Some pictures of a lot of people in matching clothing and dorky visors

I told ya'll a post or so back that we were going to get all ballsy and take our offspring to a Brewer game this past Sunday. Bonus points for 5 hours or so in the car, game time during nap time, and a salty newborn. We survived, and there were even some moments that were fun. I have photos to share.

Here is how we passed the majority of the trip to Milwaukee...Phook tucking into a bag of Gardetto's and ordering everyone around from her chariot seat:

Here is how Phook rolled up to the stadium:

Here is how Circus thankfully spent the majority of the game...passed out strapped to me:

Here is how Circus passed some of the game...cheering, shall we say?

I shit you not that Circus actually woke up and stretched during the 7th inning stretch:

Here we are after the game, with Phook looking skeptical, sweaty, and a good 4 hours past her non-nap (I think this may also be our first family photo as a foursome):

And here we are with Auntie Hode, who has been home for the majority of the last several weeks (she is a teacher) helping me out with this gig, and to whom I am eternally grateful.


All in all, it was a nice family outing. There was some howling by Phook as she was initially overwhelmed by the cheering crowd. There was some howling by me as I realized how much I was paying for my soda. There was some howling by some jackass a few rows behind me who yelled at me for blocking his view when I was putting Circus in his carrier...until his roughly 6-year-old daughter yelled at him that I had a baby. There was some howling by Big K as the Brewers got spanked. There was some howling by Auntie Hode as I changed Circus on her lap and he sharted a lot. But overall, it was good. Everything we survive with two kids makes us a little bit more bad ass, as far as I'm concerned. And I did buy Phook a plush souvenir sausage racer...the Polish, of course.

I manned him

I'm experiencing this really weird phenomenon re: Circus. I don't want to dress him like a boy. I don't want to dress him like a girl, either. I just want him dressed like a baby...basically for me that means light yellow or light green onesies. Our newborn stuff is all in gender neutral tones on account of not knowing the gender of either of our kids in advance, so this is no problem in terms of baby clothing inventory. With Phook though, I was so excited to go get her some pink stuff and some dresses and other girlish nonsense.

In advance of having Circus, sensing he was a boy, I thought about his clothes. All I wanted for my potential him was a Hawaiian shirt. I don't know why, but I was obsessed with the idea. And since he was born, he has received two Hawaiian shirts on account of me running off at the mouth about this. He has also received a boy wardrobe of both hand-me-downs and new stuff that would outfit nine children. Unfortunately for all the well-meaning gifters, I really can't help but keep putting him in the yellow onesies with duckies and shit.

For some reason, the boy clothes, with all their bold blue and red and fire hydrants and baseball gloves and dogs and monsters affixed to them, seem like too much for a wee babe. It breaks my brain to consider putting him in man gear. I don't know what's up with that. Probably some aspect of me mourning anything that indicates either of my kids might eventually grow up. Even if growing up, in this context, is something as small as holding up one's own head. Perhaps I need some therapy.

All that being said, I was still excited about the Hawaiian shirt. And on Saturday, I grew some stones and actually put him in his little shirt and matching navy blue man shorts. And then I started screaming like a maniac. Specifically, I was screaming, "I manned him! I manned him! I turned him into a man! Oh my god!!!!!!!!!" Big K was laughing so hard at me that he may have pissed himself, and ran and got the camera. Here I am holding the offensively manned child while having a meltdown (and, yes, speaking of piss, if you're looking closely at the picture, that is Circus' urine on my shirt...and no, I didn't change):

And here he is making another Snuffle Pig face. I can't get enough of this shit:

He did look really cute in his little man uniform, he did indeed. On account of that, and the whole business of normal childhood development, it seems that eventually I will have to adjust to putting him in clothing that isn't yellow. Please send meds.

Seeking your assvice, plus bonus miscellany

Allright, so in my days and nights spent Circus-whispering, I have come to determine that swaddling is absolutely key to calming this kid down and facilitating his sleep. The trouble is, I am a shitteous swaddler and he is a wild animal, capable of busting out of even my best attempts at swaddling when he really means business. So I am looking into commercially available advanced swaddling products. I have read both angry rants and wild raves about both of the products I am currently looking at, and I don't feel like I can make this decision without the input of more people I don't really know...you. So, please tell me in the comments if you have any thoughts on either the SwaddleMe or the Miracle Blanket...or some other swaddling helper.

If the details matter, Circus is fairly big...21.5 inches long, over 9 pounds already, and seems to be growing very rapidly...so ability to grow with the kid is something of a priority in whatever I end up getting. Given that this is pretty key to getting the wild beast under control, I'm not so concerned about price if the thing works. Durability matters a little bit, because he's gonna puke on it and I'm going to have to launder it often. But #1 is...does it reliably contain wild infants?

In other news, the Family K, in its entirety, is going to a Milwaukee Brewers game tomorrow, because a set of 4 free tickets fell into our laps. Our kids are young enough they don't technically need tickets, so we're also taking our au pair, Auntie Hode. This whole show involves several hours in the car, a gametime that coincides with nap time for a nap-loving Phook, and hoping my teet doesn't show up on the jumbotron while I'm trying to discreetly nurse Circus in the cheap seats. I am a fuckwit. I really hope we at least make it to the sausage race.

Also, I'd like to inform you that one of the keys to surviving this dual-child show is allowing Phook to spend a shitload of time nude in the yard dicking around with water. I present to you the following action shot, complete with strategically placed bucket:

And this image, not just because it contains Phook but because I'd like to announce that someone got me a freaking gnome! It was just there, hanging out on my garden box one day! Remember how I casually mentioned my gnome lust in this post? No? Well, that's okay I guess. But I am now a gnome owner, and this sort of random has my mom's fingerprints all over it. FYI.

