Wednesday, March 28, 2007

View from my bed-chair





I don't know what happened with Beth and her blog, but I wanted to put this up to show that I really did put her poem up in my son's hospital room (with permission of course -- and that's Gumball the Kitten next to it). This was my view when I would get up in the morning. Well, when I would get up the second time. They sent a tech and a mobile x-ray machine around at 6am every morning and since I'm pregnant I always had to get up and wait far away until they were done. Then I could go back in, help The Biscuit settle, and we could get a bit more sleep. But by the time I was awake and my husband was there with my Starbucks' hot chocolate, this is what I saw. Pretty nice view if you can forget that you're sitting in a Pediatric ICU.

Awake My Soul by Beth
Here's a close-up of the poem. It's big enough to read over on Flickr if it isn't here.


Real Moms meme



Thank you Kerflop for pointing me to this particular entry in the Real Moms meme. It's beautiful.

I was just walking my almost-2-year-old Biscuit to sleep for his nap, and thinking how we are going to do things differently with The Cupcake. I'm going to try the advice I read (I think in The Happiest Baby on the Block) and start laying her down to nap when she is drowsy around 6 months old instead of rocking her until she's completely asleep. And that made me flash on how some day I'm going to have to explain to her why we did things differently. At first she'll probably only be old enough to understand that Mom and Dad learned from the first time and so she got the benefit of our experience. But there will come a day when she'll think that she didn't get special cuddling treatment because (Oh, please, God!) she doesn't have Down syndrome. And that's not really why. It's because of that heart surgery which loomed so large from the time he was 3 days old. I was so afraid that he would not survive the surgery or that it wouldn't be enough of a help for him and so he wouldn't live; I thought that the days I had with him before his surgery might be the only ones. So I sat in the glider and sometimes napped with him for every nap and every night before bed.

After laying him down for his nap about 20 minutes ago I came downstairs to my computer to read a bit, so amazed that after almost 2 years it can still hit me so hard how much I love him. I kind of got over that by starting to read and BOOM there was the link on Kerflop.

I don't have any photos of me walking him or rocking him to sleep, so I'll just post this of our glider.




Real moms rock their babies to sleep, even when the parenting books tell you that you shouldn't.
(They also use $20 chairs from Ikea as side tables.)

Wednesday, March 14, 2007

The Mommy-Brain is not full of junk -- or empty!



I just read Meagan Francis's article on The HUB and was amazed at how much better it made me feel. Like a spring breeze on a warm day (yes, we are having some great weather recently) I feel validated and renewed.

If you want to read more of her writing check out her blog. I think I originally found her through an article about Mommy Bloggers in Parenting Magazine. I think. Some details are foggy. I'm still going to use Pregnant-Mommy-Brain as an excuse.

So much to do!



I went for my week 33 prenatal exam today and was given a sheet of paper with my daughter's birth date on it. It felt so weird, like I had just been told what day was going to be special in our lives for the rest of our lives. It made me forget half the questions that I had wanted to ask on this visit. But I guess that's normal when you are scheduling a c-section.

The Biscuit is doing well post-surgery. He seems to be waking up in the night teething, not with any pain left over from the actual operation. Poor guy has one tooth after another moving with no breaks.

I am doing well, other than feeling sleep deprived no matter how much sleep I get. I'm very much looking forward to this lull-before-the-storm that is this March. I can feel the frenzy of The Cupcake joining us in late April coming now, and I am appreciating the moments of quiet (like now) when The Biscuit is napping and I can just sit and write. Although lately I have been sitting and reading. I don't think I read any email last week at all unless it was from my husband. I got really behind there.

We will spend the next few weeks moving furniture around (we are trading bedrooms with The Biscuit) and throwing away clutter. Last pregnancy I was all about "do we have to buy this?" and this time it is "we can throw this out, right?" I just want to get rid of everything. Too bad I'm the one with no energy and am more of an idea person now. Poor Hubby has to do most of the actual throwing. But I'll get that cake baked for him today, which should make him feel a bit better!