(It should be noted that it is very hard to send your very heart off for quality time with folks who don’t like you very much, but T deserves a shot at a good relationship with C’s parents, so I support it – this doesn’t make it easy, but I’m sure he’ll have a good time.)

Anywho, here are a couple of pics of the awesome Mr. T from the train trip up to drop him and C off. I didn’t cry until after we parted ways in Cologne, at least…

I miss you, Boo Boo Bear…

I feel like I’m learning so much about teaching in such a short time. It’s going to be a while before I can integrate all of this crap into my own brain and teaching, but I’m having a blast. Of course, the other folks in the course are a riot and great to work with, so it helps, but I feel like I’ll really be in a good place for teaching when I decide to go back to work.

Of course, being home with Torsten and Christian this weekend (well, only today really – I was in Colorado Springs this Saturday at the State Democratic Convention which completely sucked for various reasons I’ll disclose in June, after my course is done and I have some time to really write) made me realize that I’m totally not ready to be back at work yet – having the opportunity to enjoy my son’s early months with my husband is so wonderful that I can’t wait for June to come and to be at home with him again, even if I go stir crazy from time to time.

Anyhow, five minutes of non-course writing is all I can allow myself – if I do anymore, my paper and lesson plans will never get done, and that is, quite frankly, not an option!

That’s right… It’s Torsten’s first cereal moustache!!!

(Ok, so more made it onto the bib than into his mouth, but he did a pretty impressive job for a first time spoon-user…)

I swear, I get into bed and make the motion-sensitive night-light go on two or three times just to see Torsten’s angelic sleeping face.

(Of course, it is also true that no one tells you how much time you’ll spend before going to sleep looking/feeling one last time to make sure the baby is still breathing, but let’s focus on the positive here I’m glad there are ways to reduce the risk of SIDS, but by warning parents about it, doctors do manage to scare the crap out of new parents with it… I mean, the words “sudden” and “death” outside of a tennis match are not words new parents need to hear. Every appointment our pediatrician asks us if we’re still lying him to sleep on his back. And I just want to say, YES, YES, WE GET THE MESSAGE, NOW STOP SAYING IT!)

Dear Torsten,

I can’t believe you’ve already been with us for two whole months! On the other hand, you’re so much bigger and so much different than you were as a fresh newborn, it seems it must be at least that long.

No, really, you’re much bigger. When you came home from the hospital, you didn’t really fit into newborn clothes. We’d expected this, but from the other direction – they were too big for you; you were not too big for them. And it took you several weeks to really grow into them.

Then, all of a sudden, it was clear that with your long body and legs and big feet, you needed to move into the 0-3 month sizes, so we started putting you in those. And then, I swear, not a week later, those weren’t long enough for you. So then you were into 3-6 month sizes (though given that baby clothes tend to be sort of randomly related in size to the numbers assigned to them, you still can wear some of the smaller stuff), and you weren’t even two months old. Apparently, you’re 23.5″ now and nearly 12 pounds. And those huge feet? Monster feet. Small Monster indeed

I think we can safely say that your paternity is established. Your father is either the evil guy with the beard or an NBA all-star, and since I don’t know any of the latter, we’ll settle on the evil professor (which should make you happy, because you really like that bearded guy…).

This month has continued the roller coaster ride of new parenting, but I think the three of us are finally starting to settle in. We have vague routines, and we’re all starting to get used to each other. In fact, we even had a sleep routine for a couple of weeks which meant that Mama was nearly human, but then the most horrible thing ever happened…

See, no one was getting much sleep when you first came, although Mama was pulling the night shift so that at least one parent would be mostly sane. But then, over Christmas, Papa heard the call of the mountains and took Tante Conni on his own personal SkiFest 2007, which meant leaving early to head off to the mountains. But of course, Mama couldn’t be up all night and all day with you, so Papa took care of you when he got home from skiing and thus got very little sleep himself.

And so poor sleepy Papa got a cold.

And then you and Mama got a cold. Mama doesn’t care so much about Mama getting the cold, but I promise you that there’s nothing so sad as a little baby who is struggling to breathe through his nose.

As a result of said cold and the subsequent struggling, you really couldn’t sleep for more than about an hour and a half at a time without having to have your nose suctioned out. Ugh. Poor baby, and poor Mama.

