The Trivial Pursuit of Happiness

Happy late Halloween from our little family. Remind me next year what a pill Ella is when she has sugar, okay? (Okay, if I am going to link to one of her being a turd, I should balance it out with one of her being adorable. Boo!)

Tomorrow begins NaBloPoMo, which means I won’t be disappearing for days on end like usual – Instead, you can make a mid-morning date with your computer every day during the month of November, and read the exciting tales of Ivory and her growing brood of munchkins. I know you are excited. Tomorrow: A round up of all the random crafts we made in the lead-up to Halloween, since, you know, you totally can’t use them now. Bookmark it for next year? Ha.

We have reached the point in this pregnancy where every time I call Tom at work, he panics. “Are you okay? Do I need to come home?” “Umm, no. Bring home ranch dressing.” “Are you sure? I can if I need to.” “Well, I really do want some ranch and carrots…..”

I keep feeling like I must be forgetting something – surely I still need to do something for this babies arrival. All the important things have been bought/set up, there are clothes and diapers aplenty, the birth tub and kit will be here at my 37th week appointment (the earliest we could use it anyway), emergency hospital bag is packed, we have a doula and midwife that we love, we have read and reread all the books, and now we are just waiting. Twiddling our thumbs. It’s ridiculous to be impatient at this point, because ideally, this kid will give us at least another month, if not 6 weeks, before they make their grand debut, but it is hard. Every day I have contractions that make me stop and ask Ella to breath with me (I’m trying not to say things like “Mommy hurts, just a second” or “Ouch baby, don’t do that to your mama!” though they are the things that want to come out of my mouth. Instead, I ask Ella to breath with me, or rub my belly – it distracts us both, and doesn’t give her a reason the be scared of labor) . Every day I get a little more uncomfortable, and start to wonder whose bright idea this whole “let a baby live in my abdomen” thing was. Since we do not have a firm due-date (a side effect of not having real menstrual cycles for almost 3 years now)  it’s hard to gauge just how selfish it is to hope baby comes on the next full moon (Nov. 24th). All the cool babies will be doing it.

But, on the other hand, knowing that this may be the last time I am pregnant (at least for a very long time) makes me appreciate the quiet moments I have with Cricket at 3am, when I have woken up to pee (again) and can not get back to sleep. I lay on the couch, cradling my belly with one arm while holding up my book with the other, and feel her tiny hands exploring the walls of the only place she has ever know, my heartbeat the steady music of her world. I can feel her turn towards my voice when I sing softly, the low notes traveling through my bones to her watery world, and I remember how much I missed this right after Ella was born. How laying close to her was never close enough, and how strange it felt not to be pregnant. This last month with Cricket tucked safe inside will feel long when it is the middle of the day and I am missing those hours of sleep I lost watching the sunrise, but I have a feeling, looking back, it will not have been long enough.

I’m not around here much anymore, but am still active in LJ communities. You can catch up with me there, or over at The Trivial Pursuit of Happiness. To see entries on your friends list, add thetrivialpur.

Archived Entires (2000-2007) are slowly being made public as I sort the drivel from the valuable.

• Ya’ll, accupuncture works. I know, I’m a crazy hippie, but until Wednesday even I was suspicious of accupuncture. But after nearly three weeks of *ahem* dysfunctional bowels (mixed with lots and lots of bile from my angry gallbladder) I took the advice of my midwife and met with an acupuncturist in my neighborhood. It was actually very relaxing, and the acupuncturist was also pregnant so we talked about how silly people get around pregnant women, and the pregnancy-related things she can treat with her tiny little needles. I barely felt most of the needles, though there were a few that were sore, but she had warned me that she was focusing on my gallbladder pressure points so they may hurt. All in all, nothing that exciting, and I walked out wondering if I had just wasted a few weeks worth of thrifting money. And then? I went to a wine tasting at a fancy hotel, came home, slept, and woke up with fully formed poop. You have no idea how excited this makes me. I have gotten so used to the idea of being in the bathroom at least once an hour lately, that the very fact that I can go out somewhere and not worry about having to run to the bathroom with poop cramps is AWESOME. I have another appointment on Saturday, and I am really looking forward to it. Insane.

