Boys vs. Girls

Last month, we found out we were having a BOY!  Woweee. I was (and to some extent still am) totally floored by this turn of events.  I am not sure why, but I REALLY was convinced we were having another girl.  I grew up in a house full of girls.  I have a daughter - not to mention a full 2 years worth of adorable, sweet, barely worn girlie clothes that will now never be worn in this house again (unless we decide to just put the baby in girl clothes...who would even notice?  Newborns all look alike anyway).  I don't know what to do with a boy.  Seriously.  What do you do with a boy? 

I am a little sad Lucy won't have a sister.  I am still getting over this, actually.  I remember a friend of mine was pregnant with her second and when they found out it was another boy, she felt like she was in mourning, since she really REALLY wanted a daughter.  I sort of regret finding out the gender, because after all the work of getting a baby out, I imagine would instantly fall in love with whatever was thrust into my arms.  Or at least instantly fall into relief at being done with the whole process of pregnancy and birth.  But there was always that little niggling fear that the first thought I would have as I discovered the gender was "oh, I wish it were another girl." (sort of like the dream I had that I gave birth to a cat - my first thought in the dream was "Oh, I was hoping for another baby...")  That is not that first thought I wanted to have about my child.


So I am letting it grow on me.  Boy.  Son.  Little BOY.  Baby boy.  Little brother.  Be nice to your brother.  Boy.  Boy.  Boy.  Boy.  My son.  Sweet baby boy.  Can you call a little boy pumpkin?  Or is that a girl nickname?  What about sweet potato pie?  Probably not princess...I'll have to come up with a whole new arsenal of pet names.  And I'll have to worry about him peeing in my face. 

He's awfully cute though, isn't he?

Sentence Structure and the Talkative Toddler

First let me preface this by saying I am going to brag about my daughter here.  I am going to unabashedly tell you how she is incredibly verbal and has an astonishing grasp of language for her age.  Before you roll your eyes at my first-time-momness, know I also have a little perspective.  I have been teaching kids age 18 months-5 years for a long time now, so I do understand that being verbal doesn't mean she is advanced...just verbal.  I know that just because she can talk a blue streak doesn't mean she is smarter or better than any of the other kids her age.  I am not planning on getting "Your Baby Can Read!" or "The Great Speeches of William Shakespeare, Toddler Edition" (I am sure someone makes this product) and drilling rote memorization into her sponge-like little noggin.  I am trying very hard NOT to be one of those "Montgomery County Power Moms" I often rolled my eyes at when I was teaching my mommy and me classes. 

MoCoPower Mom: Junior 7 months old.  He is very advanced.  He needs such and such, so his Nanny here will be with him during this class while I set up his Mandarin lessons for next session.  To which Nanny will accompany him as well. 

Me: Um...okay. 

MoCoPower Mom: Please don't use "um" in front of him.  I believe it stunts his linguistic develoment.

Me: Sure.  Your son spit up on your briefcase.

MoCoPower Mom:  See how smart he is!

Montgomery County is full of very competitive mommies.  I really don't want to be one of them.  I personally think Lucy is so verbal because Kevin and I are home together a lot during the day, so she is exposed to more adult conversation than many toddlers are.  Anyway, here ends the disclaimer.

Lucy has an amazing vocabulary.  I thought I was just being a typical "my child is so smart" kind of mom.  I mean, I know she is an early talker and would be considered very verbal for her age, but I recently taught a class full of 2-and-a-half year-olds that didn't have as many words as Lucy does at 21 months.  I feel like it is a real privilege to have such a clear window in her mind this early.  She'll be staring off in space, looking positively dejected, when suddenly she'll turn to me and say "Rode the carousel!  Horsies went up and down!  And zebra!"  So she wasn't sad or scared or worried at all - just really thinking about that carousel ride.  It is incredibly cool. 

