Thump, thump, thump, thump…You’ve got to MOVE IT!

Two girls dance together, sandwiching the unsuspecting poor sob between them. They laugh and give each other knowing looks. The world is theirs.

Then, we had cosmos in hand (and didn’t even spill them!). The girl was my cousin, and we were hotties who (likely insufferably) knew it. The guy was likely an Air Force Academy cadet, pleased with how “cool” he was to dance with hot older women.

Today, years later, it’s the credits to Madagascar. We have Luna bars in hand (and don’t even smudge chocolate all over). The girl is my Maya, and we’re sandwiching Gavin, who is resisting going back to his nap. We laugh together, and I wouldn’t go back to the nightclub even if you paid me.

Often, growing up sucks. Today, it doesn’t.

Gavin is teething. He’s not even 3 months old…and this has been going on, I believe, for at least 2 weeks.

Yikes.

Heather Armstrong managed to capture just how I often feel about my 3-1/2 year old princess:

That sweet little baby has turned into a sweet little girl, and believe me, there are days when I want to glue a bucket to her head just to muffle the whining, and then position her so that she’ll walk blindly into a wall, but on days like today, I understand that she is and always will be the best thing that has ever happened to me.

(emphasis added)

Okay, maybe I’d skip the glue. Just sayin’.

Shortly after Gavin turned one week old, I *thought* it looked like he was trying to smile — not a reflexive smile, but an honest-to-goodness social smile. “Nah, couldn’t be,” I thought. “Surely it’s just gas.”

By 10 days old, I believed it — the kid was trying to smile. Now (at 2 weeks today!), I have no doubt at all, and even caught a smile at his daddy in photo form:

Precocious, much?

Mike earlier told me that he’d informed Maya she didn’t need fruit snacks — she needs food that will help her grow.

Just a minute ago, Maya started talking about her hot cocoa:

It’s good for me. It makes me grow.

I commented to Mike, “hey, she was listening…”

…it makes my NIPPLES GROW!

Or, as Maya likes to say (over and over again), “Welcome to the world, baby Gavin!”

Gavin made his appearance at 3:47am March 5th, after very short, very intense labor and birth at home. Let me tell ya…total labor time (from first contraction until actual delivery) of less than 3-1/2 hours made for some mighty powerful work! Whew. We’re all doing well.

(click photo for more pictures)


Gavin Leopold
March 5, 2008 3:47am
8 pounds, 0 ounces
20.5 inches long
14 inch head

Full birth story beneath the fold.

Read the rest of this entry »

Sometimes, I have to look back at the title of this blog. “It is what it is.” It’s not just a pithy statement that was prominently overused on the first season of Top Chef (yes, I love Bravo’s reality series). It’s a profound way of looking at life and learning to not only accept, but embrace the life I have.

This was in an email this morning on a yahoo group re: birth that I frequent:

You never know what unexpected benefits may come from something
going differently than you’d hoped. So thinking that way may allow
you to relax and enjoy the whole process more - and may make for a
MUCH happier holiday season for all involved.

This email was in response to one gal’s concerns about having family present for her child’s birth — family whom she’d rather not have in the room. Birth doesn’t stress me out. While Maya’s birth wasn’t pain-free, it also wasn’t traumatic in the least. It was fantastic, really. But when I applied these thoughts in a broader sense, a lightbulb went off.

My response:

(name),

Just realized I should tell you — I thoroughly enjoy your posts. This last bit is especially helpful to me now, not about birthing, but simply regarding our lives. In July, we learned that my dh was getting a job offer that will move us to Europe. The formal offer didn’t finally arrive (hooray bureaucratic nightmare) until just before Thanksgiving, and now we’re eagerly/anxiously awaiting their response to our counter to their (typical) low-ball salary. Since I’m due in March, this feels like a time-bomb ticking; I’m not willing (and DH agrees) that we won’t move after mid-January, when I hit 32 weeks. Of course, the organization is dragging out their acceptance/formal plans now, so we’re … antsy … to say the least.

Anyway, it’s so often been true in my life that the unplanned and unexpected can transform into something fabulous. We may move to Europe. We may stay put. We may move somewhere entirely different. Whatever happens, our lives will work out. Thanks for the reminder!

I hit 32 weeks pregnancy on January 15th. Moving somewhere else in the US after that wouldn’t be a big deal at all. Moving to another country, where I don’t even speak the native language? Now THAT is a stressful thought. It’s good to remind myself that we’re doing everything that we need to do, and that whatever happens, we’ll be fine.

Stressed much?

On a semi-related note, I had an OB appointment on Monday and (no surprise, as I feel rather whale-like) measured about 2 weeks ahead of my estimated due date. They packed me off for an ultrasound to be sure all was well, and, as I expected, everything’s fine. Baby is simply big. He’s roughly 2 pounds, 5 ounces at this point, and approximately 15-16 inches from head to foot. On top of that, I’ve got lots o’ amniotic fluid, so yeah…my belly’s big. Since I have little torso room to speak of, that translates to a baby sticking WAY out in the front for my 26 weeks. Mike’s a big guy. We’re likely to have a big baby. No “big” deal.

But, that means I got pictures!

