My Baby and Me

Remember how I said that Baby doesn't want to be called "Baby" anymore? Well that's ok, because I'm having another one.

ETA July 20, 2011.

It will be a girl.

I'm as big as a house.

I'm doing my best to construct this baby completely out of fish tacos from Rubios and barbecue plate lunches from L&L.

Baby obliges her nervous mother by kicking her every 15 minutes or so. I love it, for now.

When I told Boy I had a baby in my tummy he shrugged and said, "yeah, and Daddy has a puppy in his tummy." And what does Boy have in his tummy? "A flower." We are all looking forward to delivery day.

Happy April Fool's Day

So here's the thing,

I decided to turn over a new leaf about keeping my blog up-to-date the day before April Fool's Day. So now, I have all kinds of exciting things to talk about, and I run the risk of them not being believed (because some of them are, let's face it, unbelievably awesome).

So I'll just skip the newsy update and chit-chat about April Fool's Day.

I like April Fool's Day when it is properly celebrated. Here is a list of proper and improper ways to celebrate April Fool's Day, all of which have been tried (though not necessarily on me).

Proper:

• Feeding your family non-breakfast food that looks like breakfast food (cookies that look like fried eggs, that kind of thing)
• "Short-sheeting" someone's bed so they end up in a tangle of sheets when they try to quietly slip between the covers
• Taking a screen shot of someone's computer screen and setting it as the desktop image, except upside down
• Telling your carpool partner that you can't pick them up and they will have to sleep at work (but then picking them up)
  

Improper:

• Feeding your family non-food items that will make them sick
• Throwing someone's bedding in the swimming pool
• Deleting the hard drive on someone's computer without telling them
• Hitting your carpool partner with your car

Ok, fine, I don't know anyone who has hit her carpool partner with her car on April Fool's Day (ha ha, April Fools!)

Squeaky Wheel

Hi everyone,

I know, long time, no see.

I missed you all terribly. (Sort of--I mean, it's been so long that I've probably seen all of you in person or at least had a long phone conversation with you in the months and months since I've posted).

But I'm back and better than ever.

To kick things off, I have posted at the Peanut Gallery today about getting special needs services for Baby (who now insists on being called "Boy." It was nice while it lasted, and it lasted a while). Check it out.

Indulging on Food

When I had a paper route, I would primarily spend my money on food: candy from Burt's Pharmacy by the library, school lunch on pizza day, and boxes of ice cream sandwiches (that I would have to write my name all over if I didn't want them to get eaten by my dad in the middle of the night). My mom would hassle me about "eating my money."

I see her point. Buying food with money seems like the worst possible way to spend it. So why is it that my indulgence is still food: no longer candy and ice cream, but gourmet strawberries and restaurants with table cloths? (Don't tell husband about the strawberries--they were gone before he got home).

Because good food makes me feel better and it lasts longer than almost any other indulgence I've found.

Take those strawberries, for example. They cost twice as much as regular strawberries. Ok fine, they cost three times as much. But they were the best strawberries I've ever tasted. I bought them at a farmer's market five months ago, and, while I've probably bought strawberries four of five times since then, I don't remember any of those strawberries with the same particularity. I ate half of the basket on the walk home from the farmer's market (Baby helped). When I got home, I stood at the sink for 45 minutes, washing, cutting, and eating strawberries until they were all gone. The strawberries cast a rosy glow over my memory of that entire chunk of time (and, given what I was feeling five months ago, that is a very big deal). My only regret is that I didn't save a single one for Husband, and if I had, we could have talked about those strawberries together (next June, Husband, I promise).

That basket of special strawberries was easily worth three baskets of normal strawberries. It was worth much, much more because it gave me an experience that transcended "strawberries."

And restaurants have the same effect. I still remember what I ate at the fancy French restaurant where Husband proposed to me, not because of the proposal, but because the sauce of the chicken was perfect (and because it was my first time eating snails). And the same for the steak at Ben and Jack's, the tomato soup at Sarabeth's on Central Park South, the shrimp coconut khorma at Bombay House, the cold ham from the farmer's market in Versailles, the pizza from Gino's East, etc. They made me so happy, and and when I think about them, I am satisfied.

