Miss Suzannah and I have spent a quiet week at home, and it's been really, really nice. Originally, I'd drawn up a list of Fun! Things! To! Do! this week, probably because I'm just really a huge fan of making lists -- I thought we'd go to Seattle Children's Museum, maybe, or do some huge fun art projects, or -- I don't know. I realized very quickly on Monday morning that what we really both needed was a week to just chill after two weeks of doing the opposite of chilling.
It was fun not-chilling, but the not-chilling meant that I don't think Suzannah had one real nap on vacation. I am almost afraid to write this lest I jinx it, but Suzannah has taken a real nap -- without drama -- every single day this week. She has even turned to me and said, "Mama? I take a nap?" And she actually meant it. Also, and this is almost too much for me, she has gone to bed easily every single night. And slept all night long. By herself. I don't even remember the last time this happened five nights in a row. She must be recovering from some wicked sleep deprivation. (I'm more inclined to believe that than to actually hope that this is her new pattern. We've just been burned too many times before. But we'll enjoy it while it lasts.)
I've been perfectly content to just go with the flow this week, without really planning some huge fun agenda. On Tuesday, we spent most of the morning and a good chunk of the afternoon with Kyanne at IKEA while we had the CR-V serviced (ouuuuch) and yesterday, Zannah and I went to the mall for a change of scenery and read a lot of books in the children's section at Borders. Then she wanted to look at magazines, so the two of us sat on the floor and read our own. I caught up on People (once in awhile I splurge and buy a copy, and Matt always makes fun of me and/or makes his scorn quite apparent, but you KNOW he always reads it when I bring it home) and Suzannah read...a bunch of nature magazines, I think, and also something about getting your novel published. Then she politely requested that we go to lunch.
Our Big Event this week was our "big" ultrasound, our anatomy scan for Baby #2. We brought Suzannah along so she could see the baby, and while I think most of it was a little abstract for her (she got bored with the close-up shots of the heart and kidneys and various limbs and focused on tickling my toes instead) she was very excited to see pictures of the baby, and she asked for them several times throughout the day. She says "Hi, Baby!" to my belly every day now (she has to lift up my shirt first -- reminds me a bit of her nursing days!), and she loves to touch it and rub lotion on it. (Sidenote: No, it doesn't matter how much I grease the belleh, so don't give me any advice on "preventing" stretch marks, please. If you're gonna get them, you're gonna get them. I thought I was safe when I was pregnant with Suzannah, so much so that I bragged noisily to a friend about not having a single one in my twenty-eighth week. Naturally, I woke up covered with them the very next morning. But whatever, I really like the lotion anyway.) Of course, then she lifts up her own shirt and jabs a finger at her belly button, announcing that she has a baby in her tummy too. Why not?
We read The Berenstein Bears' New Baby several times each day, which, in theory, should get Suzannah excited both about the baby and the new bed we're going to get her when we move the crib into the nursery. We're actually painting the nursery this weekend because I have this relentless need to Get Things Done; I'm reaching a point of panic here, with the school year approaching and all, and this is one manageable task we can take care of. Once we have paint on the walls, we can begin to put the room together and, more importantly, turn Suzannah's room into more of a little girl's room. (I say "more importantly" because if this baby is anything like Suzannah, we won't actually need the nursery for quite some time. But the room will look good.) We're losing our guest bed, due to an unforeseen, er, hiccup in our plans, but I allowed myself to stress about that for one afternoon only and I've made my peace with the fact that a.) it wasn't a great bed to begin with, as anyone who slept on it can attest to, and b.) for now, we'll have more room to organize everything that needs to be in that room. I imagine we'll replace it with something better in the next year or so, something that could actually be used as a regular bed for one of our children and guests.
Anyway, the ultrasound went well. I tend to go the route of fairly minimal prenatal care because I think so many of those "routine" things only serve to make women anxious or give the impression that they increase the odds of a good outcome, when of course they have nothing to do with it; I don't have betas drawn, I'm not a fan of more ultrasounds than are strictly necessary (with Suzannah I didn't even have a dating ultrasound, although this time I really wanted one to convince myself that there was actually a baby in there making me so sick), and we've declined all screens and tests. I did enjoy the ultrasound, though. I mean, it was fun to see the baby. I didn't have the same innocent excitement I had with Suzannah, and after carrying her I didn't have any expectations that I'd feel closer to my baby because of what we saw on the screen -- I felt Baby moving during the ultrasound (I didn't with Suzannah; I had it a few weeks earlier and hadn't felt much movement yet) and I was relieved, only because I felt reconnected with the baby after focusing on a screen. Frankly, it's strange to me to see my child above my head with someone else who doesn't know her talking to me about her, if that makes sense. But it was still good to see that everything is where it's supposed to be. Baby's growth is pretty symmetrical, and I'm measuring a few days ahead just like I did with Suzannah. The OB in the practice reads the results so I don't actually know much, but my midwife said she wouldn't be concerned; she talked to me about some of the numbers (cervix looks good, heartbeat is strong, fluid is fine, etc.) and said that the ultrasound tech usually leaves her a note if she finds anything of concern, which she didn't.
I will say that this baby was a wee bit more uncooperative -- and more wiggly -- than Suzannah was. It took quite awhile to get a good profile shot because Baby kept flinging her arms over her face; actually, it's exactly what Suzannah does now when we're trying to get her out of bed before she's ready to wake up. I could almost hear this child mutter, "Go away, I'm sleeping," just like her big sister. It's probably a good thing that we didn't try to find out the sex; I doubt she'd have appreciated the invasion.
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