i think i've lost my chops.

i've never considered myself an exceptionally social person, though i very much like to meet people and to engage in spirited conversation. i always liked hanging out with friends in my pre-marriage life, and i liked making fun happen.

i don't know what has happened to that person, but socializing wears me out, mainly because i feel like once you get married it's awkward to try to have friends.

am i the only one who feels that way?

even standard sorts of activities seem strained to me, especially if my kid is around. i'm certain that's because i don't have the wherewithal to try to engage socially when i'm trying to make sure my kid doesn't launch herself, head first, off of a set of stairs, but it's also just sort of exhausting to put an almost 14 month old in the midst of adults.  it's a landmined field of awesome, because i don't know where she'll go or what she'll do and yay there she is talking to a stranger and oh boy there's a tablecloth she's going to pull (not might...going) because wouldn't you if you were at that height?

you get my drift here, right?

so we have bantered, off and on, about how we should invite people over, make friends, do things. but honestly? i'm tired.  and i want to make friends, and i seem to do okay when i'm on my own, but when it's a family thing, i just stink at it.

so is that how married life is? you have your separate friends? because i find it exceptionally easy to make momfriends, and i don't mind when it's a momfriend activity plus baby because moms tend to gravitate toward the non-potentially-lethal activities.  but mostly i just feel stupid at other socializing, and like people just don't like me.

but maybe this is how it just is right now? maybe someday, when our kids are a bit older and we have settled someplace, we will find families who have similarly aged children and be friends with them (because, hopefully, i'll like the moms of my kids' friends or that's going to really be stupid)?

so i'm putting this out there: is this normal? am i just bad at this now?

sleep vignettes and other adorable things.

if i don't write these down, i'll never remember, and i want to remember, and this is the easiest place to do it.

this weekend, maggie spent an inordinate amount of time winding down for bed. she just laid in her pack and play (we were away) and chattered. i swear she said every word that she knew, but especially the ones that she had mastered that day. "auntie, auntie, auntie, auntie" was like a mantra chant.  she got a bit upset when she heard her daddy leave the room (she hadn't realized i had come in), and cried. i gave her hugs and laid her back down a couple of times.  then i listened to her chatter some more.  she seemed to chill out, and then i heard her say "YUM! yum." and then all was silence.

those were her final words. she's a nut.

--

about a month ago, she started getting better with her sleep with some encouragement from us.  one night, as we began another process of getting her to be more independent with her put-down process, i just sat and watched her.  she was in her crib, not upset at all, playing with her blue bear.  she folded her arms with him, then hugged and kissed him, then put him down on the bed and patted next to him. suddenly it occurred to me that she was doing our bedtime routine with blue bear--prayers, hugs, kisses, loves, and into bed. 

amazing little kid she is.

--

she knows the word "taco," and she says it like "tato." her dad thinks that's the most adorable thing she says. i have been pretty enchanted by "pup!" which she likes to say all of the time as well.

she mastered the word "banana" today. during lunch, she just kept saying it (she had previously only said "ba") and saying it and saying it until she had it down.  now, when she sees it in a book, it's "banana."   before that, her only other two syllable words were those with the "ee" sound at the end: "daddy" and "teddy."

--

she's started babbling sentences.  today, it was like i was living in a country for which i had not studied the language well enough. every few words would be one i would recognize, and it was obvious that the sentences had meaning, but i haven't the foggiest idea what they meant.  as bill cosby says, "i just listen for my name."

--

today, she fell asleep by herself on the floor of the living room. she found the pile of freshly washed blankets and decided she was done. so she put herself to sleep.

MILES from where we were, let me tell you.

--

she's starting to cry when she thinks she's in trouble, especially with her daddy. it's sort of heartbreaking and adorable at the same time.  i think she might get that from me--i very much don't like to be in trouble.

week 25: baby t.

dear baby t,

we know your name now. we like it, and we've been using it more and more.  maggie tries to say it, and it's fairly adorable, and i like the idea that you are someone now. not that you weren't someone before, but you are who you are now. 

your name story is sort of like your sister's, but less certain. that's not to say that we don't feel sure now--because we do--but it wasn't as clear at first that your name was being chosen, or that we were being helped.  we just sort of...landed on this name and couldn't get it out of our head. we went through what must be a fairly typical process of finding a bunch of names we sort of liked, and then narrowing it down, and then narrowing it down some more, until we had about three or four. but the other three were nothing compared to your name.  and we couldn't get it out of our heads.  so we didn't. and we figured out, finally, that the reason we couldn't is because you had chosen your name.

we were the ones that were a little slow on the uptick.  forgive us, baby.  we got it now.

your name is spunky and sweet, graceful and powerful.  it has room for astrophysics or for cake design, for being a lawyer or being a mom or being all of those things if you so choose. that's important to me--that you can walk into any interview anywhere and be taken seriously. we even asked grandma tutu what she thought of our short list. "would you give them an interview?" we asked. and she answered honestly. and that was good.