Also, that whole thing about not realizing Phook was huge until we brought Circus home? Um, here's a photographic kick in the teeth that yet again hammers home the point...

I believe I have also mentioned my potentially unhealthy penchant for applying multiple names to the same person/animal/inanimate object...and occasionally abandoning the original name entirely. Like my cat Lucy, who hasn't been called that name in at least 4.5 years, and instead is primarily referred to as Shib or Donkey. Or my cat Snoot, who is primarily referred to as Uncle Growler. Or my kid $#%&@&, who is primarily referred to as Phook, Bub, Bubby, Peekerton, Peeky, Peek Pie, or Bug. Well, Circus is turning out to be no exception. I have called him his real name like 9 times since he was born. (His real name really lends itself to cute nicknames, I'll note.) But the thing I call him the most is, well, Snuffle Pig. Yeah, I call my newborn Snuffle Pig. Or Snuffy. He makes sound effects and faces that just make him seem like a Snuffle Pig to me, whatever the hell that is. And here is a terrible, terrible photo of him making a sweet Snuffle Pig face, which I now gift to you:

Here's one more that displays him a bit more favorably from, well, shit, about a week ago now. You can still see remnants of one of his blown out little eyes in this shot, but that has since cleared up as well. He is turning into a bit of a looker, at least as far as his momma is concerned.

And that is all for now, pals. Let me know about the damned swaddle blankets, and I'll let you know how many drunken sports fans threaten the lives of my young during our outing tomorrow. God I love having bad ideas.

XOXO

I think there is a small chance it is possible this is possible

Holy shit, people. There is so much I could tell you, so much to say...I wish I had the time to blog more. This summer officially will not have happened, should you ever ask me about it in the future...time is flying by so fast, I am wildly sleep deprived, and I know that I'm going to wake up next summer, see that Circus is running around in the yard and Phook can finally speak clearly and in sentences, and realize that an entire year passed in a nanosecond.

In short, we are surviving. Circus is somewhat tricky. His doctor thinks he has reflux, and based on the stains on my shirt and the howling in my ear, I'm going to have to concur. She typically does not put refluxers on meds until they are two months old. I don't know why. He howls a lot. He is generally consolable with bouncing, being worn, or being walked about in the stroller, but moments of still contentment are very few and far between with him. It feels very labor intensive and difficult to get other things done, but I think Phook may have been the same way...it was just easier to attend to those needs with only one person to consider. I have been wearing him a lot in my sling lately, and I broke down and ordered the infant insert for my posh Ergo carrier, so I suspect he will be spending the next couple months strapped to me a lot. I am, in general, cool with that, and trying not to think about the fact that he is already growing like a weed and will likely require me to find an acupuncturist, a chiropractor, a masseuse, and an affordably priced liquor store (not necessarily in that order) within the near future.

I think we've convinced Circus that he should sleep in his bassinet at night, which is a skill Phook didn't have until 5 months of age, which is when we moved her out of our bed. This took a lot of persistence, a lot of howling by all parties, one scene during which I maligned my husband outlandishly in the dead of the night, and a lot of drool while I was actually technically awake. The past few days he has been averse to napping in the bassinet, but I am not going to panic. He sleeps between 3-6 hours at a stretch at night (usually 3), and I'm considering us on a decent trajectory for sleeping. I am trying not to go wild about a daytime routine because I just don't have the strength right now. It will happen eventually, and likely we'll get it down sooner rather than later.

I am madly in love with Circus. Spending 9 months fretting about that matter of business was something of a waste of emotional energy...but I think it was unavoidable...I had to have him and hold him to know I could love another baby...no one else's reassurance would do. He is so sniffable. He is such a little old man. My mom calls him "grandpa" and it is apt. He just looks like a salty old man. And then there are these little moments where he is just content and quiet and oddly attentive, checking out this business he was born into. He isn't walking yet, like Phook could at 3 weeks (I jest, of course, but she was a physical specimen straight from birth), and actually requires head support like a normal newborn. But he is already showing some early fleeting smiley faces (Phook did not really smile until 2 months) and already cooing a bit (Phook didn't coo until like last week). So I think this is my cerebral child, whereas Phook is my toddler decathlete.

Speaking of Phook, as I mentioned casually in an earlier post or two, Phook had a very, very rough time the first couple days Circus was home. This manifested itself almost entirely as howling about every single request, event, or casual breeze. There was much throwing of herself to the floor, much throwing of objects large and small, much hitting, much crying. And also, clinging to me, particularly at inopportune times. I felt like utter shit and like this was an undoable thing we had embarked upon. I felt terrible for her because I knew wholly why she was behaving the way she was behaving, and that it was an appropriate inappropriate response for the situation. My heart wanted to cut her some slack and just let her scream and hit, because Lord knows I wanted to, but my head knew to enforce the rules. So Big K and I put our sad, angry little child in time out on multiple occasions and tried our best to give her love and toddler-friendly explanations. We are by no means out of the woods, but she has settled down about 850% in the last week or so. The most persistent behavior is the clinging, particularly when people come to visit or we are out in public and people are admiring the baby. But I can handle the clinging in those circumstances. I could not handle her grabbing my leg and howling to be picked up every time I attempted to, say, do the dishes. I found that crouching down to her eye level, asking her to be patient, and telling her I'd snuggle her in a few minutes went a long way on this front. It's weird...I am basically re-learning how to parent her in the context of a new world of priorities.

