I’ve been having mild, irregular contractions for about a week now. On Tuesday they told me I was one centimeter. Yesterday I was feeling them all the long day and into the dark evening, and they kept me from sleeping. Today, though – nada. Baby’s quieter, too, today I’ve only felt a few punches to Jack’s intruding knees when I picked him up and propped him on my belly this morning.* Mother’s intuition says I won’t pop in the next week despite these signs, though mother’s intuition is never right. I obviously don’t want him to come pre-term, even by a handful of days (6 days to full term now!). Plus, my tub for my water labor won’t even be delivered to the hospital until June 10. So if he comes before then, we get all of our money back for the rental except $50, but I also don’t get to try a warm tub for pain relief. I’m torn between whether I’m deeply disappointed about that, or whether I’d rather just have him come as soon as he’s full term and the tub can go hang. Luckily, I needn’t agonize too much, as it’s all up to him!
This is a long weekend, which was supposed to see the boys + dog off camping with the in-laws while I stayed home and took warm baths to soothe the contractions and drank sparkling water out of wine glasses (just a few more days of THAT nonsense!) and watched old Sex and the City episodes and slept morning, noon, and night (or at least, reclined uncomfortably and told myself it was napping). Except God has decided to dump a big old load of rain all over the south. The family has astutely assessed that rain + camping + toddlers has a low probability for fun, and are pretty well decided that the trip is canceled. I’m, uh, so pleased that I get to spend this long, rainy, indoors weekend with my delightful, needy, heavy, grasping toddler and my hyperactive, constantly pacing and monitoring-every-movement-the-cat-makes dog. Sigh. Guess as soon as I get those SATC Netflix, I’ll just tape them back up and send them right off. Oh well. At least I still get my haircut on Saturday.
Speaking of the toddler, only recently he has begun regularly calling for us by name. We were walking home from Whole Foods yesterday, The Professor holding Jack’s hand to cross the street and me lagging a few steps behind, and he squirmed in his dad’s grip, working to turn around and look for me, and obstinately yelled “MAMA!” at me to hurry me up. He’ll shout my name if he can’t see me in the house. He says Mama! when I get home from work. One day this will annoy me, and I’ll wish I could be left alone for five minutes, but right now it tickles me to death. He has also decided recently, for some reason, to run to bed and hide under the covers when I say it’s time to brush teeth. He used to love teethbrushing, and I think he still does, but he loves the game of hiding more. I’m too pregnant to drag him to the bathroom, so instead I go get his toothbrush and bring it in the bedroom and wrestle him down. He giggles so hard he gets the hiccups, and while he laughs I shove the brush in there and brush his teeth myself. Probably better for them in the long run than his attempts to do it himself, anyway, but we’ll have to nip it in the bud at some point. Later. Some other day. In a month, maybe. I’m ok with things hanging a little loose these days. He’s so good about the bedtime routine – laying right down, listening to a book or two, clapping and mouthing along when we sing the ABCs, and then giving me a kiss and piling every single pillow, stuffed animal, and blanket he can reach on top of himself as I turn out the light. (His favorite sleep position is with his face pressed into the mesh of his bed railing, three pillows, a bolster, and his two bears all in a pile over his head.) He may cry a minute or two, if at all, but then he’s in bed for the night. Many’s the night when he won’t fall asleep until after 10 – we can hear him in there talking to himself – but he doesn’t scream or fuss and he doesn’t get out of bed. He stays quiet til morning, and then calls to be picked up. I shudder to think of the day when he figures out he can get in an out of bed himself. For now, we’re blessed to have a good sleeper.
I can’t think of a way to end this rambling update, so –
The End
*I shouldn’t pick him up these days. However, for the past approximately 4 months, any time he has wanted picked up he has walked up to me and said Down. And I’ve said – no, Jack, UP! And he says down, and I say up, and we go down up down up down up maybe ten times, and then I finally pick him up, because I can’t wait around forever for him to say a word he’s never said before. And then one day, perhaps three weeks ago, he said “Up-pah!” and pointed up. He sounds like a little Italian when he says it, because he’s really trying to spit out that plosive “p” – “Up-pah!” So now that I know he knows the word and is capable of saying it, I refuse to pick him up unless he says Up. And so for the last three weeks, he says Down and I say Up and we go down up down up down up down up down up about a zillion times, and finally I say up and he ponders a moment, smiles a wicked smile (like, I knew this all along, Mom, isn’t this fun!) and says “Up-pah!” As soon as he spits the word out I clap and scream and make a big freaking deal and pick him right up. And as of the last two days or so, he just says Up first thing, right away, and points, and we don’t play the up down game anymore, finally, FINALLY.
So, long boring story short, enormous though I am I feel I must reward my stubborn child for finally learning this word that I’ve been attempting to teach him for months on end, even if it destroys my lumbar spine and makes his brother angrily kick him in the tender bits. And take this story, and multiply it by every single word in his vocabulary, and you have what it is to teach our child to talk. I can’t WAIT for potty training.**
**Which we’ll try in a couple of months, after the shakeup of New Baby Brother simmers down a bit.***
***In an effort to prepare, I got out a couple of pictures of Jack as a baby to put on his bedside table, and we “Say goodnight to the baby” every night. Bay-beee is another word he just learned, and he loves to say it. So cute!