Not only was Mama, who is not a morning person, getting out of bed every 90 minutes some nights, but she had to get up, put saline drops in your nostrils and suction your nose, which made you cry and cry and cry until we could get you breathing well enough to eat. You crying so much made Mama want to cry, because I hate seeing you so miserable. And then you were so tired you’d fall asleep immediately at the breast, only to wake up as soon as I got up to put you back to bed.

My head was spinning for weeks – only just now, the last couple of days, has there been pretty good sleep, and let me just say this: thank you, Torsten. We still have to get up about once a night to suction your nose, but it’s getting better, and Mama doesn’t even have to entirely wake up to get you fed the last couple of days. Thank you, thank you, thank you. Mama will buy you a delicious chocolate ice cream cone when you are old enough to eat it. For now, snuggling will have to do.

But the big news in babyland is that you are totally starting to express your little personality.

You dole out smiles all the time, though trying to capture your best, widest, most appealing smiles with a camera seems to be like trying to photograph the Loch Ness Monster. That’s ok – as long as you keep making them for us.

See, this next one is your super smile, and just like the Loch Ness Monster, no mortal is allowed to get a clear photo:

We’re madly in love with you, little boy. You are sweet, beautiful, and so very good-natured – we thank our lucky stars every day for you. You were even good enough to put up with immunizations and not be all that fussy when you didn’t feel well afterwards, and it was nothing that a little Tylenol didn’t take away.

Seriously, how on Earth did we get so lucky?

And you’ve started to coo and gurgle to us too, making noises of excitement and grinning your wide, unrestrained, toothless grin when you see us – or the invisible spiders on the wall. It is the most amazing thing ever. Nobody has ever smiled at me like that – you’ve totally stolen your Mama’s heart.

You are the cutest, most awesome little guy. You must be – it would take that kind of guy to get me to wake up at 3:30 am and smile as I feed him. I love everything about you, from your soft wispy brown hair to your big blue eyes to your wiggly kicking feet to your cute baby voice and your sweet baby smell. I go away for a few hours and seriously have to get home and get my Torsten fix! Not to say I don’t like a little “me” time, but I can’t take too much of it at once. And if something takes longer than I intended it to – like the Obama rally the other day – I get really anxious to get back home to my family and our cuddly baby. So sue me, I love my Torsten – I know Papa is caring for you wonderfully, but I see other babies and just want to be home with mine

I love having your little form cuddled up on my chest for a nap, and I suspect Papa feels the same. In the afternoons, you play on your little playmat for short periods of time, but more often than not you’re in Mama or Papa’s arms, dancing or squirming or talking or playing, and I’m still having trouble believing you’re ours, but I’ll take it. Every day there’s more to do with you and you notice more about the world, and I can’t wait to see what comes next. We learn something new about you every day (for instance, today we discovered you like zydeco, which much have come from Mama’s old job in New Orleans, and something Bridget and Margo are sure to laugh at), and it’s pretty awesome.

We’re totally keeping you, kiddo. You’re lovely.

Love,

Mama

Note: Ok, so this didn’t get finished until Torsten had been home almost a month, but given how much sleep I haven’t been getting, it’s a wonder it’s being posted at all

Dearest Torsten,

For a long time now, lots of your fans have been protesting the fact that we call you “Small Monster”, thinking that we must be declaring you some sort of abomination. While nothing could be further than the truth (we think monsters are snuggly and lovable and would, for example, invite Cookie Monster and Elmo over for a playdate, although we’d probably leave that whiny Telly Monster at home, and Barney, who is not strictly a monster but certainly is an abomination, is right out…), we are proud to tell you that you had a real name after all, one that your papa and I like very much: Torsten.

For those who are playing the home game (and the one person who rather randomly almost guessed it, knowing of my Thor fetish), Torsten means, literally, in various Germanic languages, “Thor’s stone”.

But it’s cooler than that, really… Old Norse/Icelandic, which is really very poetic (I had a blast studying it, but never really had the time to keep up with it or get far enough to cause much trouble), can use a phrase like “Thor’s stone” (Þorsteinn, in Icelandic) to mean a bunch of things. Not that I looked it up on Wikipedia before we chose it, but Wikipedia does mention that ‘it can be translated to “Thor’s stone”, “Thor’s hammer” or even “adamant as Thor”‘ – there’s also some old myth about a stone that Thor has rattling around in his head, so you can see that it can mean lots of things. Me, I just like the name. Also, it has “Thor” in it (and, let’s face it, it’s much nicer than the English equivalent, “Thurston”), and we know how I likes me some Thor. So whether it means Mjolnir or someone who has a really strong will, we like the name, Torsten, and we hope you do too. It seems to suit you, though I admit, you’re very sweet and I’m not letting some pagan god throw you into the sky to hit things and then fly back like a boomerang, even if it is Thor.

