If you're wondering where I'm registered...

I am not.
I considered it today though. A coworker informed me that we are having a little shower luncheon next week to celebrate my new baby-to-be and me. I don't know why it made me so uncomfortable, but it did. So, I thought to myself... how do I handle this? I can't just sit here and seem awkward and cold. Why shouldn't I be an excuse to party? I love parties. It's just the gift part that makes me uneasy.
Can I just be honest and say "Hey, listen... this is baby #3 and we have everything we need. If you're dying to get me something or just don't like to show up empty handed, lime-a-ritas and diapers will not go to waste in our house." I mean, it's an August baby in Florida and I'm a working mom. Yes, I'll take great care of my newborn and will use my brief leave period to bond with her. However, some of that bonding time will occur while floating in my pool with a frosty beverage and she'll spend most of it loading her pants. It's the only "vacation" I'm getting this year since Florida, unfortunately, is not one of the few states that requires paid maternity leave. Thankfully, it is one of those states where they sell alcohol at Target... so, maybe I will stop in and point the scanner gun at some of my favorite flavors and various boxes of diapers this weekend. Actually, that might be more Walmart appropriate. It might even earn me an internet shaming. Damn it, never mind.
We had a totally cool and progressive shower with our first child nine years ago. It was a coed BBQ pool party organized by my friends and brother and attended by family, friends, and coworkers. We were extremely blessed and received so many amazing gifts and had such a nice time with all of these people that were so eager to do nice things for us and so excited for our new adventure. We had registered, and as first time parents, we clicked off on all of the things that the experts said we should have. Our little boy was going to be the best dressed, warmest, healthiest, most intellectually stimulated, grass-fed, humidified, spotless, germless little butterball that ever crawled the earth. Then he arrived; wearing size 3 month clothing, diaper size 1-2, accepting and collapsing whatever shaped bottle nipple or pacifier was waved within five feet of him, sweating like Chris Farley in even the lightest receiving blanket, and allergic to 95% of hygiene products on the market. So much for the organic plant-based toiletries, the size newborn anything and the top of the line bottle collection. Regardless, we had everything we needed and then some, largely due to the generosity of our friends and family.
Along came our second child. We were living in the Chicago area temporarily. We were having another boy. They'd be sharing a room. We had saved some things. We knew what things we didn't use with the first kid. We would be moving back east soon after his birth. We were on a single income. Again, we were blessed to receive thoughtful gifts from family and friends, but we just sort of pieced it together and filled in the blanks. Then the kid came along bigger, sweatier, pickier than the first and, thankfully, with no known allergies. We had what we needed, no more and no less.
So, now we are expecting kid #3, who happens to be girl #1.
She has her own room. It's really our first nursery. We've been buying what we need and what we want for baby L both methodically and impulsively for the last 6 months. It's fun. We disagree on some color and pattern choices here and there, but I love seeing the pure joy my husband experiences in the moment he has completed assembly of some shiny, blingy, bejeweled, bedazzled contraption for his little girl.
I know that in his mind, the second he picked it up off the shelf at Babies R Us, he pictured her smiling and hugging him.
Now, as he stands there pressing the buttons one by one and marveling at the function each elicits; he is holding her while she sleeps peacefully on his strong chest. They are dancing and he is twirling her around. They are walking on the beach hand in hand collecting shells. He is braiding her hair and tying her shoes. He is carefully hand painting her name on the hull of the boat he'll buy when she goes off to college.
He is thinking of the nights he spends crammed into a bunk built for a man half his size, rocking somewhere in rough seas, lonely and tired and counting down the days or months until he sees his children again. He's thinking of the pictures I'll send him of her birthdays and big "firsts" that he might miss and he's thinking of all the things that he will work to provide for her which she'll outgrow while he's on his next deployment. In that moment, he's not thinking about how much it cost or if I approved of the colors. He's thinking, "I gave her this. I built this."
So, it's more than a question of "Is it appropriate to create a registry for second and third children?" Sure, I'll shop off of your registry if you make one. Every baby should be celebrated. Every family has a right to celebrate, and to celebrate however they want to. I guess I'll formulate an automated response to "Have you registered?"
Thank you, but no. My husband and I are just having so much fun doing the whole shopping and prepping thing together. It's a precious time for us as a family given everywhere we've been and everywhere we'll be.
This is a) true and b) a safe cover for the fact that receiving gifts makes me uncomfortable.
If anyone is still not satisfied and will explode if they don't get me something... I was serious about the lime-a-ritas. Oh, the diapers, too.

