This Time Last Year...

This time last year, I was into my second trimester and thinking maybe pregnancy wasn't so bad. I'd spent a weekend at Cape May with some college friends and had had a great time. My biweekly OB appointments were going well -- no signs of the preterm labor to come. Our 20-week scan had showed that we were having a girl, and that all was normal. I was having a busy time at work, but it was set to calm down in a couple of weeks. I enjoyed singing really loudly in my car during my commute and I imagined my little girl was enjoying the tunes.

Two weeks later, I was headed to the hospital with contractions and a short cervix, wide-eyed and terrified, where I would stay until January. I spent Thanksgiving, Christmas, and New Year's Day in the hospital. I didn't leave my hospital room for weeks at a time, and left my bed only to use the bathroom. It was a dark, scary time, and normally I don't like to think about it.

But the time of year is making it impossible to push out of my mind.

Temporary Single Parenthood

I am pretty sure I haven't talked about this yet: Steve has been out of town for four weeks now, and I am tired.

My mom was here for almost two weeks, which was helpful, because I was actually able to work a full 8-hour day instead of chipping away at my annual leave by 30-45 minutes each day. (Lexie's nanny works 9 hours. I live 45 minutes from work. That means if I leave as soon as the nanny arrives, which rarely happens, I've got a max of 7.5 hours under my belt for each day.)

Time in the evenings is short. Lexie goes to bed around 7:30pm or 8pm, but I still give her a "sleep feed" around 9:30pm, and I have to hold her up for a half hour after she finishes eating due to her stomach problems. I've found that there is a very tight calculus to what one can accomplish in those evenings when caring for an infant on one's own. Here's how I've got the options figured out:

Group A (Choose one)

• 6 hours of sleep
• 4 hours of sleep and two additional items from Group B
• Teething baby -- 3 hours of sleep and subtract one item from Group B

Group B (Choose two)

• Make a dinner with more than two ingredients
• Eat dinner with utensils while sitting at the table
• Do one hour of billable work
• Shower
• Clean up house
• Pay bills
• Talk to Steve on the phone
• Write blog post
• Read newspaper/catalogs/books for fun
• Fold laundry and put it away

Aaaand it's almost 9:30, so I'm out -- off to get the little miss for her last bottle of the night.

Commuter Tales

Back before the days of Lexie, I sometimes blogged about personalized license plates I'd see on my commute. Now that I'm pretty much back in the saddle, I've got the mental bandwidth to notice license plates again. I took note of two recent ones:

I saw the "P SOLACE" license plate (possibly a urologist?) again last week. That guy must have the same commute that I have.

And then, yesterday, I saw a license plate that completely cracked me up. It made me curious about the car's owner and it made me want to be his/her friend. Ready for it? It was this: KGB SPY

Lexie and Her Doggie

I haven't written much here about our beagle, Wendy. We've had her since a fateful Beagle Adoption Day in 2005. She's a sweet pup, but she's pretty old (probably about 13) and the vet recently gave her a maximum of about 6 months due to a variety of illnesses and complications she's having. I think that's probably fairly optimistic, and based on some recent collapsing spells she's been having, it may be a lot sooner. We're trying to make her as comfortable as possible for now.

Wendy hasn't been all that interested in Lexie except when babyfood is involved. She has allowed Lexie to pet her when Lexie has been gentle, but as soon as the fur gets grabbed, Wendy hobbles away to her dog bed. But Lexie LOVES her doggie. She finds Wendy to be absolutely hilarious. And Wendy stands there wondering what everyone is laughing at.

Spider Woman (or, Evidence That I May Have Gone Off the Deep End)

We had a terrible mosquito problem this year -- they were eating all of us alive. So we purposely left up several spider webs that appeared on our small front porch. Spiders are good luck, anyway. We rarely saw the actual spiders, but we saw plenty of evidence of their effectiveness in the form of trapped bloodsuckers.

Last week, this appeared.


