Snapshots of a three-year-old

I just realized we've hardly taken any pictures of Amelia since she turned three! I am going to try to take some today.

We're very busy these days. Also, I have become better at living in the moment. This results in more peace overall but also a dirty house and an un-updated blog. I almost decided to shut this whole blog down, replacing it with a photo website of some kind. There are a few other writing projects I have been trying to focus on, and I felt bad about how little I write here.

But I decided not to. For one thing, as much as I admire people who record a sentence a day or a photo of their child a day,  this is the only place I have consistently recorded Amelia's life. It would be sad to end it.

Plus, in retrospect, I suppose the silence will be telling. There is a book I found in a used bookstore in DC (Amelia in her Ergo carrier) called "The Seven Stages of Motherhood." I like its personal stories and the way it presents motherhood as a knowable path. The chapter on mothering a preschooler (age 3-5) is called "Trying to Do It All."

That sums things up pretty well. Since Amelia started school, I have had more time to fill, and sometimes I try to fill it with EVERYTHING: cleaning, cooking, yoga, writing, shopping, errands. Yet Amelia is only in school a few days a week, and I also started a teaching job. (!) I haven't written about it here, but it started back in the fall. Officially, I am a "Young Writers Outreach Instructor" for Denver's Lighthouse Writers. It's an amazing job--basically I am a visiting writer going into schools to teach craft--and it fell into my lap with absolutely no work on my part (other than the fact that I joined Lighthouse Writers, the best writers' group ever). I took a session teaching 9th and 10th graders for 3 days a week in the fall, and then took another 7-week session of pretty much the same gig. I also taught a 6-week course back in the spring and worked for a week at their Summer Writing Camp. I love being a "writer in the schools"--it has been a dream of mine to teach writing as a visiting writer since I was a high school teacher. I love the job.

At the same time, the job has created some stress. For one thing, the teaching ends midday, around the time the half day program for Amelia's school ends. Amelia's teacher said I could pick her up late, but in the meantime, Amelia began--drumroll--NAPPING AT SCHOOL. So I usually pick her up around 2 or 3, after the kids wake up, have a snack, and go outside to play. It's cute to come pick her up and see "all the friends" in their coats and hats and sunglasses (required) playing. One day they were barking like puppies and I could hear them a block away. Still, it's more school than I had planned for Amelia this year.

Also, teaching always ends up taking time away from writing. During my first fall teaching session, I hardly wrote my own stuff at all. For this second session, I started out with a stricter schedule for myself, and I was doing well with it--for one week. The second week of the session, Amelia got the flu (EVEN THOUGH SHE GOT A FLU SHOT). So I stayed home to be with her. I am very thankful I have the kind of life that allows me to stop everything to be with my baby when she needs me, so this is not meant to be a complaint, but it does seem like every time I get on a roll with writing, something happens--we go on a trip, someone gets sick, etc.

On the other hand, after three years of motherhood, I've learned that "all things pass." So I will get back on the roll again soon. This week, I am just glad for a healthy child. And the fact that I don't have the flu.

Anyway, here are some "snaphots" of our three-year-old. Real snapshots to come later today!

Amelia visits Santa: She was annoyed that she had to wait in line. She was the only kid not dressed up in fancy Christmas clothes. Between kids, the elves furtively shielded Santa while he used hand sanitizer. When it was her turn, Amelia said she was "nervous" and I told her she didn't have to see Santa, but she bolstered her courage, sat in his lap, and asked for a robot. He kept prompting her "what else?," which I thought was unnecessary. Just a robot, Santa!

Amelia and the "scary room:" A couple of weeks ago, I woke up around 11 pm to Amelia calling me into her room. She said "something's scary!" and pointed vaguely to the corner of her room. I held her hand while she fell asleep again, but she woke up 3 more times that night. According to The Happiest Toddler on the Block, a book I cannot recommend enough, it's normal for kids develop fears around this age. Using the ideas in the book, I rallied the next day, and we rearranged Amelia's room. It did sort of look scary in the corner: the combination of the nightlight in the corner plus a bookshelf that has a tree branch on it made strange shadows, plus we had her humidifier over there, emitting a spooky mist. So I moved all that around and put her night light right beside her bed. Also, we gave her a flashlight and made some special spray (water and lavender oil) to spray at scary things. And, we remover her bed rail and told her she could get out of bed and turn on her light if she wanted to see her room.

