Dear Praying People

The FamiLee could use a prayer right now.  Oh, not for me.  Or my belly baby.  We're staying put.  Fetus Baby knows that Mama has to give a final and collect papers and answer groveling e-mails about why she has to be such a witch and not grant extensions of mercy BECAUSE TWO THINGS WAIT FOR NO ONE:  DEATH AND DILATION, SONNY!  We could use a prayer for Baby Girl, though.  She's experiencing the inevitable regression of a toddler-not-yet-a-woman precariously teetering on that precipice of Big Sisterdom.  Who wouldn't need to yank out the infantile rattles and ask to be rocked at intervals of every 2 hours every night and suddenly revert to some cryptic cavegirl code of, "Ahenna wanna flum wum wahhhh" when you and I know that girlfriend just wants another pack of fruit snacks--a request for which she is totally capable of articulating???? Poor Baby Girl.  She knows her world is about to get rocked.

We know in time, though, she'll be singin' and slingin' like a seasoned sister.

(Huge Huzzahs to my awesome neighbor mama friends who pitched in for a new Moby wrap for me and a wee one for Baby Girl).

Dear Newbie 'Nother Baby

Dear Newbie, I suppose I'm being unfair in assuming you've already gotten a good read on me.  I feel as though I know quite a bit about you, even though I haven't heard your cry (will it be one of those bleating polite ones or one of those incessantly demanding ones?) or examined your dimpled knuckles or eaten any of your toes yet.  I know that you're a tenaciously strong kicker, that you take an interest in your sister's voice, and that you have a really cute nose.  I saw you on an ultrasound yesterday as the midwife (the one who sometimes reaches into Mama's Lady Garden with cold instruments?  Yeah, that lady) thought you might be in breech position.  But the good news is that you're head-down, which means you are the more cooperative of my children these days.  Your sister has been, to put it gently, enthusiastic about negotiating the terms of everything.  I am looking forward to meeting you, and being deliriously in love with you, as I was and still am with your sister, even though she requires a puppetry play in two acts to coax her onto the toilet multiple times a day.

We'll have a lifetime to get to know one another, which is wonderfully daunting, isn't it?  But one thing I can tell you about me, in case you haven't yet quite gathered it all from your corner of my uterus, is that I really enjoy being a parent.  It's one of the few things I think I was created for -- that and diagramming sentences.  And writing the occasional sympathy note or consumer review.  I'm good at those, as well.

I love having my own family because we get to figure things out together and erect our own little totems of tradition (e.g. one of your daddy's and my favorites is taking some kind of boat ride around our wedding anniversary every year, which is odd since your mama gets extreme motion sickness just from walking and glancing down at her watch...but anyway, just a conundrum I guess).

I am also a bit of a loner by nature. I have heaps of good friends but for such a small woman, I do prefer a lot of space to myself.  So having a family has refined me into a person that actually prefers the din of coffee makers and toy pianos and NPR and pitter-patter of feet all competing for airtime at the same time.  I'm looking forward to you joining the chaotic melody of our home.

I suppose everything else we'll just have to learn about each other when we meet. And since someone asks me every .04 seconds when that will be, the choice is really yours as to whether you want to make a liar out of me.  Heehee.  I'm funny.  And passive aggressive sometimes, too!  And so much more.  Come out soon, won't you, Newbie 'Nother Baby?

Love, Mama

***

Please come soon, Newbie 'Nother Baby.  There are so many toys that await....

And Big Sister gets lonely for a companion sometimes...

...and girlfriend can't handle all these chores by herself :)

Dear Self of the Future

To my dear self of the future, In case you are retracing your blog steps to investigate What It Was Like to be pregnant in the 9th month for what will most likely be the last time ever (unless God decides otherwise and/or you get invited to host your own reality television show "John and Kay Plus Three in a Condo the Size of a Skechers Shape-up"), here is what was happening way back then:

- You and your smoking hot husband went to a concert (Ben Folds) in which you were asked where your 3rd ticket was (hyuck hyuck hyuck) and in which you gave yourselves away as the couple who had not been out on the town since '96 because you asked a police officer where the Red Sox Free Shuttle was.  Oh, you mean the one that was discontinued last year?  Yeah, that one.  Kay bye.

- You had heartburn that made you wonder if hot lava was going to come spewing out of your ears. - You got a free Coke at Chipotle because the manager clearly felt sorry for you in your enormity.

- You banned yourself from going to the grocery store because every time you went, it was as though you were preparing to stock a bomb shelter for a year.  Every time you thought about leaving Baby Girl to go have another baby, it filled you with nervousness that there wouldn't be enough fruit snacks in the house with which to pack her lunch.

- You did not have bad swelling (yet).  Your wedding rings still fit.

- Your fetus baby kicked constantly and kicked hard.

- You made yourself a Bucket List.

- You were grumpy toward your smoking hot husband 95% of the time.

- You looked at this picture a lot. - You were unseasonably hilarious at times.

- You tried to enjoy this last month in which you'd probably ever be pregnant again, which basically meant you sniggered at the couples on TLC "Home Hunters" and drank a lot of seltzer limeade mocktails and blew through whole bottles of TUMS.