Eight Years

Tags

anniversary, depression, family, life, love

Yesterday, we were sitting around watching Stephen Fry’s Q.I. on Youtube when Perfect Husband sat up straight.

“Oh, SHIT.” He covered his mouth. “I forgot!”

“What?” I was alarmed. I wracked my brain. Were we supposed to be doing something that night? Was there something vital that I had let slip through my calendar?

“I have to call a prostitute right away! It’s my last chance for the seven year itch!” he said.

I leaned back on the couch and stuck out my tongue.

Eight years ago, we were married. 

Eight years ago, he was my rock, my prince who made me feel like the luckiest person in the world. I couldn’t believe that I was getting to spend the rest of my life with this man who worked so hard to make my life better.

He was the kind of person who cooked dinner and then washed the dishes, while insisting that I sit and rest. He was the kind of person with whom I could talk for hours and never grow bored.

The best part of it all was the fact that he thought he was the lucky one – he actually felt lucky to be with this socially anxious awkward girl with weight problems who loved to take care of pets and babies but also desperately needed to be taken care of by someone else.
Ten years ago, I started dating my best friend. I avoided it for so long, because it sounds like such a terrible idea, but within days we knew that this was it.

We knew that we would move in together. We knew that we would get married. We knew how many kids we would have and what their names would be before he even formally proposed.

Sometimes you just know.

Eleven years ago, he emerged from years of crippling depression, and I discovered that the man who had always been my best friend because even better when he was free of his chains. The man who had always been willing to talk for hours about books or argue with me about hypothetical situations, who had always been willing to give the shirt off of his back to help a friend, stepped out from under the clouds so I could really see him in his entirety. He turned out to be a sunny optimist with a can-do attitude that I found deeply attractive.

Twelve years ago I stopped him from committing suicide. Even then, I knew that I couldn’t live without him in my life. Even then, he was part of the furniture of my mind. Even then, I was willing to sacrifice his happiness to keep him alive. Even then, his pain mattered less to me than the continued beating of his kind heart.

Thirteen years ago my parents met him for the first time, and they thought, “that’s the one.”

“That boy is in love with you,” my father told me later.

“Yeah… we don’t talk about it, though,” I replied, and my parents wisely kept their mouths shut. But they told me later that they knew from the first moment that they saw us together that this would happen. That he was meant to be their son in law.

His parents have said the exact same thing.

Let’s face it, Perfect Husband has said the same thing. “I knew it was just a matter of waiting,” he said.

Show offs.

Fourteen years ago, I sang a Lorne Elliott song with one of the actors in the production of Hamlet that I was stage managing. Almost no one knows Lorne Elliott and we were both delighted to find someone else who did. Almost no one else has read Gordon Korman, but he had, and we talked about it for an hour. He liked Who Is Bugs Potter. I preferred I Want To Go Home.

Fourteen years ago, I found a new friend.

So here we are, fourteen years in, thirteen years in, twelve years in, ten years in.

Eight years in.

I don’t have a photo of us, now. He doesn’t want his picture taken. He doesn’t want to remember this.

Life is different now.

The depression is back and has been raging for years. Most days, he isn’t the sunny prince that I married, but he is still the best friend that I couldn’t live without.  I have met this side of him before and I married him knowing I would probably see it again. So it doesn’t scare me. He is still kind. He is still my best friend. He is still the man that my parents knew I would someday marry.

We have two young children that demand almost all of my time. I feel a constant gripping anxiety based on the fact that I want to work more, because we need more money, but I also want to work less, because I feel overburdened as it is, and I can’t afford to shift too much of that burden onto my husband, and I really can’t afford to pay someone else to take on some of that burden.

I struggle constantly to hide my stress because he blames himself when it emerges. A stray tear, wiped away too late, and he will be pestering me, asking what he can do, beyond the impossible. He thinks that I will blame him, or should blame him, for this.

I don’t.

I was there, you see. I saw how he couldn’t make himself wake up and go to class. I saw how he sometimes backed out of plans because he couldn’t face a social scene. I knew him. I married him.

