We Cry A Lot Around Here

Last week...

Playing "I bet you can't catch me on film." I win.

Noah went to Kindergarten, The Unofficial Version, for one week.
It was, like, no big deal at all.
He didn't cry.
Neither did I.
Maybe it's the big yellow bus that triggers the crying?
Because I have cried about events far more benign than my oldest child leaving home to begin his career as a student.
Maybe there's something wrong with me.

Can you believe she's nearly four?

Greta left the door open.
The dog ran away.
I growled that I hated him and that he would probably get hit by a car.
I probably also said some words that a three year old shouldn't have heard.
Good thing she's almost four.
Greta cried.
She declared that she had always loved him (?!?!) and that now we would have to get a new dog.
But could we please get a small one?
The big dog came home on his own.

I hit a parenting wall.
Not the screaming-at-my-children-in-public kind of wall.
More the I've-completely-checked-out-of-this-family-and-shut-down-emotionally kind.
Far worse.
I didn't even realize it until the grandma swooped in and took Noah and Greta away for a day.
Thank God for swooping grandmas.
Kevin got up with the dog while the baby and I stayed in bed until ten am Saturday morning.
Thank God for Kevin.
I feel better now.

Magdalene smiled.
I asked her if it was for me.
She smiled again.
I cried.

Like Mother, Like Son

Oh my day of mixed emotions.

Noah skipped off to his unofficial first day of kindergarten yesterday.  He vacillated between super excited and super nervous approximately ninety-seven times in the hours before walking up to his new classroom.  OK, so did I.  Ultimately, he settled on enthusiastic.  Although taunting big brother came in a close second.   What? Greta, you want to go to school too?  And you're going to throw a tantrum about it?  Oh.  Too bad.  You're not five.  I am.  Later.

Next, file under I Knew This Would Happen.  After school and swimming lessons, Noah had his third eye exam of the year.  He narrowly flunked the informal visual acuity test at his five year well child check in April.  Then barely passed the real deal with the optometrist in May.  We were told to come back before school started just to make sure he didn't need glasses for the classroom.

I've been in glasses since I was nine.  So why was I completely shocked at this?

Noah is not at all conflicted about this.  He is totally pumped about his new spectacles.  Even more so after Greta threw a tantrum about not having any.  Man, that girl has some emotional lability issues lately.

He chose the frames himself.  Brown and green.  Because they're his favorite colors.  Today.

Now he'll be perceived as uber intelligent in school, which will become self-fulfilling, and before you know it, we'll be watching him on Nova.  Only I won't be able to see the TV, because my terrible vision will have progressed to clinical blindness by then.  Maybe he'll write a book and someone can read it to me.

And in conclusion, here's a cute, chubby baby shot taken by Kevin last week.

Twist Around

Sometimes we do things with our kids that make us laugh because they remind us of bits of our own childhood that we'll never have again.  Like whirling on the merry go round to the point of giggly, drunken staggering.

Sometimes we make our kids do these things over and over because the falling down is wildly hilarious for us.  And so we can get video.

We're laughing with you, Greta.

Girls Just Wanna

My Daughters

Mags has been crabby and constipated the last couple of days.  It sucks.  The clouds parted this afternoon, and she had thirty minutes of awake and not uncomfortable.  I took a zillion pictures - a baby with eyes open, willing to lie peacefully on a blanket during the day when there is sun in the room - that's gotta be pretty rare.  Greta, of course, heard the lens cap pop off and sprinted from the other side of the house to get in on the action.  She critiqued every shot after I took it.  These are a couple of my favorites.

A Real Achievement

I was so focused on being a Negative Nancy yesterday that I forgot about one of the breakthroughs of the week.  Of the summer, really.  Noah is the Jedi Master of the monkey bars.  Here he is, rocking it:

Oh, what a difference having a second parent at home makes. I love Saturday. We would be glad to accept donations to the Stay at Home Dad fund so it can always be Saturday. Bi-weekly, direct deposited to our checking account would be great.

Not So Milestones

A week of milestones.
 :: This small booty-in-the-air Magpie is gone.  Last week her hips and knees were flexed as if she were still jammed into a very small space.  This week she has learned to stretch out.  Boo hoo.
 :: Noah and Greta have realized several things I was hoping they wouldn't.  The baby is not temporary.  The baby gets more than her share of my attention.  I am unable to play with them when the baby is eating.  I am unable to discipline them when the baby is eating.  This is seriously uncool.  For all of us.
 :: That "I birthed my own baby the old-fashioned way" hormone high has worn off.
 :: It has been replaced by fatigue.  I would remember this feeling if I were ever capable of storing memories during these sleepless months.  Please don't remind me.