She has, from the outset, been a great helper, as I expected. She fetches diapers, wipes, blankets, my water cup, etc. I'm pretty sure I could ask her to go make a stir fry at this point and she'd do it. And there have been these incredible little moments between her and Circus that have blown my mind. One night, she had been sitting in the chair with Circus and I, and we were all snuggling. Big K told her it was time for bed, so she hopped off the chair after giving me a goodnight kiss. She started across the room, and then seemed to remember Circus. She came back, pointed to him, crawled back up and gave him a kiss on the head. I died and went to heaven in that moment...it was so spontaneous and perfect. And then there was the time she was giving high fives to everyone in the room, and came over while I was nursing him and pointed to his little hand with an "Eh?" and I told her she could give him a gentle high five, and she took her chubby little paw and ever so gingerly gave his tiny hand five. How rad is that?

And the other thing (man, each of these paragraphs could be a whole post, I'm telling you), is that all of a sudden she is a kid. The night we brought Circus home, we crept into Phook's room as is our custom, and all of a sudden there was a kid lying in the crib instead of a baby. It was like someone put her in the copy machine and blew her up to like 200% size. I felt smacked by the "duh" stick...up until that moment I truly hadn't realized she was not a baby. Hey, she was the smallest person living in my house. No wonder the youngest family member stays the "baby" forever...the parents never realize the littlest one has gotten big. She has matured so much so fast too, and is picking up multiple new words per day, which is major, major progress for this reluctant talker. She apparently got the memo that she is a big girl. I, however, was a little slow on the uptake there.

I'm not going to lie to you people, this is a hard gig. Caring for both of them and attempting to occasionally attend to things like my own toileting is one hell of a workout. And there are moments where they have both been howling and I've had to close my eyes and say over and over in my head, "The days are long...the years are short...the days are long...the years are short..." I am telling you that those words pull me through the crazy like nothing else. There was definitely some newborn phase amnesia at work for me prior to Circus' birth, because I kept thinking, "All babies do is sleep and eat." I forgot that often, they aren't sleeping when they should be, they are hungry when you just fed them, they blow poop across the room at really inopportune times, and their every single need is your responsibility. Obviously there are different challenges with a toddler, but I had come to take for granted how helpful it actually is to be able to say, "Can you get your shoes? Can you get my shoes?" and have a little person dart off and help a sister out. Phook's milk, although disturbingly pricey these days, pours real easylike from the gallon, which she gets out of the fridge herself. Circus' milk requires me cementing my ass somewhere for an extended period of time, unhooking an assortment of undergarments, juggling a toddler who views nursing time as a great opportunity to use me as a trampoline, and generally ends with Circus barfing on me. So, yeah, the whole "just sleep and eat" thing turns out to be a bit of a crock of shit when you're in the thick of it. Newborn babies are a lot of work, unless your roll of the dice turned you up an exceptionally easy one.

So, yes, this gig is mighty hard. But I think it's possible that it is possible. I've showered every day since Circus was born. That's huge right there. We've had dinner every night. The house is still standing and is not totally bogged down by dust bunnies. And that being said, I know enough to know that even those things don't matter right now. Phook was the baby that taught me I can do anything and everything. I think Circus is the baby who will teach me I don't have to.

Ice cream cake as weapon

At 5:32 p.m. today, when the sky darkened over your home and the earth groaned and creaked ominously, I officially turned 29 years old. My first thought on the matter is that I was 19 when I started dating Big K, which is nothing other than a fun factoid that makes me feel old. My second thought on the matter is that I don't really have another thought on the matter. When your baby is 13 days old, you don't do much wild rocking out of the birthday.

Now, if I remember correctly, at least the first 6 months or so of this blog are very boob-centric, because I was about 90% occupied by nursing Phook during that time period, and there is a lot of angst/mayhem/hilarity that goes along with the breastfeeding scene. Here I am again, and I sense this blog may return to its boob-tastic origins. Circus is a great nurser, no problems to speak of in the mechanics department...not a crack, not a blister, not even a wince of pain...all systems are go. But like his sister, he is a mad suckling pig.

Looking back at those early months with Phook, I thought I must have done something to turn her into a wild mad nurser, and that I could somehow head off that trend if I went into this thing the second time around with a little more knowledge and, well, planning, as far as his feeding was concerned. It turns out that my plans to try to get him on some kind of a routine very early in the game have been, thus far, thwarted entirely by the whims of his mad desires to suckle even when freshly fed, followed by utter rejection of a pacifier and loud, rooting protests of insistence that he is utterly starved, followed by long bouts of contentedly not eating, followed by futile attempts to keep him awake to get a full meal down his gullet in an attempt to prevent snacking behaviors. I might as well spend the day attempting to get the wookiees in my bathtub drain on some kind of eating routine. I don't know if your babies rock out this way, but it turns out that mine do, even when I'm not going into it all blind and stupid. Circus' stomach is the boss of me. At least for now.

Essentially, I'm leading up to the point where I tell you something about my birthday. We went over to my parents' house for my annual spaghetti-a-thon birthday dinner, and all was good in the world. I ate a lot. I stepped on their scale and confirmed my suspicions that I am a couple pounds south of my "when I got pregnant" weight, and laughed at the metabolic karma that is my pregnany-as-weight-watchers game plan. (Really, people, it's not worth hating on me or flaming me for this. I haven't weighed less than 200 pounds since 1998, and at my own pinnacle of personal fitness, which would be constant participation in high school athletics at age 17, I weighed 185. And no, I'm not kidding. I'm living proof that is possible to be the two bill girl and not get anywhere near qualifying for a gastric bypass. For the record, I do plan to be 199 this calendar year, if not next week, and I promise I'll let you know when it happens, because it's gonna be an occasion for celebration.)

