Suiting up

After all my kvetching yesterday, the sun has come out in glorious force--it should get up to 70 today! Gabriel has a half day on Wednesdays, so it's perfect timing for us to have a picnic and some ice cream and wander around outside with just him and not the baby, who is happy as a clam at daycare (although I have an ongoing struggle to get them to offer bottle before food and not vice versa...I'm afraid Eloi's weaning and I don't want it to be because they aren't doing what I ask them to...).

Somehow, on Monday morning, Gabriel got fixated on the idea of going to the beach. The Mister kind of played along as they had breakfast, which must have turned a pretend scenario into what to him was a fact and concrete plan for the day. So when I started making his school lunch, he cried and said "We not going to school," and when I said very clearly that indeed we were, he burst into genuinely devastated sobs. "We goinna beeeeeach!" (The plan also somehow involved a truck, but I wasn't around for the development of that so not sure how it fits in.)

Poor kid. I wish we were going to the beach too. He has remained stuck on the idea, to the point where he is reluctant to enter his classroom in the morning (it's not the beach) and asks to go to the beach as soon as I pick him up from school. We've explained that when we fly to Boston and visit grandpa and grandma in a few weeks THEN we can go to the beach, but though he gets that idea and talks about going on the airplane to go to the beach, the amount of time he has to wait until then is hard to understand for a three year old.

The latest development in the ongoing saga occurred this morning, when I was dressing him for school. He balked at taking off his pajamas because he saw the clothes I had picked out, and said, "I want to wear a...a... suitcase." Confused, I thought maybe he was thinking about packing and told him we'd put his clothes in a suitcase when we fly to America, but he said no, WEAR the suitcase. To go to the beach.

AH, I said. A swimsuit?

Yeah! With turtles on it. (He is remembering his swim trunks from last summer, which he hasn't seen since last August.)

SUITcase, swimSUIT. Language is funny, kid.

(In unrelated language funnies, he has taken to asking for "cozy bread." Which means, NOT toast or dry bread, but soft. Which makes perfect sense--all the other things we describe as cozy, like his bathrobe, a blanket, his fleece pants, and snuggling on the couch, are soft and squishy too. So cozy bread it is.)

Always fragrant, benign

Today is my favorite Catalan holiday, Sant Jordi. I love it because it has all the nice things: gifts for your loved ones, flowers and books, history and legend (Saint George and the dragon). 

The Mister left at 5 am for a quick overnight business trip, but when I made my way downstairs with the kids a red rose and a wrapped book were waiting for me on the table.

April has been sluggish and cold: the sun shines, but without warmth. A gusty wind blows that requires me to don my hat and scarf and gloves. However, I've stubbornly broken out my spring clothes, deceived by a few warm days during which we (and everyone else here) practically fell over ourselves to have picnics in the park and eat ice cream. So I'm usually too cold as I schlep the kids around, gritting my teeth into the wind.

Gabriel went easter egg hunting in the snow (oh, our little trip to the Ardennes was a big success! but then we all got sick again the following week). I keep thinking it HAS to get better. It will.

In the meantime, a poem for Sant Jordi's day by Salvador Espriu, the great Catalan poet. Soon the suffering dragon, the boredom, the cold rain will be locked away...

Les Roses Recordades
Salvador Espriu

Recordes com ens duien
aquelles mans les roses
de Sant Jordi, la vella
claror d'abril? Plovia
a poc a poc. Nosaltres,
amb gran tedi, darrera
la finestra, miràvem,
potser malalts, la vida
del carrer. Aleshores
ella venia, sempre
olorosa, benigna,
amb les flors, i tancava
fora, lluny, la sofrença
del pobre drac, i deia
molt suament els nostre
spetits noms, i ens somreia.

Remembered Roses
Salvador Espriu

Do you remember how those hands
brought us the roses of Sant Jordi,
the old April light? It rained
slowly. Us, bored and maybe ill
behind the window, watching
the street life go by. Then
she came, always fragrant, 
benign, with flowers, 
and she locked the suffering
of the poor dragon away, far away,
and she ever so softly said
our dear names, and smiled at us.