• The wine tasting was a lot of fun, even though the lead-up to it was stressful. We were sitting with the muckitymuck-higherups from Tom’s company, so we had to dress up, and um.. I’m very pregnant. And believe it or not, not feeling all that attractive. After running around town trying to find a shirt that I did not feel like a whale in, we realized that Tom has no idea how to tie a tie (the only one he has has been tied, on a hanger, since I met him, but recently was used to hold a fan together.) Thank god for youtube, though it took us forever to think of using it. The house was trashed, and we assumed we would have time to pick it up by the time Tom’s mom came over, but of course there was still food on the floor when she got here. *sigh*
  But, despite all of this, we had a blast. Food + good wine (which I sipped from other people’s glasses to avoid looking like a pregnant lush) in fancy ballrooms? What’s not to love? Dressing up with a hot husband is always nice, and spending time away from Ella made me so happy to see her when we got home. How did she get so big? She’s working on full sentences and can be reasoned with which is the first sign in a while that maybe she is human. And? She misses me when I am gone, and runs into my arms with enough force to knock me on my butt, planting kisses all over my face and saying “Mmmmmmmmmm” like you do when you drink hot cocoa for the first time all year. I think I’ll keep her.

• I have been nesting like MAD. As in, I cleaned under the couch cushions. Which, okay, maybe is something you do every day, but we’ve had our new couch for at least 2 months and I just discovered yesterday that there is a different pattern on the other side of the cushions. What? There was only pretzels and socks in the couch so I’m not feeling horribly guilty. The point is that I did it, as well as cleaned out the spare bedroom closet, sorted all of Ella’s baby clothes, color coordinated the books in the living room, made a couple more rattle babies, bought fabric for another quilt, printed out 3967 pictures for family, and have 3 huge garbage bags of clothes for Goodwill. Notice that laundry and dishes aren’t on the list, but pshaw. Who needs forks and bras? (Me!)

Now to go make some acorn squash and asparagus for lunch, since Tom can’t stand either of them and I am craving them. So what if I can’t manage to scrub the bathroom floors on a regular basis? True love is making the food they hate while they are at work, so that they don’t have to smell them.

Because beds are overrated.

A post to come later on all the craftyness that we have been up to, but how about a couple links in the mean time?

Apple hat!

One of my favorite daily doodle sites (This is my wallpaper right now)

I’m going to a wine tasting here tonight! (A suprise, since Tom just won a raffle from his job. I.. uh.. need to take a shower. And not be pregnant so I can guzzle wine. Hmmm)

This is horribly creepy (and mind numbing) but Ella loves it. We just watched it 5 times. Save me.

Our family, as envisioned by Ella, and this site.

I know I’ve said it before, but sometimes yoga is better than therapy for me. Without even telling her that this week has been one of the most emotional weeks of my pregnancy (and that I’ve really been struggling with it), our instructor focused today on letting experiences and emotions flow through us without claiming them, or judging them. I am not my anger – I am not my frustration or my impatience or my fear. They are pieces of a moment, which I can either cling to and make part of who I am becoming, or I can let them go and move on to the next moment. I needed this today. Needed like I can’t even describe. This week has been.. hard. Hard in a my-daughter-deserve-better-than-me kind of way. Hard in a I-just-want-to-fucking-call-my-mother kind of way. Hard in a I-give-up kind of way. Hard. I don’t have many hard weeks – hard days maybe, but not hard weeks. But here I’ve been, dragging it out, letting the spiraling sorrow become who I am, not what I am going though. Thank god Tom kicked me out of the house to go to yoga today, because that cycle needed broken.

