’s questions and pokes and kicks to answer them herself.
she responds to the boys in a way that i don’t quite know how to put into words. it’s something that i feel happening in my body, but when i try to describe to them how she moves when she hears them, i’m at a loss. it is more incredible than i am capable of conveying.
this morning, at my doctor’s appointment, she heard paul talking to me. we tossed out numbers, guessing her estimated fetal weight. i guessed 14 lbs. paul laughed out loud.
then i felt her entire body shift to my left side. towards her dad.
late at night, when the day is done, and there’s a slice of time spent on just paul and i, we chat and his hand is on my belly. we think it’s just the two of us talking and laughing, but it’s not. with paul’s hand on my belly, she finds him and kicks.
he moves his fingers. tap tap taps. she plays back. he laughs. he talks. she responds.
and i feel it all.
it’s like she wakes up when she hears his voice.
and i know what that feels like. so i smile.
“mommy, does pickle start with P?”
“will green be her favorite color too?”
“can i hold her with my hands?”
“mom, can she come to my birthday?”
shit and little shits
we have new neighbors living above us right now. which, i mean… shit. there were two chicks who lived upstairs when we moved in back in september and they ended up having a falling out with one another. enter parties and people and music and NOISE, and then a fallout that led to one of them moving out and then the other realizing she couldn’t afford rent on her own. so they both moved out.
DRAMA!
the upstairs was empty for all of… i dunno… 6-7 weeks. we just went about our business, assessing our life and the current upheaval that the three of us are undergoing. time passes and then we start to hear noise upstairs.
cleaning noises. carpeting being installed. painters. and each of these crews decided to appropriately come and set up shop at the exact time that my kid naps… or at least did nap. because for the week that shit was going on upstairs to prep the space for the new tenants, my kid didn’t nap.
so two dudes moved in. with a dog. a lab mix. on the second floor of an old ass home that has zero insulation, single pane windows, and paper thin walls. oh and ps, the dog loses his shit when his owner goes to work. he (the dog) has already attacked the mini blinds on the glass doors and dug up the newly installed carpet. (i don’t so much care about that part because that’s my landlord’s problem, but i mention it because i have been the blessed individual who has had to listen to that shit going on above my head). oh, and the dog owner is a waiter and works from about noon til 2 am, which is super fun when he comes home and the dog is all HEY OWNER I’VE MISSED YOU ALL DAY LONG, WATCH ME DO THE HAPPY DANCE ALL AROUND THE HOUSE! I DON’T CARE THAT IT’S 2 AM, I’VE BEEN NEGLECTED ALL DAY! CHA CHA CHA!
so for the last week + we have been dealing with a shitty amount of sleep.
(and yes, the landlord is aware of all of this, but i’m not even going to talk about him because the title of this post is not “woman-hating asshole.”)
there’s a kid in jackson’s class who is doing this reverse-bullying bullying thing that is getting on my nerves. apparently the kid likes my kid, so he’s doing irritating and odd things in order to get my kid’s attention. like tying so many knots in my kid’s sneakers that we were almost late to school this morning because i was de-knotting jackson’s shoes.
“jackson, how did your shoes get all knotted? did you do this?”
“no, ****** did it. he was mad at me.”
“………………ok.”
he has come home and started playing more aggressively with some of his toys, using language that paul and i are not ok with (says the mom blogger who titles her post “shit”), and all the while, telling us about this other child.
it should be noted that the issue is being addressed at his school and i am very confident in jackson’s teacher who is more than capable of getting to the bottom of things like this.
what i can’t seem to wrap my brain around is that this shit is happening when my kid is just weeks away from turning 4 years old. isn’t he a little young for this kind of school drama and issues to pop up? i guess i just didn’t see myself dealing with school kid issues, bullying (is this even bullying? i dunno.) and shit like this until he was AT LEAST in kindergarten.
(please note heavy sarcasm because even kindergarten sounds early for this stuff)
i guess it’s good that i’m starting over with another kid here in 8 short weeks. i’m just going to put her in an unpopable bubble. a sound-proofed unpopable bubble.
otherwise, i fear she will grow and leave the nest and become one of the final 4 sisterwives slutting it up on ‘the bachelor’ in the hopes of gaining the attention of a schmuck-mo who desperately needs a haircut.
hushed tones
when i picked up our romantic, valentine’s day manufactured holiday dinner from a favorite local bistro last night, i struck up a conversation with a fellow pregnant woman. she was dining alone and a piece of me envied her quiet solitude. like me, she had roughly 9 weeks left in this pregnancy. also, like me, she has another child at home, and therefore had forgotten about the fact that the last 2 months of pregnancy suck your will to live. we chuckled together and then she was seated at her table.
we wished each other luck and went our separate ways.
a longtime friend and confidant texted me a couple of weeks ago to tell me that she is taking the time to read my blog in its entirety. she most recently finished reading through 2009, which only solidified the decision i made back then to not share the video footage we had taken of our then infant son’s wretched feedings on this blog.
