quest for a faerie child

oh these rituals....

We are firmly entrenched in the rituals of our summer days.  The four of us or eight of us, depending on how you want to look at it, move through our summer days, living each one as we did the day before.  The only nod to one day being different from the next is whether or not  I head out in the late morning to work, or if I stay home.  Otherwise, the days blur together, run together in a haze of sunshine and heat and the surreal nature of the weeks before you are expected to give birth.

While some might find this boring, we tend to be a very ritualistic family.  There is a comfort in the overall structure remaining constant, even if the individual activities alter from day to day. 

The alarm goes off at 5am every day of the week.  This alarm used to get me out of bed.  These days, I roll over with no small amount of difficulty and turn it off and there I remain until either an overfull bladder antagonized by the little baby girl head pressing upon it forces me up and out of bed or I hear the boys beginning to stir to a point where I can no longer ignore them (read:  screaming and roaring at each other at the top of their lungs, to the point where I know this is echoing onto the street below).

Moose generally gets out of bed with the bleating of the alarm and leaves me to listen to NPR through my drowsy, I-hardly-slept-at-all-last-night-you-can't-really-expect-me-to-be-awake-yet-can-you haze.  If I'm on top of my game, I've set the coffee up to brew at 5am.  If I'm a slack, which is happening more and more these days, I've left it for Moose to take care of.

Eventually, I do get out of bed and pour myself the modicum of coffee I allow myself to still drink, which is about 1/4 - 1/2 of a cup, get dressed and head upstairs to get the boy wonders up and out of bed.  Sometimes there are baths.  Sometimes there is just a good deal of silliness as they say 'nooooo' to every single t-shirt I pick out until I finally give up and give them three choices.

This always works, by the way.   And why I do not do it from the outset, I'm not sure.  I think it is because I am too groggy-headed upon first waking to have my game plan set.

Giving Max morning meds and dose of water, overnight diaper changes, attempts at potty-going, NPR listening, dressing, choosing shoes, changing bedding on beds, gathering laundry:  all this occurs before we had downstairs to truly begin the day.  The other very important thing which must be done is to decide what we are going to do.  For Rowan, this inevitably becomes the chanted mantra of, "bus, bus, bus, bus...."  For Max, "Big park" or "Pump Park, or "Kid Park" or "School" can all be heard falling from his lips when my question of "What should we do today?" is uttered.

Lately, we've taken to preparing breakfast and eating it on the road.  Generally this means cereal for Rowan and a flour tortilla slathered with homemade refried beans and a tiny bit of cheese, melted, rolled up and cut into pinwheels for Max.  By on the road, I mean either at Piccolo park (aka Kid Park) or in the stroller as I try to get my exercise in as early as possible and we head towards one of the other various parks and usually a store or two on the way.

The goal is to be out and about as much as possible before I either have to work or before it gets too hot to want to be out in the world.

In the late, late morning, usually between 1030-Noon, Moose takes over for the rest of the day and the day is mostly my own to nap-through or work-through or cook-through or organize-through..... at my leisure.

Lately, in the middle of the night when late pregnancy insomnia holds me in its grasp, I find myself thinking about how our life is about to change drastically and dramatically.  This little structure we've built, which works oh so well right now, is likely to experience a huge shake-up as soon as I give birth.  I'd like to believe I'll be able to birth Aurora naturally and that a long, protracted "C" recovery will not be necessary.  But, you never know. 

If the latter is the case, things are going to be tough for a bit.  Not that they won't be tough anyway, but being limited in your ability to lift things and/or climb stairs is, quite frankly, going to be a bitch.

For now, I am doing everything in my power to ensure that natural delivery.  The midwife gave the ok to exercise to my heart's content beginning at 35 weeks, which is Tuesday.  Apparently, I want those contractions happening.  We need to get things moving in the right direction. 

And maybe I am just kidding myself that a natural birth will make things easier on us....  but I can continue to hope, can't I?

my children are screaming at the top of their lungs in their bedroom and yet all I want to do is settle in here in front of the laptop and write to my heart's content. Perhaps at some point, my need and desire to write will correspond to the times in which I am actually able to do so.

Until then....

Getting them up and ready for the morning is the name of the game. Baths, breakfast, attempts at some semblance of walking and a park trip are on tap before work rears its ugly head, yet again.

baby things on the brain

It is 8pm on a Sunday night and I am desperately trying to find some time to write.  The words have been moving around in my head all day, things to expound upon, ideas to elaborate, thoughts to discuss.  The truth is that these days, I have grand plans in my head of all the things I am going to do each and every day.  I contemplate them before I go to sleep.  I awaken thinking about them.  I am a planner.  I like to plan out my day, plan out my activities with the boys.  However as I was saying, these days I am lucky to get one quarter of them completed.

