It’s a little sad to be counting down the days until the end of this pregnancy, knowing I’ll never be pregnant again. And it’s funny that I feel this way, because pregnancy has absolutely been no picnic for me. Nausea the whole first two trimesters, horrible back issues, rare pregnancy complications that made me afraid for the baby and myself – these things are no fun! But there is still a part of me that is sad that after 9 days from now, I’ll never feel a little being kicking and squirming around inside of me. It is truly a miracle (in the scientific sense of the word ) to me that I can grow a whole new human being inside of my body. She’s totally part of me and dependent on me, and then she comes out and is her own independent being! Ok, maybe not TOTALLY independent, but no longer an appendage.
9 days until scheduled cesarean. At this point, it looks pretty likely that we’ll make it all the way to that date!
Things are starting to get crazy, preparing for Little Nubbin’s arrival.
I have a todo list a mile long. There are a million things I postponed to accomplish once my mom (known to Calix as “Grandma who likes raspberries”) arrived, and she came on Sunday, so we’re down to business! It’s a huge help having her here. Calix is thrilled to pieces and getting lots of attention. It’s going to be a big adjustment for us all when she leaves in just under a month! Anyway, we’ve been trying to plan Calix’s birthday party, make a little space for baby things around the house, think about preschool for Calix next year (open houses and applications are all now), do some last minute classes like a hospital tour and sibling preparation classes, and also do some fun stuff that might be really hard to do once Nubbin arrives (like a date night, watch a movie, etc). We also have a couple of things we want to do to welcome Nubbin to our house, like adding a painting to the wall in Calix’s room. Here’s the vine we painted before Calix was born. We also want to make her a blanket, like we did for Calix!
Oh my. So much to do. I’ve been waking up early with my brain spinning. Just now, I woke up from a dream about birthday party venues. Calix’s birthday party will be only a 10 days after Nubbin’s birth!
I am so very excited that we’ve made it so far along in the pregnancy. With the placenta previa, we’ve been super worried for months that I would start bleeding early, and Nubbin would end up being premature. But instead, I am full term – 37 weeks was yesterday! Nubbin is also a lot bigger than Calix was. She’s already estimated at over 7 pounds, and Calix was only 5 pounds 9 ounces at birth! I’m so excited that she’s likely to be healthy and mature. Our c-section is scheduled for February 1, which is only 6 days before my due date. In my pregnancy with Calix, I was already on bed rest at this point in the pregnancy, due to low amniotic fluid. And then Calix was born at 37.5 weeks, only a couple of days from this point! Calix had some feeding troubles and some breathing troubles right at the beginning, but of course he turned out fine. So we’re doing great.
Calix is so sweet about Little Nubbin. It’s going to be a hard adjustment for him and for us all, but at the moment he mostly seems pretty excited about the prospect of having a baby sister. We talk about it and read books about being a big brother. He has several friends with baby sisters, too.
I’m starting to feel a little wistful, because I know that especially in the beginning, I’m going to be pretty tied up with newborn baby. I’m going to miss having Calix be my baby! I hope that we are able to make sure that I still get some good bonding times with Calix. We will figure out how to make it happen.
It’s pretty fun to try something we haven’t tried for a while with Calix and see how he has advanced in just a few months. We put our Duplo Legos away months ago, because Calix couldn’t get the pieces together in the least. Calix had been asking about them recently, so I got them out yesterday. And, suddenly, he can snap them together! Colin has been waiting for this moment for about 2.5 years. Calix is easily frustrated when the pieces won’t do what he wants, but he keeps trying and trying. It’s awesome to watch him and Colin working together on stuff. For Calix it’s pretty undirected so far – he just smashes some pieces around until they go together. He does sometimes take a stack of the blocks and say that it’s a particular thing, like choo choo train or a truck.
The other day, Calix thought that he was done with dinner, but I didn’t think so. We argued about it for a minute, but he ended up convincing me that he was correct with this logic:
Two, I’m all done. This is two [holding up two fingers for me to see], and I’m all done! This is two, this is two, and I’m all done!
It was a hot day today, and Colin was working outside on fixing our front fence. While Calix napped. I went outside to see him finish the job, and then we ended up talking with a bunch of our neighbors who were also hanging out outside.
After a while of talking with our across-the-street neighbors, I said, “I’d better go back and check on Calix, because I don’t think we could hear him from here.” I went into the living room and didn’t hear anything, so I sat down on the couch. Then from out the open front door, I heard Colin say “Hi Calix!” Huh??
From what we can put together, Calix managed to open up his bedroom door, walked out into the house, walked out the open front door, and played in the yard. He was wearing bare feet, and he had his guitar. He talked about going to the back yard and the garage, places we don’t let him go without a grown-up. Thank goodness the fence was finished and the gates were closed, and he didn’t just wander out into the street!
Yesterday, in the backyard, playing, Calix pointed to the hole in the knee of my pants, and asked, “What’s this?” (pretty much his favorite question these days).
I answered, “It’s a hole in the knee of my pants.”
“Did Bossy make it?” he asked.
I was confused. “Bossy? Who’s Bossy?”
He clarified, “No, Betsy. Teacher Betsy. She plays guitar.” Teacher Betsy is one of the teachers of the Spanish Sign and Sing music class that he’s taken for several quarters.
I replied, “No, Teacher Betsy didn’t make this hole. I made it, by wearing the pants a lot. Did Teacher Betsy have a hole in her pants?”
Calix said, “Yes.”
Christie did not remember that Teacher Betsy had a hole in her knee, but she probably just didn’t notice it. Calix is very observant, remembering and thinking a lot about what he sees.
One of my favorite memories of Calix is from about a year ago. We were taking a shower together, and I was holding him at face level, letting the shower splash us on the heads.
Suddenly he turned towards me, and said, “Kiss nose!” and leaned over to give me a big wet kiss right on the nose. It made me giggle and giggle. He has never been too much of a kisser, preferring to usually blow kisses instead of plant them right on you, which made it even sillier.
Even though I’m sure he doesn’t recall the event, I like to occasionally reenact it with him, but with our roles reversed (and usually not in the shower).
Calix seems to have picked up our love of playing with language. For example, he likes to make up nicknames for people and things, just like we do. Here are some of his recent nicknames:
For Daddy – Daddoo
For Mama – Mamoh, Mamos
For Lamby Lovey – Lamboo, Lamboo-saurus, Lamboo-raptor
For Grandma – Grandmoh
I think we might have started it all by teaching him the phrase “What’s up, daddy-o?”
) to me that I can grow a whole new human being inside of my body. She’s totally part of me and dependent on me, and then she comes out and is her own independent being! Ok, maybe not TOTALLY independent, but no longer an appendage.
