One Variety

Apparently Mr. Monkey and I only make one variety of baby.

Behold, Kiddo #1 at two months:

And now kiddo #2 at six weeks:

Other than the fact that big brother had about a one pound weight advantage, I think these two look so much alike.

 

I’m going back to work tomorrow, just for one day as I have a few more weeks of maternity leave but had an important meeting to attend. I fear I’d better not look at these pictures while I’m there or I’ll either A) cry or B) spring a leak from somewhere other than my eyeball.

 

Goals and Such

Once upon a time this blog started out as a fitness blog, a place for me to detail my triathlon training and the not well thought out goals I had set for myself (12 races in 12 months! In Iowa! During the year with one of the worst winters in history! Why-oh why- did that plan not work out?).

In the last year, this blog has been about, well, everything and nothing. Sometimes about parenting and pregnancy, though I don’t think I’d describe myself as a “mommy blogger” (at least partially because that term kind of bugs), sometimes about fitnessy things, but often not as my fitness took a real nose dive with this pregnancy, sometimes about money stuff, mostly about nothing in that my posting has been sporadic at best lately. I live a very infant center life these days. I nurse, I pump, I change diapers, I insert and reinsert pacificers. I don’t really know what is going on in the world, beyond what I see on The Daily Show when I am up with the baby. I fear writing a bit because I fear that I am in a deeply boring to other people kind of mental place.

I don’t know how much longer that feeling will last, when I’ll feel interesting again.

I’m a week away from the 6 week post-partum check-up where, in addition to hopefully being told that I’m once again free to do more than hand holding and necking with Mr. Monkey, I’ll be told I can start working out again. I’ve been doing some walking and a few sessions on our exercise bike but nothing that really feels like it is moving me toward actual fitness.

Last week I took the kids to a nearby state park that I’d never been to before. It was lovely: green and lushly wooded with a nice 1.9 mile trail loop running through it. As I carried the babe in the Snuggli and tried to get the kid to stop whacking all the trees with the stick he found and promptly declared to be his new friend “Sticky”, I decided that I’m going to run that trail by my birthday in August.

I haven’t run in maybe 10 or 11 months, so I’ll be starting from scratch. I’ll need to figure out if my sports bras still fit me in my current bovine condition. Mr Monkey and I will need to make a schedule so we can figure out how both of us can get time away from parenting to run. These are all things that can be figured out, of course, and I have about 12 weeks to do it.

 

 

Questions

“Mama, why is that man fat, huh?”

“Mama, what does fat mean, huh?”

“Mama, why we don’t eat poop, huh?”

“Mama, why is that box blue and not red and red is my favorite color, huh?”

“Hey, Mama? Why is it windy today and not rainy, huh?

“Mama, volleyball and soccer are rhyming words, right?”

“Why they not rhyming words? What rhyming mean?

“Huh? Huh? Huh?’

“Mama, why you say you going to sell me to the gypsies, huh?”

“Why do you need a break? What is a break? Can I have a break too?”

“Huh?”

Three Weeks In

My son is three, almost four, years old. Not that old which means that it hasn’t been so very long since I did this whole brand new baby phase. And yet.

I’ve forgotten how much, well, work a new baby is. How planning for a trip to the mall (because you need to get out of the house and because you have a three year old who needs somewhere to run off some energy, for the love of God) feels akin to preparing for a polar expedition: the bag, the gear, the desperate importance of timing (before the older needs a nap, but after the younger is freshly fed and changes, and not during lunch or else you’ll end up shelling out $7 for a pretzel dog and lemonade) (AGAIN) (Amount spent on pretzel dogs in the last two weeks: $28.95) (But, on the bright side, parentheses are still free!).

There are many ways in which these first few weeks are going more smoothly this time around. I’m more relaxed, for one. I work under the shockingly crazy assumption that my new baby girl will continue to breathe, even if I don’t check her every two minutes. I’m getting more sleep. I’m getting along with my husband better than I was last time around, which is probably related to the sleep thing (I feel compelled to note that this is not because he is “pitching in” more this time. It is 100% that I am less crazy this time).

But it is still hard and sometimes overwhelming in these first few weeks. I feel dumpy and rather unattractive. I leak milk and my body feels flabby. My breasts are ridiculous so my back is sore. I feel moments of stark anxiety: about breast feeding (which is going fine), about money (which will be fine) about work (which may or may not be fine but is frustrating to be worrying about during maternity leave).