Yes, I miss the man who pampered me and spoiled me. Yes, I miss feeling like he was someone that I could lean on. Yes, I miss feeling that he was someone I could come to with my problems, instead of someone that I needed to shield from them. Yes, I sometimes feel envy when I meet people who can just get their husbands to take the kids at a moment’s notice, no problem, or who can go out with their friends or on date nights on a regular basis.

Then again I know people who have husbands that are perfectly well and are just giant dicks, and then I feel very grateful. He may be asleep a lot, but he’s not a dick.

Besides, I knew he was sick, and what that meant, and I said the words, “in sickness and in health”, and I knew what I was saying when I said them.

“You could still run away, you know,” he whispered before the vows started. “Now’s your chance. Look, there’s a door just there.”

I looked out of the side door near the altar. It was open to let in cool breezes. The dandelions swayed in the old cemetery where couple after couple lay side by side. Then I looked back at him and shook my head, “no.”

“Now is YOUR chance,” I told him.

Sometimes I think he should have run. He isn’t equipped to handle the stress of caring for small children. I see how just our presence in the household raises his stress levels. I think about how much  of his time is spent on blaming himself for my own stress and misery.

Sometimes I feel like we are Albatrosses around his neck.

And I know he feels like an Albatross on mine.

We keep telling each other that we have no regrets. We keep telling each other that we prefer this to the alternative.

Maybe one day, we’ll finally believe one another.

Because let’s face it: If there is such a thing as fate, we are it.

So let it be. If we are lucky, we’ll have another thirty or forty years together. And I can’t speak for him, but I would still sign up for that in a heartbeat.

Saying Goodbye To Old Times

Tags

Alzheimer's, Christmas, family, home, Nova Scotia, time, traditions

Our Christmas home in Nova Scotia felt sort of… final, to me, this year.

We plan to spend next Christmas here in BC because it is expensive to travel during the holidays, and it makes a stressful time just that much more stressful. Our next trip to Nova Scotia will probably be during the summer when more people will be free to get together with us, and travel is safer and cheaper.

Although the snow was certainly a thrilling novelty to Owl.

My father’s Alzheimer’s is slowly progressing. He still knows who everyone is, and what is going on, but he is frail, and quiet, and easily confused. My mother has to help him shower, get dressed, and she puts him down to bed for naps and at bed time like a child.

But he’s still Dad.

If and when we spend another Christmas in Nova Scotia, the person that I know as my father may have faded away entirely.

Christmas was always a big deal in our house. Both my parents love Christmas, and we used to have all sorts of traditions built up around it. The annual tree decorating was so idyllic that my high school friends used to attend it too, because it was just such a Christmassy THING.

But many of the traditions have fallen by the wayside one by one what with my commitments to Perfect Husband’s family, and my father’s illness, and the fact simply that time is moving on and things change.

We did still decorate the tree this year. Mum needed PH to help bring the tree in and get it set up. The last time we were home, Dad could still do that. He still sat and watched us decorate while he sipped egg nog, but once upon a time he would have been the one pouring the drinks and sloshing too much rum into everyone’s nog.

The decorators this year were mostly Mum and Owl, with me alternately helping, taking photos, and watching the baby. It was the same, but not the same, at the same time.

If that makes sense.

Meanwhile, the Christmas Eve traditions on PH’s side of the family are going to be changing soon, too. Their Christmas Eve family gathering had the same food, the same schedule, but less exuberance. My nieces and nephews are older now. The next youngest to Owl is already ten years old, and most of them are young adults in university and beyond.

Our kids were definitely the hit of the show.

We got a family photo of all of the “kids”, including Fritter, on the front steps. We don’t know when another group photo will be able to be taken as the grown “kids” start moving away and living their own lives.

I’m really glad we made it home this Christmas, because I felt like I was getting a chance to say goodbye to these old traditions and accept that things are changing.

Owl got to experience and explore these “old times”, and I got to make my peace with their passing.