Attempting to click "publish"

I don't fully appreciate Eloi's general laid-back personality until he loses it. Yesterday and today, he's got one of those baby-misery colds with low-grade fever, constant snot, possibly an ear infection. Continually tired but only sleeps for twenty minutes at a time, compared to his usual solid 1-2 hour naps twice a day. Kvetchy and cranky and only wants to be, whimpery, in my arms. So I hold him, or he cries for a few minutes while I run to do something, then pick him up again. Sad little dude. But boy, it makes me realize how nice it is that, as long as it's not eating or sleeping time, he's usually a seriously content kid, happy to bat his toys in his play pen, scootch around the floor in search of lint to nibble on, or flap his arms in happiness while he hangs out in his high chair.

It's not great timing for him to be sick, because we're leaving on Friday for our first little family getaway, one that doesn't involve flying to a different country to visit others. Instead we are renting a Citroën Berlingo, holing up in a stone farmhouse, and spending a few internet-free days in the cold damp of Belgian spring. We're hoping to explore the Ardennes a bit, but if we have sick kids, we might just stay in and read lots of books. It might be a disaster of not sleeping and whiny cooped-up children, or it might be a relaxing break from our regular routine. We shall see.

Ever since we exhausted ourselves with airplane trips and jet lag this Christmas, we resolved to stay put for at least a few months, so we made M's family visit us for February break instead of vice versa, and we're not taking a trip during the two-week Easter break, except for this four-day getaway, and again M's parents will come to us during the school break. We do have a trip planned to the US in May, but at least we will have managed to made it five months without getting on a plane. (Maybe the longest I've gone without doing so in...gosh, more than ten years? Maybe we also went about that long the spring Gabriel was born.)

And I have to say, this resolution to stay put has been SO GOOD. Whether it's the not-traveling, or the developmental step of turning three, Gabriel (dare I even say it?) has been SLEEPING. Predictably. All night. As in, we tuck him in at 7:30 and he pores over a book or two on his own then puts his books away, crawls back into bed, then falls asleep. And stays asleep ALL NIGHT, possibly waking himself to run to the bathroom (on his own) and running back to his warm bed (on his own). And then he sleeps until 7:30 or so, and wakes up happy and rested. This is... huge. We've struggled for three years over sleep issues with this little guy, and it feels really really good that he's somehow figured it out. The sleeping, and the staying asleep. I'm curious to see how he'll do in a different bed in a different house, if the good sleep habits will transfer... With our track record, probably not, but hopefully it won't be hard to get back in a rhythm after just a couple of days.

I've been managing to keep up with my five-year diary (although I abandoned it last fall for a few months, I've gotten back to it), and it's been amazing to compare what life was like just one year ago. Gabriel at just two was just so much younger--until going through this stage I wouldn't have realized what a difference 2, then 2 and a half, then 3 makes. At 2, Gabriel was still baby-ish in many ways, and we were still, again, going through a big rough patch of sleeping.

We'll see how things develop with Eloi, but although he is still feeding frequently during the night, he goes to bed at 6:30 like clockwork, and I can lay him down in his crib drowsy but awake, and he'll fall asleep. Likewise, after the feedings, I lay him back in his bed and he drifts off without protest. (In fact, if we bring him to our bed during the night, he has difficulty falling asleep, instead excitedly grabbing our faces and flopping around.) Gabriel was the complete opposite, and was never able to fall asleep quietly in his crib on his own, even after many strategies and routines and attempts, so I have high hopes that we won't have to go through quite so much drama with this child over sleeping issues. Of course, Gabriel potty-trained himself without so much as an accident, and to make up for it Eloi will probably be the opposite. Or whatever. I'll take it!

Speaking of sleep, the baby has stayed asleep long enough for me to write this entire post! Poor thing, I hope he keeps sleeping, because he needs it. I'm going to download a few photos of egg decorating from yesterday and do a little menu planning for our weekend away (sticking to the basics, just in case the house is outfitted with, like, one frying pan and one pot).

