we interrupt our scheduled programming

to present to you this special event .... a fat man hunting coconuts and other zany adventures in San Blas, Panama, 2001.

Or, if you prefer, a fat man eating icecream...

clothes monkey

i'm glad to see some love for the embroidered jesus satin tux, but all you haters will be happy to know i bought something slightly more low key.

i found a lightweight yellow cardigan that buttons on the side with monkeys frolicking across it. what says cool better than monkeys??? give it up, because the answer is, nothing does. monkeys rock. once i found that cardigan (on clearance!), i knew i, i mean, milo had to have it, so i scavenged until i found a yellow and white striped knit bodysuit and monkey-brown pants - with a big pocket on each leg! - to go with it. why does a newborn need pockets with velcro flaps? for cigarettes? credit cards? condoms? who knows. it's damn cute, though. it's all business and then the monkeys say, no, it's all monkey business! we'll ease the grandmothers into skull-n-crossbones onesies over time, like maybe after we get tired of fighting with milo to take those pants off and on him twelve times a day to change diapers.

a daydream believer and a homecoming king

i've composed at least 7 different posts in my head in the last 48 hours, but they're all about things that get me riled up and i don't have the energy. so instead i'm focusing on visualizing milo coming home. hey, it works for olympic athletes, so why not for my family?

i realized that our coming home outfits are wintery things. we had two for hans, because we couldn't decide; one was a double layered knit outfit, the other was a sweaterknit jumpsuit. if we put milo in one of those in august, he will suffocate in the five minutes it takes us to get home from the hospital.

so i'm on the hunt. this or maybe this is as close to what i like as i've found, and only online. justin would probably be happy with this for a coming home outfit. but there is absolutely nowhere with baby clothes i really, really dig in the greater cleveland area. maybe i should just order this online for milo (what? too much?).

nevertheless, i'm going to give it a whirl. i'm headed to the mall. there must be something worthy of my little hepcat that won't make his grandmothers hurl in shock.

look at me, planning for the future and all.

inner peace through housecleaning

nineteen trader joe's bags, three boxes, a busted laundry basket and an old suitcase's worth of clothes, shoes, sheets and other crap that someone else needs more than we do later, our house is super clean. the kid attending the goodwill truck was a little terrified when we pulled up, our station wagon bottoming out from the weight of all that crap, but he took it all. of course, we still have one of our overflowing five-drawer chests to go through as well as all the junk in the closet/guest pod/quiet room, but there can't possibly be as much stuff to get rid of as we've already carried out.

it feels good. our house is roomier and so is my psyche.

i told my co-worker today about my breakdown over getting rid of the ruffly stuff i was saving for a daughter, expecting some sympathy, but no - she was disappointed i didn't let her know, as her three-year-old granddaughter is in full-on princess phase right now. some of the stuff is already gone, but i think i still have some flowery throw pillows, so when i get to them in the clean-out process, i'll bring them to my neighbor. at least they'll go to someone's little girl, even if it's not my little girl.

meanwhile, my little boy is bringing me some joy. i'm starting to feel him two or three times a day. is there anything better??? i can't wait for him to kick hard enough to penetrate three pregnancies-worth of flab, so justin can make contact.

retail joy, spring cleaning, and the goodbye girl

inspired by the creative use of small spaces on our recent trip to tokyo, and some groovy futon chairs we saw on our more-recent trip to oaxaca, we decided to make the closet off of our living room a guest pod/reading room (we had been calling it the office, but in reality it's where we throw things when someone's coming over).

we have two houses, so technically we have four bedrooms on the property and nearly 3000 square feet of living space, but social services frowns on putting your minor-aged children in a different house by themselves, plus (if we ever finish re-doing the floor) we plan to rent the carriage house out again (which we did before we ripped up the carpet), to help pay for us taking leave when milo comes down the chute. so we're basically working with a 1500 sq ft house and two bedrooms, and we need to make every available space count.

since hans died, part of me has been itching to move to a place without the hassle of the carriage house and with three or four bedrooms in one unit, a house where we could start over and get the family thing right. another part of me has wanted to stay in the only home hans ever had, the place where we were shocked to find i was pregnant with him on our first morning in the house. deciding a couple of weeks ago that this is going to be my last pregnancy freed me up from the part of me that has been itching so hard to move. if we're only going to have milo, then we can live in a two bedroom house, as long as we have a creative way to accomodate visiting grandparents...which is where the idea of the guest pod comes in.