And these changes don’t have to feel bad. But they will be different.

Maybe that is okay. Maybe it is time for us to build our own traditions, here, at home.

Thank You, 2015

Tags

depression, family, life, maternity leave, new years, parenthood, parents, pregnancy

I have mixed feelings about the passing of 2015.

Some parts of 2015 really sucked. My husband nearly killed himself, I ended up heavily pregnant, with a bacterial infection, working and caring for our four year old who also had a bacterial infection, while he was stuck in the hospital and unable to help.

My father broke his hip and overall has deteriorated markedly in his health.

My relationship with my son deteriorated, as my capacity to tolerate his extroverted highjinks hit a new low.

I spent a significant amount of this year coughing, exhausted, diabetic, extremely stressed, half-expecting to become a widow at any moment, researching the potential cost of burying my husband, and wearing Depends because I kept wetting myself.

On the other hand…

This year also brought me the generosity and love of the friends and relations who came streaming in to help during these difficult times. There were friends who picked Owl up at daycare when I was stuck at the hospital, and friends who brought Chinese food so that I wouldn’t have to cook, or took Owl for play dates so I could nap.

There was my mother in law, who is terrified of flying and financially limited, flying in TWICE to spend a grand total of three months sleeping on our couch, just to help.

On the first visit she made me diabetes-friendly meals and arranged snacks for me at a time when I was working and exhausted and could never have kept up the dietary management that was expected of me on my own. She put my son to bed at night and made him breakfast in the morning, she read to him and joked with him and brought some humor and pleasantry to a home that was seething in stress.

On her return she cooked and cleaned, entertained Owl and then held the baby so I could shower, get dressed, eat meals, and spend some quality time with my son.

And in between those visits, my parents flew in for four months. They took money from their nest egg to rent a place nearby, and my mother drove back and forth making meals and snacks, cleaning, and reading Owl bedtime stories.

Not only did it bring me much needed aid, but I got to spend time with my father while he still knows who I am.

And this year brought me Fritter, who made a safe landing on the shores of time and gave us the gift of a colic-free fourth trimester. She brings me joy every day with her grins and chortles, and I wouldn’t change a thing about her.

And with all of those months of support from our family, PH was able to retreat and rest and begin healing. While he is still very ill, I have seen more of the old Perfect Husband in the last three months than I have in the past two years. There are mornings when I come downstairs to find breakfast laid out for me, afternoons when he greets me at the door to take my coat and offer me a drink, and evenings when he rubs my feet and offers to run me a bath.

Whenever he has a good day, I feel like I could suffer another two years just for a chance at more days like that.

I feel like I could kiss 2015 for bringing me even one day like that, let alone as many as I have been gifted with these last few months.

2015 also brought me maternity leave, which I love because I am a lazy slob. I love being home with my baby and watching The Walking Dead or writing during her naps. It’s way better than working. I’m sad that there are only a few more months left. I have a lot of writing to get down in that time.

Yes, over all I am very grateful to 2015. I feel like it got handed a terrible set of cards but it played them all right.

2015 for me was a year of defeat and renewal, of family and love.

We survived it, and maybe it has made us stronger.

If 2016 can keep up with this upward trend, I think I can look forward to the coming year.

And if it can’t… well… Bring it, 2016.

Effortless

Tags

chronic tiredness, energy, family, swimming

I haven’t been posting much, because the whole “I’m tired” thing gets… tiring. It’s been weeks (months?) since I felt the slightest burst of energy.

I start out exhausted in the morning, and I remain exhausted throughout the day, to the point where it seems like an unreasonable effort to have to keep putting one foot in front of the other.

So you’d think that when I tell people that I won’t get tired doing something, they could take that to the bank.

But during my family reunion, when I announced that I wanted to swim across the lake, my family thought it sounded crazy.

Now, I have always wanted to swim across a lake. My uncle had a cottage, and so did a friend of mine in High School, both on lakes. I’d be swimming or lounging on the dock, and I’d look at the line of trees on the other side and think “I can swim that far.”