I love the babe, of course, and am happy to rest in the knowledge that our family is complete now. My husband and son are both absolutely smitten with her and I know that there is much to look forward to. She won’t be three weeks old for long and soon she’ll be out of the larval stage and in the fun, chunky, smiling, sweet smelling baby stage. 

I don’t really have a great zippy ending here…so cut to cute picture of the baby I just described in insect terms:

 

On Kindness

I’m waiting for dinner to arrive. I’m not sure what dinner will be tonight, but I know that it will be prepared by someone who cared enough about the Monkey family to offer to bring it over and to hold the baby so I can eat it.

We’ve been blessed (there really isn’t a better word) by the kindness of our friends in the days since baby E. was born. We had friends watch the kiddo while we were in the hospital, friends bring us dinner and groceries and snacks and even one mystery friend who came over and mowed our not insignificant yard (we assume it was a friend but maybe it was a neighbor who just thinks we don’t mow often enough…either way, thanks mystery mower!).

There is something sort of pleasantly old-fashioned feeling about friends showing up at the front door with something wrapped in tinfoil or warm in Tupperware. We are not really a culture of ritual here in the United States but this feels like something close to that, this way that generations of women have taken care of each other in the wake of a new baby arriving.

It makes me want a friend to have a baby soon so I can make some lasagna and return the favor.

It is Sunday morning and there is a baby girl asleep on her Papa’s chest upstairs. The boy and I are in the basement. He is playing track and field (there is much running and jumping and a make shift high jump pit made from a bean bag chair and all the cushions from the couch) and I am calculating how much time I have to write this post before I need to nurse again.

Last week at this time I was in the hospital, dealing with some complications from the birth and feeling, just for a moment or two, like I might die. 

I hesitate to write that last sentence, realizing that it sounds fairly dramatic, maybe overly so? I don’t know. I had a hemorrhage in the early hours following E.’s birth. I was laying in bed and suddenly felt certain that I was going to pass out. I called for the nurse and then there was a lot of blood and a room suddenly filled with multiple nurses and a doctor, all working urgently as I moved in and out of consciousness. 

It was scary for me and Mr. Monkey and I had a moment of thinking “this is how women die in childbirth”. When I think about it now I feel very aware that I’m lucky to live in a place where I have access to good maternal health care. 

It seems hard to imagine that a week later I feel pretty much fine. I’ve got sore nipples and a belly that looks like a deflated beach ball but I’m fine and my girl is healthy and my boy is going to be a track star. I am keenly aware of my good fortune. 

Surfacing

She is sleeping in the swing now, occasionally grunting and gritching, maybe she is starting to wake up but maybe not. She is five days old and we are still getting to know each other.

She arrived on her due date, this new baby of mine, on a night filled with storms and tornado warnings. I’ve never been more oblivious to the weather than that night, too wrapped up in the work of bringing a baby into the world. She arrived at 3:46am, looking so much like her brother did that first night with dark curly hair and big dark eyes. She still looks like him but every day she looks more and more like her own little person. She is lovely and sleepy and sweet.

I’m in the thick of post partum healing and hormones right now. My nipples are sore and cracked and I know it will get better but the thought of nursing makes me cringe a bit right now. I’ve felt weepy and emotional today, veering wildly between pangs of love for her and for my husband (who is so great at the home with a new baby phase) and for my little monkey who is so in love with his sister, and pangs of guilt (for getting too much sleep last night? I don’t know. This isn’t coming from a place of reason) and overwhelmedness (shut up spellcheck. That is too a word). I’m not depressed, just adjusting.

I think she is waking. Time to go see this face:

All is Quiet

I’ve reached the final stages of this my final pregnancy. I’m big and round and the baby is fully developed and everyday is spent just fattening her up. I’ve got less than a month to my due date and I’m at the point where I’m ready whenever she is (actually, if she is anything like her brother, I am and will be ready long before she is).

I think there is a natural inclination to turn inward a bit in these last days/weeks. Part of it is probably feeling like I’m spending so much time just being aware of my physical self: the aches and pains and twinges and contractions and the wonder “hmm, will today be the day that I have a baby?”.  The other part is wanting to savor these last days of our band of three.

I was walking with the kiddo down to the creek by our house last week and it occurred to me that he’ll likely have no real memory of these days before his sister arrived, of the time we spent just the two of us, throwing rocks in the creek and talking about dinosaurs and robots and robot dinosaurs. It makes me a bit sad even though I think his life will be richer for the experience of growing up with a sibling (he already has siblings of course, but they are already grown so this will be a much different relationship for him).

