Pictures and Things

I’ve posted some pictures, with no captions, so they make take some ‘splaining.  The first set are from when Patrick was home this Feb for a week.  His dad helped him build our crib.  The animals helped, too, as you can see, by wrestling right in the middle of the workspace.  Patrick’s mom took pictures.  I directed from my comfy seat on the bed.

Then we immediately segue into almost a month later, when I drove to South Carolina to attend my brother in law’s 30th birthday party.  I helped my sister in law get everything set up, by which I mean I sat on a chair and told them when the Happy Birthday banner was centered, and then bumped my enormous stomach into the cake and smeared icing all over my newly donned party shirt.  The party was great – there were tons of people there who all had a great time, and he got to use his new kegerator (a Christmas present), before leading the troops upstairs to play Rock Band (his birthday present).  During the party, my "niece" (a 7 pound brown cat, as you’ll see in the pictures) leapt up onto her "grandad’s" shoulders and began to groom him.  There is no way to tell the story and make it remotely funny, but just believe me when I say it was a great moment.

I took the dog with me on this jaunt down south.  During the party he escaped out the front door at least three times, and then played a new game called "Bowling for Drunk People," where the pins are beautifully dressed and slightly inebriated partygoers trying to fetch a heavily pregnant lady’s wayward puppy for her, and the ball is a surprisingly speedy little black corgi on three inch legs.  The pins spread themselves in a seemingly impenitrable net around the ball and begin to move toward him,  and once they get within striking distance, the ball races around the pins, knocking each one down as they attempt to tackle it.  It is a really fun game – for the ball.  And for the sober pregnant lady observing from the warmth of the house.

Then a week went by and I worked and stuff.

Then I drove down to South Carolina again, this time for a party for me.  Yesterday was my very first baby shower, which arrived hot on the heels of my wedding showers, and I was getting a bit of deja vu as I sat once again in the Chair of Honor and opened gifts in front of an audience who oohed and aahhhed.  Luckily, the hosts of the shower have a 1 year old son who, after he figured out what I was up to, climbed onto my shrinking lap and helped unwrap, thereby saving me the fate of being completely boring and unwatchable.  Together, little Sam and I unwrapped a stroller, an infant tub, a mobile, a car seat base, a diaper bag, and lots of other fantastic stuff that we totally needed and I’m SO GLAD I DON’T HAVE TO BUY RIGHT NOW.  I see now why people have baby showers – eventually, I will have bought as many gifts as I receive from these parties, but I get to spread the buying out over several years as my friends and relatives have babies, instead of sinking all the cash at one time.  It’s a great system.  I keep reminding myself of this as my present karma continues to plunge into the negative.  I owe the world some presents.  Some people better have some kids real fast here and let me balance things out.

At this shower, my favorite thing was that they asked everyone to bring Jack an Irish blessing.  Some wrote them in cards, some on slips of paper – my mother in law put hers in a tiny frame.  My baby sister’s boyfriend scrawled his Irish blessing in permanent marker on a box of Lucky Charms, which I think might’ve been my favorite method.    Anyway, co-hosts of the shower are planning on putting them in a little book for Jack, which I think is just fantastic.  It’s something he’ll treasure, long after he’s out of the car seat and the crib and diapers.  Well, something I’ll treasure until he is out of his teenage years and can be trusted with things of sentimental value.

Today my sister and I drove home, stopping at a baby consignment sale on the way and picking up some FANTASTIC bargains.  Just as we were leaving the sale, Jack did some sort of acrobatic move that flipped some poky part of him up into my ribs, and I have been suffering ever since.  It is absolutely killing me.  I can’t take a deep breath.  I’ve hopped up and down, I’ve twisted, I’ve pushed on his stubborn little body part, but whatever it is has lodged itself right in the center of something tender – possibly my stomach, which is now located up around the boobs area?  Or maybe my lungs?  Anyway, it is 8 hours later and still killing me, but if I sit up really tall with my spine curved slightly to the left, it gives me some relief.  And anyway, one of my friends from our childbirth class just wrote and said her water broke and she went into preterm labor at 32 weeks and has been put on bed rest in order to hold the baby in as long as possible, and I am SO JEALOUS OF HER.  This is wrong I know.  But at 32 weeks the baby is totally formed, just really small, so I know her kid will be fine, and meanwhile she gets to spend the month of April with no alien bony parts jutting into her chest cavity, and she gets to meet her son really soon.  While mine remains a faceless, unseen, violent poky little monster who is taking up more and more of the space that used to be relegated to my vital organs.  This can’t be good for vital organs.  Vital organs are protected by the ribcage for a reason, right?  Who thought up this idea of putting an irresponsible -6 week old up in with vital organs and letting him move of his own free will?  Who designed mammalian reproduction anyway?

Oh Jack, dear heart, I do love you, or I wouldn’t be trooping around giant warehouses full of used baby items looking for great things to buy you.  I wouldn’t be longingly fingering the tiny boy clothes they have for sale there and wondering when I’ll be able to put you in them.  I wouldn’t be getting tips from girlfriends on how to prevent knuckle-biting pain during breastfeeding (and just go for eye watering pain), I wouldn’t be packing up my grown up guest room stuff and setting out a new baby room, I wouldn’t be carefully folding and preserving a cardboard Lucky Charms box to show you someday when you’ll appreciate the humor.  I wouldn’t do all of this stuff if you weren’t already the apple of my eye, dear baby.  I can’t wait to meet you, and not just so I can take a deep breath again, and have my stomach drop back into my abdomen where it belongs.  I want you to stay in there as long as it takes to make sure you’re fully cooked and ready to serve, even if it means your little head grows ever larger in circumference, making my poor birth canal shrink in fear of what it’s about to suffer.

Tomorrow is Saint Patrick’s Day, and also my next appointment.  I’ll hear the imp’s heartbeat again, and I’m going to ask the midwife what IS that thing poking me?  Feet?  Is he at least turned properly?  I’ll see if they can guess his size, as well.  Just curious.  Then I’ll go to work, and get some stuff done, and count the days til Patrick is home, and count more days til Jack comes home, and in this way will winter of 2008 tick slowly away to spring.