Score one for Cowboy

Cowboy got the job! The dream-with-a-capital-D job.

I am so happy for him. I remember us taking Gus for a walk one February night in the college town where we lived for grad school. We had just started dating and he was discussing the three job offers he had received.

"But what do you really want to do?" I asked.

"I want to be a CFO someday," was his reply.

"Well then choose the job that is going to put you in the best position for that future," (oh, I thought I was such a smarty pants first-year back then.)

For the first 7 years of our relationship, I can definitely say that my job came first. We chose the town we live in based upon my job offer. He transferred his job with the bank so we could be in the same city. I traveled extensively. Usually over weekends. For long periods of time. Always surrounded by a cadre of guys. He had the local job. At the bank with its regular hours. And took care of the house, the bills, the dog, etc., while I galloped around mountain towns. He never gave me shit or grief for any of it.

Um, honey, I know we just bought our first house but I need to go live in Park City for 6 weeks during the Olympics. Where will I live? Oh in a townhouse with the rest of the marketing department. I guess that’s right. They are all guys. Hmm. That will be strange. As an aside, that townhouse became affectionately known as The Delta House. I coined the name the night I slept on the couch because some unplanned visiting big wig was staying in my room. I had counted well over 2 cases of empty beer bottles on the coffee table and thought, "I am so too old for this shit."

Heck, we almost moved to a freakin’ backwater Mo’ town in Utah for my job. (Not PC. We so would’ve moved to PC.)

Now it is his turn to have his job put first.

First because the commute is a wee bit longer. And the job is his first in the executive-level ranks = long hours. Long days. Stretches of days where – once she gets on a schedule – he will likely not see Missy awake. Please Lord, let her be one of those babies that sleep through the night sooner rather than later.

Did I mention that they want him to start before June 16. And we have that pesky little thing in June called a DUE DATE, which, falls on June 15.

Which is code for "Of course you can have some time off when the baby arrives. Will three days be okay?"

New baby. New job. Now we just need to buy a new house to completely stress us out. Actually, the new house will probably come next year when he gets sick of the commute and wants to move closer to his new gig.

We looked at each other this morning and nodded, "Yep, we'll both be in boot camp for a solid year."

And, we decided, all of this puts me in a new job, too: stay-at-home mom.

Wow.

Part of me is secretly pleased with this new job – I already bought a book on making homemade baby food. Title of mom is one of my dream jobs. I just never thought "stay-at-home" would come in front of it. That I would be on this side of the Mommy War.

But the reality of it is that any new job I get will require those long, pay-your-dues hours, too. And it is just not fair to us, to the new baby and to our employers. Everyone will lose under that scenario. Something had to give.

I don’t want this to come off as whining. Please. Dearly wanted baby scheduled to arrive in a month. Husband with his dream job. We are beyond lucky. And I am beyond grateful.

I’m just a little freaked out about this radical change in my career path. I have to have faith that I will figure something out so I can build a bridge between two sides of the divide.

That and trying to manage the web of changing health insurance coverage so close to the end of the pregnancy.

95% there

...With the room.

I hemmed and hawed over bookcases and then found this antique pine armoire, which was marked down for a song. I have a thing for old pine armoires. This is the 4th one in our house. It holds toys, books and a pile of clothes that have yet to be washed and hung. Next weekend.

Here is the vintage secretary's desk I painted. The attached changing pad can come off when Missy is out of diapers and then we'll use it as her desk. We still need to hang the Shaker rack over the changing table.

Those effing curtains - lined and all - are 9 freaking feet long. Each.

Sorry I haven't been posting or commenting. As you can see, I've been on a mission this week.

Coming Soon: The Room

May 1. In most Western cities, May Day is reserved for workers' rights protests, strikes, parades, etc.

In our house, this May Day really means, "May Day!" As in...oh-my-god-I-have-less-than-six-weeks-until-this-kid-comes-and-I-am-so-not-ready.

