Fine Young Fauves

I’ve been trying to work with Isaac on his pink fascination, and to do so without judgment. Ben has reluctantly come along for the ride. He tolerates the pink Tevas, that simply scream girl, and the pink and lavender striped jammies, and a pink golf shirt, and a pink t-shirt with lavender stripes. I even went so far as to get Isaac this amusing t-shirt. It’s a sweet baby girl pink all over, and reads in large black letters, “TOUGH GUYS WEAR PINK.” What’s funniest about this is that Isaac wears it without a trace of irony. He just feels that it’s a statement of fact. He’s tough, all right! He loves pink! The shirt says it all. A special benefit of the shirt is that passersby read it, and smile, and say something like, “Are you a tough guy?” You better believe it! These comments bring Isaac no end of delight.

Isaac pulls this off with apparently no gender confusion among the general public. Somehow he still looks like he’s all boy, despite his fashion choices. And people know, I think, that preschoolers have a way of dressing eccentrically, and that’s normal. Only one time did he actually get mistaken for a girl. We were at Target, and he was dressed in a predominately pink outfit… AND he was buying a toothbrush bearing the likeness of Princess Belle, the heroine of Disney’s “Beauty and the Beast.” The check-out lady made a remark along the lines of “Well, she’s a well-behaved little lady!” Or something like that. It seemed to go completely over Isaac’s head, which I was glad of.

So yesterday Isaac and I were sitting around for a brief snack in between his babysitter and his dance class. We were looking through some of the many catalogues bearing images of “back to school” clothes. Since Isaac is starting preschool this fall (half-day Montessori), I am taking a look at his wardrobe. Really not so much in terms of fashion, but in terms of quantity– to make sure he has enough that while recovering from a c-section, with baby Sassy latched on to my breast, I am also not constantly having to do laundry to get him dressed for school each day. So I asked him what he liked in the Garnet Hill catalogue. He flipped immediately to the girls’ section and selected this shirt:

http://www.garnethill.com/jump.jsp?itemID=12098&itemType=PRODUCT&path=1%2C2%2C4322%2C8802%2C8820&iProductID=12098

If you can’t open or copy over that link (and sadly I can’t seem to copy the photo) I can tell you that it’s a pink knit shirt, with ruffles on the sleeves, a scoop neck, and lovely smocking on the chest.

Okay. That one? Hm.

So, I tried to direct Isaac to the more gender neutral sorts of pink-related items. Like a pink and brown striped long-sleeve T, or a dark pink sweater with a lizard on the front, etc. No. This angered him. He got quite frustrated with me and said, “NOOOO! The one that I already CHOOSED!”

I dropped it. Later when Ben came home I showed him, “Wanna see the shirt Isaac wants?” Groaning, preparing for the worst, Ben picked up the catalogue and sighed wearily. “That … is … over the top.”

I have to admit that I find myself balking at this shirt. This is not a shirt that any man would ever wear. Not David Arquette, the movie star who was recently spotted arguing with paparazzi while wearing a pink t-shirt. Not one of those southern gentlemen who make a pink golf shirt look so manly. No. It’s not the COLOR here, it’s the RUFFLES. Tough guys may wear pink, but they don’t wear ruffles!

So again I’m in a quandary. Should I say to hell with the world and social conventions and just buy the shirt he covets? (Would that expose him to teasing?) Should I gently but clearly tell him that some people might think that that’s a shirt just for girls? I don’t know. I think my plan at the moment is to hope the whole thing just goes away into the ether. That I need make neither choice and that Isaac will forget about it.

I was just reading another blog I like, mimi smartypants (http://smartypants.diaryland.com). She has a three-year-old girl who wants to wear Thomas the Tank Engine tighty-whity underwear. And wants a boy’s bike. Mimi is grappling with the same issue exactly, only in reverse.

Well, at least I’m not alone…

When I was pregnant with Isaac, every day and every hour plodded by in a combination of stunning slowness and excruciating suspense. My personal goal was to make it to 28 weeks, which that time was Labor Day weekend. At my 28-week OB appointment I came in crowing, “28 weeks! My personal goal! Woo-hoo! I made it!” Dr. Philipson fixed me with a steely gaze and said sternly, “Well I want another month, so don’t get any ideas.” As if… As if I would get “ideas” and in my celebratory exuberance just WILL myself into preterm labor.

Today was my 28-week appointment once again. I tried to play it cool this time. (Same doctor, tried and true.) The baby’s heartbeat was lovely. My girth met the doctor’s expectations, so Sassy seems to be growing fine. (Lying across my pelvis as in a hammock, hip to hip.) I had to do this annoying glucose tolerance test today to make sure I’m not developing gestational diabetes, which entails drinking 12 ounces of this nasty, orange pop concentrate sort of stuff and then getting blood drawn an hour later. We talked about my jaw, which everyone had to agree was the weirdest story ever. And then towards the end of the appointment, I said, very off-handedly, “Well, 28-weeks, that’s getting pretty good!” Dr. Philipson beamed at me and said, “Are you kidding me? It’s EXCELLENT!”

Now it’s all the homestretch from here. At any point along the continuum between now and the due date (Oct 13), having the baby would not be a disaster. Each week, of course, better than the last. We can all agree that 32 would be better than 28, and 36 would be better than 32. But now we’re solidly into the realm of healthy, secure preemie. The goal now is to get BEYOND preemie, into the realm of full-term, which starts officially at 37 weeks. I’m still hoping for a massive, due date 9-pounder. Why not? I have to have a c-section anyway, assuming Sassy will continue lazing around in a transverse breech position, which is agreed upon to be unbirthable even by the most anti-western-medicine midwife who has delivered hundreds of babies in the back of a school bus. Even such a person would say, “Go and have a c-section because it can’t be done.” Or if it settles like Isaac into the upper right quadrant of my abdomen, with its little butt far away from the door. (I mean, not even standard old breech.) So, in that case, let’s make it enormous. I have nothing to lose!

I can also report that things seem to be calming down somewhat, like my body has finally acclimated to the reality of the pregnancy. I find that just doing the minor activities of daily life (getting out of a chair, walking up the stairs, etc.) is NOT causing me contractions all the time anymore. Something seems sturdier and more comfortable about the whole thing, while of course at the same time I am feeling more and more and MORE rotund. Waddle! Waddle! And of course, a heat wave. Yes. Well, I tried my hardest not to be pregnant in the summer and once again failed. Oh well! At least this time we have central air at home and I have a car with A/C. What a difference that makes…

It irritates me when someone looks giddily at her two pink lines on a home pregnancy test and immediately conflates two very different realities: “I’m pregnant.” [fact] and “We’re going to have a baby!!” [conjecture]. Well now with 28-weeks attained I feel we can finally span the divide and say to ourselves: “we’re going to have a baby.” At this point, what we’re doing is quibbling about how big, how healthy, what kind, etc. Details TBD, but the reality of the baby is now fairly secure. We can start thinking, hey, we’d better get a new dresser, and how many of those little onesies do we have left from Isaac anyway? And maybe we could get Isaac to trade us his rocking chair for this big easy chair, but if not we’ll need a new rocking chair also. … etc. It’s a different mindset, and a nicer one by far.