The secret blog

I have to confess something: there is an entire, second blog's worth of draft posts waiting to be published on this web page. But I don't publish them, and I'm trying to figure out why.

In part, because they are unfinished and raw and I write them fast then never find time to go back and polish. In part, because when I post so erratically I don't want the one entry on my blog in a month to be me complaining, for example, about the physical toll of parenting. In part, because this blog has an identity crisis: I wish I could write mainly about words and poetry and books and languages and living abroad, but I really write mainly about babies and kids and being a mom.

But also, and I'm starting to think this is the main reason, who I'm really writing for is myself. I get nervous when I think about people reading my little thoughts or stories of our family, but those are the things I want to set down, so I will remember them, a long time from now. I don't want or care much about links or pins or tweets or reader counts--although I do like the thought of loved ones being able to keep up with our lives, a little bit. But Facebook more or less fills that function, doesn't it?

I'm not sure what to do with this realization. I doubt I will go back and publish those other posts--they're linked to a moment in time that was a week ago, a month ago, a lifetime ago (literally a lifetime, when it's Eloi's life). But that's exactly why I am anxious to record, and anxious to keep writing. I love looking back at old blog posts, before kids, or when Gabriel was a baby (even though there aren't many of those). My own words capture and trigger my memory better than Facebook status updates or even photographs can. In addition, despite my qualms about audience, the at least quasi-public nature of a blog is what motivates me to continue to write.

So. We shall see. I will keep writing, and maybe or maybe not clicking "publish." And, because this is exactly the kind of thing I want to remember forever, in all of its messiness, a little portrait of our morning:

7 am. I am laying dozily in the warm bed, next to a baby who has decided that it is morning and life is grand! Squeal! Clap! Screech! Log roll! Scoot to the edge of the bed and attempt nosedive until mom grabs a leg! I should be getting him dressed, because the Mister is dropping him off at daycare this morning, exceptionally, due to all the ice on the ground and due to the fact that I have a work meeting. But Gabriel has, in the meantime, also come into the bed from his room, and is curled up so cozily in the hollow of my arms.

So the Mister, who has just dressed himself, starts dressing the baby next to us, and Gabriel touches his forehead to mine and whispers "hi! g'morning!" with a grin. The Mister is late, so he is getting frustrated, and then Gabriel starts flailing his feet and maybe-on-purpose-maybe-not almost kicking the baby's face. So I grab his feet to me, and sternly tell him that his feet should not be anywhere near the baby's face. We have a little talk and I try to convince him that we should get dressed too, but he earnestly tells me, eyebrows raised, gesturing at the clock he can't read, that we should stay in bed "a foo moh minutes."

The baby is now lotioned, diapered, and dressed. The Mister sets him in the bed and says that he'll go down to eat breakfast, and I suggest that he take the baby with him so they can leave more quickly. But he doesn't like that idea, because he's thinking he'll have to manage the baby while running around--as he does every morning--to find the last-minute items before departure. But I tell him to stick the baby in the high chair, since that's what I do every morning while I prepare the kids' breakfast/school lunch/daycare bottles. I try to say this neutrally. But the running late and possibly the fact that he had to dress the baby when I should have done it make him tense and we are both a bit snippy.

But here's the kicker, and the reason I am telling this story. While the Mister and I are having this interaction, the boys are sitting on the bed, facing each other. I have half an eye on M. and half an eye on them, a hand on Eloi's back to make sure there's no pushing or kicking or the baby doesn't dive off the bed. Instead, Gabriel leans forward and puts his arms gently around Eloi, and says softly, so I almost don't hear it as I listen to the Mister, "Good morning. I love you, baby brother."And then he gives him a kiss on the forehead.

This, in all of its messiness, is life with small children. It's kicking and kisses, snuggling but also running late, shrieks over clothing changes and then two seconds later swagger over a "cool" shirt, a gurgling clapping baby then an enraged hungry baby, and you never know what's coming next. It might be a bit of magic, even in the midst of crabby sleep-deprived conversations.