we measured the proposed pod and then went looking today for one of those cool futon chairs we saw in mexico, or short of that, a modern daybed that could be our curl-up spot to read and double as a twin bed for milo's nonna or poppo. but what we ended up buying was a new sofa!

the thing is, we bought a new sofa last july.

but there is a plan. really. we're getting a new bed, which doesn't have a high enough headboard to sit up and lean against (which isn't a great idea, anyway, since it's bad for both our backs to recline like that in bed, not to mention that neither of us are fantastic sleepers, and the experts recommend reading or satisfying one's horrifying american idol habit out of bed instead of in it). so we're moving the smaller sofa we bought last summer up to our bedroom to use for reading and idol/idle watching. that sofa is moving into a space that now has two, three-drawer chests - which we will now put on either side of our bed and use the tops as nightstands, since our existing nightstands are scaled to our old, high bed. to make room for those chests to go on either side of the bed, one of our five-drawer chests must go...so it's going downstairs to milo's room, where we are going to wedge it in with the still-unpurchased crib and the twin bed i've had for years as my guest bed, because it has a convenient trundle under it, and which bed will eventually be milo's bed, when he outgrows the phantom crib. the rocker that was justin's great-great-grandmother's and the ottoman we bought today (60% off!) will now go into the room briefly known as the guest pod, which we are now calling the quiet room/feeding room; it can be a reading space or a distraction-free space for feeding milo with a little privacy or getting him to go to sleep. and the new sofa, which is way modern and red(!) microfiber (watch us wash the spitup off with a washcloth!) and folds down into a full-sized bed, will go in the living room, from which the slightly-less-new sofa is about to evacuate.

once we finish moving everything around and the new sofa gets delivered next saturday, we will be able to sleep four extra people that come to visit - two in the living room on the sofa and two in milo's room on the twin beds. if we get more visitors than four, they're on their own. four is enough.

back at home, we are spring cleaning to make room for the rearrangment. we haven't been in this house quite two years, so how did we manage to accumulate so much crap that should not be here? we started in the upstairs bathroom with plans to work our way out and eventually down, but we are still upstairs. we threw away an entire garbage bag of crap just from the bathroom. the quantity of failed hair products and expired medications was astonishing. on the bright side, the giant package of poise pads left over from my last round of post-pregnancy bleeding as well as anything toxic a crawler could potentially get into now fit in the cabinet with doors, and the bathroom may be the cleanest it's been in two years - justin even vaccuumed out the heat register.

we've gotten bogged down in our closet, though. it's great to have a big closet, but for people like us, a tiny closet that forces us to be choosy about what we keep might be a better idea. what really brought the process to a halt was going through the linen chest. inside were the eyelet lace pillows and pink and white striped shams and duvet that i used on the guest twin bed when i was single. besides the amazement that i used to have an entire townhouse decorated in pink and green, what killed me was putting all those girly things in the goodwill pile. i started to bawl, because it made the fact that i am the mother of two boys and no girls whack me in the head like an anvil falling from the sky.

where did this feeling come from? when did having a daughter matter to me? apparently i have not been paying attention.

justin tried to get me to keep them. you don't know we won't have a daughter some day, he said. unless milo's winkie falls off, we won't be having one anytime soon, and we don't have the room to store this stuff for someone who won't be joining us for a long time, i told him, and even if we do adopt a girl down the road, she almost certainly will not want this ruffly crap. hey, we're not sexist people, justin said; milo can use this pink stuff. but we already have a complete other set of bedding for the twin beds that is more appropriate for a boy and for our un-frilly house; we'll never use it for milo.

so he just held me while i sobbed. i really thought milo was a girl. i thought hans was a girl, too, but i don't think i felt it so keenly. i don't want milo to be a girl; he is who he is, and i love him already. i think overall there are more girls up for adoption than boys, so in another five years, when we've either connected our two houses or added on to the front house and have more than two bedrooms, there could well be a daughter for us. it's a long time off, though. too long to justify holding on to all those old bridesmaid dresses i was saving for dress-up games.

it's time to get back to the giant straw beach bags i haven't used in ten years and the four-inch heels i refuse to ever wear again.

spread it around

i'm overwhelmed by all the good wishes we've received the last two days. you people rock. a couple of other people could use some of that mojo friday; please give them your prayers/good will/sacrifices/whatever you can offer: julian's mom is going for a further look at natalie's heart after learning that natalie has signs of the same problem her big brother had and could use a miracle, and lorem ipsum is going for an hsg on the road to creating a hospitable environment for the child she wants. please send them your love.