So anyhow, we had supper. And then Circus wanted his 4th supper, so I hooked him up. And then my mom and sister presented me with the sweet ass neapolitan ice cream cake they'd made for my birthday. This involved neapolitan ice cream, smashed up oreos, and chocolate sauce. A delightfully messy disaster. So I'm now attempting to eat this cake with the wrong hand while nursing Circus. And my lap has become a particularly delightful spot for Phook to land upon since Circus also started spending time there. And that goes double when momma is housing ice cream cake. So I've got a baby on the boob, a (coincidentally naked) toddler climbing all over my lap stealing bites of cake, and I'm attempting to shovel messy, melting cake into my own maw with my left hand. I'm trying to get this big gooey bite in my mouth. One minute it was on my fork heading toward my mouth. The next moment it was gone. I looked all over my lap, the chair, Phook, Circus, everyone. And I figured I must have just sleep-deprivationally hallucinated some part of the exchange and there was really no missing cake. I continued with the balancing of children and cake and three-pronged feeding.

A few minutes later, Circus popped off the boob. And then I saw the error of my ways. The giant forkful of cake had slipped into the crevice between Circus' chin and chest, slid down his cheek and neck and shirt, and landed somewhere to the southwest of the charming car patch adorning his onesie. My own boob was also well-slimed with cake. In his rooting, he had managed to spread the original cake blob, which was really not cake so much as melted ice cream and chocolate sauce, over the entire southern hemisphere of his face. And, I can only assume, he also managed to ingest some portion of the goodness. I screamed for mopping devices and began attempting to deal with the mayhem I had created on account of my own cake-eating negligence. Circus was changed, my offspring and I were tenderly swabbed with mountains of wet paper towels, and order was ultimately restored.

There were times after I had Phook that I wished I was an octopus so I could tend to all her needs while also occasionally tending to my own. Eventually, I got better at one-handing formerly two-handed tasks and my feet became more dextrous, and I eventually became one of those women who walks along picking things up with her toes, flinging miscellaneous items up and catching them so absentmindedly that she doesn't even know she is doing it. Now I'm feeling like I'm out of limbs whose capabilities can be fine-tuned, and I'm having those octopus fantasies again. I've got an assembly-line approach down for double diaper duty, but what I really need is a better system for feeding three people simultaneously. Anyone? Anyone?

Former Valedictorian Spotted Breastfeeding Newborn at County Fair Demolition Derby

I don't know about you people, but I think this makes a great title for a headline in The Onion or something. And since I've had you sobbing in your soup long enough, this title is also applicable to a recent outing o' hilarity that I'm going to share with you. Yes, friends, let's discuss the most hilarious thing I've done so far as a mother of two children. If you've been reading this blog for any length of time, you know I live in the middle of nowhere. We have none of the amenities that individuals who have chosen to acquire a college education generally demand of the place where they choose to make their home. Clean restaurants that serve actual food, for example. Access to dentistry. The expectation that people occasionally launder their clothes. Okay, okay, I'm exaggerating and being a snob. It's not all that bad. But really, friends, I live in a very rural area. I don't know how to tell you how insanely rural without resorting to extreme extremes that make me sound like a bad person. But I live here, buddies, and that ain't changing. And, you know, I like it here for a lot of reasons. I generally choose to embrace my surroundings. So when my husband said to me the other day, "I want to take Phook to the demo derby at the fair this weekend," I found myself feeling oddly at ease with the suggestion.

So, with little Circus being 8 days old, we decided he was ripe for initiation into his rural homeland. What better way to do that than to haul our children to the county fair to experience the joys of a demolition derby? Now, while I am a veteran of several trillion tractor pulls, I myself had never been to a demo derby before. But Big K was apparently raised on them. His father was actually a demo car driver in his heyday, and is the proud holder of many demo driving trophies. At one point during our adventure, I asked Big K if his dad was any good in the demo world, and Big K said, with an odd sincerity, "He was the best ever." Um, that was by far the most profound expression of pride in his father that I have ever witnessed from my husband. I kind of gasped actually.

Okay, so if you're not familiar with the concept, a demo derby is basically an event at which a bunch of really old, crappy cars are unleashed in a mud pit, and they crash into each other until the majority of the cars are dead. Remaining cars advance until more cars are dead, and then someone gets a trophy and presumably a bunch of beer as a prize. The cars are loud and the spectators are drunk and louder. My only concern with our attending was damaging my children's ears. Big K assured me that if we sat at the top of the grandstands, everyone's ear drums would remain intact. So we went. We hauled our kids in their double stroller up to the tip-top of the furthest corner of the grandstands, and proceeded to spend about 2 hours watching cars smash each other in the company of some decidedly just-got-out-on-probation types. The action looked like this:


So Phook loves cars. She spends a lot of time observing them and commenting on them in her phookspeak. Big K was pretty sure she'd love the demo. I was pretty sure she'd be a bit overwhelmed by the noise. Momma, of course, was right. In fact, watching the demo required full application of blankie, finger sucking, and mom-clinging:

As the evening progressed, she did warm up to the goings-on, and eventually began yelling, "Go! Go! Go!" at the drivers. Now, Circus was a fan from the get-go. The little dude actually passed out during rounds of demo crashing and woke up when the cars stopped. Big K was of course quick to note that the sound of crashing cars is, "Music to a K's ears." I submit the following:

