Smelling the Roses

I guess the good news is that I'm not completely addicted to the internet! What a lovely surprise! I hear so many bloggers complain about the withdrawals they get when separated from the keyboard for a few days, but apparently, even after all these years, I have maintained a healthy relationship with web-related technology. Amazing. I can go an entire day without getting online! I can indulge in moderation! I can quit at any time! I don't need you and your double-clicky validation, Interwebs! (Okay, maybe I do, especially now that Christmas shopping is officially upon us and my only hope of buying gifts is via stores that offer virtual shopping carts, aka where it doesn't matter that it's three p.m. and you still haven't showered and you've been wearing the same sweatpants since Thursday and none of your shirts are long enough to cover your belly and YOU DON'T EVEN CARE ANYMORE.)

But! Please don't fear that my apparently easy-breezy relationship to the Internet (now that I don't sit in front of the computer for eight hours a day) means I'm going to abandon this website and you, dear readers, in favor of "real life" (whatever that means), especially this close to the birth. I have not forgotten you and your needs, oh no! On the before-you-leave-for-the-hospital to-do list posted by the front door, I have included the item "alert the Internet," and I even have someone lined up to let you know when the blessed event has finally come to pass. That's how much I care! So, if you don't hear from me for a few days, don't get all excited/worried/despondent. It's not that I've replaced you with a baby, just that I'm watching Martha Stewart or reorganizing the kitchen cabinets or still trying to capture a decent ten seconds of video showing what a full-term fetus can do to a stretched-thin midsection. (The more Wombat distorts my belly in physics-defying contortions, the more I'm convinced he'll come out with at least one extra limb, or at least some stage props.)

But speaking of reorganizing the kitchen cabinets...It cracked me up the first time I heard Linda say she knew that life after children was different when her Liberator Wedge (look it up) found its greater purpose as toddler climbing equipment. Although Simon and I haven't experienced something quite so pointed (yet), we got a little taste of it recently when, in figuring out where to store all the baby bottles and nipples and formula samples, I realized that the only eligible cabinet was the "party cabinet"--the one where we keep the festive drinking vessels, you know, the ones shaped like pineapples and coconuts. Naturally, the symbolic significance of this could not be ignored, nor go unblogged or unphotographed:

And the after:

You see we were able to keep the china and the sushi supplies accessible (at least for now), but alas the party drinks had to go into storage. Luckily, we had a perfectly sized empty box on hand:

Sigh.

And yet (here comes the gushy part) for every sigh of resignation there is a sigh of contentment. And for every whine of exhaustion there is one of is-he-here-yet?-ness. Most surprising of all, however, is that for every "I'm DONE being pregnant already" there are two or three "I'm really going to miss being pregnant"s. For the first month or so of the third trimester I thought I'd turned a sharp corner at the intersection of "Pregnancy Is Fun!" and "This Sucks Sweaty Balls," but in the last few weeks I've actually gone back to considering this a novel and enjoyable experience. I've adjusted to the weight gain (thanks in part to its having slowed waaaay down), and now that I know what my body and brain are capable of these days, I'm less likely to overextend them. I like feeling and watching the baby move, I actually like looking at myself in the mirror, and I'm already feeling full-force nostalgia about a phase of my life that I have no right to be nostalgic about yet considering I'm still living it right this moment.

But that's what I'm feeling. As much as I want to meet my infant son, I also want him to be my full-term fetus forever. Is this what they mean by "savoring the moment" and "paying attention because they grow up way too fast"? Or is it merely "reveling in the joy of a child in the absence of his poo/pee/vomit/snot/incessant crying"? Maybe both? And maybe that's not such a bad thing?

wrote Leah at 6:37 AM | Comments (12)