let's hear it for the boy! also, bassinet lust

i had a dream this morning that justin and i were in some big product launch orientation meeting (note: we do not work together) and that whomever was answering the phone took a message for us and then told us that z was a two-year-old boy named bob.

i laughed because (1) z was a girl and (2) the dimwits mistook the tech's name for the baby's name and assumed it was a boy and (3) based the age on how long we've been at this. and then i woke up to get my pee on, and i laughed even more, but i did wonder if it was a sign.

i guess it was. but this baby will not be named bob.

either i was dumb to tempt fate by drinking pomegranate juice at 7:30 am (i've not been consuming anything until 9:30 or 10:00 to avoid regurgitating it) or i was more nervous than i thought, but as we walked out the door this morning i leaned over the porch rail and deposited the pomegranate juice in the coleus bed. as signs go, that one scared me, since i haven't actually puked in weeks (the daily gag-and-wretch routine when i brush my teeth does not count).

then when we got to the fetal diagnostic center, we waited for-ev-er because apparently they needed some special room for me. we thought it must be that they were trying to find a room in which we hadn't previously gotten bad news. good luck, fellas. finally, we got to go back, and we had the manager of the sonographers doing the ultrasound, which felt both scary and encouraging.

and then - to see z (i mean, milo) moving. the best thing ever, in the history of the universe. (i will be thrilled when i can actually feel all that movement; now, i feel only the occasional tap.) the good news started rolling in: brain well-formed, good fluid, good crease, nice fontenels, cranium measuring exactly right for age; a four-chamber heart, pumping away; spine nicely formed and nicely sealed up; hands and feet - well, z has hands and feet, but he kept them balled up, so it was hard to count fingers and toes, but there are at least some of each there; and then the kidneys, which didn't work so well for hans, were measuring perfectly, and the bladder was there, and the hip bones, and then all of the sudden - the little winkie. and then the little nut sack. (nuussssaaaaaack! i love that word.) and of course, the cord, the thing i was most nervous about - there were both the arteries, bright red and pulsing, and the big blue vein, adding up to three, the magic number. have i ever been so happy?

as to z's boyhood: i thought i would be disappointed, a little, if z turned out to be a boy. when we learned hans was a boy, i was in shock, and i definitely mourned his lost girlhood for a short while. but i was really happy about that little winkie today. my only negative thought was that sweet coalminer and some of the others of you who were so sure z was a girl were going to be disappointed. frankly, if that's my biggest problem, i'm doing better than okay. and all the lovely congratses, even the surprised ones, have been lovely. :)

after we saw the peri and then the ob, i finally got to look at justin and say the word: MILO! it's nice and round and lush on the tongue, with a little bite from the long i. what a pleasure to say his name, over and over. i hope, when i want to yell at him, i can remember the pleasure saying his name gives me and calm down before i speak to him rather than screaming his name with all my might.

i called my mom first, who was thrilled that things went so well, and then told her his name. i held my breath a bit, because it took her a while to come around to johannes, but she loved zinan, loved the meaning. it took a minute or two to work through milo; the only milo she has ever known was a crusty old bachelor farmer, when she was 5 or 6, so she had to do a mental adjustment, but by the time we got off the phone, she was digging it.

i told her what the peri said about milo's head, after looking both of us over: "he's got dad's head!" and my mom said, "i bet he'll look just like hans." i was taken aback for a minute until i understood that hans is still current for her, still her grandson, a fact of the present and not just a relic of the past. and then it was the perfect thing to say. sometimes she doesn't get it, but sometimes - like today - she just nails it.

next i called justin's dad, who was ecstatic and loved zinan but had to keep asking about milo; apparently, he understood marlo at first. once we got it straightened out, he loved the name, too. justin called his mom then, who reportedly was over the moon about everything being so great and loved the names, too.

a few minutes ago, my sister called me, and when i answered, she said, "so i hear i'm having another nephew!" how do these people know the perfect thing to say to me??? everyone at work is thrilled, too, and loves both names but especially the zinan, which is a surprise, because we expected it would take people some getting used to. honestly, at this point, i think we could say his middle name was mud or cock-a-doodle-doo or banana and people would be happy for us, but people seemed to be especially moved by the meaning of zinan (second son).

my dear, sweet milo z - so many people adore you already. you are one lucky ducky.