The Imaginary Battlefield

There are a few words and phrases that make my skin crawl.
Among them are: "moist", "ointment", "panties", "God hates <insert virtually anything here>" and "the mommy wars".
As far as the singular words, it's a blend of the actual sound the letter combos produce and the creepy factor can be multiplied by the context in which the word is used. The voice can do it, too. Yuck, I'm uncomfortable just typing them all in the same sentence.
Obviously the phrases are rooted more so in my belief system than my weirdness and immaturity. I'll make explanation #1 short and sweet; God hates nothing. The end.
Explanation #2 is not so cut and dry. Firstly, as I've mentioned, my husband is in the military. He is not currently involved in combat, never has been and hopefully never will be. However, our daily family life is affected by the politics of the many actual wars going on out there in the world. We take great pride in his service to our nation and are proud to be part of the military community. Secondly, my hometown on the Jersey shore is fighting a seemingly lost war on drugs that claims another familiar young face every single day. War is oppression. War is pain. War is strife. War is loss that many of us will never understand. The "mommy wars"? Are you kidding me? What the hell are those? Are they really a thing?
I'm a mom. I'm currently a mom of two boys and expecting a girl in a few months. Add them up, that'll be three. I became a mom at 23 years old when I gave birth to my first child. That was the qualifying event. From that day forward, I could bear that title. Women acquire that title at all different ages, all different stages of life, by all different means including but not limited to: natural delivery, surgical delivery, adoption, appointment, marriage, etc. Since the day that I became a mom, there have been countless changes in my life and my family structure. I have held different jobs, participated in different activities, had more children. There have been no chevrons added to my sleeve or stripes taped onto my belt. I haven't added any formal salutation to my name or acronyms to my mailbox. I'm a mom, just like any mom.
There was a younger, less secure version of me that worried about what other moms might think of her. Maybe she wasn't less secure, maybe she just still had wits about her or still had time to think about that stuff. Ahhh, yes, I remember her now. She had a cute, big eyed, helpless little baby that needed her completely. She felt so harried by everything and worried if she was doing the right thing going back to work and school. Her baby cried and she wondered why, sure some other higher-degree mom was right about what her baby's cries meant. She felt inferior. She felt overwhelmed. She felt young. She felt like any new mom might.
The difference between "new mom" me and "old mom" me, who is technically about to be a "new mom" again is pretty simple. I don't know everything, I'm just more willing to accept that I don't know everything. You see, that helpless little baby whose cries I couldn't always understand; he's become an inquisitive and obsessive little man with more personality than I know what to do with. Times two. It happened twice. There are two of them. I didn't understand the second one any better than the first, I just had less expectation that I would understand him.
The one thing that I thought I knew as a second timer was that he had colic and while it would be miserable, I was determined to exclusively nurse kid #2. We'd get through it, because that was what I was meant to do. Turns out, for whatever reason you experts out there can come up with that my team of lactation consultants, pediatricians, in home support nurses, dietitians could not... the 10 ounces of milk he was getting from me at a a time from day one did not have the calorie content that he needed to sustain his weight. He was starving. I was holding him in my arms, rocking him through the "colic" wail we had diagnosed him with, unknowingly teasing him by pulling him close to my chest; and he was simply starving. That's a distinct cry that I will never confuse again. I couldn't count the number of hands that maneuvered my boobs into complex positions to optimize expression, or the torture devices that were introduced to try to extract an exact enough measurement to analyze, or the teams of women showing me their own naked chests and their specific range of squirting capability in that one month period of struggle. Seriously, there was more second base action in that four weeks of my life than my entire high school and college career. Fruitless, all of it.