She fearlessly grapples with words like "calendula" and "helicopter", and 9 times out of 10 coming out with a perfectly respectable and understandable version of these words.  Sometimes she gets a long word perfectly the first time - which is always pretty amazing - but then any other time she tries it is comes out like a mouthful of mashed potatoes - which is always pretty cute.  Calendula turned into "Angela" and then "calandrela..la..la".  Helicopter is now "heh-copter".  She'll be halfway through a completely intelligible sentence only to have it devolve into gibberish halfway through and then come out clear again at the end - like her mouth couldn't keep up with brain ("Lucy wants to eat spagelti grushitmut bybye the doggie?").  But by and large, she is fairly understandable and talks in semi-complete sentences almost all the time.  She climbs the stairs to the slide and says "Up the stairs, down the slide.  Here goes Lucy!"  Lucy looked at my husband this morning and said "Daddy is a peanut."  Kevin said "I am?"  Then she replied "Lucy is a peanut, too."  She picks a tomato off the vine and say "Tiny tomato is green! Lucy holdin' it." (this, despite the dozens of times I have told her that we wait till the tomatoes are RED before we pick them.  This little tomato picker is doing more damage to my garden than the bleeping chipmunks). 

The other day, I listened to her conversation with Elmo in the back seat as we drove home from the park.  It was quiet, then I hear "Want cookies."  I asked "You want cookies?"  More quiet.  "ELMO, you want cookies?  Yeah?"  The subtext was clearly, "Mama, I am not talking to YOU."  Then she went on, "You have a poopy butt?  Change the butt, Elmo?  Yeah?"  Then she erupted in giggles and squeals and gibberish that had me in stitches the rest of the ride home.

 Of course, this "advanced vocabulary" doesn't mean that she has a perfect grasp on language.  I will hear her talking to her her stuffed animals, giving a running commentary on what she is doing.  "Eating the kitty.  Banana?"  ("The kitty is eating.  Would you like a banana?") "Sitting the mouse?  Chair, mousie?" ("The mouse is sitting.  Want a chair?")  "Change diaper.  On the floor.  Elmo, change the butt!" ("Let's change Elmo's diaper on the floor!" The unfortunate phrase "Change the butt" is something she picked up from us before we realized how closely she was listening). 

She is currently trying out the use of pronouns.  This is incredibly cute, because she simply doesn't understand them, but hears Mama and Daddy using them all the time.  So using all 21 months of deductive reasoning skills, she applies them as they seem to make sense.  I can't tell you then number of times I have stood at the top of the stairs when her hands are full and say "Do you want me to carry you down the stairs?"  So now, instead of waiting for me to ask, she'll look at her arms full of stuffed animals and say "Carry you?  Yeah?".  She says things like "You want cookies."  I'll say "No, I don't want cookies".  To which she'll repeat "You want cookies.  PLEASE!"  Oh, YOU want cookies, I see.  Sometimes she'll start to squeal in frustration and say "HELP!!" and then whatever she is doing suddenly goes her way and she says triumphantly "You got it!".  It took me a few times of her saying this to realize that she thinks "YOU" is another name for "Lucy".  I will also frequently ask her "Do you want to come with me upstairs or wait down here?"  This morning I came back from the gym and said "I'm going to go take a shower".  Lucy comes running up to the gate and says "Come with me!"  So my name is "Mama", but it must also be "me", since I frequently refer to myself as "me".  She randomly applies "he" and "she", with no apparent rhyme or reason.  She looked at a picture of Abraham Lincoln and said "She's sad.  Give hugs and kisses."  Then she proceeded to hug and kiss the picture of Abe Lincoln.  I sometimes wonder if I should correct her, but then I remember that most children don't start to use pronouns at all until they are 2 years old.

She's advanced and all ;-)

In Memory of

Two weeks ago, a dear friend of my husband and I's died suddenly.  Carrie had a pulmonary embolism - a blood clot in her lung.  Her heart stopped on the way to the hospital.  Her husband was the one who called off the chest compressions after an hour of trying to get it started again.  My heart breaks for him and I hate that he had to make that decision when it was his beloved wife they were trying to save.