But people always said, “Oh, it’s farther than it looks. What if you get tired?”

What if I get tired – what a silly question. Swimming has always been effortless for me. Oh, sure, if I swim fast enough I’ll get tired, just as you might get tired from jogging. But then I can just slow down and stop and take a rest. No different from walking, really, except that I am weightless. No sore feet, no hills to climb.

But I never did it, because other people told me I couldn’t. Or shouldn’t.

Now here I was staying on the edge of a lake for a week and the other side was there, taunting me. My family would get in canoes and kayaks and skirt around the lake. They would go on a hike and walk all the way around the lake. So why couldn’t I swim across it? I had always wanted to see if I could swim as far as I thought I could.

I am 31 years old. How long do we have to be adults before we can start making our own choices? Who could tell a thirty-something, married adult “no”?

Oh right, the people who loved me.

“What if you get tired?”

“Then I’ll STOP and REST. It’s called FLOATING. It’s EFFORTLESS. I’ve snorkled for hours without getting tired. How is this any different?”

“What if you get a cramp?”

“I have never, in 30 years of swimming, gotten a CRAMP. And if I did, I would FLOAT until it felt BETTER.”

Only PH and one of my favourite cousins thought it sounded reasonable and doable.

Finally, I compromised with my parents. They agreed to try not to worry too much IF I was accompanied by PH in a CANOE, with two life vests on board.

We told them to expect us back in three hours. Really, we estimated that I could probably do it in two.

And so we struck out. PH didn’t hover by me, waiting for me to sink. He knew he was there solely for my parents’ peace of mind. He was a dot in the distance at times.

I was fine. I was swimming, and for the first time in my life, I was swimming without any obstacles blocking me. No imaginary perimeter of open ocean to avoid. No end of the pool. Just a distant shoreline ahead of me that looked just as far away after swimming for a good 20 minutes.

I didn’t get tired. A couple of times, as a joke, I stopped swimming entirely. No leg movements. No arm movements. I just bobbed there, head and neck well above the water, while PH and I smirked at each other.

I aimed for the cliff on the far side. The water there was creepily deep and cold and clear, but it was easy to climb out on the rock, and nice and safe to jump off and back into the lake.

I worked harder on the swim back. Neither of us had a watch so we weren’t sure how much time we had taken, and I was in a rush so my parents wouldn’t worry. The wind kept blowing waves that pushed me off course.

I still didn’t get tired, and we arrived back at the beach only an hour and a half after our time of departure.

My Dad was standing on the shore waiting for me to come in. He told me later that watching me swim in he had suffered frequent waves of worry because I kept “disappearing” under the water and then resurfacing.

Owl broke away from the shore to join me in the water when I got into the shallows, and we spent another half hour splashing happily.

Meanwhile PH dragged the canoe onto the shore. “She went down three times. I had to keep fishing her out,” he told my mother, who actually believed him for a minute (to his delighted amusement).

He told me later that I had looked more myself on that swim than I had for a very long time.

I think that’s the last time I didn’t feel tired.

F*@# The Might-Have-Beens

Tags

depression, family, introversion, miscarriage, parenting, vacations

I want to talk about the awesome week I just spent in Ontario with my mother’s side of the family. I want to talk about potato canons, and drunken mistakes with chinese lanterns, and 1000 piece puzzles, and the weirdness of hanging out with a bunch of cousins who share many of my nerdy ways.

But I can’t get up the enthusiasm because I’m too exhausted.

That week WIPED me. And I clearly didn’t have a lot of energy going into the vacation.

Oddly, the exhaustion is not directly due to the fact that I spent a week in a cottage with 20 relatives.

A significant portion of my mother’s siblings and their children are introverts. So while they enjoyed each other immensely, no one was surprised or disapproving if you wanted to disappear to your bedroom for a while, or take a book down to read at the beach (I walked down to the beach with Owl one sunny morning and found SIX relations reading on lounge chairs and no one in the water).