As far as communication with the small folk, the guesswork has since evolved. They can now articulate and ask me questions about Nazi Germany, skeletal systems of marine animals, Superbowl XVI, where we go when we die, why it hurts to pee in the morning, etc. I don't always have the answer, but for the love of God, I can finally understand the question. Oh, and I'm armed with a smart phone. It doesn't rule my life, but it comes in handy. I can either google the inquiry or hand over the lifeline and say "call your father" if it has to do with parts he has a better understanding of than I do.
There were periods when I didn't work. I had no job. Being a mom has never been a job. It's a huge part of my life. It is a huge part of who I am and where the biggest part of my energy, my heart, my soul and my money go.
I'm sorry, but plain and simple: being a mom is not a job. It's just not. When I didn't have a job, I never felt a need to call motherhood my job. I could call myself a mother, but I was jobless. Sure, I had plenty to do. I didn't get much sleep. There were routines, there were demands, there were sacrifices. That was my life, not my job. Sure, I felt at times that I needed to justify what I did with all of my time and how hard I worked. That wasn't a pressure that society was placing on me. It was a pressure that I was placing on myself. It was a pressure that I allowed my relationships at the time to influence. It was a "war" that I was fighting inside of my own head. Where is anyone else fighting this "war"?
I have a job these days. This job does not relieve me of any of the responsibilities that come along with being a mom. Yes, my children go to school ten months out of the year. The school does not bathe them, brush their teeth, mentally prepare them for the day or keep them awake through it. That's my responsibility. Not my job, but my responsibility. Placing my children in the care of others while I work has never equated to someone else raising them for me. They have had some wonderful caretakers and teachers, to whom I will be forever grateful, and many have had an influence on them that I hope will last a lifetime. They have not raised them. They are not raised. That's an ongoing process.
I have gone on a few field trips, sent in cookies and cupcakes when asked and I take every opportunity that arises to don a weird costume and embarrass my kids for holiday parties. I don't feel like I'm in a "war" with any of the moms that can be there all the time. I'm grateful for them. Just this week my 5 year old had a class trip where they walked across a busy four lane road for an end of year party at a bowling alley. They asked that we send in any wagons we might have to help safely usher the kids across. Sure, I had a two-seater wagon, but I also had a meeting and a deadline. When I picked him up, he was very excited to tell me about his day. I asked which moms came to help. He said "Pretty much all of them except for you. Where were you?" I honestly said "at work" and the conversation turned back to what a great day he had and how H's mom pulled his wagon and how nice she was. Is this "war"? Ummmm, no. I'm glad she was there. Even being singled out by my kid as the only mom that didn't go didn't make me feel like any kind of let down. Have you ever been bowling with 5 year olds? I dodged that bullet like a champ if you ask me.
So, the "mommy wars"... I just can't even acknowledge this silly idea. We might be fighting our own battles, but that doesn't mean we are at "war". I live in an area where many women don't have to work. They drive luxury cars, have really impressively sculpted thighs, their hair is always perfect and they never miss an in-class volunteer opportunity. Flawless baking skills, too. There are also women who work way harder and longer hours than I do who will never make it to a single awards ceremony to see their kid walk the stage.
That's their life. This is mine. I can't assume that either of them has a clue about my life or is out to make me feel bad about anything. Why would they? I don't leave my house worried about what anybody else is doing, wearing, eating or driving. I certainly have the power to make my own choices about how I will feel. That's up to me and I feel like a pretty great mom. I haven't lost or maimed anyone yet and with a few exceptions, the tooth fairy always remembers to make an appearance when she's supposed to. We have busy time but we like our down time. We enjoy being a family and everybody is overall happy and well adjusted. I don't need to make a photo collage of every day of my life to reinforce that, nor do I need to remind anyone how hard I "work" on the home front or how well I'm balancing it all. Choosing to open my doors to a mixed crowd for my child's birthday party, or my husband coming home from work is not any type of "enemy invasion". I don't need to arm myself on the soccer sidelines or the playground, although I'll admit brushing my hair and getting mascara onto both eyes evenly can feel like a bit of an upper hand sometimes. If I've blow dried on a Saturday, then watch out world. I'm coming for ya.

