Forces of Nature

Before I tell this story, I have to add this disclaimer. After 5 pregnancies, a woman's attitude towards everything gestationally related changes. At least mine has. I'm less hyper about every little thing, and, more than anything, far less full of "shoulds" for myself, my body, and, most importantly, my husband. I didn't marry him for his golden tongued compliments or smooth ability to find just the right thing to say in any given moment. And, as my past 4 babies have taught me--he is never less inclined to find the right thing to say than when I am pregnant--especially third trimester, lumbering, crabby, exhausted giantess pregnant. (Sounds lovely, doesn't it?) So onto my story....

Lately, I have noticed Chad becoming awfully cuddly at night. I'm not talking anything but plain, old fashioned snuggling, here (really), but night after night I find him spooned up against me warmly, his arm flung over my growing bulk, his breath in my ear. Its about 50/50 whether I find this contact sweet and welcome, or annoying and clingy. Regardless, it's just not like him.

My beloved is not a cold man--to the contrary, he can be incredibly playful and affectionate with me and the kids. But he's not exactly what you would call a hugger. So this surprised me.

Perhaps, I mused, he is finally recognizing the awesome miracle that is taking place inside my body. Perhaps he finds himself drawn, when not fully conscious, to the sheer, feminine, life-giving power of my expanding womb (and, you know, everything). Perhaps he is attempting to bond with his unborn child through close contact with her mother. It was a lovely little explanation I wove for myself.

So I asked him.

"You seem awfully cuddly lately; what's going on? You are, like, right next to me all night long, anymore," I teased him.

"Dawn," he said, tilting his head at that 'gimme a break' angle. "Do you know what happens when you climb into bed these days?"

"What?" I asked, still blissfully oblivious, still grinning.

"It's just gravity."

Humph.

Right on both counts

Conversation between Grace, her swim team buddy and me:

"Mommy, what does XL mean?"

"Like, what do you mean?"

"Like, Nintendo XL?"

"Oh, I don't know that much about Nintendo and all their different names."

"Oh, but, like, don't all your clothes say that, too?"

Thanks for noticing. "Oh. Yes. It means 'extra large'"

"And you need that right now because of the baby, right?"

"Yep--I need extra large" (because of the baby--very generous of you). Turning to her friend, "She needs extra room for the baby. It's called 'Maternity'" clothes."

"What's 'eternity' clothes?" asked the friend.

"It means, 'really fat', right mom?"

Girls, you both got it right.

Locker Room Incident

Tonight was Sammy's basketball game. With much planning, we managed to arrive about 25 minutes early (straight from school and work) and proceeded in our usual chaotic, meandering way to descend upon the locker room to change into our athletic clothes from our school and work uniforms. We were our usual noisy, messy selves, bickering and bossing, making our gradual way towards our goal--Sam and I in athletic attire, 5 coats hung in the lockers, quick snack consumed on the fly. There was another mom in the locker room with us--a couple of cute 5 or 6 year old girls and a diapered toddler boy in tow, changing dutifully into swimsuits. To be honest, I took little notice of her, only meeting her eyes once. I sensed a sort of weird vibe from her, sort of irritated or pointed or something, but I was far too exhausted and consumed with herding my ducks to pay much attention.

Fifteen minutes later I was busy settling my girls on the sidelines and getting Sammy onto the court in his yellow jersey when I was tapped on the shoulder. This cute little gal started telling me about the "family locker room" and how I could access it whenever I needed to. "We really recommend it for families with little boys," she persisted chippily. Wait a minute. What? Are you serious? My 6 year old son was being reprimanded for coming into the girls' locker room with his mother?

"We've had a complaint," the woman said sheepishly. My temper flared around my obvious confusion.

"She had a son, too," I snapped, unnecessarily, I know. "He was younger than mine, but she had a boy in the locker room, too," I repeated.

The girl was instantly abashed, and I retreated immediately. "It's okay," I told her. "Really, I know you have to say something. We'll use the other locker room from now on. I'm just saying," I muttered, as I walked away. But I have grown increasingly annoyed as the night has worn on.

