still here...

...and rocking a ginormous belly. Looks like we'll probably make it to Thanksgiving, which is good because the fridge is stocked and I'm not eating all those cranberries by myself.

McRevelations

River took off the "i" key on my laptop this morning, and while Thom was able to stick it back on, it doesn't engage unless I slam down on it, so the following sentence looked like this the first time around:

Rver took off the " " key on my laptop ths mornng, and whle Thom was able to stck t back on, t doesn't engage unless slam down on t....

You get the I-dea. It's pretty much a pain in the ass. Thanks, kid.

But that's not what I'm really here to write about. I'm not sure what I'm going to write about, but MY GOD THERE ARE A LOT OF "I"S IN THE ENGLISH LANGUAGE!!

I'm 37.5 weeks pregnant and I had a little epiphany in McDonald's the other day. What was I doing in that greasy heart attack pit? Well, lately this baby has been making me eat copious, crazy amounts of food, and since it's hard to make handmade, healthy, organic fair 53 meals a day, I've been indulging. Maybe it's because River hadn't thrown a fit yet that morning, or some new hormones kicking in, or I was just overjoyed by the fried goodness of Mchash Mcbrowns, but I suddenly realized that I was ready for this baby to come.

Don't get me wrong - we fully intended to have a new child when Sweet Pea was concieved, but a theoretical new child is really different from adding a real-live squirmy, poopy, attention-sucking adorable little munchkin to your life. And up until that beautiful moment - sitting under a gigantic billboard for Mcfish sandwiches - I was feeling a more-than-vague sense of panic should my body choose THIS moment to go into labor.

But no more. Come what may, we will be ready. So the birth tub's not set up? So be it. I'll have the baby in the bed. My parents aren't in town yet? We'll make due until they get here. We're supposed to be hosting Thanksgiving? Well, what's better than setting a place for one more?

I feel good. And prepared. And huge and hungry all the time, but what's new?

I guess I haven't talked about the fact that we're planning a home birth (and that's a subject for an entirely different post), but knowing that the baby has made it to full gestation and I won't be forced into a hospital should I go into labor adds considerably to my sense of well-being.

Anyway, that's where I'm at. It's a pretty good place to be.

color contest: I'm in!

Every time I enter a contest on Ohdeedoh, I have to wait forever to find out if I got in or not. Just about the time I assume it's hopeless and I didn't make it in, I do a last check, and there I am! That was my nice surprise for today, and it couldn't have come at a better time; I'm sitting home sick and needed something to cheer me up.

I'd love to make a good showing, especially since I've worked so hard to make it a wonderful room for my little pookers, so if you have a chance, go HERE and give me a thumbs up. Voting to get me in the finals only lasts for 48hrs, so if you think you might do it, don't wait.

nursery

After a year of tinkering the nursery is finally complete. I hung the curtains yesterday, did a little staging, and took some pictures to enter into a contest. If I get in I'll let you know how to vote for me. River took a step back from his big boy bed, so he's still enjoying this room. Hopefully he'll be ready to transition back before too long. Here's the final look:

Happy Halloween!

We had a lovely, sugar-filled day today. It started out with jumping in the leaf piles, followed by pumpkin carving, a viewing of my friend Jonathan's very gory horror movie (just me), and closed with a great first Trick-or-Treat outing. Here are some photos of our adventures:

River had a great time in our massive pile of leaves. He kept picking up huge armfuls to add to the pile then leaping in.

Thom's great "Bruce" from Finding Nemo.

I did the scary Jack and Thom carved the Alien at River's request.

Banks Street Doyles in their Cat In the Hat tribute.

The Doyle Monsters. This is the best group shot I have; though it's blurry, you can see I did manage to make our coordinating outfits in time.

The boys were so psyched to head out on their first candy run.

They got the whole routine down pretty fast. No freak-outs, no crying. I was very proud of them.

Handing out candy at the end of the night. You can just see the hint of River's chocolate mustache. And of course the evening ended with the expected sugar-high/massive crash.

Hope you all had some great adventures!

fall adventures

After what feels like an eternity, we have a new babysitter! Twelve hours of my week have been freed up for me to luxuriate in things like assembling baby furniture, grocery shopping, finding xmas presents, sewing Halloween costumes, and oh yes, perhaps blogging. I'm not using the time to get pedicures or massages, but if you have ever tried to go to Whole Foods with a toddler you'll understand how a trip there alone feels just as good as a day at the spa.

I'm not making any promises about blogging more often, but I can say that I don't constantly feel the crushing weight of the world on my shoulders at current, so my mind is certainly in the right place.

First up, I'd like to share some pics with you from the past month:

Here's River enjoying the bounty from our day at the pumpkin patch. Our upstairs neighbors happened to go the same day, so we had quite a haul in front of our house.

