Mama Thoughts

It's official. My daughter is my daughter. We finally split a rocky road last night and she loved it. :). First ice cream that she loved! Hooray. In other news, clinginess and sleep regressions are going strong. We returned to CIO with her and we are all finally getting sleep. It's good, since we are about to stop sleeping for a long long time. Final touches, packing the bag for the hospital, getting clothes unpacked in the nursery, and getting ready for a two week stretch without 3/4 grandparents while they go tango in the canary islands. Life's just moving on.... We need to keep up! Baby boy is the size of a durian.

We're at 30 weeks.  10 weeks to go(ish) and our life currently looks like the photos below.  We're almost done with our kitchen remodel, the rest of our house is a complete disaster as it's been run over by our 2 year old and ourselves during the disarray and to top it off we've just wrapped up a week with pink-eye, some sort of bronchial disaster disease and a fever for Yan.  It's been a little nuts.  Hopefully the next 10 weeks will bring us some sort of normal prior to the crazy descending upon this home once again.  A big thanks to the grandparents as always for picking up Lilah, giving her eyedrops (only with the promise of fruit leather... or maybe just fruit leather no drops?) and babysitting last night so that Yan and I could go out and get huge bowls of spicy soup and watch a movie prior to coming home and working on electric and organization in the kitchen.  No way we would be able to get all of this done without their help of keeping little lad...

This weekend in yoga there was a substitute teacher.  It wasn't an incredible class, however she started off with a quote to set the tone and this particular one stuck with me throughout the practice, and even on my ride home. "It doesn't take a lot of strength to hang on.  It takes a lot of strength to let go." I've been struggling with a bunch of things where this could apply.   I have been given a whole lot of unsolicited advice as of late that has ticked me off to the Nth degree (people think that giving advice to pregnant women is a super idea... I would like to take a moment to assure them otherwise).  I've been carrying around a whole lot of bitterness and resentment regarding this advice.  It's time to let go. Pregnancy itself this time around has been significantly more achy and it occurred much earlier in the pregnancy.  My pelvis and hips and ligaments and hamstrings feel very often as if they are hanging out by a very thin little threa...

I haven't blogged as much about this pregnancy as much as the first.  There are many many reasons for this.  First of all, I'm older and had more reservations and worries about this pregnancy being full term and didn't want to evil eye the whole situation (with actual people who read the blog).  Secondly, it's crazy how much time I don't have this time around to sit around and bask in the phenomenon of my baby and my body.  I have a toddler.  Little LJ doesn't exactly give me tons of time to sit about and focus and meditate on me.  I haven't been to one prenatal yoga class yet (hopefully I'm going this weekend).  I haven't had the time to sit and reflect.  So the whole 25 weeks pregnant thing really snuck up on me.  I'm about to schedule my last "every month appointment" and switch to seeing my midwife every two weeks.  We're buying furniture and figuring out the new baby's room.  Things are getting real. So here I am! Crazy ...

School started this week.  Lilah remembered the routine and immediately said "ok bye bye mama" and gave me a hug and kiss and walked away.  I wanted a little more drama for the end of our summer, but recognized a blessing when I saw it.  :) We're both on our own again doing our own thing.  She's a trooper and loves daycare and I'm told daily that she's the "most mellow and chill" kid in the place.  In fact, the other day the daycare director told me that she hopes that Lilah grows a thicker skin for when other kids take from her or don't wait her turn.  Interesting, since she doesn't really act that way at home.  We always know when she's disappointed.  She's also learning English at a crazy rate.  Telling me to "come here" today and also to play "peek-a-boo, koo-koo" with her.  She's translating as she speaks, which is kind of amazing.  

This is something I've struggled with since the beginning.  There's something incredibly exhausting about being an extrovert parent.  I love people.  I need them to recharge.  I need hanging out with a beer around a fire pit or a good discussion over a dinner table.  I don't need a movie or a dance club where I can't actually talk to people.  The only issue is that usually by the end of the day I can only get out of the house around 8 or so and then want to go to sleep around 10 or so in order to get some shuteye before waking up at 6am.  So heading out and having an incredible evening of recharging is not something that happens often.  Especially when the majority of your people are in the same exact situation as you.  We saw some of our friends recently and I thought to myself "FRIENDS! Why has it been so long!" And then I realized, we're all sailing this lonely sea together.  A whole bunch of folks in little sailboats floating along ...

Last weekend I met up with some sorority friends from college and we had a mama's weekend away.  There were 6 of us at the house.  I very quickly realized that I need to be much much happier with what I have and how lucky, fortunate, or even blessed I have been.  Of these wonderful ladies I was the only one that had no complications during birth or pregnancy and a very very healthy baby (knock on wood, spit, evil eye evil eye) thus far.  Two of these women had babies with congenital heart defects that required open heart surgery.  One of them had premature twins who needed to be fed through an NG tube for 11 months.  One of them struggled with infertility through two rounds of IVF.  All of them had families who provided less support than mine or they didn't ask for the support. I'm very very lucky.  I have a healthy little girl.  She's hilarious and happy and giggly and has quite the personality.  I have three sets of grandparents I ca...