Meanwhile, big-brother-to-be Isaac is a knight most of the time. His armor is… how should I put it?… critical to his well being. Watching a slightly scary Disney cartoon? Must suit up in armor from head to toe and stand guard, sword drawn, until the scary part is over. Going to the grocery store? Better bring the armor, just in case there are bad guys in our world. Someone said, foolishly, to him, “You can be a knight for Halloween.” To which he replied, rather coldly, “I AM a knight.” You see, this is not a costume, nothing so childish and silly as that. He’s not playing dress up. This IS his identity. A few days ago he insisted that I adorn his armor with wings. This in addition to the pink feather boa affixed to the top of his helment mohawk style, his “crest.” (The crest replacing his “plume” — a red parrot feather that was stuck there vertically in a little hole on the top until it wore out.) He chose pale pink (surprise) construction paper and I made him a set of paper wings, a la Hermes, and attached them to his helmet on each side. Then he wanted wings on his breast plate, his sword (“But it could fly away,” I protested. “I’ll hold it real tight,” he said grimly.), on the paws of the dragon on his shield. An extra set behind the original ones on his helmet. “Now I’m Hermes Knight!” he declared. He is COVERED with wings. There was a slight misunderstanding as to whether all these wings could really make him fly, which I worked hard to clarify. Just PRETEND! (I didn’t want him jumping off things…!)

The other thing is that his pink-gun fantasy has not let up. He WANTS a pink gun so badly. His grandpa got him a pair of squirt guns, neither pink, but these did nothing to placate the young knight. He wants a pink gun, plastic, that will shoot bullets and have “fumes.” I think he’s referring to the wisp of smoke so often seen after firing a gun in comic books. Today I was reading him Kipling’s “The cat who walks by himself,” (which he loves), and he kept punctuating the story with plans: “I’ll get my toy gun, pink, and my bullet, and my fumes, and then BANG! I’ll shoot that wild animal before it hurts the baby!”

His knowledge of Greek mythology is impressive. He’s been poring over a children’s mythology book and has most of the gods and goddesses memorized. He has other myth books too (his favorite is by Akili), such that he can compare. The other day he said to me, “In this book, Hephaestus makes two maidens out of gold. But in my other book one maiden is gold and the other is STEEL!” (I think she’s really silver…) “And his other name is Vulcan! And he makes thunderbolts for Zeus!” You can have a conversation with him like, “How was Athena born?” To which he’ll say, “She sprang out of Zeus’s head! He had a bad headache and Vulcan smashed his head open with an axe and then she popped out wearing all her armor!” He’s been watching the Disney “Hercules” movie fairly constantly. It’s too scary, overall. I would not have introduced it to him, but it happened when we were on the long drive to and from South Carolina, and our friend who lent us the car TV sent the tape along with it, and we put it in in a weak moment, and it fascinated Isaac so much that once it began it was hard to stop. Hades is incredibly scary in it, and the hydra is downright terrifying. I’m not happy to hear my son saying, “I’ll just slice off their heads with my sword and burn the stumps before they grow back!” It’s… um… a little bit violent. But I guess I can accept that because it has gotten him so fixated on mythology, which I do think is a benefit. I mean, what do you learn from Bambi? Snow White? Beauty and the Beast? If he’s going to fixate on a Disney production, at least this one has a small kernel of actual worth to it.

He peppers me with questions about life and death all too often. The other day we were driving along when he suddenly announced, “If I died, you could just make another baby and so it would be fine!” Resisting the impulse to pull over and sob uncontrollably, I calmly replied, “Well, no, because even if I had another baby it wouldn’t be YOU. There’s only one you, and if you died I would be very sad. I could never replace you.”
“Why?” he wanted to know.
“Well, because, each person is the only one just like that. There’s only one you. There’s only one me. You can’t just get a new one and make it okay. Like remember when Mr. Cat died?”
“Yeah…”
“Well if we got a new cat, would it be the same as having Mr. Cat back alive and with us like nothing happened?”
“Yes!”
“No– no” I protested. “It wouldn’t. It would just be some other cat, and maybe we would love it too, but it wouldn’t be Mr. Cat himself.”

I feel that I didn’t make the uniqueness of all living things adequately clear to him, and it vexed me. But maybe he was asking me about something else entirely– maybe he was trying to ask, “When Sassy comes will I be replaced?” I think this is on his mind and a source of worry, and he’s casting about for reassurance. It’s been a hard couple months here between Isaac and me because I’ve gotten more and more limited on what I can do with him, and he’s had to adjust to being taken care of by all sorts of other people while I rest. It’s taken a toll on him that manifests itself in horrendous behavior. Last night we were out to dinner at a restaurant with some friends. I think Isaac was bothered by the fact that I was paying more attention to the friends than to him, so here’s what he did: spit at me through his straw; crush his cup of ginger ale so it drenched him; throw his chicken on the floor; bang on the table violently with crayons; get out of his chair and run around the restaurant (a casual patio bar overlooking the lake, reasonably kid friendly); come and stand beside me repeatedly head-butting my arm as hard as he could; etc. etc. etc. Ben took him into the restaurant and had a little TALK with him. Isaac came back out and returned to this same cycle of badness. Finally Ben took him home, kicking and screaming and crying.

Even though I thought that was a good consequence for the behavior, and I supported Ben’s decision to do that, (and I loved staying and talking to our friends in peace for a short time!), I still felt sort of guilty about the whole thing. I remember a New Yorker cartoon in which a child is scrawling in spray paint across the living room wall, “I NEED LOVE” and the mother is sitting there placidly saying, “He’s just trying to get attention.” Well, yes. Yes indeed. Even though most of it has to be horizontal I’ve been trying to spend as much one-on-one time with him as I can. I can read stories or talk, for instance. The other night he wanted to hide under the covers with me endlessly, hiding from daddy in our tent. It was nice under there, white and secretive, and we could catch up about all sorts of things. But after a while it got very hot and stuffy and Sassy and I would need air. This upset Isaac– I could see that he didn’t want our alone time to ever end. When Daddy came in to find us, that was all right, but when Daddy tried to join us under there he was rebuffed with a frosty, “Daddy! Don’t come in here! You’re disturbing us!”

