She Laughs at the Days

On the 3rd night of Hanukah our 3rd little light came into the world. I think I may have coughed her out. I’ve had a cold for a couple of weeks now, one of the kind that linger in the lungs and lead to prolonged fits of coughing and choking. I noticed on the Thursday before the Baby was born that after a coughing fit I would start to have a contraction. They weren’t very strong. I assumed they were just Braxton-Hicks and was pretty much able to ignore them for a couple of days. I laughed to myself a day or two later when I reread the instruction sheet on when to call the midwife and right at the top it said when you start feeling contractions in your back. Oh yeah. So I coughed and contracted and continued to expect to have a baby at the end of the month at the earliest. Other people around me seem to have clued into what was going on before I did. Maybe they saw my slight winces on Friday night during the Shabbat meal as I contracted at the dinner table. Maybe they noticed me stoppin…

How did someone so silly and funny and full of joy come from me? You always seem a little bit too radiant, too intense, too full of life compared to the others around you. Your light seems to burn a little bit more brightly than every one else’s.

You love to have an audience; you will execute strange faces, and loud excited sounds for the benefit of any one watching. You have been learning from your aunties how to dance and are just recently able to perform isolation movements with your shoulders and hips like you’ve been jazz dancing for years already. You look like such a girl and a little lady all rolled into one when you throw your shoulders back and move to the music. Somehow everything you do is entertaining. Your brother tries to imitate you in your silliness and attention getting, but somehow it doesn’t seem to work as well for him. Except you, you find him vastly entertaining most days. I love to sit and listen to you belly laugh as he goes into crazier and crazier antics in o…

Well, one week ago I gave birth to a baby girl, at 3:10 am, in my MIL's bathtub, with my husband, MIL/doula and midwife in attendance, in what was quite possibly the most beautiful perfect birth I've ever seen, and it was mine. She was 6 lbs 4 oz, she has dark hair and eyes, which breaks the freaky blond streak we've been on. (We are both dark but our first two kids got the throw back genes to their grandparents.) She finally has a name, we spent a long time debating it, the Boy wanted her name to mean rejoice. The translation of her name is wisdom rejoice god is good, only it's in other languages and prettier sounding.

I've since been camped out at the in-laws in bed with my baby while other people take care of my older children and the cooking and cleaning and holiday excursions and birthday party preparations. I've been to 2 Christmas dinners, one of which was way more fun than the other, and made it to church yesterday. Now I'm back home and finding out …

So sometime in the next couple of days, unless things reverse themselves, we should be meeting Schmitty for the first time. AAAAHHHH!!!! This is about 3 weeks ahead of schedule so I have a ton of things that aren't finished the way I want them to be but that's what birth is all about right, letting go and letting things happen. Thankfully I'll have help with throwing the Girl her birthday party on Friday and I've already got her presents ready. The genius husband can make a great birthday cake so she'll get her horsie cake.

I'm off to try and get some sleep before things get carried away. The GH is off to buy me some labor snacks. I'll be back in a week or so.

The modem and my computer just suddenly stopped talking to each other last night right as I was posting again. That post is locked on to my suddenly internetless computer so I bring you something else on the Genius Husband's machine instead.

Happy Hanukah.

We enter the holiday week with hacking coughs all round. The girl stayed awake all night coughing, so guess who stayed awake all night with her? This normally unpleasant experience was confounded by the fact that I have the same cough, I'm so pregnant that finding a comfortable position to sleep in is a real challenge, and the coughing started to bring on mild contractions yesterday. Every time I got just a little bit comfortable, her majesty would start screeching from her bed the latest demand of the evening. "I want water!" "I want a blanket!" "I DON'T want a blanket." This was all puncuated with loud, deep, pathetic sounding coughs that had me weighing the merits of cough suppressants whi…

Look, I have a picture of my pregnant belly. Actually I have a couple more of other subjects too thanks to last weekend borrowing a digital camera. My Milly took this one. So here is your first close-up of Schmidtty.

You see, the Boy is convinced that this is also a boy child, and that we should name it John, because that is a boy's name that he likes. The Girl is convinced that it is a girl child, but when asked what she thinks we should name it she replies "Baby Jake." We have a friend we see often who bears the same name.

My youngest sister in law put this all together and dubbed the child Schmidtty, or Schmidt for short. It stuck, and will until we find another name. [Man I need to get on this baby name thing I'm running out of time. Usually I start with meaning and work from there, but what I know this child's name should mean and what I can find that has that meaning doesn't really work that well. Hebrew, Greek, Arabic, these have all failed me. I should …

This morning the relative quiet of the predawn dimness in our bedroom, when the children are still sleeping and the alarm hasn't yet gone off, was shattered by a three-year-old voice suddenly asking, "Mommy, what's daddy doing to you?"

I love getting yearly letters from friends and family, I like the photos and the updates, I like to stay in touch. I also like the inner chuckle I get when I read the subtle bragging that some people include, the aside references to the shiny new car, the number of degrees their kids have now, the successes that they feel proud of and want everyone to know about. I chuckle because I know that those letters don’t tell the whole story, and I enjoy the irony of keeping in touch with people by only showing the best face to them, and never letting them get too close.

I get a lot of news letters, my dad is from a family of 11, my mom is from a family of 8, and I have many friends as well who keep in touch this way. While most of the letters I get are the typical look at our beautiful children, life, home, cars, vacations, etc. Some few of my aunts and uncles have decided to break out of the mid-western best face forward mode and actually share how they really are, what they have gone through…

Ever hurt someone unintentionally, over and over again, not knowing that you're doing it? Ever find out from someone else and learn that they haven't said anything because they love you and want to cut you a lot of slack because they know you're going through a difficult time right now, and so they just let you keep hurting them instead? Ever feel really, really crummy? Feel even more so after you apologize and they forgive you without even trying to make you feel bad?

Yeah that was my day, how was yours?