This marks the major parenting victory of my life so far: all this worked! Amelia loved having her night light closer, being a "big girl" with no bed rail, and getting out of bed to turn on her light. The first night at bedtime, we heard her light turn on and off about 10 times. In the meantime, to tempt her back into her own bed after 4-5 days of sleeping with Mama while being sick, we put Christmas lights up beside her bed. The first night those were up, she played in her bed for over an hour and a half before finally dropping off to sleep.

What else? I can't think of the other stories I wanted to tell, so here are a few fun facts. Amelia can spell her name and I think she can spell "Daddy" (she and Dean play with foam bathtub letters in the bath a lot). She can count up to 30 or so sometimes--I have heard her do it, but other times she refuses or does it wrong as a joke. She knows the sounds for most of the letters (I made up a song with letter sounds one day in desperation, trying to lull her to sleep, and it took). She loves the "Jennifer stories" I tell her sometimes to distract her while brushing her hair or the like--Jennifer is a girl just Amelia's age, again made up by me in desperation one day--I was trying to use Jennifer as an example of something, like a little story with a moral--"Jennifer didn't want her Mama to brush her hair, but her hair got so tangled she had to cut it all off!" But it turns out Amelia LOVES stories where Jennifer is "naughty:" Jennifer squeezes all of toothpaste out of the tube, refuses to share with her baby brother, dumps her food on the floor, much to Amelia's delight. I am not sure what this means, but in any case, Amelia loves stories and songs. She sometimes even makes up her own stories and songs, something I should try harder to get on tape.

I am sure there is a lot I am missing, but that's a peek into life here lately. Check back later for some real "snapshots" of Amelia!

Lists, lists, oh lists

If the title of this post seems oddly familiar to you, you may be, or may have been in the past, a high school English teacher.*

Time for the final update on my July list: I didn't get everything done.

But, here are the items on the list I did accomplish:
cleaned out and organized my closet
cleaned off my upstairs writing desk
started running 3 times a week (for the past 3 weeks only, but hey)
learned all about potty training (really--ask me anything)
redesigned, multiple times, this blog
went to yoga 2-3 times a week

And, I did a ton of stuff not on the list, such as:
research preschools and Parents Day Out programs
put up an ad for a babysitter
reorganize the pantry and kitchen cabinets
start a book club
brainstorm ideas for a cookbook

The main things I did not do, however, might be the most important ones for any sort of academic career I might eventually ever have (although that idea seems less plausible the longer I am away from the academic world). I did NOT do any kind of work for the two baby ideas I had for non-poetry writing projects, something having to do with Southern Lit and something having to do with what I am calling "Motherhood Lit." I just don't have the gumption, the energy, or the motivation for these projects. I know a lot of writing opportunities come out of simply having written something, but I have a hard time starting big projects without some kind of outside pressure for doing so. Like a job. Or being in school. Amelia is a tough boss, but she doesn't require much in the way of written material. So I am slacking there.

I have been feeling kind of bad about it. I didn't even want to blog about it, and I have in fact been sitting in front of the computer for an hour NOT blogging about it, but this seems to be one of Amelia's longer nap days. I keep arguing with myself about the situation--see below.


Kim 1: Of course I am not writing much or working on anything all that serious. I am a Stay At Home Mom. My job is to raise Amelia. By the end of a day of playing, coloring, singing, talking about colors, repeating things one million times, getting in and out of the car seat, running errands, preparing wholesome meals and snacks, cleaning up bits and pieces of said meals and snacks from all corners of the house, patiently waiting for a toddler to put on her shoes "self," strap herself into her carseat "self", go up and down stairs "self," and who knows what all else, how could I even expect myself to create serious and insightful work on a realm of the world (i.e. literature) that truly has nothing to do with my life right now.

Kim 2: But you are a writer. And you want to be a writer. And writers read stuff. And also write.

Kim 1: (asleep by 8:30 pm)

So I am really not getting anywhere.

On the one hand, I love Amelia and Amelia is wonderful, and I really do love spending the days with her now. Although I have been so grateful since I stopped working that I am able to be with her so much, "I really do love spending the days with her" is not something I would have written a year ago. I found the baby months--sleepless nights, unpredictable days-- really hard. And now, things are still challenging, and I am certainly tired at the end of the day, but overall I am having a lot of fun. That's why I stopped looking for teaching jobs for the fall, and chose to stay with Amelia for another year.

