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....

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

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

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Ten for a Tuesday

1.) I recently bought Pull-Ups for the first time.  I felt ridiculously embarrassed even walking down the aisle which obviously shelves bladder control products and diapers.  I sincerely worried that people would assume that I was headed to buy me some Depends, since pregnancy/ childbirth really wrecks your ability to sneeze and not lose control over your other functions.  Annnnd I've already shared too much. 2.) Speaking of Pull-Ups, Baby Girl had her first day at daycare rocking the Pull-Ups. I expected to pick her up and for her daycare provider to be shaking her head, holding up a drenched Pull-Up, saying, "Yeah.  Not. Ready. Yet."  Instead, Baby Girl was given a standing O by all of her teachers at her mad potty training skillz.  Holla!

3.) I could not shake my sense of disconcertedness all day long over the conclusion to "The Bachelor."

4.) Lovey Loverpants is right now picking up our friend Doc Albie at the airport.  I think Albie is the Korean brother I never had.  I absolutely love his Korean guts.

5.) I asked my academic dean if he will observe one of my classes this week.  I could really use some feedback, particularly on how to engage 30 college students on grammar before they all lapse into their hungry-for-lunch comas.

6.) I purchased a new monogrammed Easter bunny basket for Baby Girl.  Why the plastic woven green and yellow $.99 special from Big Lots was not good enough for her, I cannot explain.  Pottery Barn Kids has a way of sending its catalog at precise moments of consumer weakness, I swear.

7.) I cannot imagine a time in the future when I will be as blessed with friends who live so close as the ones I have right now.  And the ones who live far away, they are pretty stellar, too.

8.) I have seen exactly 2 of the movies nominated for the Oscars:  "An Education," and "Julie and Julia."  I HIGHLY recommend the former.  I hope Streep wins it for best actress for the latter. I would not mind seeing "The Blind Side" and "Food, Inc." and I positively want to see "Up."

9.) I am really homesick to see my parents.  All six of them.

10.) I recently took a CPR refresher course and I am feeling so much more confident about my ability to not morph into a paralyzed garden gnome in a moment of crisis.  I am giving my students 10 extra credit points if they get certified or recertified in CPR.

***

Baby Girl reading in a cafe.  She's soooo Parisian.

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And so flirtacious.

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Yesterday v. Today

Yesterday, I was:- Face down on a massage table, propped up by a belly pillow, while Jose made like Patrick-Swayze-with-clay on my back. - Feeling zen-like in a relaxation room, wearing a terrycloth robe, eating dried apricots and sipping chamomile tea. - Pleased to be the only one in the pool at the Intercontinental Spa. - Feeling guilt-free taking a long, hot shower, and using all and sundry toiletry items. - Gleefully riding the train unaccompanied by a goldfish cracker chomping toddler.

Today I am: - Irrationally close to tears at my inability to find my car keys anywhere. - Irrationally close to having a heart attack when my kid falls and splits lip at music class. - Plagued by diarrhea just as I was closing in on the cashier at the supermarket, with a cart full of frozen items, natch. - Projectile vomiting up my lunch which included folic acid and iron pills I know FetusBaby needs but which he/she will not receive until tomorrow.

And that is as much as I know about tomorrow.

*** Yesterday

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