Um, yeah.

I’m starting a new career.  My wonderful husband is actually the one who suggested it, as we sipped wine and shared fondue on our anniversary.  I love staying home with Eian, and I’m already dreading going back to work in six months.  If my new career works out, though, I might not have to.  I’m going to work on freelance writing.  I’ve been submitting pieces this week, though I haven’t heard anything back.  I’d like to build up enough contacts and enough of a portfolio to do that as a job next year.  We’ll see how it goes.

Eian is finally becoming an easier baby.  I won’t say “easy” yet, just like I don’t count on a stretch of six hours of sleep.  Every good night and every good day is just a gift from the fickle little baby tyrant, so I appreciate it as it comes.  He’s beautiful, though.  Last night, after his last feeding at 10pm, I held him as he slept.  I watched his chest rise and fall, watched expressions flicker over his face like headlights from a passing car.  I’ve never seen anything so lovely. 

Okay, so I know it’s been forever since I’ve written in here, but I at least have a good excuse!  I’ll be doing more writing now, since Eian is sleeping more and I have a computer upstairs. 

 Here’s something I wrote the other day:

Spring

Like the tight spiral of a fiddlehead fern,

singing with potential energy,

your foot curls in the cupped palm of my hand,

so soft that my fingers are clumsy,

and I must feel it with my lips.

This foot has yet to hold your weight

or know the spreading shift of sand,

the sticky coolness of wet grass,

or the slapping pavement of a full run.

Bee stings and kickball still wait

in the mists of childhood.

This foot will walk you down aisles,

will pace the floor with screaming babies,

will support you in old age.

This foot will carry you away from me.

I kiss each perfect toe;

they wait, like tree buds,

for the earth to turn a little.

I know I suck at this blog writing thing – sorry about that.  You’d think with being off of work, I would have lots of time for this kind of thing. For some reason, though, I seem to fill up my time with nesting.  If I had always been a clean person (like Sam say), nesting would take a lot less time.  However, Magnus and I keep our house in a barely sanitary condition most of the time.  Well, it’s not that bad, but we are not organized people.  And I have this feeling (nesting) that if we can get everything organized before the baby gets here, the whole baby thing will be less crazy.  So I spend my time cleaning closets and cupboards and the top of the fridge and behind the electronics.  Plus, there’s the baby’s room.  I can’t even describe how much time I’ve put into that.  And it still looks like a mess of baby stuff.  How is that even possible?  Anyway, if you’re wondering where I am, I’m here.  I’m just crazy nesting woman who is extremely busy.

Health wise, things are more or less good.  More good, really.  The baby is great, which is what really matters.  Also, I don’t seem to be having worse asthma trouble, which can happen at this point in the pregnancy.  I’ve got fun pre-term contractions, which I’ve had off and on since Thanksgiving.  These require trips to the ER to get turbutaline and a cervical exam.  Now that we’ve passed 35 weeks, I can’t get the turbutaline anymore (it no longer works to stop contractions).  That means, I just basically have to deal.  This isn’t pre-term labor exactly, since I am not dilated.  It’s just an “irritable uterus.”  Anyway, it’s not too bad if I take it easy (which doesn’t really go with the whole nesting thing above).

Baby is due February 11, and I expect him to be early.  If he isn’t, though, it just gives me more time to nest!

Last night I dreamt about the baby for the first time.  I mean, I’ve had other dreams, but they basically involved me forgetting to feed or change the baby while I shopped for cute baby clothes at the Gap.  Not exactly about the baby – more about my adjustment to the idea of this not being a doll.

So anyway, for the first time last night, I dreamt I saw his face.  He had Magnus’s hair color and his eyes were a light greyish blue.  In the dream, the nurses held him up for me, and I looked into his eyes and felt this utter happiness.  In a way, looking into his eyes reminded me of looking into a three-way mirror and seeing reflections going on into infinity.  I don’t mean he was a reflection of me, just that I felt that kind of infinite continuation.  There was something ancient there.  He was so his own separate person and so real. 

