Arwen/Elizabeth

MfBW2

In August of 2003, I was excited.  Bryan and I had discerned and decided that we were no longer justified in trying to avoid conception, so... we were going to have a baby!  At least the way I saw it, we were.  I mean, that's the way the whole thing works, right?

Not so much, it turned out.  But we did eventually have a baby, and for the past two years I've been able to fit right in with the people for whom the whole baby-making process looks like simple cause and effect instead of what it really is, a big ol' crap shoot.  It was nice to live in that world for a while.

But now it's February of 2008 and we're four whole cycles out of the nursing-induced safety territory.  Many, many people would consider four normal cycles that didn't result in conception to be a cause for alarm.  Of course I'm not one of them, and actually I'm enjoying the fact that four conception-free cycles is still well within the realms of normal fertility.  Hey, look at that: I'm Normal!

However, being in the Land of Conception-Technically-Possible is forcing me to face reality.  Facing reality can be overwhelming and cause a lot of feelings to surface, as is evidenced by the fact that I have a 1200-word rambling shipwreck of a post sitting in my drafts folder right now.  I've been working on it for weeks.  But as I've pondered and written and rewritten all the things I have to say on the topic, I've come to the conclusion that while the details are important, the distillation is more important right now.  I need a mission statement, a Manifesto for Baby Wait #2, so that in the future if my feelings overwhelm me (which they inevitably will if I don't get pregnant fast) I can steady myself with the Things I Know.

Manifesto for Baby Wait #2
1.  Don't borrow trouble.
      Since I started cycling again, I've noticed that the physical signs of an imminent new cycle bring on an involuntary response that feels a lot like panic.  I know it's involuntary because in contrast to the panic, my real emotional response to the discovery that I'm not pregnant is actually relief.  We have a high-needs child.  Bryan and I don't feel that her needs constitute a grave reason for us to try to avoid conception right now (if the thought of deliberately "avoiding" conception didn't feel incredibly farcical anyway, which of course it does), but we are still a little stretched, and the idea of a while longer to recover from our long-term sleep deprivation and learn to be better parents is appealing.  Not getting pregnant at this exact moment is really a blessing in many ways.
     There's also the fact that we have no actual data about the physical aspects of our reproductive situation, and thus have no guarantees that we will experience a longer-than-average wait for our next child.  There's really no way of knowing what we will happen. Given that and the above-mentioned ambivalence about the timing, throwing myself into an emotional frenzy just because a couple of my friends are pregnant and I'm not is ludicrous.  I'm happy where I am right now, and I need to remember that.

2.  Count my blessings.
     We really, really want more children.  Even if we aren't necessarily ready to bring them home in 2008, we'd love to have a big family and before the curveball of Baby Wait #1, we always expected we would.  However, while having two children is better than having one child and having three children is better than having two, the gap of Goodness between having one child and having no children is the biggest gap of the group.  Having one child is infinitely better than childlessness.  No matter what happens, we've got Billa and that is a huge, enormous, mind-blowing blessing.  If we do go through a long wait again, I don't ever want to get so caught up in the pain of not having another child that I forget the intrinsic, incredible value of the first one.

3.  Be not afraid.
     I'm not ashamed of the way I handled our fertility struggles the first time around.  I think we discerned well and made the right decisions for our circumstances and particular spiritual calling.  I have no big regrets about anything we did during that time.
     But last time, I spent a lot of time being afraid.  Afraid of what was coming, and afraid that I wouldn't be able to handle it.  It was natural but it was unnecessary, as God patiently showed me.  He wasn't asking me to console myself or find peace or figure out what we should do.  He was just asking me to let Him do those things for me, and that is nothing of which to be afraid.
     I have seen His faithfulness in the gift of my beautiful daughter, but it is still dawning on me that the time of waiting for her was a sign of His faithfulness too.  Countless good things have resulted from that time, first and foremost my understanding of His love for me and my ability to trust Him in a way I never did before.  Had it been up to me, I would have chosen to have our first child as soon as we thought ourselves ready for her, but if that had happened we would have missed out on a huge amount of grace.  That is why God is in charge, because He knows what He's doing.
     Now I look back on the past four-and-a-half years and see clearly that His faithfulness has never wavered.  It was only my understanding that failed.  And this is why, despite my strong desire for more children and my apprehension about reentering a time of waiting and uncertainty, I am determined to eschew fear this time.  I can't do it on my own, of course: only by God's grace will I manage it.  But isn't that true of everything?

Kindred Weekend

Last Wednesday afternoon Bryan and I ran around like mad throwing our belongings into bags so that we could make our 4:20 flight to DC.  We made it with time to spare (dramatics notwithstanding, we've never actually come close to missing a flight) but we were sweaty and strung-out and we forgot our stroller and I declared that for our next trip, we will pack the night before.  Bryan rolled his eyes because I always say that, but this time I MEAN IT.  I'm not doing the oh-heavens we-have-to-leave where's-my-eyeglass-case dash one more time.  My heart cannot take it.

