sueeeus

A sweet small voice.  “I’m all wet.”  I glance at the clock.  5:30 a.m.

5:30 a.m.!!!  That’s close enough to claim he made it through the night, in his own room.  In. His. Own. Room!  The race car bed was a genius maneuver.  Genius!

Do I snuggle with him for another half hour, or do I get up, put his bedding in the washer, and start my morning?  After a few minutes of warm snuggly contemplation, I decided to go ahead and get on with the day.

A quiet morning to myself.  A cappuccino.  A few minutes for  a blog post.  Even so, bets are on that I’ll be late for work anyway.  A night on his own though!  So worth it.

If you were, oh, say, a two and three fourths year old boy who has had some scary nights now and again, and you came home to find this in your room, what would you think?

You might think that your mother was a magical genie who could, in the span of a lunch break, and with the help of Craig’s List, a fortuitous recent trip to the ATM, and a gallon of gas in the minivan, manage to find, buy, load, unload, sanitize, and assemble THIS!

Yes, it’s plastic. Which means it’s easy to clean. I know, I know. Carbon footprint, and all that. But it’s recycled. There’s no telling how many parents have encouraged their little ones to make it through the night in their own room with this particular bait. When the novelty fades or he outgrows it, whichever comes first, this item will find its way to another home, to hopefully make another child’s life just a wee bit more magical.

And my precious little boy child will have to manage some impressive somnolent contortions to fall out of this contraption. I’m only a bit concerned that he’s already too big for it. Nevertheless, I think he will be delighted, if only for a moment.

I generally don’t understand the whole influenza inoculation buzz that surfaces every fall. I decided to get the shot, one year, several years ago. I then proceeded to get sick. Very sick. Sicker than I’d been in a very, very, very long time. There are many who will say it’s only a coincidence and one can’t get flu from the shot because the virus is dead. However. I was very sick. With flu. The other argument is that the shot can’t address all strains. Well, if there are a bazillion strains, what good is it to guess at which one is or will be prevalent? It seems like a shot in the dark. So I don’t get vaccinated for flu any more.

Being a mother, I now feel a bit guilty about it. As though I have a parental obligation to have my youngster inoculated.

I’m torn.

He has relatively low exposure to the outside world at this point. The daycare kids currently don’t have elder siblings circulating in school, collecting and transmitting all manner of microscopic ickiness. He plays hard and gets lots of fresh air. He eats well (in general). He is robust. I’m not planning to take him in for a shot. But I’m feeling guilty about it.

It’s an excellent day. It all began last night when the satellite couldn’t capture the signal. No point in trying to watch House. So off to bed by 9:30 p.m., and, surprisingly, no struggles from the nearly three year old. Woot! A good night’s sleep. Up at 5:30 a.m. Poor little guy was having a bad dream. A slug on his pillow. Too scary. I let him crawl into bed with me and snuggled him back to sleep. He’s the sweetest little thing. I could have stayed in bed, but decided to seize the day instead. I had a full hour to get ready, so indulged in a cappuccino and went about donning my carefully constructed costume, all the while smiling at how pleased my beautiful boo boy would be when he learned he could be Superman all day long. What a wonderful start. And when we got to daycare, who was there? Peter Pan. And tonight? His cousins will be here, and then we will all go trick-or-treating. I am just bursting with anticipation, once he discovers that he gets to be a superhero and walk the neighborhood with his becostumed cousins, knock on people’s doors, and get candy!! It brings back such sweet memories. The happiest moments I recall as a child were Halloween, opening my Christmas stocking and finding my Easter basket. Now I’m a mother and the idea that my own child will soon experience this wonder and delight has me beside myself.

My costume today? I am a teenager. I think the look is more aptly the skateboarder look. Blue jeans. Long black camisole layered under a short dragon-emblazoned glitter t-shirt, layered under an even shorter crimson hoodie with long cuffs that cover half my hands. Messed up hair (well, that’s my everyday look, but it works). I am so pleased with myself, giggling at my own silly humour. As if anyone is going to get that I’m in costume. But it feels good to feel young. I feel young. I should have started Zoloft years ago.