*****

since i actually feel like this whole thing might really happen, i've resumed looking at cribs. we never got around to getting one the first time around; we figured hans would sleep in the bassinet in our room for the first few weeks anyway, so we weren't in a hurry. if we can borrow someone else's, i will be fine, as long as it is not this heart-shaped crib. how awful is that??? it makes me want to drink a giant bottle of pomegranate juice, just so i can puke all over it.

what i really, really want is the ooba nest - it makes me feel restful just looking at it. but i do not have $500 hanging around for an extra bassinet, so i will just have to fantasize.

there should be an arrow pointing to something below...

but i can't seem to get the camera to take a decent scan of the ultrasound. so, let me just say...

it's a hotdog! z shall be formally known as milo zinan from this day forward. wow, another son, i am absolutely excited - though, i must admit, part of me misses z maybe being a girl. this shocks me a bit ... nonetheless, everything is absolutely, entirely as should be in this stage. we got a good view of the cord, which has 3 vessles (our number one concern) and we saw a healthy heartbeat, and a hyper active baby.


"na na na naaaa na naaaa na"

pins and needles

how in the world am i supposed to wait another 16 hours??? i need to know if z has a hamburger or a hot dog and i need to know now. i'm ready to start calling little zydrunas or little zeta by name. i have exhausted all my concentration today at work in order to get stuff done and not dwell on it; i have nothing left for class tonight. thank god there are no quizzes on the schedule.

please please please let z be okay. i think i could handle about anything but a two-vessel cord, which is normally non-life threatening but was the straw that broke hans's back. i don't think i can live with the same birth defect.

the lloyd doppler effect

how much do i love the home doppler? i don't have the words. i come home at night, flop down on the bed, gel up, and then with a little scooting around inevitably there comes that lovely, rapid swishing sound.

my new favorite number is 153.

the doppler has become more helpful as i've eased off the meds. i was petrified in the first trimester, when i started them, and i am more nervous than a turkey in november about the final weeks, but the second trimester feels relatively safe. last week, while i was chillin' in oaxaca, i just didn't think about taking the buspar at night. i still took it in the morning, with the beloved prenatal horsepill, so i effectively stepped myself down to half the dosage. then we got home and were sleeping in every day, and i was taking my vitamin in the middle of the day, and the buspar was in a different bag i hadn't unpacked, and i just decided to not unpack the bottle.

i'm so freaked out about taking meds while pregnant anyway, and my ob is not in favor of me taking them in the last trimester, unless i suppose i were suicidal or somehow endangering z, so why not ease off now? i'm doing okay. i have a daily round of doubt, which i did not have on the full dose of buspar, but it is pansy doubt compared to the big bruising doubt of weeks 7-9, and now i can cure it with the doppler.

oh, sweet doppler, singing songs of sureness to my sore psyche!

okay, i'm not going to be publishing a book of poetry any time soon, for which the world should be grateful. we can also be grateful to christian andreas doppler, the 19th century austrian mathematician who dabbled in physics and figured out that the frequency of sound waves was affected by the relative motion of both the source and the detector. i'm glad he figured it out, because i never would have.

happy birthday calvin

calvin baker thayer-hansen

calvin was stillborn five years ago today. david and toni have become incredible friends, and inspiration in the last year. best wishes and warm thoughts to them, and to calvin, zelda and orson, their beautiful children.

davids play "i hate this" will be rebroadcast on wcpn tonight at 800. it's quite a poignant piece; if you haven't seen or heard it, do yourself a favor and tune in.

i just watched a man die

he had a heart attack. i froze. by the time i'd run to grab a defibulator, someone else had started cpr and recovery. he never came to.

rest in peace.

oh, girl (or boy)!

as we walked out of the house yesterday afternoon, i grabbed the mail and brought it with us to flip through in the car. i turned over the last item, a magazine, and on the cover was the actress that shares z's first name, if z is a girl.

is it a sign?

short of some genital confusion, we'll know what z is on wednesday. i suppose genital issues aren't completely unlikely; hans, while clearly a boy, only had one good nut, and the tadpole's triploidy left its gender undefined. but after the initial sluggish heartbeat, z has passed every sort of examination with flying colors, so it gives me some hope that z will exceed its siblings in this matter of sex, too.