We don't go out to eat constantly, and our cupboards aren't full of gourmet fabulous ingredients, although I do have a tiny bottle of black truffle oil that I'm waiting for the perfect opportunity to use. But if I have an indulgence, that is what it is.

Husband's Birthday

Today is Husband's birthday. If you are friends with him (and I can't think of anyone who is friends with me and not friends with him, but I guess if I really sat down and thought about it for a long time I could come up with someone), then send him a happy birthday message.

If you really want to spruce up your message, tell him a story about something he did at some time that was funny. That's Husband's favorite thing in the world: hearing funny things about himself. I think it goes without saying that this should be a you're-so-funny-and-cool kind of story and not a this-is-funny-to-me-but-savagely-embarrassing-for-you kind of a story. Not that Husband has any embarrassing stories from his pristine past.

I love Husband madly. Even when I'm mad-angry at Husband, I'm even more mad-crazy with love for Husband.

Why I'm Not a Broadway Actress

From the time I was about 8 until I was about 17, if you had asked me what I wanted to be when I grew up, I would have said I wanted to be a Broadway actress. Well, when I was 17 I would have been too embarrassed to have actually said that, but I would have thought it.

But by the time I entered college, I had given up on the idea. My thinking went like this: I didn't make the lead in the high school musical, and even if I had made the lead in the high school musical, only a small percentage of the high school musical leads become leads in a university production, and only a fraction of those people are able to make a living acting in summer stock or touring casts, and of all of those people, only a handful can get a big part in a Broadway musical. And if I couldn't get a big part in a Broadway musical, what was the point?

I don't regret stepping off that train. I mean, yeesh, I have enough problems right now without having to be a Broadway star. But I am a little disappointed in myself that I stepped off the train at the point I did. I sort of wish I had the gritty, rebellious, never-say-die attitude to believe that I could be the one Broadway star would didn't have the lead in the high school musical. The one Broadway star who, when she asked her mom, "honestly, do you think I have singing talent?" her mom said, "meh, not really."

Lovin' me some fall

Ah, the fall, the beautiful fall. Kids go to school, politicians start throwing mud, TV finally becomes good again, I stop feeling bad about my lack of a pedicure, I start eating soup, and my anniversary rolls around.

(Actually fall isn't actually very visually beautiful in Southern California. Sorry, but it's not.)

Why do we start a new year in January? The fall would be a much better time for a new year.

Here are the shows I'm going to start watching, in no particular order. I don't watch all of these shows religiously, but I watch them when the universe aligns and Baby goes to bed on time and Husband works late.

-- Glee (hello, that show was, like, invented for me)
-- Dancing with the Stars (erm, I know it's kind of lame, but the ballroom dancing BYU student in me digs it)
-- Community, The Office, and 30 Rock (NBC Thursdays pretty much rock my world)
-- Castle (I'm not usually much into crime shows, but I like this one)
-- Lie to Me (OK, maybe I'm into crime shows after all because this one is also pretty cool)
-- House (Ok, I didn't think I was into medical shows either, but apparently I need to rethink what I'm into)
-- Running Wilde (This is that new Will Arnett show, and I think I'm going to watch it in the hopes that it will remind me how much I love Arrested Development)

It's going to be a happy new year.

The Mariposa Grove of Giant Sequioas

Husband, Baby, and I spent September 11 in the Mariposa Grove of Giant Sequoias in Yosemite National Park. National parks always make me feel pretty darn patriotic to begin with. Good job, American continent, for being so gorgeous. Good job, American government, for setting up a system of national parks.

Giant sequoias are almost impossible to kill. They are immune to almost all pests and diseases. The bark is almost completely fire resistant, and up to 90-percent of the crown can be damaged by fire, and the tree will continue to grow. In fact, fires are the only ways the forests can continue because the heat causes the trees to release their seeds, and the seeds can only grow in recently burned soil. The largest trees have gaping black streaks from centuries of fires. Almost no seeds grow to become trees, but the ones that survive have the potential to become the largest organisms on the planet.

