01Mar
Today I went to the doctor about my back. She put me on bed rest for this week. The hope is that if I can rest it up really good this week, then I can hopefully avoid a month of bed rest at the end of my pregnancy. Along with staying off my feet completely, I have to go see an orthopedic specialist and a physical therapist. The PT is because whatever is wrong with my back seems to be triggered by movement and the PT will be able to teach me how to move so that I don’t put so much pressure on my back. The orthopedic surgeon is to diagnose what exactly is going on, which my doctor thinks is either a slipped or herniated disc. They’ll probably do an MRI (my doctor assured me is safe for the baby) to find out what’s going on and then we’ll get a treatment plan together from there.
I’m really frustrated with myself right now. I went to the doctor for my back a couple weeks ago and she gave me all these preventative things I needed to do – get a back brace, get a prenatal massage, go see the physical therapist – and I didn’t do any of it. I didn’t stay off my feet. I didn’t stop picking up Bean. Hell, I had a freaking YARD SALE this weekend. I knew my back was getting worse, in fact I’d had a couple small little episodes like what happened on Saturday before, and I still ignored everything. And now, things have gotten worse. I’m worried now because if I’m having this much trouble before the baby gets here, what will it be like when she arrives? Not only will I have a c-section recovery to deal with, but I’ll now have back trouble, too.
To add to that, I am losing weight really fast. I dropped 5 pounds in less than two weeks. Which isn’t horrible during pregnancy, but isn’t great either. I don’t know if it’s being pregnant with a girl or if it’s being too preoccupied to pay attention to what I’m eating, but I have had no appetite in the past couple months. Just one more thing I feel like I’m not taking care of for Gracie.
So, after that disappointing and frustrating doctors appointment, I was not in the best mood. I had snapped at everyone who spoke to me, I was pissy, I was just a pill. After the appointment, Chris and I rode together to pick up Bean from daycare. In the car, Chris listened to me snap at both my parents, complain about how I was going to handle work this week, and curse McDonald’s for not putting enough salt on their french fries. And the whole while, he hadn’t said a word. Not one word about the doctors appointment or anything.
“What’s your problem?” I snapped.
“What?” he asked.
“Well, you’re not talking to me.”
“What do you want me to say?”
“I don’t know. Cheer me up or something. That’s, like, your job,” I said.
“Kate,” he responded carefully, “I have known you for 12 years. And if I’ve learned anything about you in that time, I’ve learned no one is going to change your mind about anything, especially your mood. So, I’m just going to wait until you’re ready to talk.”
I didn’t know whether to kill him because he wasn’t making an effort or kiss him because he knew just how to handle me.
I pouted for a minute more and then started smiling. And then laughing. And before we even got to Bean’s daycare, I was feeling better again.
You know, this past winter Chris and I were visiting our hometown and met up with some old friends. We were out for New Years with them and I was complaining (shocking, I know…) about not being able to enjoy the festivities with everyone. One of our friends turned to me and said, “Just think. It could be worse. You could be sitting on an egg.”
I thought about it for a minute and then busted out laughing. He was totally right. I could be sitting on an egg. So, this part sucks. I’m sore. I can barely walk. I’m worried about work and money and how we’re going to make it through the summer on one paycheck. I’m frustrated and nervous and preoccupied and not a little pissy. But in the grand scheme of things, I’ve got a husband who loves me, a son who adores me, and a baby girl who can’t wait to come out and meet me. Things could be a lot worse.
I could be sitting on an egg.
*****
Today I am grateful that I have a very kind and understanding boss.
21Feb
Did you know Chris is a music fanatic? Well, he is. He loves all music. He appreciates the artistry. He isn’t musical himself, but he understands it. He gets music in ways that most people just don’t. He hears things that I don’t hear when music plays. And so a couple years ago, it didn’t surprise me at all when he came home with an old record player he found on eBay. He thinks that music sounds better on albums. “It’s the way you’re supposed to hear it,” he says. He listens to most things on albums now. Current music, old music, and everything in between. I didn’t even know music today was still released in album form, but you can find pretty much anything. And Chris does.
For Valentine’s Day, I gave him the Nora Jones Come Away With Me album because it’s our song. I spent a whole $12.00 and it was one of the most romantic, thoughtful gifts I’ve given him in a long time.
So, on Friday night after I read Bean’s last book to him and kissed him goodnight, I came out into the living room to find Nora’s lovely, familiar, rich voice filling our house. We opened the windows and let the cool air drift in and then Chris and I wandered out to the back porch and sat around our patio table. I kicked my feet up and Chris made dinner on the grill.