Taking the idea into a tighter focus on birth though, it’s so powerful to realize that we can not fight our way out of pain and fear – we can’t force ourselves into happiness. In labor, we yearn for control, we let our thinking brain be the task-master, shouting orders of “I should be dilating faster! I should be walking! I should not be so loud!”, instead of surrendering to the moment, and accepting that this contraction could move baby down, and I could stay in this position because it feels right, and I could just feel this contraction instead of fighting it. This moment is not who I am – this pain is not a part of my body that can not be changed. Every should is us clenching onto something, and every could is a release.  And lord knows, a laboring woman needs all the help releasing that she can get.

Alright – enlightenment over, now I need to focus on bending over and untying my shoes. You would think yoga would help with that…

In an attempt to curb the level of whining that has risen around here lately, we braved the elements and went out to the Fall Leaf Festival today. Really it’s just an enormous pile of leaves that the city rakes up at the Arboretum, and a few booths about composting (re: the big pile? Just a big compost heap to roll around in. Yummm) but Ella loves leaves lately so it was a hit.

It’s really been tough on her (and in turn, me) to not have free roam of the yard lately. Toddlers need to run and jump and eat dirt, and when it is raining (and I can not bend over to pull her out of the puddle) I am tempted just to hole up and call it a season. Summer is over, let’s agree never to speak of the swing set again. Except Ella is not on board, and ends up standing at the door to the back deck crying, whispering “Wheeeee” between sobs. *sigh*

So, starting today, we are working our way through every toddler craft project we can find online. We can play outside in the mornings when Tom is still home, and can actually run after her when she bolts out the gate, but afternoons need to be indoor time, with a round and slow mama. And maybe some gluesticks. Today is an easy craft – carve a pumpkin. Now if only it were not hailing and we could do it on the deck, because this may get messy…

*Title is from a song that they play on a podcast we listen to a lot (Spare the Rock, Spoil the Child “Music for kids that won’t make parents gouge out their ears.”) called the “Coffee Song” (realplayer file here).
I want a latte, a cappuccino
And tonight I think I’ll have a little vino…

• Ella is obsessed with buses lately, and every time we see a bus (which is at least once an hour since we live at a 4 way stop on a city busline, AND have two schools within a stone’s throw), Ella yells “Beeyus! Beeyus! Mmamamama a beeyus!” and today, “Ohhhhh a lelow (Yellow) beeyus!” She’s gotten to where she recognizes the sound, and will run to the front window when she hears one coming up the hill, and waves like a little lunatic, because Ohhhh buses, you are love. I like to think there is a passenger or driver who has noticed her and waved back, because all of that enthusiasm shouldn’t be squandered.

• Since the inlaws are planning on going to one of Tom’s aunt’s for Thanksgiving this year (we shocked them all when we said we would not drive 600 miles round trip over snowy mountain passes with a toddler when I am a week from my ‘due date’) it will be the first year that Tom and I have Thanksgiving by ourselves. At our house. With our food. That we cooked. Part of me is all giddy and romantic about the idea (this will also be the first year that I will eat turkey on Thanksgiving since we met, so Tom’s pretty excited not to have to see tofu also) but at the same time, really, am I that grown up? A store bought pumpkin pie and cranberry sauce shaped like a wedge of dog food says no, I’m not Martha Stewart yet (but my kitchy 60′s apron tied below my near-to-bursting pregnant belly says I am domesticated, if nothing else.)

• Last night when I woken by a little person in my abdomen trying to wrestle with my ribs, I concocted a plan to leave Ella with the inlaws for one night next week, so Tom and I can fly to one of the few cities we can get to nonstop on his airline, and stay in a fancy hotel and.. watch TV. Come on, I’m hugely pregnant, I’m not going to go walk around downtown and barhop. Get there, get room service, sleep 10 hours, note how nice the weather is and come home to our traumatized daughter. Tom’s airline doesn’t have a cut off for pregnant women as long as you are not in labor, but I’ll have to get a note from the back-up midwife (since mine is in Africa!) saying that I am in good health. Also: make sure the inlaws are prepared for their first night with a toddler in nearly 20 years. We’ll see if it actually happens, but it sounds nice.