As is the case with newborns, Circus requires frequent feedings, punctuated only by the occasional snack. There came a time when I knew I'd have to whip out the boob and offer him the opportunity to sup at the buffet. Now, I'm pretty comfortable with the whole breastfeeding scene at this point in my career. The most uncomfortable part of it for me is actually the occasional revealing of my midsection that kind of happens when your shirt is whipped up in the air. The baby pretty much camouflages the boob area. Big K is a little less comfortable with public breastfeeding for what I assume to be wifely protectiveness reasons, but he has said, "If you're comfortable with it, I have no right not to be." So I do what I gotta do when I gotta do it, within reason. It turns out that in the grandstands at the demo derby at the county fair falls into the "within reason" category. Alas, we didn't take a picture. But I have to say that I laughed really, really heartily sitting there nursing an 8-day-old at such a venue. I mean, most people think of bringing home a new baby and hunkering down for a good long while, getting used to their new person and whatnot. We haul our 8-day-old to an event where people crash cars on purpose. An amusing breed, we are. Welcome to The Woods, Circus!

Dear Phook

I wrote this post for Phook the day before my labor was induced with Circus. I wanted to record my final thoughts as a mother of one.

For me, it's the cheeks. I've heard a lot of mothers say that they are obsessed with a particular part of their child's body. A lot of times it is the hands. Nose. Maybe even the delectable baby butt. But for me, with you, it's the cheeks. I have always loved the way they look, especially in profile...so round and full and healthy. But most especially, it is the way they feel. Your cheeks are the softest surface on the earth. Since you were born, I have probably kissed your cheeks an average of 250 times per day. I touch them with my fingers. But my absolute favorite is to touch your cheek with my nose, in some strange kind of sniffing/rubbing behavior a mother animal exhibits toward her young. And the best time to do this, I have found, is when we are sitting on a swing together. A big person swing, with me in the seat, holding you with one arm. And what I do is I count 1-2-3 to get you excited that we are going to launch the swing, and then I say "Go!" and pick up my feet, and I press my nose to the side of your cheek because I know I am going to get to feel your cheek break into a smile. This brings about the warmest, deepest feeling of love I have ever known. My nose, your smiling cheek. That right there is my entire universe.

But tomorrow, it seems, this universe is going to be called upon to expand. Daddy and I are going to the hospital to try and convince your baby sibling to join us out here in the world. Never have I known such intense mixed emotions as I feel right now, knowing that this is my tomorrow. There is of course no blessing as great as a child, and tomorrow we will be among the lucky ones who get to collect this bounty for a second time. I am so excited to know if you will have a baby brother or a baby sister, and to see that tiny little face. But I am so sad that today is, in all likelihood, the last day of your life during which you are my entire universe. It is so hard to feel I am taking so much away from you, even though deep down I know that what we are really doing is giving you the amazing gift of a sibling.

I feel disloyal even thinking about falling in love with another baby the way I did with you. It was so easy with you and so intense. I don't know if it will be the same with tomorrow's baby, but I know eventually I will love this new person as much as I love you, as impossible as that seems. I cry because I feel like I will now have to split this fixed quantity of love, even though I know that the quantity of love I have to give will simply grow to feed you both.

I just wish you could know. I wish I could make you know. Today, you have a cough and a runny nose and some big sneezes, not to mention a black eye, but you're still in a pretty good mood. We had lunch, we played a bit, we watched Food Network for awhile, I did some chores and you helped. Right now you're napping. It is any other day in your life. I wish I could make it special, bottle it, save it, come back to it later. But this is it. The only last day you will ever have as an only child. The only day for you and the only day for me. I just wish I could make you know how special this time has been...these days of your only childhood. You can't know though, that's the deal. Children can never know how deeply their parents feel for them. That is the deal, plain and simple. You will never know.

When I stepped through that doorway from my old life to my new one, in which I became your mom, that is when I really started living. I was put here to be a mom to you. And, it seems, to be the mom to someone else as well. It doesn't seem possible, but tomorrow is the day the next door opens. I couldn't be more scared. For me. For Daddy. For you. But we are all going to go through it together. I am sure I will love you even more tomorrow than I do today. And when I see you again, probably in the hospital when you come to meet your new baby sibling, I am going to hold you so tightly, and I will breathe in the softness of my forever baby with my nose on your cheek. I loved you first, and I will love you always.

Birth of a Circus Act

First off, thanks to all of you wonderful people for the most awesome, supportive, and generally heartwarming comments on my last post. I'm all fuzzy and stuff. As for the K Family, well, we are hanging in there, getting through each day, learning how to be a bigger family. Phook is having a hard time, and I'm doing my best to apply love to the affected area in whatever quantity I can muster. Circus is a charmer. We are trying our best to inform him of the difference between days and nights. Big K and I are still glad we're married. I'll tell you more about all of this when I can, of course. But I wanted to share the Circus birth story before sleep deprivation gets the best of me and I forget the details. Note to those of you who aren't comfortable with cervix-related details and descriptions of things that hurt terribly: Don't read this, idiot.

So this is what happened. As I mentioned in one of my yammering baby update posts, my doctor ultimately became cool with letting me go to my due date (June 30), but was not cool with letting me get wildly overdue on account of increased risks to baby/momma as the baby grew and theoretically began to stress out its high blood pressure-laden home. About two weeks ago, my induction was scheduled for July 3. I didn't tell ya'll, for reasons also outlined in one of my other yammering posts. Of course, we were really, really hoping I'd go into labor on my own, but I had made peace with the likelihood of induction.