Visual proof that I am indeed pregnant. I'm about 28 weeks here (34 now), and the bump is significantly bigger and heavier. The little squirmer is moving all the time and gets the cutest hick-ups. Aside from the waddle, I'm loving this pregnancy.

Daddy doing the work of carving while River practices on his bike. It was an extremely cold day, so Thom made quick work of that pumpkin.

Attaching the pattern. We bought this kit that let you put colored pegs into the pumpkin, essentially turning it into a giant light bright.

The finished product!

The tree in front of our house in all shades of red, orange, yellow, and green. Here you go mom - not as stunning as last year, but it sure is pretty.

River's custom-made monster costume. The specs I had to work with (per River): Dark blue, light blue, and orange with 5 eyes and 5 arms. I took some liberties, but I think I stayed pretty close to his vision. Now I just have to make matching ones for Thom and I.

to the asswipe who cut me in line at the coffee shop today...

Hello there,

You may remember me from this morning. I was the pregnant lady struggling through the cafe entrance with my toddler, who so kindly held the door open for you behind me. You were the guy who let me stand there long past the point of comfort because you were too lazy to reach out an arm and catch the door for yourself. I was that same lady approaching the counter who you squeezed passed with a brisk, "Excuse me," on what I assumed was an urgent mission to the bathroom or a coveted table. Little did I know you were just trying to get ahead of us in line.

Thanks so much. Maybe it didn't look like I had rushed out of the house before having my breakfast and coffee, or that I had woken and dressed my son in minutes so my car wouldn't be towed away on street cleaning day, or that the two of us could possibly make an order quick enough to get you to the front of the line in your due turn. Let me assure you, you were wrong on all counts.

You see, I was a bit flabbergasted and certain such rudeness would be explained by some other pressing circumstances (a double-parked car? running late to work?), but the fact that you followed your coffee order by jabbering at the barista for five minutes about the false rumor of a stolen tip jar makes me believe you weren't actually in any kind of rush. In fact, I feel safe assuming you're just a scumbag without manners who takes any opportunity to screw someone else over for your own advantage.

In spite of all this, I want to assure you that you didn't ruin my morning. I'm growing increasingly accustomed to dealing with Mass-holes on a regular basis, so you probably don't even hold the title spot of d*cks I'll run into today. My son and I did get our coffee, juice, and muffin quickly thereafter, and we enjoyed the food and company immensely.

I hope you enjoyed your coffee. I also hope you found yourself in desperate need of relieving yourself and no bathroom in sight.

Good Day,
The Woman You Cut Off

you can come visit again, mom, the closet is ready

After fretting about it for a year, I have finally gathered the courage to clean out my linen closet. I know, I know, earth-shattering stuff, but I am seriously proud right now. I had a rough day yesterday (up at 4:30am, worked on projects all morning, threw my hip out, didn't get to nap, dead tired by the end of the day).

Today was so much better. I slept in, woke to my boys making pancakes, then spent the rare morning alone(!) while Thom took River to the park. I suppose there were more exciting ways to spend a free morning, but clean sheets, folded blankets, and medicines neatly organized in that beautiful closet make me feel like I spent the morning at the spa.

my craptastic re-entry to the blog

Today was unusually rough. River woke at 6:30am and though it was nice that he just hopped into bed with us (instead of us having to drag ourselves out before sunrise on a Sunday morning), it was still too early to get going.

We started out productively with a trip to a diner and Home Depot, then got right to work on projects around the house. I'm not sure what gave me a bug up my ass to paint the brick supports in the basement TODAY but that's what I wanted to do. Once I got started on that (and Thom worked on the yard, somewhat successfully entertaining River at the same time), I decided we might as well paint an accent wall too. Five coats of velvet red later and that damn wall still isn't covered.

Between the weeding, painting, laundry, raking, and cleaning up River did not get a lot of attention today. I know he's not used to entertaining himself for more than ten minutes at a time, but is it too much to ask for one day where I am not his personal trained monkey? Because of the extraordinary neglect he was feeling he started lashing out like a crazy person, turning every little thing into a battle.

He refused lunch, then cried for twenty minutes at naptime when I told him, sorry, the pizza was in daddy's belly, he missed that train. He dropped chips on the floor and laughed at the mess, spit (not spilled, SPIT) milk on the phone then the couch, banged on his daddy's computer, then mine, and generally fought every move we made from dinner to bedtime. It was like he was aiming for the time-out record of the world.

By the time we got to bath Thom and I were snapping at each other, River was delirious with exhaustion, and I couldn't face reading stories to him without breaking down in tears. Not a pretty picture. I know pregnancy has a lot to do with the extreme emotional reaction, but it's not everything.