I am ambitious to the extreme.

I am not an idle person.

But yet, my body is just really not in any position to keep up with me.  If I am honest with myself, it is not really in any position to be keeping up with my boys, either.  I find myself losing patience with them quickly when their sweet little boy natures cause them to move like molasses as they try to do things themselves.  This makes me feel horrible as soon as I find myself snapping.  I do not mean to snap.  I do not mean to hurry them along.  It's just that my back is killing me or my lower abdomen feels like it is going to burst and I just can't stand a single minute longer.  Not one more minute.

Not.a.minute.longer. please.for.the.love.of.god.  hurry.up.my.lovelies.please!

I realized something that broke my heart this morning, too.  It is that I fear my 4 and 5 mile walks with the boys, up and down the hills in SE PDX need to officially become a thing of the past until after I deliver.  What am I even saying.....?  I couldn't even stand a 2 mile walk today.  I again felt just like I did on Thursday, when I thought I was going to pass out from the pain.  It wasn't during the walk, mind you.  It was after we got home, left in the truck to go to the store and returned.  I could hardly walk.  I felt hobbled.  I had to lie down with a heating pad for an hour before I could start walking around the house.

I have no idea why this started out of nowhere....  but it is time for me to except it, I guess.  My assumption that I could continue these walks right up until I deliver was, I suppose, a little pipe dream.  And this saddens me deeply.

These walks of ours are meditative for me.  They bond me with the boys as we look at flowers and trees, bushes and houses, herbs and cats and dogs.  They know our routes and tell me where to turn and where to go.  Today Rowan saw sunflowers, one of the flowers we've been working on and started pointing wildly, screaming "sunflowers Mommy!!"  I was so unbelievably proud of him....

I guess I should try and remember that between the two of them, they weigh a combined total of close to 65 pounds.  Add another 20-30 for the stroller and I'm pushing 80-90lbs of dead weight up fairly steep hills, lifting the stroller and the boys up and over curbs, etc.  Perhaps it is a little much to think I could continue to sustain that level of strain.  It would be different if I were just walking, myself... I guess.  Right?

I am heading into heavy nesting syndrome, too.  I find myself wanting to scour my house and yet as soon as I get it in my head to start, I feel as if a nap might be a better idea.

The only thing I find myself really up for is sitting on our front porch and knitting or holding the new 5-6 week old kittens we got this weekend, which we needed like two holes in our heads, but which are so damn cute I can't even stand it.  Sibling sisters who look so exactly alike that it took me a good 30 minutes of studying them on my lap before I could figure out how to distinguish Pandora from Ophelia and vice versa.

Tiny, little mewling babies.  Itty bitty little all-gray sweeties with the most striking green/gray eyes on each of them.  The only way to tell them apart is that Pandora is a just a tinge darker than Ophelia and has a little more of what I would describe as a wicked face, even though she is the more timid of the two.  Otherwise, even down to the little patches on their nose, they look just about identical.

Let me tell you a little secret:  if you are going to get a kitten, you would do well to get two siblings.  They entertain each other when you can't.  They sleep together and keep each other company.  They are wonderfully, beautifully sweet together.

These are incredibly young, but were from a foundling litter and the people offering them for free did not want to let them be separated.  They had other, older kittens but Moose and I feel in love as soon as we held these two.  So, home we came with them and they make a sweet addition to the menagerie we seem to be building.  I am not exactly sure what we were thinking, except that we've been wanting a kitten for Lola for some time now and this is the first time I came across a beautifully painted, clapboard wooden sign offering:

"free kittens to a good home (we decide!)"

Apparently we look like a good home, what with our twin-looking boys, my huge pregnant belly and my beautiful husband.  We appeared like a good home.  We smelled like home....

And now we are home to babies, babies everywhere.

We have baby things on the brain.  Can you blame us?

preterm - schmeeterm

At this very moment in time, there is a sweet corn stock simmering on my stove and a plateful of delightfully white and yellow kernels I cut from the cob sitting, covered on my kitchen counter.  I have grand plans to make a corn risotto ala glutenfreegirl and words cannot express how badly I am in need of a lovely cooking adventure.

