Scout supervises SSP’s tummy time.

I’m adding a new set of initials to the lexicon around here.

SSP was born on Friday morning weighing exactly seven pounds and measuring exactly 20 inches.  He looks just like his brother did as a newborn, and is every bit as sweet.  Delivery was smooth and largely uneventful.  The only drama of the whole affair was the Cardinals’ stunning Game 6 victory as I labored Thursday night.  We came home yesterday, all happy and healthy, and are enjoying the adjustment to a family of four.

I’m not quite sure what my presence in this space will be like in the coming few months.  I will certainly be taking a hiatus from thrice-weekly posting, and from my usual menu of thought-provoking topics.  I’m considering just posting photos – “Scenes from Maternity Leave” or similar – but haven’t really settled on any one approach yet.  Stay tuned and I will let you know once I’ve figured it out.

Thanks for all of your support and good wishes over these past many months of pregnancy.  It is such a blessing to finally have SSP in our family.

Tonight I have a date.  First, I have a date to take our dogs to the vet for their annual checkups and shots (for which they are a month overdue…) and IEP has agreed to go with me and be my helper.  Then, on the way home we will stop by our corner pizza joint, pick up our supper, and come home and watch Game 1 of the World Series together.  (GAP has plans with a buddy.)

Under other circumstances I might find these plans draining.  Getting two Bernese Mountain Dogs in and out of the vet isn’t easy when you’re not 37+ weeks pregnant with a toddler in tow.  So I’m fully prepared for the fact that this evening’s errand could very well be a comedy of errors (and/or frustrations).  But I’m looking at it differently today.

IEP’s days as an only child are numbered.  As of today that number is – at most – nine.  And I am feeling a bit nostalgic about it.

I firmly believe that the very best thing in the world we can give our son is a sibling.  Life as an only child is certainly no tragedy and most only children grow up to be perfectly happy and well-adjusted adults.  Nevertheless, I see tremendous value in growing up alongside siblings.  There are life lessons that can be learned in any number of venues, but a small handful of those, I believe, are best learned from brothers and sisters – conflict resolution, sharing, dominance and submission, justice and injustice, and so on – not to mention all of the shared experiences and camaraderie that come from growing up together.  I am extremely close to my sister.  GAP is likewise close to his five siblings.  So we both believe that the brother that is quickly coming his way is a very good thing for IEP.

But back to my nostalgia.  For the past nearly-three years I’ve been able to give all of my parental time, energy, and focus to IEP.  He has been the sole epicenter of our family.  And we have loved every minute of it.  So there is a part of me that feels a bit sad knowing how drastically his world is about to be upended, especially given that he really has no idea of what’s coming.  Naturally he knows that the baby is coming soon – and he’s excited about it – but he won’t really be able to wrap his head around what that means until he’s living it.

Which brings us back to tonight.  I will get home from work shortly after 5:00.  I will load up 200 pounds of dogs and 30 pounds of toddler into my car.  We will awkwardly navigate our way through the trip to the vet.  I will tell IEP how to be a good helper and he will feel proud of himself for doing so.  When we get home we will go down to the basement, turn on the big TV, and eat our pizza.  I will watch him take bites intermittently as he scans the field for Albert Pujols.  I will listen to him ask me, “Mommy, no like that pitch?” every time a batter lets one go by.  And I will watch him jump and run and cheer “That humongous hit!” when either team makes contact.  He will stay up past his bedtime.  And if I’m very lucky he will crawl up into my lap for snuggles periodically.

Before too long that lap will be filled with a Boppy and a baby whom I know I will love every bit as much as I love IEP, and I can’t wait.  But for now – for tonight – I’m glad that I can still give all of what I have to him.  This is a time of beginnings and endings, and I suppose I should expect to find myself feeling emotions tied to each.

As of last night three of the four most recent posts on NYT’s Motherlode dealt in some way with kids’ access to technology (television, Facebook, and iPads, respectively).  None of these posts is especially substantial, but their sandwiched nature points to something that intrigues me: we really know very little about how each of these screen-oriented gadgets affects our children.

We know the most about television.  Various studies over the years have told us that it negatively impacts their attention spans, critical thinking skills, physical fitness, and interpersonal skills.  I can only assume that being glued to Facebook or an iPad aren’t that different.  And yet we live in a world where these things are ubiquitous; only the most dedicated of parents will successfully navigate their children’s childhoods without exposure to them.