i'm also curious to see wednesday whether z hasn't surged a little ahead of the size curve, since i am getting humongous. looking at the 100 or so pictures we took during the cooking class wednesday, it appears that between my backside and z, it will be a struggle to get through doorways by july. my weight is actually down a little, but i imagine it will bounce back as i get over my mexican jumping bean revenge.

i find that i've gotten invested in z being a girl of late. early on, it was hard to think of z as anything but a boy, since i was used to hans, but lately z just seems girlish to me. maybe it's because girls tend to be healthier in utero, as z has been, compared to the others, or because most people i know who lost a boy went on to next have a girl, and vice versa. maybe it's those bloggers (like rach and sweetcoalminer) who feel strongly enough that z is a girl that they refer to z as "she" and "her," and i've gotten used to it. i think it would be nice for z's cousin due in june, who is a girl.

then there are girly clothes. there is no comparison between girls' and boys' clothes. save your breath - there is no argument you can make for boys' clothes that outweighs the argument for girls'. for every one cute boy outfit, there are ten cute girl ones. moreover, with parents like us who aren't interested in sports (except a little junior hockey for justin and the cavaliers) or dinosaurs or vehicular themes, it really limits things.

it's not that we would dress up a girl in pink frills. (okay, maybe every once in a great, great while. and not without funking it up with boots or an irreverent diaper cover or something.) but little girls just have a world of options, and i would appreciate the opportunity to explore them.

three more days.

according to miss a-grrrrrrrr-lera

i was reading in "rolling stone" the other day where christina aguilera compared the making of her new album to "being pregnant for 18 months," to which i say, how would you know? unless she's been hiding it, miss aguilera wouldn't know diddly about being pregnant, much less being pregnant for that long.

if she wants to know what 18 months of pregnancy is like, she should ask me; i'm rolling up on that number. otherwise, her options are: (a) finding another analogy about which she can speak knowledgably, or (b) shutting her trap.

the former mouseketeer's comment (which i'm sure was not meant to insult me) feeds into my pet peeve of younger women with their easy-breezy-beautiful attitude about reproduction. i fully acknowledge that this peeve stems partly from my jealousy of the statistically easier time they'll have of it if they start reproducing in the near future, but it doesn't make their general attitude peeve me any less.

there are the young women in my office who discuss planned, elective c-sections so they can control the bikini-readiness of their scars and not deal with oh-so-icky matters of the hoo-ha (which would mean they're all going to conceive via immaculate conception, i suppose?). then there's my sister-in-law, a sweet 21-year-old who was at the hospital when i delivered hans and knows first-hand what can happen but is not fazed in the least. i suppose i should be grateful that our losses haven't imposed any anxiety on her pregnancy, but what kind of person experiences a loss that close to her and then doesn't even consider her own chances of loss? how can anyone be that oblivious? does she think she's supergirl or something?

my dirty little secret compensation: pregnancy is overwhelming her tiny frame, and while her very large bump is cute, her face has widened considerably, particularly her once-pert little nose. i am a hateful person, but it consoles me nonetheless. i guess the benefit of being old and fat is that pregnancy doesn't have much room to change one's appearance. so there. ha.

between a large sweet potato and a small zucchini

to me, a large sweet potato is bigger than a small zucchini, but according to the experts at baby center, little z was the sweet potato last tuesday and is moving toward the zucchini by next tuesday. it sounds like a backwards move, doesn't it?

on the way home yesterday, i was feeling a little weird, but when we got home the handy-dandy doppler exposed z as a galloping, swishing, looping back-flipper with a heartbeat to match. it occurred to me then that i was eight days past my last check-up, which would explain my lack of confidence. and when you think about it, eight days is a slight improvement on the usual seven-day coast i get from an appointment, so maybe things are getting better for me, mental health-wise.

maybe a good vacation extended the coast-factor. if nothing else, all the good food probably kept me in a buzzed state, and i think i felt z a couple of times, while we saw movies, which could only have helped. on the other hand, seeing all the new-walkers and early babblers with their parents in oaxaca kept me thinking about hans, and that he wasn't there...which reminded me that z isn't a sure thing. will this back and forth ever end? even when it doesn't cut as deeply as it used to, it's still discombobulating.

*****

the travel blog is updated with pics! warning: don't look if you're hungry; the pics will only make it worse. trust me.

Justin dijo

For some reason we often spend our holiday sunday mornings in Catholic mass; atleast when we´re in Latin America. In my opinion, this is the best way to view a cathedral: incense burning, priest at the pulpit, choir vocal floating through fantastic architecture, light shining through stained glass ... and, just as when I was a child, something else catches my attention, I daydream.