She was way too young, with a young family and a whole life of possibility ahead of her.  It seems dumb and random and utterly cruel for this to have happened.  I have been trying to process it and assign it some sort of meaning to try to make it okay for it to have happened.  But it isn't okay.  It IS dumb and random and utterly cruel.  Why is it fair for her 2 year old daughter to grow up without her mother?  Why is it okay for her sweet, wonderful husband to lose his wife so suddenly?  I haven't been able to even send a card to her family because I have been searching for words to say and I keep coming up empty.  Empty words of comfort.  Empty words of sympathy.  Not that I don't want to comfort or that I don't feel sympathy - because I do - but the words feel empty because I have lacked any conviction of a greater meaning behind this tragedy.   

 

But I have been giving it a lot of thought.  And in my own way, a lot of prayer.  I don’t pretend to know God’s will or plan or anything.  I don’t even pretend to know that it is all a part of a plan of any kind.  But I do know is that nothing in this life – good or bad or in between – has any meaning but that which one assigns to it.  So I guess that means I can choose to search for the meaning to this heartbreak or I can choose to give it meaning.  I can decide someone else has the meaning and believe them, or I can decide to give Carrie’s presence in our lives and her sudden, awful exit a meaning of my choosing.  I know most people don’t think this is the truth of things.  But I find that holding to this gives me a sense of power and direction to choose my path and rise above that in this insane life which seeks to drag me down.  But it is also a bigger responsibility than just waiting for an answer to come.  I truly believe God loves us and sees us and mourns with us and for us.  But I don’t believe He is a capricious and cold-hearted God that would steal away a beloved wife and mother on a whim, or even as a part of a grand plan we can never know.  Life has a flow, and things happen in that flow that don’t feel good and don’t make sense.  Sometimes they are completely unfathomable, but that doesn’t mean we can’t decide what they will mean to us and use it to help us to become the next greatest version of the greatest vision we ever had of ourselves here on this earth.

 

Carrie was so giving and thoughtful and loving.  I have decided to remember her when I think that I don’t have time or am too tired to do someone a kindness.   And I will do that kindness in her honor.  She was funny and warm.  I have decided to remember her when I feel the urge to protect myself from getting to know people better.  She was a true friend.  I have decided to remember her when I feel old friendships fading from time or distance and I will take the time to reconnect - because she would have done that.  When I try to think of the best ways to honor her memory, these are the things that some to mind.  She was a shining example of what a friend should be and I hope that I can be like her in this way.  I don't know if this is the meaning I have been trying to find, but it helps me to feel less sad.

Carrie was family.  Her family is our family.  Please take a moment to say a prayer for them as they try to find the daylight again.

To Test or Not To Test...

We got the first trimester screening done last week.  This is what they call the Nuchal Translucency Scan.  What they do is have a specially trained radiologist do an ultrasound of the fetus between 11 and 14 weeks.  The NT test uses ultrasound to measure the clear (translucent) space in the tissue at the back of your developing baby's neck. Babies with abnormalities tend to accumulate more fluid at the back of their neck during the first trimester, causing this clear space to be larger than average.  Having a thicker nuchal fold is a marker for Down Syndrome.  They also look for other things and check out the heart and such, but the main measurement they want it of that nuchal fold.  Then they do a maternal blood test to look for proteins and other blood markers that would further help identify babies with potential genetic abnormalities.  It sounds great, but it is only about 85% accurate.  This means that around 15% of women get falsely normal or abnormal results.  So everyone has the possibilities of having falsely normal results, since it is a screening test which only assesses the risk of having a baby with Down Syndrome, Trisomy 13 or Trisomy 18.  I was given a 1 in 5283 chance of having a baby with Down Syndrome and less than 1 in 10,000 chance of having a baby with Trisomy 13 or 18.  Those are excellent odds, yes, and I am reassure, but ultimately it doesn't mean anything.  We weren't going to get an amniocentesis to verify any genetic disorders.  We weren't going to terminate the pregnancy with any of the information we received.  Now we have the reassurance that we have a minuscule chance of having a baby with a genetic disorder...but it didn't rule it out completely.  So why did we do it? 