Oh well, I suppose this is all good practice for the time, coming up soon, that I will have to juggle the needs of TWO.

A most innocent beginning… I went in this noon to get my teeth cleaned. Virtue! Yes, taking good care of all the parts. Indeed, the dentist said that I had no tartar at all. My gums bleed easily these days but this is normal in pregnancy. Should have been a routine half hour and then on with the day. But no.

A thing few know about me: loose ligaments. I’ve always had them. And throughout my life I’ve run into trouble with them off and on. There’s my lucky toe, dislocated so many times that the joint is chewed to shreds. There’s the time I ripped my right ankle and was on crutches for a month, and still feeling it for at least a year. And then, TMJ, a problem of the jaw joint that really got nettlesome back around 1995-98. An aunt of mine with a medical background mentioned one time that, when I was a small child, she noticed my loose joints and worried for me. One time I had a Pilates teacher comment on it. He cautioned me, in effect, never to run. “Your bones would just jangle around and you could really get hurt,” he said. “Walk, swim, whatever, but seriously, avoid impact.” Another thing, pregnancy loosens everyone’s joints. Even normal people get loose ligaments at this time; it’s natural and makes sense in terms of preparing for birth. But I guess for me with my already loose joints, this was a double whammy.

So there I was minding my own business, getting my teeth cleaned. Ben an hour and a half away at work; Isaac (thankfully) in the care of his grandparents for the day. All was seemingly fine until the dentist was done with part of my cleaning and I realized that my jaw was stuck– open. WAY WAY open. Stuck– VERY VERY STUCK. Like a dislocated shoulder. The ball of the right jaw joint had rolled out of its socket and behind it and there it sat. I couldn’t close it to save my life. Didn’t feel too great like that either, although not excruciating. But uncomfortable. You could say that. My dentist tried to maneuver it a few times. Then said, “You need an oral surgeon. I’ll get the on the phone and see if I can get you in some place.”

Perhaps my mind was working slowly, but what he seemed to be saying was that it was REALLY TRULY 100% stuck, he REALLY TRULY couldn’t fix it, and I would have to now drive myself to parts unknown to find someone who could. I sat there, mouth agape, processing this. Naturally I tried to close it, tried and tried, but it was like an invisible forcefield held it open. Like my teeth were magnets repelling each other, I just couldn’t get it to close. Also, trying hurt.

The dentist called several people. The assistant called four more. No one could see me right now. They were all on vacation or… whatever. Bottom line: The dentist said I had to go to the ER. “They’ll have an oral surgeon there and will be able to fix you up.” Thinking about logistics I said, “Will they put me under?” (Because then I would need a ride home.) But when I said this, I didn’t say it nice and normal. I said it like a drunk person who has had a massive stroke. Please note that my mouth would shut normally on the left side, while the right side stayed propped open by about at least an inch in my way back teeth and much more up front. Even closing my lips to swallow was a serious challenge. He replied, “No, I don’t think so. They might give you a little valium. It’s in a hard muscle spasm right now and so they will probably need some kind of relaxant to move the bones.”

Also, the thought of blinding pain crossed my mind. I know that back in the day when my toe joint was functioning normally, and I dislocated it (a frequent occurrence in my crazy college days) the ER doctors always had to numb it up before repositioning it. “Or else you would faint,” they would say, cheerfully.

So I got in the car, mouth hanging open, and began to drive to Metro, the nearest ER. If you’re from Cleveland you’ll recognize that this is a huge and very inner city hospital. I’d never been there before and had no idea where the ER even was. Also, en route, the car began to make itself very clear that it was almost out of gas. So convenient! I was driving Ben’s car for the day, hopped into it slightly late for my dentist appt and found it on empty. But, hey, it’s a Prius, so I figured it just needs a drop or two to get there and then I’ll fill it up right out of the gate. I did make it to the dentist no problem, although it was beeping and telling me in both English and French to add fuel. However, with my jaw locked open it seemed a lot more ominous. Running out of gas like this… ugh. So in this rather miserable (uncomfortable and also … dare I say embarrassing???) condition I stopped and filled the tank. Standing there at the pump unable to close my mouth is in the top two moments competing for nadir of this experience.

I called Ben and couldn’t help but terrify him. I sounded like the Elephant Man. I tried to make “It’s NOT the baby,” my first sentence, but still it wasn’t soon enough. The nano second that he thought I was in labor irritated him all day. “Why do you have to scare me like that?” he complained. “I hate it when you call me up sobbing.” But I WASN’T sobbing. Well, a little upset, sure, but the real problem was that I couldn’t SPEAK normally due to obvious reasons! (A video phone would have been a great boon.)

At the hospital, they very helpfully had a valet parking option at the ER door. $5 up front. Guess who had no cash???? The moral of this story is ALWAYS have your gas tank at least a quarter full. ALWAYS carry at least some cash. Just a fiver would have made this whole ordeal a lot more pleasant. So that meant I had to drive all over the place, through hill and dale, to find a parking place. Then walk a seemingly great distance in my doubly delicate condition.

I stood in line briefly at the ER desk, being talked to by an insane old woman all the while. I explained my situation to the receptionist using slurred words and hand gestures. “I’m pregnant” [hands forming shape of huge belly] “My jaw is dislocated. I need an oral surgeon.” She understood quickly and took away my ID and insurance cards. (Later, when I saw myself in the mirror, I understood that this situation spoke for itself.)
“How far along?” she asked.
“26 weeks,” I said, flashing 2-6 with my fingers.
She went away again. She came back. “You have to go up to Labor and Delivery.”
“But,” I protested. “It’s my jaw. The baby’s fine.”
“I’m sorry– that’s what the triage nurse says.”
She gave me directions through the labyrinth, up and down dark corridors to a far away elevator marked “C.” I made the trek after a while, feeling quite taxed.

At Labor and Delivery, they had no clue as to what to do with me. People were paged, calls made, and still. I fell through all the cracks. I was not a Metro patient. That threw them in the first place… I had to explain repeatedly that my dentist sent me to the ER and this is the nearest ER, and that the ER had sent me up here DESPITE the obvious non-pregnancy-related nature of my case. I was not having a pregnancy problem. So… WHY are you here again?? (I mean, I realize I’m pregnant, but if I came in with a broken leg would they send me to labor and delivery? Apparently yes.) They put me in a little room to wait. Not a regular waiting room, it would seem. More of a storage room. With junk. And boxes. And chairs all higgly-piggly as if shoved in there to get out of the way, rather than actually placed there for pregnant ladies to sit upon. (Along with the gas pump, my wait in that room is tied for nadir.)