On Thursday morning, we went and checked into the hospital around 7:30 a.m. At 8:00, I was given a cervical ripening agent (a little pill they insert into your she-parts) and informed I was starting out dilated not quite to 1 cm, the baby was still very high in my pelvis, and my cervix was thick. (For those of you not in the loop on these matters...in order to push out a baby, your cervix has to dilate to 10 cm, it has to thin out to the point that it disappears, and your baby has to drop low in the pelvis (obviously on that last point)). So they gave me the ripening thing, and I had to lie in bed for 2 hours. Around 10:00, I got to get up and get walking, and the contractions started right away. Not very strong at first, but about every other minute.

Around 1:30, my doctor came and checked out my business, and found that I had dilated a little beyond 1 cm (woo hoo!), had thinned out a bit, and the baby had dropped a tiny bit. Not the most optimistic report, but it was at least progress, something I didn't make any of during my first 30-hour failed induction attempt with Phook, the party that occurred a full 6 days before she was actually born. I was then given another dose of the cervical ripener and spent another 2 hours in bed, which started to legitimately suck as my every-other-minute contractions got pretty legitimately painful. I was having to breathe through them and was starting to question my wisdom in procreational matters. The nurse checked out my business around 3:00, and found that I was dilated to 2 cm, was continuing to thin out, and that the baby was still stubbornly high. I got another chance to walk around, and at this point was kind of grabbing the wall with each contraction. We were optimistic we might actually have a baby within the month of July.

At 4:30, my doctor came and checked my business (if you haven't figured it out yet, I am using the term "checked my business" as a euphemism for putting way too much hand in my netheregions, reaching for my tonsils, and evaluating the status of my cervix). I was still around 2 cm, but continuing to thin out, baby still high. She decided to break my water. This was huge, as it means you are not leaving the hospital without the baby. Once the water is broken, your ass is committed. This exciting process was not exciting. Nay, it was highly painful. But successful. As soon as my water was broken, my contractions became nasty-licious. Still every-other-minute, now with extra suck. I wandered around with Big K, hanging on him occasionally, starting to get that feeling that I was an animal with no claims to being a part of the human race.

Around 6:00, the nurse checked my business, and I was dilated to 4 cm, thinner, baby still high. And when she checked me, my water decided to REALLY break. An entire quarter barrel of amniotic fluid poured out of me. It felt all weird and stuff. It also inspired my body to go batshit crazy in the labor intensity department. Oh balls of flaming pain. I was no longer in any way connected to the planet earth. One minute giant contractions with a minute or less in between. It felt constant, probably because it pretty much was. I was hanging around Big K's neck and/or leaned over with my head on the sink in my hospital room, rocking back and forth and kind of doing this weird squatty dance thing, which was just what my brain stem had me doing at that point. When the nurse came in again, I cordially invited myself to have an epidural.

I made it down to the delivery room and anesthesia dude came in. Earlier in the day I'd met with him in the event that I'd be requiring his services, and informed him that my epidural with Phook hadn't worked, I had a congenitally narrow spinal canal, and I'd had a disk surgically removed from my lumbar spine in 2002. He kind of blinked a lot, started drooling and twitching, and finally verbally indicated that he was not particularly optimistic about my case, to say the least. Those considerations aside, I wanted to take a shot at some pain relief. I'm not going to get all philosophical about this controversial issue. I'm just going to say that I was thoroughly exhausted by this pregnancy, thoroughly aware that I was about to embark on the thoroughly exhausting project of double motherhood, and thoroughly hoping that I could just get the gods to throw me a bone and score at least an hour of relief at some point in between.

The thing about an epidural is that it's not like they just give you a shot or a pill. No. It's like a procedure and shit. They have to find some little space in your spine, numb you locally, insert a catheter in your back, and do all sorts of shit involving a minuscule likelihood you'll die. It takes awhile, and you have to hold very still in a very uncomfortable and unnatural position. A difficult task while contracting like an absolute animal every other minute, to say the least. I'm gonna go ahead and call it hell. So old dude made an attempt and missed. I don't want to think about what that means. Eventually he got the thing inserted, got me all taped together, and told me it would take 15 minutes to work. 15 minutes later, I was lying on the bed, still dying from horrifying contractions, only now I wasn't allowed to move to work through them. My business was checked, and I was dilated to 6 cm. Anesthesia man kept returning to the room, mind boggled as I told him I felt not a hint of numbness anywhere on my body. He took a little alcohol pad or something and started rubbing it on various parts of my body, asking if I could feel cold. Yes and yes. I could have felt the whiskers of the world's tiniest kitten had they come within a mile of my midsection. No, not numb at all. At this point, it was 9:30 p.m. and I was dilated to 7 cm, very thin, baby still high. This was a dark hour.

Anesthesia man said, "You are the only patient I've ever had who has gotten no pain relief from an epidural." That was neat. But he decided it was worth attempting again. So he removed epidural #1 and took a few more stabs at epidural #2. Sitting through this experience, shaking like a rabid animal...yeah, ouch. I questioned whether or not I'd live. I don't know how I did, really. It's one of those experiences you absolutely do not think you could possibly live through...and then all of a sudden it is over and you just find you somehow have.

Eventually dude got another epidural inserted, and gave me a dose of intrathecal meds as well. You can google that if you want; I'm too lazy to link to something. The good news is that this medication worked, and I felt so much better. Intrathecal meds work for about 2 hours before they wear off, so I was feeling grand that I'd get at least a little break, even if this epidural also failed. And then anesthesia man said, "You're really making me appreciate that I have the day off tomorrow." Hey, I aim to please.

