How time has flown

It has seriously been about 10 weeks since we found out we are having a boy, but it feels like yesterday. Time has flown, and in pregnancy, that is great! I am now 29 weeks along. I'm feeling pretty good lately... I've been sleeping pretty decently (probably in part because Ben has been effectively evicted from the bed), and even had a chance to nap some afternoons. Eliza hasn't totally folded on the nap, which is wonderful. I am worn out most days, but I feel like I have enough energy to get through them. Long may this last... I'm hoping I can ride the wave of enthusiasm that sweeps the holidays. January will likely be a difficult month, but January always sucks the wad, doesn't it?

Right now Eliza is in the middle of potty-training. It is not fun. I'm second-guessing everything I'm doing with it, and she and I both frequently end up frustrated, but she also seems to be willingly progressing so I feel like I need to keep it up. However, every time I ask "Do you need to go potty?" I am met with screaming and running away, and when I pick her up she attempts to escape by climbing up my belly. Ouch. I have heard that when the time is right, kids get the hang of using the potty right away. I'm not entirely sure that the time was right, but I don't think there's any turning back now. Sigh.

But bathroom tantrums aside, my oh my do I love this age! Eliza is talking like a madwoman, and I love to hear the stuff that comes out of her mouth. I'm not even sure how many words she strings together in an average sentence anymore... it's more like paragraphs. She's starting to get into more "let's pretend"-type play, so it's a lot of fun to hear her playing in the next room, making her toys talk -- in a high voice, of course. (Ben and I make all our inanimate objects talk in a high voice, and Eliza has taken note.) And even on my hardest days with her, there is still something adorable that she says or does that makes all of the frustration worth it. The other night she grabbed my head with both hands and pulled me close for a kiss, then said "I love you." Clean up of mom puddle in aisle four.

Today I attempted a pumpkin cheesecake -- my first cheesecake ever -- to take to Thanksgiving dinner next week. Now that it is done baking, it has to sit in a closed oven for two hours. Then it has to sit in the fridge for eight. I see why I don't make cheesecake. But now that the oven is turned off and Eliza is asleep, I may head upstairs for a bit of a rest myself.

Dear Baby,

Your mama was wrong. You are a boy. A boy! For about 24 hours after our ultrasound I was pretty shocked. How could you be a boy? I was so much sicker with you than with Eliza! You are so much quieter in my belly than your sister! (This is because I have an anterior placenta -- the placenta is on the front of my uterus, muffling a lot of your kicks and punches. I still feel you move every day now, but you are much subtler than what I could feel with Eliza.)

But after the shock wore off, we are nothing but excited about welcoming you, little Sam, and we can't wait to meet you. I have started procuring baby boy clothes -- there is something about buying baby clothes that just makes it so real for mommies -- and almost every day I find myself going into your soon-to-be room and looking at them. I already have your going home outfit picked out. Those clothes seem at once so big and so small, and you will be in them soon. The seasons are starting to turn here. Today felt much more like fall than summer, and the house is warm with the smell of chocolate chip cookies, and these small changes from warm weather to cold are not mourned but anticipated. In the coldest part of winter, you will be born, bringing your little light to the darkest season. We can't wait to see who you are going to be, who you are going to become.

Pics from your big reveal. Learning that you are a boy:

From That Second Child

From That Second Child

Your first portrait:

From That Second Child

We love you already, little Sam-boy.

From That Second Child

Love,
Mommy

Tomorrow

Tomorrow is our big 20-week ultrasound, and we will hopefully be finding out if Ball of Cells is a boy or a girl. For posterity, I write my prediction here: Girl. And I will update soon, hopefully with some pictures! It's hard to believe I'm 20 weeks already... this first half has gone fast!

Why I don't write

The author of a blog I have been enjoying since her daughter's birth a year and a half ago just announced that she has a book coming out next year. Because I am a bitch, I'm like, "Where the hell's my book?" instead of being happy for somebody else's accomplishment. And there is the small problem of me not actually having had written a book. So.

I have absolutely no self-discipline when it comes to writing, especially when it's writing for "just me." There's also the problem of the extremely high value I place on sleep, to the detriment of just about everything else in my life. I obsess about it, actually. I can't stand the way I feel and function on less than about 7 hours of sleep, and of course with pregnancy I'd like a hell of a lot more than 7 hours. Last night (or early this morning, I guess) Eliza woke up, unable to sleep with a bad cold. I have been up since 3 AM. I guess it's a good thing that all Eliza wants to do is watch TV this morning, because it's all I can do as well. Long story short, I can't get around the anxiety of wanting and worrying about sleep, and thus can't seem to carve out more hours in the day to spend time writing (though of course I can carve out plenty of time for wasting time on Facebook or watching old episodes of Mad Men).

I do not have this problem with running. With running, I wasn't very good when I first started out, so I knew I had to keep at it and devote time to it in order to improve. And when I trained for a marathon six years ago, I knew that I couldn't just show up and pull a 26.2 out of my back pocket. So I spent six months of weekends out running farther than God intended. But writing? Well, unfortunately for me, I've always been told and known that I'm fairly decent at it. Not that I'm Super Shakespeare by any stretch, but I'm not bad and so I 1) let myself off the hook practice-wise and 2) put a ton a pressure on myself when my writing isn't publishable in its first draft.

My problems with writing have hung around me for a long time and I haven't figured out how to deal with them. I have so much resistance to just sucking it up and WRITING. Which is why, you see, I don't have a book deal.

Eliza's Day Out

We took Eliza to A Day Out with Thomas at the Illinois Railway Museum yesterday. The girl was in hog heaven. She loved playing with the "Thomas train tables" and getting the chance to ride on a "real" Thomas. Even though she got a little cranky from the humidity and the crowds, she had a fantastic day. I made a video to commemorate the occasion.

Belly pics

12 weeks-ish:

From That Second Child

Over the weekend, almost 15 weeks:

From That Second Child

I like that I am wearing the same shirt. I should make that a thing.

Dear Baby,

Please don't blame being That Second Child on getting short shrift with my blogging attention. Instead, blame yourself, swimming around inside of me, making me hungry/nauseous/tired/etc. Ninety percent of my absence can be explained due to that. The other ten percent is indeed because you are That Second Child and your sister is Two-with-a-capital-T at the moment. Dealing with her temper tantrums while pregnant has certainly added to the exhaustion.

I am fifteen weeks pregnant today. I am feeling a lot better than I did when I last posted. My nausea is, for the most part, gone, though I am quick to gag when I smell eggs cooking. And your sister eats a lot of eggs. I am still tired, but I am able to nap most days and that helps a lot. But my energy level is somewhat restored and I am grateful for that. Today has been a sleepy day, but it was a busy weekend. We went to Indianapolis to celebrate my friend Marta's little boy's first birthday, and with all the activity and discomfort of sleeping in a new place, I don't think it's too unusual to be sleepy today.