You have other names too, ones I won’t mention online for your privacy, but one is a family name and the other is in honor of a great friend of ours whom we really admire – we’re sure you would too.

But you’re still our Small Monster, and we mean that in the most loving way possible.

I thought I might steal an idea from Dooce (sorry, Dooce) and write you a little letter about you every month for a while, until you’re a little older anyway. And this letter, this letter is about how you came into the world, complete with some very bad pictures because Papa and the auto-focus don’t get along very well.

So Mama had a regular doctor’s appointment one afternoon to check on how you were doing in her belly. So far, you’d been doing fantastically – we’d even gotten to see some awesome pictures of you (which really do look like you when you sleep) – and Mama was just hoping we were getting closer to delivery. She hopped on the bus – for once, fortuitously, not taking 10,000 things with her – and went off to the doctor, hoping to have lunch after the 1 pm appointment.

In retrospect, she should have eaten first.

The appointment started off like every other appointment – listening to your beautiful heartbeat – and the doctor even pulled out the ultrasound to check on your size. Kiddo, those doctors were obsessed with how huge you were going to be, and boy, were they wrong. The doctor was thinking, on this particular day, that you were probably nine pounds, maybe ten, although he still deferred to the judgement of the perinatologist who didn’t think it was much to worry about when he saw you a couple of weeks ago.

Anyhow, then the doctor wanted to know if I wanted my cervix checked.

Now, in case someday you have yourself a pregnant wife, let me just say that no pregnant woman wants her cervix checked for fun – it’s uncomfortable – but we do want to know when we’re big and heavy and pregnant how things are rolling along. It doesn’t matter how many people on the pregnancy board tell us it serves no purpose, we want to know. Let me also say, though, that if we do make a brother or sister for you, next time around, they are going to stay the Hell away from my cervix until I’m in labor. Because this is how the exam went:

Doctor: <poking around with fingers> You’re three centimeters, and… sorry, I know this hurts…

Me: <breathing> It’s ok…

Doctor: <poking around more with fingers> and you’re… whoops.

Me: What?

Doctor: Well, dear, you’re being induced today…

Me: Um, huh?

Doctor: <flustered> I, uh, accidentally broke your water there. Never done that before, by accident, anyway… so you need to get your butt over to labor and delivery.

Now, don’t get me wrong – I wasn’t entirely upset about this, because any day where you get to meet a Small Monster is a good day. But I also knew that being induced would at the very least lead to an induction, which often leads to a C-section, and no matter how pregnant I was, I wasn’t really wanting that.

So anyhow, I calmly called Papa and let him know what was going on, but that he didn’t need to be in a hurry. They checked me in to a labor room after making triply-sure I knew what being a confidential patient meant (“You do know that this will mean we pretend like you’re not here and we’ve never heard of you, don’t you?” – um, yes, fools, that was the idea…), and I got to change into a very stylish hospital gown and wait on the doctor to show up for a good while.

Meanwhile, I was leaving a message for your papa, trying to tell him what to bring from home, when the nurse actually did show up. At this point, all was a little unreal, and I still wasn’t entirely convinced we were going to bring a Small Monster into the world. You were happily rolling around in my tummy, and speaking of my tummy, at this point, I noticed that my room had a view of the Thai place and remembered that I had not had lunch yet.

I knew I wasn’t going to get any either, and since I hadn’t started having real contractions yet (though they claimed I was having them on the monitor), I wasn’t going to get any anytime soon.

So the nurses hooked me up to some monitors and then started an IV after royally screwing up on the first try (Mama had a huge bruise for days afterward) – one which the resident said really wasn’t necessary yet, and days later I wished I’d protested, since I’m now missing feeling in the wrist where they shoved the thing and left it for days – and Mama walked the halls for a bit in her stylish gown before realizing there really wasn’t any place to go. I went back to the room and danced around a bit there.

Bored bored bored.

Soon thereafter, Papa showed up, calm as Papa always is, and promptly got sent out to eat his own dinner (Thai!!!) and to head home to get some other things he didn’t know I needed when he’d stopped at home on the way to the hospital (note that all of this took him a while, since he took the bus, but it’s not like you were coming anytime soon…).