On a separate and sad note...
If you are the praying type, please keep the Wehner family in your thoughts. Amber, a high school classmate, became a mom to an angel this week as she said goodbye to her baby boy. Matty was born in November with Down syndrome and struggled with a heart condition. God decided he'd suffered enough and called him home.
Matty's beautiful face and precious pictures of big brother, Ryan, doting on him 2500 miles away were my personal motivation to have screening tests done in this pregnancy that we had opted out of previously. I wanted to prepare for any possibility because I didn't have the faith that our family could immediately accept such a challenge as bravely, lovingly, and openly as Amber and Ryan did. Our initial results began a briefly frightening but forever enlightening journey in faith, hope and love. Our daughter appears to be healthy, but children like Matty and their devoted, heroic parents will touch our lives every day. Our family will honor his memory through continued support of the beautiful special needs community and hope others will do the same.
A link to help support his family is below.
http://www.gofundme.com/9ew93k

In my dreams.

There is a state of delirium that only an inner city ER physician, clinical insomnia sufferer or parent can truly know. At least two of these populations are expected, and often required, to reach a full level of functionality on a daily basis. With our move in full swing and all other compartments of life running at a constant; I'm about halfway there today. Good enough.
I appreciate having brilliant children. I appreciate that they love learning and that they are capable of stimulating conversation and politely expressing their little personalities. Sometimes they outdo themselves a bit too early in the day for my liking. Here's a recap of our morning commute...
Me: I had the weirdest dreams last night.
B (the 8 yr old, looking out the window): The average human has 1,460 dreams per year.
Me: Where'd you learn that? You can't just ask me about my dream?
B: I guess I read it somewhere. Maybe on a TruMoo. I love facts.
Me: Ok. I love facts, too. But... if I said that to your brother, he would have just asked me what my dream was about.
C (the 5 yr old with the thick Jersey accent, from the back seat): I think if a human has 1,460 dreams per year then some of them will be weird. That's logic.
B: Women have strange dreams during pregnancy, too.
Me: How do you know that?
C: You told us that. It's your hormones.
Me (putting the car in park to escort B into school): Ok. As we walk in here, I want you to listen to the conversations that other kids are having with their parents. These are the conversations we should be having some days.
(background noise: a girl arguing with her dad that she wants to bring her cell phone to school... something in Chinese... a mom asking her son if he brushed his teeth... a dad reminding his son to turn in his permission slip... random whining about not wanting to go to school)
Me: See? Those are normal levels of enthusiasm at 7:45am.
B (making those green eyes sparkle at me under those mile long lashes and whispering as he walks away backwards): We are not normal. Good day to you.

Well, he's got me there.

When it rains, it pours.

The universe has been excessively kind to our family this past month. To share all of our good news almost feels like bragging, but I'm too inspired to keep it to myself. Where to begin...

Well, let's start with the house. 

We were casually looking. When I say "casually"; picture a swollen, irritable, pregnant elephant placed in a 1200 square foot enclosure with two juvenile gorillas that haven't learned to peel their own bananas yet and add some kind of bear that means well... but is still a bear. That pretty closely describes our current living situation. We are coexisting... for now. 

How "casually" would you be looking? When shopping for a home you have your needs and your wants. The first home we looked at had a few cosmetic turn-offs and was at the very top of our price range, but it ultimately had both all of our wants and all of our needs. It is a place where I could immediately picture our family as a whole and each individual on their own being very happy. A key ingredient in the equation is that the Florida school system is struggling and this house would keep our children zoned for the A-rated neighborhood school that our older son currently attends. We had applied to the Gifted Magnet school for both boys next year but acceptance announcements wouldn't be made for another six weeks or so. We arbitrarily went through the rest of the homes on the agenda that night but I could tell by the twinkle in those dashing blue eyes that Big B was thinking the same thing I was: we'd already found "the house" for our family. I'm sure the twinkle was related to the visions of the bar he's always wanted to build around a pool more than the school zoning, but, hey. He's earned it. So we made an offer that night. The seller wanted to close within 30 days. Hmph. Surprisingly our bank said we could make it happen. 

Fast forward a week. It's a girl! We had our mid-pregnancy scan where our little girl refused to show us her precious face but was glad to give us all of the "potty shots" we wanted. When we asked the boys if they wanted to take a peek at their little sister, B said "Sure!" and C said "No, I want to see my little brother." Pretty typical of their personalities. Having been through a butt load of these things over the years, I was confident in my assertions that she was tall-ish, active-ish, had the notably large head of her people, and was, in fact, a she. That's the extent of my medical expertise. We went on and spread the word to our family.