On the other hand, part of me feels very isolated. When I think about it, which isn't often, I miss school, both taking classes and teaching them, very much. Long term, I would like to be part of the larger writing world again, but I have a lot of fears and worries about ever getting there. I am afraid of being lazy now and missing my chance. I am afraid I can no longer write a good poem. I am afraid I will never have the discipline to read all the stuff I need to read to be a good poet. I am afraid I will never find a teaching job.

And I am afraid no one is all that interested in what I have to say. Awhile ago, I mentioned the fact that I wanted my blog to be more than a "mommy blog." I had come across a piece of academic writing on "mommy blogs" that really annoyed me, but I couldn't quite figure out why. It wasn't particularly insulting, just a kind of study and description of "mommy blogs," but it really not on my nerves. Then I came across this article on the words "mom" and "mommy", and two and two came together. As the Orlean article points out, "mommy" as an adjective comes across as infantile, silly, even trivial. It annoys me to have a whole segment of writing women, most if not all of whom provide each other (and the whole cyberworld) not only with a mothering community but also with invaluable insights on both parenting and writing, labeled as "mommy bloggers." And it both offends and scares me to have most of my writing labeled as such. Offends me because I don't think most of what I write is trivial, even if much of what I write is primarily about Amelia. And scares me because maybe, in the eyes of the larger writing world, it is.

Of course if I really believed that, I'd shut down the whole operation, and here we are. I know these feelings are not new to women or to mothers or to artists in general. And I know how lucky I am, how hugely lucky, that my challenge is balancing mothering and writing, and not working and spending time with my child, or trying to put food on my table, or dealing with war or poverty or fear for my family's physical safety or innumerable other terrible things. I try to remember to be grateful for my life daily, even hourly. And I am very grateful.

Still, I know that part of me is meant to write, wants to write, and it waiting to do so. In the ongoing brave new world of motherhood, a different world every day, I think my upcoming lists are going to look for ways to be more of a writer too.

*It's from Hamlet, a play I read too many times with a great deal of teenagers who were uninterested in, if not downright hostile toward, Shakespeare. The ghost says it (or rather, "list, list, o list!") to get Hamlet to listen. I'd say it to get my students to listen. I was such a cool teacher.

13 on 31

I never seem to find the time to write the developed posts I compose in my head at 4am, so here are 13 things about life, lately:

1. Amelia is sick. Poor baby. She and I both had colds for the past two weeks or so, but when mine went away, hers seem to get worse, and a fever appeared. A trip to the doctor showed no ear infection, and when I called again today, the nurse said a virus that sounds like what Amelia has is going around. So I am giving her ibuprofen, and she is drinking a lot of juice.

2. She says, "Juice!" Also fish, mask (because of an African mask Jes got us that hangs on the wall above our reading/nursing chair) and, just this weekend, Daddy! ("Da!")

3. Naps have been challenging, lasting 45 minutes, tops, for most of last week. Maybe because she has been sick? With 10-15 minutes of crying when I put her down. But today, for the first time since I cut her off from nursing to sleep: no pre-nap crying! She just talked to herself for a few minutes, then all was quiet on the napptime front.

4. Night sleep has remained mostly great, even through the sickness. A couple of early morning wakings. I have nursed her at night twice. My hope is that this is fine, as long as it doesn't turn back into a habit. It seems okay so far. There is a middle way!

5. List of lunchtime food items on the table and floor right now: wheat bread. Strawberry jello. Cheerios. Milk. A french fry. A slice of turkey ("gobble gobble gobble"). Vanilla ice cream. Something gooey I can't name--oh, mayonaise.

6. Number of the above items Amelia actually ate for lunch: 0.

7. What has Amelia eaten today? About 1/3 of a bag of rainbow goldfish crackers. (Don't worry, they are colored using natural ingredients, like beets.)

8. What have I been doing during these 45 minute naps last week? Writing! Somehow when I know there is only going to be 45 minutes, I can make myself get more work done than if I think there might be 2 hours. I have been working on my manuscript and work for the class I am taking. My class met again last week (it meets about every 3rd Monday). We discussed my manuscript and one other (6 students, 2 manuscripts per session, for two rounds). I got lots of positive feedback and several helpful suggestions. And a few crazy suggestions, but that is par for the workshop course.

10. And, I just got an email from the instructor asking me if I want to be in a reading soon! A nice boost for my confidence. Especailly considering that

11. I spent some time this weekend looking into jobs for the fall, mostly getting very discouraged. I read too many faculty bios of people who had PhDs and lots of publications. Whatever, guys. I can recite both Brown Bear, Brown Bear, What Do You See? and Dr. Suess's ABCs.