I don't know for sure, but I am pretty certain that the "family locker room" is a converted handicap bathroom. There is one in the entire facility. I have no problem using it, really. As long as it is available when I need it, (though visions of stressed out mothers of sons over a certain dangerous age--I don't know--5? standing in an endless line waiting desperately to take their little perverts to the bathroom or to change into their gym shorts can't help but fill my mind).

I am just annoyed by the sheer audacity and insanity of it all. It's not that I haven't thought about this before (remember the Garden of Eden post a year or so ago?), it's just that I don't see any feasible alternative. Beyond the implications of safety involved with sending a 1st grade boy into a boys or men's locker room alone, there are the simple practical considerations. Is there a 6 year old on the PLANET (male or female) capable of changing his clothes, keeping track of every item he removes, and not succumbing to the siren song of an infinite array of unsupervised mischief (unattended toilet paper! 6 showers all in a row! Lockers I can fit inside!)? I'm sure they exist, but like most families, we were on a schedule, and even if I could keep him from messing around and somehow keeping track of his crap completely unattended, there is no way he could do it in any reasonable amount of time. Even assuming he could defend himself from any potential real threats to his innocence, should the unlikely and unthinkable occur.

I am also the mother of many daughters, please remember. I am every bit as concerned about their modesty as I am their brother. But he is 6--HE IS 6!! Not to mention the fact that he has taken about 3 baths his entire life unaccompanied by a female. And that he was infinitely more concerned during our brief locker room time with the distribution of fruit snacks and pretzels and whether he had to tie his own shoes than he was in noticing any little half dressed vixens that might have shared his space.

Mothers of daughters, please give those of us with little boys a break. We already have to deal with getting peed on during every diaper change, potty training months later than your girls, learning about such weird toys as bakugan and beyblades (trust me--learning the names of the half dozen or so Disney princesses is cake compared to remembering ben's 10 alien forces) and dealing with the noise, the mess, the sheer masculine energy of these little men. Don't also make us worry about offending or threatening your little princesses. Trust me--the risks inherent in their catching a glimpse of a little extra skin are far less pervasive than the risk to your precious daughters should they lay a finger on his fruit snacks!!

I'm not one to complain, but...

So I readily admit that this pregnancy has been remarkably easy. No (and I mean not a single twinge of) morning sickness which for me is nothing short of miraculous. Much more reasonable weight gain than prior pregnancies (still on the high end, but at least within spitting distance of normal, even considering my starting point was a titch higher than it might have been in the first few).

But I'm going to vent for the next 3 minutes (until the kids finish their bedtime snack and start circling and demanding lap space). I HATE third trimester. And I'm barely even in it. At least I think I am. Actually, the thing that is most noticeable about later pregnancies is just how unmonitored they are, at least by this mama. With Grace, I thoroughly noticed and analyzed every tiny twinge and hiccup. I read dozens of books (really--this is no exaggeration as my recent attempt at halving my books, a sad and disheartening prospect--has shown me. And my mom informed me that medically speaking I am now what is known as "a grand mul-tip" or something like that. Sounds sort of regal, doesn't it?) I also knew almost to the second how much time remained until my due date. Now, if it weren't for the babycenter.com emails I receive each week (and when the heck did I manage to sign up for that? I ask you), I couldn't even tell you what month I am in. With Grace, and less so with each subsequent baby, I felt personally responsible for ensuring the continuation of my pregnancy through sheer force of will, focus, and devotion to prenatal vitamins and a religious avoidance of tuna fish, soft cheeses, deli meat, and, of course all alcohol. With this one, I could nearly (nearly) forget for weeks that I was pregnant at all. Until now.

So I am due April 15. What does that make me? 26 weeks and something, I think? Anyway, trimesters are 13 weeks a piece, so that puts me just in the very foothills of the mountains of trimester 3. And I'm already dragging.

I hate this part. Other than the delightful popcorn bouncing of this little baby bug (which is decidedly less delightful in the middle of the night), there is not much joy in these dragging last 3 months.