I was a sophomore in college on September 11, 2001. That day, for me, is a clear mark between my wide-eyed optimism for eventual world peace and my slightly darker, smarter, older outlook. My heart was bruised with the New York City skyline.

The trees lifted my eyes up and up. The sky was dark blue. The grove felt like a cathedral to me on September 11. A cathedral dedicated to the healing power of time.

Back to School

I am a guest poster today on a really great blog called The Peanut Gallery (and I'm a teensy bit nervous that no one will like me). Read my post here.

Things I Love and Things I Hate

Maybe it's because I come from a big family, or maybe it's because I'm a generally indecisive person, but I always get a little zing when I discover something about my preferences that makes me different from most other people. And the different-er it makes me, the better, because it means that I'm special, distinct, and important. In other words, I like to find out that most people hate something that I love.

For example, I love the smell of gas stations. I don't know if it's the exhaust or of the evaporating gasoline, but whatever it is, I love it.

I love old scratchy towels. When a towel reaches the stage that other people think is only good for washing the car, I think it's just right for drying my freshly-showered body.

I love living in an apartment when paper-thin walls and kooky neighbors. Granted, I've never lived next door to a punk band, but maybe even then...

I love universal health care (which puts me in a distinct minority in my current social circles).

I usually don't broadcast the things I hate that most people love because I don't want to sound like a party pooper. But those things still make me feel special and identified.

I hate ice cubes in my beverage unless they are absolutely necessary.

I hated the Twilght Saga. (See, I hope that people who love the Twilight Saga with rabid intensity have the sort of flamboyant, fast-paced personalities that don't stop to read teeny tiny print.)

Here's something interesting: even though I like finding these identity-affirming things about myself, once I find them, I love finding other people who share these quirky traits. It makes me want to start a scratchy towels club.

What do you love? What do you hate?

Thoughts on Preschool

Baby has been in preschool for a eight weeks now. Today was the last day of the summer session (semester?).

When I was a piano teacher, I learned pretty quickly that I wasn't selling piano lessons to my students but to their parents. If their parent liked me, I would remain employed. Parents liked it when I bought music for my students, organized three recitals per year, performed at those recitals, taught seasonally-appropriate music, gave out trophies and piano-themed Christmas presents, and filled out certificates of merit when a student completed a book or whatever. These take-home evidences of accomplishment were important to the parents. They sure as heck didn't see improvement in their children's actual piano playing. So I did them and I kept all of my students, year after year.

I think Baby's preschool teachers are on to this little trick. I think they know that it is really, really cool when Baby comes home with a red, white, and blue windsock in time for the Fourth of July. I know that Baby did not participate in the creation of the windsock. In fact, he was most likely on the opposite side of the room, poking around in the rocket toys while his teacher made his windsock. The streamers were too neatly attached; the star stickers were too uniformly affixed. I think, when Teacher held out the windsock to me as I was ushering Baby out the door, Baby and I were both seeing the windsock for the first time.

Still, I made Baby show Husband "his" windsock when Husband came home from work, and I hung the windsock proudly on our front porch. And I taped the frog puppet to the fridge. And I framed the farm picture. And I made Husband take the construction paper watermelon to work. And I put the octopus with the funky mouth in Baby's baby book (I think Baby did actually draw the funky mouth).

Today, the last day of preschool, Baby came home with the mother lode: binoculars made out of toilet paper tubes, a paper plate sun, a cardboard boat, and a safari hat. I don't know how the preschool teachers had time for all of this, but if they wanted to ensure that I'd be back for fall preschool, they did a good job.

I was kind of on the fence about continuing preschool in the fall. Toddler crafts aside (and as you might imagine, it is extremely difficult for me to put toddler crafts aside), I'm not really sure that Baby is getting much out of this preschool experience. He isn't socializing with the other kids at all that I can see, and that was the biggest reason I wanted to have him involved. I haven't noticed any improvements in his numbers, letters, days of the week, or (ahem) craft-making skills. I like having non-Baby time on Tuesday and Thursday mornings, and that's probably the biggest reason I'll keep Baby in preschool (well, not the biggest reason, but I said we're leaving toddler crafts aside).