A middle age man lights a candle. An offering to someone near and dear. A fresh wound. He spends a good part of half an hour in deep prayer. I cannot remember the last time that I have dedicated 30 minutes to anything. An intense love in his eye. I can´t stop looking at him.

Ok, I´ve been here for more than 20 minutes. Time to go.

feliz navidad

the house is clean. well, relatively. a half-load of dishes is washing, and we'll transfer the load of towels now in the washer to the dryer before we leave. the trash is bagged and by the door, waiting to be carried out. the plants are watered and the lamps are turned on to suggest our imminent appearance from upstairs. our bag is packed and the rejected clothes have been put away. in only four hours, we get back out of the bed into which we just now finally climbed, and then we're off to houston on the 6:10 am flight. from houston, we're going to try for oaxaca (to which neither of us have been), but it's close, so if we don't get on that flight, we're getting on the guanajuato flight. we've been to guanajuato - nearly five years ago! - and would be happy to go back.

so one way or the other, this time tomorrow, we'll be calling it a night in mexico. or not. you never know.

there is no justice

kinnik and will, i understand. but ayla??? gedeon??? i don't know if i can keep watching idol.

on the other hand, it has just occurred to me that while we are on vacation next week, i will miss the big two-hour special - the first big two-hour special of the top 12. maybe we shouldn't leave the country. maybe we should just get in the car and make sure we're in a hotel tuesday night.

my name is laura l, and i am an american idol junkie.

*****

we've planned the last of the second trimester overseas hurrahs for next week, to correspond to my spring break from school. we've been planning on our beloved buenos aires for a while, but flights are not cooperating. it's hard to make plans when you're flying stand-by during spring break.

tonight, i started running down through all the foreign destinations we could reach in a direct flight from justin's employer's two main international hubs to see which ones had empty seats. i came up with nine possibilities: bristol, chihuahua, frankfurt, leon/guanajuato, london, merida, oslo...and three more i can't think of right now. we're leaving saturday morning, and we'll pick a destination then, i suppose, and you, dear reader, can find out (if you care) by checking in on our travel blog on sunday or monday. we'll be somewhere.

and we'll be together.

in the onion patch

little z is perking away! i had the two-week anxiety check-up today and it took a little bit to find the heartbeat, but when we did, it was lovely. i saw a different ob today because mine is at a conference, and he was considerably more gentle than my ob, which is fine except i have the padding of multiple pregnancies between the doppler and z, so skimming the surface is not going to get the job done. he was really a sweetie, though, so if i end up giving birth when my ob isn't available, i wouldn't mind having this guy.

i am not, however, auditioning doctors for subsequent pregnancies. i've come to realize that this is the end of the line for me. pass or fail, this is my last pregnancy. the mental/emotional strain on my health is too much, which is not to say that if i don't go through any more pregnancies i'll have stellar mental health the rest of my life - i'm realistic about it - but i don't need to add any known triggers to the equation. justin is also incredibly supportive, but the roller coaster of my mental state takes a toll on him, and on our relationship.

there's also the physical aspect. justin worries (because of the daily gag and wretch routine and maybe because of my back) that pregnancy is bad for my physical health. i think those things are purely temporary, but i just don't want to endure the physical trials of pregnancy any more. i've hit the stage where i can't get comfortable at night; i start out on my left side like a good little girl, but then my hip starts to get sore, so i flip to the right, until it starts to get sore and i flip back to my left, and so on all night. i am not 22, dammit, i am 36, and this is hard on my body. enough is enough.

we talked at great length last weekend about the prospects of another child after z. i had been holding out hope that with the right antidepressant this pregnancy could be much easier - easy enough that we would both be willing to jump in again. but i don't want the antidepressant, at least for now; i can't stomach the risks. and there is no pill that would make it easy enough for us, ever.

so we've started to talk about adoption again. we both wanted to adopt originally, although we had different ideas. justin wanted to adopt exclusively, back when we were dating, while i wanted to "have" one and adopt one. eventually, justin came around to my plan, but since hans died i've avoided the prospect of adoption. i wanted to make my own, dammit. (please withhold any lectures about adopted children being your own; i know all that, and you will only come off as self-righteous.) something inside me snapped, or maybe twisted, when hans died, and my thinking about it hasn't been rational, and i haven't cared whether it was rational or not. but this week adoption has started to seem much more doable again, and on the timetable justin originally envisioned (maybe in another five years, and an older child).