So, I have already started to feel you moving! I didn't expect it so early, but I am pretty confident I felt you for the first time almost two weeks ago. Now I am definitely feeling you fluttering around every few days and it's just the best. Right now it's still so light that I still usually question it, but sometimes when I lay down to sleep at night, I feel you right away, wiggling around. Once you start getting bigger and really letting me have it -- well, I love that. Feeling you move and being able to eat whatever I want are definitely the best parts about being pregnant!

I went to the doctor last week and was able to hear your heartbeat for the first time, too! 155 beats per minute, which still makes me think you are a girl. Are you going to be a happy surprise at the ultrasound in five weeks or just proving your mommy's intuition correct? It doesn't matter either way... we are just so excited to have you coming in to complete our family.

Love,

Mommy

Hanging out

This past week Ben has been at a curriculum training at the University of Illinois. So it's been just Eliza and me at home. I was changing her diaper shortly after Ben left, and telling her that "Daddy is on a trip, so right now it's just Mommy and Eliza hanging out at home." She picked up on "hang out" and so all this week she has been saying, "Mommy, Yi-ya [Eliza] hang out."

That's what it feels like we're doing right now, too. Marking time, not getting anything accomplished in the way of house upkeep... just reading books, watching Elmo, going to the park even though it's raining. I have had no energy for anything besides the care and feeding of Eliza. Luckily, Ben was able to come home for the weekend -- he has about 40 hours here before he returns for another week of training -- so right now I am able to devote some time to writing here while he and Eliza are at the park.

I am almost 9 weeks along, and I am tired. I have slept decently for the past few nights, but I think that has mostly been because I was denied a nap during the day. I am tired but can't sleep, and I am hungry but struggling to find some food that sounds good. I was not this food-averse with Eliza, and it is frustrating. The idea of cooking is repulsive, so I have been eating things like frozen waffles and Cheerios. But the little juxtaposition inside me is growing and measuring right where he/she is supposed to, per an ultrasound on Tuesday. My pants are getting tight, too, but I hope I can squeeze another few weeks out of them. I was hoping to make it through the summer without needing to buy maternity shorts, but now I'm just hoping to make it to the end of the first trimester (which is a VERY optimistic wish).

This Thursday I am flying to Tucson for my cousin's wedding. I'm going to tell my family the big news there, and I am excited about that. It will be just me (and Ball of Cells) going to the wedding, as Ben is still going to be gone, and I didn't want to drag Eliza to an evening wedding on Pacific time. I am going to miss her like crazy, but I am also getting a hotel room to myself for four nights. And after a week of solo parenting and two, yes, two bouts of cleaning up my daughter's vomit, I am really looking forward to some time to myself and some grown-up conversations with my family.

The first trimester tsunami

It seems that the wave of fatigue has hit. I have been napping every afternoon when Eliza does, and it doesn't seem to do much but put a dent in the sleepiness. I definitely seem to have morning sickness in the true sense of the term with this pregnancy, too -- very nauseous in the morning (almost threw up for the first time this morning), but it tapers off within a few hours and I feel mostly okay tummy-wise. With Eliza, the queasiness came on and off all day. So maybe this baby is a boy? I don't have a very strong feeling about it one way or the other yet.

It's been a busy week around here. Ben's parents came into town on Saturday for a long visit, helping us get some work done around the house, and of course, dote on Miss Eliza. She had a blast with her grandparents and had a long sleep last night, recovering from all her excitement and adventures. And for our part, we now have a new ceiling fan installed, landscape timbers in place in the backyard, a sandbox for Eliza, clean gutters, the house prepped for the remainder of exterior painting, and the lawn mowed.

I want to go to Costco this afternoon, but I realize that my will is weak and I will not be able to resist that box of cream puffs. Also, last night I had Kraft macaroni & cheese for the first time in ages, and holy hell, I can't stop thinking about it. So now a Costco trip will hopefully involve some bulk packaging of that for this pregnant lady's feasting.

Baptism

Last Sunday Ben and I went to the baptism of my friend Katie's daughter, Kaylee. It was held at her childhood church, in the town where we grew up, and it was a mass specifically held for baptism. There were five other babies besides Kaylee getting baptized that day, and I actually knew two other parents there who were in my high school graduating class.

Watching the service, watching the 8th grade kid I sat next to in Spanish baptizing his second child, a chubby boy, and watching Katie, whom I have known since my sophomore year in high school, baptize her firstborn daughter, it was a shock to realize that my generation has stepped up to take on the mantle of old traditions. Back in 8th grade Spanish the traditions weren't ours to control. But now that we have become parents ourselves, we now have the opportunity and the responsibility to create and uphold what we see The Right Way for our children. It kind of boggles my mind that it is our turn now. Even though by all markers I am very much an adult, I still don't feel old enough to be a homeowner, a mother, a credit card holder. It boggles my mind that I am in a demographic that can do something, except now it seems I am mostly too tired.

In which I bore you with symptoms

The pregnancy fatigue has already set in, and even though I've had a lot I've wanted to write about this week, I've felt too rundown to bother. I haven't been sleeping well since I found out I was pregnant, which is cruel and unusual punishment above and beyond the third trimester insomnia in my opinion, because I'm like, already with this shit? but last night was a lot better, and perhaps I am now just turning the corner to first trimester exhaustion. It is amazing how easily wiped out I feel. I forgot about that. And how quickly I feel my blood sugar depleting and my mood rapidly heading south and need to eat something (that I remember -- there is nothing quite like preggo hunger). I am hoping to keep going to the gym, though I'm certainly not going to push myself, but this week I only got there once.

I had some bloodwork done to confirm the pregnancy and make sure my progesterone levels were okay. I had to supplement with progesterone for the first trimester with Eliza because they were kind of borderline. I got my first set of numbers back today: hCG level is at 555 and progesterone is 22.9 for 16 days post ovulation! For comparison, I also had a blood draw with Eliza at 16DPO and it was 413 and 15ish, respectively. I had another blood draw today and should find out tomorrow what those numbers are... you want the hCG level to double and the progesterone to stay the same or go up.

That's all for now. It's Memorial Day weekend and I hope to have a little more time to rest, and, subsequently, write a little more here.

The perfect mimosa

... and how to make drunk pancakes

Dear Baby,

We found out about you yesterday. You are the line on the left.