He'll stay in preschool. I think it does Baby more good than harm anyway.

The reason I found this preschool in the first place was that I thought I'd be overwhelmed with two more babies right now. You might say that I'm overwhelmed by a gaping absence of two babies right now, but preschool doesn't help there. They would have been born sometime this month.

Down on the Farm

I'm housesitting this week. I didn't used to understand why people hired housesitters. Now I know that one reason people may want to hire housesitters is that they have millions of pets. The people who own this house for example have a chickens, fish, birds, a cat, and (most importantly) a pregnant dog. There's also a few houseplants.

The easiest animals to take care of are the chickens, and interestingly they are also the only animals with an obvious use. They lay two eggs a day. All I have to do is check on their food and water jugs every morning and collect the eggs. Freshly-laid eggs are warm, which is a little freaky but not so freaky that I don't eat them. They are delicious and different from grocery store eggs the same way homemade bread is different from grocery store bread. I wonder if farmers think the cold eggs out of the fridge are freaky.

The hardest animal is the pregnant dog. She is carrying several thousand dollars of puppies inside her (if she took a lesson from the chickens and laid two puppies a day, she would be so rich). She misses her owners and she is very, very sad. And, you know, she's pregnant, so sad things are even sadder. Her sadness is getting in the way of her diet, and she's pregnant so diet is a big deal.

She's actually getting a little prissy about being so sad.

The cat falls in the middle. I used to think he was pretty awesome because he puts up with Baby constantly waking him up, but then tonight I saw him coughing up a hairball. I had never seen that before, and it is so disgusting. The hairball is still sitting on the kitchen floor. I think I'm going to make Husband pick it up. I fed the chickens this morning, after all.

Baby's Birthday

Can I keep calling him Baby now that he's four years old. Yes, yes I can. I am officially giving myself permission to do that until (1) I stop calling him "Baby" in real life or (2) I have another baby, whichever comes first.

Baby is four years old. He is potty trained (there was no magic bullet--just a long, long time and a lot of wet "unnuhweers"). He uses full sentences. He sings entire songs. He makes crafts in preschool. He plays games on pbskids.org. He holds hands when he crosses the street ("so the cars won't snash me"). He can tread water without his floaties on, and he can jump off the diving board if he does have his floaties on. He says the prayer before dinner. His favorite book is This is the Way to the Moon, and he is in the library summer reading program. His favorite food is a peanut butter and jelly sandwich with watermelon and canned corn on the side. He is everything I ever wanted in a four-year-old boy.

Dieting

Living in SoCal has its perks. The fact that I spend much of my time in a swimsuit is not one of them. I don't look super-cute in a swimsuit these days. (Maybe I just haven't found the right swimsuit yet. Must think about this...). This wouldn't bother me too much because most of America doesn't look super-cute in a swimsuit, but I don't look that great in the one pair of jeans that still fits me either.

Soo, I'm dieting. In the past, I've been able to lose weight by keeping the fact that I want to lose weight in the back of my mind. When I'm lying around, watching late-night TV, thinking how terrific it would be to eat an entire pan of brownies, I remember that I'm trying to lose weight, and I just stay on the couch. I didn't want to get off the couch anyway, so there. When I'm rooting around in the fridge, trying to find mayonnaise or bacon or deep-fried lard hunks, I remember I'm on a diet, and I give up and eat my turkey sandwich plain. And after a few weeks of succumbing to my laziness instead of my hunger, my jeans fit a little better.

But not this time. I'm getting the feeling that this fat has moved in and intends to take possession of my body through the legal doctrine of adverse possession. In most states, it only takes 20 years before the adverse possessor gains full legal title to the property.

(Maybe the reason this weight is more difficult to kick off is that I'm approaching my 30th birthday. Must think about this...).

