anxieties of a different sort

gus is 28 weeks and one day. he kicks regularly, and he’s getting big enough that carole’s not just feeling sluggish, she actually is — not waddling yet, but hey, she’s still got eleven weeks. aside from the minor scare a month ago, the pregnancy has been as uneventful as we could have hoped. we’ve taken the plunge and begun buying clothes for a little boy (at my reunion in early june, i got him some serious alumni colors). we believe he will come, and arrive safely, and be healthy.

apparently, that takes some getting used to.

because without the constant worry about something going terribly wrong with the pregnancy, i have begun to worry about…everything else. e-v-e-r-y-t-h-i-n-g.

i walk around all day with a tightness in my chest that only goes away when i get on the bike and raise my heart rate and force that chest to open up, dammit!

it can’t be that bad, you say? well, witness:

item 1: mairin is going through a developmental burst. she is picking up words daily, and using them in two- and three-word combinations. one of her favorites is “bye-bye dada!” she says it when her mother picks her up to go to another room, she says it when i stand up, she says it after she finishes breakfast, she says it before i go on a ride (more appropriate, i know), she says it as she leans away from me to her mother. is this how she sees me? as someone to say “bye-bye” to? do i leave too much? does she want me to leave? why doesn’t my daughter like me?

item 2: also about mairin, but less about me: she’s almost two. she says “no,” a lot, or ignores our entreaties and demands that she cease and desist her occasionally very minor wayward behavior. she laughs when we get stern (ooh, this burns me up). and she’s running her mother ragged, going through a very very mommy phase. let me repeat, she’s almost two, and i know that this is what 2-year-olds do — they test boundaries, they explore the limits of parental authority, they take notes about particularly weak spots in the fence, they come back to those weak spots again and again to test them until they finally break and suddenly you’re letting the kid buy barbie escalades and have a cellphone and get her 2-year-old ears, nose, and navel pierced for a package rate — she’s entirely normal, yet i worry: are we dropping the parental ball? too many long days in day-care, too little structure at home, too much fixation on carole’s expanding belly and its contents…  are we ruining our daughter?

item 3: gus: holy shit, he’s gonna be here in two months! and the house is a wreck! and what will we do when he’s three months old and carole needs to go back to work — are we really going to stick him in day-care? and if we do, how are we going to pay for two kids in day-care? and if iday-care’s ruining mairin already, and she had 15 months with a parent as primary caregiver, what the hell is going to happen to gus? and why are we doing this for two jobs we don’t even like? but how can we pay for anything without our two jobs? (imagine the spin cycle of a washing machine, or maybe that famous scene from vertigo, as you witness the pathetic spinning of my brain.)

items 4 and following: more general: do our neighbors hate us because our lawn is a wreck? can i buy a .22 and shoot out the tires of cars that come in the “DO NOT ENTER” end of our street, preferably before one of my kids runs out in the street and gets plowed over by a scofflaw? is our car going to make it another year? what about our home’s A/C unit? why don’t i know what i’m doing at my job? does everyone know i don’t know what i’m doing at my job? what do i do at my job? what exactly is my job? and why is everyone so negative at work? is it me? it must be me. and so on…

all of these things tend to spin around and get caught together and work their way into each other and fill up the spaces in my body formerly reserved for the dread that my son would not make it here alive (dread not entirely gone, by the way, but much diminished — so it’s not like i totally got rid of that in favor of this little stuff) and twist me up. not pretty, not much fun to be around, but i’ll take it, and just keep working on my deep breathing.

what about paul giamatti? or, the return of carole’s libidinous dreams

yesterday morning after i regaled shannon with a dream-tale — i was a medical doctor in the midst of successfully treating a young woman who came into the hospital in labor (the whole bit: timed, measurable contractions, months and months since her lmp) but instead of being praised for my excellent care i was chewed out by the chief of staff for failing to actually make sure the young lady was pregnant, an oversight that had been discovered by a nurse when she ran a standard test or two and thus found that the poor girl’s beta was 29 and she was most certainly not about to deliver a baby any minute, which resulted not only in the aforementioned ass-chewing but my subsequent and very public and quite humiliating being fired, which was followed absolutely immedately on my being rescued (professionally, you understand) by the very generous and impeccably-dressed dr. jimmy smits who was impressed with the level of compassion i had shown to the lass and who thought more doctors should act as i had acted, a favor i returned to the handsome doctor by sitting in a corner making out with him in true high-school style (high school of the old days — all lips, no tongue, certainly no petting) and then was accosted by own mother who shrieked at me “what do you think you are DOING? you are only 17 years old!” — after all that, shannon looked at me calmly and said “hmmm. you’ve dumped orlando bloom for jimmy smits? you don’t make things easy on a guy, do you? i mean, what about paul giamatti? he seems like a nice guy.”