whether it works that way or not, i now know this - i will not intentionally be getting pregnant again, and it's lifted a burden from my shoulders that i didn't realize i was carrying. i can focus on z and not on how what happens in this pregnancy will affect another pregnancy. the freedom feels good.

the 17 week old onion

according to the food-obsessed experts at baby center, little z is now the size of a large onion. (hey - maybe that's why my pits smell like they do....)

today is 17 weeks, and wow - do i feel pregnant. when i got up during the night to go to the little mother's room, i realized i was waddling. must get a grip on the waddle - way too soon for waddle. also, my shirts are riding up frequently, which would be ideal if i were, say, a porn star, but it's somewhat frowned upon in the world of banking. what's sad is that these are maternity shirts riding up - i'm going to be wearing pup tents by july.

today is also our first bloggiversary. this post is number 445! how is that possible? i guess we have occasionally made more than one post a day or posted on the same day, and there are some picture posts.... still, it seems like a big number for a year. i'd be curious to see what percentage of posts i made compared to justin; i'd guess ten-to-one. i wish justin would post more, but still i'm glad to blog with him. and i'm still grateful that a year ago today, when i couldn't think of a title as cool as his, that justin let me join his blog.

you can take the girl out of the south...

on the way to work i passed a funeral procession. besides the fact that all of us in the morning commute were passing a funeral procession, what was sad was that there were only five cars - containing a total of 9 people - plus a darkened limousine and the hearse. i found it almost unbearable that nine people plus whatever family fits in a limo were all the people bearing witness to this person's burial. maybe there were more people at a service, and those nine were the only ones who didn't have to go on to work. maybe it was someone so old that there were only nine people left that he or she had outlived. god, i hope so.

and let me just say, where i come from, if there's a funeral procession, everyone pulls over and lets it pass, out of respect for the deceased. if you get waylaid by a funeral procession on your way to work, you tell whomever cares when you get to work, and no questions are asked. it would be unthinkable to pass a procession, or to cut into it or through it. i love my adopted hometown and have no desire to live where the high is 90 or above for eleven months of the year, but i think the funeral thing is one thing the south gets right.

the memorial of the memorial

the memorial service for hans was a year ago today. i was thinking about it earlier this morning, driving home from taking justin to work. it took us 2 1/2 weeks to get a memorial service together. the shock of losing hans put everything into slow motion those first weeks, and every time we sat down at the kitchen table to work on the plans, they seemed incomprehensible. but we made it. my friend kath called every community center and public space she could think of to check availability and cost, and my mom (who stayed with us from when she arrived a couple of hours before the delivery until the day after the memorial) coaxed us along, asking us questions to try to get us thinking - she must have been so annoyed with us, even though she understood why we were impossibly inert - and a couple of friends and justin's extended family provided a staggering amount of food and drink, and it happened.

we made it through that day, even sailed. we were amazed by all the people that showed up to acknowledge hans and support us. i am still amazed when anyone other than us acknowledges hans, but it still happens.

david came over the day before hans's birthday with birthday presents from their family: rubber duckies, a bubble blowing kit, an indoor flower garden (justin has planted the seeds for the garden and is trying to will them to germination). catherine sent me the bracelet for hans that i wear every day, and deadbabymama and daddy sent a card with a long note. a few people who aren't the parents of departed children remembered, too: both my mom and justin's crazy aunt sent cards with checks for hans's memorial scholarship fund, my sister sent a card, and justin's mom had a plate made, a quasi-delft thing personalized with hans's full name, birth date, weight and length.

so we made it through the anniversary of his death and here we are at the anniversary of his memorial. on tuesday, it will be the one year anniversary of this blog. that day was the first day we were alone since the horrible moment we learned hans's heart was no longer beating. another milestone.

another anniversary coming up: the anniversary of the period in which i thought about killing myself. actually, the anniversary of when i started thinking about it has already passed; just the anniversary of when i stopped thinking of it remains. it's on my mind because of my current struggle with depression and because of the conversation justin and i had friday night after watching "in her shoes," which justin only agreed to at the video store because i agreed to some czech comedy (and my limited experience with czech comedies is that they are not comedic at all). the movie actually was not quite as fluffy as either of us expected, but what was pointed for us was that the sisters who are the central characters lost their mother at an early age because she had mental health problems and she took her own life.

