no sleep, just dreams

Three years ago tonight, I had no idea what lie ahead of me. A little before midnight, my water broke, setting off a chain of events that was alternately thrilling and terrifying, and while things have mellowed out since then, it's safe to say that nothing has been the same.

Well, OK, some things are the same all over again. I'm currently rolling around for hours at a time, pulling out my hair at sleepless night after sleepless night. I'm carrying around a ridiculously oversized belly that keeps me from moving quickly and squeezing into small spaces (critical toddler coping skills). And I'm soaking up every minute of back-East-time, basking in the idea that I get to stay here for more than two weeks, but dreading the though that I might not be back for a long time.

This Christmas we're seeing signs of what things might be like in the future: Luke jumping out of bed on Christmas morning, breathlessly announcing, "Santa is coming!" Sam and Luke and Lily sitting by themselves at the kids' table, conversing among themselves. Luke and Sam picking out a book and curling up on a chair to read it together. Are these the same little helpless infants who we used to carry around in car seats?

Three years ago, all Dave and I knew was that there was this tiny, extremely loud and messy human being who was all of a sudden our round-the-clock responsibility. The idea of it was almost too much to process. Now I look at our little mop-headed builder/drummer/guitar player and I listen to him chatter away, and I think, how could I even imagine a life without him?

I tell Dave that he is the love of my life because I chose him, he chose me, and we choose to live our lives together every day. It doesn't have to do with blood or obligation; it's the purest expression of free will that we want to be together. But my love for Luke is different; almost more physical. In my weepy hormonal state, I can sometimes picture an imaginary umbilical cord connecting me to him in a way that can never be broken.

Last night when Luke couldn't/wouldn't go to sleep, I finally just let him run around while I sat blocking the door. At some point his steam ran out and he collapsed in my lap, burying his head in my chest and inhaling deeply. Finally, he raised a tired head up to look at me and said, "You smell good, Mommy." At the end of the day, it's those little words, and the full-body hugs, and the sloppy kisses that always outweigh the most trying episdes of the day. I love you, my three-year-old boy, and I can't imagine it any other way.

light in the darkness

So we had a Santa pic; now it's time for the equal-opportunity Hanukkah pic. Sadly, it isn't quite equal opportunity. Luke's been so busy absorbing all of the details of Christmas, Santa, and reindeer that it felt like sort of an afterthought last week when I said to him, "So there's this other holiday that we celebrate called Hanukkah...." Lots of information to process this week.

Aw, heck. The truth is, mostly I haven't blogged because I didn't want the footie pajama post to be pushed further down on the screen. Guess I can't hold out forever though.

Things that bumped me up this week:

*Offers and counter-offers on our house
*Seeing our meatball trying to suck its thumb, missing, and then turning to face the screen and moving its jaw up and down in laughter. That's really refined humor among the 16-week-old fetus set - looks like we have a comedian in there!
*Watching Luke very solemnly use his new doctor kit on his bear with a tummy ache and saying, "Your tummy hurts? Hmmm. Just a minute," then going over and consulting the pamphlet in the doctor's kit. "This says 'How to Fix a Bear.'"
*Finally getting at least one good night's sleep following several early wakenings.

Things that made me say 'hmmmm.'

*Playing with Luke at the park, urging him not to leave his hammer lying around because "someone might take it," then watching him become extremely interested in the idea of someone taking it. He stopped all further play, placed the hammer in the middle of the path, then sat in wait for some kid to come and take it. At some point I just put the hammer away. Then he did the same thing with his green measuring cup. Finally some little kid walked by, picked up the cup, and then put it down in pursuit of some other toy. As we were leaving the park, Luke told me (and did I detect a note of pride in this?) "When we were at the park some kid took my toys!"

*Taking Luke to a family holiday party, and watching him progressively fall apart more each time some kid took 'his' toy. Funny, he's happy with just one kid around...and plenty happy with a room full of adults...but once you introduce party chaos and kid free-for-all, he doesn't seem to want to hold his own.

The latter might have been explained by the onset of yet another cold. Last night it manifested itself with Luke declaring that there were orange monsters in his room, and then making repeated trips out of his room and into my side of the bed throughout the night. Funny enough, he was perfectly happy this morning. Let's hope he (and I) can all stay healthy enough for the next 48 hours to have an uneventful flight back East.

flying

My two least favorite words have now become "subchorionic hematoma." That said, my two new favorite words are "fine to fly."