I didn't know what to expect this month. As I have had every pregnancy symptom in the book and not actually been pregnant, I chalked up a lot of what I was feeling to my crazy body and rationalized them all out of my mind. Yet, there is always a part of me that holds out some hope that they are in fact genuine. The only real clue I had that you might in fact be here was that I really didn't want the bloody mary I ordered on Sunday when your dad and I were out on our first date in ages. I mostly wanted it because they give you a stick with cheese and olives and sausage that goes in the drink, and those olives were looking mighty fine. But I was a bit averse to the alcohol itself. I didn't say anything to your dad, and yes, champ I am, I finished it right up, but that was the only thing that seemed a bit different.

Yesterday morning I saw a faint line on a test... I knew it was positive, but I didn't think your dad would believe me. So I tested again in the afternoon and there you were, as plain as day. I was excited to tell your dad. When he got home last night I had Eliza in a "Big Sister" shirt that I had purchased for this very occasion a few months back. I put our camera on record as he walked through the door so you would someday be able to see his reaction. Your dad paid no attention to the shirt, but saw the camera immediately and wanted to know why it was on, and then turned it off. He thought that I was just recording Eliza's reaction to him coming home, so he starts play-acting and giving her hugs as I turn the camera back on. On the video, you can hear me asking Eliza, "What does your shirt say?" I asked this about three times. He finally got it almost immediately after he turned the camera off AGAIN. "You're pregnant?" your dad asked, Sherlock Holmes that he is. It was a very typical your-dad reaction, so the video is kind of funny. All of your concerns about wasting batteries descend directly from his genetic material.

We are so excited to welcome you here next winter. As I am already feeling pregnant, I have a good feeling that you are sticking around and making yourself comfy in this (already bloated) womb of mine. Your big sister paved the way for us in terms of what to expect in both pregnancy and parenthood, and while, to be perfectly honest, the next year and a half is figuring in my imagination to be a pretty exhausting one for me, I also know the immeasurable joy and love you are going to bring to our lives. You will make our family complete.

Love,

Mommy

This weather can suck it

IT IS THE MIDDLE OF MAY AND I HAVE MY HEAT ON. I AM DRINKING TEA. I AM WEARING A SWEATER. FUUUUCK.

Quality time

First of all, things are back to normal between Ben and me. We worked through our fight on Friday night, then we were fortunate enough to have my parents come over and watch Eliza while we went out on a date on Sunday afternoon. Let me just say that it's been a while since we sat at a bar. Anyway, all is peaceful in my happy world once more.

I have been thinking a lot about what it means to spend quality time with my daughter lately. She is a lot more independent than she was just a few months ago, so she has gotten a lot better at self-entertaining, and I'm able to get a little bit more done around the house each day. But I'm beginning to wonder if I should still be playing farm whenever she is playing farm, or reading her books when she seems pretty content with just looking through them... the eternal question Is Mom doing enough? shooting through my brain. I mean, I like having a few minutes to skim a magazine at lunch, or the chance to empty the dishwasher while she plays with her trains, but on the other hand, I don't want her to think that she has to play by herself. I'll play with her whenever she wants, but I guess the reason I don't immediately engage all the time is because it's pretty freaking boring. I love her to the moon and back, but Mama's brain turns into porridge at the thought of pushing zoo animals in and out of a tunnel for fifteen minutes. I know there are only like a zillion other stay-at-home-parents who feel this way. I do not claim to be unique.

What do I like doing with Eliza? I like taking her to the grocery store. She's actually really good and we talk and I push the cart fast, etc. I like taking her to our local library for a baby storytime once a week. We both love that. I like taking her on walks, but she has a lot less patience for that than she used to, and walks usually need to be by the train tracks or coupled with a park visit for her. And of course, walking without a stroller tends to be chaotic. I like reading books to her, but reading the same book seven times in a row would grate on the Dalai Lama. And as the weather gets warmer, I know I'll like taking her to the pool, or setting up our inflatable one in the backyard for her. I can't wait for that.

It's hard to stay at home because you so rarely get a glimpse into other people's similar daily lives. How do they manage their days? What could I learn from watching them? We're so isolated nowadays. And I did so much to make those connections by ditching the mom's group! Ha!

Long week

Ben and I are fighting. I'm not going to get into the reasons behind it, but it's been icy here since Monday, and that is a new record for us. He is mad at me. It is discombobulating and scary.

The weather at least has been good. Eliza and I have gone outside and gotten too much sun. It's so fun to have a toddler. Yesterday we went to the park, then walked down to an ice cream shop across the street from the train tracks. We watched the trains go by and had vanilla ice cream with sprinkles.

More another time when I don't feel so off-kilter.

Home alone

Ben and Eliza are out at the park down the street, leaving me a rare empty house. I crave the space and silence, but it's strange how I can never think of anything to do anymore. It's supposed to be Meghan Time, but whenever I'm afforded the peace and quiet I don't do much in the way of my soul. Today I haven't read or sung showtunes (guilty pleasure and so uplifting for me!) or even painted my nails. I straightened up the front room, always a toddler crime scene, and started making dinner. Maybe it's not so much what I do with the space than the simple fact that I have it.

Random thoughts

Because I can't think of anything substantive to write about.

• There is a nest of bunnies in our garden. Except I looked out the window just now and the bunnies are gone. I hope Eliza and I didn't scare them off this morning. I also hope something didn't just eat them. Anyway, I was equally bothered and pleased that bunnies decided to seek shelter in our garden. Bothered because I want them to not eat tomato plants that will be going in soon, and pleased because of course I'm not going to be an asshole and kick them out. Freeloading bunnies.
• Costco at 10 AM on a weekday is a thoroughly pleasant experience, even though they don't have free samples out.
• Eliza can count to 13. I don't even know how she figured that out. She will frequently skip a number or two, but you know what she's doing and it's amazing.
• Also, I have yet to buy the giant box of frozen cream puffs at Costco. BUT I WANT TO EVERY TIME I GO IN THERE. I have also successfully avoided the Giant Pies.
• The weather is all screwed up in this country. Apparently there's a drought in Oklahoma and flooding in southern Illinois. I don't understand why we can just have weather swapsies. This spring has sucked ass.
• I am having dreams that I need to incorporate more of my masculine traits into my consciousness. I don't know what my psyche thinks isn't masculine about getting poop all over your hands when you change a diaper, or read a Dr. Seuss book four times in a row. But seriously, this is giving me food for thought and I'm seeking some more clarity on this issue.
• The death of Osama Bin Laden made me sad. Not that he's dead, I'm thrilled about that and am glad he was killed rather than captured, but I was sad to think about how this one man has so negatively impacted my generation. Of course, our government could have chosen a different course of events, but my generation was dragged into two wars and has struggled economically, in large part to that asshole's actions. What would our lives be like if September 11 never happened? Where would that $3 trillion have gone? To education or green energy or technology? How much smarter would we be?
• I should have bought those cream puffs.