At this point, my contractions, all textbook-like, slowed down. I didn't dilate much over the next hour. So my doctor ordered some pitocin to get them moving again. And, yes, they moved. I got these wild shivers and my teeth started chattering and I started shaking uncontrollably, and, well, then my uterus decided to get hyperstimulated. Rad, huh? Basically, little Circus did not like the application of pitocin to his cocktail. His heart rate started doing things that are generally considered bad. Dropping to 80, for example. They shut off the pitocin, had me start sucking oxygen and changing positions, etc. He rebounded nicely. And I know that whole business all sounds really terrifying, but at the time I was oddly calm and confident we'd be okay. No one lost their shit and there were no hysterics. It just sort of happened.

By this time it was about 11:30 p.m. and the epidural was, thank you Lord, working. I could feel a lot of pressure and some general tightening of my belly, but not actual contraction pain. The nurse checked my business. I was fully dilated and ready to go. Except Circus was still hanging out much to the north of where babies ought to be before they make their exit. The nurse told us she didn't think I'd be able to push him out from his treetop location, and that c-section could be in my future. I acted casual. I mean, was there really any point in wasting energy on freaking out at that point? I think not. Then my doctor showed up, checked my business, and said that according to her estimation he wasn't quite as high as the nurse thought he was, saying something about taking the extreme lengths of my body into account when assessing the situation. She did say she thought it was likely she'd have to use the vacuum extractor thing to get the kidlet out, but that we'd give it a go. I was more than ready to give it a go myself, since I felt like I had a watermelon being dropped from the height of a 10-story building asking me none-too-politely to please extract it from my she-parts.

Okay, so at this point it was 11:50 p.m. My doctor had just confirmed that all the baby resuscitation equipment was ready to go, which freaked me out a bit. I was pretty sure I was gearing up for a marathon, not a sprint. I thought I was about to start the push-o-rama to end all push-o-ramas. I was imagining hours. But I was ready to do it. If you've ever been engaged in what I'd call a childbirth situation and felt the urge to push out a baby, you know that this sensation is not a suggestion. Nay, it is a demand. So Big K was getting rather chipper as he does when he's about to score a kid. I was grabbing my knees and reaching into my presumably empty pot of stamina. And right there in that pot I found stamina. I just gave it everything I had and pushed when I felt the urge and listened to Big K get all excited, "Oh, the baby's right there! I can see it! You can do it! Push! Oh, you're doing it!" And, you know, all that is pretty motivating. So I did, I pushed. And it hurt, it burned, it hurt. But this is not the sort of thing you want to do at 50%, so I pushed. And at 12:01 a.m., little man was born.

There was this quick moment where the doctor grabbed him and did something and I wasn't sure what was happening, and as it turned out she was removing the cord from around his neck. It happened so insanely fast that there was no time at all to panic or worry or freak out. And then I started saying, "What is it? What is it? What is it?" and she finally got an eye on the situation and told us it was a boy. I had no instinct at the moment of birth like I did with Phook, and it was kind of a weird moment. I had sensed I was carrying a boy through the majority of the pregnancy, but it was still kind of odd for it to become real. A boy? We actually created a boy? Big K was instantly crying of course. I know that he would have been just as happy with another girl, but there was a definite polish on that happiness on account of the fact that God had just handed him a son. I was so happy to see him so happy and by then I had a squealing newborn boy on my chest, totally cheesed off that he was no longer rocking out on planet utero.

The word that best describes my emotion upon seeing him is probably simply "relief." I was pretty damned scared through a lot of this pregnancy that I would eventually hit a chute and there would be some setback, some problem, some complication, some something horrible. The fact that I kept hitting ladders and here I was with a healthy little boy on my chest had me feeling like I'd been running hard forever, reaching for something I couldn't quite grab, and now I had finally grasped it. And I felt relief. I felt happy of course, but not the soul-shattering joy that I felt when I was handed Phook. I think that once your soul is shattered by the feeling of becoming a parent, you can't repeat the experience. Big K and I agreed that with your second baby, you need to fall in love with the actual baby rather than the whole scene around it, since you've already had the birth experience. Maybe that's just us though.

The good thing is, I started to fall in love fast. He'd been on my chest for about 10 minutes and he was getting a bit cranked up out in the scary cold world. So I put my finger in his little hand, and of course he instinctively gave it a squeeze. And he quieted right down too. And Big K melted a little and made that Big K melting sound, and I melted a little, and we all melted together a little bit and he started working his way into our hearts.

After this, there was weighing and measuring and checking and I suppose there was some tidying up business involving my parts (1 stitch) and whatnot. And then they gave him back to me and we made our first go at nursing. And the piglet latched on after about 1 minute and proceeded to nurse for a solid hour. Relief on that count too. Then I got a sandwich and some yogurt, and that was sweet. Oh, and a 7-Up. That was awesome, that right there. Let me tell you. Birthing is hard work, friends. I'm still hungry, actually.

And that, people, is the story of the birth of Circus. It happened a week ago today. It might as well have been four centuries ago. It was actually kind of difficult to conjure some of it up already. Time is whooshing by and everything is a blur and the days are flying off the calendar like the image they sometimes use in movies where they have like a desk calendar with the pages ripping off the thing at a wildly fast speed to illustrate the passage of time. There are moments where I want to scream, "Stop the ride!" and then there are moments when I am hanging on to anything I can find just riding and riding and letting the wind whip my face and looking around at the passengers in my car and just being glad that we're all on the ride together. I love my husband more than ever, even though I never thought that particularly possible. I love Phook, my suddenly huge child, so much that it makes my heart feel like it will just blow out of my chest, liquefied into in fine mist. And I love the little Circus, the tiny brand new baby soft little old man that he is...well, I love him like I've been loving him forever.