Like most who have gone through pregnancy loss, I didn't even accept that I might actually have a baby until about halfway through the pregnancy. As such, no planning happened until 5 months in.

Then - I confess - I made a spreadsheet. (Hangs head).

It was the only way my linear mind could grapple with all the stuff we needed to source, buy, research, do. Most people think of spreadsheets for finance, but when Micr0soft launched its Excel program, it used famed mountaineer Ed Viesturs' need to manage supply logistics for an upcoming expedition to Mt. Everest as a marketing story in how to use Excel for planning purposes. If it worked for Ed and Everest, I figured it was good enough for me.

Only back at 5 months when I developed our baby logistics plan, I had all sorts of 2nd trimester energy and failed to incorporate the 3rd trimester brain drain into the plan.

As such, I am behind on the nursery. The ROOM. The room that has so much significance in our journey. The room that I visualized decorating. For years.

The room that has been alternately cleaned out then had the door shut on it with each pregnancy and subsequent loss.

The room that caused a huge fight between us when I refused to move my new work office into it because just in case we might get pregnant. (Ironic but we ended up finding out about Missy a few weeks after that fight).

The room that has sat empty and undecorated since we bought our house in 2001. I referred to it as the "mayonaise room" due to its off-white walls, off-white wooden blinds and off-white berber carpet.

Here, take a look.

I can't believe I'm behind on it after I have pined to decorate it for years. I mostly need to sew and hang the curtains. And sew the crib skirt. And a duvet for the down quilt (even though I know you aren't supposed to use such things until Missy is much older).

The fabric has been sitting in the room for ages. Again, damn that 2nd trimester energy kick making me think I could put this off until now. I need someone to seriously kick me in the ass and get my sewing machine cranking.

You'd think the six-weeks-to-go countdown would be motivation enough. Or just the sheer satisfaction that - finally - THAT room would be done.

Now, I'm locking myself into the house this weekend until all that sewing is accomplished. I don't care if it is sunny outside. My loss for procrastinating.

And because pictures of a boring-ass-white-room are so what no one wants to see on a blog, here is a fun picture from Missy's first shower.

I ate 3 of these.

Week of April 21: 8 months, 8 weeks to go.

Busy, busy week ahead.

Sun: L&D tour at the hospital. Hang head when Cowboy asks if we can bring Gus into the waiting room. In his defense, the lady giving the tour made a big deal about our ability to invite as many family members and friends into the waiting room as we want. Find out that they have flatscreens in the labor/delivery/rest rooms. And cable. Neither of which we have. Is it wrong to kind of hope that Missy will oblige her mama and come late in the week so I can watch "What Not to Wear" on TLC?

Mon: Interview pediatrician. Decide I like her when she says she doesn't mind if I space out vaccinations so Missy won't get several in one day. Bonus points for her saying that she believes that rising rates in autism are probably linked to bad things in the environment.

Mon: Texas Independence Day. Hang out Lone Star flag. Check.

Tues: Earth Day. For the past several years, I celebrate by adding one thing each year to minimize our impact on the environment. This year it is going paper towel-less. We've been paper towel free in our house since January and it hasn't been that hard at all.

Wed: My birthday! Last year I celebrated by recovering from miscarriage #2. Am hoping for a much better day this year.

Thurs: nothing.

Friday: My one year blog-a-versary! What a difference a year makes. I've been thinking a lot about how changed my life is from last year to this year. Will post my thoughts as soon as I suss them all out.

Would love to hear from others as to how you celebrate Earth Day. Do you celebrate it? What, if any, are some things you've done this year to contribute in a positive way to the environment.

Or you can post a "shut up, you hippie" comment if you want to instead. It will make me laugh. I love that word. Hippie. It's funny.

Dear Diary

What the fuck am I going to do? I am going to mother a daughter. And recent events have made it quite clear that I am in way over my head.

