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The advent calendar

My mom was always one of those crafy people who loved holiday decorations just about as much as my brother and I did when we were little. She would deck our house out with all manner of homemade bling; Easter, Valentine's Day, Thanksgiving, Halloween - each warranted some serious effort even in our tiny three bedroom house in Ravenna. But of all the birthdays and holidays to mark the passing months each year nothing compared to Christmas. Christmas was like a wonderland in our house, with the living room overflowing with not only a tree and the requisite presents but a whole family of Santas and enough reindeer to turn Christmas night delivery into FedEx, nativity scenes, whatnots and so much stuff I honestly can't even remember all of it. One item in particular stands out in memory though - a handmade advent calendar. My brother and I would take turns each day during December pinning one of the tiny, ornately sequinned felt ornaments to their little tree. One ornament at a time we'd make our way toward the big holiday, practically peeing our pants in excitement over the gifts that just kept piling up. We fought each and every year over the gold star tucked into the 24th pocket - a promise of everything we anticipated.

I haven't had that feeling of incurable and endless *waiting* since I was about ten, and never have I felt such a pure version since a childhood Christmas, at least not until now. We're visiting with our midwife on Monday again, in just four days. I'll be just into my 17th week and we've decided to try to work out just who it is that's hanging out in there. After hearing the heartbeat at our last visit and oohing and aahing over the tiny littly body floating around in the flotsam and jetsam of my insides we realized we both really, really do want to know. So now, I'm waiting. Counting down the days; hopelessly trying to bend time....and I have been ever since I made the appointment 20 days ago...

I feel like a six year old - waiting for Christmas.

June Cleaver was a double D

It's 7:18 a.m. - a most ridiculous time to be awake, much less baking cookies, but that's exactly what I'm contemplating doing - nevermind that we don't have any flour. Or sugar. I've been wide-eyed and on the exhausted side of bushy-tailed since 4 o'clock.
I send a rambling early-morning pregnancy update to a friend on the east coast and include a novella-length complaint at my inability to sleep through the night - she's been awake for hours already what with the whole EST thing and reminds me, mother twice over that she is, that this is something to get used to. Lack of sleep, she sing songs over email, is just a part of life now. Welcome to the club.

I can no longer lie on my stomach, not because my stomach is all that big just yet, but because my breasts are (fabulously) achingly large. I cannot, for the life of me, understand why any woman would *pay* to have breasts this size. They are most definitely in the way. Even on our deep feather bed, one false move and I'm snapped out of dreamland by a dull ache from my newly acquired...appendages as they gasp for breath and claw for space. I'm about to give them nicknames, they are so very present in my life these days...but that just seems kind of strange after all.

It's 7:33 a.m. and no woman this side of 30, with a child outside the womb or within 40 weeks due, feels the least bit sorry for me and so I digress...and think again about baking cookies.

My chemical brain is trying to force me into this motherhood stuff. My emotional brain was already there long ago but wants nothing to do with cooking and baking or dishes and laundry. Even so, I actually prepared three full meals for Hamid yesterday - not to mention three or four cups of tea along the way. Served them to him, no less, as he sat coding on the couch. I never cook and I certainly don't serve. My perplexed husband just looked up at me each time I presented him with a plate of food and smiled - probably afraid to question what I was up to for fear of breaking the spell. Never realizing that he was graciously thanking my chest each and every time.

The Afterbaby Pile

The first part of my second trimester has been infinitely more kind to me than the first - though I have not, as yet, replaced the sacrificial bag. Still not trusting this body completely yet, I guess. But things are good, I'm gaining a bit more energy each day, and we've been hiking with Mooshy along the beach on weekends (yes, there are such things in Arizona believe it or not...). I've also started to really gain some weight, which is fine with me - it's all part of the deal. But I'm running out of things to wear.

Even before we knew we were pregnant I invested all of my shopping spree fund into clothes that were purposefully one size too big. My carefully selected size medium Abercrombie whatnots, which I was literally swimming in a few weeks ago, now *fit* and any hope I had of wearing the collection of skirts, dresses, and low rise jeans I'd harbored in my closet in a kind of "Well...maybe..." plea with a most unaccomodating universe are now completely unrealistic. Skirts that sank oh-so-low down onto my hipbones now don't even make it past my thighs on the way up. Zippers won't zip. Waistbands get...stuck...before making the intended destination.

I eye a pair of ridiculously skinny white jeans, previously worshipped 27/34s, and marvel that these were ever an option. They get folded up with all the lovely things I am now too big to wear and boxed away for after the baby when I will miraculously melt back down to a Tori Spelling frame...one can only hope, and she was pretty hefty with her baby...gives me something to aim for.

Anyway, for now, *those* clothes are hidden away so I can forget about all that and focus on this darling, gorgeous growing bump that really does look something like a swallowed basketball (atop admittedly rounder hips). And all of a sudden I LOVE being pregnant. Eespecially now that my body has transitioned to clearly pregnant as opposed to maybe-just-getting-chunky. Especially now that we've heard the basketball's hearbeat and seen a beautiful little greyscale image of him/her floating around in there - tiny little ribs, toes, the sweetest little head, and a perfectly formed miniature heart...

Defrosted

Our trip to Florida was such a wonderful break from the freezing chill that permeates Arizona's deserts during the winter as well as a great opportunity for my grandfather to meet my husband. My grandfather, whom I adore but haven't seen in ages what with the oceans and continents between us, and who has apparently saved every single thing I've written over the past few years; both blogs and emails.

Now, there was actually a blog here, right here, on thesuperheavy - years before this one - it was before I knew anything about websites or had a brainy husband to build a proper blog program for me, so I bought the domain and kept it at a place called Angelfire which had all kinds of templates and goodies for the HTML-deficient me. That blog was fairly short-lived and deleted quite purposefully, I even let the domain go for a few years in between - although if you work really, really hard you *can* actually find a few meager bits and pieces of it, clinging to digital life like things on the net seem to do - however old, however useless.

Honestly, I don't want to find it. I know it's there, but I don't want to read it. I throw away remnants of the past the way other people throw out vegetable peels - without mercy, without hesitation, and certainly without nostalgia and I did my best to delete that old account but apparently missed a few "click here's". I don't have boxes of yesterday, virtual or otherwise, tucked away anywhere and I like it that way. Imagine my surprise then when I was presented with a manila folder stuffed with years and years of things I've long since forgotten, things I deleted when I decided it was better to forget, things I don't want to read, or touch, or remember. Things I don't want to know about myself.

That folder, I imagine, will mean something to me later - when I'm older and more comfortable in my own skin; and it was, is, an incredibly sweet gesture. My grandfather's tiny, beautiful wife thrusting the folder at me while she showers me with compliments, urges me to write a book. I love that they've kept that part of my life for me, if only because it's the kind of thing that family members do and I'm a sucker for those few-and-far-between familial "movie moments" - but for now, I've left it behind. Anyway, there's another couple years of thesuperheavy they'll be printing and stuffing into that folder labeled 'TESS'. One day, I hope I'll be able appreciate it's contents. Maybe.