But I was trying to do several things at once:

New Traditions

Tags

board games, Christmas, elmo, family, gifts, ham, Jane Eyre, Munchkin quest, RC helicopter, sony, tradition, turkey

I hope you all had a wonderful Christmas.

Mine was… strange.

I mean, it was good, but it was weird. It was the first time, ever, that I celebrated Christmas without my parents and our set traditions. Instead, Perfect Husband and I had to compromise to make our own.

Perfect Husband’s family celebrates Christmas on Christmas Eve. Santa comes early for them, while the kids are out on a drive, looking at Christmas lights. They have a big feast of ham and pot luck goodies.

My family has always done Christmas more traditionally. We go to church Christmas Eve, open presents Christmas Day, and have a turkey dinner that night.

So Perfect Husband and I had to work things out.

We agreed to open gifts from family/each other Christmas Eve, but that Santa would still come overnight so Owl could open his stocking Christmas morning. That worked out ok.

Perfect Husband got his ham, since I got turkey at Thanksgiving this year. I’m not sure how this quite works, though. He’ll get ham again at Easter (to me, ham is Easter food), so does that mean I have to do ham a third time next Thanksgiving before I get my next turkey dinner? Unsure at this point.

I did my sweet potato casserole, one of my favourite Christmas/Thanksgiving dishes, and Christmas Eve I made tortiere, my own family’s Christmas Eve meal.

So it was weird for both of us – PH because we were eating tortiere on Christmas Eve instead of ham, and me because we were eating ham on Christmas Day, instead of turkey.

We Skyped with my parents so they could watch Owl opening his stocking this morning, and that was nice.

And I got awesome gifts – Perfect Husband got me nerdy T-shirts, including an Anxiety Girl shirt, a geeky board game (Munchkin Quest, which we played this evening and is awesome), a promise of a video card once boxing day sales kick in, and I got a new video camera which I have been needing for a while (my friend and I have been toying with the idea of making dog training instructional videos, but not with my low-def 2007 model handycam!). This is a Sony PJ260V and is entirely awesome and has a PROJECTOR on it. So you’ll be getting some HD videos posted soon.

I was deeply relieved to learn that a gift he had ominously referred to as my “Fifty Shades of Grey Gift” was actually a toy helicopter – something I have always wanted – and nothing scary for the bedroom.

He also gave me (get this, The Squeee!) an 1858 edition of Jane Eyre, which he had professionally restored. It’s beautiful. I want to run my hands over it and keep it in my pocket but I’ve been keeping it up on a high shelf instead, well away from inquisitive toddlers!

And Owl, well, he got TOO MUCH STUFF!

Puzzles, books, stuffed animals, clothes, undies, noisy electronics… I think the cake was taken by our Daycare Lady, who apparently got him (and every other boy in the daycare) one of those Let’s Rock Elmos, which is both adorable AND creepy. I need to post a video of that soon because Owl was just AGOG.

Our favourite of our own gifts to him (which were minimal and actively reduced when we saw the influx arriving from relatives) was a $10 box of plastic foods, which pretty much deserves its own post, accompanied by cute HD video so stay tuned for that.

He fell asleep clutching the shark slippers my sister in law sent him.

We also exposed Owl to The Grinch (which he loved), Rudolph the Red Nosed Reindeer (which bored him) and A Muppet Family Christmas (the unexpurgated version, which PH had transferred to DVD from a VHS tape six years ago), which held him entranced.

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I have a feeling I’ll keep forgetting that Christmas happened, since this was such a departure from all my previous Christmases. It felt like a wonderful day, but not like Christmas per se. It didn’t smell like Christmas, or taste like Christmas, because there was no turkey or gravy. It wasn’t at my parents’ house where Christmas always takes place. We opened gifts Christmas Eve instead of reflecting on the Christmas Story. It didn’t feel right.

I’m sure it felt just as weird to PH. But this is how new traditions start, I guess, with departures from the old. Maybe some day Owl will complain when things don’t match what today was like, because that will be Christmas for him.