I hate my clothes. I hate my feet. I have completely stopped speaking to my legs (seriously--you do not have to gain and metamorphisize into something so horrid at such a disgusting rate. Your job is so peripheral to this whole effort, really). My smile is beginning to retreat entirely into the folds of my fat face. My hemorrhoids are acting up. I breathe like Darth Vadar with a head cold and have to lie down every time I take a load of laundry up the steps just in order to catch my breath. I am hot all the time (which makes me grateful this last trip down this long, long road will complete before any real prospect of hot weather sets in). And I just have no energy. My life requires a lot of energy. The others are minor annoyances, but the exhaustion can be nearly insurmountable.

Case in point, the queen is on my lap, Claire is insisting on helping me "on the 'puter" and Grace is performing girl scout camp songs and demanding a better audience than I am currently providing. Sam is MIA, but I'm guessing his silence involves contraband chocolate chips. Oops, no--he needs someone (guess who?) to bring him toilet paper.

So, perhaps the beauty of this last pregnancy is the complete lack of attention and time I have to pay to its inevitable march towards April, even now in these exhausting last weeks. Remarkably, in spite of my utter inability to give it any more than a passing thought here and there and a grudging avoidance of wine and diet pop (most of the time), things are progressing just fine.

It's 8pm. I have about 30 minutes before I will be drooling into my pillow, regardless of whether the little ducks are settled or not. I best be off...

Good night bug. Glad you can get what you need from this big old body of mine whether I pay you any attention or not. Good thing my love doesn't falter even when my attention does.

Mark me down for the assist

In ten minutes, we are leaving for Sammy's weekly basketball practice/game. For the second year in a row, I volunteered to coach the team. For the second year in a row, I have been assigned as the "assistant coach."

Now, I'm not complaining, exactly. Chad thinks I'm crazy to even try and coach at all--what with 4 kids and one on the way, a full time job, and about a bajillion other commitments and daily activities to keep track of.

But I love basketball. I devoted years of my life to it, spent countless hours perfecting my hook shot and my free throw, spent even more hours thinking and dreaming about the sport. I was kind of a freak about it.

I started playing when I was 8 on the exact same courts my little boy now takes his first tentative shots on. I played every Saturday until I was 12, then joined the junior high and high school teams and played every day for 6-7 months the next 6 years. Then I chose my college, in part, based on where I could keep playing the game I loved and played another 4 years. Then I joined the men's after work leagues for the next 2 years, even though I was the only woman on any team and struggled to play the power forward/center position which was the only job I'd ever had at my lifelong gigantor height (6 feet is not a center in most men's leagues).

And now they assign me to the assistant job. The guy I'm assisting wore cowboy boots to the last practice.

So games start at 5 and that's an awfully early time for my darling morning duty hubby to get home by. Which means I have to rely on my 8 year old to watch her 2 sisters. Which means I'm distracted during games, to say the least. And I am 6 months pregnant so my attempts at demonstrating certain moves are, hmmm, how to say it, somewhat comical and unwieldy (though these kids--99% 5 and 6 year old boys--are most certainly getting the gist). And, in fairness, I also end up holding a cranky queen on my hip half the time as well. So, from a broader perspective, I really am much better suited to the assistant role.

But still. If I can ever get any of my girls to play, I won't take such an assignment quite so lightly. For now, I'll bide my time. Mark me down for the assist.

2011--the year of halving it all

No, that title isn't a typo. This post represents my 2nd annual New Year's Resolutions post, where I tell you all the ways I am going to make my life 100% perfect in the coming year.

Yeah right. But, eternal optimist that I am, I have to try, and what better day to list my resolutions to make it just so.

So this is my vision. Awhile back, during one of those inevitable diet and weight loss conversations over a buffet table at a party, a relative of mine told me that she and her husband were trying a new diet based on the principle "halve it." The premise, of course, was that you could eat anything you wanted (within reason) as long as you ate half of your normal portion. Split dinners at restaurants, take a half piece of cake at birthday parties--you get the drift.

So this has been bubbling around my brain for awhile, and has begun to take shape in a very different form, though in principle precisely the same.

In the last month, of course, we've gone through our annual quadrupling of stuff. Santa simply shows no restraint in this household (darn December bonus), and grandma, grandpa, and godparent Santa aren't much better. We are bombarded with new whiz-bangs and thingamabobs every year. And with each subsequent child, the pile of loot grows proportionally--which means we are getting approximately 4x the amount of gifts we used to take home when it was just Chad & I. I'm not complaining, of course we are blessed beyond measure to live such a luxury year after year and I try hard never to forget it.