GAP and I took I pretty hard line for the first two years of IEP’s life.  He was allowed in the room while we watched news or sports, neither of which really captured his attention.  But he wasn’t allowed to watch any children’s programming until after his second birthday, and even then it was a very rare occasion.  Seeing the way his eyes glazed over – captivated, but unresponsive – told me that whatever was going on in my little boy’s brain wasn’t good.  It was only as he developed the ability to interact with the show – shouting out the answers to Dora’s questions, or laughing at Steve’s jokes on Blues Clues – that I developed some peace of mind that his viewing wasn’t putting him into a Clockwork Orange-like trance.

This was the path GAP’s and my guts told us to take.  But we still don’t exactly know what effect this exposure will have on our little boy.  Neither do we know what effect his exposure to iPhones (he’s been able to navigate GAP’s since he turned two), or iPads (Nanny has one that she uses for educational apps periodically) will ultimately have on him.  Facebook isn’t in his vocabulary yet, but if there’s anything I can count on it’s that his interest in social networking will sprout much earlier than I expect it to.

Given all of this, I am prone to wonder – after a certain age, at least – whether a cold turkey approach or something more permissive is healthiest for our kids.  Perhaps no technology at all is best for young kids.  Perhaps the only thing such indulgences achieve are a few quiet moments for Mom and Dad, and nothing beneficial for the child himself.  Or perhaps (and this is the direction I’m leaning, though I’m not fully confident of it) the better direction is something of a hybrid.  Our kids will never live in a world without smartphones and iPads (at least not until the next thing replaces them…), so what good does complete denial do them if it doesn’t represent reality.  (In a sort-of-applicable parallel, most of what I’ve read about kids and nutrition instructs that we should teach our children how to balance healthy and unhealthy foods, rather than declaring war on French fries and chicken nuggets altogether.)  So is a combined approach better?  If our kids can watch an episode of Thomas the Tank Engine and still want to read books before bed is that preferable to requesting a book only because they don’t know that Thomas exists?  (Yes, I know that the Thomas behemoth started out as a simple book.  We have many Thomas books…)

With our second child on the near horizon I also wonder how we’ll chart these waters during his first two years.  IEP knows that Saturday mornings are his time to watch his shows.  Will we pull the rug out from under him just because his baby brother is within earshot?  Likely not, but how we’ll minimize #2′s exposure remains to be seen.

The one thing that I take a bit of comfort in when it comes to issues like this is that we won’t get it 100% right, but we won’t get it 100% wrong either.  We care greatly about our kids’ mental development.  We work to ensure that they are exposed to many different settings and circumstances.  We teach them manners and initiative and boundaries.  It would take an army of tech gadgets to drown out the influence that we spill into our kids’ ears each day.

We may not know what the exact right answer is to our questions about kids and technology.  But we do know that if we’re asking the questions in the first place we’re probably on the right track.

I suppose that if you asked 100 different people what hope looks like you would get 100 different answers.  That is human nature.  If I were one of those 100 people and you asked me that question today the answer would be: these pajamas.

A few weeks before IEP was born my mother was in town for one of my baby showers.  She took the opportunity to spoil me in a variety of ways, one of which was to take me shopping for pajamas to wear in the hospital so that I would have something comfortable but attractive to wear when friends and family came to visit me and our new baby.  One pair was pale blue with a chocolate brown floral pattern.  The other pair was white with spring green leaves and periwinkle blue birds.  I loved them both.  But, as it turned out, no one ever saw my cute pajamas.

Just hours old, IEP was transferred to a children’s hospital for treatment by teams of specialists.  (He is fine now.)  This meant that I spent my two postpartum days in the hospital alone with my mother, waiting for my phone to ring with news of my baby’s condition and prognosis, while GAP tended to our son across town.  I won’t lie.  It really, really sucked.

Now here I am, three years later, preparing for the arrival of my next baby.  Perhaps I shouldn’t be, but I’ve been trying fairly hard avoid thinking about delivery.  They were complications during delivery that caused all of IEP’s problems, and it’s hard to think about the actual birth of my second son without my mind going to a worst-case-scenario kind of place.  We have taken all the proper steps to ensure a healthy and safe delivery, which does put my mind at ease a bit.  Nevertheless, I struggle to envision exactly what it might be like to go through labor without incident, and to relax in the hospital with my baby for a couple of days before we head home.

And so I turn to pajamas – two pairs, one floral and one polka dotted – which to me represent hope, optimism, and the faith that this time will be different from the last.  They arrived in the mail yesterday and shortly after I got home from work I tried them on.  Then I called my mother and said, “My hospital pajamas came today.  And I’m bound and determined for someone to actually see them this time.”  She knew immediately the significance of my statement.