 :: Magda is officially in The System.  Her insurance card came in the mail today.  Bring on the first otitis.

Cutey Pants

I think the fatigue may be starting to set in.  At 4:30 this morning, I was up trying to help the girl work out a giant gas bubble.  What made me think of pants before sunrise?  I've no idea.  But Magda now has three new pairs of pants.  My Singer was on fire today.

Golden Slumbers

Day Two.  She did a lot of this.  Pretty much all day.

Love at First Sight

Day One, a little later on.  Noah and Greta came to the hospital to meet their new sister.  The girl they had been waiting all summer to see.  I remember being shocked at how BIG they looked when they walked into the room.  Six hours earlier they were small people.  Now they're enormous.  Big enough to hold a newborn.  And to argue about who gets to hold her first.

Greta, I forgive you for looking at my [four-hours-post-partum] belly and asking when the baby [who is sleeping in the bassinet right in front of you] is coming out.  But seriously, one week later?  Please stop.  I'm starting to get self conscious.

Our first family-of-five photo.  Now is when we abandon hope for all faces to be both facing the camera and in focus.  We'll do our best to at least keep the faces clean.  Actually - no - probably not even that.  All together now.

Dog Days

Kevin is getting tired of summer and wishing for fall.  Not me.  I'll take as many sunhat days as I can get.

Time Travel

Time machining back to early July.  Independence Day weekend.  Hudson Booster Days.  Parade, then carnival rides.  Hot.  Hot.  Hot.

How weird is it to look backwards at pictures from not very long ago with a big fat belly?  Weird.  Have I mentioned how good it feels to not be pregnant anymore?  It feels awesome.  I don't generally hate being pregnant.  It's not that uncomfortable for me.  Generally.  This time around, those last few weeks were killer.  It feels really, really good to be able to move like a normal person again.

Anyhoo... about the pictures.

Us at the beach after the Booster Days parade, cooling ourselves.

Kevin and The Big Kids on the Ferris wheel.  No pregnant ladies allowed.

The kids got some cotton candy.  They completely freaked out and thanked us for being the most awesome parents ever about a zillion times.  That was nice.  The post-cotton candy crash was not so nice.  We don't have to talk about that.

We did not intentionally dress both kids in green, then plant them in a green flying saucer.  But it did work out nicely for pictures, no?

Daydreaming of more cotton candy.

Dreamland

Skipping ahead to Day Five.
The Giant Baby Yawn series.
As in, giant yawn.
Not giant baby.
Magda's exactly the right size.
 

Magdalene Rosalee: The Birth Story

I've never been inspired before to record my babies' birth stories.  This time, I am.  Maybe Magda will forgive me one day for all the pregnancy photos I didn't take this time around.  The post-pregnancy has been far more momentous anyway.

Day Zero (Wednesday, July 27): 40 weeks + who-the-hell-cares how many days pregnant.  Past 40 weeks and bitter about it.  Kevin met me at the clinic to take the big kids home so I could go to my appointment with my midwife.  I whined about how I was probably going to be pregnant forever.  She assured me I would not.  Baby still inside, heart still beating, essentially no change in my exam from last week, contractions still disappointingly few and far between.

I left the clinic with an appointment for Monday, August 1st for a biophysical profile, thinking that my July girl would almost certainly be born in August.  A devastating thought (no offense to August).  I started having some little contractions while making dinner in the evening.  Big deal.  They would definitely slow to nothing before bedtime, as usual.  The dog got his evening walk - the three-mile loop around the neighborhood that had failed to kick-start labor nearly every night for the last three weeks, even in the July heat.  We both came home hot and smelly, as usual.

The big kids went to bed (I like calling them The Big Kids - 'cause they're so big).  I sulked and made the most amazing ice cream topping ever with a giant bowl of vanilla.  We watched an old episode of The X Files (the one about the alien abduction).  At some point it occurred to me that the little contractions from before dinnertime were still happening.  And not quite as little.  Still, I knew that the moment I started watching a clock to time them, they would get scared off and disappear into the forest.  I at least had the foresight to peek in on sleeping Noah and Greta and give them one last kiss before I completely rocked their world.

