Favorite part of the day

Nothing makes my day more than River’s reaction to my arrival home. He hears the door open as I enter and regardless of where he is in the house, I hear him exclaim, “Mama! Mama esta aqui!” then comes running to greet me.

He is usually wearing his pyjamas, which highlight his increasingly long and lean body. I get to breathe in the scent of his freshly shampooed hair and kiss his clean, smooth cheeks. I feel loved, appreciated, lucky.

It makes up for whatever I’ve experienced during the day.

How long can one not show?

I had a doctor’s appointment today – pretty useless in that nothing was done beyond measure my uterus and take blood for a thyroid test. I’m now in the second trimester. The doctor said this is when many women start to have more energy and feel better. But since I never felt too bad to begin with, I don’t expect much of a change.

It’s odd to think that six months from now, I could very well have a second child in my arms. That both seems so near and so far. So near in that it’s only six months and it’s within this calendar year. I think not crossing into another calendar year during this pregnancy somehow makes it feel shorter.

At the same time, when I think about how many weeks of my stomach growing are left, then it seems like a very long time.

I have occasional flashes of wow, our lives will change this year. Or crap, can I really handle a huge belly and labor again? But generally, I don’t spend a whole lot of time thinking about it. Usually, I don’t even know what week I’m in at any particular time.

I asked the doctor how much growth was expected in the next few weeks. Could I wait until after the second set of screenings to inform my work?

He said that depended on the person, but that because I’m tall, I probably wouldn’t be showing.

Last time I told my employer around the 4th of July for a due date in the first third of December. This time it will probably be the second half of July for a due date towards the end of December. Basically, I’ll be giving about the same amount of notice.

I didn’t think that would be possible, since I heard that women show earlier the second time around. I do think I’m showing more than last time, but it’s still not enough to attract notice. Or at least not enough notice to cause anyone to comment yet. If it’s because I’m tall, I guess I’m grateful.

Bouncing already

They say you feel the baby moving sooner the second time around and so far, that seems to be true. I’ve been feeling it for quite a while, especially when I first wake up in the morning. But this is the first time I’m feeling consistent bouncing around, so much so that it’s briefly painful. When I had the ultrasound recently, I saw how it bounced up at regular intervals. I wonder what causes this. Instinct, boredom, development?

Now I feel these bounces as sharp pangs in my lower left abdomen. More than 25 more weeks of this? Yikes.

No news is good news

It’s been over a week since the first triple screen and I haven’t heard anything. So hopefully, despite my slightly advanced maternal age, I’m not in the category demonstrating a strong likelihood of Down’s syndrome. That’s a relief. I didn’t think that it was very likely to begin with, but I didn’t want to deal with the stress and the difficult decisions associated with either a false or a true positive.

late night experiment

About nine months ago, I met a local woman with similar interests and she suggested I come over some evening, with River and Mark, for pizza and a movie. I agreed and we tried to coordinate. It took nine months to finally set a date that worked for us both.

In that time, it became less easy to lug a portable crib around and let River get a few hours sleep. He tends to talk to himself for a while upon going down. If we wake him up after an hour or two, it’s painful, both for him and for us.

So I decided to skip the bed accessories and just let him stay up a bit late. We were meeting at 7 and agreed that if we decided to do a movie, we’d go back to our place for that and River could go to bed. I forgot that these friends have European and South American backgrounds, which meant that a simple dinner (without movie) took four hours. At 11 p.m., River came over and put his head on my shoulder and we gobbled down our dessert so that we could leave.

He had a great time and did remarkably well until 11. He was excited and happy and cheerful. We were glad to see that he was flexible and that he could enjoy a late night out like the little Spanish children we’d been around recently.

But it was definitely not easy to get over and took a full day or two to readjust. Maybe it would have helped if I hadn’t waken him at 8 the next morning. But I didn’t want to skip our planned bike ride. He was tired when he woke up and exhausted by noon. When I took him to a park, he ran over to the equipment, but then didn’t go down even a single slide. I think he was too tired.

It wasn’t until the following day that he was more or less back to normal, but we saw the effect that even one night of short sleep had on his ability to function. It’s nice to know we can have a fun night every so often. But I think we’ll save that for extraordinary cases. He is a little boy and he needs his sleep.

School lunches

I wrote recently about how I was pretty appalled seeing what the kids were eating out of their brown bags at a visit to the zoo. This blog shows what they might be eating on a school day and is a fascinating read. Scroll down to the peanut butter "sandwich" lunch. Unbelievable.

Somehow, I remember school lunches as being good. Perhaps it was because I usually wasn’t allowed to buy them and because the lunches my mom packed were both healthy and not sufficiently filling. The school lunch was like a smorgasboard, a big treat to me. I remember greasy tacos with crunchy corn shells, apple cobbler – yes, perhaps it was the unhealthiness that appealed to me.

I remember in high school, where we were given the option of an a la carte snack line, myself and many other teens fed themselves the most nutritious lunch of a salted soft pretzel and soft serve ice cream/yogurt (not sure what it was). Thank goodness I was really active in high school, because between that and my incessant candy bar sales (which I snacked on constantly), I really could have packed on the pounds.

I don’t know what lunches are like at our local schools. We’re still several years off from experiencing them. Part of me thinks there is enough of a health and eco-conscious community that they might not be so bad. I’ve definitely seen signs of activism among parents of local schoolchildren. However, at church, where the congregation is also very eco-conscious and supportive of people’s nutritional choices, River regularly gets goldfish and juice boxes as a snack. I don’t really mind since it’s only once a week. But boy do I hope his school lunches don’t look like the ones on this blog. I’m already dreading packing a preschool lunch one day a week. I really don’t want to have to do it daily.

More toxic stuff

Lead in juice boxes and canned fruit:

Luckily, I’ve never bought River juice, so I don’t have to worry too much about this one. Hopefully, the very occasional canned fruit and/or juice box he has received outside the home are infrequent enough to not worry about either. I really don’t need anything else to stress about right now.