27 weeks…

…and i got nothin‘. and that’s great.

oh sure, gus is kickin’ up a storm: the other night mairin had another wailing fit (two nights running) – she woke up around midnight crying, i was on duty so i went to try to soothe her, and as soon as i got there she began wailing “mamamamamamamamma!” (actually sounds more like “mambasmambasmambasmambas!”) until finally i capitulated and we brought her into our bed. carole said that as soon as and as long as mairin was crying, gus was “going crazy” — kicking, pitter-pattering, and generally moving around a lot.

so we figure he can hear okay.

oh, and he had the hiccoughs the other day.

but really, all’s quiet on the gustern front.

have i told you how happy i am about that?

happy anniversary to us

a few nights ago shannon and mairin and i went for pizza at our local hand-made pizza joint. while we there we realized that we’d done almost the exact same thing, almost exactly a year ago:

pizza at dewey’s, june 18 2007: 

pizza at dewey’s, june 14, 2008:

we landed in cincy may 15 2007, but it wasn’t until the month of june that we started to settle in. shannon was a SAHD and mairin was as virus-free as a breastfed, non-daycare kiddie can be. i started my new job june 1st, and came home that first day to tell shannon that i’d give it a year before finally passing judgment, but i was not optimistic. (how prescient that day was.) the movers delivered our furniture on june 5th. on june 6th i interviewed the woman who would, seven weeks later, become my new boss. on june 7th i was thrown a “welcome reception” by my new colleagues; on june 8th i had to write the press release announcing my arrival at the new job. on june 20th i had my first ob appointment for ruby (aka “slim”). on june 25th mairin had her first local pediatrician’s appointment. we were busy, thinking we would settle in for oh, a few weeks, and then get on with things. you know — good things.

and now, in june 2008, we are not exactly where we thought we’d be. one year ago it was reasonable (reason! you scoundrel!) for us to expect that by this time this year we’d have two healthy, living kids playing together in our painted and organized new home, that we’d be getting ready for our first full-family (well, as full as can be, missing earl) summer vay-cays, that shannon and i would both be, if not as fit and active and healthy as usual then at least back on track. in other words: at the beginning of the rest of our lives.

instead, we’re still in limbo. the house is kind of painted, but mostly with swatches of failed color choices. (as an aside — if you had to choose, would you go for “filtered sunlight” or “soleil”? this is the stuff my spare time is made of.) our belongings are technically mostly unpacked, but since we lost a lot of storage space when we moved, “unpacked” now means “neither in boxes nor actually put away.” we’ve started (but of course not finished) half a dozen outside projects in an effort to rid our yard of the overgrowth and bad karma (not to mention the overgrowth of bad karma) imposed on the unsuspecting property by two previous crotchety and not particularly aesthetically-inclined homeowners. i still feel self-conscious when we have company because it’s hard — HARD, I TELL YOU — to have a house that reflects your own chaotic psychological state. shannon works outside of the home and mairin goes to playschool, where she picks up all the neighborhood bugs and brings them home to share with her parents.  we’re often sick, generally sleep-deprived, and ready to begin what we’ve started calling phase 2. (target start date: 9/9/2008.)

i’ve learned not to be cocky and so won’t hazard any guesses about june 2009. but we’ve made it a year — and cocky or not, i feel optimistic. so raise your glasses to us here in cincy, and toast the beginning of our second year.

 

you guys okay?

sometimes i wonder whether mairin will ever know how important she was to our mental health when she was such a young one.

twice in the past few days i’ve been scrolling through pictures on our computer, all sequestered in file folders by date and theme, and come across a particular folder that i hadn’t looked at since we originally loaded it. it’s a set of pictures taken at a local park about one month after ruby’s delivery and death. carole and i were so sad and stunned — just beginning to come to terms with the loss, and seeking refuge by strolling in beautiful gardens on a temperate october day. i remember we commented on how much was still in bloom, and we even played a little hide-and-seek with mairin. but mostly we kept an eye on her and walked around, holding hands, missing ruby a lot and wondering: where next? what next? how? how do we rebuild? can we? and missing ruby a lot.