Wow. A daughter. I've never had one of those. Big B wanted a baby girl, but I hadn't given it much thought. I didn't not want one, I just hadn't assigned a gender to this baby. The flood of elation and excitement hit me in waves over the next few hours. A daughter. The fear that she might someday be 6'3" hit me as well, but Big B talked me off the ledge about that one. He assured me that we'll make certain she knows every inch of her is beautiful no matter how cruel those nasty, smelly, pimply, squeaky little things we know as "adolescent boys" will be to her. So, we got through that crisis and were about to kick off a family birthday weekend when I got a very casual (and cavalier if you ask me) phone call from my doctor that went like this. The sonographer had seen some markers on our scan earlier and I would need to follow up with a perinatologist. When do I need to go? Immediately. It's 4:00pm on a Friday, when will they see me? We'll call you back on Monday. Can you tell me what these markers were? <Insert medical jargon that I wasn't meant to understand>. I have noted that you have not had xyz testing done and recommend that you have it done as quickly as possible so that we can forward it to the perinatologist. Have a nice weekend, try not to panic. 

Clearly, this woman does not know me. 

We did have a great weekend celebrating C's 5th birthday, my 32nd and the fact that we were going to have a little lady in our lives. We went out and bought our pink stuff and I ate my feelings. I do that. Whether I'm happy or sad, angry or delighted, they all taste the same. After some fumbling with the referral and scheduling process, we were finally able to see the perinatologist ten long days later. I was so relieved to have gotten there because I was sure the waiting had been the worst part and we'd get the all-clear and move on. Well, we didn't get bad news... but we didn't get good news either. Our daughter had two abnormalities that indicated she might have a trisomy. The most fearful trisomy did not seem likely based on some features that she clearly did not exhibit and some low risk screening results that my blood had produced. If we recalculated my risk factors based on the additional findings, it wasn't as conclusive for additional trisomies. We opted to have genetic testing to determine what we were up against because we had such a small window to make a life-changing decision. 

No, not *that* decision. My heart breaks for people who have to make *that* decision. Fortunately, Big B and I share a faith that takes that burden away from us. We wanted this baby. This baby did not come to us easily. We went to extremes to have this baby. She was the baby we were meant to have in our lives, no matter what challenges she brought with her. 

One of the first things every parent thinks, I'm sure: would she somehow hinder her brothers' lives with the possibility that she'd have special needs? That question entered my mind once and my heart immediately and proudly answered it. We have never raised our sons to think that any life was inconvenient or secondary to theirs. There is no human on this earth that has less value than them, whether she is under our roof or oceans away in a third world country we will never see. That was the last thought I would give to that concern. 

The decision we needed to make brings us back to the house. 

We were under contract with less than a week until closing. It's within our budget, but it's at the top of our budget. Our budget requires two incomes. What if this little girl needs constant care? What if one of us can't work in order to provide that care? What do we do? Do we exit the contract? 

No. This is the house that we all deserve. We will never not work. Ever. There are so many wonderful resources that are available to us through our healthcare plan, the military community, the special needs community. Our daughter will be well cared for, no matter what needs she might have. 

This is the house where she deserves to be thrown in the pool by her obnoxious older brothers, the cul de sac where she deserves to have her training wheels removed, where they'll all fight over the bathroom. This is what we all deserve. These are the tiles that I deserve to delegate sweeping of, this is the yard that I get to watch my kids mow while I have a margarita. This is the shed where C will build his time machine and the yard where B will hold his QB training camp.

Here we are.

Last Friday, we got the notification that our sons have both been accepted into the Gifted Magnet school for next year. 

Monday, we got the genetics results back from the perinatologist that, with 99.1% accuracy, our daughter is chromosomally normal. Her odds at being socially normal are iffy at best based on the family she is coming into, but that's the great gamble of life. We will continue to see the specialist to monitor the potential issues that were identified in her screening, but the most likely outcome is that they will resolve before she is born. Let's chalk it up to the fact that we know way too much these days and it is a constant cause for panic. I have learned so much about myself, my marriage and my family in these last two weeks and have such a profound renewed respect for why I have been put on this earth.

Last night, we closed on "the house". 

This weekend we celebrate Easter. Life is good. 