you kick a lot and move even more.  you seem to like sugar, but i think mainly you're like me--you're a person who needs to eat frequently, and you like it when you do.  you started to kick tonight as i was putting maggie to bed, when i was singing.  that was sweet. i like to think it's because you heard my singing and liked it. maybe it's because maggie was on my lap and you wanted all of it to yourself. who knows? but i liked it. pretty soon, i think maggie's going to figure out that she's being kicked by you. 

hopefully that won't be the beginning of sibling rivalry.

i think of all that i did for maggie's pregnancy and what i haven't done for yours, and i feel a bit badly about it. i only have like three pictures of my belly.  i am not recording every little thing.  but i am still invested, baby girl, and i'm still planning. i'm still working and i'm still trying. 

thanks for being patient. i promise you, somehow, i will figure out how to be a good mom to both of you. there may be bumps in the road, but i hope you know how loved and wanted you are.  we are very excited to welcome you to our family.

keep cooking for a while yet, though. we're not ready for you quite yet.

love,
mommy.

four am wakeup call.

i'm 24 weeks tomorrow, and the hip pain while sleeping has commenced.

i don't remember when it started with maggie. i seem to remember going to the doctor after weeks of not sleeping well and my doctor looking at me and saying "you look tired." i feel like if the most unobservant of doctors i've ever had makes a comment like that, you must actually look like a truck ran over, backed up, ran over again and then dragged your remnants far and wide.

so i'm not sure when that started, but i know it was a pretty big, long deal.  we're just a few weeks away from the third trimester (finally! yay!), so i think it was probably around this time.

anyway.

maggie has been making HUGE strides in her sleep. as in, she's basically doing it herself now. she'll rock for a few minutes (like 2 or 3) and then she squirms and points at her bed and signs please when we ask her if she's ready for her bed.  then she might whine and complain a bit, put her bear to bed, or just lay down on her blankets and settle in.

she does it all by herself.

we're still in the room at this point, but we're getting farther and farther away. i'm pretty sure that soon we won't need to be there at all. 

i feel so very proud of her and so very grateful at the same time. it's been hard work, but i think what's most rewarding is that we did it by listening to her and to the Spirit. we did subscribe to anyone's plan of sleep training. we listened to our kid and we prayed. and when the time was right to do something else, we did it.  and it was hard at first and it was exhausting but when i think about how quickly she changed and how much she has grown since then, i am so proud of us for being brave and i am so proud of her for doing it on her own. 

and the past few nights, she's been sleeping better than she has in AGES.  what a blessing.

i don't expect it to be an every night thing. but it's so nice to see that she can do it.  i think she had slept through the night ONCE in the four or five months previous to this last month. now she's done it three or four times (once on the night before her birthday party--what a blessing!).  i'm grateful for long stretches. 

but i don't really get them.  last night, i was wide awake at 4am. i think it might be because my body is so accustomed to not getting straight sleep (longest stretch is usually 3 hours, maybe 4). when it got 5.5 straight hours, it was like BING! TIME TO WAKE UP!  so up i was.  finally, at 5, maggie woke up briefly.  when she went back to sleep, i went to work. i got a lot done, but goodness i am tired at 930.  why am i not in bed?

i still have work to do, and there's something lovely and wonderful about the time to be just me (whether it's working or not) after she goes to bed. she's kind of squally right now--cold + big fat molar coming in (the gum in superswollen now and pushing up) = whiny, weepy, cranky kid.  plus, we're in the throws of the 2-1 nap transition. she's been on one nap for a couple of weeks now, and i think her body is still trying to adjust to that change.  some days she has monster naps. some days she barely has an hour long nap. 

nevertheless. things are good here.  i'm busy but my husband is home more.  i have read 2.5 mysteries in the past two weeks. i have gotten through the grading for seven classes.  i'm about to start four more, and i managed to plan two entire classes (including posting all of the materials and rewriting 8 quizzes) in two days while my baby was sick and my husband was getting there too.

it's a challenging life, but it's a good one.

even when i wake up at 4am.  

i've been having Deep Thoughts about motherhood and this whole gig wherein we take our lives in our hands to give life. 

but i can't think about that because the phrase that's going through my head constantly is "don't pee on my head and tell me it's raining."

let me pose this question to you, internets: is it possible for someone to try to upload two papers, to try to email said papers once before, and to fail both times miserably? as in, i never got them and am yet being told that, yes, said assignments have been sent?

at first i thought, sure. it could happen. i was suspicious, but okay. benefit of the doubt never hurt anyone.  but how can you tell me you sent it to an email address that i'm checking every single day from my phone (so multiple times a day) and yet never received it?

don't pee on my head and tell me it's raining.

student2 just sent me a superrude email after getting his superlow grade on his plagiarized paper, suggesting that it is, in fact, mere coincidence that his paper and a superfamous tell you everything about a book including themes and character sketches type of site has the same phrasing, the same ideas, the same construction. 

uh huh.  yup. i buy that. fine. i'll just tell you all of the things that are wrong with your paper on the face of it, tell you that you're rude and need to reconsider how you speak to someone in authority, and suggest that a few moments of careful reflection before hitting "send" wouldn't be wildly out of line. i should have also suggested a great deal of spell check, but even i'm not that snarky.

and the thing is? i still really like what i do. 

but next semester? so different. so very very different.