How are we going to do this?

Well, here I am.

I'm home alone with a broken ankle. Okay, I'm not totally alone. Andrew is here with me. But Mom went home this morning, and William isn't due home from summer camp for another two hours. Andrew's great and all, but he's not really much help around the house. It is All Me right now.

It's a little scary.

Here's my set-up: I'm sitting in the big arm chair in the family room, with my foot propped up on a pillow on the ottoman. Andrew is sitting in the Peg Perego stroller next to the ottoman. He's not a big fan of having to hang out in the stroller, but it reclines, so it's his only option for getting a nap right now. I can't stand up and lift him in and out of the Pack'n'Play or the swing, so the stroller is it. I've got the laptop here, with the house phone and the cell phone next to me. On the advice of my friend Kimberly, Mom bought me an apron with deep pockets, so I can carry things when I'm crutching around. We put a plastic tub of diaper-changing supplies behind my chair, so I can get out and change Andrew on the floor; I've got a footstool back there, too, so I can hopefully get up and down by using that. I can push the stoller into the kitchen when I'm on crutches, as long as I don't get too ambitious or move too fast. And I think I can get down on the ottoman and get Andrew out of the stroller and down into the bouncy seat by the coffee table. This will be much easier once I can put some weight on my foot, but I think I can manage until then.

Everything's just going to be a little more time-consuming and complicated than it usually is.

Whew. I remember feeling a little bit (okay, a lot) of cabin fever after I got home from the hospital after having a c-section. A few days at home, and I was ready to get out again. I have now been inside my house for almost a week. I've actually been housebound longer than I was when I was post-op then. Because at least then I could go out and get the mail. I'm not about to navigate our front stairs on crutches. So, here I am. It's miserably hot out there, so I guess I'm not missing much. I'm feeling a little guilty because I had hoped to do all this stuff with William this summer, to make up for lying on the bathroom floor in front of the toilet for so much of last summer. But this summer, I'm just stuck in the house.

A couple of friends have offered to come by tomorrow to visit, and I'm going to take them up on that. Mary Clare actually offered to come by early this afternoon, but given that today was her first (half) day back at work after finishing maternity leave, I really wanted her to go home and be with her family. I think I can make do until Diane brings William home. Then we'll wait for David to come home from work.
Tomorrow will be another adventure. It will be my first day without Mom here to help me get up and about. We'll see how it goes. What's really scaring me is the thought of next week. Next week, William doesn't have summer camp. He'll be home all day with me and the baby. It will be me with my bum leg and the baby who can't sit up by himself yet but weighs at least 15 pounds and my bouncing-off-the-walls four-year-old. Good times, huh?

I'm still feeling grateful that I didn't have to have surgery, and I'm still relieved that Andrew didn't get hurt. But I'm starting to worry about how long I'm going to have to stay off my right foot...how long I'm going to have to do all this. If I knew it wasn't much longer, I think I could feel better about coping in the short run. As David said, we know this is temporary. I just don't know how temporary, and that's the problem. Y'all know me. I like to have a Plan. Plans need more definite paramaters than this. You know, like an end date. This is my OCD kicking in, I guess.

But hey, at least Andrew finally fell asleep in the big stroller. Hopefully we can make this work...at least until we don't have to anymore.

Baptism photo

Photo of the boys from Andrew's baptism!



Didn't they all look so handsome? I am very proud of my boys. Please note that William is holding the special candle that they gave to us from the baptism ceremony. No, he didn't get to hold it until after I blew out the flame.

I'll post more pictures from the baptism when I can. My foot hurts because I can't keep it propped up when I'm using this computer, and it's been a long day anyway. Also, I need David to chaperone me while I crawl up the stairs, and he's ready for me. Maybe tomorrow I'll feel like sitting here at the desk and posting some more photos.

My first (and hopefully last) broken bone

I would like to encourage all of you women out there to start working on your upper body strength immediately. Go to the gym and do some triceps exercises, or get some cans of soup and start doing biceps curls at home, or better yet, start rowing. Or all of the above.

Why? Well, you never know when you are going to have to drag yourself up a big long flight of stairs. Multiple times. Like for instance, the flight of stairs in my house, which has 17 steps. Seventeen tall steps.

That's how I'm getting back and forth between the first floor and the second floor of my house these days, thanks to a broken ankle that has severely curtailed my ability to get around. As in, I can barely get around at all. I've got a big heavy boot on my right foot but I can't put any weight on it, so even with my crutches, there's only so much I can do. Heaven forbid we have any kind of emergency while I'm in this state.

Let me start at the beginning for those of you who haven't heard the story yet.

We had Andrew baptized on Sunday at our church here in Nashville. It was wonderful. My father-in-law, who has been ill, was able to be the presenting elder for Andrew, and it was Aaron who carried his baby grandson out into the congregation during the service. William walked down off the stage and joined them to help introduce Andrew to all the church members. The sight of Aaron carefully navigating the center aisle with Andrew in one arm and holding William's hand with his other will surely stay with everyone who saw it for a long, long time. The pastor who baptized Andrew leaned over to me and told me what a beautiful image it was. It really was. We're not allowed to take photos in church, so I stared as hard as I could to burn the image into my brain. Since Daddy baptized William, it was really nice to have Aaron involved in Andrew's baptism.

Afterward, we had a family luncheon at our house. After dessert, David passed Andrew over to me so I could go feed him. I took Andrew, turned around and fell over the open dishwasher door. Trying desperately not to fall and slam Andrew's head into the counter, I somehow managed to twist and contort and fall to the ground with him in my arms. However, I managed to twist and contort and break my right ankle on the way down. Scared to death that I'd catastrophically injured my son, I screamed and cried in hysterics. I pulled Andrew away from my chest, and I saw that he was wailing, which I dimly registered was a good sign. David took Andrew and examined him, while I remained on the floor and....well, freaked out about Andrew. Others immediately got ice for my foot and propped it up on a pillow. When we saw how swollen my foot was and I couldn't put any weight on it, we realized it was time to visit the ER.

Long story short, I have a spiral fracture of the right distal fibula, or a frature in the smaller of the two leg bones down by my ankle. The ER doctor put a boot on it and sent me home with instructions to elevate it and stay off of it. A subsequent visit to an orthopedist yesterday resulted in a new, better-fitting boot...and instructions to elevate my foot and stay off of it until I go back for another appointment in about two weeks.

So I'm more or less immobile. Right now I'm sprawled here on a chair in the family room with my booted foot propped up on a cushion. My friend Del posted a line from "A Christmas Story" on my Facebook page today: "Randay lay there like a slug. It was his only defense." I can't even tell you how much I feel like Randy right now...only without the heavy snowsuit. My poor mother is now waiting on me hand and foot, almost literally. I can hobble around on the crutches, but I'm not very good at it, and I've also managed to strain a couple of muscles in my chest from the effort and bruise the insides of both arms from the armrests of the crutches. Also, I can't get myself up and down the stairs except by sitting on my bottom, like a hesitant toddler, and dragging myself with my arms. It's slow and awkward. I'm trying to only make the round trip once a day so as not to completely wear myself out. (Hence my instructions at the beginng of this post.) Taking a shower is also an adventure. Mom's out looking for a stool or chair we can put in the shower so I don't have to stand on one leg and try to wash my hair. It's one thing to pretend to be a flamingo on dry ground; it's a whole other thing to attempt to do it in a slipper shower, you know?

Anyway, the good news is that I won't need surgery on my ankle. I won't have to worry about feeding Andrew formula from a bottle for a few days while taking pain medication for the surgery, either, which was actually much more of a concern for me than the actual going under the knife part. He's had exactly one bottle in his whole life, and he's never had formula, and I was dreading the thought of having to introduce both at the same time to him. Longtime TPinaP readers will remember the, um, adventures that we had in getting William to take a bottle when he was a baby, and I just couldn't imagine doing that right now with Andrew, not when I'm already a little stressed out from my injury. So I'm trying to get by with plain old Motrin or Advil for pain relief instead of a narcotic as it is, so I won't have to pump and dump. (If you don't know what that means, just be glad. Anyone who's ever uttered the phrase "there's no use crying over spilled milk" has never tried to pump breastmilk, let's just say that.). Most of the time, it's okay. I asked David last night if it was normal that my ankle was hurting, and he looked at me like I was nuts. "Um, yeah," he said. "You have a broken bone!" Heh. Yeah, that's right.