I don’t remember much about the other features.  The dream was about his eyes, about meeting him and seeing who he was for the first time.

When I woke up this morning, I could look down and see the lump of his head just to the right of my belly button.  I put my hand over it and thought about him in there.  Right now, he does see infinity.  He’s looking at the universe of pre-existence.  He’s maybe vaguely aware of the outside world, but his world is so much smaller and so much larger at the same time.  I wonder if he dreams.

I’m reading this fabulous book by Anne Lamott called Operating Instructions:  A Journal of My Son’s First Year.  I’ve read some of her other things, and actually I’m not really all that moved by her novels for some reason.  But this is awesome!  I laughed out loud several times last night and subjected Magnus to at least three excerpts that he didn’t exactly have a burning desire to hear.

Anyway, it makes me think I should be writing more.  Actually, I know I should, but there seems to be this wall between where my head is now and the ability to string several thoughts together into a cohesive whole.  I’m not sure what that is.  Is pregnancy making me dumber?  Seriously, it probably does have something to do with hormones.  I just hope it isn’t permanent.

Also, Sam is going through a hellish experience with cancer.  That has very little to do with my not writing, except that I write drivel and then look at her blog (full of insightful, real thoughts), and I have to wonder what the hell I’m writing about.  Sure, forming a new life is very important and cool, but I’m not saying anything meaningful.  And Sam is fighting for her life and sharing it so beautifully with her readers.  Hard to explain, I guess.  I just feel like I should be doing the same thing, and yet, I can’t seem to do it.

So I’ve written this entire thing about not writing, but really, it feels good.  It’s something.  It’s not deep or important, but it really is how I’m feeling right now.

I’m going through a phase of listening to Dar Williams (again) in my car.  I don’t have that many CDs, so I listen to them in shifts (over and over until I’m sick of it for a while). 

There’s a song that has the line, “Am I the habit you’re too tired to break?/ I want you to love me with every step you take.”  This used to mean a lot to me.  I worried about this with Magnus, before we were engaged.  Was he just too used to our relationship to leave it?  I wanted him to love me in a deliberate, intentional sort of way.  This line used to make me get a lump in my throat sometimes.  Anyway, I heard it again today, and all I felt was happy.  I don’t worry about that anymore.  I know he’s here because he wants to be.  I know he loves me on purpose.

The other song that really struck me on that CD is called “The One Who Knows.”

Time it was I had a dream
And you’re that dream come true.
If I had the world to give
I’d give it all to you.
I’ll take you to the mountains,
I will take you to the sea.
I’ll show you how this life became a miracle to me.

You’ll fly away, but take my hand until that day.
So when they ask how far love goes
When my job’s done you’ll be the one who knows.

My mom sang that song at my grandma’s memorial service, and it means even more to me know when I think about the baby.  I wish I had even a tolerable singing voice so I could sing it as a lullaby.

I felt the baby move for the fist time a few days ago.  Since then, it has moved every day.  One day it was even turning flips or something.  I like feeling it move.  I usually sort of think of it as a shapeless flesh-colored thing, but the moving reminds me that it has arms and legs and even some of its senses.  I’m excited to see it on the ultrasound (in 13 days).

I’m not so sure it’s a girl anymore.  I had some freaky spotting last week after a Pilates DVD, and that really made me realize how silly it is to focus on whether it’s a boy or a girl.  I want a healthy child.  Either way, I’ll be happy.  I can’t deny still wishing a little for a girl (all those adorable dresses, the dolls, the tea parties, the princess costumes, the hair styles, the pink bedrooms, the wedding someday, the female relationship), but I will not be disappointed with a boy.  A boy will teach me things about boys.  I don’t know how to be a mother to a little boy, but I’m sure I could figure it out.  We could make forts in the living room and maybe cook together and play board games.  And a mother/son relationship is supposedly different.  Perhaps it isn’t fraught with all the teenage tension of a mother/daughter relationship.