And we talked.
About our life now. About Bean. About work. About Gracie. About trips we want to take. About things we want to do. About whether changing our light bulbs to energy efficient ones had made a difference in our power bill. About family. About where we want to be in five years. About where we were five years ago. About Girl Scout cookies. About our taxes. About daycare for the kids. About golf.
We talked about everything and nothing.
And we laughed.
And while we sat there, just enjoying each other, our song floated outside and wrapped itself around us. Like an old pair of perfectly fitting jeans.
I get asked often how becoming parents changed my relationship with Chris. And there are lots of things that have changed. But I think some people worry that having babies will cause their relationship to become unrecognizably different. Sometimes that’s true, yes. But sitting on my back porch with my husband, the same person who has held my hand and kissed me goodnight since I was 16 years old, it didn’t feel different. It felt like us. Like the us we’d always been. And even though I sat there, feet away from my son and with a baby growing in my belly, even though we are in such a different place and living such a different life, even though we talked about parenting and taxes and homeownership, I was still sitting there in that place with my high school sweetheart – the love of my life.
I love my husband today because he provides for our family, because he is a loving father, because he is patient and kind and forgiving in our marriage. But mostly, I love him because he is the grown up version of the teenage boy I fell in love with. Our relationship has changed, our plans have changed, our life has changed. But our love? That’s still the same. Only a little sweeter, a little stronger, a little deeper because we’ve had children together.
*****
Today I am grateful for Chris.
Sunday night, Chris and I went out to dinner for an early Valentine’s Day. We tried a sushi place for the first time and we were not disappointed. I think I ate my baby weight in sushi (only the cooked fish though – don’t worry!). It was delicious. We hadn’t had good sushi since we moved from Connecticut and though this place was worlds different than the hole-in-the-wall place we used to go to up there, the sushi was every bit as good and it was nice to feel like we had found one more thing down here that felt like home.
Only, there was a little hiccup in our romantic dinner.
We finished appetizers and six rolls of sushi in about 15 minutes. Seriously. We were seated, ordered, ate, and paid the bill in 20 minutes. When the check came to the table, Chris checked his watch and died laughing.
“What are we going to do now? We can’t go home yet. We just left.”
“I know. But we don’t really have the money to go do anything else.”
“Yeah,” said Chris. “And I really want to see the Grammy’s.”
“Good, cause I really want to read my book,” I said.
On the ride home, Chris and I tried to figure out how our romantic Valentine’s dinner had been so quick. We decided it was because when we go out to dinner normally with Bean, we have to hurry because we have approximately 15 or 20 minutes before he starts getting fidgety and antsy. So, we’re just in the habit of eating quick. It’s a necessity. Which is great, unless it’s Valentine’s Day and you’re trying to spend some quality time with your husband.
Then today in one of my classes, a student asked me what Chris had given me for Valentine’s Day. I looked around me at the room full of hopeful middle school students, all holding their teddy bears and roses and love letters and candy from significant others that they truly believe are the people they will spend the rest of their lives with. Their eyes looked at me with a romantic, whispy look that said, “Isn’t love awesome?”
“Uh…” I studdered, trying to decide if I should lie or be honest. I went with honesty. “He got me a SunPass.”
Total silence in the room.
And then from the back, some poor, lovesick 12-year-old girl quietly asked, “Is that what happens when you get married?”
Not wanting to burst their little pink and red heart-shaped bubbles, I quickly recovered with, “But he bought me a dozen roses and a sweet card, too!”
(That’s a total lie, by the way.)
They seemed to collectively sigh with relief and the happy hum of a classroom full of puppy love middle schoolers resumed.
Yes, it’s true. Chris got me a SunPass for Valentine’s Day. But it’s what I wanted!
Which begs the question…What the heck is wrong with us?!?! We finally – FINALLY – get time away for a romantic dinner together and we’re home in less than an hour. And we’re giving each other things like toll money for gifts. What the heck is going on? Don’t you think those things should raise some red flags about the state of our marriage?
Eh…not really.
I was a little worried about it until today. Monday. The Real Valentine’s Day. Around 10:30 this morning, I got an email from Chris at work. All it said was, “I can’t stop thinking about you today and how much I love you and our life together. Just wanted you to know.” I think I giggled like my students for about 2 hours and I must have re-read the email about a million times.
And then tonight, I came home and made a Valentine’s Dinner for Chris and Bean. On our romantic menu? Spaghetti and meatballs. Bean’s favorite.
And cucumbers in vinegar. Chris’s favorite.