Nevertheless, we are starting to burst at the seams a little bit in this moderately sized home of ours. The words "we need a new house" have been uttered more than once in the last 2 months around here. But there are a number of reasons why that is not all that feasible just now. The main reason is, of course, that we will need to buy a new building for the business before too long, and taking on that much new family debt, in spite of my regular paycheck, just isn't altogether prudent. We also really like our neighborhood and our location--we've had experiences with crappy neighbors before, so we know how blessed we are here on B-lee drive. Our kids have a great network of friends and kickball cronies where we are. We are just a few blocks from Grandma and Grandpa and school, shopping, and both places of work are conveniently close. When rates went low enough in the last couple of years, we refinanced to a 15 year mortgage, and as it stands we could pay this house off before we need to invest a not-so-small fortune in college educations. There are a lot of positives to this location and this house.

On the other hand, we have just 3 bedrooms. My dad and uncle Ding were talking over Christmas, and they didn't quite relate to my laments about lack of bedroom space. "They only come in 2 sexes," Ding reminded me. "You just keep stacking them in." Sound logic, I have to admit. Though if this baby is a girl, I may request donations for a 4th bedroom in lieu of gifts come April. If it is a boy, I can get my head around a girls' room for 3 and a boys' for 2. There are worse things then learning how to share a room sometime before you go off to college.

But I meander (do you expect anything less?) So the point, of course, is--we have too little space. Or too much stuff. As I've explored (at some length) more space isn't in the cards right now. So, that leaves us with door number 2--less stuff.

So my plan is to halve it. No really. I want to try and reduce our crap load by 50%. This is a lofty, likely unachievable goal; I realize this--especially with a baby on the way. But even if I miss it by half (no pun intended) I should still be able to simplify and streamline our lives enough to quit feeling like I am drowning in a sea of ill fitting hand-me-downs, unused kitchen gadgets, and the ubiquitous and ever present avalanche of plastic toys and paperwork, ah, me the paperwork. Don't even get me started.

I spent the first 5 years of my career as an assembly line manager in a lean manufacturing facility. When I say lean, I mean lean. Inventory (or muda) of any sort was the dirtiest of wasteful, ugly words where I launched my professional life. I learned all the evils of "too much" in a factory environment (someday maybe I'll outline all the types of waste--moving, sorting, etc.) This was drilled into me enough that I am very conscious in my every day life of all sorts of "non-value added" activities.

So, skip ahead 14 years (oh man--has it really been that long?) and I'm about to welcome baby 5 into an already busting at the seams daily life. Where will I put him? Physically, I mean? And how can I possibly squeeze her into my schedule?

Easy. By halving it all.

So, in the interest of keeping this from the 2011 words or so it is threatening to become (and because if I don't feed the natives soon I will have a revolt), here is my list:
1. Halve my stuff. I want room in every drawer and cupboard. I want to cut out the excess.
2. Halve my workload. What's the point of a houseful of kids if I'm just adding people to wait on? An 8 year old, a 6 year old, and a 4 year old are capable of far, far more than they are currently being asked to contribute. Implement the sibling buddy system.
3. Floss. Seriously, this year is the year.
4. Exercise--the plan is 30 minutes of yoga, 30 minutes of cardio (biking or walking til April, then running). Yoga--well, more on this in a later post.
5. Whole foods. The High School Reunion diet is my inspiration. (more on this later, too).
6. Potty train the queen, lose the binky, and transfer her to a big girl bed.
7. Keep spending under $250/week. This includes all groceries, birthday presents, household items (including housekeeper) etc.
8. Use Scrip for all groceries and gas.
9. Read to the kids every night.
10. Blog at least 2x week.
11. Invite another couple/family to do something at least 1x month. (This could be the subject of another post sometime as well).

There you have it--my year of lofty ambitions in 11 (for 2011--clever, right?) pithy little goals. Now I really must feed the family as I'm pretty sure they have all subsisted on chocolate frosting, chex mix, and clementines all day long (please reference goal number 5).

Happy New Year, everyone. May 2011 be as wildly wonderful and full of blessings as 2010.