12. I am looking forward to spring. Although we had some days in the high 50s and low 60s last night, tomorrow's high is supposed to be -3. Can people even exist in that kind of weather? How did the pioneers survive out here? I am making it my personal business not to leave the house tomorrow.

13. After 16 months, I am beginning to feel like my old self again, whoever that is. I think sleeping through the night helps. So does getting to leave the house at night and not being the only person in the universe who can get Amelia to go to sleep. Plus having a toddler is really a lot of fun! Hard sometimes, what with the tantrums and the poor communication skills, but fun. I like playing with Play Dough and stickers and puzzles. And Amelia is only just beginning to be able to do those things, so more fun is in store. I've also been doing more stuff I want to do, generally. I made a sort of New Year's resolution to try to integrate more reading and writing and yoga into my daily life, even if I don't have large swaths of free time. I came up with a concept of "5 and 20." Basically, I try to take a span of 5 minutes to do something I want to do sometime during the day, and then another span of 20 minutes to do something else I want to do. So I might read the news for 5 minutes in the morning, or read a poem for 5 minutes while Amelia plays on her own. Or I might try to do 20 minutes of yoga while Amelia plays around me. Or write for 20 minutes during Amelia's bath and bedtime. After roughly 31 days, I feel happier and more... well-rounded is the best word I can think of. Reading more of the news, for example, has allowed me to actually think of something besides Amelia and exhaustion to talk about to my mom friends (not the conversation often turns from babies and/or sleep, but just in case!), and to Dean and my other friends as well. And doing a little bit of yoga each day makes me feel better physically, and I think helps during the yoga classes I go to too. It turns out that there is more to life than motherhood, and I have been finding ways to access that life. And that is a good thing.

Tally

Number of minutes I am giving myself to write this post: 5

Number of papers I have graded in the past 5 days: 37

Number of hours I have spent on airplanes in the past 2 weeks: 11

Number of take-offs I have had to endure: 5

Number of minutes baby A cried on said planes: surprisingly, probably only about 45-60

Number of teeth Amelia now has: 2!

Number of houses Dean and I have bought: 1!

Number of blog posts I have written in my head: many

Number of days left to teach: 3

How much I am looking forward to the end of the semester: very, VERY much

I promise updates as soon as I am not swamped with teaching, a teething baby, and uprooting life changes.

200th Post!

I am surfacing from the vast and various alternate universes of my students' papers to try to write a bit. I am graded 7--yes, that's SEVEN--papers so far today, and Amelia is about to finish out hour 3--yes, that's THREE--of her nap, so I figure I have about 15 minutes to write.

The 200th post is a milestone, or it seems like it should be. But this will be rushed. I feel like I have a lot to say and not much time, so here are ten facts about our lives lately, in no particular order:

1. We are still tired. Last week Amelia gave us 2 glorious nights of a full 8 hours of sleep, then went back to her old pattern of waking up 2-3 times a night. Sometimes she will go back to sleep on her own, sometimes not. Is she teething? Lonely? In some sort of new developmental leap? I don't know. I have grown weary of speculating about it. All that gives me hope is how many people promise that eventually she will sleep more. Today I was looking at the pear trees that have bloomed behind our house, whose white blossoms somehow reminded me that last year at this time I was throwing up every morning. So next year, maybe I will the pear trees blooming will remind me that last year at this time, I was so, so tired, and it will have passed.

2. Amelia is sitting up on her own! Sort of. If you're not right there with her she'll wilt or flop down and bang her head on the ground. Still, it's fun to be able to read to her or play with her without always also holding her.

3. Amelia has become more interested in rice cereal, especially since 2 days ago when we mixed in a mushed up slice of banana. We are going to try applesauce and green beans this weekend.

4. It occurred to me yesterday that teaching part time and staying with Amelia the rest of the time is the hardest thing I have ever done. Although it's great to have all the help we have, when I am alone with A during the days, I feel like a just do a rather bad job at both preparing for school and caring for her. However, I suspect that any combination of working and having a baby--working full time and leaving her with someone else for most of the week, or staying home with her exclusively-- would still be the hardest thing I have ever done. So I am reminding myself to enjoy all the benefits of the situation I am in, particularly all the wonderful grandmother time A enjoys.