Oh, that and what Luke said to Santa tonight. He asked for candy, and then he told Santa he "I want Mommy to feel better."

my heart, it wears striped footie pajamas

Is it so wrong to just watch Luke toddle around in the morning and totally swoon? Here he is, with his little sturdy body, giving us a constant narration of his activities while he alternates between flipping pancakes on his bed, fixing a chair with a hammer, solemnly strumming his guitar. It's ironic, because the same small person who is such a delight in the morning can be such a pain at the end of the day that I can't wait for him to go to sleep, but by the time the sun is up, I can't wait to hear his footsteps coming back to see me again.

On our vacation we got to see the best and the worst of times; the best being when he was surrounded by adults and confidently chatting away about various foods and activities. At our favorite Mexican restaurant he struck up a conversation with the big burly manager on the way out: "Thank you for dinner. I got some candy from the candy bowl. It was just like when I was trick-or-treating." We could barely keep from cracking up, when, walking away from this conversation, we heard Luke quietly saying to himself, "That was a very nice man."

At our favorite Japanese steakhouse last night, we could almost hear the groans at our communal table when all of the other already-seated couples saw us sitting down with a toddler. But Luke was on perfect, bordering on angelic behavior throughout the evening; saying "please" and "thank you" to everyone; laughing at all the appropriate jokes that the chef made; and quietly eating his rice with chopsticks when he wasn't being spoken to. It was as if there was a halo over his Little Lord Fauntleroy suit. Everyone complimented him at the end of the meal for being such a delight.

And yet...as night and tiredness overtake us, we see the demonic flip side of all this sweetness. The first night it was a whine that turned into a nonsensical tirade on the way home from the drugstore: "Daddy turn the car around. I want the white notepad, not the yellow one. Turn the car around! I want the white one!!! Nooooooo!" and so on for 20-plus minutes.

Last night it was even worse, coming down from the steakhouse high, when he turned into his rarely seen utter non-compliance mode during teeth-brushing and bed-putting. Dave put him to bed, over loud protests, to the point where I swear he was still saying, "I want MOMMY!!!" as he slipped into sleep.

By 1 a.m. the reasons for the sudden shift in behavior became more apparent when he woke up crying that his ear hurt. Ugh. Back to sleep by 2 a.m. And back up at 6:30. And back to sleep until 9 a.m., with the extra time feeling more like a necessity than a bonus.

Tonight we're back at home and Luke is a little glassy-eyed and dopey, and - am I allowed to say this? - I kind of like him this way. He's all cuddly, and affectionate, and all he wants to do is curl up and snuggle in bed and watch music with me. There's no edge to his sickness tonight; it's just pure droopiness. And it just makes my heart swell even more. I watched him fall asleep tonight and then listened to him for a little while and wondered about him as a four, ten, or even fifteen-year-old. Will I look back without remembering the ugly tirades, and just long for the snuggly footie pajama times again?

vacation, all I ever wanted

Here we are in Palm Springs, or a close proximity, and I'm tapping away to the dimmest light in our room while Luke is sleeping and making impossibly cute baby murmering noises in the background. I was feeling somewhat light-hearted and happy, but now that I read Joe's blog I'm mired in gloom and sadness. My biggest complaint right now is there's not much of a view from our otherwise well-appointed hotel room, so what is in fact my problem?

Pause for deep sigh.

Luke has been asking friends and his teachers for days, "Do you love Palm Springs?" He's been almost as excited as any one of us about this trip, and yet once we're here it's been hard for him to identify exactly which part is Palm Springs. "Is this Palm Springs?" he's been asking, at the outlet stores, pulling into the hotel, in the lobby lounge, and again at breakfast. One thing he knows for sure is In N Out burger. Yesterday he napped on the long drive here and seemed to wake up with a start when we passed an In N Out burger on the freeway in the middle of who-knows-where. "That's In N Out Burger!" he declared, and then promptly turned his head, shut his eyes, and fell back into a deep sleep. It's a special kind of radar.

