Blogaversary

Today marks my 1-year blogaversary.  Yup - one year ago today I embarked on this journey for no particular reason at all other then I like putting words on paper (or screens), and, let’s be honest, all the cool kids were doing it.

Or more accurately, my wife was doing it, and either because I thought it looked fun or the fact that we are certifiably co-dependent, I started one too.  To be honest, I wasn’t sure how long it would last.  It quickly seemed impossible to have that many topics I’d be willing to share with the web, even if my readers didn’t know me personally.  I think there were some moments when I considered just bagging the whole thing when I got lazy about posting - but then I’d switch to some new Blo*gger theme, add links, and I’d get all excited about it again.  I’m a bit obsessive about how things look, and so switching to Word*press was when I felt like this blogging thing was for real.

I had some trouble at first figuring out why on earth I would have a blog.  E.’s blog had a purpose, and it quickly became apparent that so many other bloggers out there had the same one (hi friends!) - sharing information and supporting each other along the journey of trying to conceive.   But what would mine be about?  I knew I didn’t want it to solely focus on TTC, or becoming a parent, because I’m obsessively balanced and parenting is just one part of my life, albeit a pretty big one at the moment.  So I decided I’d open it up to talking about anything and everything - and realized that a lot of other bloggers do this, too.

So I found a common thread, or theme, if you will - to describe my approach to life and navigating through it all, thus Fumbling on Track.  I’m still fumbling around trying to figure it all out, but I’ve got great supports, a stupendous wife and partner, and I do feel as though I’m on the right track to refining my values, goals, and dreams.  And I have found some great connections online - mostly with the TTC process through E.’s blog.  I don’t even think I realized people could (or would) comment on blogs when I started.  Now we have an entire community spanning multiple countries who all support and give to one another.  It’s pretty amazing.

I still think my blogging is more for me than anyone else.  I thrive on writing out my thoughts and engaging in dialogue about them.   If I can make people laugh, all the better.  If I can prompt people to think, I’m even happier.  All in all I like the discussion, the back-and-forth, the conversation and connecting to people through wires that completely crashes the theory that technology has pushed people apart.  From my view, it’s only brought them closer together.

Heavy Heart

Like many things we think of when we are young, I think my view toward having someone in your life pass away was very simple: that it only affects you as much as you were close to that person. As an adult, what I’ve experienced is so much more complicated than that - and so much less self-centered. Along with your memories of that person, you carry around that person’s loved ones and what they are going through - spouses, children, brothers, sisters, grandchildren. Even if you never knew the person you still carry these connections around with you, as I’m doing for a co-worker who just lost her dad.

It’s hard when these things seem to happen one-after-another and you carry around multiple people in your heart going through perhaps the hardest part of life. The fact that I feel deeply for loved ones or friends going through it only confirms for me how much we are all connected to one-another in a very primal way. I continue to feel this more strongly, and steadily, as I grow older, and for that I am thankful.

I never in my wildest dreams thought this love and caring could seep through computers as it has for E. and J. during this difficult time with their uncle, and that only further confirms that empathy, love and caring exist even when we’ve never seen each other’s face. In a time when death seems to be at many doors right now, that is what keeps me going.

Sacred Solitude

I’m convinced that if the human brain could accurately calculate all of the million ways our lives will change once we have kids, there would be a lot less babies in the world.  E. went away this weekend to visit the fam - and I couldn’t hide my giddiness to have the house to myself this weekend.  Going from work to class to work again really takes its tole, and I can’t remember the last time I had a long stretch of time at home, let alone time by myself (most likely the last time E. left for a weekend).  Thankfully, our relationship is such that we both value a healthy balance of “us time” and “alone time” that I was unashamedly happy, and E. was happy for me.  Bless her.

So as the weekend neared the thought did enter my brain that perhaps this will be my last chance for alone time for quite some time, as er, our BABY will arrive in less than 3 months.  But the minute the thought enters my brain I can see it seeping out the other ear - as thoughts of silent reading, movie-watching, and general lazying about the house without a care fill up the space instead.  It’s as if my brain is not fully equipped to show me precisely how my life will change in just 80 short days.  Yes, yes - I know intellectually how it will change - the look of pure longing and jealousy on my co-worker’s face when I told her about my weekend (she has a 2-year old) was enough. But when I really try to visualize it all - and in the spaces of quiet in our house or when E. and I share a nice dinner together and I say, “Brain - insert baby!” it’s like a cartoon image of a baby plops down in the center of the room and just sits there, not making a sound.  My mind answers: DOES NOT COMPUTE.

I guess it’s just as well, since I thoroughly enjoyed my weekend alone, filled with a visit to the library (books! childbirth videos! cds!), renting 3 movies (H*arry P*tter, how I love thee), drinking some wine, and a surprise brunch with a visiting friend.  Just. Perfect.