The only problem in this little plan is that I am suffering with a great deal of pain, the origin of which is unclear to me.  If you asked Moose, he'd tell you I have overdone it and that I need to take it easy.  But, I honestly have a hard time believing that is the case. I've been doing the same amount of activity throughout the majority of my pregnancy.  The walk I took yesterday to drop Max off at school was less than the walks I normally do and yet I knew something was not quite right within blocks of starting out.

I continued on, though.

I was contracting a great deal more than I normally do in exercise.  The abdominal pressure I've been feeling for several days began to double and then quadruple.  My back was bothering me.  By the time I was on my way home with Rowan, I decided I was going to need to work from home instead of going in that afternoon.  By the time I had to drive to pick Max up, some movement was causing me to have to catch my breath due to the pain and yet I was not contracting in a rhythmic manner.  More so, it seemed as if my belly was just in a constant state of contraction.

I called my midwife upon returning home and decided to come in to L&D to have her check me out.  She told me to try one last thing of relaxing in a bath and seeing if I could get get things to calm down.  I didn't do the bath, but I did lie down with a heating pad on low on my abdomen for two hours.

I felt more able to walk around afterwards and didn't feel like I was going to pass out or stop breathing, so I decided to continue to stay home.

This morning, I'm having similar issues when I move around.  A trip up to the hill to drop off a urine sample for the Maximus and then a stop at the store is all it took to have me feeling like I'm heading into some form of preterm labor.  Again.

What in the hell?

Seriously.  I know I've been bellyaching to anyone who will listen that I am so done with this pregnancy and that my due date can't come soon enough.  But, I honestly really didn't mean I want to drop the baby this weekend.  I would like her to continue baking a little bit longer.  37 weeks on the dot would be absolutely perfect.  33.5 weeks... not so much.

Despite the weirdness going on with my pregnancy of late, I was still determined to cook today and this is why the gorgeous aroma of sweet corn and basil is wafting from the kitchen in wave after wave.  I just keep telling myself, to work in stages and if I need to go lie down for a bit, do it.

My family certainly thinks I should.

In the words of Maximus when I went down to the basement just now to check on all my boys, "Mommy, go sleep!  Mommy, go bed!  Mommy, out!"

In the words of Moose, "Mommy, take care of baby!"

In the words of Rowan, "Mommy!"

You need to visualize wildly pointing fingers from everyone as they proclaim the above and then you get the full picture of what I am up against...

Oh holy back pain, batman!

In the words of Sarah, our former and first nanny who now works up at the school as a barista, which allows me to still see her every single work day:  "And why are you hobbling today?"

Oh, that would be because my back just cannot take lifting the boys in and out of the cruiser, in and out of shopping carts, onto and off of exam tables at the doctor all in a several hour time period. I think I am officially done with this pregnancy.  Seriously.

I'm really tired of the incessant wake-up insomnia I experience every freaking night like clockwork.  You could probably call this the amityville pregnancy, because I wake up at about 1:50 every night.  Without fail.  I am awake thereafter for at least an hour, generally longer and the boys usually start stirring by 530am, at the latest.  I am such a great mother these days, that I let them fuss in there until at least 6:15, because I just cannot get my pregnant butt out of bed before then.

And I am an early riser.  I am an "early bird catches the worm" kind of girl.  Generally speaking, it is always "the earlier the better".

Not so right now.  I think I could probably stay in bed all day and still be able to go to sleep when I need to.  I'd just wake up again at 150.

I'm also really tired of how unbelievably difficult it is to turn over in bed.  I had kind of forgotten about this stage.  You know which stage I mean?  It's the stage where your belly is a huge watermelon and you feel like you have to heft it from one side to the other as you roll over in bed.  It's also the stage where your hips ache when you stand up after having been lying down and where they feel like they could just come loose from your legs at any given moment.

I should stop complaining, really.

Honestly, overall... I feel better than I have with any of my other pregnancies.  I walk at least 2-3 miles a day and usually about 5.  I do yoga multiple times a week.  The back thing only really happens when I've been lifting toddlers back and forth for hours.   And I've managed to keep the sacrum issue at bay.

I think I really just want to have this baby already.  I think that's it.  I think I'm tired of the waiting.  I think I really just want to know if she's going to have a lot of hair like I did and if it is going to be dark like mine, rather than the platinum blonde boys I somehow seem to produce. 

I am ready to meet her.

Oh and I finally have a full name for her.  We've had the first name for quite some time, but I just could not settle on a middle name.  I swear... I've been changing it every single day.  I was being fickle, I’ll admit.  I couldn’t commit.

I’ve finally committed.  Her name will be:  Aurora Bella.

And if I change her name again, you have permission to make me eat my socks.