I'd say it's about time you met the Gopher.

There she is, sweet Ophelia Rose. Born at the beginning of December by c-section, 10 days early.

FAQs:

What is the Birth Story?
This could be a long one, due to some medical weirdness in my blood requiring a lot of doctors and a bonus captive period in the hospital a few weeks before she actually came for infusions and other excitement. Boring. Here are the parts that count:

1. Ringalingaling!
Surprise! I know we're catching you at the end of your work day, but just wanted to let you know the stars have aligned and your platelets are up and you're having major abdominal surgery to produce a human tomorrow morning at 9am! Be there or be square! Oh, and don't eat or drink anything after midnight! Tell your boss! Bye!

2. It turns out that while you lie there on the table, nice and sliced wide open, the hot topic of conversation is Types of Salsa in the Hospital Cafeteria. The anesthesiologist likes the fruity salsas. Turns out there are far more choices since Baja Fresh opened. Residents are all about the roasted corn, and the nurses dig the green chile business. What's that? Oh, shit! A BABY!

Also, being conscious through surgery in a teaching hospital means listening to the surgeon grill observing students about your innards. "What is this?" is not something you expect to hear from someone who is elbow-deep in your abdominal cavity. Even for the sake of education.

3. ...And truly miraculously, it happened again: a perfect baby girl. Generally grunty and squeaky with a bad-ass hunger cry and a voracious appetite, big blinky eyes and a nice baby smell. Oh, we are lucky.

What does Bird think of all this?
Where to begin? She's huge, for one. A gigantic, sweet and bumbling monster of a child, doing her very very best to not crush or eat this baby out of love or frustration. Always in her face, nose to nose. So much adoration for this tiny new thing, so much curiosity and, alternately, boredom. So much sharing of attention to be done, so much change. Trying so hard to be the big sister we all made such a big deal about. We congratulate her on her kindnesses, on sharing, every victory we can find. We try to be gentle with redirection, give her a little wiggle room. But we also get annoyed. She gets annoyed. We snap. We all act out. We reconcile. We say to each other, "I love you very much, even when you are DRIVING ME BANANAS." Permission to say that is worth its weight in gold, for all parties involved. I hear it just as much as I say it these days.

Goodness, though. It's complicated. Sometimes I want to set her out on the front porch and lock the door behind her, sometimes I literally cry over her sweetness and the hard, clumsy work she's putting into her part of becoming a family of four. Sweet Bird. Oh my.


Are you getting any sleep?
Am I supposed to? Stop asking silly questions. Are you winning the lottery? No? Did you expect to?

How is A. holding up?
Wow. The most wonderful husband/ father/ friend. I hit the spousal jackpot, y'all. This man was born to be a daddy of girls and a partner to a lunatic like me. He is incredibly kind, patient, and so easy to love. And damn cute, eh?

Can we bring a casserole?
And oh, the friends! The best in the whole dang world and beyond. We have eaten well and been so loved. Who says we don't live near our family?




How were the holidays?
The first in nine years without a single trip to Indiana. Plenty of visitors-- two separate shifts of grandparents and family before and after the Main Event, full of joyful company and personal quirks and general holiday drama. But Christmas Eve and Christmas Day were just ours-- free to sit around in our jammies and gaze at the baby and play with our (modest) Christmas loot and eat nachos and watch Mary Poppins. I never knew Christmas could be so lovely. Best. Gift. Ever.



How is Maternity Leave?
Oh, man. Livin' the dream most of the time. Sometimes feels a little solitary, sometimes wonderfully so. Adjusting to the pace of home, re-working my definition of urgency and daily accomplishment, trying to keep the dishes done and the laundry caught up, trying to work in a shower once in a while.

But also: YOU SHOULD SEE MY LIST, Y'ALL. Budgets, closets, books, sewing, projects, purging, thrifting, cooking... half of me fighting for long hours of napping and dreamy baby-gazing and the other half barking tasks like a drill Sargent. This is the last maternity leave I'm likely to have-- and possibly the most time away from work until I retire*-- and both of me (dreamy mama and taskmaster) just want to make the most of it. Sometimes it is an ugly fight, but everyone eventually gets their say, and it tends to cost me my nap.

And what else?
Ran over my own keys in the pet store parking lot this weekned. And you thought it couldn't be done!

The neighborhood free-range chicken has taken a particular shine to our front yard tree/ garden. As her shitting place.

Lovin' the MOBY.

Contemplating a haircut like this one, as a sneaky growing-out tactic, considering going back to Shaky Hands. I know! A gamble! But she is so cheap! And I know better!


And up to my general scheming, as usual. Wheels turning, turning. Always.


*OMFG

I'm not gone, I'm just...

Pregnant. Still.

Don't forget about me. I have things to say if you still want to hear them.

But right now I have to pee. Again.

31 days to go, btw.

Can I get a HOLY SHIT?

Well, well, look at THIS! She decides to just SHOW UP again, eh?