The challenge from here on out is going to be trying to be a mom. I can't walk. I can't drive. We're not sure when I'll be able to do either, but it'll probably be at least a few weeks. I might be able to put my foot down for balance in another week or so, but we don't know for sure. It will depend on how fast I heal and what I can tolerate. Diane is going to help as much as she can, and a couple of friends have also offered to help out when they can after Mom has to go home on Monday. What I could use is a dumb waiter. You know, one of those devices in old hotels and houses where you can stick something in a little compartment and then lower it up and down on a pulley, almost like a mini elevator for your stuff. I could put Andrew in that, and lower him down to the first floor in the morning and then up again in the evening, while I haul myself up and down the stairs with my arms. (I'd better get some fabulous arm muscles out of this.)

Or a magic wand would be good, too.

This is my first broken bone, incidentally. Hopefully, it will be my last!

Quick photo of Andrew being adorable

Seriously, how cute is this picture?



I know! Andrew adores being changed, weirdly enough. You put him down on the changing table and he just lights up. He wriggles around and smiles and giggles. So I snapped this picture right around the time that David was getting him ready for bed the other night.

Isn't he just delicious? Andrew, I mean. David's pretty cute, too, though.

Nighty night? Not so fast...

So. Tired. So. Freaking. Tired.

I read an article a couple of months ago that said that people who don't get enough sleep have a harder time losing weight. The threshold was something like seven or eight hours of sleep per night, on average.

Ha HA! I laughed so hard at that, I nearly fell of my chair. When was the last time I got seven or eight uninterrupted hours of sleep? I'll tell you. It was about a year ago. Because once I became pregnant, the All Day-All Night Ugliness set in at about five or six weeks. And that meant that I was nauseated and/or puking at night. And then, even after that lessened (read: got a little better but did not go away entirely), I had to get up and use the bathroom four or five times per night. And no, that's not an exaggeration. That lasted throughout the whole pregnancy. Then I had, you know, the baby. That was in late February, and well, here we are. No wonder I'm not able to lose the rest of this baby weight. No wonder these pounds are stubbornly clinging to my hips and stomach and waist--and well, everywhere, let's be honest--no matter how many miles I log on the treadmill at the Y. My body's too stressed from exhaustion to let go of the pounds.

Now, to be fair to Andrew, he did sleep through the night a few times. He's done it at least eight or nine times, in fact. It wasn't reliable at all. You couldn't predict it. But after a couple of rocky nights in a row, usually he'd throw in a really good night, just to keep us from completely going insane. The trouble is, he's not doing it anymore. About ten or twelve days ago, he started doing this horrible multiple-times-per-night-wakeup routine.

It goes something like this:

Andrew goes to bed in his crib, approximately 9 p.m.
Andrew wakes up, crying, approximately 12:15 p.m. [Last night, it was 11:40. But I digress.]
Jennifer or David stumbles down the hall to give him a binky and returns to bed.
Andrew wakes up again, crying, approximately 1:30 p.m.
Jennifer and/or David attempt to rebink him, which lasts approximately 20-30 minutes.
Andrew objects again, around 2 a.m.
Jennifer nurses him.
Jennifer puts him down in his crib again, around 2:20 a.m.
Andrew wakes up, crying because he's spun himself around in his crib and now his head is wedged up against the crib side, approximately 3:30 a.m.
Jennifer spins him sideways and rebinks him for good measure, then flops back into bed.
Andrew is mad again, 4:45 a.m.
David and Jennifer both wake up and hope that he stops crying on his own accord. No such luck. One of them goes in there to deal with him.
5:40 a.m.-ish, Andrew's ready to eat again. Often, he's also mad that his feet have gotten stuck in between the slats of the crib rail.
Jennifer nurses him from the comfort of her own bed, and they fall asleep together.
6 a.m. David gets up and gets in the shower.
6:10ish, William makes the first of a half-dozen entrances into the room to see if everyone's awake and ready to talk to him.
The baby stays mostly asleep until about 7 a.m., then begins wiggling incessantly.
William continues to pop in and out, slamming the door loudly after himself.
Jennifer finally gives up the ghost and stumbles downstairs for a Diet Coke, between 7:15 and 8 a.m. depending on when she has to get up anyway.

Sephora is now selling Yves St. Laurent's vaunted Touche Eclat concealer. I saw it yesterday. It might be worth the $40, frankly, to cover up these ginormous dark circles that are now taking up half my face.

Everyone keeps telling me that this, too, shall pass. Yeah, it's the mantra of all exhausted mothers of new babies. I just wish it would go ahead and pass already! I remember when William was a baby and still not sleeping through the night, and another mother told me that she dearly loved her baby, but she'd love him a lot more if she didn't have to see him so much during the middle of the night. And I knew exactly what she meant. I'm sort of feeling that way myself right now. I loooooove Andrew. Want to eat him up with a spoon. But oh, I'd love it if he'd give me a night off here and there...

Compare and contrast

People around here are always saying how much Andrew looks like William. At first, he really didn't, but as he gets older, I can see more of a resemblance. They'll never be mistaken for each other, but you can definitely tell they're brothers.

Here is a Compare and Contrast for you.

Andrew, today, at three months (and one day):



William at three months, July 22, 2006:



I tried really hard to get Andrew to smile so the photos would be more comparable, but he wasn't interested. He really is a smiley little guy these days, but well, you can pose a baby but you can't make him smile on cue.

Looking at these pictures, they don't look that much alike here. I have some other photos of these two in similar poses and outfits in which they resemble each other more. I'll post those another time.

Three months

Today is Andrew's three-month birthday. Happy birthday, little man!

I'm not sure how three months passed so quickly. I guess time flies when you're not puking anymore.

We did not do anything particularly special today. I took the boys to the YMCA so I could work out. They both went to the children's area, which William adores and Andrew doesn't seem to mind. That's about the extent of our day. I did some work. William watched "Word Girl." Andrew slept in the swing.

Really, I can't believe that three months have gone by since I gave birth to Andrew. It seemed like William's first three months lasted much longer. But then, I was living in 29 Palms then, and it was summertime and blazingly, eyeball-searingly hot, and time just seemed to pass more slowly then anyway. These past three months have passed in a quick blur of hauling everyone back and forth to Westminster, honestly. Preschool, church, committee meetings, etc. I've joked in the past that I ought to have a cot set up somewhere in the church, and well, I'm only halfway kidding sometimes.

But seriously, three months just went by, snap, just like that. Andrew's outgrown most of the three-month clothes and is well on his way to wearing six-month outfits. He's been sleeping in his own room now for a couple of weeks. I'm about ready to return the cradle to Shab and all the maternity clothes I borrowed to their rightful owners. Three months, done. What's that expression about how the days are long but the weeks are short? The three months really did fly by.

Stay tuned. I hope to post some compare-and-contrast photos of William and Andrew soon....

William's Word Nemesis

We have found William's word nemesis.

It's "ravioli." It has all the sounds that he has trouble with: R, V, and L.

It sounds like "wabb-ee-oo-wee" when he says it. He can get the "v" sound if he slows down and is careful, which improves it to "wavv-ee-oo-wee."

It's pretty cute, him enunciating as carefully as he can. He can get the "r" and "l" sounds better, too, if he takes the time, but he usually doesn't. I mean, why bother? Usually, he's only saying "ravioli" if we're having ravioli, so there's context working for him.

For the record, the school district's speech pathologist wasn't worried about these little articulation issues when she evaluated him earlier this spring through the gifted-and-talented program. She said it's pretty normal for a child his age, and she expects them to resolve as he gets older. I know that I had trouble with the "l" sound myself as a little girl; I used to call myself "JJ Warson." And I eventually outgrew it, so I'm not worried about William, either.

Maybe I'll just serve a lot of "wabb-ee-oo-wee" and let him practice...

P.S. I have a word nemesis, too. And I'm 35. My word nemesis is actually a phrase nemesis. It's "lawn mower." I can't seem to quite say "mower" right, unless I say it very slowly and exaggerate it. I say "lawn more." However, I think this may be a Southern thing. Sort of like "bold shrimp."