I also haven’t been filled with that Christmas peace that I have had in the past, probably due to disruption of traditions and my work schedule interfering with my Christmas spirit. It’s hard to get in the mood when you’re working even on Christmas Eve, instead of on a mini-vacation back home, you know?

But I have no complaints. There will be many more Christmases, with turkey and grandparents, and midnight mass, and next year Owl will understand about Santa, which will be fun. We kept telling him Santa brought him his stocking stuff and he kept saying “No, Daddy did it!”

And I have a second edition of Jane Eyre, man.

No complaints at all.

I’ll Be Home For Christmas… Next Year?

Tags

Christmas, distance, family, traditions, travel

We aren’t going home for Christmas this year.

Not only is it expensive to do every year, but PH couldn’t get Christmas Eve off of work, and since that’s when his family celebrates, it would be $4,000 for him to miss Christmas anyway.

So we aren’t going, even though I’m an only child and my parents will be spending Christmas alone together for the first time in 30 years. Even though PH’s brother just moved back to Nova Scotia, so it would be the first time his entire family would be together in one room since our wedding, and the first Christmas entirely together in… who knows how many years.

We aren’t going, even though my parents have decided that they can’t come here, either, which is what they did in 2008 when we were recovering from the costs of our honeymoon.

My Dad’s health is pretty good overall, considering his age and considering the fact that his two older siblings both died of cancer in the last five years. But he’s not up for travelling long distances any more. It’s too much hassle and he would rather spend a quiet Christmas at home. Even if Owl and I aren’t there.

My mother is depressed about it. Dad thinks it’s time that PH and I developed our own family traditions, had a private Christmas together, but my Mum would say “Eff that!” and come in a heartbeat if she didn’t think that leaving Dad and the diabetic cat alone for Christmas was probably wrong.

I’m… ok.

It’s hard to explain to someone with siblings how close-knit your family unit is when you are an only child. A friend of mine from Toronto happened to be in Vancouver one day so we went to lunch and we ended up talking about it – when you’re an only child, Christmases are quiet and intimate.

People talk about obligatory family spats and awkward moments at Christmas. My ex used to call me in tears on Christmas Day, after his traditional fight with his mother. In blog posts I hear people talk about a family disagreement as if it is as much a part of Christmas as cranberry sauce.

Yeah, I don’t know what that’s about. We have never had a Christmas argument in the history of ever.

In fact, my family’s Christmases are so idyllic that our yearly tree trimming always attracted a few of friends, who enjoyed watching the fire, sipping my Dad’s heavy-handed egg nog, and decorating our tree while Karen Carpenter sang about sleighs and snow.

For the next two weeks my parents would spend every evening sitting by the fire, listening to music, sipping wine and occasionally sighing “what a pretty tree!”

Christmas Eve we would go to the midnight mass and sing Silent Night by candlelight, and then my parents would send me to bed and Santa would come.

Yes, that’s right, long after I achieved adulthood my parents continued to do the Santa thing, because I was still in the place of the child.

Only last year did things begin to change. We got Owl to bed and I participated in stocking stuffing.

This year my parents will just have each other, and since my mother stuffs both sets of stockings, I know she’s going to be bummed right out.

It will be easier on me – I’ll have Owl to think about, and really children are what make Christmas fun.

He’s discovering Christmas, and I love it.

“Yook! Wismus yights!”

“Yook! Wismus tree!”

“Yook! A man a beard. Santa.”

He still doesn’t really understand, though, so we’ll be talking him through Christmas the way we did last year. He understands presents, that’s for sure.

We’re planning a Skype session – maybe if I set up my netbook or my itouch in the right spot, my parents (and maybe even PH’s parents) can watch Owl opening his gifts.

I suspect that won’t be quite the same, though.

Hopefully next year, we’ll be having a White Christmas again.

Totally Overthinking Child Spacing BECAUSE THAT’S WHAT I DO

Tags

babies, child spacing, children, family, pregnancy

I’ve always planned a rather large space between children.