Meanwhile, various doctors and nurses stopped in and laughed at what the doctor had done – understand, this doctor, who I like very much, likes to give people a hard time I hear, and so I think they were looking forward to getting their own back, but nevertheless, this was my main form of entertainment for a while. The resident who was taking care of us, along with the HMO’s attending physician, stopped in to let us know that we were on a clock. I sort of knew this was going to happen, but basically, they were going to give us a few more hours before they decided to use Pitocin to induce labor. They didn’t seem to be in a hurry, and while C-sections were mentioned in passing, I really don’t think the attending was inclined to push one. Mostly we just talked about you being big. Which you were not.

Meanwhile, Mama decided to let some people know you were on your way. Via the Internet. Because Mama is a geek (click to embiggen):

But then there was a shift change, and another attending came on. Nice guy, but he was talking C-section from the beginning (with a trial of labor), and that made me a bit nervous. The clock expired and they put me on the Pitocin, which wasn’t initially such a big deal until I was informed that I wasn’t going to be allowed to get out of bed.

Now, in our childbirth classes, we’d been told we could get portable monitors and labor walking around, but the night nurses were having none of that. So I don’t think we had much of a chance to avoid the knife, to be frank.

Also, your Mama is a fool. I was going to try to do it without pain medications for as long as possible. And so they started the Pitocin, and kept increasing it, and I breathed and made it through the contractions pretty well for a long, long time. Of course, since I was lying in bed, those contractions had a pretty poor chance of doing much, and so after a long time, I’d only progressed to four centimeters. But still, that was progress, and I was thinking we’d still get to see you come out of an approved orifice.

Well.

They kept turning the Pitocin up, see. I guess there’s a scale of increments they go for, and the maximum they usually go to is 20 (though they can go higher), and they got Mama up to 20, and… holy cow. Most people will tell you Pitocin contractions are worse than normal contractions, and I can only hope so, because otherwise, I don’t understand how the human race can go on.

We went on with these contractions for a while, you and I, and the only good thing I can say about them is that you were hanging in there like a champ, doing just fine. And that, for the most part, is all I cared about.

(Well, that, and food, and food I wasn’t going to get, just apple and cranberry juice…)

But when they checked me some hours later and I was still at four (stupid lying in bed!), they decided to insert an internal contraction monitor to see if my contractions were strong enough to be making things progress. I could have answered that for them – those freaking hurt, and I suspect they could have gotten the Middle East peace process to progress – but anyway, it was clear they were getting antsy. Never a good sign.

Meanwhile, Papa and I watched episodes of The 4400 (yes, kiddo, your mother is such a geek that not only did she live-blog the start of labor for a few friends, but she also watched sci-fi while having evil contractions…), most of which I can’t remember because they were interrupted by me breathing and going “oh my God, oh my God…”.

We hates Pitocin.

Not long after this, Mama asked for pain medication. We decided we’d go for Fentanyl rather than an epidural, because all I wanted was a little rest, and you weren’t going to be coming all that soon anyhow. Plus, they can counteract the effects of Fentanyl pretty quickly in the baby if they need to, and I didn’t want anyone messing with my spine. But that’s just me.

And that first dose? That was the best thing ever. You seemed to be tolerating it fine, and me, I just felt tons better.

The nurse told me we could give me another dose every hour. Sounded good to me.

Of course, no one mentioned to me that after the first dose, it’d wear off after about half an hour. Or that if the baby was tolerating it, they could have given it to me every twenty minutes. So later in the night, I’d have about 30 minutes of moderate relief, and 30 minutes of breathing through horribly strong contractions.

It got to the point where I could tell when they were going to come. See, there was a machine next to me that pumped Pitocin into my IV, and it would click when it did so. Every other click, I would have one of those insane contractions, and it clicked pretty often. It got to the point where I wanted ear plugs just to avoid anticipating the click. Later, when we were recovering in our hospital room, the leg compression thingies they made me wear also clicked, and I had the Pavlovian response of cringing at every other one. You have a very odd Mama, kiddo.

But in spite of this all, all of the Pitocin and pain drugs and monitors, you were doing fine, little pumpkin, and that’s all that mattered.