(this knowledge of her reading my archives also confirms my decision to not read through my own archives. ever.)
another trusted friend was emailing back and forth with me just yesterday and mentioned how quiet my blog has been lately. she’s correct (as she usually is). i have been quiet here… not for any particular reason. certainly not for lack of content. i shrugged when i read her astute observation. she was spot-on, and i had no insightful response to return. just a shrug. an acknowledgement.
perhaps i’m hibernating. “nesting” in a way. quieting down. preparing myself for change. big change. taking inventory. reading. observing.
perhaps i’m wigging out. burying my crazy and stuffing it down deeper and deeper into the crevices from which it eventually seeps out of. people can suffer in silence. not that i’m suffering. i’m pregnant with a preschool age son and a husband shortly deploying. some people have it worse. others have it better.
perhaps i’m just listening… which is not something i am particularly strong suited to do, and certainly not something i practice often. (i think this makes people nervous. when i am quiet, others around me aren’t sure what to do with themselves. are you ok? are you upset? is something going on? is there anything you need to talk about?)
life is noisy. the abundance of sound, words, opinion, vitriol, speculation. it’s exhausting.
i am someone who loves words. LOVES. one of the things i truly enjoy the most about life is discussion. just simple discussion with people. agreeing. disagreeing. problem solving. expressing oneself with words. to me, it’s intoxicating. it’s powerful.
it’s meaningful. it CAN BE meaningful.
but it doesn’t feel that way to me right now. words aren’t feeling productive and insightful. drafts are being written without edits. submissions and speculations are being made without confirmation. words are being shared without a true sense of the message being put out in the universe. people are writing and speaking for the sake of writing and speaking. for a deadline. for cash. to be heard. to say SOMETHING. anything.
but what is truly being said?
when i find myself at a place where i am questioning words like this, i tend to quiet down.
someone needs to listen.
pregnant postpartum purchasing and prep
with 10 weeks to go in this pregnancy (HOLY SHIT!) i’ve moved well beyond the realm of maternity purchases and in to the lovely land of postpartum purchases. i never wore a lot of maternity clothes during my pregnancy with jackson, and the same holds true of my pregnancy with pickle. i invested in a 2 pairs of good (expensive) maternity jeans, and the remainder of the time, i’m either in maxi dresses, high waisted leggings with tunics, or elastic waisted loungewear a la target.
(ok fine, there are plenty of times i just go sans pants, but that’s behind closed doors and usually involves a dance party with my almost 4 year old who also prefers to go pantless at times.)
“the pickle cave” (since we’re not doing a nursery in this house with us moving back into our old house this fall… see big long ridiculous story here) consists of a bassinet on wheels, a changing table/chest of drawers, and a diaper cart contraption, all of which are currently housed in our poor excuse for a third bedroom, which is really more like a “bonus room” because it includes our washer/dryer. oh yeah, and a queen bed is back there for guests.
you totally want to come stay at my house now, i can tell. take a number.
in addition to establishing pickle’s mobile nursery, the baby gear is all out and washed, onesies and booties and these killer baby leg warmers have all been drefted and delicately placed in drawers. i even purchased a headband, people. A HEADBAND. me. i purchased one. it has a pink flower on it, if you must know. and yes, i am proud of myself, thankyouverymuch.
case in point, we’re ready… as ready as we can be, all things considered. so, i’ve continued to move forward, as one does, and look towards postpartum prepping. i’m scoping out diaper bags, though i am not a fan of diaper bags AT ALL. i’ve purchased some nursing tanks as i hope to be a breast feeding champion this go-round. given the climate that we now live in and the fact that it’s 72 degrees in mid february, i’m assuming that come april, i will be living in nursing tanks sans pants and stretchy bottoms. all things considered, i think i’m due for a break when it comes to nursing and if i’m buying clippy nursing tank tops, you best be ready to get your boob feedings on. (you listening pickle? let’s rock this!)
and speaking of nursing, let’s talk more about boobs for a minute. in month number 7 of this here pregnancy, it seems as though everything is getting LARGER around here. in fact my mailman commented to me just the other day, “you get bigger and bigger each time i see you.” and aside from the eye roll i gave him, i genuinely asked, “well, isn’t that the idea?”
(people are strange when it comes to talking to pregnant women. we don’t try to make you feel uncomfortable around us. come to think of it, our pregnancy has NOTHING TO DO WITH YOU. so it’s perfectly ok if you feel so awkward around us that you simply don’t say anything. in fact, it’s welcomed.)
in addition to my kid growing by the millisecond and my ever-expanding uterus that knows no bounds, my boobs have hopped on this gravy train, which i suppose is fantastic not only for my husband’s current viewing pleasure but also because i plan on putting them to good use in the near future.
jackson is very interested in boobs lately because we have enlightened him to the ways of breast feeding. ah yes, that wide eyed, “MILK COMES OUT OF YOUR BOOPS, MOM?” moment when you realize you have done permanent damage on your child’s brain has happened. it’s worked out quite nicely though. jackson has been sharing with us all of the things he wants to help out with when pickle comes (none of these things includes diaper changing which is bullshit). naturally, when he told paul and i that he wants to feed pickle when he holds her, paul and i shared an “oh shit” moment and then down the rabbit hole we went with the breast feeding explanation.
“jackson and daddy can feed her from bottles…”
“ALL THE TIME! ALL THE MILK! SHE WILL BE HUNGRY!”
“yes, babies are very hungry. but she will also be drinking from mommy too because mommy’s boobs will have milk for your baby sister.”
“AND THEN I CAN FEED HER WITH MY BOOPS TOO!”
“no. boys don’t…”
“GIRLS HAVE BIG BOOPS!”
“yes, girls have bigger boops boobs than boys do so that they can one day feed their babies.”
“I CAN FEED HER BOTTLES OF MILK WITH DAD?”
“yes. you can feed her bottle of milk with dad. and i will feed her from my boops boobs.”
while he seemed to grasp the concept at the time, he showed me just how much he truly understood as we shopped through target the other night. i was stocking up on elastic waist lounge pants in the pajama section of target when i heard “MOM, I FOUND YOU SOME NEW BIGGER BOOPS!” from my son, and then saw him barreling at me, holding two of the largest bras my eyes have ever seen.
“no bud. those aren’t boobs. and see? no milk either.”
Have a Sip