I do have an excuse. I haven't been writing because I haven't really been awake for 3-ish months. Completely exhausted and sick as a damn dog and hardly able to construct a quick email sentence about whether or not I am available for a conference call. I mostly needed to be in a quiet and more private space for a bit while I wrapped my brain first around surviving the day and on a bigger scale, the impending whiz-bang close to 2009. At which time, I will be a mama to TWO. 12/13/09, baby. I can't (and won't) say we're ready or that we know how we're going to swing this, but it's what we want and it's good. We'll know what to do when we do it. Things always come together and I'm just trying to pay attention to the signs and opportunities. The excitement is different and more peaceful this time.

:::
One of my to-do lists currently includes the item, "list of demands." I have no idea what I meant when I wrote that, but I like knowing that, at some point, my demands may be met if I would only submit them in list form.

:::
I shopped at a grocery store in the college neighborhood on Monday. It was heaven: clean, bright interior, landscaped parking lot, well-stocked shelves and Fage yogurt availability. I was asked --MORE THAN TWO times-- not for change or cigarettes but if I could be helped in my food search (the staff must have sensed my wide-eyed wonder). There was actual eye contact as my food was passed over the scanner by the kind hands of a Harris Teeter associate, and polite conversation, even an offer to help me to my car with my seven very manageable bags-- an offer that, admittedly, first tripped my initial "DO NOT follow me to my car, M*f*kr" defense before I realized there is also a HELPFUL kind of following, not just the creepy, "can I have a ride" kind. The icing on the cake? This particularly well-lit, friendly grocery is open until ELEVEN o'clock-- hardly noteworthy to some, but the dingy yellow ghetto groceries close at 9pm due to the sometimes unsavory late night patrons, and visiting at 8:30 leaves you waiting to pay for your mealy, pink tomato in the one open checkout lane, inhaling the scent of a 7-pack per day smoker as she unloads an entire cart of Hungry Man dinners onto the belt while behind you, a ferociously strong person gives you the crazy eye, all of us prepared to accept complete indifference from the disgruntled check out girl with tattoos on her neck who will hear the sound of a dozen eggs being crushed under a watermelon as she bags your items, and throw your tortilla chips in the mix, just for good measure.

Shopping until eleven, like it's the most normal thing in the world. The luxury of it! After a lovely dinner out with old friends, I entered the friendly and well-lit grocery at 8:30pm, childless and free to roam about among the micro-brews and the bok choy, the non-sticky floors and pleasant, non-gaggy smells. It was like a past life. It was like checking into a spa. A spa with more than one kind of yogurt.

Bird needs a haircut and other bits of information

So, after another trip to Urgent Care and many, many hours waiting to see a bona-fide opthamologist and a series of three waiting rooms full of elderly people with cataracts, my husband is fine, his sight has been restored, and the eye patch has been retired until the next ocular tragedy or costumed holiday, whichever comes first.

I'm still looking for the camera cable so I can share a photo or two. Our little catch-all office area is still a shambles but a more, uh, planned shambles, as we now have some actual piles of things that might really go together after we build the shelves we've promised ourselves. A. has separated all of "his" stuff from "my" stuff... editing and video and random cables and hard drives and nerds-only equipment over here, teeming piles of shit to be shredded, shit to be reviewed, shit to be paid, and general miscellaneous shit-- oh, and the massive collection of daily finger paint masterpieces on thick construction paper--over there. Seeing as "my" computer doesn't have internet, or electricity at the moment, I'm typing this on some kind of bozo keyboard that has editing symbols and colored keys instead of letters, and I must say I'm faring remarkably well. Mrs. Gibbs (high school typing teacher-- we actually used typewriters. And corrective tape) would be proud of my mad blind typing skeels.

Anywho, just thought I'd share that I didn't make bread this week and didn't buy any either, and yet we have miraculously survived. I received my political bumper sticker of choice and continue to race home to check for my t-shirt daily, but alas, it does not arrive. I made a delicious thing from the October VT tonight that I didn't expect to be quite so delicious, but hey, we were pleasantly surprised (served it over cous cous). Birdy has declared a tolerance for cous cous, and the new kid in her class at school seems to cause her mild stress by simply existing to this point without a working knowledge of the rules and culture of her beloved Red Building. I just spent an outrageous amount of money on 2 new dog beds and the big guy still insists on sleeping in his stinky old chair, which I have a desire to un-stink and about which he has a fierce re-stinking agenda. He is more underfoot than usual tonight, like the worst version of a needy, underfoot cat, if that cat weighed seventy pounds.

And another thing: I'm pregnant. You may know that already, because you know me outside of this blog or because I've not exactly been NOT hinting about it. We're excited, we're terrified, we're freaking out about the cost of dueling childcare. We're savoring the tail end of our three-pack days and preparing for a new life-- both the literal human one that will keep us up all night and smell like a heavenly human biscuit, and the new life we'll be navigating and fumbling with as everything changes in all six of the lives that are currently being lived under our little roof. I'm due April 28, almost ten weeks along at present. I'll keep you posted.