I’ve had a box of course work that I’ve toted about for the last twenty some years. I don’t remember why I saved it for so long, other than a vague notion that I’d refer to it once in a while and refresh my memory of lessons learned. As if I would need to know how to do a Laplace transform. Or remember Thevenin’s equivalent. Or differential equations. I have used the equations I learned in economics for calculating amortizations and present and future values, before the advent of the www with its plethora of readily available calculators, but now there’s no need to remember how to calculate them by hand. It does astonish me, somewhat, to imagine that those squiggly scratches made some kind of sense at one time. Oh the things we can do when we’re young!

I bought this pencil in 1982 or 1983. I put much consideration into the quest for the perfect pencil, and it was a splurge, at $8, for a student on the brink of poverty. It continues to serve me well, and it reminds me of my youth. In retrospect, money well spent.

College for me was drudgery. I didn’t enjoy engineering school. I wanted a decent paying job at the completion of my degree, so it was merely a means to an end. I couldn’t imagine spending so much time and money on an education that wouldn’t serve me. That was back when I naively thought that the road to financial stability was the road to happiness. How often I’ve looked back and regretted not investing more in my heart. How different my life would be now.

All the same, my path is my path, and here I am. Learning to revere the journey. Learning to revere the day. This day. This moment. Now.

Had I not followed that path, where would I be? I can’t imagine a life without my beloved boy, so all steps that led me here were necessary steps in the journey.

So I wouldn’t change a thing.

And look at me now.  Mother of a superhero.  Can it be any better than that?

On any given day, one can wander about my home and realize that it’s not at all uncommon to encounter a four wheeler next to a bowl of vegetables. This makes me smile.

Self Portrait Tuesday

. . . Love is . . .

. . . . . nothing but smiles . . .

. . . it doesn’t hurt to have a captive audience either . . .

. . . because . . .

. . . it’s not so easy to sit still when you’re nineteen months old!

I’m loving every minute of this journey called motherhood.

are moments like this

Inspired by PeaSoup’s recent post, I am compelled to post something about my beautiful and beloved greyhounds.   I’ve never been much of a pet person, and I’m conveniently allergic to cats and dogs (and, alas, a whole slew of other things).  However.  One day.  A few years ago.  While my biological timeclock was ticking.  Loudly.  Booming, in fact.  I happened upon a greyhound adoption awareness expo.  And fell. In.  Love.

I’d never seen such docile and beautiful creatures.  They resembled little deer with those fawny coats, big soulful eyes, and long slender legs.  I learned that people with allergies can often tolerate greyhounds, because they are not like other dogs.  They are short haired dogs and they don’t have the same oiliness that other dogs have, hence, they don’t smell like other dogs, don’t have the same kind of dander as other dogs, and don’t shed like other dogs.  These are all marketing points, and might be somewhat exaggerated.  In truth, they don’t smell bad (except, errr, the flatulence…) and they aren’t oily (I think perhaps that oil is what contributes to the dog smell, but I’m no expert), but they do shed.  Lots.  But who cares   When you’re smitten, you’re smitten, and these things don’t matter so much. 

I gathered all the info, set up my home and yard for greyhound safety (there are many requirements to meet, in order to be approved for adoption) and having passed the inspection and been deemed worthy of becoming a greyhound parent, I anxiously awaited my new family member’s arrival.

My first beautiful boy.  He was so scared, and cried all night.  I didn’t sleep the first night.  He was an ex-racer, and had never known life beyond the track and kennel.  A home was entirely new.  I had to teach him about windows and stairs and furniture.  I taught him to use the potty place (designated place out back).  He learned fast!  He was such a good boy.   (Until my Bugaboo arrived, at which time, there were a few behavioral incidents involving indoor urination…) 

He never learned to stay by my side.  How he loved to run free, but off-leash was out of the question.  He would bolt, and he wasn’t streetwise.  He didn’t understand roads or traffic, and he could run SO FAST and so far that by the time he stopped, he wouldn’t be able to find his way back.  This is one of the issues that one might encounter with an ex-racer. 