obviously, we also took some pictures — some of the blooms, some of the dormant fountain. but the one that brings tears to my eyes is of mairin looking right back into the lens of the camera as though it were my eyes, with a look on her face that compresses my chest and lumps my throat. in it, she’s saying as clearly as she’ll ever be able to say with words,

…you guys okay?

twenty-one months

at twenty-one months, mairin is delighted by all things potty and loves to whisper her new words: “race.” “cracker.” “car.” (huh. maybe she does live in the south after all.) every now and then she tries out a few two-word combos: “dada baiwk.” “more leuhm-leuhm.” (you figure it out.) and she’s graduated to the bunny room at playschool, where she gets to spend all day long with her beloved ian (“eeeeeeiin!” — always with the exclamation point).

there’s really not much more two ga-ga parents could ask for.

*gulp*

mark your calendars: september 9, 2008. if gus has not seen fit to arrive by then, he’s being dragged out, butt-first and screaming.

on his cousin gaby’s birthday, no less.

in which mairin has an adventure…

this morning, after we all three ate our oatmeal, and the coffee was done brewing, carole and mairin took carole’s coffee upstairs to get ready for the day, while i settled in with my cup of coffee to read a few headlines in peace and quiet.

sort of.

i was relatively peaceful, but only because i was able to block out the noises emanating from upstairs — noises that sounded less like a mama showering and a toddler toddling than like a stampede of silly elephants. after a bit, i realized that the shower still had not started, so i abandoned hope of finishing an article and went upstairs to investigate.

where, while not hitting the fan, the shit had hit several other things.

oh, and so had the pee.

see, mairin hasn’t quite figured out the need to sit for a little while on the potty when you have to go. you know, to wait for things to happen. (in her defense, patience is not her mother’s strong suit, either.) she’s all, hey, diaper off, sit down, smile fetchingly for about three seconds, and then get up and run around. it probably doesn’t help that we find the whole toddler-naked-from-the-t-shirt-down-running-around thing pretty darn funny.

so apparently this morning, the noises i was hearing were mairin, after abandoning her toilet, running into one room, performing a bodily function, hollering “uh-oh-uh-oh-uh-oh-uh-oh” until her mama showed up to discover said bodily function, then running into another room to repeat the process.

pee on the back bedroom floor? check. ”Uh-oh-uh-oh-uh-oh!”

poop on the bathroom floor? check. “Uh-oh-uh-oh-uh-oh!”

a little more poop in her own bedroom? check. “Uh-oh-uh-oh-uh-oh!”

i asked carole why she hadn’t called for my help, and learned that that coughing i had vaguely heard was actually her gagging (which apparently prevented her from yelling “get yer ass up here!.”). she looked like she was ready for a drink, and it wasn’t even 9 am. once it was all cleaned up, though, we thought the whole adventure was pretty funny.

well, i did.

practice makes perfect…or at least gives you enough experience to say

HOLY SHITE woman WHAT ARE YOU THINKING?

that’s right, folks. i have now spent a full 8-hour shift parenting two children under 2. and i will be the first to admit that it. was. not. pretty.

on saturday mairin and i stayed with baby cousin emmet so his parents could attend a wedding. and we love emmet. mairin particularly adores him. i knew it would be work, but figured it would be work in the same way that baking chocolate chip cookies, or shopping at anthropologie, is work: tiring but fun and resulting in yummy goodnesses.

or not.

things started off just fine. the three of us stood outside and waved our bye-byes and blew our kisses and signed our i love yous as the parents drove off. and then the three of us went cheerfully inside. where mairin proceeded to unpack emmet’s drawer of toys while emmet himself sat forlornly by the window. oh, he’d occasionally bang the window or rattle the blinds to let us know he was still there, thank you very much, and not very happy about being left to stare after his parents, who just so we understood things would be back ANY MINUTE NOW because certainly they could not have intended to leave him ALONE with us.

after what seemed like an hour but was probably only 20 minutes or so emmet started crawling his way slowly to join the toyful celebration in the living room. thrilled to hear the pat-pat of emmet’s hands on the lino, mairin ran her best chimpanzee-running-the-100-yard-dash run across the room toward emmet, whereupon she realized that up on his hands and knees like that he was positioned EXACTLY like a horse or even better EXACTLY like his new ride-on truck and so she did what any good cowgirl or truck driver would do: she climbed aboard. and emmet went flat as a pancake. well, flat as a pancake with one end caught on the griddle-handle — his body went down but his head was stopped by the corner of the bottom stair, leaving a dart-shaped bruise smack-dab at his hairline.