Pain is weakness leaving the body

Finger? What finger? Eliza refuses to let a little amputation slow her down:

From 2011.05.01 Spring big camera

From 2011.05.01 Spring big camera

From 2011.05.01 Spring big camera

From 2011.05.01 Spring big camera

The finger

On Wednesday, I was on the phone with my friend Marta, when all of the sudden I heard an enormous CRASH in the dining room. I hung up the phone and found Eliza on top of a knocked-over chair, screaming. I pulled her out and saw blood... lots of it. It took me a minute to realize it was coming from her finger, and once I had grabbed a towel and gotten the bleeding somewhat under control, I realized that her right middle finger was shorter. Oh, fuck.

Ben called me right at that moment and told me to head to the emergency room. I had to change a poopy Eliza diaper before we left -- amazing that there isn't a huge blood stain on the carpet where I did it -- and I realized that if her finger was shorter, that meant that the rest of her finger was somewhere. Dragging Eliza by her bloody hand, I found the little tip of her finger and entire fingernail, picked it up with a Ziploc bag, nested it in some blue ice, wrapped it all into a Hobby Lobby bag and sped off to our pediatrician, running a red light and not giving a damn.

Our pediatrician is just down the street, and they took one look at her finger and said we had to go to the ER, but were able to wrap up her finger so she wasn't bleeding all over herself anymore. I was crying and I'm pretty sure they felt like they were dealing with a crazy person, because they asked me a few times if I would like someone to drive with me to the hospital. But I was okay beyond being a sobbing sniveling wreck over watching my little girl all hurt and scared.

We drove to the ER and only waited in triage for 10 or 15 minutes until we were taken back to the pediatric ER. Eliza's biggest problem didn't seem to be pain, but incorporating new people and potentially more stressful/scary situations. She didn't protest a 2+ hour hand soak in an iodine solution, but freaked out when a man came by to get our insurance info. That kind of thing.

A social worker came by with a big bag of toys and videos to help calm Eliza down before they reattached the finger. We watched four Elmos and a Thomas, I believe, before the doctor finally came in to do the procedure. Eliza had to be strapped down in a baby papoose, AKA baby straitjacket, so that she wouldn't flail about while the doctor worked. She cried the whole time, but Ben, who watched the whole procedure, said she never once tried to resist the doctor while he reattached her fingertip.

When it was all over and she was released from her straitjacket, I held Eliza while she pounded on my chest for a few minutes, shouting "NO NO NO NO!" over and over again. At first we thought there was something wrong, but we realized that she was probably working out all her anger from being so helpless and scared. We were discharged shortly thereafter and she came home and slept like a rock all night.

The finger doesn't look like it is going to reattach itself right now, but the orthopedic surgeon we met with the following morning has assured us that whether it takes or doesn't take, her finger will heal normally without a problem. I'm so grateful that she'll be fine and won't remember any of this. Me, on the other hand... well, I'm slightly traumatized by the whole ordeal. Picking up your kid's body part, no matter how small, just totally sucks, and the night after it happened I had a hard time getting that image out of my mind. I had trouble sleeping that night and the next -- just difficult to calm my mind down enough to fall asleep -- and since then I've just been exhausted. It's a small trauma in the grand scheme of things, thank God, but it's a trauma nonetheless to my mind, and it's interesting to step back and see how I am processing all of this. I've had trouble finding and pronouncing words, which is a major sign of fatigue for me. Today I left a gallon of milk in the shopping cart (or somewhere... after Eliza wakes up from her nap we have to go in search of it). It takes a lot of energy to emotionally deal with emergencies, and it certainly makes me empathize with people who are in crisis and are struggling to function from day-to-day. Not that things are that bad here at all -- I just see a glimpse of how hard it must be.

Anyway, Eliza is going to be fine and all is well in our happy home again. Stitches come out in two weeks, and this mama needs a nap and a drink in a bad way.

How I came to work at the Wendy's

The crime against this generation is the theft of opportunity (stolen from a commenter on Reddit).

http://imgur.com/a/mTWpc

Easter

I have addressed some of the below in previous entries, but I had a pretty powerful spiritual awakening over the weekend that I wanted to share here. I wrote this as an email, though interestingly enough I haven't sent it yet! I'm not yet done processing it for myself. Additionally, this post has undergone some editing from my original writing, as I want to keep some details to myself should I ever make this blog public.

Over the past few weeks I have had this yearning ache in my heart. I knew it was attached to something, but I couldn't figure out what. Recently springs have been like this for me... some kind of longing, some sense of something waiting to be born. I've also felt the need to connect to other mothers right now. So I've done a lot of work around these feelings -- reading, prayer, meditation, journaling, tarot cards, the whole nine. But nothing was coming through.

Two weekends ago I went to my dream group. I was telling the women there about this feeling of rebirth, how I feel connected to the seasons now, and how I've been at a place where I've been treading water spiritually for a while, but I'm about to go back underwater, and how that feels like a good thing. Karol, the woman who runs the group, said, "Holy Week is coming up, maybe you're also feeling the downward pull of that weight." She knows I'm not Christian, but knows that I was raised Lutheran and said that perhaps I was feeling that from my childhood. I didn't really agree with that, but I like the whole idea of Easter being a celebration of rebirth.

On Thursday I saw Katie and told her that I felt like my heart chakra was opening up, but I didn't know what it was all about.

Friday comes. Good Friday. Ben had the day off, and we had talked about me having a "Meghan's Day Off" that day, and he would take care of Eliza while I did whatever I wanted. When I got up I realized I had started spotting. I was really upset about it, because I was only a week past ovulation and my cycle is being a bitch and I'm probably going to need supplemental progesterone. I decided to do some yoga to clear my head, and I'm half-crying through the first bunch of the poses and start asking God for a sign. I tell God to send me a sign in a book of symbols I have, and as I'm praying this prayer asking for clarity, a cardinal shows up right outside my window. It sits there for a while and then flies off, and I realize that the cardinal has a message for me as well.

When I'm done with yoga, I grab the symbols book and my finger lands on a picture of sage. The book says that people have used it to connect with the Virgin Mary. As I'm asking God for clarity with the whole pregnancy thing, I'm thinking, okay, so Mary had a baby... but I'm still pretty clueless. Then I go to my animal signs book. One of the meanings of having a cardinal show up is to look back on your religious past and revisit it, maybe find some once-discarded truths that might be useful to you again.

And suddenly I get it... holy shit, Mary is coming through to me.