It made me realize that perhaps E. and I could do better ensuring that each of us gets a sufficient amount of alone-time, even if we are both in the house at the same time.  Some inkling tells me if we figure out how to somewhat achieve this now, it might help us in the future.  Though my brain won’t fully let me go there…

Filling in the Negative Space

Woke up early thinking about a friend’s question. Couldn’t get it outa my head, so had to get up and post.

Q: “Non-bio moms, how did you deal with your partner’s pregnancy–or anticipation of your partner’s pregnancy?”

Regarding pregnancy, I do remember feeling a fleeting sense of detachment, before I found my role in it all. For me, my role became doing everything to take care of her - go shopping and make dinners when she came home and couldn’t do anything but go to bed, give her massages, and generally just be the one who felt normal. When we were trying (for so, so long…), I decided to be the one who dealt with the swimmers - called the bank, picked it up, took it back, etc. I decided that if the pregnancy was going to happen inside of her body, what could my body do to be a part of it all? I thank E. for willingly giving up a lot of the outside tasks and just be able to trust me to handle them (of course, I think she was just glad to not have to add them to her plate already full with charting, etc.).

The task-keeping spilled over to pregnancy. I keep the list of “to do’s” for baby prep, also because I just have more time on my hands. I cross out the weekly calendar on our fridge - honestly, if E. did it instead, I wouldn’t be happy (this might be a surprise to E!). In other words, we’ve found our roles: E. is growing our baby, taking care of her body, and doing her own mental prep to prepare for birth (as well as many other mental processes I’m sure I’m not aware of). I’m keeping us on-task, prepared, and offer her the emotional support when she needs it.

I think I’ve come to realize my role as the non-bio mom perhaps more quickly than most because of our exposure to the children in our lives. I’ve slowly been able to piece together what I’ll uniquely have to offer our child, which has been a great comfort to me. After all, if we are non-traditional families, we are creating our own maps, and thus the creating can take quite the time and effort. For example, I’ve noticed that when our nephew picks up a book and is asking the group of us to read it to him, I’m usually the one to happily agree. I’ll read it to him 5 times if he’s into it. I just can’t say “no” to reading a book to a child - I’m that passionate about reading. Not surprising, since I’m also usually the one to usually take an extra second to try and explain a new idea to him, trying to catch a “teaching moment” if I can. I think I’m also more the “rough-houser” in terms of play than E. Sometimes I think these all add up to being more “dad-ish” qualities, but I think they just happen to be what I’m more interested in.

In other words, my advice would be not to focus on what you aren’t (bio-mom), but what unique gifts you have to give as a parent. As an adult, I can see the different, but equally important qualities I got from each of my parents. This comforts me to know that our child will get the same from us. This realization didn’t come right away, but throughout the length of pregnancy (thank god for those 40 weeks!!), and in the end I just had to admit that E. will have a different relationship with our child because she is giving birth, period. But I’m free to form my own relationship, and that quickly became exciting to me. We each offer different things, but they are both so important.

No doubt it’s all a process, and I’m sure I’ll be re-defining it as time goes on (and baby actually gets here already!). I hope any of this helps, friends.

Lots ‘o Ladies

It was 80 degrees today.

It’s OCTOBER 22.

I can only deduce that this is the reason for our lady bug infestation. It started as finding one here and there - and they are actually the ONLY bug I can tolerate in the house and not hound E. to KILL IT IMMEDIATELY like I do every other insect. Lady bugs are just too cute - and E. also has a thing for them, so I’m able to let them be.

Unless there are about 30 of them swarming around in the kitchen, and another 20 or so in the bedroom. Both locations are windows or doors facing the back of our place, where the sun beats at the end of the day. I’m not sure if this is the reason, or if it has something to do with the apple tree back there. But there must be some hell of a nest or something - because we have a full-on infestation.

I finally couldn’t take just watching them swarm around, and E. got out the vacuum cleaner. The college exterminator is coming on Wednesday. After looking around online, E. found that they are most likely a type of “Asian Beetle,” not lady bugs. I’m hoping this is true - I feel a lot better about killing off the beetles than the ladies.

Um, are there still people out there who think global warming is a hoax?

Plethora

Thanks so much to everyone for your kind words - it really helped me through. The funeral was really tough to take, but so moving to hear from so many people that my Aunt touched in her life, and the best thing I heard the whole weekend was her mother, my grandmother, say to me, “I’ve made my peace with it, I hope you will too.” This coming from a woman who has now buried 3 of her 7 children. How can I dwell on death after hearing that?

