Time flies

Marlowe Lee is one today.

It’s hard to believe how quickly a year can go by.

The most crazy part of it all is that we are done having babies, so this is the youngest baby I’ll have for the rest of my life.

Thinking that makes my heart hurt the teeniest, tiniest bit.

She’s a flirt.

She’s a charmer.

She pontificates in a language we can’t fully understand on the injustices of having a big sister who snatches her toys, on the delights of a soft blanket, on the fun of a balloon, on the inexplicable satisfaction of tearing toilet paper into teeny tiny shreds.

I pure straight love being her mommy. I love watching her sister and brother show her the ropes. I love watching her daddy melt in her presence. She is the perfect baby sister to the family and the best way to go out on babies.

I spent the day preoccupied with other things, mostly. But every snuggle I got today was extra juicy, as if Marlowe knew it was a special day. As I laid her down for bedtime tonight, she ran her chubby little hand up and down my right arm and nuzzled her head in closer to the crook of my neck. It’s the most delicious feeling in the world, a baby who snuggles.

I’m all too aware that this phase won’t last forever.

Each phase has its own joys and challenges, so I strive to cherish the ones I am in.

Family Band

Few gifts will get you uninvited to future children’s parties like musical instruments. They’re up there with Play Doh and glitter.

Give a child a kazoo, or a recorder, or a keyboard. See if their parents ever include you in their lives again.

So why on earth would I purchase a toy drumset for our children? Why would I inflict the hell of mind-numbing noise, the stress of refereeing turn-taking, and the frustration of building a tiny plastic instrument on myself?

This is why:

The joy! The camaraderie! The intense concentration on Maddox’s face!

I don’t even mind that they played incessantly for 40 minutes while Marlowe napped. She didn’t mind either – she slept right through it! And even though one of the canned tracks sounds very much like something you’d hear at a bar mitzvah like, 100 years ago, I kind of love how delighted my kids are by the catchy little track.

We may just form a family band.

Marlowe, the Villain

Early on, Marlowe seriously resembled a villain when she would nurse.

She’d scrunch her little face up.
She’d squint her eyes.
Her little tiny hands would clench fist fulls of skin, and her whole upper body would curl around my breast possessively, like Gollum with His Precious.

Perhaps this isn’t the fodder you all visit this blog post to read, but it’s something I never want to forget.

And seeing this picture of her little toes in a classic villain finger-steeple pose, I thought I’d better document the memory.

Marlowe is almost 5 weeks old, and I can’t believe how fast this time is flying.

Perhaps Marlowe can use her villain superpowers to develop a time machine so I can revisit these precious little moments and glimpses of Her-So-Tiny whenever I’m missing Fresh Baby… Villain Nursing and all.

 

Singing to Marlowe

Yesterday, Marlowe was upset about her newborn-inherent inability to get her own pacifier back in her mouth. Anson quickly fetched himself some hand sanitizer before helping Marlowe get a hold of her binkie once more. Then, he started to sing “the Daniel Tiger song” (which is not the “beautiful day in the neighborhood” Jam, but rather, a song Daniel Tiger’s mom sings to him at bedtime).

“Good night… good night to you… good night Marlowe good night. It’s mommy’s bedtime too!” He sang, and Maddox chimed in, too.

And then my heart exploded. Not literally – but you get it.

Legs falling asleep

I had a C-section two weeks ago, so I’m not supposed to be picking up the kiddos right now.

I do compromise by letting them climb all over me when I’m sitting down.

At movie night the other evening, Anson was sitting in my lap. I asked him to please sit next to me instead, after a while. “Why?” he asked me. “Because my leg fell asleep,” was my response.

“Oh.” Anson thought about this for a while. “My leg fell asleep, too.” He got up and moved to sit beside me, then pointed to his other leg. “And this one is pretty tired, too.”

The last day I’ll ever be pregnant

At least, with this one.