It makes SO MUCH sense. As I've grown older my spirituality had evolved to one of seeking out divine mothering. I directed much of those prayers to the Goddess, but I never fully felt connected -- my idea of the Goddess felt too ethereal. Mary walked on earth, had a baby, held her dead son when he was pulled off the cross. She has been here, she knows our suffering. She's an angel with muddy feet, to paraphrase one of my professors. I can connect with that.

Even little things become clear with this insight: I have had an idea for years about a book that alludes to Mary. I LOVE nuns in kind of a crazy way (and went to a Catholic grad school with a bunch of them). A few days before I had this revelation I wrote a note to my aunt Mary just to say how I much I missed her. (I do miss my aunt, but it was an out-of-the-blue thing for me to have done.) And there's my middle name, Mary, staring at me all these years! All this in my life, and I NEVER thought to look in her direction!

Later that day I head to this awesome metaphysical bookstore that has this yummy incense smell and just always brings so much peace to my soul. I find this book called The Return of the Mother with a picture of a statue of Mary on the cover. It's all about how we need more divine feminine in our spirituality, and I'm a little bit jaded by the premise because I have like 17 similar books like this at home, but there is a chapter on Mary (and the book is 40% off) so I decide to buy it. Later that night in the bathtub I start reading the chapter. The author used to be into a lot of Eastern spiritualities, but he had a falling out with his twat of a guru and in this whole process he discovered Mary.

He writes that as one begins to connect with Mary, your chakras begin to realign. You begin to operate out of your heart chakra, and your heart undergoes an opening so that you, like Mary, can better connect to and work toward ending the suffering of the world.

I feel like I'm in a very joyful place knowing that I have finally made this connection with Mary. I love that she has been in my life for ages, just waiting for me to be ready for her. And I love that I can relate to her as a mother myself; in fact, maybe I needed to become a mother before I could truly connect with her. But I feel how I imagine an adopted child must feel connecting with a birth parent. Like you have this really huge connection, but where do you start the conversation? How do you start the conversation? I have this need to have an image of her with me. I've ordered this necklace with a picture of her holding Jesus, and in front of the picture is a rose. I like how the rose is opening up, just like my heart.

And that was my Easter weekend.

An afternoon with Aunt Tatie

My dear friend Katie came over this afternoon with her 3 1/2-month-old daughter Kaylee. We looked forward to a quiet afternoon full of conversation, possibly a cocktail, and sleeping babies. What we got were two girls who refused to nap, lots of big tears and screaming, and a long walk with bulky strollers to try to get children to calm down. Still, we had a wonderful time. It was so nice to spend an afternoon with someone who is as tired as I am, whose attention is just as easily diverted as mine is, and who just basically understands how much motherhood throws life for a loop. Plus, she and I have been friends for half our lives now, and having that deep history with each other is so delightfully easy.

So even though I have a crabby toddler on my lap who only wants to watch Sesame Street videos online (she was so excited that "Tatie" came over that she couldn't calm herself down to nap), it was worth it to have an afternoon with my friend, fighting the good fight in the trenches next to me.

My Lenten resolution

My first entry on this blog was about how I planned on giving up reading other people's blogs for Lent, and instead devoting that time to writing my own blog. We are just a few days before the close of Lent, and I'm happy to say that I have done well keeping up my own blog, even if I totally broke that resolution a while ago and went back to reading some of my favorite intertubes writers. Oh fricking well. I am pleased with the results of this little experiment, even though I have yet to make this blog public. Beyond a few close friends, I'm really not comfortable sharing the getting pregnant stuff with the world. Once I am pregnant, and that baby is safely growing inside my belly and making me crave McDonald's entirely too much, well, that's a different story. But I don't envision making this public until I'd be close to the second trimester. Who knows how far away that will be!

We're in the waiting game again here to see if I am in fact pregnant this month. I don't really have a feeling about it one way or the other. I have had every pregnancy symptom in the book and not actually been pregnant, so I don't put too much stock in what my body says until I see the second line on the test. And I'm trying not to obsess about it. I think I am at a place where I'll be okay and not really disappointed if I am not pregnant this month, but in the mean time it's really hard not to give those "symptoms" any attention.

The weather here has been alcohol-inducing and we are back to being stuck inside again. Yesterday I took Eliza to Pump It Up, an indoor bouncy castle kind of place, just to get her to burn off some steam. For her first time there she was much less intimidated than I thought she would be -- she even went down a 15-foot-tall slide by herself. Unfortunately for her mom, there were a lot of activities she insisted on doing even though she couldn't figure out how to maneuver on her own, so I had to go through one too many inflatable obstacle courses yesterday.

Even after all this time

This is brave

And I am so not anywhere near the place she describes. If something happened to Eliza I would melt away.

http://www.mamalode.com/blog/2011/04/18/mama-digs-to-be/

Surrender

I've been thinking a lot about the concept of surrender lately, especially when it comes to having another baby. It's so easy to be in a place of control with the whole baby-making thing. You can take your temperature and figure out when you ovulate and overdose yourself with supplements that might make your womb a more hospitable environment for a tiny person. You can get to a really obsessive, crazy-making place with the whole process. I have spent time in that place, and it's not at all fun.

I have realized that once you get to a place of surrender about having another child, and have given up any attachment to it, the magic seems to happen. Time and time again this has proven true, both for me and for people I know. I have a friend who had tried for over two years to get pregnant. It turned out she had fibroids that were probably causing the problem, and she got to a place of acceptance that she needed the surgery before she could conceive. Two weeks before she was supposed to go under the knife, she found out she was pregnant. No medical intervention necessary. I have another friend who couldn't get pregnant, so she and her husband decided to adopt. They had been in the waiting pool with her adoption agency for almost a year. She started posting on the message board where we got to know each other that she was so done with the adoption process and was starting to look at donor embryos to try to get pregnant. She posted messages about this all week. On Friday afternoon, her adoption agency called. They had been matched. She and her husband are expecting a baby girl next month.

My first pregnancy ended in a miscarriage at six weeks. I was devastated. I think the fear of potentially having to endure that again got me to a place of surrender with the whole trying to conceive process, and I was okay with it taking a while and physically and emotionally healing from that sad place. And as it turned out, I got pregnant on my miscarriage cycle. I let go, and there she was.

So I'm trying to get myself to that place with this baby. I think you authentically have to get yourself to surrendering any attachment to having another baby, rather than saying "Oh, I'm surrendering all this" and then checking your chart for the seventeenth time that day, and I'm not quite at that authentic point yet. I haven't obsessed about getting pregnant this cycle, and I'm not going to be devastated if I'm not pregnant this month, but I think I still have some letting go work to do. It's hard when I am absolutely certain there is another little one who is ready to enter our family. I just have to accept that God knows far better than I do about perfect timing. Baby, I hope you come soon, but I know you'll find the best time to be born!

