I'm not dead yet...

This is the price I pay for saying we don't really get sick very often. I've been sick for an entire month, and now know the intimate disgust that is a sinus infection. With a bronchitis bonus! I finally went and got some druuuuugs and I'm much better now.

The first day we were all feeling better (Isaac's got it, too) we decided to drive downtown since it was Toby's third birthday and ride the train. And Toby threw up all over the car, bless his little heart. Ironically I was telling J on the way in that I needed to ask the pediatrician what it means when he complains that his tummy hurts. I'm pretty clear on that now.

So that's where I've been. Look what my awesome Montana parents sent:
http://www.rhchurch.org/pages/cardboard-testimonies/

It helped me further clean out my works by giving me a good bawl, and I am not prone to that kind of thing.

Week 38 Round-up

I've caught that dreaded third-trimester bug, you know, the one where the preggo cannot stop watching Discovery Health shows involving rare disorders and high-risk deliveries. I have a few hours to myself right now and I spent part of it wallowing in frightening medical possibilities, with Toby at the Aumsville toddler ranch while I take care of some high powered (cough) viola career-related jockeying and teach a student in Portland. Mostly I had my bible study come over and also had tea with my pianist while we talked about what we wanna play this year.

As to my balance of ambition/parenting dilemnas, I think I have found a partial solution for at least the next few years. My focus will turn to my duo, building the viola studio at the college, and to opportunities I can arrange for myself. Those are the things I enjoy most artistically anyway. Those are also the most easily self-driven aspects of classical freelancing and they afford me the most control. I would rather put my energy there than in drumming up gigs and networking, though there are a few ensembles I will always agree to play when they call.

A brilliant friend reminded me about grace this week- and especially that it can include the ability to be okay with a different circumstance than one has planned. This relinquishment of control and trust in grace applies both in sacrifice and in receipt of energies and abilities.

A phrase from a song lyric has been rattling around my head: heart wide open. I want that in these preschool, busy, boring, frenetic, rapid adaptation years. In the three most important years of my life (marriage, Toby's birth, and now Isaac's arrival) I've always longed for the ability to be present, to slow down, to remember and absorb my own days.

I tease and complain about pregnancy, but I hope I don't forget what it's like to actually contain all this life, otherness, potential.

And I hope he comes soon.

28 days!

Because I don't count today or the day I'm actually due, there are just 28 days left on this hormone trip! Last stop, everybody off, this train is speeding back to the yard to remedy all misshapenness.

28 days is a fun thing to google, because you come up with either everyone's favorite sweatpants & beer movie star Sandra Bullock or a deadly virus.

I'm doing a little dance. It's jiggly, but it's mine.

Skip this- it's ugly.

I cannot believe I have 32 days left. My hands get sausagey and numb with no provocation, I am awake every night at 4am (give me a call, we'll chat), the steering wheel in the Jeep is giving me a cello-mark on my belly button and I... well, I waddle.

I think the extra fat has infiltrated my grey matter, because even my thinking feels groggy unless I'm mad. Which is a lot more often lately, right honey?

I am drinking raspberry leaf tea and casually asking the midwives WHEN WILL YOU START THE NATURAL INDUCTION STUFF??!!! (In another 2.5 weeks.)

How do people do this with more than one kid?

LLLLLLLLLet's gggggoooooooo....

I seem to be slowing down at everything lately, blogging included. I miss coming up with thoughts and commentary on a regular basis, but it seems every time I turn around it's 3 or 4 days later.

Toby and I went for a long walk today over on 23rd and Lovejoy, a popular Portland area. I think it used to be all artsy and eclectic, but now there are at least three Starbucks and several other chain restaurants in the mix. Not that we mind that- in fact the kiddo and I shared a muffin and some quality car-on-table-top noisemaking time in one of them.

A few doors down from S'bux there is a super cool store called Hello Portland. If we were throwing away money, I'd pick up a bunch of the plate sets and stuff they have for kids. We don't last long browsing while Toby grabs at trendy and breakable nicknacks, but still it's a neat little place.

It's hard to be patient with Toby. He's generally a really compliant, curious, energetic guy, but he also weighs 31 pounds and is almost as stubborn as J. Not even close to my level of obstinence, but he may just get there... I'm kind of relieved that at just a hair past two years old he probably won't remember Pregnant Mama.

Today was a beautiful 55 degrees and sunny, and I tried to focus on just letting him walk at his own pace and explore (mostly) whatever he wanted. Alas, there were still moments where I wished we could put him on wheels and pull him around. I'm thinking something along the lines of a human-powered sidecar. J's suggestion is to find a stout harness with metal hardware and mountain climbing ropes, to be attached at the parent's waist. All those people who snicker at Toby's beloved stuffed dog-shaped backpack harness leash doohicky would really have a field day with that, but then they don't have to worry about him careening into traffic or picking up smoldering cigarette butts or getting squashed by a homeless guy's shopping cart, or.. or... I could go on all day with these. Must be the pregnancy hormones.

Gifts!