About 6:30 the next morning, though, the doctor came in to have The Talk. I had known it was coming by then, especially when my contractions were certainly strong enough to have brought progress (I still am annoyed about having to labor in bed, though…) and I was only at four-and-a-half, and I was so tired from a night of Pitocin-induced pain that I really couldn’t complain. All night they kept saying, “Oh, good, the pain medication seems to be lasting you about an hour”, and I wanted to throttle them and say, “No, it lasts about 30 minutes, and sheer will power is lasting me the hour, damnit!”

But a Small Monster was coming, so what did any of that matter?

Well, anyhow, I’d had my trial of labor, and I was no more interested in subjecting you to whatever Pitocin does to little babies than I was to subjecting myself to the pain, and so after 13 hours of labor, all of a sudden, there were forms to be signed and discussions to be had and strange medications to be drunk, and a few nasty contractions later, we were in the operating room.

You were still, my pumpkin, doing great in there, and I am thankful.

I can’t say that I remember too much – it was very bright, and Papa was in there looking funny in his blue outfit. The spinal they gave me was really very bad, very uncomfortable. I had to sit on the edge of the table while they poked at my spine, and it really hurt. I kept thinking I was going to fall off the table, and let’s face it, no one wants anyone messing with her spinal cord area. Papa and a nurse kept Mama steady, though, and I’d felt the last contraction I’d feel that day.

All of a sudden, Mama was up on the operating table, a big sheet in front of her eyes (thank God – not that Mama didn’t want to see you born, but she really didn’t want to see her own internal organs…), with Papa sitting next to her being mostly soothing (except for mentioning the knife – bad Papa!).

In truth, the actual C-section wasn’t so bad.

Mostly, it felt like people poking me in the tummy, and it was clear everything was going fine. Most of this is kind of a blur to me now, but I do remember them all of a sudden waving a big blood-covered Torsten at me quickly before taking you over to check you out. Your Apgar scores were good (8 and 9, because we’re in Denver and it takes babies a little longer to get oxygenated), and I could hear Papa asking lots of questions.

Oh, and as for you being huge?

Not even eight pounds.

Bite me, modern medicine.

Anyhow, Papa took this lovely picture of you right after you were out (click to embiggen):

And then they brought you over to me – I think Papa was holding you – and, well, wow.

I have never been so in love in my whole life (sorry, Papa ). I have never seen such a beautiful little boy, big wide eyes and beautiful face and all, with perfect little hands and long fingers and lots and lots of brown hair. Mama was all covered with tubes and stuff and couldn’t touch you for a while, but that was ok – I got to lie there looking at your perfect little face and share the wonder of you coming into the world with Papa, and it was the most awesome thing ever.

Soon after, they rolled me onto the cart to take me into recovery, and I finally got to hold you and nurse you and cuddle you. (See picture, and yes, click to see full-size)

Mama was still a bit out of it from surgery and they kept having to take you away to bathe and weigh you, but it was so awesome finally having you out on the outside. Sure, all I had gotten to see were your face and hands, but you are still the most beautiful baby I’ve ever met.

(Sorry about this picture – remember what I said about Papa and the auto-focus? )

Not long afterward, we finally went off to the room where we’d spend the next several days. I have to say, Mama wasn’t really prepared for what it would be like to both be recovering from surgery and becoming a new mama, but in the hospital that was mostly manageable. Mama didn’t sleep much – she doesn’t like to sleep on her back – but you seemed to be fine and happy with the world and were cuddly and slept quite a bit.

We took a lot of pictures of you there, though mostly you’re swaddled, so I guess you’re kind of hard to see… sorry, kiddo

(Click to embiggen!)

Papa was great help in the evenings when he was there staying with us, and you and I tried very hard to learn how to nurse (the fact that the lactation consultant would never come when paged didn’t help…).

It was overwhelming and Mama wasn’t feeling too hot (although, for having a c-section, apparently I felt comparatively great), and sometimes we got lame nurses, and worst of all, there was always someone coming into the room at odd hours to poke you or poke me or check you or check me, but we were doing ok. You’d lost some weight and were turning a little yellow, but we were assured that both things were normal and nothing to worry about.

Finally, a few days later, we were about to leave, when suddenly it seemed as if the doctors noticed your weight and your color for the first time, and it made for a rough homecoming for us. Suddenly, the nurse practitioner who’d thought you were fine the day before was saying you’d lost more than 10% of your body weight (probably because Mama’s milk had just come in, and you’d not had any time to take advantage of it), and you were more jaundiced than they’d have liked (though not enough to treat), and then there were lots of people hovering around giving Mama instructions on how to feed you with supplements and what had been a fairly relaxed morning leading up to your homecoming was all of a sudden filled with worry. You got prodded and weighed again, and Mama was a mess as at the last minute someone tried to show her how to use a breast pump.

