Update with a Side of Stretch Marks

I must have started and stopped four different posts this past month. Checking...

Yes, four. One about the first day of school, one about my father's second yartzeit, one about Turtle's birthday, and one about Coco-pop's. (Didn't even start one for Princess...)

They are lingering in draft form, and in draft form they will probably stay unless their molecules drift apart, because I lost steam halfway through and they came out forced--Like all, look at me! I am FUNNY! Oh, and look again! Now I am SAD!--and uninspired.

Why, you ask? Both of you who hung out through my sporadic writings this year?

Oh, and no, this is not going to be one of those horrible--oh, I know that I have not been writing please forgive me, because NOW I FOR SURE AM FOREVER AND EVERY FIVE TIMES A DAY IF NOT MORE posts--this is just me being ridiculously tired and doing this ridiculous thing in which I am having a houseful of guests while having a baby and doing the even more ridiculous thing of stressing about things that I cannot change.

You know when you have so much to do and you're sitting there, writing a blog entry and drinking coffee even though caffeine, sugar and milk are three things that hurt your stomach right now and here you are, putting all three sins in one cup for fifteen minutes of pleasure and five hours of pain (No? Juuuust kidding, I would never do that! That's not worth it at all!) and you're thinking, I-have-so-much-to-do-I-have-so-much-to-do and the muchness that you have to do keeps you glued to your chair thinking that you should definitely instead watch reruns of Dr. Who?

(No? Me neither.)

So here I am. This is me. Tired. Hugely pregnant. sHosting people. Dashing over writing deadlines with the speed of a train that is out of service.

So, shall go and do what I need to do. But first, shall give a one-paragraph shout-out to all four posts which are sitting there and getting covered in mold in draft form.

1. Happy happy first day of school! It is wondrous to hear my own thoughts again and a bit shameful as to how much I enjoy coloring in their homework sheets. And a bit painful to figure out all that Hebrew gibberish stuff. Just so you know? Non-immigrant parents? You are totally cheating.

2. Sad and lacking yartzeit, Abba, being six-thousand miles away from your grave. And six-thousand miles away from anyone who cares about things like that. I thought about you, and Outdoorsman even made a siyum. But it was all so hollow. I haven't even been able to cry. I feel like the tears are all stored up and they'll come out at the least opportune moment ever ever. I'll keep you posted.

3. Turtle is three! He has a haircut and thus we have discovered that he has the roundest head in the known cosmos. It is perfect. It is like a hairy apple. I must confess to biting it. Please don't take him away from me. You would bite it too, I know you would.

4. Coco-pop has been waiting for this day for so so long, and we're pushing it off a bit longer so that her cousins could be here for the celebration. Because yes, this week, I am also making a birthday party. Because timing is one thing that I am impeccable with. (Witness my four summer babies.)

That's all, folks! I am now going to not do the thing in which I am not doing the things I need to do. After all, coffee is finished, post is finished, and I have a while before I am doubled over in pain. Yay!

See y'all on the other side. Thanks for tuning in.

Barefoot and Pregnant

It's 7:30, and the girls are soft and warm and smell like strawberry shampoo. I want to finish our good-night routine quickly, because the play-area looks like someone ate all of the toys and then threw them up in violent, patternless heaves (I think that is the most vile metaphor that I have ever come up with! Yay me!) and the kitchen was dirty from the kids' dinner and spotless from the one I intended to make for Outdoorsman and me.

I tousled the nearest damp head of hair, blew kisses, and edged to the door. Then, from the larger damp head--

"Ima, how do babies get into Imas' bellies?"

So many things flew into my head. A few of them: dinner would be late, and the house woul be messy. And, Princess! You are three! I thought that I had, I dunno, 18 more years or so before I had to answer The Question. And, I better answer her, because my face looks scary right now. Also that I will never be able to calculate square roots in my head, but that doesn't make me any less valuable as a person.

So I said, (truthfully, though kind of leaving out the technical realities,) "G-d puts a tiny tiny seed into the Ima's belly, and it grows into a baby." Then I sat down, because I knew all sorts of questions were going to come exploding out of Princess' inquisitive mind.

Sure 'nuff:

"How big is the seed?"

"Very tiny."

"Does it go in from the front or the back?"

????

"The front."

"Does G-d have to cut the Ima open to put the seed in?"

Ouch. "Nope, it's so tiny, it slips right in!" If she asks through where, and I say through the belly button, does that make me a bad person?--

"And then it gets bigger and bigger?"

Phew. "Yes, it gets bigger and bigger, until its ready to come out."

"Oh!" She sits up in bed, and grabs my hand. "That's why I have to eat good food with protien, so that I will get big and have a baby inside my belly, and then the baby could get bigger and bigger?"

Good explanation as any. "Uh huh!"

She's quiet. Then, "Does uh huh mean yes?"

"Uh huh. I mean, yes."

"Then I will go to the hospital and they will name my baby? When I am big and old and full of baby?"

OMG. "No, Princess, you name the baby all by yourself."

"Ima!" She is wide-eyed, and squeezes my hand. "You have to help me!"

"Oh, Princess." I feel my eyes filling with tears. "I'll help you however I can."

I hug her, and lie her back down, first turning her pillow over to the dry, cool side. Then I give her a kiss on her forehead, and head for the door. The kitchen is beckoning.

"Ima, how old will I be when you stop being my Ima?"

In two steps, I cross back over to her bed. (Not really an accomplishment; the room is the size of a larg-ish shower stall.)

"I will never be old enough to be too old to be your Ima."A complicated sentence, but she gets it.

I get it, too.

I need to sit on their beds, hold them tight, read to them, listen to them. Dinners and clean living rooms are not the things that will be remembered.