I want to remember this particular bit of magic, so I'm recording it here. A picture is impossible, a Facebook status doesn't cut it, my memory won't hold it given that I'm operating on months of no more than three consecutive hours of sleep. Given that it's just an ordinary morning, a morning out of thousands like it. But now it's here, in this repository.

Where we are now

Hi. I have been here all along, although the blog languishes in silence. The longer I wait to post, the less likely I am to post, because I want to catch up on everything, five months' worth of everything.

So this is a warm-up, a little post meant to get my toes wet. I want to make myself just dump out a few thoughts and not worry if they don't cohere or if I leave things out.

Eloi is eight months and a half. He's gigantic, wearing the clothes that Gabriel wore when he was a year plus and walking around (and I thought Gabriel was a big baby!). Eloi doesn't even crawl yet, a fact for which I am grateful, because I know as soon as he does it will be insanity around here. For now he rolls around quite efficiently and has started to scoot. He is only *meh* about solid foods and has only just acquiesced to drinking from a bottle (of pumped milk) at daycare (after months of trying; he started in December). He has the widest toothy smile (seven teeth! he got his first two at four months) and when not hungry or tired is consistently a happy-go-lucky baby, content to hang out wherever I plop him down. I was thinking about Eloi's birth yesterday as I walked past the hospital, and realized I never wrote it down. As each month slides by, it will be harder to remember, so I want to do that soon.

And Gabriel turned THREE last weekend, which is mind-blowing in itself. He is cheerful and funny, and likes building elaborate castles and animals with his blocks or legos. "Look mom, it's a giraffe!" His toast is a crocodile, his blanket is a cape, the pillow is a hat, a tree, a mushroom. "I a tiger," he says, but he pronounces it "tijher," I guess because of Dutch. He often says, "I too!"--he wants to be sure he's included. He got close to tears the other day because he was asking for a vitamin and I thought he was asking for a "fireman," and couldn't figure it out. Those are the hard tears, the frustrated ones, the "I'm trying to tell you something but you don't understand me or I can't explain it" tears. He is starting to notice the difference between "boys and grills" (which reminded us of our nephew calling them "girdles"). He likes to cook with me and pretend cook with his toys, and asks to watch "recipes" and "toff chef" on the internet. I could go on and on. He's his own little person, this astounding three-year-old, this sweet kid of ours.

January was frigid and yucky, sleety and damp, and we were sick with endless maladies of the kind that one gets in January when one child attends daycare and the other preschool. But so far, we've had a more mild February, and the sun has even peeked out in the last few days. We had M's family in town to celebrate Gabriel's birthday, and M and I actually got to go out for two meals AND a movie on our own during that time.

I am more active with the university now, and find myself a coordinator for an upcoming conference. After Christmas I attended the big disciplinary conference in Boston, which was awesome not least because I got to see good friends. I had a job interview in January, which did not result in a job, but which was an exciting development nonetheless. (The less exciting part was when our internet went completely dead the DAY before the skype interview and would not come back on. I scrambled to set up at a friend's house and the internet came back with only hours to spare.)

My mom was completely cleared after her long journey of cancer treatments, as they found no evidence of the tumor just before Thanksgiving. But after a truly wonderful Christmas celebration all together in Maine, she got the flu, then pneumonia, then a scary loss of weight/strength and then cognition that landed her in the hospital for a week in January. The docs still don't know exactly why that happened, but it was probably the weakness combined with the previous brain radiation. SO, so scary. We were the ones who brought the flu with us at Christmas, I think--Eloi was sick, then me, then Gabriel with a VERY high fever that lingered for a week and required an ER visit, the first time we'd ever had to bring him.

(This account skips entirely the whole month we spent in Maine back in late September and October, stays in Boston and a trip to Madison, the birth of a new baby niece--the first girl cousin!--and then a trip to Barcelona for the last week of October. You can understand why we opted to not take a scheduled trip to Barcelona last week...after a crazy fall and holiday season we just couldn't handle another round of travel and jet lag and whacked schedules.)

At this particular moment in time, we are all healthy, the sun is out, the baby wants milk, and I have work to do. But there! I have wetted my toes.