I waited.

My jaw throbbed.

I read a tattered old copy of Parenting magazine.

I went to the bathroom and saw myself in the mirror. You could plainly see that a large bone was bulging out the side of my face and that one cheek was bright red. Deformed looking. Bizarre. Kind of almost nauseating to look at, like.. well, exactly like looking at a broken arm or a knee bending the wrong way.

I noticed that it was now 2:00 and I had not eaten since about 8 a.m. Nor had much to drink. So big deal, right? Well… I was getting dizzy. Pregnant ladies need food regularly. (Why had I not eaten BEFORE the dentist? I had another appt in the morning, came home after it and fell sound asleep, then got up just in time to get there. Figured I would eat first thing afterwards. Right after filling the gas tank.) Low blood sugar makes us dizzy, and can even make us faint flat out. I kept waiting. Waiting. I think I had been in that little room close to an hour and half when I heard some progress in the hall. Fragments like, “No NSAIDS, No Benzos… just shield the belly! Shield the belly!” seemed to be an OB on the phone explaining to the oral surgery people how to handle me. (Shield it from x-rays I guess…?) Finally a young resident popped her head and said she would take me to oral surgery.

Thank god she escorted me– I never would have found my way there in a million years. More obscure elevators and long abandoned corridors. Especially with the combined effects of hunger, thirst, and now… okay, the “discomfort” was moving right along to pain. Having the bone completely out of place for that long– over two hours– was really starting to become an issue.

At the Oral Surgery Department, my resident and the resident there had something of a spat. “My attending says this…” and “Well, MY attending says that…” I couldn’t really follow it. But it seemed that there was a disagreement as to where I was supposed to be treated. Or something. Meanwhile the receptionist tried to get her head around the fact that I was not a Metro patient, had never been here before, had no Metro clinic number, nor a surgeon, nor an appointment. …

Anyway, this young guy in scrubs finally took charge of me. He showed me into a room and sat me sideways in a dentist chair. He said that he would push on it a little bit, and there would be some pressure, but then it would be all done. Meaning– NO Drugs. Meaning– no nothing. Just hard core, put the bone back while I sit here. I suggested as calmly as possible that it was in muscle spasm (hint: might need some meds to relax that muscle… to say nothing of the REST of the patient…) “Oh, I’m sure it is,” he said. “You can’t have a bone out of place that long and not have the muscle around it go into spasm.”

Not to put too fine a point on it: I starting crying.

Dread.

The dread was very intense at that moment. Not to mention just… I don’t know. Patient fatigue I guess you could call it.

He poo-poohed it and patted my shoulder. “It really won’t hurt. We’re not going to hurt you.” Then he added, “I’m going to round up some other people who want to watch.”

WATCH!? Oh dear god.

While he was out of the room I got some paper towel and dried my eyes, trying to bolster my strength for whatever was to come. But when they all came in– seemed like a lot of them although it was probably only three or four– I started crying again. They all gazed down at me with concern. “It’ll be quick,” they promised. “We just want to watch because we never get to see this.”

I guess it gave me SOME confidence that the leader of this crowd seemed to know exactly what he was doing. He put his thumbs into my mouth and just pushed my jaw in a very odd way, somehow pressing on my back teeth while lifting the front. Then he said, “Try to close your mouth, gently now.”

I tried. It closed! It felt OKAY! It felt much BETTER actually. All done! A miracle!

Just then a lady came in. She said, “It’s all over?? Aw, I missed it!” She seemed genuinely disappointed.

The receptionist too was stunned that I was back already. “What?? All done?”

“Yep.” I said proudly. “It was incredible! So fast!” I realized the SHEER BLISS of being able to once again talk normally. To have my normal FACE back. I signed many papers and left.

Homeward bound. Food, drink, nap, in that order.

Yes, it’s sore. The guy said it would be quite sore for a few days. But it feels so much better and I’m so glad that this whole mess is behind me.

As anyone who has been pregnant or who has been the sleeping partner of pregnant person can tell you: it’s hard for pregnant ladies to get comfortable. After 20 weeks or so lying on your back is verboten, even if you wanted to, which you don’t. Lying on your stomach, even if you wanted to, which you don’t, is impossible. You’re supposed to lie on your side (circulation and whatnot, left side preferred). That means that in order to get comfortable you need something like an igloo made of pillows. I’ve been stacking ever more around myself in a complex nest, which is comfortable once established. But the Turning Over Process is lengthy and complicated. It’s impossible to sleep through. Not just the part about resituating one’s belly and limbs, but also the part about deconstructing and reconstructing the igloo. (Annie LaMott writes of her post-partum belly: “It lies beside me politely, like a puppy.”) Also, even the most kind-hearted partner is likely to notice the injustice: you have six fluffy pillows, while he’s left with one meager cast-off. (I’d trade if he would have the c-section!)

So a couple weeks ago I had this pregnancy massage. It’s different from a regular massage in that they don’t use any heat, they keep you on one side or the other, and they surround you with lots of pillows! The lady said, “I want this to feel like you’re in a cloud.” This was my first encounter with a body pillow. Heavenly. I decided that having one at home was one of those getting-through-this luxuries that would help me, well, get through this. So I ordered one and it arrived yesterday in a box most amazingly thoroughly crushed, as if stamped on by a giant. No matter! The pillow survived transit quite well. Last night I launched my new relationship with the pillow. And I do mean relationship– it seems an awful lot like another person in the bed. It’s 72 inches tall. I’m no math whiz but I can tell you that this is taller than I am. It’s feathers and down, such that it has a sort of strange, floppy dead weight to it. The first time I turned over with it I felt like I was trying to change places with a dance partner who was drunk to the point of unconsciousness. It lies something like the Great Wall of China down the middle of the bed. Ben is out of town for a few days, but I think when he comes home he will find this new development somewhat alienating.

But, like a cloud? Yes. Yes. It’s only in transitions that it feels like a sodden log or an inebriated bedfellow. Once settled, all the parts, the limbs and the belly, are set adrift in a sea of feathers. And lucky Ben can have all the igloo fixin’s he could want now, pillows of all sorts. Me and my cloud are heading off to dreamland.

