Two weeks with two kids

Two weeks ago at this exact moment I was going to bed and hoping that I would not still be pregnant at breakfast.

I wasn't. And for the past two weeks we have been figuring out what life with two little boys looks like.

Eric gets enormous credit that things are as good as they are. No matter how late one sleeps, one does not wake up the next morning physically recovered from pregnancy and labor and Eric has picked up a lot of the slack while I have been recuperating. This in turn has helped me heal more quickly and I have been feeling pretty good.

We have been doing so well, in fact, that we may have gotten a little over-confident: today we went to IKEA, which everyone knows is the K2 of retail.

I carried Ethan in a wrap and Emerson rode in the cart. Things actually went remarkably well until the very end. In spite of taking shortcuts and being very focused, we spent longer than we had intended to wandering around IKEA and Ethan got hungry. This was fine - I am adept at nursing while walking, so that's what I was doing when Emerson tragically dumped his much-needed snack on the floor and then became very sad about it. We recovered and made our way to the check-out.

Because it was IKEA at any time of any day, the lines were epic. Among the impulse buys near the check-out was a huge bin of plush soccer balls. Emerson helped himself to a ball and then proceeded to make a break for the store exit. I, with baby to breast, tried to go after him ineffectively while Eric, trying to steer two unwieldy carts as the line moved up made frustrated noises directed at the carts, Emerson and me.

Emerson's escape route got cut off by two carts pulling out of the checkout and, because he couldn't think of anything better to do, he laid down on the floor in the fetal position, hugging the soccer ball.

"Don't we all want to do that right now?" one of the women next to us in line commented.

Indeed.

Ethan's birth story

Emerson's birth story started with the Jelly Belly factory tour followed by the Anheuser Busch brewery tour right nearby; Ethan's starts with Family Fun Day featuring Dinosaur World, a fruit punch winery, and Santa at the mall. I guess nothing inspires my body to bring a baby into this world quite so much as ridiculous tourist attractions.

It was at the mall that I first started feeling some light contractions. I didn't want to jinx anything by getting too excited too quickly so I tried to ignore them until they developed into something more definite. Which took a little while. I still wasn't sure if they were worth mentioning to Eric as we were heading to bed at 9pm that night, but I did let him know that something might be happening. (Yes, 9pm. That's how we roll these days.)

I woke up at 11:30pm with the awareness that labor was definitely starting. The contractions were still very manageable but they were more consistent and I could feel they were starting to get more intense. I just laid in bed and breathed through them until midnight when I decided to wake Eric up. Given how crazy it was last time to get the tub filled up I wanted to give him enough time. He got up and went downstairs to start preparations while I stayed in bed a little longer. I was very excited that this meant I would get to meet Ethan soon...and just a little nervous about how hard the labor might be.

At 12:15am I called our midwife Rebecca and gave her the heads up that labor was starting. She said I still sounded a bit too cheery to be in full-blown labor yet but that she was ready to come over whenever we needed her so I should just let her know when to come.

I headed downstairs and labored through contractions standing at the kitchen counter while Eric worked on filling up the tub. I was timing my own contractions and noticed that they seemed to be accelerating. At 12:45 I called Rebecca back and said that while it was probably still a little early, I would feel much better if she were here with us, especially since she lives 45 min away. She said she would be on her way shortly.

By 1am I couldn't manage to time the contractions myself: they were intense enough that I really needed Eric's support with them. He was great at helping me breathe through the contractions and not just make "this hurts too much" noises which are not very useful.

At 1:30, when she should have been arriving, we got a text from the midwife that said the highway was closed and she would be here in another 30 min. I was discouraged by this because I was looking forward to having her support (plus she had some special tricks for easing the pain of back labor, which is apparently a hallmark of labor for me). But I wasn't too worried about it.

So Eric and I continued working through the contractions together. I found that our light brown leather chair helped me with the now incredibly intense and close together contractions and this is where I was when Rebecca finally showed up about 10 minutes before 2am. She brought in all her gear and then came to check in with me. 

She suggested I move to the birth ball to labor there for a little while and I immediately regretted leaving the chair: the next contraction was a doozy. As was the next. On the third contraction I suddenly felt that it was time to push and Rebecca knew it too before I even told her. Then my water broke on our expensive new rug. (It cleaned up just fine!)

I had wanted to give birth in the tub like I did with Emerson but the tub was less than half full and the water was scalding hot (Eric learned the hard way the first time that you need the first half of the water to be extra hot because the second half will be cold). Eric began madly dumping ice into the tub while Rebecca helped me walk towards it. We knew it wouldn't be long now before Ethan would be making his big entrance.

I got to the tub but didn't manage to get in it. Instead, I knelt next to it as I felt the next contraction coming. Rebecca asked Eric to grab a towel and when he turned back, Ethan's head had been born. Moments later his body was out as well and Rebecca was handing him to me. It was 2:09am. She had been at our house less than 20 minutes.

The joy of meeting Ethan was immediate. Eric kept saying: "He's beautiful, Ellie." We just looked and looked at him, overwhelmed with amazement and gratitude (and still a little shocked he was already here!). His little eyes peeked open and looked back at us. We all just sat there for a long moment, taking it all in.