I had a fortune that said, “Your dearest wish will come true.”  I interpreted that to mean a daughter, but now my dearest wish is a healthy baby.  I’ll be so happy either way.

On a side note, I have the best husband in the world.  I like to brag about him.  He makes every day better.  He’s been telling me every day that I’m beautiful, which means more now than it ever has.  He buys things at the grocery store to tempt me.  He goes shopping for baby things when he really isn’t that interested.  He rubs my back.  He buys me flowers.  He helps me with household chores.  He kills spiders even when he’s scared of them.  And the big one:  he dealt with the fungus in the coffee pot.  My hero.

In my boredom today, I was doing a little internet research on childhood memory.  I’m not sure what made me think of it, but it’s always been interesting to me.  The classic, long-accepted belief about childhood memory is that people are really incapable of remembering things from before the age of 4 or 5.  Many of us know this is BS, since we personally can disprove it.  However, what accounts for early childhood memory?

Some people believe that it is verbal ability.  As you gain more language, you are better able to think and remember things in words.  This applies pretty well to ultra-verbal people like me, but I don’t think early memory is limited to those of us who think in words.

Another theory, which I just came across, is that early childhood memory is associated with a sense of the self as being separate.  So once we can identify “me,” we can think about what happens to us.  This typically occurs around 18 months of age, though it is later for many people.  I tend to subscribe to this theory myself, but I think that mostly has to do with the content of my first memory.

I remember my grandma holding me on her hip while my parents climbed up a cliff toward us.  For a long time, I thought I must not have that right, since it seems to be a very strange situation.  However, I asked my mom about it one time, and she said that she and my dad had been into rock-climbing when I was little and had climbed on the Ledges in Grand Ledge (where my grandparents lived).  This event did actually occur, and it happened when I as about 18 months old. 

I think this makes a lot of sense in terms of the second theory.  The memory is basically about seeing myself as separate from my parents, and it even happened at the time when this ability is supposed to develop.

Probably memory is a mixture of things.  I’m sure verbal ability has something to do with it, since rehearsing a memory is what keeps it fresh.  But this theory about sense of self seems very interesting.

So to the reader(s):  what is your first memory?  What do you think is responsible for early memory?

Magnus and I have talked before about how we felt really empowered by the success of our move to Minnesota.  After reacting to the Pfizer layoffs for several months, we chose to act and move here.  I’m not sure if we would have felt so empowered if it had been a failure, but we both worked to make it a success.  We made a choice, and it was the right choice for us.

Getting pregnant is both the same and not the same.  We made the decision to have a baby.  We acted (I won’t go into detail on that one).  But really, since then, I feel like I have been reacting.  And frequently, at least for people like me, simply reacting presents an emotional challenge.  It makes me feel powerless and dependant.  I don’t get to feel like myself.

And really I am surprised and disappointed by my feelings about being pregnant.  This baby is something I have wanted for years.  Shouldn’t I be thrilled and happy to be pregnant and just generally thinking positively?  Reading online message boards, that seems to be the attitude of most people.  But I feel like I’m being so negative.  I keep thinking about the changes in my body, about how some things will never be the same.  And I keep worrying about the first few months and how we will handle that.  I miss my Independence and creativity (some of which is already gone).

In truth, it is probably normal to have mixed feelings, and the hormone craziness certainly doesn’t help.  I am generally a very calm and grounded person, so I expect to react a certain way to things.  But no one is that predictable (even me), and when you add hormones into the mix, well, chances are good things will get a little crazy.

I just need to keep in mind that this is a choice I made.  This is really an action, not a reaction.

Okay, this is going to be short but entertaining (at least I think so).

Last night, Rae came over, and she brought fresh sweet corn from a roadside stand.  I was so happy to have an opportunity to use my corn skewers (you know, those little corn-shaped handle things).  Anyway, on my first bite of corn, the skewer on the pointy end came loose, and I stabbed myself in the face with it!  It’s right next to my lip, so it’s not that noticable, but I found it amusing (despite the blood)!