By the time we got you into your car seat to come home, you were crying and Mama was about to cry, and poor Papa was having to deal with both of us. We did both decide to stop before we left the room, though

Once we got you home, pumpkin, I admit it, it was tough, but that’s not because of you. You’re really a good baby – you cry when you’re wet or you’re hungry, as babies are wont to do, but the rest of the time, you’re usually just curious, staring around with those big beautiful eyes. The first nights at home were rough, as they always are, and were a bit rougher because Mama had to feed you, then pump, then give you a supplement, and as much as Papa helped, it meant very little time to enjoy you in the beginning, which is too bad, because you’re a very sweet, wonderful little boy. Mama loves to smell your sweet little baby smells and cuddle you and watch you make big eyes when you see a face, but mostly, you smell Mama’s milk and are more interested in my cow function than much else – this makes it a little hard to find playtime, especially if you’re hungry most of the time.

(And did I mention that your Papa is awesome and that you worship the thin ice he walks on? Click to embiggen…)

We’ll try to be better about that in the future – we’re working hard to get the feeding thing straightened out – but I promise you that no matter how tough these first few weeks are, I wouldn’t trade you for sleep or comfort now matter how appealing they are right now.

We love you very much, little pumpkin.

Welcome home!

Love,

Mama

(Click photo to embiggen)

Oh, and Small Monster’s now not-secret name? Torsten.

He’s sweet and beautiful and precious, and we love him more than all the world.

Dearest Small Monster,

Tomorrow you are full-term. Fully-cooked. Ready for lift-off. And probably lots of other things that involve two words with a hyphen between them.

And this means you can make an appearance any time. Your house arrest has been lifted, although unfortunately, your landlord is also preparing eviction papers. Fortunately, we’ve found new and snugglier accomodations for you, so you might as well come on out!

Your Mama dreams about you almost every night, although it’s rarely exactly about you. Sometimes they’re scared dreams where I can’t find you or someone takes you away because they decide I’m incompetent or that you “belong” to them or, for some reason, you come out talking. Last night, for some reason, I’d taken a field trip to Boulder with friends from college and high school, and there’d been some sort of horrible explosion somewhere where you were, and I went looking for you even though I knew I wouldn’t find you. And then my cell phone died, so I couldn’t call anyone to help me find you. And then I realized that I haven’t given birth yet, creating one of those “wtf??” moments in a dream which for some strange reason don’t stop the dream from continuing! Argh. I think I’ve been watching the news too much. You are totally not allowed to hang around places that might explode until like, um, ever, ok?

Fortunately, most of my recent dreams about you have been good ones, ones where you’re healthy and hale and here, and I can’t tell you how excited I am to meet you. I know we’re going to be tired all the time, and I know my chest is going to be sore, and I know I am going to feel incompetent and stir crazy and lots of other things. But those are only the bad parts, and they don’t matter so much. I already love you more than I know how to say, and I’ve never even seen anything but a fuzzy ultrasound photo of you. I love that you wiggle when I sing and that, for some reason, you wiggle the most when I listen to the music I love. (And, for some reason, I find myself pleased that you pass the in utero hearing test, though it would make no difference to me if you did not…) I love waking up with you doing somersaults (well, now it’s more like my attempts to turn over at night now that you’re so heavy – you’d like to do a somersault, and you wiggle around for a while until you realize it’s just too much effort and not worth it ), and I find myself trying very hard not to move or disturb you so that I can feel you playing in there. I worry when I don’t feel you for a while, even though I know it’s one of your in utero naptimes, but usually you perk up when I stroke your little house, and so I try to leave you alone so you can sleep in peace. I admit I sort of like the idea of having some inherent quality (read: being me) that soothes you into sleep without even trying right now. I probably won’t have that luxury once you come out.