• Other cute things about Ella that I want to remember: Her favorite color is blue, her favorite book is “How Do Dinosaurs Say Goodnight” (it must be read twice, with her acting out all the (fake) crying and teddy bear throwing (and kisses) before she can fall asleep), she loves getting her chest and back massaged with lavender lotion after baths (a holdover from a stint with vaporub during a cold a while back), and she has only nursed once in the last two weeks. I… have a lot to say about this. But first I have to stop blubbering.

• Oh, and then there is this:
  
  Are you excited?

When Ella was tiny, I did my best to follow the mantra of new-mom-advice: “Sleep when the baby sleeps.” It wasn’t hard – I was exhausted, the house was quiet, why wouldn’t I sleep? I’ve never been neurotic about housework (Tom is laughing at the understatement of this) so letting the dishes sit while I slept with my Bean was not a problem. As she has gotten older though, I’ve gotten into the habit of using her naptimes as small windows of guilt-free me-time. I can watch trashy TV, eat peanuts, sit in the hot tub, and daydream about Baked Alaska (on a good day, all at the same time) without feeling like Peg Bundy, which is why when she misses a nap, or fights it tooth and nail, it grates at me in a way I can’t verbalize (a low growl is about as close as I can get.) A lot is made of women maintaining their identity after having children, and for most people this means keeping in touch with friends, having a night out occasionally, keeping up with their hobbies, etc. For me, it means being lazy and decadent and completely self-absorbed for 30 minutes a day, so that I can soldier on through the tantrums to come.

I’m not sure how we are going to navigate this with Cricket, and truthfully, it’s one of the things that really causes me anxiety about her arrival. I already anticipate snapping at Ella more, letting her watch more TV out of desperation, sending her over to her grandparents because I just can’t deal with her for 10 more minutes. All because I can not spend a half hour without someone strapped to me or hanging off my belt loops, neeeeeding something. And that makes me feel like a jerk. What did I think I was signing up for, anyway?

She is entirely clueless about how her world is about to be shaken.

When Ella was born, I had Tom at home with me for an entire month, since she had the good manners to be born on the first full day of our winter break from university. We spent that little baby-moon growing into a family, learning how to be parents with Ella, and also true supporters of each other. It never dawned on me to want to be alone, because I was so in awe of this new world I was living in. This time, we will be lucky to have Tom at home for a week (and this is really pushing it) and that dreamy baby-moon feeling won’t last past the first time we have to tell Ella to get off the kitchen table and to STOP eating that houseplant. The idea of me-time is laughable, and I know this, but it doesn’t make me mourn it any less.

So, in an attempt to rid myself of the impulse to turn into a slug in early afternoon, I spent Ella’s nap folding the mountain of clean clothes that have accumulated on my craftroom couch.

And then I rewarded myself with whipped cream, straight from the nozzle. Baby steps ya’ll.

1. I cried yesterday in Yoga because we were told to visualize the last time we felt real joy, and to focus that energy to our babies. The first thing I thought about was Ella, and Tom, and how freaking happy they make me. *Happy little tear* And then I realized how lucky this baby is to come into a family that loves it as much as we do, and how upset it makes me that all kids don’t have that, and then it was a battle not to start crying real tears. Ohhh pregnancy, how transparent you make me. As over-sensitive as I’ve always been, at least when I am not pregnant I can keep from spilling all my gooey emotions out on my sticky yoga mat. Also: irony that I was supposed to be sitting there focusing joy to this kiddo, and ended up dwelling on something so depressing. Sorry Cricket.

2. Speaking of Cricket, I keep having dreams that she is a girl, and her name is Sage. Alice Sage? Sage Alice? Carolyn Sage? Sageysagesagecricket?

3. I am finally starting to move all the photos I have scattered across the interwebs over to Flickr, and it’s more of a feat than it should be. Slowly but surely I’ll get them all over there though, so that someday Flickr will own my soul.

4. In the mass movement of photos, I found long lost pictures of last year’s trip to the pumpkin patch, with a tiny Ella, and it made me all teary. But, really, what doesn’t these days?

2006

2007