Sucking it in

Well, I can officially let my gut do the Homer Simpson thing that it has been dying to do for the past few weeks. The secret is out; I am now officially as pregnant at the office as I am in the rest of the free world. No more avoiding the path past my boss's open door office after lunch time because the chicken salad I ate in a thirty minute sitting has advanced the appearance of my baby belly by about ten weeks. No more non-contributing at meetings because breathing regularly and speaking at the same time might compromise my ability to suck in the monstrous bump that conveniently decided to show up about two months before its two predecessors did during their tenancies. I recently saw a viral picture of a teenage boy with veins popping out of his forehead captioned "Trying not to fart in front of your crush". I laughed out loud, I forwarded, then I gasped and shrunk behind my desk. Oh my God, that's me! Has my boss seen this every time I walk the path to the copy room for the past few weeks? Gross! Quick, I better write up a memorandum and announce myself! It's not gas, it's a baby!
So, here I am. All pregnant and stuff, wondering why I was so terrified to share the news. When I say share the news, I mean exclusively with the big bosses. I work in an office full of southern women. Georgia, South Carolina, North Carolina, West Virginia... I like to think of my coworkers as a real life casting of Steel Magnolias. Every day, I hear the term "heifer" and the phrase "there's more than one way to skin a cat", though the regional drawl that it is delivered by can vary. What began as a conversation about a recommendation for a fertility specialist about a year ago evolved into every single one of these women knowing which doctor I was seeing on which day and which injection I might be receiving depending on the status of my most recent lab results. The day I received the positive pregnancy result, it was a full on tactical blitz to try to reach my husband with the news before they strong armed it out of me. Understand that I am over six feet tall and these women probably don't reach my shoulders. I was still intimidated.  They are nosy, pushy, always in my business, and some of the most genuinely supportive people I have ever worked with. They bring me food a lot now, too.
A side note: I'd like to go find the large, angry woman that didn't think I was pregnant enough to use the "Parking for Expectant Mothers" space at the grocery store last week and tell her that I was sucking it in. Truth be told, I don't think she looked any more pregnant than I did; just crankier about it. Maybe I'd tell her to cheer up, too.

The book I'll never finish.

I've scribbled, jotted and photographed for years now, telling myself that I'll eventually compile hilarious biographies of my children's lives for them. The fact that I couldn't even log a monthly entry of milestones throughout a single pregnancy should have been an indicator that it wasn't going to happen. So, here's where that idea has come to die. 95% of what I choose to share with the world relates to my children; their awesomeness, their imperfections, the moments I pretend they aren't mine, the moments I wouldn't let the world think they are anyone else's. It's what I've come to call the Mommy Moment Matrix. I'm stuck in it, no matter which pill I take. It is a parallel universe where time slows down when your child is about to humiliate you and the moments you wish would last forever seem to move at the speed of light. No matter how time flows in that matrix, you are rolling at a constant; unable to reach the child before he puts the booger on the cashier or to keep him in your arms long enough to tell him how much life he has given you just by being him.
A little about myself...
I am currently a 31 year old mother to two boys, 8 year old B and 4 year old C, and expecting baby #3 in August. I have a career, a generally clean home and we enjoy a rather full social schedule. My husband is in the Navy and our family has spent much time divided over the last few years. Some of my most challenging moments as a mother to sons have come in those times, also some of my most brilliant. Now, the real adventures in co-parenting begin. Part of me selfishly wants to keep all of the funny, glorious, victorious moments, but I'll have to let the husband, Big B, share in the excitement and trust that he'll report back to me on everything. He's missed enough.
I believe that kids are funny until you teach them to be unfunny. Their fresh take on the world is pure and simple and has provided me countless hours of laughter, tears and the accompanying lines on my face. I try to harbor a healthy balance of good manners, common sense and freedom to make light of what situations we can. There will be many days in their lives that will be marked with pain and injustice. I want those days to be met with a peaceful, courageous and faithful heart. I don't see where allowing them to be funny can hurt in any of this.
There are things that we know in our house to never be wasted: prayers, good manners and cool outfits. They might not always be appreciated, but they can never truly be wasted.
We are on the same hamster wheel as everyone else. We have children whom we suspect to be the cutest, smartest, most talented, most important little people on the planet. We coach their soccer teams, we're PTA members, we keep buying a bigger bed that keeps getting smaller, we only get the butts of the loaf of bread. We laugh. We laugh a lot. So, I'll share in that laughter. Someday, my kids will find their stories here and know not just how funny they are, but how much I love them just as they are.