The lively air

It's been a while since I've posted any poetry. An old favorite of mine by Theodore Roethke has been ringing in my ears lately, especially as I feed Eloi. Its rhythm, its meanings easily adapt to feeding a tiny baby:

The Waking

I wake to sleep, and take my waking slow.
I feel my fate in what I cannot fear.
I learn by going where I have to go.

We think by feeling. What is there to know?
I hear my being dance from ear to ear.
I wake to sleep, and take my waking slow.

Of those so close beside me, which are you?
God bless the ground! I shall walk softly there,
And learn by going where I have to go.

Light takes the Tree; but who can tell us how?
The lowly worm climbs up a winding stair;
I wake to sleep, and take my waking slow.

Great Nature has another thing to do
To you and me, so take the lively air
And, lovely, learn by going where to go.

This shaking keeps me steady. I should know.
What falls away is always. And is near.
I wake to sleep, and take my waking slow.
I learn by going where I have to go.

~Theodore Roethke

***
The poem captures those blurred lines between thought and emotion, between knowledge and physical motion, between fear and joy--all of it grasped better in the twilight deliciousness between sleeping and waking. I think babies must experience all of this in an instinctual mesh of sensory input, and that Roethke's rhythms reach toward a lullaby to that end. So what I hear as I think of these lines from my baby's perspective goes something like this:

The Feeding

I wake to nurse, and take my waking slow.
I feel my way to feeding and I have no fear.
I grow by nuzzling in these arms I know.

We think by feeling. What is there to know?
I grin a milky grin from ear to ear.
I wake to nurse, and take my waking slow.

Of those so close beside me, which are you?
My mama! I see her and smile softly there,
and grow by nuzzling in these arms I know...

Swirl

Somehow we have managed to go two and a half years without a night like last night: one in which our poor little preschooler vomited every hour or so, the Mister and I wielding the mop and clean sheets and clean pajamas and a rinsed-out bucket, knowing that once we got him changed and back to sleep we would do it all over again in a short while. And in between, nursing the baby.

I remember when pulling all-nighters was exhilarating and fueled by coffee and writing and reading and a heady feeling of being grown up.

Now, oh, now. We are grown up all right. The all-nighter brought to us by very different kinds of liquids, very different kinds of demands. And a different kind of satisfaction: that of stroking a child's soft cheek and hair until he falls asleep. Of singing softly when a small voice asks, "ting a tong, mama."

Back then, I could sleep off the all-nighter fog after a couple of days. Make up for it on the weekend, or the next day, after the paper was handed in or the exam completed. These days, one or the other of the kids will wake us up at 7 or 8, no exceptions. A nap snatched for a few minutes, if I'm lucky. A couple of extra minutes of sleep while M feeds Gabriel breakfast. What seems impossible in the zombie haze of 3 am soothing, in the light of day is doable because it must be done.

Yet as I write right now both children are snoring softly, one on the couch and one in a bouncy seat, a rare treasure of a simultaneous nap (although I'm sure the baby will wake now that the other one is asleep). There's something to be said for sickness-induced lethargy: at least parenting the toddler doesn't take as much running around or the constant, nonstop, williteverend need for coming up with activities and negotiating about activities and food and on and on.

So I have a moment to write in this blog. Which has been badly neglected, as I feel caught in the swirl of life. Not a bad swirl, but constant motion nonetheless.

Gabriel started preschool, and is adorable in his tiny backpack proudly walking across the park with me to his new school. We LOVE having it just four minutes away. Just four kids are in his class at the moment--the Belgian system staggers the first preschool class so children enter after the school break nearest to them turning 2.5. He already knows one of his classmates, and as more kids enter the class he will know a few more. He is delighted that his is the turtle class, that he gets to feed the turtles. This is about the only fact I can glean from asking him about his day, that and that he got to "throw a ball." I'm still getting in the swing of things at the school, making lunches, understanding the Dutch information we receive, and so forth.