Kevin wanted to get it done to use the pregnancy to educate ourselves on a possible Down Syndrome baby.  We now know the chance is very small, so we aren't going to do that.  But what if...?  We might have considered giving birth at the hospital if it were likely that this babe would have heart troubles due to Down Syndrome.  But now we know that the chance is very small, so we aren't going to do that.  But what if...?  So really, what was the point?  I know that some people would have had an amnio to confirm possible abnormal results, but we would have just worried about it for 6 more months, for possibly no reason at all.  If I had been given a 1 in 12 chance of having a baby with Down Syndrome, how would I have spent the next 6 months?  Crying?  Stressed?  Worried?  Probably.  And I STILL might have had a perfectly normal, healthy baby.  Now I am happy and reassured, but I STILL might have a baby with a genetic disorder.

This is not to poo-poo the test.  I think it is a good tool in many cases, especially for women who either have a family history of Down Syndrome or are older mothers.  And it IS very reassuring.  But the genetic counseling they give you before the scan when you get to the ripe old age of 35 is a little frightening.  They show you this graph of exponential increasing risk as you get older.  It is scary and makes me want to not have any more kids.  And it makes you feel like you are old.  When my mom had my older brother in the early seventies, she was called labeled as AMA - Advanced Maternal Age - at 28 years old!  I must be having a positively geriatric pregnancy!  Well, actually, according to official definition, I AM!  GERIATRIC!  At 34 years old! Anyway, I digress.

This baby - like its sister - will be born at home. I will have a natural birth, possibly in a pool.  We are seeing lovely all-green midwives.  We cloth diaper.  I breastfeed (still breastfeeding my 19 month old).  What made us decide, amidst all this return-to-nature, keep-it-simple child birth choices and parenting made us decide to go all high tech for information that is, generally speaking, fairly useless? 

My question is - did you get the First Trimester Screening done?  Why?  Why not? 

I guess we DID get a great picture of the little nipper, though.  So that's something.

Early Pregnancy Again

February 1, 2011

Five weeks and counting.  I have a ticker for my pregnancy-obsessing buddy group on Taking Charge of Your Fertility .  Those pregnancy tickers they have on sites like Baby-Gaga and Pregnology and 500 other baby/pregnancy themed websites make me obsess about every day of the pregnancy.  Every day I look at my ticker and I see "I am 5 weeks and 3 days pregnant.  Only 242 days to go".  Then I see the little blob that is looking more and more like a teeny little human being - right now s/he has flippers.  FLIPPERS!  At FIVE WEEKS!



I like this one from Baby-Gaga.  I like that it injects humor into the process.  Right now, it says "Even though I'm only 3.5mm big, my brain is growing fast & I already have more brain cells than Paris Hilton.  I'm 5 weeks & 3 days old, only 242 days to go!  By the time this posts some time in March, it will be saying something about wondering if I have a hotdog or a hamburger.  Referring humorously to the fact that on an ultrasound girlie parts look like little hamburgers and boy parts look like hot dogs.  You can, of course get the straight developmental facts in the tickers.  But you can get the week-by-week development anywhere!  Give me the funny!

Because nothing feels funny right now.  I want to cry most of the time.  Lucy doing something cute makes me cry.  Lucy doing something frustrating makes me cry.  Stories on WTOP News makes me cry.  Baby Signing Time makes me cry.  Car commercials make me cry.  Burned eggs make me cry.  I can't turn around without something making me cry.

Also, I am crabby.  I want to bite everyone's head off.  Everything that comes out of my mouth is mean and snarky and acidic.  And I can't even use the "I'm pregnant, back off" comment.  We haven't told anyone yet, not even our parents.  I want to wait till I hear that heartbeat.  Which won't happen till 10 weeks or so.