I fell so deeply in love that I became a foster mom, and took in new recruits and helped them transition from the track to the home, prior to going to their forever homes.  It was a tough job!  Like having a newborn (that is, until I had a newborn, at which time I learned that it wasn’t quite the same after all).  I fell in love with all my fosters, but I couldn’t bear to part with this little beauty. 

She was the sweetest thing.  She was a rescue, retrieved from a home in which she was not at all well cared for, and her previous mom was blacklisted, for good reason, and not allowed to adopt again.  My sweet girl.  She flunked out of racing before she even began, so she never actually raced.  She wasn’t so inclined to the singleminded chase, as her brother (who raced a full career, with a handful of wins, even!).  She did quite well off leash, and would return to my side when called.

We let her run free at the ocean, and it was exhilarating to behold!  The unbridled joy of a greyhound running at full bore, charging through the waves!  I will treasure the memories forever.  Even now, I can’t help but smile.

We briefly allowed her brother off leash, but it was a disaster and we nearly lost him.  We were able to retrieve him, thank God, but knew from that moment he absolutely must remain on leash, for his own safety.  My beautiful boy.  How I wanted to let him run free.

These hounds taught me much.  They readied my heart and my mind for motherhood.  I’m convinced of it.  There is a compassion that one learns when one cares for another.  Patience, tolerance, love, responsibility.  All these things are heightened.  Unconditional love.  They live it.  To experience it is an amazing and beautiful thing.  Yes, they taught me much.

I do believe that loving and caring for these creatures helped prepare me for motherhood, in more ways than one.  Given the fertility stumblingblocks I wrestled with, perhaps the experience of opening up, loving, and nurturing helped to allay some of the stress and havoc in my mind.  Stress can have such an impact to the delicate hormonal balance that determines whether or not an egg might be released.  I’m convinced of that.  (Of course, I don’t claim to have any medical basis for this.  I just believe it.  That is all.)

The weight of the actual responsibility that comes with the birth of a child is tremendous beyond expression.  I thought I was ready.  Completely prepared.  I’d waited my entire life for this.  Yet, when it happened, I realized that I knew nothing!  It was the most terrifying thing, the first few days of motherhood.  And in those days, I felt unable to care properly for my beautiful hounds, and a baby was new to them, and they both had a particularly strong prey drive.  (Prey drive can be an issue with greyhounds, so one must be vigilant in training and exposure to potential prey.  It’s the responsible thing.  Never take for granted that training will overcome instinct.)  The baby outprioritized the hounds, and I couldn’t give them the attention and care that they needed and deserved.  I decided to let them go.  Many tears were shed, but the good news is that both of them were re-adopted to fine homes that very day.  Within hours, even!  Neither one had to spend a night in a kennel.  For this, I am very thankful, and pleased.  And their new families received loads and loads of toys, bedding, and clothes.  (I had very well dressed hounds!)

Links:

http://www.greyhounds.org/

http://www.adopt-a-greyhound.org/

http://www.greyhoundlist.org/

http://forum.greytalk.com/index.php act=home

It’s excruciating.  While waiting to retake the test, I did some research on all the various exposures I’ve had and found some peace in learning that there was very little risk involved.  I breathed a sigh of relief and then tried to reconstruct the time line and the symptoms.  I matched the symptoms against the early symptoms checklist.  I started fantasizing about baby names.  I tried to guess due date.  I came up with January 14, 2007.  Imagine that!  Boo’s birthday.

All for naught.  I couldn’t wait the full week that I’d told myself to wait.  I tested this morning, and it’s very cleary ‘not pregnant’.

Even though I told myself not to get overly excited about the prospects, and even though it might not be the best instant in time for me to be with child…

…I’m still disappointed.  I can’t help but feel that way.

I had myself so convinced.  The nausea.  I never have nausea.  I fell asleep at Cirque du Soleil on Sunday, for crying out loud.  Only for a few minutes, but it’s that same overpowering fatigue that I remember from the last time.

Sigh.  C’est la vie.  Maybe another time.  I hope.