I was an only child, and that means that I am entirely unused to the sibling dynamic. The rivalry, the fighting, the chaos were all absent from my childhood. It was just me and my parents. Often it was just me, hanging out in my room.

A wider spacing between kids would give me the chance to focus on each child with the kind of intensity that I enjoyed from my parents as a small child, while still giving my children siblings to share family memories with.

I figured about three years would be about right, but I wasn’t too picky. When Perfect Husband said a couple of months ago that we would have to wait until Owl was in school before we could afford a second, I just laughed. Five years seemed extreme, but if necessary, so be it.

PH has begun to change his tune.

As previously mentioned, Owl is an extrovert TO THE MAX.

Our week in Vegas really made clear to us how much of our time is spend in simply trying to entertain Owl. Taking him places kept him busy, but any time spent in our hotel room was time spent wrangling a pent-up extrovert.

Then, by contrast, our time in Wisconsin involved lots of people to deal with Owl. He especially adored his 12 year old cousin who came down for the reunion as well. He demanded her by name constantly, and we found blessed relief when she was around.

“Take out your IUD,” PH told me.

I think he was only half serious, but we are becoming more and more aware of the possible benefits of having a second child as a potential playmate (and, yes, squabble-mate) for Owl.

We also have begun to do the math.

Owl is not even two, so we have always felt like we have plenty of time. Turns out, it takes 9 months to make a baby.

“Even if you got pregnant right now,” PH pointed out, “there would be two and a half years between them. If we wait much longer it will be three years, and then three and a half.”

How big of an age gap would be too much? If we want a sibling that Owl can play with, and not just share memories with as an adult, we may be fast approaching a pregnancy deadline.

There is another thing that we are beginning to take into account, too. While we were away, we found ourselves really looking forward to when he is old enough to enjoy bigger-kid things. Rollercoasters and the Nuclear Testing Museum – the kinds of stuff that we like to do in Vegas. And we realized that we wouldn’t just have to wait until he is old enough – we have to wait until his younger sibling is old enough.

My mind has been whizzing with numbers.

If we had a baby when Owl is three, he would be four when the baby was one. They wouldn’t be able to play. The baby would be two when he was five. They could start to play. The baby would be three when he was six. They could probably play. The baby would be four when Owl was seven. They could almost definitely play.

If we had a baby when Owl is four, he would be five when the baby was one,  six when the baby was two, seven when the baby was three, eight when the baby is four…

It might be too much.

We’re beginning to think that instead of three being the minimum age gap, three may be the MAXIMUM gap.
The problem is, I don’t feel ready for another baby yet.

I always thought I would just wait until the baby urge came back. Perfect Husband only wants two kids, so if I pop out a second and then get the urge after that, well, I’m out of luck. My next kid is my last chance.

So I’ve been keeping that second future kid like an ace up my sleeve. When the baby urge came back, well, I could bring out the “time for a second!” card. Why condense the baby years, when I could enjoy them consecutively, instead?

I haven’t felt the baby urge yet. In fact, when I think about having a second one at this point I start panicking with thoughts like “OMG no one will ever baby sit for us ever again” and “what if Owl pinches the baby on purpose just to hear it scream??”

But if we change our goal from “let’s wait until we actually want another” to “let’s get someone Owl will actually be able to play with”, I may have to take the plunge early.

And soon, apparently.

The problem is further complicated by my nitpickiness.

Complication #1:

I have always had this dreamy image of being pregnant over Christmas: My family crowded around the tree, bringing me presents of baby clothes that I spread over my belly while Nat King Cole sings in the background. Christmas fills me with a deep peace and it makes me think more about birth and family than any other time of year.

I was technically pregnant over Christmas last time, but since I didn’t know it yet, I don’t think that counts.

If I want to be noticeably pregnant over a Christmas season, I would have to get pregnant either RIGHT THIS INSTANT or in spring/early summer next year.

Well, considering that I have an IUD and don’t really feel ready for pregnancy, not to mention that I don’t have a “pregnant” switch that I can just flip to ON, right this instant is clearly not happening. But if I wait until spring/early next summer before getting pregnant, Owl would be three and a half by the time the baby is born, and that may be too large a gap.