after the movie, justin asked me how i felt about it and admitted he was afraid for me. i understand that my depression affects both of us, but i don't think i realized how much it affected him, how much it scares him, how heavy the burden he carries is. i tried to reassure him that my desire to end my own life was the result of the grief i felt last year and not a feature of my usual depression, and that it certainly wasn't part of what i'm experiencing now. i hope he's comforted, too, by the fact that i told him what i was feeling then, to make myself accountable to someone and because i didn't want to do it. thinking about it and planning to do it are two different things; i certainly thought about it, but if i had made actual plans, i would not have told anyone, so that no one could thwart me. i wanted to be thwarted if i got that far.

but i'm calling for a psych referral tomorrow morning. it's one thing for me to try to be tough for another five months (plus whatever postpartum period) - and a debatably wise thing, at that; it's another thing to wear justin out with worry and with the responsibility for everything around here, since when i am most depressed i am least capable of even putting my dirty clothes anywhere other than where they fall when they come off. i need help, and we need help. we need to not be spending the beginning days of little z's life trying to dig out of the depths of my despair.

and i'm beginning to really expect, to anticipate those first days of z's life. i had a talk with z this morning about how long he or she had been cooking and how long we had to go. we're starting to plan for z's room, a little, and about what to do with the futon currently in there (we're trying to figure out how to turn a very large closet into a guest-pod/tv space, inspired by our recent trip to tokyo). we've started talking about when to go get the baby gear currently stored in mike and kath's attic (we're thinking late may, when i finish the school semester, and we'll be into the third trimester). i'm starting to get excited. :)

i don't want to be sad in the midst of all this joy, though. i know too well how easy it is for sadness and joy to co-exist, but there's no good reason for the sadness. i want to focus on the joy.

little z's finishing school

i have come to realize that i am a slouch. i do not sit up straight as a rule. i like to recline. i'm also big on leaning. if there's a tabletop on which to rest one or both elbows: ideal.

but z is pushing me to do better, to become a more evolved person...or at least, to have better posture (because of course a straight back is the sign of moral fortitude). z and his or her condo are expanding in such a way that i cannot continue to slouch if i want to breathe. i'm big on breathing.

and hey, a growing fetus beats having to balance a book on my head any day.

strawberry blind

how can anyone even look at any other fruit when it's strawberry season?

the most perfect strawberries were at the store tonight. ruby, robust, reeking of strawberriness. heaven in a green plastic pint basket. organic, too! woo-hoo!

breakfast tomorrow: strawberries and waffles with whipped cream. i don't know if i'll be able to sleep tonight...

school days

school is one of those things that's wasted on the young, or at least it was on me. when i went away to college at 17, i was ready to GET OUT THERE on my own (or as "on my own" as one could be as a minor, in a dorm, without a car, and funded by academic scholarships and, oh, right, my parents). the authoritarian model my parents followed had made me wildly squirrelly - but it hadn't equipped me to make my own decisions. boy, did i have a good time. boy, did i squander my educational opportunities. at the time, i didn't care.

now, of course, sadly, i do care. i wish my initial college experience had been different - to an extent. of course, for it to have been different, i needed to be raised differently, which means my parents needed to be raised differently - you'd have to go back generations on both sides of my family and institute change, which undoubtedly would have been better for all of us, but it's a little late now. and i do have some great memories of college. :)

now, no one cares that i scored a 30 on the act 20 years ago, nor will they hand out scholarships for it, dammit. it's a shame - i could really take advantage of full tuition now. wouldn't it be great if i could defer all that free money until i could appreciate it? i would be the most enthusiastic, annoying full time adult student now if i could afford to be. but that's not my life, and i wouldn't trade my life, anyway. so i'm going to school part-time (i'm that enthusiastic, annoying part time adult student messing with the curves) and getting as much out of it as i can.

the unexpected thing i'm getting out of it is an opportunity to think about...z! justin and i decided a long time ago that we wanted to live in the city, to raise our family here, to make sure our children did not grow up in white enclaves (like we did) so that a person of any degree of color was exotic (and therefore, inhuman) to them. this class i'm taking is making me see how much room i still had (and have) to grow as a person and as a member of my neighborhood, how much prejudice was still lurking around in my brain and how unfounded it was, how segregated our lives still are despite rubbing elbows with people of all colors on the street. z deserves better than a mother whose hand unconsciously tightens on his (or hers) when a person of another race passes us on the sidewalk - even if she does smile and say hi. lovely message for z of fear and hypocrisy, no?