All things tend toward chaos

I was talking to another mom at the mall today, and when I was admiring her teeny little ten-week old baby daughter, I noticed something. Everything that the mom had for her baby matched...or at least all of it coordinated. The pink-and-white flowered (and monogrammed) diaper bag coordinated perfectly with the lace-edged pink blanket. The baby's outfit matched her hat. The outfit and the blanket and the hat all looked lovely and coordinated against the backdrop of the tasteful charcoal gray infant car seat and stroller. Even the mom was dressed in a lovely outfit that seemed to go perfectly with her child; she wore a really pretty white tunic, with dark jeans, silver sandals and silver jewelry.

By contrast, Andrew's set-up was a total hodgepodge. He was wearing a sweet little Kissy Kissy romper printed with sailboats, but it clashed jarringly against the brown, aqua, and cream polka-dot-and-stripe pattern of his car seat. Which in turn did not match the black Snap n' Go stroller frame. He did have a nice little white blanket, but geez, how hard is it to throw a white blanket on your baby? And then he had his pacifier clip, which is white-and-blue. He had everything he needed, but he sure wasn't going to win any style points. Or, should I say, I am not going to win any style points, since I was responsible for all of it. Oh yeah, we haven't even gotten to my ensemble. I was wearing an orange t-shirt, khaki cargo pants, and green sandals. Not even delicate pretty sandals, either. No, I was wearing my big old clunky Keens. And my glasses, which are scratched. Of course.

Together, we looked like the Before picture in a Before-and-After photo spread for a makeover feature in a women's magazine. Some editor would be slapping little black bars across our faces.

This might have bothered me a few years ago. However, at some point, I had to come to terms with reality. And for me, reality is the fact that I am just never going to be all perfectly turned out. I'm never going to be one of those women who never has a hair out of place (good Lord, no, not with this hair). I'm never going to be one of those women whose clothes are always neatly pressed, without any wrinkles or strings hanging off. I may start out looking nice and neat in the morning, but eventually my true self wins out, and I start looking a little frazzled.

I am about to do something fairly unusual in a parenting blog. I'm about to talk about physics. My reason will be very clear, however. You see, in physics, one of the laws of thermodynamics posits that all things tend toward chaos. That about sums me up in a nutshell. Really, I'm okay with this. At some point, you have to accept the truth about yourself. The truth was out there. And for me, the truth meant wild hair and the odd Diet Coke stains on my shirt.

And for better or for worse, I am passing this little, er, characteristic on to my children, too. For example, I have big messy hair. William has big messy hair. Probably, Andrew will have big messy hair. I tend to spill food on my clothes. William tends to do the same. I'll hazard a guess that Andrew will eventually do it, too. You can see where I'm going with this. My poor kids never had a chance. David may be all nice and neat and orderly most of the time--and he really is, it's pretty amazing--but in the universe, chaos tends to win out over order, and that's how it seems to be developing for our offspring, too. Granted, Andrew can still blame me for anything right now--he's not choosing his own outfits, after all--but I think the handwriting is on the wall, just the same.

No, I'm just never going to be perfectly turned-out, no matter how hard I try. And neither are my kids. Luckily, they're boys. People seem to have lower standards about these things for boys. And whew, I'm kinda glad. I'd feel a little bad about setting a daughter up for that life... at least, until she was old enough to come to terms with it for herself! Maybe people will think that it's charming in my boys. Or maybe they'll marry someone one day who can reign it in...a little bit.

School's out

Today was William's last day of three-year-old preschool. Wow. It doesn't even seem possible that the school year is over. And it really doesn't seem possible that he's through with his first year of preschool.

And yet, today, when I picked him up, he climbed up into the minivan with all this end-of-the-year stuff. His spare set of clothes. His school photos. A large envelope of art projects. A little treat (bubbles) from his teachers.

I guess my having a baby in February is probably responsible for my feeling like the year just sped up all of a sudden. I mean, Andrew is twelve weeks old today. How did THAT happen? And yet, he is. And William's finished with three-year-old preschool. He has a two-and-a-half week break before summer day camp starts.

Insert cliche here about time flying, yadda yadda yadda.

Somthing I've started doing recently is musing over what I remember about being William's age. My memories are rather vague between the ages of three and four; undoubtedly some of what I remember is probably just things that my parents have told me. But I can remember a lot more about my life, more clearly, starting at about age four. I remember moving to Birmingham, just a week or two after my fourth birthday. I remember racing into my new room and bouncing on the bed. I remember starting kindergarten at our church a few weeks after that.

I wonder if William will remember all the things that he's experiencing now. Will he remember what it was like when he visited me in the hospital and met Andrew for the first time? Will he be able to tell Andrew one day what life was like when Andrew was a baby? Will he remember the flood? Will he remember playing Batman on the playground with his buddies in preschool? Will he remember the bouncy house at his birthday party? Or will his memories be supplemented with my memories, with the stories that we will tell him, and with photographs?

I guess that's why I write these things down.

Speaking of writing things down, I posted this little exchange on Facebook yesterday, but I thought it was funny enough to preserve for posterity here...

William: "Do you know what tofu is?

Me: "Yes."

William: "It's a Presbyterian's favorite food."

Me: "Oh yeah? Tofu? Are you sure?"

William: "Yes, because Presbyterians don't eat meat."

Me: "Hmm. Are you sure you don't mean vegetarians?"

William: "Oh. Yeah. Vegetarians."

Me: "What do you think a Presbyterian's favorite food is?"

William: "I don't know. [Pause] Carrots?"

Big Kids

When I was pregnant, I optimistically thought I'd give the whole baby-wearing thing a shot, at least some of the time. Knowing that I wanted to try out a couple of different kinds with my soon-to-be-second-child, a friend sent to me a couple of her slings. She'd given up on using them with her daughter and wanted someone to get some use out of them.

Now, I did try carrying William around in a ring sling for a little while when he was an infant. But he rapidly got so heavy that it hurt my neck and shoulders. By the time he was about three-and-a-half months old, I'd given up on the fabric sling altogether and only occasionally deployed the (sturdier) Baby Bjorn.

But I figured that my second child might not be as big or as heavy as William, so why not give it a second try?

Ha. Ha ha ha ha ha!



See, even Andrew's laughing at that! Ha, ha, funny Mommy! She's so naive and optimistic!

Just for kicks, we weighed our younger child last week. In a diaper and onesie, Andrew weighed...wait for it...15 pounds and four ounces. Now, David is quick to add that Andrew had just eaten and may have had a slightly wet diaper. But still. I know people whose babies didn't weigh 16 pounds until they were a year old, and our kid's going to weigh 16 pounds (or possibly more) by the time he's four months old.

Good grief.

So naturally, people look at Andrew, see his (admittedly quite adorable) chunky little body and chubby arms and legs and figure that he's older than he really is. They tend to ask me, "How old is he?" and seem to expect me to answer, "Oh, he's almost six months old" or something to that effect. (He also holds his head up better than a lot of babies his age. He's so Advanced! He's so Above Average! Call Garrison Keillor!)



So when I say, "He's eleven weeks old," they tend to blink. "Really?" they say, with a slight shake of their heads in disbelief. "Wow..." No one has actually said, "Are you sure?" to me yet, but I can hear them thinking it. For the record, I'm pretty sure how old he is. I was there, after all.

Yes, I grow big kids. I don't know what it is, but I grow big kids. You might not know it to look at David and me, but we have Big Kid DNA in us somewhere.

I took this picture of Andrew snuggling on his daddy's chest for a nap this afternoon,

and it was not lost on me that they may not be able to do this too much longer. He may be too heavy pretty soon. He's already about too heavy now for me to do this. When I was pregnant, I had a belly full of baby compressing my lungs. And now that he's on the outside, if I have him lying on my chest, he compresses my lungs that way, too. Ooof. I'm not sure, actually, how David managed to sleep this way.

Aw, but Andrew's such a sweetie pie, I promise. There's just more of him to love.




Speaking of big kids, you all know that my actual big kid turned four last month. But with all the other stuff going on (hello, massive flood), we just got around to taking him to the pediatrician for his four-year well-child appointment. He is wonderfully healthy, fortunately, and doing just fine.