So one moves forward and busies oneself with the endless daily tasks that thankfully allow us to forget about the big picture for a while. Yesterday was my first day back volunteering at the after-school program, and I was so happy to see the kids there and catch up with how their summers were, learn new card games, and gain a bit more confidence with rule enforcement, one of my personal goals for my experience there. I absolutely LOVE this program - it’s based at the school and is run by this amazing woman who has no children of her own but from whom I’ve learned so much from. Not to mention the kids - all 30 of them - are awesome. They come in after a full day of school and play, eat, do homework, argue, and for the most part are happy and content to be there with us until their parents come at 5:30. I love being there while they unwind from their day and just chit chat, play games, or just sit and watch their amazing energy.

My life continues to feel fuller with each day as classes near and I continue to cross things off my life-list and somehow continue to ignore the invisible item called, “start exercise routine that will enable me to have the energy to do all of these things.” Oops. Somehow the “doing” edges out the “sustaining” on the list. Need. to. work. on. this.

I’m so crazily excited to go away this weekend with my honey to our favorite get-away, and can’t quite comprehend that it will be our last time before baby arrives. We have been traveling a whole lot lately, but not just the two of us. I’m excited for the drive through the mountains, waking up and going downstairs for breakfast in our PJ’s, sitting by the fire, strolling the main street of the quaint small town, listening to live music in the living room downstairs, and most importantly, spending 3 whole days with just my honey. Yae!!

Summer Separation

I’ve really enjoyed having E. back this week from the Cape. The alone time kinda gets old after a few days, and once I have a break from classes and she’s back I really don’t want her to leave again.  So I, along with all the friends we saw this weekend, have been giving her a REALLY hard time about the whole thing.  She’s been pretty good to put up with all the guilt-tripping.

This text message back-and-forth pretty much sums up each of our positions, with an added twist of as I get older I realize how much I really can’t stand days like this where it’s in the 90’s:

Me: I hate heat! I want beach!

E.: Me too.  Now do you get why I go to the Cape?  Why be miserable when I don’t have to?

Me: Your wife is why!

E.: Right, especially when she’s away for 14 hours a day….

Me: Whatev.

I’m almost ready to admit that perhaps I’m just jealous of the fact that when it’s nearing 100 degrees tomorrow she’ll be jetting out of here.  Ho hum.

Empty Nest

There have been no sightings of the groundhog family in the past couple of days, so I started to wonder what was going on. This site tells me that shortly after the babies are born and can eat on their own (which I saw them doing the other day), the mother leads them to another den. I can’t believe how sad I am over this news! (yet another example of my 60-year-old-man alter ego) I had visions of watching them grow throughout the summer living under our deck. Bummer. Maybe they’ll come back to visit.

I had my first classroom management class last night and I am SO psyched about it. I finally think I’m taking a class that will actually teach me how to teach the stuff I’ve been learning in my other classes. Thank goodness.

E. comes home on Thursday and I’m glad - I really miss her. I just hope she won’t go crazy in the summer heat without a beach in site.

HAPPY BIRTHDAY, HUN!

Please wish my wife a happy, happy birthday, and pray that she makes it through the day without feeling too nauseous!

Love you, hun.

Dreams

I’ve been having some bad dreams.  I do not like them.

I had the first one just a few days we found out E. was pregnant.  In the dream it was early morning, and I woke up to the sound of someone furiously trying to break into our apartment.  I tried to get up, but my eyes felt glued shut and I couldn’t jolt myself out of my slumber.  I felt E. jump out of bed, go downstairs and peak out the window near the door.  I heard her say that it was a student, and he looked all bloody.  I remember thinking, “Don’t let him in!” and tried desperately to get up, to no avail.  I worried the student was crazed, was going to hurt E. and then make his way upstairs to me, where I lay helpless in bed.  I heard her open the door to let him in.  I forced myself to wake up.

A couple days ago, I dreamt E. and I were sitting somewhere with some random guy, a guy who was clearly coming on to E.  When he got up to leave, I watched in horror as he came over and kissed her cheek, then kissed her on the mouth.  She seemed to enjoy it.  I was enraged with jealousy.

What is up with these dreams?  The first one seems hit-you-over-the-head obvious about my worry about E.’s safety - it feels odd to suddenly have this protective part of me.  I do remember thinking more about her physical well-being in the first few days after we found out, but I think the bulk of my worry is surfacing through dreams instead of in real life.  I have had some moments, though: at graduation last week I wandered off to take a walk around to avoid the boredom of the speakers, and returned to our spot where E. had found a chair and was the only one in our group sitting.  I started worrying: did she start feeling sick?  I had taken our bag of water and snacks with me - I should have left them!  I checked in with her when I got back and she was fine - just felt like sitting.  Am I going to be like this through the entire pregnancy??

The second one is less easy for me to deal with - not too sure what that was about.  The obvious main feeling was jealousy, which I don’t think I am usually plagued by.  Was it some deep-seeded hetero-normative scenario playing out in my sleep?  Am I secretly afraid that E. will leave me and raise the baby with some guy?  I don’t really think so - sometimes dreams are just plain strange, I think that’s more the case with this one.  Or, let’s hope…