Saying “This is the last one” feels awfully permanent.

But as I write this I am thinking of the things I won’t do/we won’t do again.

I won’t have a positive pregnancy test.

We won’t have a big reveal.

We won’t have ultrasounds, or non-stress tests, or blood glucose screenings.

I won’t have to wear pants with full stretchy panels to keep them up (at least, one hopes).

I won’t feel first kicks.

I won’t lay in bed and watch my tummy move involuntarily.

I won’t have intolerable heartburn.

And tonight is the last intolerable night of anticipation before arrival.

Tomorrow, I’ll have my last C-Section.

And, we’ll meet the last new member of our immediate family.

I’m more excited than scared, more exhilarated than nostalgic, anxious about the next part more so than sad about the things I won’t get to do again.

But one thing I NEVER did, not once in the previous three pregnancies, is have a picture taken of my big exposed belly. And as I was looking at my belly tonight I realized, this is the last time I’ll ever look like this. And that, for whatever reason, was the thing that made me choke up a little.

This belly full of baby has carried three beautiful humans before this one. Two small stretch marks on my right side are the aftermath of Anson. The scar from my younger years’ belly button ring is stretched tight over my belly button, an inny that morphed into an outie over the past 9 months and change. I cannot believe that bodies do this. I’m just sitting here, making human parts, without putting any conscious effort into it, really.

Tomorrow we’ll get the best last surprise of this pregnancy. Tonight, I’m saying goodbye to this stretched-tight belly for the last time, and getting ready for a lifetime full of firsts to begin.

 

Making cookies with Anson

Anson really showed his big boy colors today.

Not only was he very helpful with daddy’s projects in our master bathroom, he chipped in with cleaning up the play room AND helped me make chocolate chip cookies.

We had so much fun measuring and scooping and using the stand mixer and dumping in the whole bag of chocolate chips.

And then I burned one pan of them.

Anson was so sweet about it. “It’s okay mama. I still love you even if you make mistakes.”

Dress rehearsal for the next 3+ months

Last night was not our best.

It started when I realized that we still don’t have names picked out for our baby. This is the last baby we’ll get to name, and all of a sudden the fact that we don’t have the perfect unique unexpected just-right name already set in stone irked me. So I started researching names, and all that screentime was my first mistake.

Around 10 pm, I realized that I wasn’t going to be struck by inspiration and needed to put away the Kindle. I tossed and turned until 11:30pm, when I woke from a doze with Maddox flopping down on top of me. I shipped her back to bed, but this would be the first of several visits from one or both of our children throughout the night.

At around 12:30 am, Anson and Maddox stood at my bedside and Anson announced,
“Mama, Maddox and I are ready to get up.”

“No, you’re not, because it’s the middle of the night.”

Back to bed they went.

About a half hour later, Maddox had somehow crawled into Anson’s bed and he was not happy about it. He wanted to sleep in her bed, and Zeb and I were just tired enough to let them give it a try.

“Oh HI Anchie! Anchie, what are you doin’?” I could hear Maddox exclaim in her high pitched, not-falling-asleep-anytime-soon voice.

Needless to say, Zeb separated them.

And then, the tears started.

“Momma! Maddox spilled water all over my bed and my PJs!” Anson wailed.

We stripped Anson’s bed of the sheets, made him go use the potty just in case, and put them both back to bed, again.

At 4:30 am, Maddox started wailing. She was just standing at the side of Anson’s bed, crying, when I walked in. Anson was saying in a sweet and comforting voice, “Maddox, what’s the matter?”

Seriously. What is the matter? For the past week, these two cuties took the whole “Sharing a bedroom” thing in total stride. I couldn’t believe our good fortune – these kids can nap AND sleep (mostly) through the night in the same room! Jackpot! One transition down of about a million tricky and challenging and (odds are) sleep impacting transitions in the weeks and months to come.

It just goes to show you. Never get too complacent, and never take a good night’s sleep for granted.