This particular clinic offers 3D/4D in addition to the typical sonographic images. Pity that little guy really didn’t feel like showing his face. The songographer thought this was a muscle-man pictures. To me, it says Moooommmmmm…leave me alone! Five more minutes!

He was, however, perfectly happy to flash us his nether-regions again, assuring us that the sonogram in October was in no way mistaken about gender. Look, ma! I’m a BOY!

I love profile photos. This also gives you an idea of how little guy likes to flex his feet and push on me. All. the. time. And, for the record, I think he’ll have Mike’s nose.

Toward the very end, Baby Boy finally moved his arm/elbow down just enough that we got a shot of eyes and nose.

We’re having a boy, folks.

Last pregnancy, my skin was smooth and glowing. This time, I’m breaking out and oily. Oh, and I have extra hairs on my chinny-chin-chin.

Last pregnancy, I craved all-sugar-all-the-time. This time? Chicken. Bring me the chicken, darn it.

Last pregnancy, I got wide, and my belly grew low. This time? Well, I’m still getting wide (sigh…darned hips and thighs), but my belly is way the heck up near my ribcage. Let’s not discuss how much I weigh now at 21 weeks. The idea of piling 19ish pounds on top of that scares the bejesus out of me. Oddly, though, I feel great. I mean really, really great. And I love the belly enough that the butt and thighs are just annoying tag-alongs.

As different as everything is, and from the hint I got from intelligender, I had an inkling that this just might not be another girlie-girl. Nah. It’s a boy-boy-boy.

Gee, ya think? There was no room for questioning at this ultrasound. Not only did baby boy show the goods, he showed ALL the goods (seriously, we could see scrotum), multiple times. “Hi! I’m here! I’m HAPPY!”

He’s developing at a pretty normal pace, too, which relieves me and my fears of “what if this kid has a noggin as big as his dad’s?”

Looks pretty cozy in there, to me. I wouldn’t mind a recliner like that.

Since learning (three weeks ago, sorry to be so late) that this is a he-baby, we sorted through Maya’s piles (and piles) of baby clothing and packed a 30+ pound box to ship to Iowa to Mike’s sister, who’s having a girl next month. No, we haven’t decided for sure whether this will be “the end” for us, but why let all those cute things just sit unused? The universe will surely reciprocate should we have another baby girl down the road. And for this one, friends have given me stacks of boy duds to start with. And, of course, we *had* to buy a few new-to-this-baby items, just because we could. Who knew that boy clothing could be so fun?

We still don’t have timing on the move to Austria. Our last update was mid-October, that the Director General of the IAEA had signed off the paperwork, THEN it was going back to personnel, and THEN it would be sent to us. Maybe by Thanksgiving we’ll have details? Whatever, Mike knows that if we hit mid-January (32 weeks) without a move, I will seriously look at moving to Colorado until after the baby’s born. He says he will NOT let that happen.

So, that’s what’s up here…we’re still preparing for a big move in the December/January timeframe, but getting yanked around about the details. We’re told this is quite normal, and to expect things to move VERY quickly once they finally get us the paperwork. Wait and hurry-up.

Go read a great post by Chris at the Parenting Post. I *love* how she helped her son deal with a setback.

Rather than coming up with a title on my own, I’ll steal the title of the post I’m linking. Via Carnival of the Godless, I came across Holy Smoke at A Load of Bright. He compares quitting religion (as I did through December, then formally announced as of the first of 2007) to quitting smoking (which I did almost instantly in January 2004, even before I knew I was pregnant). It’s a striking comparison to me — one that resonates with me.

A sampling:

One question that is often asked of atheists is, “how are you going to replace religion? People need religion. If you take it away, what are you going to put in its place?” Many atheists answer this question on face value, normally with an outline of secular humanism. This is correct in a sense, but the question is actually heavily loaded. It assumes that people need religion. Do they really?

I used to think I needed cigarettes like I needed food. At times, when I was broke in university, I would scrape pennies from the floor of my car and the backs of couches to buy cigarettes while my cupboards were bare. “I need a cigarette”, I’d tell my bemused housemates, “I need one”. When you smoke, you are imbibing poison into your body. If there is one thing that, by definition, your body never needs, it is poison. I didn’t need a cigarette. I needed food. If you don’t eat, you die. If you don’t smoke, not only do you not die, you live longer! It’s easy for me to say that now, but at the time I was convinced that it was an essential.

Just as we are all born atheists, we are all born non-smokers. Do people really need religion, or do they just not know any better? Obviously, not all people need religion – the existence of happy atheists proves that. So why would some people need it and not others?

Over time, I’ve found myself filled with nearly zero angst about my walking away from religion in general, Christianity in particular. When I first even contemplated (not out loud, even — just in my head) the idea that God might just not be, the emptiness wasn’t unlike the craving for a cigarette — a loss that, had I not fed an addiction, I wouldn’t have ever recognized.

These days, when I consider religion, it’s largely in relation to how I’m raising my daughter, and how I can coach her to think critically about everything she encounters, even “truths” that I might tell her. Someday, she might be atheist/agnostic. She might be Christian. She might be Buddhist, Muslim, Jewish, or a New Age flake. Whichever she becomes, my wish is that she will have spent time genuinely considering *why* she believes what she does.