I recently wrote a piece for HuffPo about my general apathy for the prolonged Christmas season. The whole Christmas tree thing is slightly anxiety-producing on the best of years but this year, with a curious toddler who likes to climb things and I just was not feeling it.
Planning vacations or… anything… has become a game of Germ Roulette. Mostly it is Rowan who is our vector of plague, but the rest of us like to chip in and do our part from time to time. I’m pretty sure I have a sinus infection but I didn’t think that would preclude Thanksgiving activities. It originated from a cold that Rowan gave me, so I thought we were pretty safe.
Holy guacamole, Rowan is 18 months old. Pretty much all words I have to say about that are just cliche parenting lines about “my baby” and “time flies” and whatnot.
The pregnancy had been a mess from the beginning, with every plan dismantled. I went through four sets of providers – each progressively more high risk than the last. It was not astonishing when, 37 weeks later, I sat in a hospital room next to my infant son. The surprise was that he was already five weeks old.
If you are anything like me, you have likely read about a kazillion birth stories since the moment you found out you were pregnant for the first time. I have read everything from accidental unassisted homebirths to hospital horror stories. From beautiful water births to straightforward c-sections. I don’t know that I have ready many details about preterm c-sections.
6:15am: My alarm goes off.
I slowly and carefully extract myself from the bed, careful not to wake the toddler who has almost certainly ended up velcroed to my nipple at some point in the night. I tiptoe out of the room, stepping gingerly over the sleeping dog, who is blessedly deaf and does not notice what she does not feel.
Embarrassing our children — Not just for human kids anymore.
We get Squirt shaved once a year or so, but normally if we are going to get Maya groomed it’s just a bath and brush out. But because I am not capable of caring for the number of living beings in my house, she had gotten matted without me realizing how bad it was in a couple of areas. So this happened. She is so fucking embarrassed.