Showered

I did take a shower today.. something that probably doesn’t happen enough now that we live in the “country”. I showered for our baby shower which was at our house this morning.

It was a sweet affair with many of our Petrolia friends present to celebrate, eat, and offer us wishes for our birth and expanding family.  This pregnancy has been white noise behind our months of transition, work, and parenting.  It sounds terrrible, but it has mostly been a physical challenge to endure as opposed to the semi-bliss, special time that my first pregnancy sort of was.  The second time around there is no time for long walks, prenatal yoga, long talks about the magic of it all, and, most importantly, sleep.  There is also the added layer of anticipatory anxiety about how anyone ever sleeps or travels or bathes or reads or does anything with 2 small children.  With the length of a day and the effort of two adults and the already full menu of needs and gifts  created by our 2 year old, the math just doesn’t add up when you factor in another baby.  Somehow, people do it.  They do it all the time.  This was a thoughtfully planned pregnancy so we must have thought it was a great idea at some point.

Though this pregnancy has mostly seemed eternal, it now seems sudden to be reaching the finish line.  We realized today that we have to put 2 car seats in the car to get to San Francisco because we are coming home with TWO CHILDREN instead of one.  We had to repeat that realization to each other a few times in order to absorb the new level of reality that logistical detail represents.  It was nice and important to have a ritual today that acknowledges the incoming new life and this moment in our briar-bonpane world.  I was inclined to not have a shower and just get things done and go have a baby and come back and get more things done.  But, Nola really deserved to have some celebratory recognition that she is not just another child but a totally new being that we are excited to meet and will surely be in awe of as we have with Ossian since day 1.  Blase and friends had the wisdom to argue me into having the shower and I am grateful.. it was the right thing and felt really good. Who will Nola be?  What will she look like?  How will we ever function again with 2 magical beings to stare at in our house?

Ossian has a new song today that starts.. “Osh-magosh ( her current nickname) and Nola Granola (nola’s current nickname)”.

There are two other pregnant women in Petrolia right now… thus the triple belly photo.

P.S. Ossian likes to read books in the laundry basket.