Milla blessedly declined to urinate on me on the flight down.  I was readying my song of thanksgiving but quickly had to stow the music when, just as we taxied to the arrival gate, she activated Plan B.  Plan B was, frankly, a less desirable alternative to Plan A.

I am now in the position to make an educated decision between these two choices:

1.  Sit through an hour-long plane ride with someone else's urine drying on your pants.

2.  Walk through an airport terminal covered in vomit.

I might have thought that option 2 would be preferable because the time involved is so much shorter, but having experienced both, I can say decisively that option 1 is much less disgusting.  If you ever get to choose, definitely go with the pee.

After a harrowing clean-up - thank heaven for family restrooms, is all I can say about that - we finally emerged odor-free from the bowels of the airport into the bowels of the airport car-rental parking garage, where Camilla decided that enough was enough, and screamed like her car seat was a tiny piece of hell on earth.  Which turned the car ride into torture for all three of us.  Fortunately our hosts live very close to the airport.

I was excited, but also mildly nervous.  SoCo and I had met in person once, and done enough emailing and phone-conversing to know that we got along very well on a limited-exposure basis, but the real litmus test of a friendship is spending lengthy amounts of time together.  Even more so if you're on personal turf, and we were going to be staying at her house.  Plus, I'd never met her husband.  I expected him to be awesome, but you never know.

Fortunately, he is awesome.  As is SoCo, even (especially) in extremely extended exposure.  The weekend turned out to be one of the best I've ever had, and I've had some good weekends in my twenty-five years.

We didn't do much - a couple tours of historic buildings, a couple delicious dinners out - but I think that was a plus, not a minus.  The company, not the activities, was what made the time awesome.  The best parts were when we were just hanging out, exchanging ideas and laughing together and getting to know our new friends.  I'm actually looking forward to Bryan having another business trip, so we can go down there again.

Milla can't wait either.  She wasn't as excited about the Old Senate Chamber as I was:

But she thought the benches in the capital city were pretty cool.

She made new friends in the persons of SoCo's neighbors, two adorable girls aged six and four.

She really enjoyed chowing down on chips and salsa at an excellent Mexican restaurant, and carrying around an extra purse that SoCo kindly provided for her, and forcing our too-generous hosts to read books to her.  (SoCo is now a devotee of the Personal Penguin song, as all our friends must be.)

Milla got along well with our hosts' dog, who is everything a dog should be and exceedingly patient with small children.  (When I showed Billa this picture, she said "Woof woof!")

We took some great pictures of us with our friends, but since SoCo stays mostly anonymous online - for good reasons - I can't show you them.  How about a picture of Milla appropriating the lens cap, right before we took the pictures?

I'm just too in love with this girl, I tell you.  Yet another thing that contributed to the awesomeness of the weekend was how great our hosts were with Billa - patient and kind and appropriately enchanted by her.  She won their hearts, I think, and they won mine by letting her.

One of the coolest things about the Internet is the chance to meet people with whom you wouldn't otherwise cross paths.  On the surface, SoCo and her husband live a different life from ours - much more urban, for one thing - but at the heart of it they have as much in common with us as any couple I've ever met.  It was not merely because of the wine and margaritas that the conversation flowed so abundantly all weekend long. 

The two-and-a-half years we waited Milla were difficult, and I wouldn't want to relive them.  I would certainly never choose infertility.  But when I think about some of the good things that have come out of that struggle, things like my friendship with SoCo... well, it makes me realize that silver linings can turn out to be a heck of a lot bigger than they look at first sight.

And I'm not just saying that because her husband's margaritas were the best I've ever had.  Although they were.  They definitely were.

Emergent

Blogging is kind of like going to confession.  The more you do it, the easier it is to do it.  And unfortunately, vice versa.

Whenever a blogger posts that she's been so busy with her life that she's let blogging get away from her, I'm selfishly surprised.  What could be more important than updating the Internet (read: me) on the happenings?  Seriously, WHAT?  But I've been failing to practice what I silently preach, and oops, look at that!  Two weeks without posting.

I have no one to blame but myself, of course.  I have been working on a post about the possibility of baby #2, and about all the contingencies and about how I feel about all the contingencies.  The post is 95% finished but until it says what I want to say I won't post it, and in the meantime regular updates fall by the wayside.

I think one of the problems is that I keep trying to be the blogger I was (or at least aspired to be) before Camilla came along, with well-thought-out and carefully written essay-style posts on specific topics.  Those can still occasionally happen with proper inspiration, but I am really much more of a dashed-off casual-update type of girl now.  I need to face that fact. 