Current exploits to acquire childhood toys and books from my parents' storage shed also yielded not one but two diaries.

The first, started when I was 8. Here is an excerpt from the second entry: Today in school Bryan M**** atted (sic) very serious about kissing me. You can tell when he feels like kissing you. When he runs around and atts crazy, that means he loves you and wants to kiss you, BUT he doesn't.

WTF!! I am 8 and writing about boys already. Kissing boys. I can't even properly spell "acted" (for some reason, however, I can spell "serious" correctly). Although I should point out that I didn't technically, really kiss a boy until I was like in the tenth grade. It was all wishful thinking up until that point.

Oh, it gets better. Every few entries begin, "Dear Diary, Now I think I have a crush on so-and-so." Sheesh. I was an 8-year-old jezebel.

The second diary - with Hello Kitty on the cover - gets even better. Started in junior high, it goes all the way up to my senior year in high school.

In it, I went through my mean phase with harshly written critiques about everyone and everything. Although I had just read Harriet the Spy and I remember deliberately trying to copy the prose from the book.

There is the awful, awkward phase of comparing myself to other girls: the pretty, popular ones and the not-so-pretty, not-so-popular ones. It is hard to read now. There is the ridiculous, trying-on-other- personalities phase whereby my friends and I referred to each other by names and persona other than our own.

There is the entry written toward the end of my junior year that begins, "Dear Diary, I think about sex all the time..." Mind you, I hadn't had sex yet either, but still. Oy.

Does anyone else think it ironic you can find a sentence like that one in a diary with Hello Kitty on its cover?

I AM IN WAY OVER MY HEAD.

The most disturbing entries are in the back of the awkward-years-Hello-Kitty diary. It is a food and weight diary, which I began in 8th grade and kept up sporadically during times of *crisis*. Daily, I listed my current weight, my desired weight and everything I ate that day - along with supportive comments like, "pigged out" and "gross. must eat less tomorrow." In the 8th grade, at age 14, I weighed 79 lbs but wanted to get down to 72.

Okay, I should point out that I am short to begin with and was from ages 7 to 20 involved in a sport that dictated small-ness. But desiring to be 72 lbs. as a 14-year-old ?!? WTF?

Old habits die hard. I still keep food diaries from time to time. Although I have not done so while pregnant (too dangerous for me to do). I can't even keep a scale in my house as an adult. I am totally not in the position to pass along good body issues to my daughter. Or, for that matter, equipped to handle the crushes of an 8-year-old or god knows what else of a teenage girl. Holy frick!

Good Lord. I AM SERIOUSLY IN WAY OVER MY HEAD.

I 've got to save these diaries, although kept under lock and key, so I can refer to them when Missy is 8 and then in junior high and so on. That way I can remember what I was going though. It's the only way I can think to put them to good use as a mom.

Any ideas for a terrific hiding place?

It's not all bad

Just when I was bitching about the cold and the rain, today and tomorrow are calling for sunny and warm. Finally, a taste of spring up here.

I feel like the countdown has begun. And even though I still have days of doubt and terror, each day finds me feeling a wee bit happier about Missy’s arrival.

Last week brought it all home – literally and figuratively. I went to Texas to visit my parents. It was wonderful. Great food. Good weather. A fantastic pedicure. My brother visited, too, and we spent an entire day going through my parents’ storage shed, which contained 40+ years of family history in the form of scrapbooks, baby books and favorite story books and treasured toys from when we were young.

My mom, Mrs. Super Planner, had each large box labeled by child. Inside each box was a list of the contents. Items were carefully wrapped in paper. I don’t call her Mrs. Super Planner for nothing. Our goal was to purge items: keep things we wanted for our children or prep items for a mega-collectibles tag sale my mom will hold in the fall.