And yes, William is big, too. For the record, William is a little over 41 inches tall and 42 pounds. That puts him in about the 75th and 90th percentiles respectively for height and weight. Which is about where he's been most of his life, albeit a little higher up on the curve in both categories this time. No surprises there.

Me and my gigantic, albeit adorable and wonderful, boys:


But all joking aside, I'm glad that both my boys are healthy and happy. I may joke around about how big they are, but I'm really lucky that both of them are thriving. Too often, I hear about babies who aren't so big and healthy, and I always have a moment where I think about how thankful I am for my children's good fortune. I could be sitting by an isolette in a NICU somewhere, and thank God that I'm not. If I get a little backache from carrying around a heavy baby, well, that's just not that big a deal in the greater scheme of things.

Happy Mother's Day

Yes, we survived the Great Nashville Flood of 2010. Yes, we know how extremely lucky we are. Our little subdivision somehow escaped the floodwaters, even though most of the rest of our suburb was underwater. On the whole, Nashville will never be the same, and after seeing what the flood did to this whole region, I don't think I will be quite the same, either. I've never seen such devastation in person before.

More on that later. (Or if you want to read more about it now, go over to my other blog.)

For now, I just wanted to wish all you mothers out there a Happy Mother's Day, with a special heartfelt wish to my own mother. (To Judi: Happy Mama's Day. I love you. Thanks for being my mommy and putting up with me all these years. Love, me.) And to my mother-in-law, thank you for doing such a good job raising your son so that I would have such a terrific man to marry.

Me and the boys today, in front of my dogwood tree, which I've decided is going to be the official Mother's Day photo spot:



And a quick shot that I got before we left for church. I wanted to make sure I at least attempted to get some pictures of them while they were both still relatively clean:

A few new Andrew photos

Drive-by posting to show off how unreasonably cute my younger son is.

This is a snapshot that technically I should not have taken because I took it at the photo studio when I was having his portrait made. I didn't realize I wasn't allowed to. I took it after the photographer did his thing, though, and I bought a ton of photos from him, so I'm not feeling too guilty. Sorry it's sideways.



I was hoping for just one good photo of Andrew so that he won't whine in 25 years that I didn't get his picture taken nearly as often as I did for his big brother. Luckily, we got several, plus we got some cute ones of Andrew and William together, so I am looking forward to getting those. I need to buy a bunch of frames now.

And these are two photos taken less than 30 minutes ago. Andrew was laughing at the bears hanging from the Pack'n'Play. Somewhere around here, I have an almost identical picture of his big brother at the same age doing the same thing.





He's starting to smile a lot more often, which is both marvelous and reassuring. Also, look how giant he is! Last week, he had his two-month well-baby visit, and he weighed 13.2 pounds! He was a smidge over 23 inches long, too. I don't know how I grow such giant babies, but there you go. I'm two for two.

Oh, yes. Pictures of William turning four are coming soon. He doesn't have his four-year well-child visit in about two weeks, so I won't have vital stats on him again until then. He's pretty hale and hearty, though.

Birthday Eve

It was four years ago today that my water broke as I was lying in bed in our little house in the desert. I got up, emailed my doctor to check in with her (and yes, this is STILL a major subject of discussion in my family), and got dressed. Then I drove myself to the hospital, knowing that the next time I returned to my house, my life would have irrevocably changed.

Interestingly, April 21 is not only the day that I went into labor with William, but also that Remus and Romulus founded Rome.

Yeah, I know. I just heard a collective "huh?" from all of you. Well, as you all know, I got an iPhone right before Andrew was born. And I've become addicted to finding cool new applications, or "apps", for my phone. One of the newest ones that I uploaded is a "what happened on this day in history" app, and I looked up William's birthday. But since it pops up on the current date, I just glanced at today before scanning forward for tomorrow's info. That's how I know about Rome. And now you know, too. Don't you feel all intellectually edified now? You can say you learned something on the Interwebs today.

But anyway. So as it turns out, William shares a birthday with a very interesting and divergent group of folks. On the list are Immanuel Kant the philosopher, Vladimir Lenin, the physicist Robert Oppenheimer, TV mogul Aaron Spelling, Jack Nicholson, Louise Gluck the contemporary poet, film guy John Waters, and Boston Red Sox manager Terry Francona.

Kind of appropriate that he was born on the birthday of one of my favorite poets and of the manager of David's favorite sports team, huh? Not so sure of the significance of sharing a birthday with someone like Lenin, though. Oh well.

I just asked the soon-to-be-birthday boy how he feels about turning four years old tomorrow. "I think I'm pretty excited," he reported, before immediately chattering on about the Lego castle game that he's currently obssesed with. And then I had to listen to an earful about the evil wizard and the king and all those guys.

A better question may be how do I feel about my baby turning four years old? I feel pretty good, to be honest. In some ways, it's hard to believe that he's four, but in other ways, I'm really really glad. He may be wild and crazy sometimes (er, often), but he's really a person--a person with thoughts and opinions that sometimes really surprise and delight me.

A little while ago, he brought to me a picture that he had created from construction paper, stickers and markers. On the back, he had painstakingly written his name in blue crayon.

"I couldn't make the M for Mommy," he said, showing me the end of his name, which looked sort of like Willian, instead of William.

But he had written it all by himself. And that, to me, is a prime example of one of the things that I enjoy about watching him grow up. It's a little intimidating knowing that he's going to remember things from here on out--it raises the bar on me and my behavior, which is a little scary--but I think it's worthwhile.

Plus, he gets to experience life with a baby brother, which, I might add, he seems to be thoroughly enjoying...

Super Brudders!

I mean, seriously. Does it get any better than this?



There are days when I am frazzled from trying to manage two boys. Since Andrew is both preverbal and not mobile yet, it's not that hard. It's really more of a matter of managing William while trying to feed and change the baby...or keep William from waking the baby up. I feel like I spend an inordinate amount of time saying things like, "William, stop it!" Or "Gentle, please. GENTLE! I said, GENTLE!!" And "Please do not cough on the baby/kiss him when you've been eating peanut butter/crush him when you kiss him by throwing all 41 pounds of your weight on top of him." (Okay, I'm paraphrasing there at the end.)

But then there are times when it is so incredibly sweet to have my two boys that I get all choked up.



I took a whole series of pictures of the boys in their superheroes outfits, which their Uncle Mark bought for them. Not only did the photos turn out well, but it was so much fun actually taking them! Amazingly, William was very cooperative and even helped "pose" his baby brother. I was saying things like, "William, turn him this way. No, a little more to the right. Okay, that's good. Now, look at me, and smile. That's great! Can you look at him now?" and so on. He was very patient with me.



It was so worth the effort. Even Andrew had a good time.



They really are Super Brudders. Er, Super Brothers.

Grateful

Someone recently commented to me that every pregnancy is different. True. I have to add to that that every situation after the birth is different, too.

I was worried that I was going to feel really depressed after Andrew was born because of how I felt after William was born. I didn't write much about it on this blog, but that was a really hard time for me. As it turns out, I'm enjoying this post-partum experience a lot more than I did when William was a new baby.

When William was born, we were living in California, in a tiny little town, and we were very isolated. We didn't have any family around, and my friends from work lived at least an hour away and couldn't just drop by and say hello. We didn't really have close friends who lived in town, either. So it was just David and me. Once David returned to work, it was just me and this tiny little baby alone together. And I was unsure of myself as a parent, and I was so lonely. There was really nowhere for us to go, and there was nothing for us to do. I tried valiantly to manufacture things for us to do, just to get myself out of the house and in contact with other people, but it was hard. I just felt so alone. I went from working 50 or 60 hours a week at the newspaper to hanging out in my small house with this tiny person who didn't talk. It was like slamming on the brakes, and that alone would have been a major adjustment. The loneliness made it that much worse, though. We didn't have a church there, so we didn't have people coming by to visit, or the pastor coming by to call, or ladies bringing us casseroles. We got by, in those early weeks, on Stouffers' frozen stirfry (I think...I've blocked a lot of it out, and David's not enirely sure now, either) and Papa John's pizza. It was just us and William. All the time.

Eventually I did make some friends through the breastfeeding support group at the military hospital, and that was really my saving grace. Friends like Jennifer and Beth joined my life later on that year, and suddenly my situation vastly improved. I still lived in a tiny little desolated town, but at least I had really nice people to eat lunch with or hang out with at the park at last. And that was fun. But until I made those friends, it was a very hard time for me.