And then we heard Emerson shout from upstairs, just like he does when he wakes up from a nap: "Mom! Mom! Dad! Dad!" Eric went and got Emerson and brought him down to meet his new brother.

"Brother," Emerson said. "Yeah."

The next few hours were a happy blur of moving up to our bed, me taking a shower, Eric repeatedly trying to get Emerson to go back to sleep and Ethan's newborn exam where we learned he was 9lb 5oz, 21 inches long and perfectly healthy.

And now we are a family of four.

Family Fun Day

Eric and I declared Tuesday "Family Fun Day." Eric took off of work and Emerson and I abandoned our usual routine for a day of new adventures.

We started at Dinosaur World, of course. I think the easiest way to explain Dinosaur World would be to say it is like a sculpture garden but in a forest and with dinosaur replicas instead of art. It is clearly someone's dream and you can tell that a lot of thought and attention has been put into making it real.

Emerson liked it starting from the parking lot.

We were literally the only people there for the first hour and a half and it was neat, if a little weird, to have the place to ourselves. We let Emerson roam free and he loved it, except for just a few of the particularly large and scary ones.

 Emerson also got to search for fossils in a timed 15 min sand-pit dig where he could keep three of the fossils he found. He and Eric found a lot of teeth and a couple snail-looking rocks just before the buzzer.

 On our way to Dinosaur World we had noticed a sign for a winery just a little ways down the road. "Why not?" we thought. This is what Family Fun Day is all about.

Eric did the full tasting - 3 blueberry wines, 2 blackberry wines and about 6 "fusion" wines which are 80% grapes and 20% fruit, for example peach chardonnay and key lime sauvignon blanc. If you like Kool-Aid, this is the winery for you. And the best part: the wine slurpee machine behind the tasting counter (far left in photo, probably acquired when a nearby 7-11 had to close down). We brought home a bottle of the semi-dry blueberry wine and passed on the slurpee (they were low on ice anyway).

After Emerson's nap, Family Fun Day continued at: the Mall. We decided it would be fun to take Emerson to see Santa, though Emerson wasn't too keen on the idea of spending any one-on-one time with Santa so we took a family photo. For the record, I was not expecting to have my photo taken. Here's our last photo as a family of three: I have maximum belly, and Santa's not doing too bad himself. 

And, because it was Family Fun Day, Eric and Emerson rode the merry-go-round at the mall as well. 

A great time was had by all.

Past due

My due date, Sunday, came and went without labor or birth. I didn't really expect it to happen this way this time since I was early last time and second babies tend to come earlier than first ones.

It feels like by not going into labor by my due date I have now missed my chance to have this baby and now I will just be pregnant forever.

At the dealership

I had the unexpected pleasure of spending several hours at the Toyota dealership yesterday. After Emerson and I went to his toddler gym class in the morning the Prius would not start. Emerson's response, after instructing the car in a loud voice "Work!" was to go to sleep in his car seat. I made arrangements for AAA to come help us out, and a mere hour and a half later we were jump started and on our way to the closest Toyota dealership to get the car fixed.

By this point it had been a LONG time since breakfast for both of us and of course we couldn't stop the car to get food on the way over there so we did what we had to do: McDonald's drive through.

And there I was: the 9 month pregnant woman feeding herself and her toddler McDonald's for lunch at a car dealership at 2pm. Apparently Florida is having its effect on me whether I like it or not.

A woman standing near me see Emerson's enthusiasm over the french fries ("More! More!") and says "That's good stuff isn't it!"

"I don't normally eat this stuff," I quickly say more than a little defensively.

"I do," she says.

Skip ahead 45 minutes: Emerson has had half of my chocolate milkshake, half a hamburger bun (the "extra" bun in my first ever Big Mac) and the better part of a medium french fries. I have eaten the balance. There are greasy bits of french fry smeared all over the floor below our two chairs. The window behind Emerson's chair is practically opaque from the greasy toddler fingerprints all over the glass and there are shreds from an ESPN magazine strewn around his chair. The others waiting for their cars are all silently praying that the dealership has expedited the repairs on our car.

Emerson is having a big day. His emotions swing wildly from elated and giggly to furious, writhing on the floor. He is bouncing from one thing to the next - shouting loudly in gibberish at people we do not know, trying to pull down the shabby garland hanging from the service desk, pulling all the magazines out of the magazine rack, jumping up and down on an ottoman, asking me to help him search for pictures of dogs on the available computer terminal, and so on.

He is almost unrecognizable as my son. (Except for the dog pictures - that's a standard activity.)

After several hours of the most basic form of damage control parenting on my part and wild toddler antics on Emerson's part, the car is ready. Everyone is happy about this. Emerson tries to insist that he should drive us home but I veto that and decide that I will drive us instead.

Double gator

Gator Central, aka the pond in our back yard, is currently home to two alligators. One is about 3 feet long, the other one is a little bigger, probably closer to 4 feet long. Yesterday we saw them both creeping around the pond, eyeballs noiselessly gliding through the water. I was watching one of them through the binoculars we now keep in the kitchen for a close-up view when the whole gator's body came up out of the water for a split second and it's jaws cracked down on some form of pond prey. I think I made a sort of loud squawking sound out of a combination of surprise, fear and delight.

I am still not used to watching nature documentaries in my own back yard.

When we get a dog we will need to make sure it is a big one.