Of an Evening

From Collages

37 weeks tomorrow.  Yes I am that person that has the hateful (but legal) no solicitation sign in my front yard.*  G loves his binoculars ("noculars") and he watches airplanes and also spies on the construction site down the street.  There is not room in my lap for G, hasn't been for quite some time.  At bedtime, he sits next to me on his bed.  But he still tries sometimes.

It was a beautiful day today. It was cool this morning and it drizzled a bit, but we still played outside on our new play equipment.  More on that later.  But the parenthood, mommynetwork is an awesome thing.

We went grocery shopping late in the afternoon (think 6ish - which is completely unheard of, because bed time can start around here as early as 630).  And Lewis introduced G to a pixar short called "Air Mater" which might be all of 8 minutes long and is about "flying Mater" who ends up joining up with airplanes that do airshows a la the Thunder Birds.

The excitement, at my house, over these 8 minutes, was ridiculous.  The child loves really anything that goes VROOM or BEEP BEEP, but Mater and Lightning McQueen and airplanes?  No wait, check that, Mater and Lightning McQueen as airplanes???  The kid was a pig in mud.  At the end of the short Mater says, "they aughta make a movie about that."  Please, pixar?  Please?  Because I'm going to have to watch that stupid (it's not stupid, it's well done) 8 minute short on a loop until he gets sick of it.  Which may be never.

I go back and forth between being sick with worry over the nearing end game of this pregnancy to being very excited to meet the new little one.  Lewis has been working on a multimedia project "since we lived in the old house!" and now for reasons I don't understand, I have access to all of my home movies on my television.  So G and I were watching these, looking at baby G and his sounds, tummy time and the first time he pushed up on his elbows, his first foods, his first steps, his first crawling - nope wait, not that cause we didn't do that at my house.  G liked the videos, but his favorite was one of him laughing every time I said "boom" and then daddy coming home and Mavvy rushing to the door to great him and pretty much knocking him over.  He laughed, and wanted to watch it over and over again.

I'm obsessed with picture taking so I really don't have a fear that there will be less pictures of #2 than there are of G.  I have tons of photo ideas that I can't wait to try out.  But where I do fear I will fail, is taking pictures and having the camera ready for all of those "firsts."  I made a mental plan the other day to just always have the point and shoot at hand and at the ready, because I'd rather have a picture, versus no picture, even if it's not artistically brilliant.

I did really well with G.  I have a cataloge of his first year of life that would make a scientist jealous.  Is this important?  Not really.

But his baby book is a thing of beauty.  And it's so very, very important to me.  I love looking at the pictures, of seeing his transformation.  I have not done a lot in my life that I can be super duper proud of, but I am proud of him.

I hope and pray I do as good a job with the next one, and that I can continue to be a good mother to both of them, most of the time.  And the tests we will face will be different but probably similar in many ways, so I hope I can be calm in the knowledge that these tests and phases will pass.  He will only be a baby for so short a time.  It passes in an instant.

So if you are so inclined, please say a prayer for us.  Pray for a healthy baby, a happy family, and a stress free transition from 3 ... to 4.  Soon I'll have both my babies to cuddle.  That will be a good day.


*We get solicited all the time.  When we first moved in to this house it was almost every day.  And I learned at the old house not to let them in the house, and some of them will ask, especially in the summer.  I didn't put the sign up right away because it's so mean and unfriendly looking, but than I got a solicitor that wanted water and seemed like he wanted inside and it bugged me and I told him flat out, I was going to have to put the sign up after he left and he said "oh well I usually try to avoid those houses" and I said, "well that's good because that's the law, and if you visit a house with a sign and they report the company that you work for, they can get a fine."  I'm not very nice all the time.  I feel bad because these are just guys trying to make ends meet and some of them may have records and this was the only job they could get, so I don't report the ones that come to the door, I don't want them to get in trouble.  But as a stay at home mom with kid(s) at home ... well I'm overly defensive and cautious.