Born on the 4th of July!

Well, friends, I don't know how you celebrated Independence Day, but I personally decided that yesterday would be a swell day to have a baby. At 12:01 a.m. Yes, buddies, the kid squeaked into firecracker territory by 1 minute. How cool is that? And, well, Circus Act turned out to be a...

BOY!!!

It feels weird not to be able to announce his real name, since that's the sort of thing you usually do when announcing a birth, but alas, Circus Act he will remain for now. Anyhow, little dude was 8 pounds, 6 ounces and 21.5 inches long. I'm not going to go into the whole birth story right now, although I will share it soon. However, I will tell you that I ended up being induced the morning of the 3rd, and labor hurts a lot. And also, moments after being told by the labor nurse that she thought a c-section was likely because he was still so high in my pelvis after I was fully dilated, and moments after being told by my doctor right before I started to push that she thought she'd have to use a vacuum to help get him out, I proceeded to push that kid out in exactly 11 minutes. If you're looking for a woman who can push babies into this world, call me.

And now we are home, Phook is unhappy (more details on that later), Circus is sleeping, and I'm going to share some pictures. Everyone is luckily very healthy and we are very, very blessed.

Here I am laying my eyes on Circus right after he was born:

Here is our first photo with the new addition...Daddy is VERY happy to have a boy (can't even tear his eyes away to look at the camera):

Here is what your woefully bruised, woefully broken blood-vesseled little face will look like if you are forced from the elevation of your mom's throat to the outside world in 11 minutes, all with your cord wrapped around your neck:

Here I am with my boy, the special person on this earth who presumably will beat people up in the future on my behalf if they choose to slander me:

Here is the very tired big guy enjoying new fatherhood:

Another close-up shot of Circus "No, Those Aren't Freckles" Act:

Here is Phook leerily meeting her new brother:

She did decide to be hospitable and offer him her blankie, the most special object on this earth as far as she is concerned:

And a look at the little old man with his eyes open this afternoon when we packed him up to bring him home:


I will tell you more later, but that is the story for now. Thanks again to everyone who has been checking in on me via blog and sending good wishes in the general vicinity of my family. It is greatly appreciated.

Oh, and one more thing. I love him.

Phook, can you kiss the baby?

My kid is a pot head

Today, this is what I have to offer you. No more, no less, just the hijinx of a toddler.

XO,
Big W

If you're taking roll call...

...I'm here.

Another day, another non-stress test for Circus. Circus is happy. Blood pressure is happy. The Woods' policy makers should be happy because Big K will be able to attend his very important city council meeting tonite, the one that is so wildly important it inspired a fellow city council member to say, in all seriousness, "Well, if she's due on the 30th and has the baby on the 30th, he should be able to make it to a meeting on the 1st." Heh. I'm not laughing. I'm simply reminded why the only people I like already live in my house.

I don't know what to tell you people. I guess I'll tell you that I crossed another thing off of my dreamland to-do list. This would be the list that doesn't even exist on paper because it is like priority level zero shit that I had no hopes of ever getting to pre-Circus. Just thoughts that floated through my mind as things I would like to do if I weren't having a baby or laid up. And even then I thought of them with a crazy-fied laugh inside my head. But I'm getting to them, still pregnant and still not laid up. Oh, the irony. Anyhow, we here in the House of K like strawberries. If you don't, you're kind of a tool. So every year, I get myself some vast quantity of strawberries and then I handle them in various ways so we can enjoy them year-round. This year, I was thinking, "Shit, I won't be able to do strawberries." And then I moved on. However, today I found myself buying a flat of strawberries at a farm stand. During Phook's nap, I made a batch of these things called lunchbox strawberries. It's easy. You basically wash them, stem them, cut them into slices if you so choose, put a little sugar and pectin in with them, and throw them in the freezer. I didn't go wild and can anything crazy, but I at least have my stash of lunchbox strawberries for some of those cold winter's nights when I've eaten enough squash and miscellaneous root vegetables to gag a maggot and it seems that a strawberry is the most exotic creature the earth ever produced. And I have enough leftover to make a pie, which I'll do if Big K checks his messages and stops and gets me some strawberry jello. (And, Mom, if you're reading this and pissed I wasn't napping, this project only took me a little over an hour, I found the repetitive exercise of stemming and slicing the bastards oddly mentally therapeutic, and I had my feet up on a chair the whole time.)

Oh, you people don't care about my strawberry exploits. Sorry.

Phook isn't wearing any pants. She has a giant shiner under her left eye, courtesy of the large speaker she face-planted into in our living room yesterday while taking hot laps around the room. That's gonna be cute in pictures of those first moments of my children together as siblings. She only seems to get shiners when I want photographs. Last time she did it up good was the morning of her Christmas photo session.

Oh, you people don't care about my kid's untimely shiner. Sorry.

All right, I guess I don't have a whole lot else to say. My doctor is predicting Circus will be a boy, for what it's worth. Big K and I have mysteriously shifted our predictions to the female gender at this late hour. We both think the baby will weigh 8 lb. 2 oz. for no good reason, but we arrived at that conclusion independently, so I expect it to be an accurate figure.

Thanks to all you cats out there who are wishing me well and checking in on me. I've got much love for you.