I posted a blog entry last night (see below) and the automatic e-mail notification did not go out to anyone, as far as I can tell. So I’m posting this to check if it’s working yet. I let blog-city know. Also, while I’m on the topic, many of my subscribers are listed as anonymous. This is due to not unchecking the “keep e-mail private” box when you subscribe. If you do uncheck it, the only thing that happens is that I can see who you are! (It makes it seem like you’ll get a lot of spam or something, but you won’t.) So.. if you’re not trying to keep your identity private from me, and you feel like it, you can change your status simply resubscribing with the box unchecked. (And vice versa… if you wish your e-mail were private from me and it’s not…)

Just when I was gloating about attaining 24 weeks. Just when I got ballsy enough to buy yarn for a baby-related knitting project, thinking “it’s always a good sign in any pregnancy when I’m feeling confident enough to knit…” In fact, shortly after I got home from the yarn store, as if the fates were punishing me for my cockiness, I was sitting and eating dinner when a very odd contraction drew my attention. Odd. Sort of hard. Slightly… almost… painful? Out of the blue while I was sitting there. After a short interlude I was stationed on the couch, reading a story to Isaac while occasionally suggesting as calmly as possible to Ben that he look at the clock. And Ben, while doing the dishes, was as calmly as possible writing down the times. Of contractions I mean.

This went for a half hour or so, painful contractions every 5-8 minutes, during which time I made a silent pledge to give it another half hour, hope that they would go away, and then, if not, to set the whole thing in motion: call the hospital and be told to come in; call someone to take care of Isaac; go there and face the medical beast for good or ill. I was feeling nauseated also (a sign of preterm labor… or the flu?) and hot (but WAS it actually hot?) and achy (just the flu??) and very, very worried. But what happened was that they spaced out wider and wider. I took a hot bath– rather challenging to get a hot bath in this house by one’s self! Final compromise was that Isaac was allowed to keep watch over me in the bathroom, “So you don’t drown.” But at least in the tub ITSELF I managed to be alone. The contractions went away. I felt rather battered inside and Ben also felt completely emotionally drained by the fear. But we went to sleep and all seemed well enough.

However, this morning I woke up feeling, well, in mild pain. Not horrible blinding pain. Just… a little pain. Abnormal. Not usual. Painful, painy kind of pain. Baby was moving and kicking per usual, but seemed each time to be a blow upon upon a bruise. Also, still nauseated. But no organized contractions really. Just an overall sense of unease and unwellness and a sense that something was amiss. I spent an hour or two like this (thank god a babysitter was here chasing Isaac for me). I got the doctor’s phone number and set it next to my bed. But calling … ugh. When you call these people it forces you to admit that something real is going on. I mean, real enough to call. It’s not so much that I worry about being thought a ‘fraidy cat (I’ve got seniority and my courage round the maternity ward is the stuff of legend), but that calling them makes it all TRUE. Moves it from the realm of worry to the realm of situation. Also it always leads to action. After a short time, though, I came to my senses. I called and admitted to the nurse that I was scared. Not surprisingly, she said that I should come in shortly. Thus, poor Ben had to be dragged in from work (1 1/2 hours away) and meet me at the hospital.

There, they did this lovely new test that has been developed only recently. It tests for a chemical change that proceeds all other indicators of the onset of labor. It can predict that you’ll go into labor next week. Also, they did a quick ultrasound and noticed that healthy and well baby is now head up. (On Friday, it was head down.) They examined me from top to toe, ruled out a variety of things, and pending the test basically decided that I was fine. Later in the day the test came back negative. I’m NOT going into labor in the next week. Phew.

So what happened? Their working hypothesis is that you have here a long skinny one-half of a uterus. In it you have a large, ever larger, robust baby. It decides to completely change position. In the process of going from upside down to right side up, it spends some time wedged crosswise. Kicking and punching like a tiny masked Nacho Libre. Thus irritating the poor uterus, triggering a round of way-harder-than-usual contractions, and actually indeed BRUISING it from within. Hence, it feels literally bruised when kicked and very, very tender. Well, this may be exactly it. We do know that three days ago it was one way and now it’s the other. It makes sense that the process in between would be a little harsh. It also makes sense that it would settle in this position, like big brother Isaac, who spent his whole third trimester with his little big head crammed ever more snugly under my right ribs.

So… bottom line… we’re drained. We’re exhausted. But we’re fine.

Yesterday we crossed the line of 24 weeks. I’m now officially six months pregnant, which feels like quite an achievement. I’ve mentally replaced the word “waist” in my vocabulary with the word “equator,” and the non-maternity clothes in my life, even the most ample, flowing, draw-string sorts of things, have been banished to the attic. Between now and 28 weeks, each day and each week marks a vast improvement in terms of preemie survival. Yes, there are 26-week preemies who do not survive; and I’ve heard of one 23-weeker who did, albeit with a lot of complications. But overall, 24 weeks means a chance at survival where effectively none existed before, and 28 weeks means a 95% chance. After 28, the quality of that survival improves daily.

So… so far, so good. We can put the whole sobering 20-24 week part behind us and move forward with great strides. Momentum. We’re really gathering momentum.

Meanwhile, nothing untoward has happened. I was at the OB yesterday for a monthly check-up. (The very fact that it’s monthly, not weekly like last time, speaks well for how this is going…) The heartbeat sounded nice and strong. The baby’s growth is right on track. It’s moving and kicking a lot in its crescent moon space on the right side of my abdomen. Also, with its tippy toes, it seems to be expanding into the left side a little bit. I encourage it to colonize new regions and take all the space it wants and needs. But still I visualize my uterus as something like a mitten, with the baby in the hand part and this unused little thumb (unstretched-out left half) sitting there and generally not helping.

As to child care, I’ve been trying to add some more. It’s hard to track down the right people, though, let me tell you. I now have half days all week, except Thursdays, which still needs work. On Thursdays I also have Isaac in two classes, inconveniently spaced and located. (I registered for one and then was notified about the other sort of out of the blue as a make-up class from when he was so sick.) This past Thursday was the first time I tried it and it was not a success. Isaac’s morning class is art. It’s an hour and fifteen minutes– a very nice class in all respects. Only after about five minutes there the other day, Isaac proclaimed himself “all done!” And then spent the balance of the time alternately lying on the floor in civil disobedience mode and running away entirely (needing to be chased, of course!) He grudgingly made a few scribbles on his collage project (it was about Jazz and really a nice concept…), totally refused to decorate his plastic hard hat (which you would think he would like) and generally made the whole thing hellish.

(I noticed a few other boys having a hard time with the passive, small motor aspects of it, and also struggling with their mothers and rolling around on the ground. We are not alone! The girls did their work quietly and nicely, true to form. I think it’s time to enroll Isaac in hockey, tumbling, and swimming! I just need a team of chauffeurs.)