Also to face the fact that I am incredibly long-winded, which is why I just used four paragraphs to warn you that this is a casual dashed-off update instead of a carefully crafted essay.  Totally unnecessary, and it won't happen again, I promise.

This past weekend we went up to northern Michigan to go skiing and spent a total of ten (10!) hours in the car round-trip, which with our car-hating baby is an accomplishment.  It's also exhausting: when Camilla was awake, one of her parents had to sit in the back and play with her the entire time, or ELSE.  On the trip up we actually tried both sitting in the front seat and just singing to her in the back, and she got so mad she puked.  I think Bryan was seriously considering selling her at that moment.

We're planning a trip to Pennsylvania in October, and when we started looking at plane tickets a few weeks ago Bryan suggested that we just drive, because it's not such a long trip.  And I looked at him like he was completely insane, and said NO, absolutely NOT, that is INSANE, and he hemmed and hawed but since I flat-out refused to even consider it, he agreed that we would fly.  And then this weekend when we were making the painful trip that is only half the length of a drive to Pennsylvania, he suddenly saw my point, and gave me credit for my wisdom.  So that was a nice moment.

Speaking of trips, Bryan has to go back down to DC next week for the third time in a month and a half.  The recent frequency of his travel is giving me bad flashbacks to 2006, when he took 14 business trips between February and September.  But this particular time I'm excited, because Milla and I are going along with him to visit my new Internet BFF, and we will have a great time doing capital-city things like, uh, taking nice long naps in the afternoon.  And possibly drinking wine, even though it is Lent.

The time between the start of the new year and the start of spring is my least favorite, since it is cold and dark and always seems to drag so.  However, this year it has been passing quite quickly, and it is thanks in part to the following schedule:

Last weekend in January: DC trip
Second weekend in February: Ski trip
Fourth weekend in February: DC trip
Second weekend in March: Ski trip
Fourth weekend in March: Easter
April: SPRING!

I'm aware that spring technically begins in March, but we live in Michigan, and expecting spring to begin in March here is just setting yourself up for bitter disappointment.  It always snows at least once in April, always.

I shouldn't complain, though.  It could be worse: my sister's college roommate was from the northern part of Michigan's upper peninsula and in her hometown the first snow fell in October and didn't thaw until May.  That is something to complain about, depressing-winter-wise.

We're staying busy in 2008.  After April, it goes like this:

May: trip to Minnesota to see my brother
June: Blog Nerd and family come to visit, trip to northern Michigan
July/August: summery summer activities
September: trip to Pennsylvania to see Bryan's/my aunts and uncles
October: Milla's and Bryan's birthdays, plus autumny activities
November/December: Thanksgiving followed by Advent followed by Christmas, my favoritest busiest time of the year

I realized the other day that I've been trying to fill the year with trips to avoid noticing the thing it is decidedly not filled with, which is the expectation of a new baby.  Especially after July when my sister gives birth, I'm sure that will be a noticeable fact.  It's neither unexpected nor particularly painful at this point, but while I'm certainly motivated in a positive way to make use of this time when it's still relatively easy to travel, I also have a secondary motivation to distract myself from facing reality again.  I've enjoyed the new-baby respite from the sub-fertile world, and I'm not quite ready to re-enter it.  But more about that in the other post I'm working on.

Speaking of Milla (were we?  In my mind we always are), sixteen months is an incredible age.  I'm shocked by how quickly they learn and grow at this age.  It's hard for me to process the fact that time has passed so quickly, and I often get a strange feeling when I see my BABY sitting on the floor paging through a book.  How did she become a big girl when I wasn't looking?  And when she walks up to me and says "Nur? Peez?" I'm shocked that I suddenly have a child who can ask me for things in words.  It's amazing.

There are also downsides to the big-girl-ness.  A month or two ago Milla started hitting us, and thanks to some gentle discipline techniques it has slowed way down, but still: not fun.  She learned to say please but she has since learned to refuse to say it under certain circumstances, which is funny but also exasperating.  On the upside, it helps us distinguish the things she *really* wants from the things she wants *kind of, but not enough to stop being stubborn*.  She also screams, which has fortunately lessened thanks to our two-pronged technique of ignoring (if she's simply expressing frustration) and telling her to ask nicely (if she's trying to get our attention), but MAN.  Who knew lungs that small could make sounds that ear-piercing?

Toddlers: they make you want to sell them one moment and buy everything in the world for them the next.

Incidentally, today is Valentine's Day.  Which means it has been six years since Bryan and I got engaged, and two years since we got the scariest most thrilling most wonderful news of our lives.  Tonight, in celebration, we're eating dinner at our favorite sandwich shop and going grocery shopping.  We lead a charmed life, I'm telling you.