status: sleepy.
Friday, September 4, 2009
Thursday, September 3, 2009
Morning on the riverwalk
When we had just two children, I smugly thought I'd figured out this business of parenting, at least parenting in the early years. But then number three came along. At 39 weeks pregnant, I found myself going into (false) labor on a daily basis, usually in the early morning hours, say, 2 or 3:00 a.m., only to feel contractions fade away after a couple of hours. After a week of false starts, and compounding exhaustion from the sleepless nights, I'd begun to imagine pleading conversations with my unborn baby where I begged him to end the nightmare that had become my frustrating and emotional wait. I walked around more than 5 cm dilated, for a week folks. Five centimeters! Some women labor for HOURS to reach that point. At the end of that week, after a four hour stretch of wishy-washy contractions that petered out at about five in the morning, I was so utterly exhausted and so emotionally drained I broke down in an ugly torrent of tears, at which point my mom (who was staying to help) wisely suggested calling my midwife. (Duh! Why didn't I think of that?) My midwife broke my water and in 27 seconds I was holding my third born.
Why am I giving the sordid particulars of his birth?? Well, because those final days of my pregnancy were warning bells. Clanging, shrill warning bells that were trying to send my sleep-deprived, addled brain a ward of caution: THIS STRONG-WILLED CHILD WILL TAKE ALL YOU THOUGHT YOU KNEW AND TURN IT ON IT'S HEAD - Just so you know.
I'm still figuring him out, almost three years later, but one thing I know for sure:
The boy loves to be outdoors. (cue booming, decisive voice here)
He's willful and mischievous, his mood swings are bewildering, and he will not be made to do anything he doesn't want to do, but it all changes outdoors. So, (I'm getting to the point now) I took him to the riverwalk this morning and he was in heaven, and, consequently, so was I. He led the way, and I spent the morning trying to keep up, while he called back to me "Coming, mommy?"
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