The Long Morning

R had a rough morning today. I woke her up ten minutes early. She was snuggled under her quilt, refusing to be roused from her dreams. After a quick breakfast of oatmeal, I loaded her into the car and made the long drive to the doctor's offices at St. Mary's Hospital, where she was born.

We go to this place every two weeks. I set R up in a chair with a portable DVD player and let her zone out to Winnie the Pooh or Peter Pan while the docs ask me a million questions and review my insulin dosages. We're usually only there for an hour, but today was different. Today, Daddy showed up. Today, we were there for three hours. Today, we got to know that we are having R's little sister.



I have been looking forward to this ultrasound for so long. I knew it was a girl, I just knew it. This pregnancy is different than R's-- it's so much easier on me-- but still, the thought of "girl" rang clear and true in my mind, where "boy" didn't seem to fit. I had the same certainty with R.

The ultrasound tech left the room to confer with the doctor, and Senpai and I immediately whipped our phones out to send messages to family. R was getting antsy. She had no interest in her movies, was tired of being told to sit, and wanted nothing more than to be up on the exam table with Mommy.

My doctor came in and ran a second ultrasound to verify some results. A bit of calcium plaque was found in baby's heart, and she explained to me how that can be a Downs Syndrome marker, but there were no other signs of Downs, and otherwise healthy babies are born with it, too. I'm not worried.

We finally left the office after having been there for three long hours. R was out of sorts. She hadn't had the least bit of fun the entire morning, and had been told numerous times that she couldn't climb up on Mommy. Poor little lady. Senpai and I drove our separate cars to an Indian food buffet for lunch. R usually loves Indian food, but today she had no appetite. Senpai and I were reminded of her colic days when one of us had to hold her while the other one could eat, and then we'd switch off. Except there was no switching off today: the cupcake only had eyes for Mommy. I completely understood. She's used to having me available 24/7. She says "Up!" and I pick her up. She wants to climb on me and I let her climb on me. Today I was unavailable to her, and it was too much for her to bear. I didn't mind holding her during lunch, but it made things a little difficult that she couldn't decide what position she wanted to be in. A squirmy 20 mos old in one's lap does not make for easy eating.

Senpai went back to work after lunch, and R and I made the long drive back home. She had just fallen asleep when Oma called. "Poppy?" She sounded incredulous, "Poppy? What about Sage or Lavendar?" I had to chuckle to myself. Sage was our boy name. (If you don't know yet, R is Rosemary.) "I guess I'll just have to get used to it," she finished. Yup. :-D

Vacation

In July 2009, we celebrated our honeymoon (belated by 2 years) in Hawaii.


In September 2010, with a 5 month old baby, we visited Senpai's extended family in upstate New York.


This year, July 2011, we visited my family in Treasure Island, FL.


I love the beach.

I grew up in Maryland, not too far from either the Appalachian Mountains or the Atlantic Ocean. Just about every summer my family would spend a weekend at Ocean City: walking the Boardwalk, riding carnival rides on the Pier, and hanging out on the beach, getting sand everywhere, and getting knocked over by the waves in the cold ocean. After Maryland, I went to Sarasota, FL for college, and moved into a house just 5 minutes away from Siesta Key. Some days after school I would take a detour to the beach, grab the chair, towel, and umbrella I always kept in the trunk of my car, and let the lazy lapping of the Gulf of Mexico tune out my stress for a bit. After a brief stint back in MD and then an even briefer stint in Las Vegas, I moved with Senpai to southern Illinois, far from both mountains and ocean, as landlocked in the flat Midwest as we can be. Our little town is quaint, we're close to the big city attractions of St. Louis, but I miss being able to drive-- whether 5 minutes or 2 hours-- to the sunny, sandy beach. Well, this summer we did just that.

We packed up the car and left on a Wednesday night, just after dinner. R had a hard time falling asleep with her carseat facing forward for the first time ever (it gave us more room in the car that way), but after we turned it back to rear-facing she finally dozed off. We drove all through the night and the next morning, pacifying R with the portable DVD player we had bought just for the occasion. At 2:30 pm on Thursday, we finally arrived at Oma and Grandad's house in Northern Florida. Thursday and Friday we got to enjoy lazy time in my parents' pool, and we even tried to take R to her first feature film, the new Winnie the Pooh movie, but she wasn't in the mood to sit through the whole movie. After lunch on Saturday we made the two hour drive to Treasure Island where we all spent the next week. My brother and his wife and kids would join us later in the week.


Somewhere in southern Georgia, driving to Florida.


Grandad acts as a high chair at his and Oma's house.


Group photo in the beach condo. SIL is on the left holding O-buddy and O-lady, Oma is holding C, Grandad, Bro, and I are on the couch, and then Senpai and R are on the floor.


It was so wonderful to meet my brother's fraternal twins, the O's, who had been born late February. O-buddy is just like R at that age: full of gas that he can't get rid of on his own so he always wants to be held. As soon as you pick him up, sure enough, out comes a fart, a burp, or spitup, lol. And O-lady is such a gentle soul, always looking after her brother when he fusses.


R and her cousins, C, O-buddy, and O-lady


This trip was R's first time ever seeing sand and ocean. She was not a fan of the shoreline where the waves splash, but she was a big fan of going out into the water and bobbing up and down with the current in her baby saucer.


She loved the water!


Daddy enjoyed himself, too.


How R got around on the sand. I'm so glad I had this Boba Baby Carrier. I even got to bellydance with R on my back when we encountered a drum circle on the beach. ^_^


Other random things that we enjoyed while we were there: a couple's massage at Paradise Spa (I highly recommend them!!!), Senpai got his seafood fix at Bubba Gump's, the Harry Potter Experience at Universal Studios, the Harry Potter 7-2 movie, driving to the Tampa airport to eat Baja Fresh(!!!!), a very interesting karaoke experience at a local bar, the Dali Museum, taking R to a Disney Store, and the Museum of Science and Industry in Tampa. It was a wonderful trip. The drive home was hard (thank you, Senpai, for picking up my slack), but it was so very worth it.