The Big Girl Bed + Maddox observations

Maddox has officially transitioned to a big girl bed.

It started with the transition of her crib from a baby cage to this:

But this is the crib that her big sister was intended to have, that her brother slept in for two and a half years, and that her baby brother or sister will occupy for the foreseeable future.

So, we had to get Maddox a twin bed.

She looks so tiny.

The bed is bouncy and gigantic. She loves to jump on it, and sing “No more monkeys jumpin’ on the bed.” Then she emphatically plops onto her buns, which, on her rock-hard infant mattress didn’t result in much push back but on this boing-y monstrosity resulted in her being catapulted into the wall the first time she tried it.

She is living her best life.

Tonight, Anson and Maddox spent a solid 10 minutes running back and forth in the hallway, leaping onto Maddox’s bed when they reached the bedroom, then turning around and racing into the entry way to leap onto the ottoman there.

Anson definitely has more stamina for this kind of physical activity, and as Maddox started to lose steam, she also started to stumble a bit. I stood and took it all in from the doorway of the bathroom as I filled their bathtub. Anson raced by me, oblivious. Maddox noticed me watching, and raised one arm to wave.

Then, she nearly ran into the wall from not paying attention.

She is her mother’s child, isn’t she?

Boundless energy, but a severe lack of coordination.

These two cuties filled our house with their raucous stampeding feet and joyful laughter tonight, and it made me feel all the feels: happy, proud, content, anxious, protective.

When the New Human arrives, this all gets disrupted, and of course it is for the better.

He or she will just need to learn to sleep through… well, anything… in their little baby bed that has been broken in by the three beautiful humans who made me a Mommy first.

The one week countdown

This is the Walter family’s last Monday as a family of five. A week from today, we’ll be figuring out what to name New Human, the fourth of the Walter kids and the final puzzle piece to our family.

It’s weird to think about the countdown now in terms of days instead of weeks. And the kids are starting to get pretty jacked.

There are all kinds of new items littering our living room – baby blankets and tiny onesies and a vaguely familiar yet oddly undersized carseat. There’s the newness of sharing a room, which I’m delighted to report has been a pretty easy transition for all parties involved. There’s the ceaseless discussion of good baby names. And today, Zeb told Anson, “Buddy, do you know that in a week, you’ll get to meet your baby brother or sister?”

Anson stopped what he was doing, which was good because he was leaping around the living room on the furniture which is an activity we should probably put the kibosh on since his sister copies just about everything he does. He stopped, he turned, and he laugh-exclaimed, “Oh ho ho hooooo… that’s not a lot of days!”

No, indeed, it is not.

We have been working hard to set expectations with Anson that it might not be a baby brother, and that would be okay. He really has his heart set on a baby brother who we can name “Anson” but refer to as Baby Brother. When Grandma Debbie asked him today what he would do if it turned out to be a baby sister, Anson’s response was one word:

“Cry.”

And honestly, I’ll probably cry a little bit too. Not because I’ll be so disappointed to have a girl instead of a boy. I’ll be a tiny bit sad either way, because it means that Anson or Maddox will be the last time I get to do certain little boy and little girls things.

It turns out, “Little Boy Things” and “Little Girl Things” aren’t really that big of a thing anyway. Maddox is just as into cars and trucks and trains as her brother, and is about as rough-and-tumble as they come. I’m not sure ballet is in the cards with that one, but I bet there will be a lot of sports. Meanwhile, Anson has some killer dance moves and I’m totally tempted to become a dance mom with my little hip hop toddler man.

Any bittersweetness I might feel about Our Last Baby will be overshadowed by the excitement of all the ways that our family is complete, with anticipation of all the ways I’m going to be challenged and stretched and entertained and amused. The surprise we’re in for a week from today is just the first in a lifetime of surprises that I’m positive we have in store with New Human/Bebe Bptschz/Tiger Ram.

Bring on the surprise.