It was like going through a time capsule of your life. There were the two baby dolls I received as gifts when my sister and then my brother came home from the hospital (replete with entire wardrobes of doll clothes sewn by my grandma). A Depression-era handmade doll cradle used by my grandmother when she was a girl. My first kiddie rocking chair. Hardbound Dr. Suess books (do you have any idea how much those cost now?). A vintage – at 30+ years old, they sure are vintage now – Fisher-Price barn and schoolhouse with all the non-toxic, Made-in-the-USA plastic animals and wooden people intact. My collection of Little House on the Prairie books.

Missy scored.

I love that she’ll be playing with some of the toys and reading some of the books that we spent hours with. And I appreciate that my family is re-using these toys so we don’t have to buy new. Some people might freak that they are older toys but I feel safer having a few pre-made-in-China pieces around.

Missy received some of her first gifts as well, including a pale pink felt cowgirl hat. By a few days into the visit, I actually felt happy and confident enough for Missy’s Nana (that would be Mrs. Super Planner) to buy a sweet little coming-home-from-the-hospital-outfit from Janie & Jack. I went into Pottery Barn Kids for the first time since I started trying to become pregnant. It was a new me, for sure.

I guess my point in all of this is that I am glad that I’ve let those who love and care for me into this process. At first, I was so paranoid and scared about everything. I put off every kind of celebrating. I didn’t want to lose another pregnancy and then be ashamed to face everyone with my sadness.

But the more I open up and let others celebrate – where sometimes I still cannot yet – is absolutely healing to the soul and affirming to my spirit.

The Crabbiest Month

After living in the Northwest for 8 years, I've come to realize that April is the crabbiest month. It's still cold. It's still rainy. The beginning of April is like Ground Hog Day for us - minus the ground hog. We don't need one because we flat out know to expect shitty weather for the next 6 weeks.

The cold and damp imbue every living thing. It makes Gus sulk. It makes people crabby and rude.

Or maybe it is just that I returned from a trip to Texas, where people call you ma'am (and not because they think you are old) and hold doors for you. Unlike the airport parking security asshole at PDX who threatened to write Cowboy a ticket because he left his car for 5 seconds to help open the door to the airport exit for me as I struggled with 2 suitcases, a carry-on and a big belly. Sigh. Because no one else offered to help hold the door.

For as much as I love where I live, the everyone-is-free-do-to-his-own-thing-and-I'm-content-to-be-in-my-own-world ethos is one thing that gets me down when it takes the form of aloofness.

I am just being old-fashioned that I think it is simply a nice gesture for men to hold doors for women? Or that it bothers me that our friends and neighbors let their kids call me by my first name. I do not like a five-year-old calling me Ms. Planner. I prefer Miss Ms. Planner or Mrs. Ms. Planner.

Poor Missy. She'll be the only freak in the neighborhood referring to grown-ups as Mr. & Mrs. and routinely using "Yes, ma'am" and "No, sir."

Now who's crabby? Hormonal, maybe?

In other news, you can tell how great snow season has been by how long it takes Cowboy to file our taxes. We still haven't done them yet.

Our snowpack is like 200% of normal. I didn't mind being the snow sacrifice this season. Really, I didn't.

I have ten weeks to go.

It was our third anniversary yesterday. Because the traditional gift for a third anniversary is leather, I hope Cowboy wasn't embarassed in front of the other restaurant patrons when he opened the leather riding crop I bought for him. Just kidding. I didn't buy such a thing.

But I thought about it.

7th Inning Stretch

I don't know why I included a baseball reference in the title. Other than it is the only reference I can think of right now related to the #7. Seven being the number of months pregnant I will be on Easter Sunday.

As this blog is my journal and my blog, thought I would take a minute to jot down some recent stats (more baseball - and I'm not even a fan):

I've gained 24 lbs so far.

I'm still doing yoga, but mostly at home. When I was recovering from a miscarriage and trying to get pregnant, the yoga studio was my safe space. I'm sensitive about interjecting my obvious belly into someone else's safe space, so just in case, I explained to my instructor that I'd be practicing at home for the most part. I do a very slow, modified Ashtanga practice or a kick-ass prenatal yoga DVD. Bending over in yoga is getting tough, so I may be trying out a prenatal class soon.