Escape

I am dreaming of flying to Rome and spending a few days there doing nothing but eating and drinking. Screw the Coliseum, bring me another chianti.

When I have escapist fantasies like this, I know something in me needs attention, care, and nourishment. I have tried to discern what this ache is for a while now and still feel very in the dark. It's been very hard to retreat from the obligations of family life this past week, and even though Ben does his best to give me breaks, I need Rome. How do I disconnect when staying at home is more than just my job, it is my whole life? And if I need something else new and exotic to feed me, well, what the hell is it?

Finally, spring

We had a beautiful weekend here, and it was so nice to get outside and not have to wear a jacket. The grass is green, flowers are blooming, robins are singing on my lawn, and I could go on and on with this spring crap. I get the whole Easter thing now. I mean, I am not theologically on the same page as Christianity, but I understand celebrating death and resurrection, waiting and rebirth. I resonate with this each spring. In fact, I have these animal spirit cards (and you sigh and point me in the direction of the new age bookstore), and yesterday I pulled a card that had a turtle on it that said Mother Earth. And I was like, no, don't get all environmentalist on me, animal cards, but when I bothered to read the interpretation of the card, it said that the turtle lays her eggs in the sand, and then the baby turtles are "born again" as they hatch out of the eggs and come out of the sand. It said that this card means rebirth, that I am primed for a rebirth. I have been saying this word a lot over the past few days, and I wonder so much what is waiting to be born in me.

Searching for the soulful

I feel like every spring something cracks open within me. I am yearning for spiritual conversation and connection this afternoon. I want to be a part of a group of women, a group of mothers, who have those Big Conversations with each other over laughter and wine. Being home all day with Eliza, I don't usually feel lonely, but I definitely recognize how isolated our days are and I am yearning to have a conversation with someone who understands this afternoon. Maybe after the hibernation of winter, I feel like connecting and creating again. I don't know. I feel this longing every year around this time, and then life gets in the way again and I don't do anything about it.

I am brainstorming about how to start a real group like the one I dream about, because I'm fairly certain no one in this area has something like this going on. Maybe that's how to connect my creativity, my search for work, and this overpowering afternoon yearning.

Making something

After two and a half years of a lot of work and a lot of student loans, I received my master's degree in pastoral counseling. Unfortunately, when it came time to find a job, the economy downturned into a recession, and of course, when times are tough, human services tend to get the ax. It took me almost six months to find a part-time, non-counseling position (it was a religious education position at a church), and then about two seconds after that for me to get pregnant with Eliza. I quit that job when she was three months old, vowing to get back into counseling and work toward counseling licensure when I decided to return to work.

These days I'm not thinking about returning to work, at least not in the immediate future. Money will always be a bit tight as long as I'm staying at home, but we're very fortunate that I am able to be here, where I want to be, with my daughter. But when I think about returning to work, I do not feel like I am being pulled toward counseling. Instead, my fantasies of work generally revolve around being creative, getting my hands dirty, making something. I think this is in part a reaction to all that "head work" of counseling and not being able to see any tangible results of your efforts, but also, I realize upon reflection that I have always enjoyed seeing the finished product. I used to work in textbook publishing, and I cannot begin to describe the thrill of holding one of my college-level finance textbooks in my hands. I helped create this very real object into being. I loved that feeling.

I feel drawn toward such work again these days. I am frustrated that I don't have an artistic or technical skill that I can showcase. I have visions of quiltmaking or sculpting in my spare time, and then selling my works for a little extra cash. Things like that. Perhaps this blog is growing out of that need to create, too. It's not tangible, but I can see that I have a dozen entries written now -- my work is growing and becoming something. That matters to me, even if I am the only person still reading this.

No matter where I go in life, I am grateful for my counseling degree, because I think it gives me a tremendous perspective on the world. Perhaps I will come back to that type of work when I am in a different place in my life. But for now, I don't have the energy to invest in my clients like I used to be able to. My energy stays here, at home, and the limited candlelight I have left must be directed towards people and passions I care about. I love my life, and right now I am looking to add the thrill of creating back into it.

What Mothers Do Especially When It Looks Like Nothing

I am in the middle of What Mothers Do Especially When It Looks Like Nothing by Naomi Stadlen, and it is the most validating piece I have read about motherhood since becoming a mother. Since making the decision to stay at home with Eliza, I have been plagued with the idea that I am not "doing enough," and this book addresses how my house may be a disaster and I never got to the laundry today, but I am most certainly doing enough when I am mothering a baby. It also talks how there are no words to describe the types of work that mothers do with babies -- that multifocused attention, the multitasking of shopping with a toddler (you're not just shopping, you're socializing a toddler to the world by communicating with them about their surroundings and enforcing social norms), the communication with a pre-verbal child. She names plenty of work that mothers do, and certainly is validating to hear why I can still be so tired after a day at home with Eliza.

What I also really appreciate about this book is the naming of the identity shift that mothers go through after having a child. I remember going over to watch the 2010 Rose Bowl at a friends' house. They have a little boy a few months older than Eliza. Not that I care about football, but the whole time I was there I did nothing but care for Eliza, making bottles, feeding her, changing her diaper, making sure she was entertained. If I talked, it was about my child. We drove home that night and I just couldn't believe what my life had become. No longer would I be carefree or travel lightly. I didn't want to go back to who I was pre-baby, but I also realized that there wasn't a way back. That door slammed shut when my child was born.

It has taken me a while to really incorporate this mama piece of myself. For a while I felt like I couldn't connect all the pieces of my personality together, that they were all separate and disjointed and impossible to integrate... perhaps to make room for this mama piece; I don't know. But I remember thinking that it was impossible for Carefree, Silly Meghan to co-exist with Mama Meghan. And I didn't know which of those pieces I was when I was all alone, doing whatever it was I wanted. I wasn't all of them, and I wasn't none of them, either. While I'm still not sure how I'd primarily define myself, my psyche is capable of owning and integrating that mama piece these days. I recognize that I wear many hats and have many personalities, and it feels less like chaos and more like I have a well-equipped toolbox at my disposal. I am so happy to see a book actually naming, or at least describing, this struggle -- my only wish is that I had read it when I was going through this identity shift.

Eliza is napping; the house is quiet. I have been feeling the need for some spiritual centering in my life lately, and I think I'm going to attempt to right myself in the cosmic realm while I have a few blessed quiet moments alone.