It’s hard for me to think about delivery.  But in my own way I am mentally preparing for a different experience this time.  For me, right now, hope looks like new hospital pajamas.

Little by little it’s all becoming quite real.  IEP has moved out of the nursery and into his good-boy room.  My FMLA paperwork has been filled out and will be submitted to HR this week.  Last week Nanny laundered all of our newborn and 0-3 month baby clothes.  And over the weekend I took IEP’s vast collection of 2T polo shirts out of the nursery closet and hung his former collection of newborn footed sleepers on tiny hangers.  Tiny hats, socks, and onesies fill the dresser.  Newborn diapers will be ordered this week.

This baby is coming.

People ask me if I’m ready.  The nice thing about having a second boy, and a second November baby is that from a logistical perspective, I’ve been ready for three years.  We have all the gear, all the clothes, and all kinds of knowledge we didn’t have the first time around.  This should be a piece of cake, right? …  I’m not so sure.

I have no experience in parenting two children.  I have never tried to care for a newborn while also caring for a toddler.  We have never been a family of four.  And this adventure, much like the first one, will be a case study in lessons learned the hard way.  For that is the only way to figure these things out.

And so I look at the logistical end of things.  I am pre-registered at the hospital.  IEP’s birthday party is planned and booked.  Christmas shopping is about 85% complete.  We have made arrangements for Nanny to be on call for IEP should I go into labor in the middle of the night.  I still need to stock my freezer with my preferred post-partum menu of homemade soups, and stock up on batteries for all of the bouncy seats, swings, white noise machines and other baby paraphernalia.  But beyond that, I’m ready.

And beyond that, I’m ready.  I’m ready to meet this little guy.  I’m ready to see what IEP is like as a big brother.  I’m ready for the ligament pain in my spine to dissipate.  I’m ready to roll over in bed without having to wake up and adjust multiple pillows each time.  I’m ready walk away from my job for a few months and indulge my mind in the mental vacation its been craving for weeks now.  And I’m ready to burp and swaddle and snuggle the newest love of my life; to smell that new baby smell; to hear the sweet little grunts that are only made by a nursing baby; and to watch my life fill up again beyond anything I ever could have imagined.

This baby is coming whether I’m ready or not.  Lucky for both of us, I’m as ready as I’ll ever be.

Several weeks ago, in an effort to begin preparing IEP for big brotherhood and to keep him excited about being a little boy after the baby arrives on the scene, I started talking to him periodically about all the things that ”big boys” get to do that babies can’t do.  (Think: go down slides, eat ice cream, play with trains, tickle Daddy, go to gymnastics class, etc.).  However, after months and months of telling him after various outings and adventures that he behaved well and was a good boy, when I started regaling him with the glories of being a big boy he corrected me.  “No, no, Mommy.  No big boy.  IEP good boy!”  (Note: he doesn’t actually refer to himself by his initials…)  And so it was in that vein that this past weekend’s major project was not moving IEP into his Big Boy Room, but rather into his Good Boy Room.

The process was bigger than GAP and I anticipated at the outset and ended up absorbing the entire holiday weekend.  Tasks included:  Select and purchase furniture.  Select and purchase bedding.  Select and purchase family meal from KFC.  Move all adult office furniture out of heretofore home office and into heretofore guest bedroom.  Reroute all computer, phone, and internet cables.  Realize cell phone is missing.  Vacuum many dust bunnies.  Select and purchase wall paint.  Paint bedroom walls.  Go out to breakfast because the house is completely devoid of any basic provisions.  Unsuccessfully shop for draperies.  Successfully shop for drapery hardware.  Select and purchase two file cabinets.  Drive to two different warehouses to collect said file cabinets.  Realize cell phone was left at first furniture store two days prior.  And on, and on, and on.  It was an incredible drain.

Nevertheless, the weekend contained some significant bright spots.  I always enjoy weekends at home with my boys, but weekends like this one remind me of how much I appreciate them.  I appreciate that even in exhausting and stressful circumstances GAP and I navigate life together without snapping or fighting.  I appreciate that IEP is a trooper, happy to tag along on errands and (for the most part) keep himself occupied and out of trouble.  And somehow, it is during trying times as often as happy ones that I recognize how truly thankful I am for the life that I have.