Now, let me preface this next section by saying I love and adore my mother. She is wonderful and helpful and proactive and her energy is enviable.  But she drives me nuts sometimes. We haven't told them we are pregnant yet because of wanting to heat the heartbeat first, AND we have a fun surprise. Which I believe is ruined now. My mom and dad were here this weekend while I was away for work (I had a trip Sat-Sun, Kevin had a show last night while I was gone and then left today for his trip before I got home, so we needed coverage for Lucy).  My mom is a maniacal launderer.  She won't stop.  She digs through everything looking for dirty laundry to do while she is here.  That is lovely of her, yes, and it is nice not to have to do laundry. But Kevin doesn't want her to do his laundry (something about his mother-in-law folding his boxers...) and I feel bad having her do my laundry while she is here doing us a huge favor.  Plus I end up having to pick up and refold everything because my mom has some sort of thing against laundry baskets - everything is always stacked about 30 feet high on top of the bed, so it falls over in heaps before I get a chance to put it away. (God I sound ungrateful).  So I have told her as nicely as possible to not do the laundry...which she does anyway. So today I get home and, shockingly, all the laundry is done and stacked on the bed (Kevin's boxers folded neatly).   All of Lucy's laundry is done.  I don't really think anything of it other than to say "Please, Mom, you don't have to do our laundry!".  I go into my office after she has left and notice she has rearranged some things...probably searching for ONE MORE TOWEL to wash (though why it would be in my office, I do not know).  On my desk are all my positive home pregnancy tests.  I say "tests" not "test" because I have been obsessively peeing on things since 9 days past ovulation.  I can't stop peeing on things - just to make sure I am still pregnant.  Anyway, this sad pile of pee-soaked sticks - the proof of my obsession - has been moved...every so slightly.  And on top of Lucy's pile of laundry is the "I'm Going to be a Big Sister" shirt that I was going to wash and stow away until we were ready for the big reveal.  Folded neatly.  See the plan was to take a picture of Lucy wearing the shirt and send it to our family.  Or we were going to dress her in it, bring her over to their house and just wait to see how long it took for them to notice.  She didn't say anything when I got home, but I think she would have to be an idiot not to have put two and two together.  I am hoping she put on her Oblivious Hat and didn't even notice. 
 
If I weren't pregnant, I would be able to shrug this off, but I AM SO IRRITATED.  Or I was 20 minutes ago.  My mood changes with the wind. 

Laughing Horse

I may have mentioned (a dozen times!) that I teach YogaKids classes at a local DC studio.  I teach 2 classes, one for 3-4 year-olds and one for 5-8 year-olds. Often I find I dread teaching these two classes.  It often takes me an hour to get there and an hour and a half to get back (class ends at 5:45 pm - smack-dab in the middle of DC rush hour).  There are usually the same kids every session, so I feel like I am reaching ever deeper into my rapidly emptying bag of tricks to keep them interested.  There is usually the one little girl, whose company I will lovingly call a "challenge" to enjoy.  There are usually 2 or three boys whose company I will lovingly call "impossible" to enjoy.  Then there is the group of three kids (a sister-brother pair and their best friend) who are just lovely...but having been coming to yoga class since they were infants, so they are SO comfortable at the studio.  The tend to take liberties and listen a little less than attentively.

But yesterday was a class that makes it all worthwhile.  In my 5-8 year-old class I had my three musketeers...and that's it.  They are sort of a nightmare when it is just the three of them.  They know all the songs and all the poses and are not shy about whining until I get so irritated that I let them do what they want.

Yesterday I stood my ground.  I had a class planned that I thought was fun and engaging and I was going to teach that class if it was the last damned yoga class I ever taught, and they were going to freaking enjoy it if I had to tie them down and force them to have fun.

We had a many moments of power struggle - all of which I won.  They pout, they whine.  They grumble.  But I still win.  Triumphing over 3 6-year-olds.  My great accomplishment.  So we made our way through class.  They were a little glum and I was a little crabby, but I will take glum over crazy day.