mairin: 1. emmet 0. carole -1.

with emmet crying from being flattened and mairin crying out of compassion fear of being punished some strange fake form of empathy, i picked up both kids and we lumbered our way back to the living room, where everybody played happily for a while until mairin, in her efforts to steer emmet’s new ride-on truck (the actual toy, not the emmet-as-truck version), had run over emmet’s various body parts a few too many times and emmet had HAD IT and he crawled over to me to sit on my lap where things looked to be a bit safer. which they were.

mairin: 2. emmet: 0. carole: -2.

so emmet sat on my lap with gus giving him the occasional wallop while mairin enjoyed being in full control of every. single. toy. emmet owns. and then, thank god, it was only 4:30 dinner time.

mairin: 3. emmet: 0. carole: -5.

now, emmet has the same high chair as mairin, and mairin is (bless her little heart) not really the best share-r in the world, so we started off, um, badly. but eventually i had emmet’s spinach and garbanzo bean casserole heated and mairin’s burrito wrapped and emmet was in the high chair and mairin was in my lap and emmet finished his casserole and mairin finished her burrito and so decided to munch on emmet’s remaining cheerios and she ate every last one, so i just reached over to get her some more, picking up the container, as i am wont to do, by the lid and the container, as containers are wont to do when lifted by their lids, crashing to the floor. the exploding cheerio game delighted both babies, and emmet watched contentedly while mairin sat on the floor ostensibly putting the cheerios back in the container but actually eating those she wasn’t crushing under foot. and i stood by taking a picture, figuring that was all i was really good for anyway. my next efforts — sweeping up the crushed-cheerio-crumbs — were thwarted by mairin’s sudden and intense fascination with the broom and soon the cheerios were spread to the four corners of the kitchen and emmet (like me, quite frankly) found the turn in the game quite dull and so started crying again. which instigated mairin’s really pretty irritating half-assed tears which prompted me to give them both a cupcake and TO EAT ONE MYSELF. as i ate the top half of mine and then frosted the bottom half (the babysitter’s prerogative, you understand), i watched the two of them destroy their cupcakes and fill the high-chair tray and surrounding floor with more yellow cake crumbs than i thought possible from only two cupcakes.

mairin: 5. emmet: 3. carole: -11.

now, every babysitter knows that after dinner the best way to while away the time is to watch tv while the kids cry in another room give the kids a bath. so with one food-smeared baby on either hip i lumbered my way upstairs to the bathroom, where both babies broke into smiles at the prospect of play time in the tub. i turned on the water and undressed mairin and plopped her in the tub, where she immediately commandeered all emmet’s bath toys and started squealing maniacally as she filled cup after cup with water, emptying each successive one over her head. while she was thus employed i took off emmet’s shirt and then stood him up and leaned his chest against me. i pulled his pants down to his ankles and looked up to check on mairin (still gleefully baptising herself) and then looked back at emmet and waited. and waited. and asked him if he was planning on helping me get his pants off or if he was just going to stand there like the not-quite-one-year-old he is. at roughly the same moment i remembered that sarcasm is lost on one-year-olds i also remembered that HE IS A ONE-YEAR OLD and that he can’t lift his legs out of his pants and so WOULD NEED MY HELP.

mairin: 7. emmet: 6. carole: -17.

once both kids were in the tub i figured i’d run out and look for towels. i asked mairin to keep an eye on emmet and stood up and then REALIZED i had just put a 21-month old in charge of a 12-month old and that both kids were likely to drown if i so much as stepped outside of the bathroom. so i heaved myself back down to the floor and watched mairin continue her bathtub-as-font routine while emmet sat and stared at her, wondering what sort of stupid creature would EVER willingly douse herself over and over with water. once it became clear that emmet was NOT going to play with his RIDICULOUS cousin and her INSANE game of self-drowning, i pulled him out of the tub and we wandered out in search of towels. with towels in hand i asked mairin if she’d be OK while i put emmet into his jammies and she said yes and so confident in my daughter’s honesty and self-perception i took emmet into the other room where he looked at me gratefully — AT LAST! SILENCE! — and we lotioned and diapered and jammied him up until he was restored to his happy self.

mairin: 9. emmet: 9. carole: -21.