Complication #2:

I don’t want to do the ready-to-give-birth in August thing again. I don’t know if you remember, but I had the cankles of doom and was sweating peculiar slime last time.

Nor do I want a Christmas baby, because Birthmas gifts suck and I wouldn’t wish that on a child.

That leaves a time frame of getting pregnant in May-August, which again leaves me either getting pregnant RIGHT THIS INSTANT or waiting until next spring/early summer. Which, again, might be waiting too long.

Complication # 3:

I feel obliged to give my boss at least a year of work before I become knocked up.

I hate to tell someone who just hired me a few months ago, who just told me that she considers me one of her “senior techs” and who wants me to take an “active role” mentoring the newbies that I will be leaving in 9 months. I figured I wouldn’t be getting pregnant until after next February. But maybe I should be rushing things…

Complication #4

I DON’T HAVE A PREGNANCY SWITCH.

It’s all very well to over think this to the skies, but as The Farm Fairy pointed out to me today, nothing ever goes as planned.

Even if I decided I did want to get pregnant RIGHT THIS INSTANT, chances are excellent that I wouldn’t.

Ditto goes for waiting until early spring/late summer next year. An age gap of three and a half might be pushing it. If I don’t get knocked up with gusto, we could end up with that four year age gap which we no longer want.

…Which means that we should probably begin trying a bit earlier, since a smaller age gap is a better outcome than an earlier age gap.

…Which means that we should probably file Complication 1 and Complication 2  under the category of “Suck It Up, Princess.”

Tell me, honestly – what age gap do you think is too big? How long can I put this off?

A Week in Wisconsin – Part Of Owl’s Heritage

Tags

family, home, in-laws, travel, wisconsin

Well, here we are, home.

Our week with Perfect Husband’s relatives in Wisconsin was an odd combination of relaxing and incredibly exhausting.

On the one hand, we mostly just hung around his grandmother’s house. There was a lot of watching baseball on TV, listening to repetitive stories, and meeting distant in-laws that I will never see again.

On the other hand, we mostly just hung around his grandmother’s house. There was a lot of watching baseball on TV, listening to repetitive stories, and meeting distant in-laws that I will never see again.

I felt like I had to mind my p’s and q’s at all times, because PH has terrified me with stories about his grandmother, who did have a penchant for recounting memories of times when she felt insulted, and graphic descriptions of the violence she wanted to commit in return (I heard the phrase “My, I wanted to jest to punch her face in!” far too many times).

In reality, she was perfectly sweet to me and just doted on little Owl. “C’mere and let me feed you!” she barked at him regularly, and then she’d chuckle as she spoon-fed him yogurt. “He’s just like a little bird!”

But I still lived in fear. PH told me not to read in front of her, because apparently the sight of other people reading has been known to insult her in the past. So mostly I just sat.

When possible we made excursions. We took PH’s mother and Owl to a Brewer’s game and we drove up to Green Bay where PH and his sister drooled over Lambeau Field and Owl toddled around going “Foot. Ball. Foot. Ball.”

But mostly, it was relatives, relatives, and more relatives.

Only one of these relations actually showed up for our wedding, so I hadn’t met most of them. PH barely recognized many of them himself, and had no idea who others were. His American branch of the family doesn’t have much in common with the Canadian side.

Our stay with his distant relations involved a lot of racking my brain for polite rejoinders to announcements like these:

“Women must be stupid for going through the pain of childbirth more’n once.”

“We were so poor even the black kids weren’t allowed to play with us!”

“Mormon’s aren’t Christians!”

“I just had the most blessed bowel movement!” 

Ultimately, even though everyone was very nice to me, I was relieved to leave. I think it was more exhausting to my introvert sensibilities than all of Las Vegas.

But Owl certainly learned a lot about sports while we were there – PH is delighted.

Happy Owlidays

Tags

babies, children, Christmas, family, holidays, photos, slideshows

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