We are sleep deprived, obviously, even discounting last night's craziness, due to a baby who wakes a lot. We're dealing with some severe eczema with Eloi, which keeps him up at night itching, poor baby, and keeps me up as a consequence. We've got a regime of baths and lotions and creams going on that take up a surprising amount of my day. But he's started smiling and laughing, and he's still a calm easy-to-sleep dude, already chunking out of his 6-month clothes.

The house has been an organizational chaos ever since we got back from Spain. We've been making progress on that front bit by bit, although I'm worried leaving again for the US next week will start the cycle again. I am going on the job market this fall, and I need to get back to my academic projects. Not sure how that will work out with Eloi at home.

My mom has been undergoing a long stretch of radiation therapy and already a couple of rounds of chemo. She is responding really well to treatment, the cancer already shrinking, and the medicines are keeping the worst of the side effects at bay, thankfully. She lost her hair, though, and Gabriel's dumbfounded stare and thumping heartbeat when he saw her on skype without a hat were echoes of how we all felt about it. I can't wait to be there--Eloi and I leave a week from today. We spend a month there, and the Mister and Gabriel join us for the last two weeks. The Mister's parents will come here to help with Gabriel for the two weeks I'm gone, for which we are so grateful. This means both M. and I have international flights with one kid each, and I think he has a harder job!

September so far has been mostly beautiful in Leuven, and I have felt really supported by great friends both here in town and far away. Throughout the swirl: the no-sleep, nonstop, rain and sun, teaching and learning and laughing and crying with our treasured little boys.

Growing, traveling, crying

Eloi is two months old tomorrow. I continue to be amazed by how much he sleeps and how calm he is. Which is not to say he doesn’t have his moments, or that handling two kids has magically become easy (I'm sure I will write soon more about how it is NOT easy). But it certainly helps. He is now smiling intentionally from time to time, and it’s such a delight. He has big eyes and cowlicks that meet in the middle and make his downy blonde hair stand up in a mohawk. I can lay him down in the crib and he’ll hang out for a while then…just fall asleep. This morning he woke up long before I was ready to get up, so I kept sleeping and he just laid there and gurgled for an hour. This kid!

The boys and I have been in Barcelona (well, there and between my in-laws’ house) for a little over two weeks now. The Mister flew down with us, stayed for the weekend, and then flew back to Belgium. The purpose of this temporary separation is for him to get a lot of work done on his dissertation, while I hang out here and have more of a summer. Couldn’t do it without my parents-in-law, who have been taking care of Gabriel pretty exclusively, leaving me free to handle the baby. Gabriel, of course, is delighted, and is running around king of the castle, his Catalan developing by leaps and bounds.

But—and I don’t know how to transition to this easily—the main thing that has been occupying my thoughts and energies these days is sad, scary news.

My mom has lung cancer.

Even typing that sentence makes me tremble a bit, because I really don’t want it to be true, and because it sounds so horrible. Something that happens to other people.

She had been sick with chest colds/pneumonia too many times over the last months (including while she was in Belgium with us), with a lingering cough, and the doctors suggested a scan. And the scan showed a mass in/on her lung, and a series of biopsies and further scans confirmed that it is small cell lung cancer, which is very bad, and a kind of cancer usually found in smokers. Only 2% of the people who have it are nonsmokers like her.

This means that treatment possibilities are good, however, and she’s in overall good health, and there is no metastasis. But my overwhelming sadness when we got the definitive news had to do with treatment: I don’t want her to have to go through the pain, the exhaustion, the utter wretchedness of cancer treatments in their various forms. I couldn’t, can’t, even let myself think the worst thought, an outcome that doesn’t end in a cure, the one that to think of even for a second makes my stomach lurch in horror and my eyes well with tears.

We will be traveling to the US to help in September, when I’m more needed (mom has actually been feeling really good since she got over the bout of pneumonia), but it’s hard not to be there right now. My siblings immediately all came together to help and just to be together, and I wanted to be with them. It’s hard to rely on the normally sufficient means of communication like email and skype and phone calls for the information that we need and the reassurance and togetherness we all crave.

