Wholly Cow

That’s how I feel, anyways. I forgot how uncomfortable the last few weeks of pregnancy are. The need to chase a toddler around has led me to feeling mildly disabled, and there is so much yet to do! Trying to get Christmas boxes shipped to family and cleaning out the spare (soon to be not so spare) bedroom are on the top of the list. Everything isn’t helped by the fact that 5 minutes on my feet bring about painful contractions. I don’t remember having those with Lea, but they’ve been consistently getting stronger over the past few weeks. My midwife told me they are normal and so I am not so worried, but they still drive me nuts. As I said, I had little Braxton Hicks with Lea, but nothing like these until I was actually in labor. He has to wait at LEAST two more weeks to come, though. I am all about fat pink newborns, and I’d love to avoid the whole preemie scene.

Just writing that leads me to a shocking realization that somehow keeps surprising me even though it pops up in my head every 5 minutes or so: we are gong to have a newborn human being in our care within a month. Though Lea taught me that I am capable of mothering and that I love to do it, I am still left a little shell-shocked every time this thought resurfaces. I think that between being distracted by Lea, getting the house straight, school, and the holiday season and the fact that we had some significant warning signs first trimester which indicated that this baby might not be okay, I haven’t been as obsessed and/or consumed by this pregnancy as I would otherwise be. I am elated that everything is okay and I cannot wait to meet Noah, but those emotions come with a side dish of surprise and intimidation. It’s definitely similar to the feeling I got before jumping out of a plane at 12 thousand feet.

Miss Lea is doing well. She tripped on her own feet the other day and went sailing face first into a cabinet corner, so I slept in her room with her for a couple of nights so I could wake up and poke her every few hours. Aside from a bruise on her forehead and a cut down her nose and lip, she’s okay. I had to laugh at our parents who said to put a cold pack on her head to reduce bruising. They don’t know Lea and her absolute inability to sit still! It was hard enough to follow the nurse’s advice line’s instructions to keep her from running for a few hours after the accident.

Roscoe the bad dog has been slowly redeeming himself lately. I am more and more impressed with his ability to tolerate and even enjoy children. Our neighbor’s son loves him so much but is a little rough. He likes to tie a foot-long toy leash onto him and lead him around. Remarkably, the dog who has torn pockets out of my winter coats with his pulling allows the boy to do this and calmly takes any unintentional abuse the kids send his way. I guess that with all of the problems Ros and I have had, his tolerance of children makes up for a lot.

My classes are over at the end of this week. From there I have a month off and I am only going part time next semester. I am pretty happy with my grades and it was a stress-free semester for me. I still can’t wait to be done with my BS. I have decided that a Master of Arts in Teaching (MAT) is what I am going after once I have it. It feels like a long way off, but the day will come when I will be officially ready to reenter the workforce doing exactly what I want!