As for the Good Boy Room project itself, we got it all done.  The office was successfully relocated.  The new bedroom furniture will be delivered tomorrow.  The walls are painted.  The bedding is washed.  And IEP has slept on his Good Boy Bed every night since Saturday (we were able to bring the mattress home without the rest of the set).  Drapes have been ordered.  I’m still looking for a rug, but other than that we’re very close.  I’ve been amazed and impressed with how easily my baby has handled this big change, and I find myself quite proud of the little boy he’s become.  Each night when I tuck him in he goes down with a smile and I’m sometimes taken aback at how much he simply isn’t a baby anymore.

As for babies, IEP’s move into the Good Boy Room means that the nursery is once again vacant.  And somehow – as if being seven months pregnant weren’t tangible enough – seeing that room sit empty has made it quite real to me that we have another baby on the way.  I am easily transported to the weeks leading up to IEP’s birth, when the nursery was complete but the pregnancy wasn’t.  Many evenings I would walk in, sit in the glider, and stare at the space that had been so carefully filled with the stuff of a baby, but was yet so empty for lack of an actual tiny person.  I thought to myself, “There’s going to be a baby living in here soon.”  But no matter how many times I tried to envision it I really had precious little conception of what it would be like when that statement came true.  Now, with our second go around, I make the same statement in my head with much more knowledge of what the future holds.  What I don’t know, though, is who this baby is.  Is he a good sleeper and a good eater?  Will he nurse quickly like his brother or slowly?  Does he like to be swaddled?  Are the hours from 5:00pm to 7:00pm hard for him?  Much like meeting any new person for the first time I know both much and little of what to expect.

What I know for now, though, is that IEP is a Good Boy, with a Good Boy Bed, in a Good Boy Room.  For the past nearly-three years he has been as good a boy as I could ever have dreamt of.  I can’t imagine loving anything else as I much as I love him.  But then again, before he was born I never could have imagined loving him this much either.

My life is stuffed with blessings.

30 weeks down.  10 to go.

75% there.

Glass three-quarters full.

Six months and three weeks along.

Two and a half months left.

All of those things are true about my pregnancy today.  But only one of them makes me feel like I’m really getting closer to my due date.  I’ve been pregnant for 30 weeks.  I have only ten weeks left.  That feels like an accomplishment.  Every other version of the same math leaves me feeling as though the end is still not in sight.  So I’m focusing on the first countdown method, because I find myself needing a little pick-me-up in the attitude department.

I should be honest here.  Pregnancy is pretty easy on me.  Other than third trimester heartburn (which mercifully hasn’t set in yet), I get virtually none of the miserable side effects that often come with pregnancy.  I am keeping up with my usual routine, and while I’ve had to dial back the intensity level of a few things, for the most part I feel pretty normal.  So I feel a bit selfish admitting that I’m counting down the weeks to delivery, because I know I could have it a lot worse.  Nevertheless, I miss feeling like my old self.

Wishing these last few weeks away could be dangerous, though.  These are IEP’s last weeks of being an only child.  They are my last weeks of having only one little boy who needs me.  My last weeks of being able to devote myself entirely to him.  GAP’s and my last weeks of outnumbering our children.  Whether or not we are ready, big changes are coming and I would be remiss not to stop and cherish the life that we have had and loved for the past nearly-three years.

I’ve remarked to GAP many times recently that I never imagined that parenthood would be this much fun.  I thought I would enjoy it, but I have been surprised and delighted at how truly fun it is.  I believe that adding to our family will only add to that level of fun.  I will find joy in watching IEP take up the mantle of brotherhood.  I will get to be tickled all over again with the many milestones of the first couple of years.  And I will be able to look around at my life, never having envisioned myself as the mother of two boys, and recognize how much I love it and how well it suits me.

However, there is much about my life as it is that I love.  Aspects of that life are going to end, and I’m struggling with that.  From this vantage point I can easily see what I will lose when our second son is born this fall.  But I can’t yet see all that I will gain.  So I am left to take it on faith, to trust, and to believe, that what I give up will be outweighed by what I gain.  After all, it was because we are so head over heels in love with IEP that we wanted to have another child.  I know it will be hard for a while.  I know we will be in over our heads.  I know that there will be stress and hormones and tears.  But I also know that the moment my second little boy is born I won’t ever again be able to imagine my life without him.

With some big changes on the horizon (moving into his big boy room in the next couple of weeks, followed closely by the arrival of a baby brother) Nanny wisely decided to incorporate some increased structure into IEP’s weekly schedule.  Moving forward each week will include a designated day for crafts, gymnastics class, field trips, library story time, and cooking.  These are all things that they’ve been doing anyway, but assigning each one a day of the week makes things a little more predictable for IEP, which I think will be good for all of us. 