Now I'm on an honest-to-goodness diet, and, you know, it is not very fun. It's not that I don't like vegetables and lean proteins--I do--it's just that I like other things too: wonderful, beautiful things like cinnamon rolls and fettuccine alfredo. Sigh.

I'm also exercising, sort of. Instead of being a good suburban mom in her car, I am an amazing suburban mom on a bike with a trailer. This is big deal since I live in city that apparently doesn't have a single 50-foot stretch of road that isn't on a hill.

Here's the hard thing: riding a bike is not fun when you don't look cute in your jeans. Come to think of it, eating vegetables and lean proteins is also more fun when done in cute jeans.

I'll get there. But I don't have to enjoy the journey.

Mish-mash of Thoughts on my Miscarriage

I'm ok. I don't cry every day (anymore) and I don't think I have lost the ability to be truly happy (anymore). In fact, many days, most days, I think I really am happy. Tonight, watching the Tony Awards, I'm pretty darn happy.

So don't worry about that.

One thing I've learned is that babies are everywhere. Little by little, I'm learning not to flinch when I see them (I think I have it down to a couple of fast blinks). It's a weird, weird feeling to get uncomfortable around babies. It's like being uncomfortable around rainbows or flannel blankets. I'm not uncomfortable because they're nasty or ugly, but because they are so heartbreakingly beautiful.

We visited the twins' grave on Memorial Day. Memorial Day morning, I realized that I didn't want to go. I hadn't chosen to be the young mother in the baby section of the cemetery on Memorial Day. But when I got there, I remembered how much I loved cemeteries. There are so many stories engraved in stone, and most of the stories are happy ones. Even the sad stories (five tiny markers in a row for five babies who all died before their first birthday) are filled with love. I was glad I went.

It's amazing, but even though everyone is afraid of saying the wrong thing, not a single person has said the wrong thing (except me). Some people have been so thoughtful that it's made me cry, but that doesn't mean they said the wrong thing. Last week a woman told me that she wanted to spend all day with me on the twins' due date because it would be a hard day and I shouldn't be alone.

I've fallen desperately in love with my little boy. Last week he finally mustered up the courage to let go of the wall in the pool, and dog-paddle out into the middle of the water. He shrieked with delight and shouted, "Mama, look, I'm brave, I'm brave!" pumping his skinny brown legs as fast as he could. My baby, my son.

The 'Burbs

I like the idea that I've lived in New York City, Chicago, and Los Angeles all within a one-year period, but the fact is that I haven't really gotten the LA experience. Our city is the very definition of suburbia, the "-urbia" in this case being LA.

The suburbs are like being on vacation. Tra la la, take Baby to the pool; tra la la, drive to the park even though it's only a fifteen minute walk away; tra la la, oops I forgot to pick up the dry cleaning again, but maybe I'll remember tomorrow; ooh look, it's the MTV Movie Awards on TV, full of people with more energy than I have.

The suburbs are also beautiful: no piles of garbage, no neon lights, no nasty mismatching stripmall store fronts (we keep things respectably mission style around here).

Do I miss big city life? Sure. I mean, I guess. It's no secret that if there was only Portia and no Husband, no Baby, no Family, I'd live in a big city and love it. But it's not like I can't see why city lovers move to the suburbs and refuse to leave. Life is hard enough without having to deal with a public transportation schedule and piles of garbage on the sidewalk.

The Blue Chair

I bonked my knee this morning. That's the short story. The long story is that I was at my parents' house, about to take a shower but after I undressed and turned on the water, I remembered that I had left my teensy bottles of non-Suave shampoo upstairs. I was pretty sure that Baby and I were the only ones in the house, so I crept upstairs and ran into the computer room to retrieve my backpack. I forgot that my center of gravity had recently shifted, making me a super-klutz. In my naked dash to the den, I twisted my right ankle, fell down, and landed on my left knee.

I normally like to shriek loudly when I'm in pain, but this time I only whisper shrieked. I was deathly afraid that I had miscalculated who was still in the house. I had a horrifying split-second vision of my dad hearing his daughter shrieking and running down the stairs to find her lying on the floor, her recently pregnant abdomen flapping in the morning breeze, yelling "cover your eyes!" Lucky for me, my dad wasn't home. You know, I've been feeling kind of sorry for myself lately, and I probably need to pay more attention to tender mercies like these. At least Dad wasn't home.