I’m not sure how much I’ll write about it here, because it feels selfish to write about how I’m feeling sad or down or dealing with it when SHE’s the one who has to deal with the Big Thing. I also have been avoiding writing about this because saying makes it feel more true. But then again, writing is how I process, so maybe it’s a good idea to write about it.

Happy belated fourth

Eloi's American passport and "consular report of birth abroad" (his American birth certificate) came in the mail today. This is remarkable because we only applied for it one week ago. Two days after we filed the application I got an email saying it was ready. And we didn't have to pay any expediting fees.

This is why I love America. And this: 

The morning of our big excursion to Brussels to the embassy, I realized that the paperwork for birth certificate, passport, and social security number involved a little bit more than I had thought. I needed, among other things, a non-standard-size passport photo, proof that I had lived in the US for more than five years (transcripts, tax statements, etc.), a translation of the Belgian birth certificate, a list of everywhere I had ever lived in my whole life, an affadavit about Eloi's last name not matching the Belgian birth certificate (the Belgians had to follow the Spanish naming standard using both parents' last names but we want him to just have M's), and an envelope with a registered mail stamp. 

The proof of US residency was required because only one of the parents is a US citizen, so they need you to show that you haven't been living abroad your whole life. My mom had brought a bunch of documents with her but when I looked through them that morning it turned out only my college transcript would work as part of the proof, covering three years (not including junior year abroad). So at the last minute I emailed M. at work and had him print my (unofficial) grad school transcript. 

I google-translated the Belgian birth certificate and sent it to M. to print along with a list of (slightly fudged) residency dates (they wanted day and month I moved to every city I've ever lived in!) and the name affadavit, ran to the post office and bought exorbitantly priced envelopes and stamps and then promptly put the stamps on the wrong corner of the envelope, caught the train to Brussels, and rushed through the city to the one photo processing place listed on the embassy website that would make US-standard passport photos and that was in the neighborhood of the embassy. Our appointment was in a half hour.

The photo place was closed. As in, out of business, an empty storefront.

I already had made passport photos of Eloi, propping him up in a photo booth, at two weeks old (even caught his eyes open!) and now hoped they would work even though the instructions emphasized how Belgian photos would not be accepted. 

Thus sweaty, stressed, and leaking milk, with Eloi nestled in his wrap against my chest, I met M. at the embassy and we went through the security check. We had to leave all our bags behind. I was sure we would have to do this all again after they told us the photos and/or proof of residency and/or something else wasn't in order.

Yet, once our number was called, the lady behind the desk couldn't have been nicer. "Oh, I just love Mondays!" she gushed. Monday is the day they schedule the babies. She took our paperwork and barely glanced at it. Didn't bat an eyelash when I gave her the Belgian-sized photos. Told us that passports are usually ready in two weeks, probably less (we're traveling in mid-July so needed it asap!). 

We then waited for the formal interview, where the proof of residency would be examined. Once we entered the little room, the official started joking around and asking us all about our studies. He had my transcripts in front of him, and made comments about a bunch of the courses I had taken, and about M's training, and talked with us about European history and made a joke about Belgians. Completely jocund. Of course, this was an interview (probably a more effective one than a "formal" approach) but it didn't seem like one. He took our incorrectly-stamped envelope and said, "Oh, we'll figure something out!" (When it came today I saw that they had coaxed off the stamps and taped them to the right corner.) He held the passport photo, trimmed to specification, in his hand, and gave us the rest of them back. That was it! Everything was completely fine! No problem!

And that's why America is awesome. Even if the bureaucracy is complicated on paper, in person nine times out of ten people are friendly and can-do and help you out and want to make it happen. In some other countries that shall remain nameless, the instructions would look simple and then the official behind the desk would study the papers, looking for problems and finding them, never looking at you or starting a conversation, then deny your application and tell you to come back with additional, more complicated forms or papers. 

So. Happy belated fourth of July! There are many reasons I'm happy to be an American, and this is one of them. And now, so is little Eloi! I didn't get a passport until I was 19, so he's way ahead of me in cosmopolitanism. 