This time, it was so different.

When I was in labor at the hospital, I had people checking in with me via email and Facebook. But I even had a friend, Patrice, actually drop by my hospital room to say hello and to bring me an armload of magazines. The day after Andrew was born, another friend, Cyndee, dropped by to bring me a giant cherry limeade from Sonic on the way to take her daughter to school. My pastor Guy came by to visit and have a prayer with us. My husband's office sent flowers. My mother-in-law Diane came by, with William in tow. My friend Mary Clare came to see us (despite being 38 weeks pregnant herself). Kathleen came by after work. Dad came to spend a few hours with us and arrived with a bag of gifts for William, Andrew and me. The next day, Shab, Jennifer, and Jerri all came to visit, and so did Mark and Jen. Another pastor came by to see us. Every time I turned around, someone was stopping by to give us hugs and to coo over Andrew. We got phone calls. We got emails. The church choir sent flowers to our house. People left us messages. Some of the women from church banded together and bought me a special gift through our children's school auction.

Then, when we arrived home from the hospital, the March of the Church Ladies began. Our friend Fran came by the next afternoon with dinner for our whole family. I think David nearly cried in gratitude over the first hot meal he'd eaten in weeks--I, er, didn't do a lot of cooking those last couple of months of my pregnancy, and I guess the constant PBJs got a little old. And every few days for the next five weeks, someone arrived with a meal for us. Rather than trying to hobble around my kitchen to put together something to eat, all I had to do was stick whatever arrived in the oven or microwave. And presto, a delicious meal. And lots of brownies, too. I could have written poetry about how great it was to have someone make food for us.

I was overwhelmed with people's generosity. Still am, in fact. I told my Bible study class that I'd never felt so cared for in my entire life. I didn't feel alone. I felt surrounded by people who cared about us and our family, and it was such an amazing gift. Especially in contrast with what I felt the last time around. When I think about it, this sense of gratitude just wells up inside me. And I keep fervently thinking, "Thank you. Thank you."

So yeah, I'm tired. I wish that I was getting more sleep. But every time the exhaustion threatens to wipe me out, I do have to step back and remember just how good I've had it this time. Because I have. And I am so lucky.

And I'm really really lucky for these:

Charlotte's Web

When Andrew was born, I wanted to find some way to preserve some special time with William that would be just William-and-Mommy time. I didn't want William to feel like I no longer had time just for him, or that he'd been replaced. It's hard to be the big sibling when everyone's all excited about the new baby, as I well remember from becoming a big sister at about the same age that William is now, and I wanted to be sensitive to his feelings.

So finally I hit on an idea. I took him to the bookstore and bought a copy of "Charlotte's Web." I told him that we'd read a chapter or two together every night before bedtime. It's supposed to be our time together. Occasionally, however, Andrew has intruded, but William has been very gracious about it. We've ended up all curled up on William's bed, with me nursing the baby and the book propped up between us.

We didn't have time to read a chapter last night, so I volunteered to read one this afternoon before naptime (naptime is no longer a regular deal in our house, either, just so you know, but William needed one today, so I insisted). Well! I don't know if it's leftover postpartum hormones, the side effects of general exhaustion or if I'm just becoming a sentimental fool in my old age, but I just barely made it through reading the chapter when Charlotte dies. I knew it was coming, and as I began reading that last paragraph about how she died after the fairgrounds were deserted and Wilbur had gone home to the barn cellar with her little sac of baby spider eggs, my voice began to wobble. My eyes teared up, and I gamely finished reading about how no one was with Charlotte when she died. Gah. I don't remember that part ever fazing me like that before. And yet, there I was, sniffling over it.

Hormones? The extra-sensitivity that motherhood brings along? Probably a little of both. I'm not a big crier, as a general rule, but sometimes I find myself getting choked up over the oddest little things. And the death scene in "Charlotte's Web" can hardly even be considered odd. It IS sad. Even William seemed sad as I tucked him into his little bed for his nap. I think he was more sad over the whole fact that she died, and there I was, feeling sad because she died all alone and never got to meet her own children. Ack. Now I'm tearing up again.

I think I'm going to go love on Andrew for a little while. Maybe he needs feeding or something.

Easter

Happy Easter, a few days late. And in honor of the celebration, here's a milestone for you. Here's our very first family picture, with all four of us:



It was a little impromptu, granted. After church on Easter Sunday a few days ago, I insisted that we try to get some photos while we were all dressed up. My mother-in-law was standing there with her camera as David and I posed with the baby, and when William ran by and decided to sit down for an instant, she snapped away. We were lucky to get a decent shot. Hopefully we can get a more posed photo at some point in the near future, but in the meantime, I'll take this one. At least we all had our eyes open. Er, well, at least all three of the people who should have had their eyes open had their eyes open.

But, never fear. I wouldn't give up that easily on getting Easter photos of both my boys with their eyes open.



See? You can't really tell from this shot, but Andrew was wearing the most adorable soft white day gown with a blue gingham bunny on the front. He had a matching bunny-adorned burp cloth. With boys, you get about two years, give or take, to take advantage of the sweet little clothes and stuff, and that's it. So I'm trying to take full advantage of this window while I can.

We had a lovely holiday, by the way. Diane held Andrew through the entire Easter service, and while he did snore lightly, he otherwise was good as gold. William stayed through the first third of the service so he could see David walk in with the choir and hear some of the brass ensemble's music. I got to get some photographs of the family, which of course made me happy because everyone knows how much I like to take pictures, and David was just glad that his voice held out through three repetitions of the Hallelujah chorus from Handel's "Messiah." Later that day, we grilled hot dogs in the backyard in honor of baseball season's Opening Day and watched the Red Sox beat the Yankees. (Woo!) Not bad.

I have a lot of other thoughts that I'd like to write about here, but I'll have to get to those a little later. It's dinnertime for me and William, and we need to eat while the baby's sleeping. Soon, Andrew will wake up, and then it will be Feeding Time for him for the next four or five hours for him...Just like his big brother, he's an evening and nightttime cluster feeder. Yay for me, right? Why yes, that was a hint of sarcasm that you detected. I keep telling myself, "This too shall pass" because I do remember William doing the same thing at Andrew's age. That does help keep things in perspective. Most of the time.

Four weeks!

I am seriously behind on this update. And the worst part is that I can't even promise you a good long one! Andrew's behind me in the crib, grunting and complaining that I never feed him.

So a couple of very quick thoughts.

First, today Andrew is four weeks old. Amazing, huh? I can't believe he's been here with us for four whole weeks. That's a month! Man, I don't miss being pregnant. I haven't been pregnant for a whole month, and that alone would be enough reason to celebrate. But hey, I also have a sweet little baby!

Second, he's about to outgrow this newborn-sized outfit!





















That was taken well over a week or so ago, I think. He's already bigger. I swear, if you stare at him long enough, you might actually see him grow.

And lastly, here's a quick photo from when Ma and Pa Larson were visiting last week:




















I do have other photos and thoughts, but like I said, angry baby in the background. So I'll have to give you a raincheck....

No sleep til...

Longtime readers of this blog might remember me writing that it's not surprising to me that sleep deprivation is frequently used as a torture technique. I believe I wrote that during the early days and nights of William's life, nearly four years ago. At the time, I think I was desperate for some sleep and nearly delirious from a lack of it.

Well, guess what, folks? It's still true! We had a rough night last night. So far, it's been a pattern of one decent night, one bad night, one okay night, one awful night. Given that Andrew won't even be two weeks old until tomorrow, I think I can understand that it would be silly to expect anything better than what we're experiencing. And that's far more perspective than I had when William was the same age. But it still doesn't make it any easier, physically speaking, to cope with a night of nearly constant wakeups, especially when I have to wincingly haul myself out of bed without aggravating the pain in my right side. Poor David had to go to work today, and I sincerely hope that he had access to some strong coffee to help him make it through the day because I don't think we even logged two cumulative hours of sleep last night.

When Jaclyn called to schedule a lunch and playdate with us today, I gratefully accepted. And I realized that we haven't taken any photos of me with Andrew since I was in the hospital, so I asked her to take a few for me. I had to put on a LOT of makeup to counter the effect of last night's marathon. Andrew, of course, looks exactly the same.






