You are totally packed into that little house of yours, though, and it’s hard to tell which limb is which when I see one poking out of my belly as you move. One of your papa’s colleagues forewarned us that you’d be all folded up when you came out, and I can totally feel why. When I see my bare belly in the mornings and it is so round and taut and uniform in shape, it is clear that everything in there is stretched to its limit to accomodate you, and that you’ll have to come out soon or risk being squished into a jam-packed Sphere-O’-Baby (note: gratuitous use of the contraction (?!??) O’ has made me hungry for Bennigan’s. Ridiculous, these instantaneous cravings…) which, quite frankly, is so much less appealing than being born, don’t you think? But really seeing you there, with no doubt (even from up above) that I am pregnant with a Small Monster amazes me, even after nearly 9 months of carrying you. Strangers are starting to make the comment that I “look like [I] could go at any time”, and that is of course soon. It could be next week, it could be in 5 weeks, but in the grand scheme of things, after almost 37 weeks of Small Monster in the belly, that isn’t that long – it only feels like it. But they, of course, mean that it looks like I might just give birth right now, in the deli line, and could I please not let my water break where they might have to clean it up?

But that’s ok, Small Monster. If you want to let our water break in the deli line, you go right ahead. I’ll meet you anytime and anywhere I get the chance to meet you (though I admit a slight preference to making it to the hospital, and remember, no places that are likely to explode).

I know it’s really cozy in there with your free pool, heating, and round-the-clock snuggling, but it’s got to be pretty boring in there by now. It might require a little more work out here to get you bundled up in snuggly blankets, and you probably won’t like our version of the pool (or bath) at first, but if you come out here, you get to meet all sorts of cool people who love you, and you’ll get snuggling from your papa (trust me – snuggling Papa is tooootally worth coming out for). And – here’s the extra special bonus – if you wait a year or so, there is chocolate. There is no way getting hints of whatever chocolate Mama has eaten is as good as getting the real stuff, trust me.

If you don’t believe me, ask Papa.

Which you’d have to come out here to do.

So get a move on.

But out here, it’s exciting. There are trees and animals and all sorts of things to be fascinated with and make noise with and play with. Of course, there’s also Dick Cheney and Lindsey Lohan and Carrot Top out here, and we’re totally sorry for that, but, eh, for the most part, it’s good, and we’ll try to make it the best place we can for you.

In some ways, we’d love you to wait a week so that Papa can recover from a long quarter and I can do more to get the house in order, but as far as we can be, we’re ready for you, so come on down. Sure, we’re going to panic sometimes when you just aren’t comfortable enough to sleep or we just can’t guess why you’re crying so hard and we’re frantically trying to find something, anything, to make you feel better. And I’m sure there will be grumpy mornings when you’ve decided in your infinite baby wisdom that 4 am would be a great time to play with us and that nothing else will do. But I promise you that whatever happens, we will love whatever kind of little guy you come out to be, even if you decide to vote Republican when you grow up.

I admit to rabid curiosity about what you’re going to be like, especially because that will be a different person at birth than at one (and ten and twenty and thirty) – but I can wait. We’ll get to discover you as you grow, and I can’t think of a more awesome gift to be given. So thanks, Small Monster. We’ll be seeing you soon (how’s Monday for you?), and in the meantime, here’s a selection of baroque brass music for you to dance to…

Love,

Your very expectant Mama

It was one Hell of a weekend.

Christian and I rented a car for a full 3-day weekend (usually we only rent one for a day) to get last minute baby and winter preparations done around the house, and it was busy busy busy.

Friday was a security conference and then my baby shower, which was much fun (and may have involved accidentally directing some guests to a halfway house instead of the party, which is always a fun part of any baby-related event) and a lovely way to see friends before the big arrival. Thanks to Susan, Steve, Lynett, Chris and Kyra for a great time and a lot of useful baby swag and advice! It was awesome

Then Saturday was childbirth class (which I have to admit is useful, although I’m still wondering if I’m going to get to apply any of it or if they’re just going to cut me open like a watermelon…), after which I shopped for most of the baby stuff we need but don’t yet have (and remember, I hate shopping!). I still feel vaguely guilty buying baby stuff because it seems like tempting fate, but seriously, I don’t think I’d feel very good about the kid having to be naked all winter, so shop I did. We also had a nice little dinner at an Asian fusion place near campus with one of Christian’s graduate students, at which I learned that “bistro” probably comes from a Russian word (which we got through French) meaning “quick”, which the place was, in fact, not But hey, you learn something new every day…

But wait, there’s more! And it involves shopping! (Boo…)

