Critter Talk

Have you ever felt that the only way you can get through your life is if you keep everything very compartmentalized? I feel this way pretty much all the time. I can’t stand when I am focusing on one thing and get someone (usually my darling husband) trying to shove four hundred other things into my mind at the exactly the same time. That doesn’t mean I can’t handle a lot going on at once. I work really well under pressue actually. It just means that each thing has its time and place to be dealt with. Within one frame, say work time, now 400 things can come up to do with specifically my job, but just don’t try to throw in life things at the same time I am in my work box or I will seriously spin. Perhaps what I am saying is that I have a lot of obsessively compulsive ways that people may or may not realize and I often pretend aren’t there. My family definitely sees it, but the rest of you… you probably have missed it. Great! That’s exactly what I want.

It’s really all about focus. I want to focus on what is directly in front of me. And I don’t like to play a lot of guessing games with everything else that I might have going on until each thing’s number actually comes up. What has got me in a tizzy, you think? Well, many things actually. But all those things have had to be shut out, after a polite conversation with my husband to simply NOT talk to me about where we will move to next year until it is time to talk about it… like next year. Until then, I’ve got other things soaking in way too much gravy off my plate.

This summer has been a lot of compartmentalizing. We took the trip home early on, so my entire focus was on that. Then I focused on the family visit here. Now we are past that and I need to focus on the next big thing… this baby thing. Anyone that knows about my obsessive tendencies would be shocked to know that I haven’t really done much about this whole baby thing other than let it brew. I just couldn’t focus on all those baby needs until I had the time to truly focus. And do it right. Because I think I kind of forget sometimes that this is… well… BIG. It must sound ludicrous to say that and you are probably thinking… that girl seriously has no right to have a baby if she only just realized that a baby is DAMN big now. I swear I thought about it before… once or twice. But now I am less than 11 weeks out and holy hell… there is a lot to do all of a sudden.

My friend just got engaged. I sent her a planner to help get her started. Why isn’t there a baby planner – one that tells you when to conceive in life, when to buy the furniture, when to make a birthing plan and when to start on number two? I feel gypped. I digress.

The past week has been all about the ‘baby do’ list. I washed loads and loads of little boy clothes, up until the 6 month range, hoping it was a decent head start in the never-ending washing process ahead of me. We have a three bedroom house which has a master bedroom, a guest room and the third contains our computer room. Obviously this wouldn’t do with a kid on the way, so now we have a guest room/computer room and one very empty room which some would call a nursery… if it actually had anything in it. I did check on the furniture order just to see where all of that was at, and particularly if the Navy Exchange ever even ordered it. Lo and behold, they did. It has all shipped… at varying times. We’ll still be lucky if a dresser shows up before the baby. Fingers and toes remain crossed. And the crib… well, we also still haven’t picked that up from our friend (it wasn’t right compartmentalization time before now), which means it also hasn’t been sanded or painted. It remains on the ‘baby do’ list, now getting shoved to the dad side of those to-do’s because the procrastination since we entered into the baby finish line phase three weeks ago has not been mine.

I also started taking classes. Together, we finally re-upped our CPR certification. Can you believe it is now 30 compressions to 2 breaths?? And doing it pregnant… dang… do you get out of breath. Not to mention the struggles to get off the damn floor afterwards. I also took a breastfeeding class. Found it completely useless. I could have read everything from a book and gotten more out of it. Plus, I swear they lied. I asked about that painful stage and was, with Heath Ledger mental/Joker-like smiles plastered on their faces, informed that there was simply no such stage. Not what my mom friends are saying. I tend to believe the truth to come from the lips of friends and not what these La Leche League cronies were selling. I’m still doing it. I just wanted to hear the truth from a professional or two and not what someone thinks I want to hear. We have two more classes to go, of which KH will be joining me. He is thrilled to be going to Labor and You and Baby Basics in the next few weeks. He is even more thrilled about the Bootcamp for Dads class I signed him up for, of which he will be going on his own. If I am going to push this thing out, the man needs to feel some pain too in the whole process.

We actually also met a real doctor at the Navy Hospital. I was just glad to know that they really had them and it wasn’t some urban military base myth.

Left to do… find perfect homecoming outfit, pack for the hospital, figure out how the car seat fits into the Japa Capa, actually put some furniture in the room… when I get some that is, find a Japanese hospital that does the 4D ultrasound and who understands me enough to make an appointment, buy a scary looking breast pump, find a rocking chair in Japan (damn near an impossibility I’ve so far discovered), and continue to update the baby book of which I seem to be falling behind. I’m sure there are other to-do’s left, of which I will most assuredly remember at about 3:00 a.m. some morning, bringing me back into freak out mode that it’s only a little over 10 weeks away.

And the actual baby, you ask? All is very good there. He’s getting bigger and in position. He kicks like a fiend as felt by me and by anyone who has patience and cold hands they want to put on my belly will tell you. And his kicks… they rival Jeff Reed’s performance in the preseason game against the Vikings this past weekend. I truly love the feeling of his rolls and jabs and kicks, with the exception of at about 4 am when my insomnia is in full force and I desperate to fall back asleep. I swear he kicks harder then than at any other time of his active day, although I have discovered that my newly added, nightly Robitussin cocktail ritual is keeping him quieter than usual. Well, except for last night when around 2:00 a.m., I decided to re-dose in bed, in the dark, with a teaspoon so I wouldn’t wake KH for the first time in over a month. That was, until I spilled half the bottle across my stomach and legs, watching it seep into the mattress padding, at about which time I proceeded to swear up a storm while frantically wiping the red stickiness from between my legs with my nightgown. With all that going on, the critter riled up quickly to join his mom at the party.

For those that keep asking, here is a picture of me. 29 weeks and counting. Please don’t laugh too heartily… unless I am fully out of earshot.

And note that my very offensive sunflower tattoo is becoming more of a vine than the little tangle it used to be. The Japanese would so not be pleased.