5. I have written exactly zero poems or poem-like things since I began grading these
godforsaken papers. I got a little note from the American Poetry Review yesterday; shockingly, they did not accept the poem I submitted for publication. I have had lots of ideas for poems, though, and have scribbled some of them on scraps of paper. So that's something, I guess.

6. Amelia is waking up. So only 6 things about our lives. I am posting this without rereading it. Wish me luck on the papers, and I'll try to post more pictures soon.

Damn this has been a great class

So this email was in my inbox this morning, sent by one of the students to our coursemail address:

Hey everyone hope you have a great holiday season. Its been a lot of fun chillin with all of you bros. If any of you need anything my number is ***-***-****. Hope all of you get smashed on new years. Damn this has been a great class. Love all of you...

-Jason

This is amusing. Also a little frustrating--how many times did I explain its is possessive and it's=it is?

It's also kind of touching. I mean we're talking about freshman comp here, a required course that's not exactly everyone's idea of a good time. Perhaps this student was up late celebrating the fact that U-Md's last day of finals was cancelled due to the snow? Anyway, I'll take whatever good feedback I can get. Maybe I should forward the email to Agnes...



P.S. You might notice from the time stamp on this post that I am up early: Amelia slept from 9pm-5am!!! Yes, that is EIGHT FULL HOURS!!! But after I fed her at 5:00 I was so happy that I couldn't go back to sleep.

Finally. Finished. Grading.

Once again, thank God for the Moby Wrap. Now I am going to stuff diapers. Maybe soon, I will find time and energy to write some of the blog entries I have been scribbling notes for on scraps of paper.

(Here's a sneak peak: "Chocolate chip cookies--addiction." "Cardiologist." "Pre, post-natal, Itsy Bitsy Yoga.")

A Week of Thankfulness, Part 2

I missed yesterday, so I need to do two today!

What I wanted to write yesterday was that I am thankful for my job. This is not only because going back to work has made me feel much more like myself again, giving me the chance to wear real clothes and think my own thoughts during the drive to work, but also because I actually really like what I do! We found out during Dean's stint at the law firm how important it is to love or at least like the job you go to every day (or in my case, 2 days a week). I really enjoy my students. I even like their newly-discovered intellectual indignation, pretty common to freshmen around this time of year, about grades and "institutional education." ("We want to learn for learning's sake, but the system won't let us!!!") I also like teaching writing, even freshman composition. It's fun and challenging to improve my lessons every semester.

Also, even though Dean and I wish we were closer to our families, in this economy we know we are lucky to have any job, especially jobs that allows us such flexibiilty to spend time with Amelia.

As a footnote to this, and a tangent to the real clothes I mentioned above, I am also thankful for my boots, which I bought last year. (Mine are green. They were on sale.) These are the best shoes ever. They feel lighter than flip flops but they keep my feet super warm. They are great for walking across campus in the rain.

Anyway, speaking of jobs, I need to grade some papers. If the day allows, I will post again later.

Monday, Monday

I finally got a set of poems ready for submission to journals! Suki helped. I will walk the envelopes to the mailbox later. Cross your fingers for me--and the waiting begins. (It can take up to 4 or 5 months to hear back from these journals.)

In other news, The Wiggle Baby has a new name. Besides Amelia, which we can't seem to call her yet. Really, we just call her "the baby." But also, she is now The Baby Wad.

This appealing name is due to her new move, which is to wad herself up in a ball on the upper right side of my uterus. She has limited space as it is, so I am not sure why she likes to curl up in one spot like that. Honestly, it is not comfortable for mama. Dean pointed out that curling up in a small ball IS called "the fetal position."

Despite the way it feels, anyway, she must be a bit more stretched out than she feels to me, because at my doctors appointment last week I learned that her head was "way down there." The doctor said this as he was checking my cervix for dilation, a super fun and comfortable process, let me tell you. He said my cervix felt "at least half effaced" but never actually said if I was dilated. I got distracted with his explanation of why it was good the baby's head was down: "It can wear away your cervix now and make labor shorter." Right on! I'm for it.

Sometimes I can FEEL that her head is "way down there," another interesting feeling. I've been having crampish feelings that may be digestion-related (there's not a lot of space for anything but baby), or maybe Braxton Hicks contractions? I really don't know. They're not debilitating or regular, or associated with any blood or fluid loss, so I assume I'm fine.