It's a spider egg sac. My first instinct was to remove it -- to toss those suckers as far away from the house as possible. Then I looked more closely, and saw the spider.

She was never openly visible in her web before the egg sacs appeared. Now she was perched just below her sacs, guarding them. I decided to watch for a few days.

The next night I saw her spinning one more little bubble below the five pictured. The night after that, she started encasing all six bubbles in a thicker cocoon. Every time I passed the web, she sat vigil under her eggs.

I started thinking about Charlotte's Web -- in the book, Charlotte died after the eggs hatched. I did some research -- for some, but not all, spiders, egg-laying is their last major act.

And this is when Crazy came to town. I started relating to the spider. She'll do anything to keep her eggs safe, I thought. She won't leave them, even though this places her out in the open where creatures like me come stare at her. This could be her last shot.

There is no way I will be the one to kill her babies.

This may mean that we'll soon be overrun by tiny spiders. If they keep to themselves, we'll all be fine. If they start messing with my baby, that's another story.

Never a Sure Thing

I went through a long period in my 20s when there was literally zero family/personal tragedy. The worst things that happened to me from around age 21-27 involved relationship breakups. The most stress I experienced was typically related to apartment moves. Nobody in my extended family died. Nobody got sick, had major surgery, lost a limb, lost a house, lost a baby, got divorced... nothing. Things were very quiet in the "major life change" department. I'd been at my job for more than 5 years. I took the calm for granted.

As I left my office building on September 10, 2001, I walked across the street and past the World Trade Center for what would be the last time, although I didn't know it. As usual, I recognized a lot of the same people walking near me. I was on the same schedule with these strangers and saw many of them daily. "My life is like Groundhog Day," I thought. "Every day is the same. Something needs to change."

I really did think that. Of course, you know where this is going.

Change came in relentless waves after 9/11. I never returned to that office. After six months of professional limbo working in New Jersey with my colleagues at an alternate "temporary" site, I resigned and headed to DC for grad school and a job at a university that offered an uncompetitive salary and free graduate classes.

The drama and change continued. My aunt and then my grandma died. Steve and I got married. My dad had hip surgery. I finished grad school and found a new job. My mom had surgery on her vertebra. Steve went to Iraq for six months. My uncle died. Steve and I started trying to have a baby and had two losses right off the bat. Steve's dad began descending deeper into chronic illness. In the last year, two of my real-life friends lost their babies, born too early to survive. I finally made it to the second trimester and ended up in the hospital with preterm labor for 9 weeks. Lexie was born 10 weeks early.

I've wanted to ask someone -- why does this shit happen? Why do babies die? Why did nearly 3,000 people die on the whim of some sick asshole on the other side of the world? But there is no "why." You can get into specific causes, but the big-picture "why" -- it doesn't exist.

What this has taught me is that nothing is a sure thing. I didn't truly understand this before having some real adversity. I think it's good in some ways that I know this now, instead of sailing through life thinking it's a big deal if someone dents my car in the garage or the movers break my mirror. This knowledge can also be bad, though -- as in my earlier aversion to buying Lexie's wardrobe too far ahead. It's irrational. Chances are, now, she'll be alright. But who knows -- the world could end tomorrow. As long as we go together, I think I'd be ok with that.

I really don't have any words of wisdom about this day. I'll be remembering the friends I spent that Tuesday morning with, remembering the ashes and singed papers floating down to the ground in Brooklyn, remembering the acrid smell, remembering how the gorgeous September weather seemed all wrong for that day, remembering the 13 worried messages I had on my machine when I got home after everything happened. Remembering waking up the next morning to a moment of peace before the memories flooded back like a punch in the stomach. Remembering the fat plume of smoke that rose from lower Manhattan for weeks afterward.

Remembering how we thought things would never be the same.

Gratuitous Giggling Video

We had Lexie baptized last week, and with the resulting deluge of family, we have been very busy. But we did have time to take this video of Lexie giggling in her pajamas.



Every time I watch this video, I can't believe how lucky we are.