This resort is...hmmm...a little strange, at least for our current needs. They're bending over backwards to make it a great stay for us. When we got in we asked if we could get a refrigerator (aside from the super-full minibar), and within moments a man came in wheeling a fridge that's about twice the size of what I had in my college dorm room (no charge). But our special rate/stay here seems to have forced us into some kind of 90-minute sales-presentation-that's-not-a-sales-presentation, which we may or may not be able to get out of tomorrow. Plus the resort as a whole is very spread out, with only sporadic golf-cart-shuttle stops, and you have to walk sizable distances to places like the lobby, restaurants, pools, etc. That would be fine if I were at a normal activity level but since I'm not really supposed to be walking at all I've been depending on Dave to chauffer me/us on ridiculously short car trips. Today I watched Luke in the hotel's kiddie park while Dave was on a work call; dealt with a meltdown when I told Luke he couldn't dig in the sand in the parking lot with the croquet mallets, and then wound up catching the next available shuttle-to-anywhere in complete mom desperation. I can't tell any of the buildings apart, so I had the driver drop us off at the corporate center, thinking it was the main lobby, and then there we were, stranded, sans Dave, watching some bored suits talk on their cell phones. So it's been a little strange.

I told Dave today that I would love to be enjoying this vacation at my normal pace and at a normal anxiety level but almost every vigorous movement reminds me that everything is still not quite OK with my body, and I'm worried. It doesn't feel so good. Let's hope Luke is able to at least remain somewhat oblivious and enjoy the rest of the time here.

little earthquakes

Luke has been waking up early for some unknown reason; for the last two weekend days he's simply getting up and crawling into our bed (which is OK at, say, 6:15; but not OK at 4:30 because either way I won't fall asleep afterwards).

This morning Dave and I were awakened at 6:20 not by our little earth-mover, but by a real-deal earthquake rattling the windows. OK, a micro-earthquake, magnitude 2.7, but still, it was noisy for all of 5 seconds.

Luke for reasons yet unknown slept through the whole event, and in fact kept sleeping until an almost unheard of 7:40. Why he chose to do this on Earthquake Monday, rather than, say, a weekend day when we might have liked the extra sleep is also unknown.

Incidentally, I went on the main earthquake site almost immediately afterwards to check magnitude, location, and to fill out the "Did you feel it?" forms. Dave says, "Who bothers to talk about 2.7 magnitude earthquakes besides people from the East Coast?" Turns out more than 100 people from our town had already filled it out - guess we're all transplants.

Sunday papers

The scene: Luke and I are reading the hardware ads in the Sunday paper together.

Luke: "What's that, Mommy?"
Me (reading the ad text): "That's called a Sawzall."
Luke: "Hmmm. Mommy, I think that's called a reciprocating saw."

Phone home

One question a person might ask is, how many more days is Jeanne going to spend primarily in bed? That is a very good question and Luke and Dave and I would all like to know the answer. Following yet another scare on Wednesday I'm back to the mattress with a laptop and a few DVDs as my constant companions.

One thing that has really emerged as a trend over the past week, as Dave runs around town with Luke fulfilling all of my various errands, is that Luke finds talking on the phone irresistable. He and Dave could be gone for less than two minutes and if I call, he wants to get on the phone.

"Hi Mommy. We were at Home Depot. We were at the Tool Corral. We saw saws, drills, sanders, jackhammers...Now we are going to In N Out burger to get some milkshake and French fries..." and this could go on for hours.

He sounds so serious and so authoritative on the phone that I've been forgetting he's not even three yet. I dictate my food orders on the phone to him ("Beef burrito." "Double mushroom pizza") (Yes, that's how we've been eating for the past week). Today I talked to him after his eye doctor appointment and he asked me if I needed Dave to go to the farmers' market. That had both of us scratching our heads because how did he know it was Friday? (We sent him to school today even though it's not his regular school day.) And how did he know I was thinking of asking Dave to go to the farmers' market?

If anyone calls while we're at home, he'll be going out of his skin until he gets a chance to have his say. Dave was on the phone with the newspaper subscription office the other day and I thought Luke was going to pop a blood vessel, trying to get near the phone to say hi to the lady.

Wednesday Luke and I passed the time by calling assorted friends and relatives and leaving them messages. Did anyone get them? Because we have a small boy here who really, really wants to talk to you.