We did a few more baby prep errands yesterday. Dean installed the diaper sprayer in the downstairs bathroom and we made the harrowing trip to the NoVA (that's Northern Virginia) Target to pick up some odds and ends. I am still at a loss regarding cloth baby wipes, and we have to figure out how exactly we are going to handle the diaper pail. Other than that, I really think we are almost all the way ready. As ready as we can be, anyway.

Dean and I have both been feeling a little restless. It's strange to think that the baby could come SOON or that we could still have 3 or 4 weeks to go. I'm kind of impatient but don't want her to come TOO early. My due date is officially 3 weeks from today. My mom has predicted an early baby. Dean said today that he thinks she will come "at the end of next week." And from the beginning I thought that September 25 would be a good day to have a baby. (It rhymes with my birthday, November 25.) If you'd like to cast your bets, now is the time.

I have been feeling alternately brave and anxious about the delivery. I took a "birth plan" to my appointment on Friday and discussed some things with the doctor, which was reassuring. He is agreeable to all of my preferences except he says I have to wear the baby monitoring thing around my waist once I am 5 cm dilated because the nurses are too busy to come in and monitor with a Doppler as they could if you were at a birthing center. I suppose I can live with that. He says you can still move around with it on. And at the time I figure I can always make a fuss if I decide to. Surely you can wear it intermittently? Besides the mobility issue, I've read that the monitors can make doctors and nurses think something is wrong when there isn't. Who knows. I've cut myself off from reading any books written by midwives and doulas. They make me anxious about a hospital birth. Honestly, I should probably be going to a birthing center. It fits my personality and gut feeling about this whole process better. But I didn't find out about birthing centers till too late in the game to get into one. By the time I called there was a waiting list for October births. I was seventh. At this point I am just trying to go with the flow. I know that if I WAS going to the birth center I would probably be anxious about not being at a hospital. IF I have a second baby--and that's a big IF--maybe I'll try the doula/midwife/home birth route.

As for the delivery itself, I had an idea that maybe giving birth is like teaching a class. In SOME ways--stay with me. It's just that I get nervous before every single class I teach. I vaguely dread walking into the room and getting started, and I worry about the little details. You just can't plan every single moment of a class and you have to think and act on your feet, and as a planner that fact makes me nervous. But then as soon as I start teaching, I have fun. I am always able to come up with stuff to say, and to think of examples and stories in the moment itself, and to handle what arises as it comes. So I was thinking maybe giving birth will be like that. You can't possibly plan or know exactly what is going to happen, but when the time comes, you will be able to go with it. That's my hope, anyway! We shall see.

Back to School

School began yesterday. Despite some nervousness and last minute syllabus copying, I had a really nice day!

I decided to drive to school so I could go to Babies-R-Us after class. The weather has been beautiful here lately, so I got to drive in with the windows down, listening to Morning Edition. It reminded me of the one thing I liked about my old Chapel Hill-to-Garner drives--it's kind of relaxing to drive to work with NPR. And I got to try out the parking situation. Instead of buying a regular parking permit, I got a "bundle pack," which consists of 10 1-day passes for $40. The faculty (yes, I am officially "faculty" now) can part in various overflow lots, some of which are literally miles from where I teach, but I found a lot within a 5-minute walk from my classroom! Good to know for when I return after the baby comes. I am saving the rest of the passes for then, since it takes so much more time to Metro than to drive to school, and I imagine I'll be on some sort of a breast pumping timeline.

I got to school a little early, so I went to the library and looked over my notes. I was nervous, even though I have taught the first day of English 101 8 other times, and I do almost exactly the same thing every time. It's just that so much of teaching is on the spot. You have to stand up and just go with it. I haven't been doing a lot of that this summer. But when I got to the first classroom and started the class, everything went very smoothly. It was fun!

My second classroom is directly across the hallway from the first, so in the 15-minute break I sat outside in the sun. The baby was very busy. It was nice because she was quite sluggish on Monday. I think she was excited to be teaching too. She did teach a whole semester last spring, but she was very young so she probably doesn't remember. I myself WAS remembering the first day of school last semester, which was the first day I actually believed the faint pink line on the pregnancy test.

The second class also went well. They were a particularly bright-eyed bunch, with most of them staying quite alert even through all the boring course policy information, which I have learned to go over aloud despite its dullness. The students just don't read it on their own.

The first part of the curriculum covers rhetoric, and this semester I am focusing on analyzing advertisements. As a unit project, the students will create their own advertisements in groups. After class, I went to the co-op for lunch, and as I ate I read the campus newspaper, The Diamondback. There was this front-page article that fits perfectly with the concepts I'm teaching, so after I ate I got 22 copies of the paper and took them to my office to use in class tomorrow.