We still adore him, of course. :)

Home for a week

We've been home from the hospital for a week now. The week went by surprisingly fast, too. David, poor guy, was running errands constantly, which left me free to stay home with Andrew, which was nice, and to rest and try to heal. So far, I think things are going pretty well; that is, we haven't experienced anything really out of the ordinary. I've got some pain in my right lower abdomen, probably from weak muscles trying to recover from a long pregnancy and the trauma of major surgery. And of course, we're trying to adjust to the return of the middle-of-the-night feedings.

We're all in love with Andrew, though. No question about that! He is chubby and pink and sweet and delicious.


















William adores his baby brother; he likes to pull a stool up to the cradle, lean over and sing "Twinkle Twinkle Little Star" to him. And should Andrew be crying or fussing, William will croon "It's okay, baby brother" to him until he can't take it anymore. Then he comes running to find me and says urgently, "Mommy, he needs you! He needs you!"
















And last night, William "read" "Goodnight Moon" to his brother, too.















We've also been extremely lucky in that we've had several people from church bring us dinner this week, freeing me from trying to think of something to make and freeing David from actually having to make it! The sheer utter luxury of having someone else make you dinner! A good dinner! Ahhh...

But I also wanted to record a few thoughts and memories from Andrew's birth and the first few days afterward, so that I can both share them with y'all and so that I have a better chance of remembering them myself, too. These may be rather stream-of-consciousness, so bear with me.

My water broke at 5:50 a.m. on Wednesday, Feb. 24. I had crept out of bed, right before David's alarm clock went off, to go to the bathroom. On the way back, I thought, "Wait..." When I was sure, a minute later, I woke David up. A flurry of activity, all pretty controlled, ensued. We got dressed, made sure our already-packed bags had everything we needed in them and then woke up William and got him dressed. We called Diane and asked if we could bring William by on the way to the hospital. When we got there, she was waiting with a travel mug full of hot coffee for David and hugs for all of us. It was cold, with the sun peeking through clouds. David and I were in a good mood, a little anxious but excited, as we arrived at the parking garage for Baptist Hospital.

A couple of hours later, I was ensconced in a labor and delivery room, hooked up to an IV, sitting up in a hospital bed and chatting with David and playing on my iPhone. We could see the city skyline out the window, and I noted that William would have loved being able to see the Batman building from my hospital room. Snow (!) began to swirl down, and I said that I could actually sit back and enjoy watching this snow, now that I was safely at the hospital and not worried about driving through it. Over the next few hours, as the Pitocin kicked in, I watched the snow drift slowly and then fall faster and faster. I posted on Facebook, texted my parents, and emailed friends and enjoyed reading all the responses come in. The CRNA came in to insert the epidural; later I had to have it reinserted. My nurse and David made sure I had plenty of ice chips (the good Sonic ice kind), and my friend Patrice, who works at the hospital, dropped by to chat for a little while.

My doctor came by to check in on me, and give me a progress report. Later that afternoon, we began the pushing process. Unfortunately, a fast-acting anesthetic agent had completely numbed everything below my bust, and my pushing was less than effective. But I tried. They turned off the epidural and let the meds wear off so I could feel again, and the pushing resumed. Only, oh my God, it hurt. And I'm no stranger to that kind of pain. I pushed for 3.5 hours with William, after all. So I kept pushing. At one point, they offered me a popsicle, and I gratefully sucked on a cherry one, then threw it up later. ("It was worth it," I said. It totally was.) After more pushing and then some more, I just didn't know if I could do it. The baby was facing up, and it's much harder to push a baby out when he's in that position, so I was having trouble moving him effectively. The doctor and David and I conferred. After one last bout of pushing, it was time for a c-section.

That's when it gets a little hazier for me. A team of people rushed into my room and began preparing me for surgery. I was moaning in pain, I remember that part pretty vividly though. They gave me an injection--a spinal?--of something in my epidural, and they put a cap on my hair, and they pushed me on a gurney down a hallway to a brightly lit (but somehow small-seeming) operating room. A couple of the people who transported me to the OR showed me the gurney where I'd be operated on, and I said that I didn't think I could get up there all by myself, and they laughed and said they'd take care of that.

I remember being relieved that my arms were not strapped or tied down after they assembled the drapes for the surgical field, and I remember David having on a surgical mask and hat. At some point, I think I asked for more oxygen, too. Then I heard a cry--Andrew! David was taking some pictures, and then they took the baby over to the warmer to check him out. He seemed great, and no one seemed worried at all. A nurse weighed him, and when David saw the weight in grams, he nearly did a double take. They called out to me that Andrew weighed 9 lbs and 4 and a quarter ounces, and all I could think was "Oh my God, I was carrying a baby that big inside me?" I mean, no wonder I felt full to the brim of baby those last few weeks; I was! The next little bit was a little hazy, too. A couple of women took me back to my L&D room, and I sent David off to the nursery with the baby. One of the nurses asked me if I'd had a late ultrasound or anything to indicate that the baby was going to be that big, and I said no, there had been no reason to have one. No one thought I would have been able to push out a baby that size in that position, at least not without some big help, which was somehow validating and reassuring.

In the L&D room, I begged for apple juice, which somehow I had gotten obsessed with at some point during the day. They said I could have a clear drink like Sprite (!) when I was moved up to my regular room, so I had to be content with that. I spent about three hours in recovery. Early on, David brought Andrew to me. It was nice and quiet, and I was still a little drowsy from the anesthesia, so it just seemed so peaceful. We curled up in my bed and I nursed him for a little while, and then we took a nice little cozy nap together, him sighing up against my chest. Eventually I went to my new room. Andrew and David went to the nursery again for a little while, and they met me in the new room. When I got there, I met my nurse and the assistant (they call them techs), and they got me settled in a bed, with my IV pole and all the tubes and stuff in the appropriate places. I asked if I could have something to drink, and they said yes, soon, and I asked about the Sprite. And that's when I got the good news that I could have my apple juice. This was extremely good news. They brought me two small cups and a cup of ice, and asked me to drink it slowly. It was the best thing I think I've ever tasted.

I don't remember much of the rest of the night, except that people checked on me nearly constantly. Blood pressure. Vital signs. Temperature. Incision. Catheter. Blood pressure again. (My blood pressure was very low and stayed low for another day, in the 80/40 range.) Lather, rinse, repeat. The next morning, I perused the room service menu for the clear liquid diet, which was all I was allowed to have. I ordered more apple juice, an Italian ice, and some chicken broth (I think). The Italian ice was tasty, but an ice and chicken broth doesn't make a very exciting breakfast. Needless to say I was delighed when my friend Cindy showed up with a 44 oz cherry limeade from Sonic that morning. She was the first of a steady stream of visitors. Diane brought William to visit, then my dad came over from Brownsville, my pastor Guy arrived, and Mary Clare came to see us. We teased MC that if the nurses got a good look at her, they might not let her leave, since she was just days away from delivering her own baby boy. Later, our friend Kathleen came by, too. The best part was seeing William meet his baby brother. He ran to the bassinette and cried, "He's adorable! Isn't he adorable?"

































Sometime around dinnertime, they finally gave me the okay to order some real food. My daytime nurse wasn't very hot on the idea of me eating yet, but the evening shift nurse thought I was ready but warned me to take it easy. Just to be on the safe side, I ordered more exciting broth, another Italian ice, iced tea, juice...and then a plate of chicken fingers. The chicken fingers were good, but nothing quite measured up to the way that apple juice had tasted the night before. Still solid food at last!