I set the table with all the Valentine goodies the two of them had for the day. Cards from different family members, art projects that Bean had made at school during his Valentine’s Day party, cute little notes and odds and ends that people have sent us to tell us we are loved.
And while I finished cooking and dishing up dinner, the two of them got to sit in their seats and open all their goodies. We laughed and talked and made Bean sing the “I Love You” song over and over again. Finally, dinner was on the table and we all ate together, talking about our days and listening to Bean babble on about…well, we’re not really sure…
After dinner, we all helped put away dishes and clean up the kitchen. Which wore Bean out and so he laid down on the counter and talked to us while we cleaned.
So, Valentine’s Day was pretty much like any other day in our house. Except we all had candy. And you know what? It was one of my favorite Valentine’s Days yet. True, it was very different than past, over the top, romantic Valentine’s Days. True, there were no flowers or stuffed animals. But there was lots of love. You could feel it in our house. And that meant more to me than any dinner out or any gift Chris might have given me.
Marriage changes things. Kids change things. But those changes are sometimes the things in life that are so good, you didn’t even know to ask for them because you didn’t even know that kind of happiness was possible. That’s the change that marriage and children bring to my life. And not just on Valentine’s Day. Every day I find things in my life that are simpler, different, and worlds better than I could have even imagined.
*****
Today I am grateful for sundresses!
I’m one week shy of being eight months pregnant. My back has gone out twice. I’m tired. I’m cranky. I’m usually half covered in chocolate ice cream smudges. In short, I’m not at my finest.
For the past two months, Bean has been sick off and on. He’ll go about a week feeling great and then he crashes. It’s that same cold virus that’s been going around and the constant flux from cold to warm weather doesn’t help things.
Any time something goes through his daycare, Bean’s going to get it. And then he’s going to bring it home to me. And I’m going to get it because during pregnancy your immune system is just for show.
Basically what I’m saying is that Chris’s life has sucked for the past two months.
With me unable to contribute very significantly to the day-to-day operations in our house right now and Bean a walking, talking, snotty, coughy, whiney mess, it’s pretty much left Chris to not only fend for himself but to provide for the rest of us, too. And he does it like a champ. He never makes me feel guilty. He never complains. He never gets a bad attitude. He just digs deeper and does whatever it takes to keep our house from exploding.
But in the past week, I’ve noticed some changes in my beloved. For example, when I was sitting on my heating pad one night, unable to move any more that day, I asked him to please bring me a bottle of water. To which he replied, “Maybe I should just get you a bell and then you’d never have to get up again.”
He laughed.
I didn’t.
And then there was this weekend when Bean was feverish and sick and whined for about 48 hours straight. To which Chris replied, “Okay, Bean! We get it! You’re sick!”
But today, I think he crossed the line. Cracked up. Reached the end of his rope.
This morning at 9:00am, Chris started cleaning. It started simply enough. He was cleaning the kitchen and I started doing some laundry. After the kitchen, Chris moved on to the living room. He vacuumed. He dusted. And then he pulled out the ShopVac and started cleaning the couches. And then under all the furniture. And then under all the area rugs. From there, he moved on to the bathrooms where I’m about 98% sure he used a toothbrush to clean the grout.
He continued like this all day long. All day. Until about 6:00 tonight. All day he cleaned and scrubbed and vacuumed and dusted. All day he didn’t speak to either Bean or me as we wallowed in our misery, except when he mumbled towards my general vicinity at one point, “I’m going to scrub all these damn sick germs away so you people will get over it.”
I have to admit, my first reaction was, “What the heck is HIS problem?!?!” which was immediately followed by my second thought, “He needs to suck it up and get over it!”
But then I realized that it’s probably about time he hit the wall. Eight months of pregnancy, including two months of an immobile wife and a sick son, and I guess this is what happens to you. It’s understandable and I don’t blame him. So tonight I’ve tried to take some time out for him. A back rub while he gave Bean a bath. A few extra hugs and kisses as he was cooking dinner. Because I do appreciate him and I do acknowledge all he’s done for our family during the past few months and I do understand that this hasn’t been easy on him.
But I’m giving him a week to get himself back together again. He gets a week. A week should be enough time for a sane, healthy, able husband to get himself centered again. I mean, it’s not like he’s growing a human being or anything. And then after that week if he hasn’t gotten himself together again, I’m going to sit on him. Which at this point in my pregnancy is a very scary threat.
Until then, maybe he has earned a little break.
(NOTE: There are no pictures of Chris cleaning and/or breaking down in this post because when a grizzly bear is frustrated with you, you don’t stop to take out your camera.)
******
Today I am thankful for Lysol.
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