Then we came to the Rocking Horse Pose (Dhanurasana which is the Upward Bow or Floor Bow Pose).  

Now I have a problem.  When I do floor poses on my stomach, I laugh.  I can't help it.  I get the giggles and they don't stop.  So I get into Floor Bow and I start giggling.  Then they start giggling.  We are all giggling madly, insanely, gleefully.  It is wonderful.  The rest of class is just a dream.  The kids give me hugs before they leave.  I go home still high on joy and laughter.

It reminds me that sometime my yoga practice isn't doing poses or breathing.  It is learning to be patient and sharing the joy of life with my students.  It is letting the laughter out when it needs to come out.  It is being joyful and loving even when the situation feels less than ideal for being joyful and loving.  This is why I became a teacher.

The Power of Belief

My husband is not a religious man.  But he believes in Drano.

This steadfast faith in a thick, toxic, foul smelling liquid completely confounds me.  We have used Drano on every drain in our house at one point or another.  Bottles of the stuff.  Buckets of the stuff.  Extra strength, Super Extra Strength, Professional Strength, Divine Strength.  I believe the crabs in the Chesapeake Bay are dying because of our inability to keep our drains clear.  When the tub was draining slowly, Drano.  The tub still drained slowly.  When the bathroom sink was draining slowly, Drano.  The sink still drained slowly.  Recently, we paid a plumber $500 to come snake two of our drains - this was AFTER the sacred liquid was poured out for our sins of having hair that detaches from our head and putting egg shells down the garbage disposal (which I will NEVER do again, so help me Drano!).

Last weekend, my devout Dranoite was headed away for the weekend to Vermont for work.  Our bathroom sink had been draining very slowly for a few days, and getting worse by the hour.  I am not sure how hair gets down THIS drain (since I don't generally wash my hair in the sink), but if the plumber had snaked this drain, I am sure he would have found hair.  Maybe the sink actually grown its own hair to clog the drains when we are failing at the task.

Anyway, I digress.

The evening before he left, Kevin comes out of our bathroom with an empty bottle of Drano and says, with an air of confident purposefulness "The sink has been Drano-ed."  My gut reaction was to say "Oh, thank GOODNESS!  I'll call the plumber tomorrow."  But I believe in the right of every person to practice their own religion without fear of persecution - not matter how ridiculous I think it is -  and Kevin doesn't mock my faith, so I won't mock his.

Anyway,  that evening I notice that the sink is indeed running a little better.  I think "This is a first!".  Now, this sink isn't running well, mind you, just better than it had been.  But better is better and I forget all about it until the morning when I am washing my face.  Apparently the "better" drainage I noticed the night before applied only to when you had the water running for 3 seconds or less.  Not so much when the water was on for a shocking 15 seconds.  I leave the sink full of water and got in the shower.  And I now the shower is no longer draining.  I am ankle deep in water after 3 or four minutes.  Perhaps the Drano pushed the clog from the sink part of the pipes into the shared shower part of the pipes and was now clogging the shower AND the sink drain.  I roll my eyes and start composing this blog post in my mind, ready to skewer my silly husband for his faith in this stupid, stinky, evil Drano crap.

And then, a miracle.  In the space of about 10 seconds, I hear a loud gurgle and all the water in the sink drains out, and the water in the shower quickly follows suit.  I am agog.  Aghast.  It was like Drano sensed my scorn and doubt and had to prove that Kevin's devoutness was justified.  So while I am not a convert, I have a deeper respect for my husband's abiding faith in the power of Drano.

The sink and the shower have been running like a dream ever since.  I don't believe that I will never shed another hair down the drain, or that our drains will stay clear forever, but I am ready to concede this one to Kevin.  I have often wished Kevin would find comfort in a faith in something bigger than himself and this crazy world we live in.  I had hoped that it would be something more like...say, God or Buddha or Life or the Benevolent Universe.  But if he has found his faith in Drano, so be it.

Amen.