So anyway, I bonked my knee, and I have to stay off of it for the day (not doctor's orders, just common sense because it weally huwts when I twy to walk on it). I have taken refuge in my favorite chair in the world. It's the blue Lay-Z-Boy recliner that I lived in for the two years I gestated Baby, wrote all of my law school final research papers, and nursed Baby for 14 months. Sadly, this chair now lives at my parents' house. It would have taken up our entire New York apartment, and in the time since we've left New York, we haven't found a way to transport it without paying more for the transportation than the money-value of the chair (the sentimental value of the chair is priceless, yes, but not so priceless that I'm willing to pay whatever to move the thing wherever my nomadic life leads me). Thus, when I visit my parents, I visit my chair.

Know what was on my to-do list today? Clean my parents' entire house (well, the main part of it, anyway). I wasn't really looking forward to it, but I was going to do it anyway because I love my parents and I love my little brother whose graduation will be celebrated in this house tomorrow afternoon.

I love my chair slightly less than I love my parents and little brother, but if I have to give up doing something nice for parents and brother, I'm satisfied to spend the day in the chair.

By the way, I've decided to write non-sad blog entries for a while. I think that blogging about the twins does more harm than good for me at this point. Talking to people: helpful. Blogging: not so much.

Provo in the Springtime

I think I will always remember my first spring in Provo. I was fifteen, and it was, in some ways, my first spring because I had previously lived in Southern California. While spring exists in Southern California (it's when the hills with a brown tint take on a green tint, before they get the yellow tint, duh), it doesn't have the same effect.

It was a perfect storm in some ways: I was fifteen and at the peak of my ridiculous, dramatic, romantic-ness; I had spent the winter being lonely, bored, and cold; and I played Chopin nocturnes on the piano and read Bronte novels. Then, gradually and all at once, daylight savings, friends, joy, sunshine, spring.

I wandered the streets of Provo, cross-eyed with bliss, ecstatic over the hyacinths and apple blossoms. If apples blossomed in California, I had no memory of it. I was in love with spring, with Provo, with myself (every healthy fifteen-year-old is secretly in love with herself, right?). I was Leisl squealing in the gazebo, and I hadn't even been kissed. I was Anne Shirley on the White Way of Delight, and I hadn't even been adopted. I was Ariel the mermaid, and I hadn't even found a fork in a sunken ship.

I think I've stomped down that fifteen-year-old springtime insanity, but I still get a teensy bit bubbly when I'm in Provo in April, whatever else is going on.

Burial

We decided to have a private burial for the twins. We were given the option of "letting the hospital take care of it," but we opted for cremation and burial in the Provo Cemetery. Truthfully, I was confused and ambivalent on this subject (as I am about everything these days), but, especially after having seen the twins' bodies, Husband wanted to know where they would be.

The little shared urn was two inches tall. As part of our move to California, Husband drove it from Chicago through Nauvoo, IL; Columbia, MO; Salina, KS; Rocky Mountain National Park; to Provo, UT. He took Baby with him and called it a road trip with his boys. He carried the urn in his pocket wherever he went.

The portion of Provo Cemetery set aside for infants and stillborn children is called the Angel Garden. On the map, it's called Babyland. Most of the plots are unmarked, including ours.

Usually people live before they die, and usually it is the children who bury their parents. My twins died before they lived, and I buried their ashes today.

Lost

One week ago, during a routine ultrasound, I learned that my twins had died at 16 weeks gestation. By the end of the day, I had been admitted to the hospital, induced into labor, and delivered the babies.

Their tiny bodies were beautiful, but heartbreakingly incomplete. I am lonely for their warm presence and for the anticipation that comes with pregnancy. I have never felt such deep sadness. I have never been so thankful for the opportunity to care for my first son.

Thank you to so many people for their support and understanding during this most difficult time. The most difficult time.