I need a sitter and some time for myself. I need to take it a little easy. I need to do something that has nothing to do with the house, the child, the pets, the shopping, or the car. Mostly, right now, I need to go to bed and press Reset on this day.

Infinitely Happy

Let's do a little evaluation... Six years ago today I was waking up in the JW Marriott, celebrating a post-wedding brunch, and getting ready to board a plane to Fiji with my new husband. I was slightly younger, quite a bit lighter, a tad more naive, and infinitely happy.

Today I wake up with my industrious man doing yoga down the hall, feeling grateful for the 9 hours of sleep I got and the cup of coffee ready in the kitchen. My little boy is (blessedly) sleeping in downstairs, and my baby is doing good-morning stretches in my belly. There are legos and picture books at my feet, and my thoughts are on the errands to run and playgrounds to visit today. I'm 30 years old, I'm a mommy, and I have no idea what I want to be when I grow up.

Tonight I will have a quiet dinner out with my husband where the conversation will mostly be about River and the new baby to come. Neither of us will feel anything but happy about this.

We won't have the time (or, in my case, ability) to indulge in an evening of endless cocktails, but we'll be doing what we always do: talking about our lives, our dreams, our partnership. We'll be thinking about what we're doing right and what we could be doing to make things better. We'll listen to each other. We'll support and inspire each other. We'll laugh and conspire.

My life is busier and harder than I imagined it would be. But it's so much richer. I feel like the luckiest woman in the world to have married a man who so perfectly fits me. Thank you, Thom, for sharing these six years with me (and for putting up with the woman who accidentally taught your son to say "dickwad").

escape

It's such a shame that a week of vacation inevitably must be followed by a day traveling home. The 45 minute cab ride, airport, delayed flight, super-fast transfer, second plane ride, lost luggage, and long drive home with 6 people and their bags stuffed into too small a space somehow takes all those relaxing walks on the beach and crushes them like bugs under an unrelenting, steel-toed boot.

And yet, it was a great vacation. Disneyworld was a hyperactive weekend of neon and sugar shock. The heat was unbelievable and there was way too much to fit into so short a time (especially considering the boys still require at least one nap to get through the day), but we saw the great mouse and his duck friend, we rode countless kiddie rides (and a few grown up ones too), we scared the shit out of River with Pirates of the Caribbean, and we ate copious amounts of french fries and ice cream. All in all, what more can you ask of the Magic Kingdom?

The week that followed was spent lounging by the beach and in the pool in the Dominican Republic. The Cuba Libres (rum and cokes) flowed freely (as did the virgin Pina Coladas for me), River nearly learned how to swim, and Finn followed his cousin around picking up a dozen new words. We toasted Jack and Julie's 40 years together, read books, did yoga, laughed, ate, and drank.

It was lovely to have such a concentrated time to relax and enjoy family. I'm so glad Thom got an actual vacation (he turned his email auto-reply on for the first time in SEVEN YEARS!), and I'm thrilled the grandparents had so much undivided time with the little ones. I loved getting into the comfy routine of sharing a house together - spending leisurely days eating, playing, and swimming.

My Italian vacation was wonderful in a different way - I had time alone with my best friend, able to just be Summer, not Mommy. I rushed around foreign cities with the energy of a college kid and came as close as possible to experiencing life without responsibility. But in the DR I was able to slow down, step away from the stress of taking care of my family yet still enjoy my family. It was really lovely. I don't think River and I have laughed together like that in a long time. I'm hoping I can take some of that carefree energy and work it into life back at home, because that week away from it all sure felt like what life should be all the time.

"Hit Donald again!"

We've been planning a little trip to Disneyworld for a while now and since River has had zero experience with old school Disney characters, we figured it might behoove us to introduce him to the giant mouse before we arrive. Of course YouTube offers a great selection of old cartoons and we watched a couple the other night.

The first one we found featured Mickey, Goofy, and Donald in an eviction scenario which rivaled the horror of an Itchy and Scratchy episode. Apparently, the kid loves violence, and every time someone got smashed in the head with a piano, stuffed into a fishbowl, or blown up by a leaky gas pipe River cracked up. Donald Duck received the brunt of the violence and something about his enraged responses pleased River to no end. Since then he's been talking about going to see Donald and doing his best impression of D-man's scratchy, throaty squawk.

We're watching an episode as I type this and while River cracks up the little one is kicking like mad. Guess it runs in the family.

maybe the Taoists have something here...

I'm starting to think that a certain amount of laziness in our approach to parenting is really paying off. Don't get me wrong - I work my ass off, as does Thom, and neither of us feel like inattentiveness with River gets us anything but more work down the road. So when I say lazy, I guess what I mean is "selectively non-proactive."