Sunday I drove Christian and one of his grad students to Boulder for a programming languages conference. After dropping them off, what do you think I did, hmm? I got to shop more at Babies “R” Us (ugh – fortunately, I got in just after they opened, but enough after they opened that all of the sales associates had latched onto other unsuspecting expecting couples so that I could get what I needed and get out), which is between Boulder and Denver (and quite a drive from both home and Boulder, to be honest). But that wasn’t enough shopping fun, so I then went to a baby resale shop in Boulder (where they resell baby clothes, not babies, c’mon…), which was full of clothes that actually cost more than I’ve paid full price for anything Small Monster has now – so that was a waste of time. And finally, I got to hit Target again to get whatever I couldn’t find elsewhere. Because, you know, I hadn’t had quite enough shopping for one weekend. At least I got a lovely dinner with my evil husband at The Boulder Teahouse before we headed home, though. (Food and atmosphere were great, and there was this cute German sitting across the table from me. How awesome is that?)

But for the record, that is way, way more shopping than I can normally put up with.

As if that weren’t enough, I got to drive to an OB appointment this morning (note: Small Monster’s doing fine), and then hit Wal-Mart and Sam’s Club (two places I generally don’t like to shop) to get the last of the last of the last of the things we needed, although none of these were for the baby (some rugs for our living room hardwood floors, some toiletries, etc).

I am done shopping.

Done, I tell you.

So that’s one part of what made the weekend so chaotic, and given how much I hate shopping (and driving, for the record), that was really enough for me.

Unfortunately, on top of all of this mayhem, just before the baby shower, I got a handwritten (and sincere, if misguided) letter from a family member that just kept The Drama ™ going and going, and this letter, over the course of the weekend, ended up precipitating the final blow in the estrangement from the family I grew up in – this all started with the announcement of my pregnancy in April and has been rearing its head every few weeks since then, making being pregnant and joyful really hard, and causing no end of visits to my counselor to try to figure out how best to handle things. I had hoped to be able to keep contact with at least one of them once I had decided I had had enough, but the events following the receipt of this letter made it quite clear that this is utterly impossible.

Sometimes in life you have to make decisions that are personally unpleasant but are the best ones you can make for you and your family, and that’s what I’ve done – we have a child coming into the world, and it is our job to look after his best interests. If those interests collide with what is comfortable and desirable for some other people, it is unfortunate, but that cannot be helped. After putting up with attempts to draw me back into to the drama again and again over the course of the last 7 months, even after having made it repeatedly crystal clear that I had no interest in participating, I have to admit that it’s a great, if complicated, relief to be able to finish my pregnancy and start on our journey as parents without the baggage of those who feel the right to constantly violate one’s boundaries, even if the way everything has happened is really very painful. I’ve mentioned this drama obliquely several times over the course of my pregnancy here, and I never really spelled any of it out – some details don’t belong on the Internet – but for those who’ve wondered at my occasional mentions of it (comments about drama and pseudonymous comment posting, among other things), that’s been what’s been going on for the past several months. I kept completely mum about it after some point because I did not want to engage those who were making my life so difficult, but since I really no longer have anything more to lose by being open about it, my level of self-censorship has gone down by several degrees.

So it was a very busy weekend, and perhaps not the most pleasant one because I’ve had to come to terms with some things I really didn’t want to accept about someone I love; on the other hand, I don’t have to tiptoe around anymore, waiting for the next e-mail or letter or phone call or blog comment intended to stir my life up again at a time when we have quite enough stirring up going on! The drama has made it really hard to focus on the fact that I have an incredibly loving husband, unbelievably supportive and fantastic friends (near and far), and a snuggly little Small Monster on the way – all of whom bring untold amounts of love and joy into my life, and all of whom deserve a partner/friend/parent who is present and engaged rather than constantly distracted by this unnecessary anxiety. I sort of feel like (once I get over the sting of this weekend’s events) I’ll be able to give that soon for the first time in a long time.

Anyway, that was a lot more personal than I usually like to get publicly, but it sort of felt good to be open about it.

The weekend is over, and the sun is shining outside. I think I’ll make myself some tea and go enjoy some fresh air.

(Note to readers who are almost definitely not you: Negative or abusive comments will be moderated and/or deleted and will be treated as harassment if appropriate. If you don’t like the rules in my sandbox, go play in your own…)

Cuteness on wheels.

Click to embiggen. Turn your head to the left to see cute little face with his hand in front of it

Blurry it may be, but you can’t say he’s not cute.