Although I've been in Tawes, the English department's new home, all summer, yesterday was the first day I got to use it as a teacher. I used the fancy new copier/scanner to make copies for tomorrow, and then I went to my office. The offices are spacious and sunny, 4 desks to a room with a computer in each office! Compared to my old office, which had about 15 desks and a computer packed into a room not even twice as big as the new office, this is very luxurious. (And even more so for the TAs who had their desks in "the bullpen," a messy, noisy room in the old English building that was home to at least 30 desks, 1 computer, several filthy couches, and a refrigerator full of molded bagels.) The only thing that was slightly sad was that I was all alone in my office--there was something nice about always having a colleague to talk to, as was the case in the big shared space.

After I wrapped up all my teaching tasks, I made the thrilling trek to Babies-R-US through the College Park-to-Silver Spring suburban sprawl. As a pregnant person, I am not a great driver. Not only am I super paranoid that people are going to crash into me, I also feel oddly distracted, as though I can't focus. Plus I get terrible road rage. But I made it there, where I got to fulfill my dream of parking in one of the "Expectant Mother" parking spots right up front. (Dean wouldn't park there when we went together.) I took in Sophie's old car seat and got a new Graco Snug Ride, complete with silver buckle. It's blue and gray, which doesn't match Meg's stroller or mine, but the only choices were blue and gray or pink and brown. I figured blue and gray is more unisex for any future babies that might inherit the car seat.

Speaking of gender, all of the random strangers who have guessed the sex of the baby lately have thought it was a boy. They say things like, "When is the little man coming out?" They are always very surprised, somewhat skeptical, and slightly disapproving when I say she is a girl. I guess it's the way I'm carrying. I'm considering just going along with people and agreeing it's a boy, so I don't have to have such long conversations with people about it. I've realized that one of the things people who love being pregnant love about it is getting a lot of attention from strangers, but I don't really love that part. Sometimes it's nice, but other times... I'm just tired or in my own world. (And apparently extremely anti-social.) And then there are times when the encounter is just plain weird, as the other day when I was meeting Dean outside his office. A man, who was wearing black winter gloves for some reason, asked me if people wanted to touch my belly a lot.

"Sometimes," I replied, thinking fast about how I was going to reply when HE asked to touch it.

"Do you let them?" he asked.

"Sometimes," I replied again.

"Well, you shouldn't."

This was surprising. He proceeded to explain that every time someone touched my belly their spirit got into the baby and if they had a bad spirit, this harmed the baby. He told me how Mary, when pregnant with Jesus, kept it a secret for that reason. He said I should not even allow my family to touch my belly. I thanked him for his advice and sidled away as soon as I could, aided by some men wearing navy uniforms who stopped to talk to him.

Anyway, back to Babies-R-US--the car seat came in a HUGE box, which reminded me of Liz's recent experience with a car seat purchase. I loaded in the cart, car and house all by myself--don't worry, it wasn't really heavy, just big. After I picked out the car seat, I wandered around the store in the hope that I would spot any other item I might need so I would never have to go there again. In this way, I learned how very many baby products there are, and how "your baby's safety" is an important marketing technique in selling these. After resisting the urge to buy both a yellow "baby on board" bumper sticker and a digital kick counter that said it "reduced the likelihood of stillbirth," I paid for the car seat and left.

After that, we stopped for a healthy snack, a McDonald's hot fudge sundae, and I made my way home. When I got here, the Ergo carrier had arrived, so it was a big day for the baby in terms of new items. Tonight or tomorrow, we'll install the car seat, and then I'll get it inspected Friday. It'll be ready just under the "1 month before your due date" timeline!

To top off yesterday's pleasantness, I went to yoga, which is always nice. But it was extra nice because one of the women in the class, who I dislike because she invariably "feels really great" and does 10 REAL push-ups to every half-push up the teacher instructs us to do, had gotten all of her hair cut off! This proves that she has had at least ONE pregnancy symptom! (See The Girlfriend's Guide to Pregnancy regarding the little known but common urge to cut ALL of your hair cut off during the third trimester. I have been resisting this myself.) Her hair looks fine, so it's not that I'm gloating that she looks bad. It was just satisfying that she showed SOME sign of being at all affected by her pregnancy.