mairin was also quite happy to be lotioned and diapered and jammied, and toddled happily at my side as the three of us made our way down the stairs in search of bedtime milk and vodka stories. i warmed emmet’s bottle of milk under the tap while both kids sat in the living room, subdued but watchful. as soon as i handed emmet his bottle mairin broke into a cry: “nooek. nooek.” okay, honey, you want some milk in your sippy cup? “no! nooek. nooek.” oh, you want a bottle? (are you effin’ kidding me? you want a BOTTLE?) thrilled, mairin sighed: “yeeeehhs.” (at least i refused to warm it.) mairin sat at my side on the sofa while emmet reclined in my lap, each baby gulping through the milk as if they hadn’t been fed in AGES.

mairin: 11. emmet: 11. carole: -27.

milk doth indeed soothe the savage beastie, and soon i had two quiet babies ready to head upstairs to bed. mairin followed me into emmet’s room and waited patiently while i sang him a few songs and found his second pacifier (one for the mouth, one for the hand) and kissed him goodnight and put him in his crib where he rolled to put his back to me and really, who could blame him. mairin and i went into “her” room where i sang her a few songs and decided that she could keep the bottle of milk with her, tooth decay be damned, and kissed her good night and put her in the crib where she stayed peacefully.

pleased with myself for managing a chaotic few hours and so successfully putting two babies to sleep i made my way downstairs to clean up our messes.

mairin: 14. emmet: 14. carole: -23.

mairin was the first to cry. when i got to her she was standing in her crib pointing at her diaper sobbing “peeuh, peeuh,” and yes indeed she had so i got her up and took her downstairs where i had foolishly left her changing supplies. once downstairs — CHEERIOS! CUPCAKES! TOYS! — she thought it was really not time to be in bed after all. so she ate a second dinner and helped me clean the kitchen and an hour or so later we settled back onto the couch with her bottle where we sang some songs and she started to unwind (again) and then emmet’s cries came through on the baby monitor.

mairin: 16. emmet: 14. carole: -67.

so we headed upstairs, where once in emmet’s room mairin refused to be put down and i groaned and grunted my way through holding her on my jutted-out right hip while trying to lean left far enough to get leverage under emmet to haul him out of bed. moments later the three of us collapsed into the rocking chair, where emmet lay with his head on my left shoulder and mairin with hers on my right, their legs so charmingly intertwined at roughly, well, my crotch. we rocked and sang a few songs. emmet dozed off and started snoring. hearing him snore, mairin kicked him. emmet opened his eyes and mairin quit kicking. i figured it was a fluke of timing. (no, i will not ever learn.) a few songs later emmet was snoring again, and mairin kicked him again. i wanted to scold her but wasn’t sure how to do that in a whisper so i just reminded her to be gentle with her cousin and she said “yeehhhs” and we continued rocking and singing and snoring and kicking. for oh, a small eternity, all the while me wondering how, exactly, evolution had overcome this conundrum of the conspiring children because clearly it had, even if i hadn’t.

mairin: 20. emmet: 17. carole: -89.

eventually the kicks lost their power and emmet stayed asleep and mairin clambered down and i stood up and put emmet back in his bed. and mairin and i made our way back to her room and sat down and sang some songs and rocked until she was ready to be put in her crib. where she stayed, resting peacfully.

two babies who are usually asleep by 7:30 were asleep at least by 9:00 and i managed to get the kitchen mostly cleaned up and even to read a few pages of my book before the parents came home. and when i got mairin out of bed at 11:30 to drive her home she was so grateful that she stayed up until 2:00.

mairin: 25. emmet: 20. carole: -872,198,936.

can it be?

at last?

26 weeks today, folks, and do you know what that means? do you KNOW what that means?

say it with me now:

third trimester. third trimester. THIRD TRIMESTER.

i know that this feels bigger than it is — gus still has a lot of growing and developing to do before his arrival, and we want him to stick around and get every last bit of umbilical goodness and every last drop of amniotic fluid before he makes his arrival. and coming now would be a dangerous thing for the little guy.

but.

but as i’ve said before, the second trimester is our scylla and charybdis, our minefield, our gauntlet, our [insert your own damn fraught metaphor here]. It’s where bad things happen to carole’s pregnancies. it’s when we lost earl, and when we lost ruby. it’s currently the cause of my headaches, and lost sleep, and ragged fingernails, and ground teeth, and short temper.

and it’s over.

o-v-e-r.

so pardon me if i seize on this meaningless little marker and blow it way out of proportion and feel good about it and entertain the increasingly real possibility that i will welcome my son into this world with tears of joy and not of anguish sometime during the early part of september.

can it be?