Around midnight, Kev and I decided we should try to get some sleep.  Just in case.  About ten minutes after we turned off the lights, it was clear that sleep was totally not happening.  Still, somehow I was conflicted about calling in reinforcements.  Should we wake up the grandparents?  Probably not.  There was still a good chance in my mind that the labor would stall out and I would make my Monday, August 1st clinic appointment.  Kevin pulled the trigger.  Grandma Marge was on her way.  That made it OK to really start timing contractions, wake my parents and pack a toothbrush.  Oh yeah, and put makeup on and fix my hair.  Who wants to go to the hospital without mascara?  What was I thinking?  You're supposed to go to the hospital when your contractions are five minutes apart, lasting 40 seconds to a minute each.  We were already late.  I was becoming less certain that this would all turn out to be a false alarm.  But there was still a chance.  People have been sent home from the hospital still pregnant before.  I didn't want to set myself up for disappointment.

Kevin's mom arrived, the dog went bananas (this evidently continued for many hours - he continues to be the child most affected by the new baby in the house), we went out into the hot, humid, and eerily foggy night to go have a baby.  Fog isn't a bad omen, is it?

Day One (Thursday, July 28): We checked into the hospital at 2:12 am.  I was still walking at that time.  I remember that it still felt good to pace through the contractions.  I can't remember what time Kevin bet that the baby would be born.  My bet was 9:19 am.  I was so wrong.  As usual.  My woman's intuition really needs some work.

We walked down to the birth center where the water birth tub was filling up in our room.  My midwife and I had talked about water birth a few times through my pregnancy.  I may lean granola, but tub birth seemed a wee bit too hippie for me the first time she brought it up.  I didn't tell her that, of course.  The polite thing to do was to be non-committal and promise to think about it.  I continued to "think about it" for the full 40 weeks.  Magda (you can call her Maggie if you want to) must have sent her the message that my decision was yes, because there was the warm and lovely tub, complete with dim lighting, aromatherapy oils, and ambient music.  Now was the time to commit.

My midwife suggested breaking my water to get the real contractions started.  I didn't want to break her heart and tell her that Greta was born nearly twelve hours after her water was broken.  At the very least, it would be nice to hang out in the jacuzzi all day while waiting for these so-called real contractions.  So, water broken.  REAL contractions.  Holy crap.  I had never actually felt real contractions before.  Noah and Greta were epidural babies.  I had seen some real contractions on the monitor.  They looked painful as I yawned through them and went back to flipping through daytime cable TV from my bed.  This was something completely different and about a million times more intense.  Pretty much no chance of being sent home from the hospital still pregnant now.

Kevin and I were instructed to walk around the hospital a few laps.  And if I felt the urge to push, to get back to my room as quickly as possible.  We walked.  Sort of.  I mostly shuffled in twenty-foot spurts, stopping to practice my deep breathing and visualization skills at every bank of chairs, desk, and counter top along the way.  I'm not sure how we made it back to our room, but I think it took about a hundred years.

The next minutes are blurry.  Kevin probably remembers.  I can call up fragments.  I got into the tub and kept having contractions.  It was slightly nicer than leaning over a chair back, but still incredibly painful.  Kevin was there.  My midwife was there.  There was my nurse, the aromatherapy and the ambient music. Lovely.  Someone started screaming.  Oh yeah, it was me.  Someone started begging.  Me again.  I couldn't make it.  I knew I couldn't do it.  In my birth plan, med-free child birth was the tentative plan with a very low threshold for analgesics.  There was no way I was going to be able to endure even one more contraction.  I was done. I was 9 1/2 centimeters dilated, but my midwife tried to fake me out with the offer of an epidural if I really wanted it.  She's so funny.  It occurred to me to wonder how I would know when it was time to push.  With the next contraction, I figured it out.  Someone started screaming again.  Someone was very hoarse the rest of the day.  Someone signaled Kevin to get out the camera.  IT was happening.  Someone told me to look down.  And by the way, don't stop pushing - that was just the head - there's still the rest of the baby to go.

Then she was born.  3:48 am.  Unbelievably.  I did it.  I think I said that about a thousand times.  I did it.  We did it.  Holy crap.  I actually had a baby.  Like, without pharmaceuticals.  What a rush.

There were a few moments of anxiety at the very end.  Magda (or Magpie) couldn't figure out which shoulder should come out first.  She didn't surface with a big strong cry and gasp for breath.  I remember these things, but I also remember feeling none of the anxiety I probably should have.  I was so high.  I knew it was all going to be OK.  It was.  45 seconds later, Magda (or Magdaroo) was perfect.

We are so in love.

The rest of Day One continued... another day.