Earlier this year we began thinking about how to get River to move to his toddler bed downstairs with enough time before the new baby arrived that he wouldn't feel like he'd been evicted from the nursery by his snotty little sibling. We had a lot of time, and since we didn't have any great ideas about how to make the transition without a lot of drama, we just sort of let it be. The only thing we did was plant the idea in River's head that when he was ready he could try to sleep in his "big boy bed." Every now and then we would play downstairs and remind him that it would eventually be his "big boy room" instead of just his playroom. At bedtime one night, a couple months after we'd started plugging his new room, he told us, "River want sleep downstairs." I'm sure it was just a ploy to extend bedtime, and it actually didn't work out that night, but a few nights later he asked again and it was a success. For a week we had a slow transition to the downstairs room with very minimal drama and by the end of the month he was completely moved.

I just imagine if we'd taken a more aggressive approach we would have had a huge battle and not enjoyed the nearly seamless transition we did because River made the choice to move on his own. Our laziness really paid off in this case.

I look at when River stopped nursing at about 20 months and though I needed to stop for my own sanity, I know River was definitely not ready. He drew great emotional comfort from nursing - much more, it seems, than other children who ween themselves by their first year. The decision was not his own, and while weening took a short time, I think taking the choice away from him has had repercussions that last to this day. After all, the reasons he needed to nurse didn't just disappear when the boobies went into confinement. So he took the next best thing and started holding my boobs when he was sad or hurt or just needed love. At first I thought it was part of the transition and didn't want to take that source of comfort away from him too. But it's been nearly 10 months and there are no signs that he's ready to, uh-hum, let go just yet.

So yes, it's uncomfortable when I walk into a store and my 2 1/2 year old is gripping mommy's girls, but I can't let my anxiety about social acceptance affect me the way it did with weening. It's not fair to River, and I have to accept that the time will come when he is ready to pull away on his own. Making that decision himself will make all the difference for both of us. I'm taking the lazy route on this one and trusting River won't still be clutching at my boobs as he heads off to school.

Last night, as we were getting ready to plop River in the bath, he looked down at his peeper and kind of wiggled his bottom. This is usually a sign that he's ready to pee, so we asked him if he had to go and he said yes. Normally, we would follow this by an offer to go on the potty (a question he responds to as though we'd asked if he'd like some hot pokers in his eyes). We've had a couple rough days lately and I didn't want to push any buttons, so we offered to let him go in the bathtub. Imagine our heads nearly flying off when he told us he wanted to go on the potty.

Really, we were woefully unprepared. Because of his typical reaction (see: hot pokers, above) I haven't pulled out his potty chair in months. We've taken the anti-proactive approach to potty training, ignoring the issue (aside from the occasional suggestion to River) and assuring ourselves that changing diapers on a four year old wouldn't be that bad. Every now and then I think about how my grandmother potty trained me over one weekend when I was one, or I hear one of my mommy friends has started with her child. And then I happily ignore the urge to rush, and I enjoy my laziness.

Since there was no potty chair in sight, we stood him on top of the toilet seat, strattling the bowl, and hoped for the best. He stood there a while, holding his peeper, wiggling his bottom and seeming generally pleased to be doing something new. Well, a while went on for even longer and I realized that the cats hadn't been fed, and hell, preggers wanted some cookies when bathtime was done, so I went upstairs to attend to those things for a few minutes. When I came back down River was now sitting on the way too big seat and boasting of having GONE PEE! IN THE POTTY! I couldn't believe I missed it. I am so proud. And so happy we didn't try to force him onto that stupid seat before he was ready. I know it's just the first step, but because he's started on his own, all of my (repressed) anxiety about getting him out of diapers is gone. I know he will do it in his own time. And maybe even before he's four.

imagine what we could do with 48 hours?

River went camping with his aunt, uncle, and cousin yesterday afternoon and returned today just before lunch. It was his first sleepover trip and it sounds like he had a wonderful time. Meanwhile, Thom and I were taking advantage of the uninterrupted time to do some work of our own. During the 24 hours he was gone we:

• Emptied the storage closet
• Sorted the contents of a dozen boxes
• Reorganized the storage closet
  
• Weeded the lawn
• Got ice cream
• Put new linens and a new magnet board in River's room
• Slept 8 hours
  
• Held a yard sale
• Organized all of River's baby clothes
• Began setting up the nursery
• Assembled three new end tables
  
• Rearranged the patio furniture
• Mowed the lawn
• Backed up my computer

And we still had time to watch The Complete Works of William Shakespeare.

back from italy...

...can anyone loan me about ten hours to sort through the pictures and tell you about it?