The rest of the afternoon was equally exhausting and filled with tantrums. Suffice it to say that once we were safely home and I was horizontal (and it was pouring rain) we did NOT venture out again to tackle his Dalcroze dance-n-music class. Sigh, sigh. I spent the afternoon on the phone editing out a wide array of errands. Luckily, also, several social options were rained out in the tempest. But– I can’t take him to both classes on Thursdays in general. That’s the take-away from the experience. I need an ambassador of some kind. I need Mary Poppins.

Props to my friend Martha who has been pitching in like a supreme champion and whose lavish rewards I’m still devising.

Props to Ben’s parents who took Isaac for his first sleep-over on Sunday! Seems like it was a raging success, at least from Isaac’s point of view (had to be dragged away when it was time to come home). I was so proud of him to be so self-assured to be without his mommy or daddy during those vulnerable midnight hours, especially in the context that lately he’s been having frequent nightmares. And I truly enjoyed a free day to rest at will. Getting enough rest makes such a huge difference in my health and overall maternal well-being.

Some recent Isaacisms:

“Mommy, can bunnies die at night?” (um…. why do you ask?)
“Did you know that baby spiders don’t have spinnerets?” (no, frankly, I didn’t)
“She has breasts… I’d like to put my hands in there!” (referring to an animated princess, but still)

Some recent scary Isaac dreams:
“I was on a cliff and I thought there was a surfing board there, but there wasn’t! Then I was falling!”
“A t-rex was stomping the whole city! All the buildings!”
“There was a crack in the floor big enough for a little boy to fall through.”

Turns out “the whole set” of babies Isaac was referring to totals five. I tried to point out that the math doesn’t add up. Isaac, plus baby Sassy, plus one more, makes three. But Isaac has five fingers, and he can’t add worth a damn, so he insists that all facts to the contrary the whole set is five. Five babies? Ugh. Whatdya want from me, kid? I’m 39 and I have a bicornuate uterus… maybe in a couple years we can get a puppy.

When we were down at Pawley’s, there was a moment in which I stood with a group of moms on vacation. We were discussing sleeping habits of our youngsters. In the midst of this conversation, Isaac stepped in amongst us, poked his little finger in the air and declared, “I’m a non-sleeper!”

It’s sort of true. His babyhood sleeping patterns were appalling. I chalk this up to the fact that he came home from the hospital weighing 5 1/2 pounds, with a stomach the size of a walnut, and with this little defect of the tongue that made it hard for him to nurse or even drink from a bottle effectively. We had to feed him with a tube for the first month or so, for instance. And feed him often, sometimes even hourly, along the lines of a baby bird. (These are among the many reasons I hope and pray for a big fat robust baby this time.) But in addition to his size and to the long, hard, ounce by ounce struggle to get him big enough to hold enough to sleep enough, there was the temperament factor.

He’s a rather high strung, high energy person, just like his father. I’ve heard from Ben’s mother that Ben as a child never slept. She said that he would drive her crazy with the non-sleeping, mentioning also that it went on until he was a teenager. I listened to this report with a sinking heart, and then realized that Ben left for boarding school when he was 14. Meaning… that his departure from the house was most likely how the problem was “cured.”

But all that being said, Isaac is really improving. He seems to have a pattern of four or five good nights in a row, going to sleep around 9 or 10 p.m. and waking up around 6 or 7. No naps anymore, as naps of any sort seem to make the night sleeping a lot worse (but it does make for a hell of a long day for me…). However last night was one of those odd bad nights that come along one a week or sometimes twice. He had a busy day yesterday, with a series of people coming along to take care of him to spell me. Ben and I had a date planned in the evening, too, at which point Isaac hit the skids. He screamed and cried as we departed, and then in the course of being comforted, nestled in to the babysitter’s chest and fell asleep– at 7:30 or so, without having eaten anything.

So… 1:30 a.m. rolled around. …

I think you can envision what happened. Isaac woke up, starving, ready for breakfast.

Also I should add that he just got a suit of armor yesterday. It was a special new toy as a part of our new anti-violence campaign in the house. Basically if he can make it through a third of the day (we divide by meals) without kicking, hitting, or throwing in anger, he gets a sticker. When he has accumulated five stickers, he gets a new toy ($10 limit). Basically I can say that after two weeks of this, it’s working way better than all the time-outs in the world. He’s REALLY trying as hard as possible to contain his anger and more often than not is able to do so successfully. Anyway, so yesterday afternoon we went to the toy store. After reviewing everything in the entire store, he settled on this set that includes a plastic breast plate, with dragon, a helmet with moving visor, a sword with scabbard, and a shield also with dragon. We spent the afternoon with me rather exhausted on the couch while he stood around in his armor, sword at the ready. He’s trying to work with the fact that I need to rest all the time, and allowed me to participate by pretending that I was a dragon and the couch was my dragon’s keep.

So… in the middle of the night I stumbled downstairs to get him something to eat. (How could I leave an honestly hungry child to cry until dawn??) Then, we both discovered his armor in the dining room. He begged and pleaded to wear it while he ate his snack, insisting that he wouldn’t PLAY at all. Just WEAR it. Groggily I agreed, thinking– what do I care what you’re wearing at this hour? I got him a sandwich and he sat and ate it awkwardly, sword held in one hand and shield on the other arm, visor getting in the way of his mouth all the time.

Then, since we were all up and about, the dog Lena also woke up and began to bark to go out for a pee. What next? I thought. But I would rather stumble out into the yard with her than clean up a puddle in the morning. So out I stumbled, and of course the little knight in armor tottered along with me. I stood chaperoning Lena (she can’t pee on what little lawn we have because it burns it and so needs to be guided to her designated non-lawn spot), and Isaac looked up. “I see the first star in the universe!” he said excitedly. “I see the big dipper… see…? There’s the handle and there’s the cup part… and there’s Orion the Hunter!”

Groan.

I’m sure we made a fine picture out there in the darkness… me in my ridiculous maternity pajamas, little Sir Isaac pointing to the sky with his sword.

It took until about 4 a.m. to get him to sleep again, and since then the day has been completely topsy turvy. We’ve slept a few chunks but unsatisfyingly so. I should add that it’s only 11:00 a.m. now.

Sure seems a lot later than that.

The weather has been wonderfully cool, and yet the physical challenges of this phase of the pregnancy are all too present. As Isaac has his good and bad days, so too do I.