Quiet mornings

I love the mornings when Eliza sleeps in and I can catch up on my intertubes with a cup of coffee, enjoying the silence. I hope she doesn't sleep much longer, because then she won't take an afternoon nap (and I love the afternoons when Eliza takes long naps and I can catch up on my intertubes without coffee, enjoying the silence), but morning peacefulness is a true gift.

I am learning how to use a DSLR camera, which is basically just me messing around with it and praying, since I'm too impatient to learn technique. I have a good eye but poor technical skills. But here are some recent pics with the big camera:

From 2011.3.30 Winter big camera

From 2011.3.30 Winter big camera

From 2011.3.30 Winter big camera

From 2011.3.30 Winter big camera

From 2011.3.30 Winter big camera

A definite answer

Which was no. No baby for us this month, no baby for us in 2011. When Ben and I were talking about it last night he said, "You know, this is my baby. It's probably not good to put arbitrary timelines on someone sharing half my genes." As nothing slows Ben down faster than me telling him to hurry up, he has a very good point.

So onwards and upwards to a 2012 little Nelson. In the mean time, it is Ben's spring break. Yesterday we took Eliza to a local little zoo. She had a good time even though it is so goddamn cold here for the end of March, and she's a little sick. (In fact, she's still asleep right now and it's 8:30.) And I started painting our upstairs hallway, which likely has not been painted in this century. It is going to be a challenge once I get to the high walls with the stairs, so I can see why this task had not previously been accomplished.

Recent early spring pics:

Choo-choo excitement!

From 2011.03.27 Eliza fun

Early spring Eliza (since this picture was taken, the winter coat had to come out again...grrr):

From 2011.03.27 Eliza fun

Multitasking with reading and exercise:

From 2011.03.27 Eliza fun

A long, hard week

Maybe it's because Eliza seems to have a cold (hopefully it's just a cold, anyway), and maybe it's because I've been crabby, and maybe it's because the once-promised spring has returned to February-like temperatures, but last week was hard. Last week was screaming and vomiting and runny noses and fatigue and winter coats pulled back out of the closet. But we got through it, maybe a bit worse for wear and further away from carefreedom (I don't care; that's a good made-up word), thanks to a good friend's visit and a bottle of wine and enforced early bedtimes. And, it must be mentioned, a wonderful husband who, when I balk at the possibility of being up in the middle of the night with Eliza, volunteers to sleep in the guest bedroom with the baby monitor. That is a good man, folks.

This blog was started to document our journey to our next baby, but I haven't actually talked about that yet, mostly because there hasn't been a need. I took my first pregnancy test of this cycle today when I woke up to pee at quarter to six this morning, and my result was totally ambiguous. To the untrained eye, it is negative, but to my eye, which has stared at hundreds of pee sticks over my years on my trying to conceive/pregnancy chat board, I see possibility. I know that my particular brand of pee stick has developed a reputation for mind games (First Response Early Response, I have peed on the last of YOU), so I tested again later in the morning with another of the same test. This time, I saw a second line, but no color in it within the time limit, but when I took it upstairs to show Ben, the line had disappeared. So I am in the same place as I was this time yesterday, except that I had not yet peed on $10 worth of merchandise.

I'm going to test again tomorrow, and I hope I'll have a definite answer on a different brand. The waiting is so frustrating. The getting one's hopes up is so frustrating. This is the last time we'll be going down this road, trying to make another baby, and when you have roller coaster days like this you worry that the road will be long.

Ice cream

From 2011.02.19 Much Eliza

From 2011.02.19 Much Eliza

In response to a question

Which is harder, your child as an infant or a toddler, posted on a parenting forum I frequent:

In some ways toddlerhood is easier for me. Eliza wasn't super happy as a baby -- I always felt like she was kind of pissed that she couldn't make her body do all the stuff she wanted it to. She's SUCH a happy kid now that she can run around and explore, and of course she's a lot more fun, too. I felt like 13-16 months was a much harder phase of toddlerhood for us, because that was when I was much more afraid of her killing herself. She was unsteady, into EVERYTHING, and didn't understand what "NO" meant. Now, I can let her do a few activities unsupervised and I don't worry about her.

That said, those unsupervised activities last all of 5 minutes before she wonders where I am and starts following me. She likes to play with [Ben], but again, that only lasts for a few minutes until she wonders where I am again. So it's hard for me to get a break at home. And she's SO much more manipulative and that's really taxing. She kicks me during diaper changes and thinks it's hilarious. Today I tried ignoring it and that seemed to help (but hurt a bit). There is a lot that she does for attention that is really tiresome to me, like deliberately eating paper in front of me to watch for my reaction, then I chase her around trying to fish the paper out of her mouth so it becomes a game.

I agree with [a previous poster], things have gotten easier as the weather has improved (and a lot more fun, too). We can run around outside and burn off that energy. My house is never going to look the way I want it and I've mostly gotten over that. I was thinking today how there is a toy/Eliza paraphernalia in every single room of our house, and that made me a little batty.

All in all, I'm enjoying this stage more, probably because I'm not so sleep-deprived, but IT WAS SO NICE to be able to leave a baby in the bouncy chair and know they would stay there while you took a shower.

Naptime

Eliza's new mattress was just delivered, and she is upstairs soundly asleep... in her crib. She had a freakout the day after I wrote the last post, complete with vomiting, so we moved her back to the crib and she's done okay in there again. This is, of course, after I ordered the $450 mattress. Oh well.

The weather has been amazing here the past few days, and it feels glorious to be able to run and play outside again. I think we are both acclimating our energy levels to this newfound freedom -- Eliza slept in this morning and went down for a nap with little fuss. I am succeeding in wearing her out by taking her outside, but it also wears me out, too. Still, it's fun to be in the fresh air moving around, and I hope to be able to fit in my jeans again. I tried on a pair this morning that I haven't worn all winter, and I'm like, how the hell did my jeans shrink from sitting in my dresser all winter? You know what I'm talking about.

I have a job interview on Sunday. The job is a position that I am extremely qualified for, a step up from a similar previous position and a big leap for me professionally. It's been a very soul-searching journey for me to consider going back to work. I have basically been hemming and hawing over it since I quit my previous position when Eliza was 3 months old. Financially, we are doing okay. Not great, but we get by and don't have any real money worries. So it's always been my choice if I want to return to work or not. I've had the luxury of waiting for the "perfect" job, and in many ways, this job is perfect for me... and I'm now 95% sure I don't want it.

