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That's IT!

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So.

I've decided to move my blog to Wordpress.

Please bear with me while I get it up to speed - but here's the new site:

Serenity Now! (only better!)

Thoughts on parenting.

My head cold is on the move.

It seems to have decided that clogging my sinuses is so last week. So instead, it's working its way down into my chest, snuggling in, despite my feeble attempts to dislodge it.

Why don't you just make yourself comfortable in there, cold? Really, it's no problem. I've got nothing else better to do than fight you off.

*sigh*
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For a while now - almost since I got pregnant - I've been trying to imagine what kind of child Squishy might be. Will he be like his daddy, who never really was much for eating and sleeping as a baby, but who turned into the sweetest and most thoughtful little boy? Or will she be like me, who loved her sleep as a baby and who turned into a stubbornly independent little girl with a quick smile?

It didn't hit me until this past weekend that I haven't spent any real time imagining what kind of parent I'm going to be once Squishy is here.

I mean, I do know at a very high level the kinds of things I do and don't want to do. I don't want to make my kid feel like he or she isn't good enough, like I have expectations that they'll never meet. I NEVER want to strike my child in anger. I want to encourage their imagination and exploration. I always want my child to KNOW that I will listen to them.

This is all good and fine, but what does that really mean for me?

My biggest fear about being a parent is that I won't be able to break free of what I know. Having been raised in a family where yelling, spanking, and losing your temper was commonplace, I can say NOW that I'd like to be calm and thoughtful as a parent. But when you're actually IN that situation, where your toddler is throwing a screaming temper tantrum, or your 5 year old knowingly is pushing the boundaries just to see how you'll react...

... what then? How will I cope? And will I be able to remain rational?

I know. That I'm thinking about this now, that I'm aware of how my reactions will affect my child is good. And yes, I know that no parent is perfect, we all make mistakes at one time or another.

Babies don't come with instruction guides.

But I feel like we've gotten this unbelievable opportunity... to create and shape a person. And if we do all the right things, then there's no telling what our child will do someday - the sky is the limit.

I want so much for this child.

And when it comes down to it, I just hope I can be the kind of parent that enables my child to thrive.

Monday.

Ok, so my weekend probably wasn't as restful as it should have been. But we got a lot done. The house is now clean - including the bathrooms. J trimmed a ton of branches and started cleaning up the yard for the fall. On Saturday we got a chance to see a friend row at the Head of the Charles regatta.

But best of all...

The Red Sox are playing in the World Series.

Nothing like the pregnancy hormones to make me bawl like a baby when Dus.tin Ped.roia hit a 2 run homerun in the 7th inning. Seriously. I cried... and then told J not to even think about laughing at me because I was crying.

So anyway. Monday. Something other than baseball.

I don't have much to report, really. The pesky cold I got last week is still hanging on - I still have a stuffy head, a sore throat, and a need for a lot of tissues. Course, the late nights watching the Red Sox this weekend I'm sure didn't help.

Other than the cold, I'm feeling ok. I will say that the second trimester, for me at least, has been a lot more uncomfortable than the first trimester. I have a lot more Uncomfortable Belly Days now, where the crowding inside makes my muscles sore. I think (I HOPE, anyway) that I'm just not used to the stretching, and it'll get better once I've popped out for good. The heartburn is getting more frequent too, so I have to be careful what I eat, especially at night.

But. I'm starting to be able to feel my uterus a few inches below my bellybutton, and I love feeling the swell of my belly when I wake up first thing in the morning.

I really hope that everything's still ok with Squishy. Because I'm starting to get used to the idea that I might get to hold my baby - our very own child - in April.

Big ultrasound is a week from Thursday.

Friday impatience.

It's Friday.

I made it through the week.

To celebrate, I am sitting in my favourite P.anera Br.ead right now, sipping my half decaf-half regular coffee, and munching on a toasted cinnamon crunch bagel.

With butter even.

I'm feeling pretty good today - well, comparatively, at least. I still have a bit of a stuffy head, and for whatever reason my throat is a bit sore again this morning. But for the most part I feel like I'm on the mend. (Knock on wood, mind you.)

So. As of tomorrow, I will be 16 weeks pregnant. 16 freaking weeks, people! And you know something? 16 feels like a big number. Probably because it's only two weeks away from 18, which is two weeks away from 20. And 20 is halfway.

And in the week 16 section of my pregnancy book, they talk about the fact that in the next couple of weeks, I'm going to start feeling Squishy move inside me. Quickening, they call it.

Ok, I confess. Since I read that a couple days ago , I've stopped whatever it is I am doing at that particular time at various points of my day. I've sat there quietly and looked inside me, hoping to feel something.

Nothing, of course.

Which is fine. It's still pretty early, and even if I did feel something, I think that I'd probably dismiss it as a figment of my imagination. But here's the thing. I'm finding myself looking forward to feeling the Squish move in there. It's almost an impatient longing, really.

It's just that, after so much time trying, this whole concept of there being a BABY inside me is so… well… abstract. And I really want to start thinking of Squishy as a baby, to allow myself to grasp that I might actually bring home a child next April. I'm anxious to know for sure that s/he is thriving in there, instead of what I do now: intellectualizing that a lack of negatives must mean that things are still going well.

But. I've waited this long to be here, I suppose a few more weeks won't hurt. Right?

Right.

Surfacing for a second.

WOW this week has totally sucked.

To be fair, the work front I KNEW was going to be bad. I picked up another client this quarter, and so I ultimately had THREE quarter reviews this week. Plus meetings with partners and follow up.

And on top of it, for two of those reviews, I'm down an experienced associate each - one has left my firm, and another is on his honeymoon.

The nerve.

That means a lot of work and not enough time. Really in order to get it all done I needed to be able to be in two places at once. Because, well... yesterday and this morning I was expected to at two different clients. At the same time.

Yeah. That didn't happen.

And then yesterday I woke up with a full-blown head cold.

Good times, good times.

But. It's Thursday, which means it's one more day closer to Friday. And yesterday I called my OB and got some medication which they told me was safe to take - so I was able to sleep last night. And despite not being able to hear out of my left ear because it's full, at least my sore throat has disappeared.

And. AND. Best of all - I invested in a box of Pu.ffs Pl.us tissues - with the aloe lotion. My nose is thankful.

So.

I'm almost there. One more late night tonight... and then I can rest this weekend.

Bad Timing.

So J's been sick for the past number of days. He gets sick a lot more than I do, just given how when he trains his clients he ends up working on their computer.

Even though my SIL warned me that she got sick a LOT when she was pregnant, I thought I'd be safe. Because, well, I have a really good immune system - I rarely get sick. And I'm also still on antibiotics to clear up my UTI.

And frankly, I'm too busy to be ill this week. Not only do I have three quarter reviews, but two of my teams are down an experienced associate each, respectively.

But.

This morning I woke up with a sore throat.

Apparently my SIL was right.

*sigh*

So if I'm not around that much for a couple of days, please forgive me.