Last week we had this day that began well and ended badly. My friend Martha and I decided to go to the beach (Lake Erie, half a mile away). There we figured we would sit in the shade and sip cool drinks while the children played. In fact, this was wonderfully true to the vision. Cool breezes and lovely views, an enormous sand box to play in. But for one problem: Isaac. Martha and I sat in the shade, while Isaac ran headlong towards the filthy water (sometime I’ll tell you about the time Ben got uvulitis– and infection of the little dangly thing in the back of his throat– by swimming in it after a rain), and I had to chase him. Then once I got settled again, he headed out towards a rocky breakwater, and I had to chase him. I went and sat down again, sipped a bit of Perrier, until he began to pick up rocks and throw them perilously close to innocent bystanders. I had to chase him. After that he threw sand… etc. etc. etc. Finally I decided that I simply had to leave the bucolic splendor and think of something else to do. Lunch at a cafe seemed a good choice, seeing as Sassy Lassy (babe in utero) was starving. But there too, the chasing! The rushing outside to play while I was in the midst of ordering! After that, thinking that if he climbed and ran he would get his yah-yahs out, we went to the playground. Again, my vision was that I would sit on a park bench and he would climb and exhaust himself. But in reality, I was always on the hoof, rushing across the playground to break up fisticuffs or prevent opportunities for falls from great height.

He’s not a bad child, mind you. He’s a gem among boys and almost a pure delight. But he’s A BOY in the most physically active, busy, curious, daredevil sense. After a full day of this plus dinner out with guests I was really in a state. I started having this strange trembling feeling, that seemed like the baby was perhaps having a seizure. This scared me half to death, and then became clear that it WASN’T the baby at all, but my uterus itself having something of a seizure. Then it spread until I was having muscle spasms all over the place. I felt like a race horse, twitching after the Kentucky Derby. I reviewed and remedied the obvious– dehydration? Not enough salt? Too much of something? An imbalance of electrolytes? Nope– what it boiled down to was just profound exhaustion. After I lay down for a few hours, it went away. The next day I did have a babysitter for four hours and so canceled everything and spent the whole time in bed. Wonderfully, after she left, Isaac and I had a sandwich, and then he fell asleep and I could sleep some more. Bliss! That evening I felt just fine. Isaac was a lamb and went to bed early.

HOWEVER, to pay me back for my easy day, Isaac woke up at 4:30 a.m. on Thursday. (All that sleep re-energized him.) I dosed off and on until Ben had to leave at 6:30 a.m., and then the marathon was on. All day, through trips to and fro the store, out to lunch and seeking our fortune at intriguing venues, and through all manner of quiet, sleep-inducing activities, Isaac stayed bitterly, persistently AWAKE. Refusing all naps or efforts to quiet time. As the afternoon wore on, my whole body began to hurt. My uterus clenched itself into a very hard lopsided butternut squash with defined edges. Finally I did the unthinkable and fell asleep with Isaac on the couch watching Clifford by himself. He could have choked; he could have fallen down the stairs; he could have played with matches. But instead he just sat there for an hour and watched Clifford quietly and I slept and renewed myself. I felt much better. At 7 p.m., Ben got home, and we had a babysitter coming for a date night. True to form Isaac tanked, had a screaming fit (he really must have been exhausted by then) and went directly to sleep five minutes after we left.

I have two conflicting imperatives at the moment, perhaps a free sample of what it’s like to manage the needs of two children. One: keep the baby safe and get through the pregnancy with both of us healthy and well; Two: take good care of Isaac and enjoy him, during this final summer of “just us.” We’ve had a much longer run than most, halcyon days of time together for almost four years! But much as I KNOW that having a new baby will be a good thing for Isaac in a lot of ways (and of course good for Ben and me and our family overall, or we wouldn’t have done it) I also have this melancholy sort of swan song feeling about this summer. I just want to BE with Isaac as much as possible. I know what’s up ahead– he doesn’t. Hence the idea of getting full-time babysitting in here and really resting much more has a sad and hollow taint to it. (Not to mention the staggering expense… the whole economic point of my not working for money is that I provide the childcare myself!!) Ben points out that there will be such as thing as alone time for me and Isaac — even after the baby comes. He mentions that Isaac and I could go out for the afternoon and he could stay home with the baby, for instance, and that this whole guilt-sorrow swan song deal is really irrational and pointless. He adds that he himself, at age 40, sees his mother alone from time to time.

Yes, but…

But my days are fraught with frustration. I am constantly thwarted. I can’t so much as sweep the floor or carry a load of laundry upstairs without feeling those unpleasant signals that I need to sit or lie down. The biggest thwarting of all is that I can’t– simply can’t– chase Isaac 12 hours a day and still be healthy and safe. I can’t provide him with good care, really, as the emergency sleeping with him unattended attests. I can’t go around feeling constantly stressed, weak, and bone tired. It doesn’t help that every twinge frightens both Ben and me. Of course, normal pregnancy is full of twinges, yanks and tugs all the time. As experienced as I am at this, I must admit that I have TOTAL amnesia about my pregnancy with Isaac. I think I was so terrified the whole time that I just went out to sea, self-medicating with all 20 engrossing Patrick O’Brian books.

And all this is in higher relief than ever this particular week, week 22, which is the particular week five years ago that we lost Jacob. So we live with the constant awareness that this CAN happen, unlikely as it is at this point in a pregnancy that (unlike that one) has been pretty much seamless. But even when we pass this week and get it out of our system emotionally (which I believe we will) we still have to admit that the pregnancy is not going to actually get any easier from here on out. Baby Sassy is getting bigger all the time and putting more and more strain on the one-half of my uterus in which it lives. It still needs to BE in there safely at least another three months, and the situation is only going to get more precarious.

I also know that it’s been incredibly cool weather– add heat to this mix, as surely will happen at some point this summer, and the reality immediately becomes a lot more dire. I learned during that brief heat wave around Memorial Day that heat makes the most basic activities much more pregnancy-threatening. We have central air, but how can I keep Isaac in the house with me all day? Impossible. Which means, venturing out. Which means, contractions.

No… no. The reality is here. Three mornings of babysitting (we just increased my coverage a few weeks ago to get to that level) are not enough! Shocking expense or no, emotional quandaries or no quandaries, I need someone else to chase Isaac MOST of the time. I don’t want to be PUT on bedrest forcibly… Or worse.

Mantra: it’s just a few months, a few critical months…

To end on a much lighter note, Isaac made this observation the other day:
“If you make another baby after Sassy, then you’ll have the whole set!’

