Supermom

Last Monday, I took the Awful Exam.  Tomorrow, I start the Scary New (Temporary) Job.  In the time between, I’ve accomplished a great deal, much of it falling under the category of Making Room for Baby.  The bottles are rubbing elbows with Jack’s sippy cups in the kitchen cabinet.  The kitchen junk drawer is now the bib, pacifier, baby washcloth, and beer coozie drawer.  (Yes.)  The boys’ closet is all set – I just need to sort out the socks and shoes, and we are in business.  I’ve also started packing up the hospital bags – one for me and Patrick and Angus (not his real name), and one for Jack in case he has to go visit some friends while I’m in labor.  We have lovely friends with a son his age who are going to take Jack if Angus (not his real name) comes during a period when we don’t have some family member or other in town.  This is unlikely, given we are about to host a rotating roster of lovely family members whose job is to be the Stay At Home Mom while The Professor frantically scribbles the last chapter of his dissertation* and I work my legal job.  But, Murphy’s law states that my water will break on that isolated day between visits, and I certainly don’t plan on having Jack experience labor from the audience’s perspective.  One labor per child is enough for any kid to have to live through, til they grow up and birth their own darling snowflakes.

I worked steadily on these projects through Tuesday and Wednesday, breaking at around 7 on Wednesday night to start a new project – packing for a little trip we took to Gulf Shores!  We splurged on one night in a cheap hotel and one seafood dinner out, and spent a lovely couple of days exploring Mobile, Spanish Fort, and Orange Beach.

We drove up on Thursday, early, and arrived to greasy and delicious cheese burgers at an Irish bar in downtown Mobile.  After that meal (during which Jack was an angel), we walked around a nearby small city park, and then drove around the historic homes – they are similar in style to uptown NOLA houses, though of course slightly bigger and more widely spaced.  Jack raced all over the park, saying hi to every man, woman, child, tree, stick, and rock in the place, and then fell fast asleep as soon as we got in the car.  We drove around a bit more, checking out an uninspiring state park, several other neighborhoods, and the rest of the bay, while Jack snoozed away.  He woke when we pulled into a Wendy’s for frosties, and he was pretty much all set with being in the car. It was a half hour or so to our hotel, so we turned up the Sirius classic rock station and got Jack dancing with us the entire way.  Once we finally arrived, he leapt out of his car seat and exclaimed with joy over every single amenity in the room.  He could not have been more thrilled to be out of the car, and promptly settled down to the business of methodically pushing all of the tv buttons over and over.

We rested a while, cartoons on the tube, and then dressed for dinner and headed the ten miles down to the beach for a quick pre-dinner walk, during which Jack evolved from “pretty weirded out by sand and surf ” to “soaked from the waist down and begging for more.”

We changed him into his extra clothes and headed off in search of a seafood meal.  We found our dream spot at a lovely place by the bay – perfect because of its location, its high chairs (an indicator of kid friendliness), and its virtual emptiness – no people for our toddler to bother.  We sat on a breezy back porch with a view of the bay, yachts tied up to the docks, sea birds wheeling.  It was a lovely beginning.  Unfortunately, a cat meandered through the porch, and that was the end of Jack’s good behavior.  I think if he’d had the strength he would have willingly broken his legs to get out of that high chair and chase the cat.  Eventually, The Professor and I did the take-turns-with-the-baby thing, where one sits and eats and the other chases the wicked child (who coos and jabbers happily while running around, but screams like the Undead when levered into his high chair.)  Of course, about a million people showed up shortly after we sat down, so I felt like That Parent, something I hate.  We were highly annoyed with our son, but he quickly charmed us back to good humor by cheerfully reading the letters off all of the street signs as we were leaving (the wrong letters, of course.  Everything is “A” or “G” or “I”, but at least he recognizes that letters are letters.)

Jack slept in a nest of pillows on one of the double beds.  The Professor shared with him, while I shared my bed with a squirming, up-in-my-lungs fetus.  Despite our second son’s calisthenics, I slept better that night than I have in several days, and woke refreshed and ready for the beach.  A short drive and very loooong boardwalk hike later, we were sunning ourselves on a couple of towels and enjoying the sea air.

It smelled of oil, but none had washed up onto the shoreline yet, though we saw a boom or two.

Despite the oily air, we enjoyed ourselves in the beachy way you do – getting wet til we were cold, getting dry til we were hot, repeat.  Jack found the waves beyond hilarious, and also loved playing in the sand, so it was a pretty relaxing and fun day for all of us.

We dragged his reluctant little toddler body back to the car in the early afternoon, and ate our McDonald’s burgers (burgers two days in a row!) on the way home, where Virgil was waiting to be picked up from the kennel.  It was short, no frills, and only a couple of hours away, but it was one of the best vacations this little mama has ever had.

Anyway, yesterday we cleaned a bit more and hung out and volunteered at a Habitat for Humanity thing and went to a funeral and went to Target and bought a few baby things, and today we cleaned and hung out and went to church and did some more sorting.  And that was my week off!  As of tomorrow I’m back to the M-F grind, though for a short 6 weeks, and I am looking forward to it.  But I have to say I’ll be quite pleased that Jack will still be asleep when I leave in the morning.  It plucks my guilt-strings when he stands at the door with his sad face and cries for me whenever I leave him.  Sigh.  I will like being a lawyer, but I do wish we were independently wealthy so I could put this career on hold til the kids are all in school.  Alas.  It is not to be, and I should stop dreaming of it, and embrace my lot.  At least I don’ t have to work in fast food or retail, right?

So.  This is long enough!  I hope you had a lovely Mother’s Day, and I’ll check in after my first few days.  I hope I’m better at being a law clerk than I am at applying sunblock.

*It happens to be due for defense just a few short weeks after Angus (not his real name) is born, and as I will be busy working all day and putting my swollen pregnant feet up at night, we’ve called on some family to step in and rescue us.  Again.  Sometimes I feel guilt that, as a career mother, I won’t likely be available in this way for my children when they are grown.  Then I remember – we have student loan debt that probably rivals the GDP of a small Latin American country!  And I give myself a break.  You do what you gotta do, right?