I like staying at home. I always wanted to stay home when I had children, and I'm grateful that I am in a place where I am able to "live the dream," even on the shittiest of days. It has taken me a long time to get over the idea that I need to be going somewhere professionally, that my value is in a paycheck. I am extremely valuable to my family, to my daughter -- though of course on those shitty days it is hard to realize that, and on those days I am perusing the ads on CareerBuilder and assuming that my problems will be solved when I go back to work. But I am much more me, authentically, when I am home. Now, this may just be my propensity towards underemployment, but work has never challenged me in the way that staying home and raising a child has. That's not a knock on working moms at all; for me, there is a tremendous challenge in staying in the moment that being a mother has provided, and that is something that has always proven a struggle. I don't miss office banter or adult interaction (see previous post regarding introverted tendencies). I like being able to be there for all of my daughter's moments. Maybe that's me being a control freak. I don't really care. I'm so happy with my life.

Anyway, don't expect this to turn into a rant on working mothers, because I can completely understand why mothers work, both out of necessity and choice. At this time in my life, and in Eliza's life, it is just not the thing for me. I am grateful I have a choice. I am grateful for asking God for some illumination around my career situation and God gives me this great gift of a "perfect" job. Here is this beautiful cake, Meghan, would you like a bite? Umm, no... think I'll just go back to my salad. But I am going to the interview anyway. I feel I owe it to myself to really explore this and feel completely certain this is not something I want right now. There are a lot of cards stacked against me taking this particular position (loooooong commute, for one), but I am also open to hearing more about the positive potentials of returning to work.

Who knows, I may not be offered the job in the end, anyway. I am one of three finalists for the position, which is a nice wanking for me professionally (and as someone who doesn't get wanked professionally very often, I take my jollies where I can get them), and I just don't feel ready to throw in the towel quite yet. Just saying that I probably will.

Random lulz:

And speaking of sleep...

Today Eliza napped in a big-girl bed for the first time!

She is a giant kid and has outgrown the confines of her Pack n' Play, so we decided to order her an inflatable air mattress for travel. I realized that we'd have to get her used to the mattress before we could ever expect her to sleep on it in a new place, and figured with her schedule being all off-kilter because of the time change anyway, why not give it a go today? If she didn't nap, no worries save for a few hours of cranky baby.

I talked to her about the big-girl bed every time we were in her bedroom this morning, letting her know that this is where she would take a nap today, asking her how you go night-night and having her show me on the bed, etc. When it came time for her nap, we first read a few books on the bed, and I closed the door and left her alone as usual. I SO wished we had a video monitor so I could have watched her figure things out outside of her crib. I heard her trying to open the door, jumping off the bed a few times, and kicking at the door, but no real fussing. I took a shower, and by the time I got out, she was quiet! I peeked in and saw her with her blanket covering her face, passed out on her mattress. There were books by the door, so she looked at books for a while before going to sleep. And she slept for about two hours! I actually went in there to try to wake her up, just because I'm concerned about getting her back to her regular sleep schedule. (Mama likes her in bed early at night for some free time.)

I am so proud of my little girl. She's a very active child, so I'm so impressed that she figured out how to calm herself down in a room with lots to keep her busy. We'll see how she does over the next few days, but maybe a big-girl bed will be in her future sooner than we anticipated!

Sleeping the sleep of a mother

I woke up at 5:30 this morning when Ben got up to go to the bathroom. Then I lay in bed until 6:20 when Eliza decided to grace us with an early weekend wake-up. I got up with her and tried to put her back down, but once I returned to bed, it was obvious via the flashing red lights and whines coming from the baby monitor that The Stig was up for good. Ben got up with her while I tried to go back to sleep, but by that point my stomach had woken up and started protesting not having been fed for 12 hours. So that was the end of that.

While never a rockstar sleeper, having a baby has inched me ever closer to Princess and the Pea status. Everything in my bedroom has to be just so before I can fall asleep, and I have to pee about 18 times before I can be confident that I won't wake up in the middle of the night needing to go to the bathroom, because if I wake up there is a very good chance that I won't get back to sleep for two hours. And if Eliza wakes up in the middle of the night I can guarantee you that I will spend 10 minutes with her and another hour and a half tossing and turning in bed. I think being pregnant and giving birth turned my body into a hormonal fiesta, a party which, in the Mexican tradition, seems to be neverending.

Know Thyself

Now that Eliza is older, I've been venturing out with her more and more into our suburban community, taking classes at the park district, attending a program at our library -- basically trying to get her exposed to being around other kids, since she's not in daycare and not yet old enough to attend preschool. As a white, middle-class, suburban, stay-at-home mother, I did what many other white, middle-class, suburban, stay-at-home mothers do and joined a moms' group. In part for the above, but also for my own sanity. We attended a few activities with the group before I realized that being a part of the group wasn't helping my sanity at all.

It was nothing against the friendly people I met. I just realized that even though I fit into a very stereotyped SAHM role, one facet of that lifestyle (the mommy groups) really didn't jibe with who I am. I'm an introverted person. I certainly enjoy hanging out with other people, but I prefer more intimate settings than the stress of trying to talk to a bunch of new people while trying to keep an out-of-control toddler from running into the road. It just wasn't the right situation for me in which to make new friends. Then I realized that, in many ways, I was also attempting to force myself into that stereotyped role. There was no reason to conform because other people claimed it would make me happy.

Eliza and I survived the winter, which initially intimidated me, having to keep my active girl more confined to our house. We had swimming classes and library storytime and many visits to the train table at Barnes & Noble to keep us busy, and with spring beginning to peep through our windows, a much wider world of activity opens up to us. (I should mention that I am always looking for free/super cheap activities for us to do -- there's plenty of indoor opportunities available if you're willing to cough up the dough.) And I'm happy. I know how I make friends and will allow those opportunities to unfold organically, rather than force them. I'm listening to my heart about this, and if there is one thing God wants to keeping beating over my head, it's that there are a million ways to live a life. Listen to your heart and live yours.

Gratitude

I'm giving up blogs for Lent...

... and devoting that extra time to blogging myself. Every time I read one I realize how much I actually want to write one, and really, I have no excuses to not join the Mommyblogger Crusades. I stay at home with my twenty-months-tomorrow daughter, and she both naps and enjoys watching an inordinate amount of freight train enthusiast videos on YouTube.

This blog is going to be private for a while, at least until I can prove to myself that I'll keep it up. It is also intended to document the life before our second baby and our preparations for him/her, but at this moment, I'm not pregnant and don't want to make our trying-to-conceive journey public fodder... at least not yet. This is the first month that we are actually going to try to get pregnant... the last few were let's-see-what-happens and apparently, we need to step it up a notch.

But in the meantime, here we are on a gray March day. The Stig is upstairs fussing toward napdom, I am feeling discombobulated as I recover from a really bad cold, and the house, as usual, is too cluttered to my liking. Here is my fortunate, messy life, and I invite you (eventually) to come along for the ride.