Yesterday marked the 20-week border. This is officially the halfway point of a full-term 40 week pregnancy. For us, though, it’s the commencement of the officially hardest and scariest month of all. From here to 24 weeks, we are crossing a large gulf to viability. The 22-week point, of course, is the supremely most scary part for us, just psychologically, because it harkens back to our loss five years ago. But Thursday we got to see our beautiful baby, all 14 ounces of him or her. (We did not find out!) All the beautiful little parts, the lovely 4-chambered and perfect steadily beating heart, two-lobed brain, five-fingered hands, and tiny lively kicking feet. This month is the month the baby can be as large and fully formed as possible while still being completely unable to survive ex utero. It also it is a time when the baby is becoming truly “present”– lots of kicking that I can feel all the time and the general sense of midriff expansion becoming completely impossible to deny. June 23rd, or 24 weeks, will be the viability milestone; if born then the baby could survive, barely, theoretically, and with massive neonatal intensive care. July 21st or 28 weeks is more like it, but a beacon so far away.

Most of the time I’ve been able to maintain my composure and good cheer about all this. I’m busy and distracted by Isaac most of the time. Yet I have my moments. On Thursday our doctor just fleetingly mentioned the emotional importance of 22 weeks and I surprised all by bursting into tears. (Hormones I suppose are not helping…) At certain times I feel sort of like we’re stepping out on one of those rickety rope bridges strung over a burbling lake of lava. It could hold. I might hold. It probably WILL hold! The last guy got across it! Right? Yes! Okay… One step at a time…

But that being said this 20-week check-up was really as good as it could be. There are no further signs of abruption. (“What abruption?” the technician said. “Yay!” we cried.) It’s just healed up wonderfully on its own. (Stopping the cough did seem to do the trick!) The baby’s growth and everything else about it seem to be completely perfect. The future cannot be predicted, but everything is going very well. I need to rest a lot more than your usual pregnant lady, finding as I do that “overdoing it” at all causes mild contractions. I find myself on something of a short leash, contractions-wise. Walking up the stairs once, no problem. Three times… um… no. I find that the intersection of high-risk pregnancy and highly-active three-year-old boy is a tricky one to navigate. Yesterday, for instance, Isaac (and therefore I) slept only from 1 a.m. to 7:30 a.m. and then got up to rush about. I did have a baby sitter coming for the morning, but a different doctor appt across town that took up most of the time. I figured though that Isaac just would simply have to collapse in the afternoon and allow me to sleep. But no– the babysitter left at noon and he was still a live wire for HOURS. I tried every known strategy to get him to calm down and ADMIT how exhausted he had to be. Finally at about 3:30 I put him in the car and he did fall asleep while driving around. But after carrying him in and laying him down on the couch, I found that I was really cramping and having low-grade contractions from the marathon. (They went away, though, shortly after I lay down and napped.)

I’m thankful that our doctor does not believe in bedrest and in fact advocates publicly against it. Bless him. I’ve only tried it for 3-4 days at a time in my 2001 pregnancy, but it was a worse fate than you can imagine. What’s the big deal, you ask? Why would it not be fun to lie down 24/7 when you feel just fine? Well… for starters you need a personal assistant with you all the time– a staff of maids, cooks, and housekeepers would be quite useful. While pregnant with Isaac I trained our dog Lena to fetch things for me that I indicated around the room with a laser pointer, which became a charming parlor trick, but luckily I never had to actually use it while confined to horizontal. Beyond the inconvenience, though, there’s the muscle atrophy. The bone loss. The depression. The fact that it’s not actually proven to help pregnancies go longer. (There’s a wonderful support group that helped me a lot when I was pregnant with Isaac– a national buddy system for women lying on their left sides for months and others simply coping with high-risk pregnancy. It’s at sidelines.org) I truly hope to get all the way through this without that…

But the doctor did caution me, repeatedly, soberly, to take it easy and listen to myself. “You know yourself better than anyone. Don’t over do it. Make someone else do the dishes! Put Isaac in a safe room and let him cry if you have to.” etc. It is true that I do know when I cross the line. It’s just so maddenly easy to do these days. So far I’ve found that simply sitting or lying down and having some water to drink makes the contractions go away. The fear is that, one of these times, they WON’T go away so easily.

Also, the doctor said ixnay on the traveling from here on out. I said that I was hoping to go to Minneapolis in about 4 weeks and he said, bluntly, “You want to be in a hospital in Minneapolis?” to which of course I said, “um, now that you mention it, no.” He’s not keen on the flying itself, but really it’s just the being that far away from the nest at a time of potential need. It’s true. If anything happened I would not want to be out there trying to get my entire medical history faxed and without my trusty familiar medical team around me. So the trip to Minne is not gonna happen.

Similarly, plans to gut and renovate the kitchen this July-August are seeming now a little grandiose. It’s just the pull of powerful hatred for our current hell kitchen of 8 years on the one hand, and the siren song of a whole new SUNNY BIG kitchen, that is so, so powerful. We’ve gotten so close, too! Designs in the vault, bids completed, and a contractor on deck. But… what IF I do get into trouble and need bedrest– how fun would that be in a sea of dust and roaring skill saws? Renovation vagrancy looks a lot worse when in a medical situation. The other thing is that the timing is so tight, like– ZERO margin of error. We do like and trust our contractors, but if his estimated 7 weeks goes more like 9 or 12 … as these things so often do… we would really be in a complete mess… Isaac starting school, his life upside down, the house torn up, and a new baby here early! Good lord. No. We really lost January-May to illness and pregnancy issues on my part. I just couldn’t keep the project moving for those months. And it turns out that those months were very crucial to getting it all done this summer.

Also I should point out that Isaac’s design sensibilities are incredibly conservative. He loathes all change. We put a new rug down in the living room and he had a huge crying and kicking fit. “You’ll get used to it!” I tried to consol him. “I’ll never get used to it!” he screamed. (It turns out he was right– the rug was all wrong and we’ve since gotten rid of it.) I think that tearing up the kitchen and putting in a new one, right about the same time he’s also starting school, and becoming a big brother, well, it’s just too much all at once. I try to keep his future therapy bill in mind at times at all times, and this pile-on of change just seems like a recipe for psychological trauma.

Oh Well!

So our consolation prizes are that now that we have a design we can at least finally get new appliances that will for sure fit in that design. A new stove and a new fridge will cheer us up a great deal. And there’s no reason not to do at least the external phase of the project, getting a back porch and new back door (because we’re going to eventually close off an entry point that now leads into the kitchen). Sigh, sigh, sigh. Well– chalk it up to more time to look at swatches and research counter tops!

So in just a short office visit, the summer has been redrawn and pulled into focus. The focus is: BABY. Okay. Makes a lot of sense actually. And seeing his or her adorable little profile that morning makes everything else seem utterly trivial.