I just love this kid so much.

Friday Brain

I am having a baby next month. This is both a relief (my belly is continuing to encroach on my boobs and now my it feels like all of my bras are trying to kill me slowly) and a source of stress (we still need To Do ALL The Things!).

But then there is this: sometime next month I will have a little peanut of a baby asleep on my chest and that will be unbearably sweet.

She’d better be cute though. This pregnancy has been kind of a bitch.

*****************************

A relative of mine had a Facebook status update today on his upcoming 21 day trip to Europe. I had a brief moment of jealously and “how can he afford that?” kind of thinking before I reminded myself that Mr.Monkey and I could theoretically  jet off to Europe too (not right now, of course) if we really wanted to but that ultimately this is time of our life for staying close to the nest and saving for the future and that Europe or Panama or Ghana will still be there when we are in the place where children aren’t so young and expensive.

And then I watched this: http://consumerist.com/2007/04/snl-skit-dont-buy-stuff-you-cant-afford.html and laughed and felt glad to be married to someone who is cheaper than I am.

****************************

And then I fell down a worm hole of videos that make me laugh:

http://www.hulu.com/watch/38477/saturday-night-live-update-thursday-fix-it (at about 2:19)

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=-qv7k2_lc0M (NSFW language)

Basically, just do a search for “Key and Peele” on YouTube and you’ll know how I spent my lunch hour today.

***********************

And, lastly, to end a post that is in no way organized, a quote from my three-year old that is both wise and true:

(The background: I’ve reminded him for the 1000th time to get a tissue instead of using his finger)

“The problem is, Mama, that most kids like the pick their nose. My fingers fit up there real good.”

Pears

Today is Valentines Day and like many an old married couple before us, Mr. Monkey and I will celebrate by trying to get the kid to bed at a reasonable hour so we can fall into our own exhausted sleep well before the Daily Show even starts.

We have plenty of excuses this year: I’ve been sick with a virus that seems to have no end in sight, I’m super pregnant, the kiddo is dancing on the border of being sick so there is missed work and rescheduled meetings and a messy house and money to be saved for the coming baby. The reality is though that neither Mr. Monkey or I are very big Valentine’s people. I think we used to exchange cards but we don’t even do that anymore. I’ve never gotten flowers at work and Mr. Monkey knows me well enough to know that I would be, frankly, horrified if I did (No judgement if that is a tradition you love, I just don’t enjoy flowers enough to make me forget how freaking expensive they are to get delivered on Valentine’s Day).

Even though we are not Valentine’s celebraters, the sight of rows of freshly delivered flowers on the front desk of our welcome center here at work does make me think a bit about love and marriage and the whole messy enterprise of attaching your life to someone else.

Mr. Monkey and I will be married seven years this summer. This sixth year of marriage has, for me, been the toughest in a variety of ways. We’ve had a major job change and an unexpected pregnancy to deal with. We also had some internal issues that forced us to look long and hard at our marriage and to ask the scariest question, out loud and in seriousness, to each other: “Do you want to stay married to me?”.

FYI: there is no way a pregnant woman can be asked or ask that question without risking dehydration from the crying, crying, crying that comes with it. In the event that you ever get to plan or schedule your serious state of the union talks, aim for a time when both people’s hormone levels are at somewhat normal levels.

We do though. Want to stay married to each other, to make and remake this relationship into something more than just a vehicle for raising small children and providing each other with economic security and pleasant conversation and semi-regular sex.

Mr. Monkey isn’t a TV commercial version of romantic. He doesn’t buy flowers or jewelry or chocolate. He doesn’t really buy anything to express his love (save for honoring the pregnancy induced requests for various fast food places). He has been more conventionally romantic in the past and I have a drawer full of beautiful letters and poems that I will treasure forever. But, tangible things aside, I think of Mr. Monkey as a romantic because of what  he thinks marriage and long term committment can look like and the work he is willing to do to get there. He believes in the idea of marriage as a place for both people to continue to work toward being their best versions of their selves. He believes, I am certain, that his job as a spouse is to say “yes” to whatever I say is my dream for my life. He helps me see marriage the place where we figure out how to live our lives on purpose and require more of ourselves than just being good friends who happen to have babies together.

And I love him for that.

So, happy Valentine’s Day, Mr. Monkey. I will always bring you pears if you want them.

We’ll discuss it inside