David and I talked about how tired we were, and I encouraged him to go home that night and get a decent night's sleep. Andrew's circumcision was scheduled for the next morning, so I wanted David at least to be in good shape in case it was a rough day. He hemmed and hawed, and I practically had to shove him out the door. He called me when he got home, and I told him that Andrew and I were curled up in the bed, watching the Olympics on TV and snoozing through the figure skating. That night, they took out the catheter, so I could get up and down to go the bathroom. I called the nursery and had them take Andrew for a few hours while I slept. Then they brought him to me for feeding around 2:30 or so. I put on my new pink bathrobe over my groovy hospital gown and walked him back down to the nursery myself afterward (partially because I could and also because I was curious about the nursery itself). They brought him back to me about two hours later to eat again, and then they took him back down to the nursery for rounds. Around 7:30, David burst into the hospital room when I was coming out of the bathroom and shouted, "Jennifer, where are you? Is everything okay?" And I walked out of the bathroom and was like, "I'm right here. I'm fine." And as soon as he saw me up walking around, his face relaxed. He'd been worried about leaving us and feeling guilty, but I thought and still think it was the best thing to do for all of us. Andrew was an angel, but we did have a busy day: photos of Andrew, a discharge session for parents, more visitors (Shab! Jennifer Pearson, with more cherry limeades!), Mark and Jen, the interim pastor Ben from my church). So we did just fine.

So that's the majority of the story. As you may or may not know, we came home last Saturday to a sick William, and Diane stayed with us an extra night to take care of him. But we're doing okay now, and we're just very grateful that everything turned out as well as it did.

Andrew!

Y'all, I promise promise promise to write a huge long post about this soon and tell you all about the experience. But I know I've been remiss in even just posting the big news--and it is Big News--so let me do that, for the record.

He's here! Andrew James Wyckoff made his inaugural appearance at 6:31 p.m. on Wednesday, Feb. 24. He weighed a crazy 9 pounds and 4 (and a quarter) ounces, and he was 20.5 inches long. He cried immediately to let us know he was all good, if perhaps a bit chilly.

He was born via c-section, so we stayed in the hospital a few days. All in all, it was a good experience. He's healthy and lovely, and I'm recovering without any complications.

Seconds after the birth:















Proud Papa!















Me holding Andrew (a day or so later):















Unlike his big brother, he is not a little bitty version of his daddy or his grandaddy. We're not sure yet who he resembles, but we think he's really, really cute nonetheless...















David's taking the week off, so we're spending some time bonding as a family. If you live in town, drop by and say hello!

Techno savvy

I recently read a story that discussed the technological savvy of the children who are a few years younger than the current Millennial Generation. Some researchers are tentatively calling them the iGeneration, since they have literally never known a time in which there was no instant messaging, no email, no Internet, etc.

I think William is a little too young to be considered part of the iGeneration, at least officially. But in spirit, he is right there. We have regular tussles over who gets to use the iPod Touch each morning. I like to check email and the weather after I wake up, but he's right there with his hand out. He wants to check the weather too--and watch a few scenes of either "Monsters Inc" or "Wall-E," both of which are loaded onto the device. Or listen to some music. Or play the Star Wars trench run game that his daddy downloaded for himself to play but which has captivated William.

And of course, I think I've already mentioned that William regularly speaks to his grandparents via Skype on the computer. He knows how to navigate the software, adjust the setting so that the video feed works, and make and end calls.

So it should come as no surprise to any of us, I guess, that today William informed me that he and his friends have a website for their favorite playground game, which they call "Bad Guys." William claims that he created the website. "There are lots of different episodes and videos," he tells me. "There's a game called Capture the Treasure." According to my son, there is a castle on the playground, and that's where the Bad Guys keep their computer, and of course, that's where the Bad Guys website is. Also, there are links to the PBS Kids websites, seeing as how William is a big fan of many of those already and likes to log onto the computer (by himself, natch) and play them. So I think I know where the Bad Guys website idea came from.

Geez. And when I was 3, the most technologically complex thing in our whole house was probably our rotary dial phone.

Reserved for a reason

I hope there is a special place in hell for the middle-aged white guy who flipped me off in the parking lot today at the mall.

He pulled into the vacant Expectant Mothers parking spot--which is very CLEARLY MARKED as being for expectant mothers or mothers of new babies--right as I turned into that row. As he hoppped athletically out of his sedan, I glared at him from inside the minivan and pointed to the sign. He turned around, saw the sign, and to his credit, got back in his car and pulled out of the spot. I looped around and took the spot. As I passed him, I nodded in thanks and he flipped me off. Jerk. One day, he'll have some knee or back injury and he'll want a close parking spot, and hopefully someone will be there to prevent him from getting one.

Grrr. Do NOT take the pregnant lady parking space from the pregnant lady who is a billion weeks pregnant, grouchy and can barely walk. At lunchtime. There are a few kinds of people that you don't want to mess with, and right now, I am one of them. And I weigh as much as a couple of them. Those spots are reserved for a good reason. I don't know why people insist on ignoring them when they are 1) not pregnant and 2) able-bodied. I can't decide which group of people annoys me the most when they take the pregnant lady spot: men in general (and it's never elderly men who might genuinely have trouble walking or might not have seen the reserved sign), teenagers, or well-to-do older women in luxury cars. I've seen all three of them do it. If they're not lugging around at least an extra 20 pounds directly on top of their bladder, then they can't understand why they need to back off.

Okay, rant over. Thank you for listening.

Now, we wait

I think I mentioned...or maybe I didn't...that our friends Jaclyn and Bruce helped us clear out more of the office last weekend and move the crib over from William's room. And just to be clear, people who are willing to help you disassemble and reassemble a crib all in one day? They're real friends.















William has picked out a few things and put them in the crib for his brother. I didn't realize that he'd done that, so I moved the little stuffed giraffe lovey back to his room, where it came from, only to find it in there again a few hours later. He explained that he was giving it to Baby Brother. He also carefully selected a baby blanket with frogs on it from the stash of his old blankets in the crib drawer and tossed it into the crib, too. Like I said, he's nesting.

So even if we have nothing else done, we have the crib set up and ready to go. And Shab and Santi, bless them, brought over their bassinette for us to use, too, so we even have a place for Baby Brother to sleep until we're ready to move him into his own room. Whenever that will be. The rest of the nursery can wait 'til we all have more energy.

Several friends have generously volunteered to take William for a night or two when I do go into labor, and for that, I am deeply, profoundly grateful. We've talked about how he's going to go have a sleepover with one of Mommy and Daddy's friends while we're at the hospital and tried to assuage his anxiety over that. I've notified his preschool that there may be someone else picking him up and dropping him off in the near future. And I've packed his bag, so he should be ready to go. My bag, of course, has been ready for the hospital, so I decided to go ahead and pack a bag for David, too (he said I packed him an awful lot of underpants, but what can I say, I'm used to packing for myself and a three-year-old, and that's the sort of thing you can never really have enough of. Underwear and socks.). The camera is ready, with the battery charged.

So right now, Baby Brother is in the proverbial driver's seat. All the decisions are up to him now. Now we wait. William keeps asking things like, "Is the baby going to come today?" and we keep having to say, "Well...we don't know." Not exactly the most satisfying answer, I know. Since I'm a big believer in Murphy's Law, I fully expect there to be a long wait now because we are, at last, somewhat reasonably prepared. My OB and her nurse aren't so convinced, given that I was still 4 cm dilated at yesterday's appointment but also 80 percent effaced. As the nurse said, that's about as close to being in labor as you can get without actually being in labor. Yikes.

Snow, yes. Baby, no.

NO, I have not had the baby yet.

Just wanted to clear that up right at the start, in case you were wondering. However, I am nervous about it. We keep getting all this crazy snow. Last evening, about two inches fell between 6 p.m. and 8 p.m. Then the rain and sleet arrived. I tell you, I fretted half the night away last night, worrying about getting to the hospital in that kind of weather. I kept thinking, "Please please please let me make it through this night."

I'm sure my mother-in-law, Diane, can relate. When she was pregnant with David's brother, Mark, in 1977, it was one of the snowiest Januarys that Nashville had ever experienced. My father-in-law and David had to keep getting out there and shoveling off the driveway so they'd be ready for a fast getaway to the hospital. Okay, so Aaron really did all the hard work of shoveling. David, who was almost three, used his beach pail and shovel to "help." Hey, every little bit counts, right? (Also, the notion of little toddler David out there, anxiously helping to make the driveway passable so his mommy could go give birth to his eagerly-awaited little brother gets me every time. I always say it's one of the reasons I married him. That might be a little bit of an exaggeration...maybe....) Luckily, I have not had to enlist William to shovel off our driveway. Yet. But perhaps it will stop snowing for awhile, so I won't have to worry about it.