Lately life is like being in an Oprah show audience over at casa del jwards- gifts are piling up under all our chairs.



We just got this sweater set in a package from the Kalispell grandparents. People who can knit are cool, and tend to be incredibly generous to boot. I love the hat- he wore it to church this morning with a brown plaid flannel and I felt like we were almost as hip as the other parents. He's going to be wearing that thing all the time.

The chair he's sitting on's from my aunt & uncle in Spokane. They are practically professional thrift & antiquers and we've benefited a bunch from their finds since Toby's arrival. They are my home-decor-finding idols.

Then there's that black fabric photography background. It came from my parents to J for Christmas, and it is going to be so rad to have that thing. Everything looks better in front of it. I mean, even this tattooed freak's enormous pregnant belly seems practically... naturalesque.

Horseshoes and hand grenades...

Can I just say, I'm really looking forward to the moment in time when science and medicine and Star Trek all align to create one of these little electric shaver-looking body scanner devices they wave over you to see exactly what is happening in your body in no uncertain terms?

I had a regular OB check-up on Monday, and it was the one where they do a glucose screen to see if you have gestational diabetes. You have to drink an unpleasant sweet syrup (why don't they just give the pregnant ladies a doughnut?!), wait an hour and then have your blood tested to see if your body has freaked out or whether you should allow yourself all the Egg Nog Latte's your heart desires for the remaining 2.5 months of hugeness. Mine was apparently fine because no one has called to tell me otherwise, but I wanted to tell you all about my doughnut idea before somebody else publishes it.

What was a little widgy was my protein level. They tested twice (it's a pee-in-a-cup type test, for which people in their third trimester have some seriously Olympian skillz) and could basically only say, "it looks somewhere between trace and positive."

This happened a few months back with another test (are you leaking, are you leaking, ew that's gross! ew that's gross! etc...), where they said it seemed pretty much kinda okay-ish "except maybe for one spot" and just recommended I think happy thoughts and let them know if my check engine or holy crap I'm about to have a baby light came on during the course of the day...

My hospital (OHSU) is very impressive looking. The Center for Women's Health is in the newest part, where the shiny silver tram lands, and is packed with expensive looking art and luminescent glass wall tiles. It's reassuringly posh. Point being, when I pee in a cup, I expect them to know for sure what it means- and to spare me the tea-leaf reader's digest.

Hmphh. I suppose I'll just have to waddle through the week with my whatever anxiety I couldn't park on my blog in tow.

Like a human word scramble. riaMim!

So, I know I'm not the most logical gal on the block of late.

Last night J and I were messing around with some photos he took and I started to get all tense and snotty about the recent lack of picture-taking happening in our home despite the expensive piles of photographic equipment lying around.

Thing is, here's what I tend to do when J tries to innocently capture my image for art or posterity:









The only pictures I like either don't contain me or allow me to peek cheekily from behind something large. I can't wait for this pregnancy to be done with so I can try to scrabble myself back into shape. Then again I am clearly underqualified for ownership of the kid we already acquired (see yesterday's post), so what am I are we thinking releasing another? At the very least, I'd like to have just one chin and am not impressed with my ability to simulate a pterodactyl's wingspan with my underarm flab, thank you very much. (And when I say, "you", I mean Nestle's tub of toaster-oven-able dough and Eggnog flavored Coffeemate. You high-quality baby making nutrients, you.)

I am once again reduced to a weepy jumble. Noodle #2 must be working on a brain-part or a hormone gland or somesuch frivolous indulgence. Brat. I hope he at least has the courtesy to grow some Momentous Cheeks of Great Kissiness, in the tradition of Toby before him:

Should should should should HAVE TO

The holidays have always been good times for me, and I felt bad for people who stressed about them. This year I'm starting to understand maybe just a little.

First off, no one came to our open house, which isn't all that surprising when you take into consideration all we did was put a sign out on the main road. I forgot to even put it on Craigslist until too late. Or... maybe we could have told every single person in Oregon and still no one would have stopped by because we aren't going to be able to sell it until Toby's growing pubic hairs. Sigh... at least it's clean...?

There's this purply-grey house-selling cloud settled over my right shoulder. It says we shouldn't go away for the holidays, that we should plunk ourselves down on the corner with a big sign saying "BUY MY HOUSE AND I'LL GIVE YOU A PUPPY" and wave it about like the Mattress World guys. I know that trying harder probably has nothing to do with selling FSBO real estate, but it still feels like the thing to do.

I am excited about seeing our relatives and more importantly having Toby expose them to his brilliance, but I don't relish the trip or my expandingness. I know it's annoying when pregnant women complain about how big they are, but GUYS! This is not a "cute bump" pregnancy. Apparently the backs of my arms, the width of my hips and the area just under my chin are all closely involved in growing baby bits, too. They have expanded accordingly, and we are not quite to six months here.

Who doesn't feel hyper aware of the state of their body when visiting relations? Fit people, I suppose, but then they can just feel all svelt and glowy while they bring me another vat of Dreyer's Egg Nog ice cream.