I passed my gestational diabetes test.

Since I am Rh-negative, the antibodies test came back as predicted. Yet another shot of Rho-Gam.

I failed my anemia test and now must take 325mg (!) of iron a day. At first I thought this was no biggie, but then quickly realized that most iron supplements come in 25mg doses, which equals a heck of a lot of iron pills each day.

We signed up for a 529 college plan.

We have started working on "the room." Will post pictures when there is more to show than paint on the walls and pieces of a crib stacked in the corner waiting for assembly. Right now I am re-finishing a vintage secretary-style desk to use as a changing table. It is slow going because I cannot use any chemicals (hand sanding is so fun!) and wear a mask and gloves for safety. I will be pestering this blogger soon for curtain sewing tips.

Frienemies

Do guys have frienemies?

I’m beginning to think that one of Cowboy’s close friends might qualify.

To preface, since pre-Ms. Planner, Cowboy has maintained a close group of friends from college. Many of them live nearby. I’ll come home to find one of them in the garage or drinking a beer in our kitchen after a round of golf. I like this about Cowboy and his posse.

All have wives and children. As such, we congregate every so often for birthdays; summer holidays at someone’s cabin or lake house. We are the youngest and last couple to add children to the mix. Some of their children are old enough to babysit ours.

I would not have chosen to be friends with most of these folks were it not for Cowboy. We get along. They make me laugh (mostly). But we don’t have much in common save for our love for Cowboy. That being said, I respect his bond with his friends and don’t want to do anything to jeopardize it.

HOWEVER…

He has one particular friend – a stay-at-home dad – who is starting to drive me insane with his negative comments about child rearing. Here I am, trying - after a long time of sadness – to be genuinely happy. And he seems intent on imparting on a steady stream of "let’s get a rise out of Cowboy and bring down the pregnant lady" with his sage stories about raising his only child, a girl, now 7.

Let’s see. There are endless stories of baby excrement. Especially related to changing the diapers of little girls. The story – told on several occasions - of when his daughter puked and it got in his mouth. Don’t ask. Stories about leaky swim diapers. Scoffing when Cowboy and I bring up the concept of maybe using cloth diapers. Badgering me as to when are we getting a playpen for the boat. Although he knows Cowboy absolutely doesn’t want a playpen in the boat (I know you had a playpen in your boat but I prefer to hold my baby in our boat – thankyouverymuch). Generally how our lives will suck after having a kid.

Our theories and desires (and, admittedly at this point, they are just theories) are met with the proverbial: ha-ha-ha-oh-you-new-clueless-parents-just-you-wait attitude. Yesterday, his unrelenting spew took me to a point I hate in myself: I let loose a snotty and indignant comment, something to the effect of, "yes, I believe I’ve heard that story from you ten times," which brought the conversation in a large group of people to a complete halt. Nice one.

I don’t want to surround myself with people like him. I prefer positive-thinking these days. I need positive thinking. There is so much stacked against a new mom what with the hormones, the questioning of one’s self confidence, the inevitable sleep deprivation, the changing body, etc., that I need those who will build us up not bring us down.

Stay away from this guy is the easy answer. Except that he and Cowboy go water skiing once a week. Water skiing season is just around the corner. I watch his daughter while the guys go out on the river after work for a ski session. No one can figure out why his wife can’t leave work at 5 pm just one night a week so the guys can have guy time. So I watch the child for Cowboy’s sake because he is annoyed to no end by her behavior on the boat. Sigh.

Any ideas on how I can stem the tide of negativity without impacting my husband’s long standing friendship?

You know, writing about this seems very self-indulgent when there many out there close to me who are suffering in ways that are so much more poignant and real than this. I guess with all the sadness afloat, I am just feeling a tad more sensitive these days.