So, yes, we have snow. No, we don't have a baby. That's the news, folks. Keep checking back.

4 cm

Ack!

So I went to the obstetrician this morning, and as it turns out, I'm already 4 cm dilated. 4 cm! Now, I realize that some women walk around for weeks, dilated like that, but last time, it took me hours on a Pitocin drip to get to that point. We may be Four Peas in a Pod sooner than we originally realized.

So. Much. To. Do. I would repeat that, but it might give me heart palpitations. And I don't need any other random health issues, thanks. The carpal tunnel syndrome, reflux, and nausea have given me plenty to deal with.

What have I done so far? Well, I managed to procure a carseat. That was a huge relief. I ordered one weeks ago from Amazon, only to get an email this past weekend, notifying me that it had been back-ordered and wouldn't ship 'til mid-March. Um, no. NO. I cancelled that order and ordered a similar carseat through Target's website. And thank you, Target, you lived up to your billing: the car seat arrived in less than three days.

I also did manage to lay in a few baby supplies: a few diapers, some wipes, some saline drops, some diaper rash cream, a couple of new pacifiers. I have a couple of going-home outfit options. My hospital bag has been (mostly) packed. A friend is bringing me a bassinette to use at the beginning, and another friend has offered us the use of her child's swing and baby bathtub. (Thanks, y'all!)

Now, if we could just get this room in some workable order, I think I would feel a lot more relaxed. The crib is still in William's room, and poor David is dreading the task of first disassembling it, then moving it, then reassembling it in the baby's room. You know how some people buy a treadmill, and then instead of using it, it ends up collecting dust and functioning as a rack to hang clothes on? That's pretty much what our crib is doing right now. It's an ad hoc clothes rack in William's room. But we can't move it into the baby's room until we move more stuff out. William's crib may be a clothes rack, but the baby's room is still a storage room/home office. Hopefully we can do that this weekend. I'm feeling a little bit anxious about it. I guess that's the nesting instinct kicking into high gear. I wonder if I'll suddenly be inspired to clean the grout in the shower with a toothbrush next? Okay, I doubt that. But maybe I will be inspired to figure out what to do with the gazillion books we have lying around, taking up space.

Of course, now that I'm all worked up about things, watch me walk around for the next four weeks without going into labor. The OB said she didn't think I'd make it all the way to 40 weeks. It might be 39 weeks, and it could well be sooner than that. Somehow that really made it seem Real. And a little intimidating. Like I said earlier, So. Much. To. Do.

Snow Daze

Well, we were probably overdue from some Serious Snow, weren't we?

The snow started falling in earnest on Friday morning, and it literally snowed all day long. And then it sleeted a little bit in the evening, and then it snowed again. Amazing.

Here are some photos from Friday...you can see the snow still falling while I took the pictures:






































Not the best snow for making snowballs--it was too powdery--but we did give it the old college try:







































What's a good snow day if you don't have hot chocolate afterward?




















David took William out for a ride on his own old toboggan yesterday afternoon:
















I have to admit, it really did look like fun, William being pulled around on the toboggan. I figured it would be cruel and unusual to ask David to pull me on the toboggan, though...

Getting ready

Don't worry. I haven't gone into preterm labor or anything like that yet. We've just been swamped with other things going on, and sadly, I've neglected my blog here. David and I have been diligently cleaning out the home office/storage pit for the baby's room, and I've had a lot of freelance work that I've been trying to get done. Add to that one busy preschooler and one big fat mama-to-be, and well, the spirit was willing but the body said, "Nah, go lie down. You can write on the blog later. And geez, can you do something about these huge swollen ankles and feet?"

At any rate, we did muster up enough energy to take William to the Big Siblings class at Baptist Hospital a couple weeks ago. William and his buddy Leland were very diligent little students. William informed the whole class that the umbilical cord's purpose is to connect the baby to the mommy inside her belly (the instructor's response: "William, would you like to come teach this class?). And he also revealed that his mommy's belly button has nearly disappeared. He doesn't hold back, does he?

He also learned how to diaper a baby. Well, he got some help:

















And the highlight of the morning was getting to tour the labor and delivery unit and see the new teeny tiny babies in the nursery. Actually, that was probably just as useful to me as it was interesting to William. David held William up to the window so he could get a closer look at the babies, and the nurses in the nursery recognized David and began waving to him and pointing at William. I'd forgotten that they might recognize David! Meanwhile, I was making mental notes on everything I saw. Wow, these civilian hospitals are so plush compared to the military hospitals. I never had any issues with the Navy hospital where I delivered William, but these other hospitals are really so much fancier. I need to ask if they even have wi-fi....

Since our visit to the hospital, I've been trying to get my hospital bag ready, too. I had no idea it would be so hard to find pajamas or a nightshirt that buttons down the front. Really, is that such a strange thing to want to buy? No. But the people who make pajamas and nightshirts apparently have never tried to breastfeed a hungry baby. I'm still packing that bag so it will be ready when I need it, and I should pack a bag for William, too, since he'll be going to stay with his grandparents when the time comes. And yes, it amazes me, too, that the time is now so close. Well, so close and yet so far. When I go over the list of things I still need to do, the time seems very short. But when I'm attempting to roll over in bed without the aid of a forklift, well, let's just say that I'm looking forward to not being pregnant much longer.

Even William is nesting. He's been digging out old baby toys and lining them carefully up in a row, then calling me over to tell me how he will teach the baby how to play with each one. It's very, very cute. (Yes, it's also a little inconvenient, but well, I don't want to stifle his enthusiasm.)

So that's where I am right now. Trying to get the office cleaned out enough to turn it into a nursery. Trying to prepare for an eventual trip to the hospital. Trying to get work done before going into labor. Trying to breathe with this ridiculous head cold that I've come down with. Trying to remember all the stuff that I need to buy.

Actually, that last one is of the hardest ones. You'd think, oh, we've had a baby, so we should have everything. No. No no no. Yes, we do have crib sheets, crib linens, onesies, blankets and toys. And we have a Boppy, a bouncy seat, a Bumbo seat, and plans to borrow a bassinette. But we need to get wipes, diapers, diaper cream, a new changing table cover, changing mats, baby bath wash, a new baby bath tub, some more baby wash cloths, a breast pump and supplies, bottles, nursing pads, some nursing bras for me, socks for the baby (um, I promise that William wore socks, but for the life of me, I don't know which alternate universe they must have vacated to), a warm hat for the baby, new binkies, and God knows what else. I just got our new stroller from the UPS man today, and we have a new carseat en route. I want to get some burp cloths monogrammed for the baby (that is, if we can ever settle on a full name). And I probably should go through everything and make sure we have enough warm sleepers for the little guy, since we only had a few for William, as he was a spring baby. The thing is...right now, we still don't have a good place to store all this stuff, so I keep putting off the purchasing of said stuff. I guess if worst comes to worst, I can send David or Diane out to Target for a few of the most vital necessities and then pick up the rest later myself. Hurray for living close to Target this time around.

Whew. No wonder I'm tired, right? In addition to being the size of an aircraft carrier, I'm carrying around a lot of stuff in my head!

Cold, yes. Snow, well, not so much.

I know. You're probably wondering, "Well, did it snow or not?"

The best answer I can give you is, "Yes, it snowed. Sort of." Here, a visual aid might help.



































In other words, not so much. I fully believe it's because we really were prepared to get a significant amount of snow. We had bread. We had milk. We had toilet paper. We had long johns. That's when Mother Nature says, "Ooops, just kidding!"

William was a little disappointed. He really, really, really wanted to build a snowman and have a snowball fight. He has all these books where they show pictures of kids doing that in the winter, and he had great expectations. I guess I should dig out the book that my mom bought for him last year about what winter is really like in places like Mississippi (and Tennesseee): cold and gray, but not necessarily white.

And it's pretty darned cold here right now, too. The temperature is supposed to continue to dip this weekend, with expected temps in the single digits at night. And some optimistic weather folks are saying we may get some more flurries, but that doesn't go very far in placating small boys who want to build snowmen. It also means that the roads are icing over, which means we have to stick pretty close to home. Although I don't have a surplus of energy these days, I do think it'd be nice to escape the cozy confines of our house occasionally. After all, we had a lot of indoor together time over the holidays, and I'm still recovering from that.