Wednesday was the first official cooking day, and I’m already thrilled with it.  IEP was waiting for me at the back door when I got home from work (which is unusual), knocking and waving as I approached.  When I got inside he exploded into a chorus of, “MOMMY!! LOOK!  LOOK!  LOOK!!  MOMMY!! MOMMY!!”  He ran to the kitchen counter and pointed very proudly to a loaf of banana bread sitting on a cooling rack.  He requested a seat on the counter and immediately picked up the entire loaf, so that I could get a better look at his creation. 

IEP eagerly told me – replete with hand motions – about how he squished the bananas, cracked the eggs, dumped the flour, and made the mixer spin.  Per Nanny, when he awoke from his nap he couldn’t wait to see the final results and quickly declared, “Banana soup is toast!  Show Mommy!  Show Daddy!”  When GAP got home he was too excited showing off the banana bread to go through the explanations again, but he made it quite clear that he was pleased with the results by sinking his teeth right into the loaf without bothering to ask that we slice off a piece. 

I’ve written before about the benefits of having something to show for yourself, and IEP’s pride and excitement really resonated with me.  As someone who’s been cooking her whole life I know well the feeling of being tickled by the fruits of your labor.  I feel such satisfaction at seeing a cake on a platter, a slice of pie on a plate, a platter of chicken parmesan, or an especially colorful salad that I’ve made.  It’s probably been 25 years since I uttered the phrase “Mommy! Look!” after completing a dish, but a tiny remnant of that sentiment still lives in the back of my mind every time I put dinner on the table.

Cooking may not turn out to be IEP’s thing.  Perhaps he’ll move on to matchbox cars, or painting, or the construction of a treehouse.  But I hope he’ll always find a way in his life to create something tangible.  Seeing his face light up with pride on Wednesday filled me up in so many ways.  And yesterday morning at breakfast I was filled again, more literally though, with delicious banana bread made by my equally delicious son.

I’m skeptical of any married person who claims that she doesn’t fight with her spouse.  No two people are so perfectly aligned that they never disagree, never hurt each other’s feelings, or never sense friction of any kind.  I think I’m even more skeptical of people who claim that they do disagree, hurt each other’s feelings, and sense friction and still don’t fight.  Something about that just doesn’t feel genuine to me.

Of course there is a continuum here.  What I call a fight you might call a discussion.  What you call a fight I might call a hostile screaming match.  What I call cooling off you might call the silent treatment.  And so on.  But the commonality here is that there is conflict, no matter how civilly or heatedly it is expressed.

When the two conflicted adults don’t have children, their fighting style is mostly a personal choice.  Provided it’s not done publicly there’s not much place for anyone to say what is the “right” way to fight.  If yelling and screaming gets the anger out of your system and the issues out on the table (and your partner is game for it), then who am I to claim right or wrong?  If a calm conversation is both cathartic and productive, then more power to you.

The kicker, though, is when kids are in the picture.

Questions abound.  Should our kids know that we fight?  Should we let them see us argue?  If they know we’ve had a fight should we put on a happy face when we’re in front of them, or is that disingenuous and stressful for them?  A post yesterday on NYT’s Motherlode asks these very questions.

The social worker quoted in the article says just what you’d expect her to say – that what matters most is that kids learn how to manage their differences; that they learn how to do so in a loving fashion and with respect; and that they learn how to voice their own needs and opinions.  This all sounds quite manageable in shrink-speak, but I wonder if it isn’t a great deal harder than that in real life.

GAP and I aren’t “fighters” per se.  We disagree and argue often enough – we are both strong-willed and opinionated.  But we don’t yell or scream.  Ever.  We don’t get huffy with each other in front of IEP, which for the moment I think is the right call.  He’s too young to understand that conflict between Mommy and Daddy is normal and healthy and I don’t want any occasional tension between us to ever frighten him.

But what of the future?  What about four or five years from now when he’s in elementary school, perhaps getting into playground spats with friends from time to time, has several siblings he has to get along with, and needs an example of how to settle an issue effectively?  How then does our example affect him?

Like most parenting issues, as the mother of a two-year-old this one is new to me.  So much of what I will learn about raising a child is out in the future still.  And, like many other parenting issues I’m sure we will screw this one up, at least a couple of times, before we get the hang of it and figure out what works in our families.  Nevertheless, I wonder if there is some path – whether wide or narrow – within the boundaries of which I can walk with some assurance of safety.  Even though I know I’ll make mistakes in this realm, I hope that they will be minor.