All in all, a good day. And now I am off to a breast pump tutorial with Caroline and Lucy!

Monday Update

I taught my last classes today. These COULD be the last classes I ever teach at UMD, depending on what happens next year. It was a pleasant day, not any actual teaching--just course evaluations, and for my poetry students, a final small group workshop and then a large group reading. We each brought in a single poem, just to read, not to workshop.

Interestingly, I got through a whole semester without telling my students about the pregnancy (although I know at least one or two of the poetry students, young women, have been checking out my belly). And I still haven't told anyone at school, because they still haven't announced lecturer positions for next year. So I am still stuck in a weird purgatory state with announcing and planning.

I found out I was pregnant (at least, I got the first of many positive pregnancy tests) the night before the first day of classes. January 26 or so? That's a long time to keep a secret.

I remember I felt AWFUL for about 2 days. Like I'd been run over by a truck. And my nose started running ALL the time. Then I felt better till about 6 weeks or so.

I still feel vaguely nauseous from time to time--pretty much every morning and random other times too. I guess that's not going to go away.

Anyway, in other news, I won a teaching award. I am a "Distinguished Teaching Assistant," one of 8 chosen by the English Department. It made me happy to find out. (THAT'S why they should want to keep me as a teacher.)

Also, I got a summer job with the English Department! I've been offered 20-30 hours a week to work as an office assistant. The pay ended up being decent, and I think I am going to take it. My other option is temping again. Theoretically, I could make more money temping, but to do that, I would also have to work more hours. It will be nice to work part time so that I can still write, as well as to be able to count on my schedule. With temp work you just never know. Last year I waited for jobs for a long time, then got an AWFUL stint at the Washington Post (NOT as interesting as it sounds; I was filing over a year's worth of car dealership and housing development ads). Then I was off some more, till I landed what was supposed to be two weeks as a receptionist at a law firm. Nine weeks later, I will still there. It was a mixed blessing--nice to have the work, but long, LONG hours--as in many hours a day, as well as hours that seemed to last for days.

What else? Several lovely people are planning baby showers for me, so I have gotten busy with the baby registries and such (as you can see to the right of the posts). I've made some big decisions: crib, stroller, car seat, although I am still researching a few details. I've learned a LOT about strollers in the past week. And I've probably creeped out my share of parents and babysitters, because I've peered at a lot of strollers too. The stroller decision is a big one for the city dweller. A lot of the strollers we saw on our Babies-R-Us field trip looked too flimsy for Capitol Hill's uneven brick sidewalks. As it turns out, many of the parents in our neighborhood have chosen strollers that are extremely expensive. But I think I found a good option (the City Mini, in case you're wondering).

And, the mystery baby has been moving around. It's mostly very faint movements, so faint I am sometimes unsure I am actually feeling the baby move. It feels like flutters or involuntary twitches on my insides. Sometimes, it feels like pressure pushing downward on whatever is just below the uterus. Cervix? I need my diagram. One night, the night of the poetry reading, I felt actual kicks--not hard, but definite kicks, sort of like light poking in my left side. Maybe the mystery baby was congratulating me?

I got a lot of kind comments about the poetry reading (this was the student prize reading). I am meeting with my thesis advisor one last time, tomorrow afternoon. I want to talk about what to do next. I suppose I am officially working on a book now.

The last random fact for the day: at nineteen weeks, the baby is "the size of a large heirloom tomato." (We've come a long way from lentil!)

Excuses, Excuses

I was going over my students' absences today, realizing how very many strange reasons they've given me for missing class throughout the semester. I don't know what it is about this batch of students, but as a group, they've dealt with some vivid and unique circumstances this spring. Here are some examples of ways they've finished the sentence

"I missed class today because..."

1. I have a hot tub business, and I had to meet with some potential buyers.

2. My inner ear burst last night.

3. I got kidney stones from eating too much Domino's Pizza.

4. My girlfriend and I were in a car accident on the Jersey Turnpike, and now she is in the hospital with brain damage, and she thinks it is last year.

5. It was raining, and my umbrella turned inside out, and I was too wet to come to class.

6. I was detained in New Orleans on a matter related to my hot tub business.

7. After staying up all night to write the paper, I was sleepy so I rested on the bench downstairs, and I fell asleep and slept through class.

8. My roommate accidentally ate peanuts, and he has a peanut allergy, so I took him to the emergency room.

9. My kidney stones are back.

10. I also own a small appliance business, and I needed to attend to a service issue.