Baby brother

It appears that I went and had a baby, and suddenly, a month later, I have a one-month-old baby! Isn't it funny how that works. I meant to post about it oh, probably every day since he was born, but I was either A) in the hospital, B) fiercely protecting the one-on-one time with baby while husband/mom/dad handled the toddler (and meals and cleaning and so forth), or C) handling the toddler and the baby and meals and cleaning and so forth. You know how it goes.

Plus, thrown into the mix I have been trying to work (revisions on an article), my mom got sick, M. went to Barcelona twice (the first time was right when my mom got sick and could barely get out of bed, and the second time, the baby got sick in the middle of the night, OF COURSE), M. turned 40 and we had to celebrate as a fortieth birthday calls for, and various paperwork-y kinds of things like getting birth certificates and passports at embassies involving three different countries.

I will try to catch-up post and write about labor and birth (kind of crazy long labor but went well in the end--couldn't have been more different than Gabriel except that both were no-epidural and perfectly healthy), the overall experience with Belgian hospital birth, and the aftermath: this newborn vs. that newborn, what it's like to be a mother of two (still getting a handle on that, actually, since my mom left only this week, and Gabriel has completely melted down since she has been gone).

In the meantime, presenting Eloi Daniel, our lovely baby. He was born on June 5, one day before the due date (thank goodness!). I went into labor literally as my mom was arriving from the airport. (But then spent that day, the next day, and two nights in labor...) He weighed 3.7 kilos, or about 8 pounds 5 ounces. He's very different from what his big brother was like as a baby, sleeping easily for the most part and generally calm and mellow.

Glamour shot.

Wide awake, with cowlick. 

Walking home from the hospital!

A yawn. 

Gabriel sees his brother for the first time.

Breathe

Still no baby. I'm ridiculously large, extremely uncomfortable, and there's a week to go until the due date.

As I write, I can feel the baby breathing (or "breathing," since it's amniotic fluid), which is a rather wild sensation, one that I don't remember from before. At least, I assume that's what it is: a quick, regular but gentle feeling of expansion and contraction coming from the baby in the lower left quadrant of my belly, which is where the back of his chest is curled against me.

I can wrap my arms around the bottom of my belly and jounce the baby almost as if he were on the outside. He complains, of course, when I do this, kicking mightily and turning his head from side to side, the latter of which movements is not very pleasant for me, since he's head-down and well engaged. So I leave him alone.

Now that I'm almost finished with this pregnancy, I can safely say that compared to Baby 1, I had an easier first trimester, a similar second trimester, and a much, much worse third trimester. I was much larger much sooner, and in a lot more pain. This pelvic issue has been tough, and is still getting worse, although fortunately there's an end in sight. I am physically limited in ways that I never was carrying Gabriel, and it's very frustrating to have to leave so much to the Mister, from cleaning to child care to...really anything involving bending over.

My last Dutch exam (in a series of four) is tomorrow, so I'll be relieved to have made it through that milestone (it always was a gamble to take a course with exams so close to the due date). Then, the next step is to make it until Sunday when my mom arrives and we have someone to take care of Gabriel when the baby makes his appearance. After that, it will be all about encouraging him to arrive! So far, I don't feel any signs of imminent labor. I've had a few scattered contractions, but that was last week. I get the sense that he'll take his time and be at least a few days "late" (but really, right on time, since only he and the inner workings of my body will dictate that right moment).

I'm looking forward to that right moment: both because I'll find out what *this* labor/delivery will be like, and because, of course, we get to meet the next member of our family, the next little resident of our nest. Meanwhile, he breathes, I breathe....waiting.

All delight unclouded

Suddenly, Belgium has decided that spring-into-summer is here, and we've had a few days of sunny, even muggy weather in the upper 70s, without any rain (even though rain was predicted). This is, of course, a welcome change and one that makes me more energetic and ready to have this baby! I've discovered that I have exactly four short-sleeve or sleeveless maternity shirts, which should be enough to get me by--although this will be annoying in the short term (especially since even these shirts barely cover my belly any more), it makes me glad that I didn't go out and buy more spring maternity wear, since it's really not worth it for just a couple of weeks.

Gabriel comes home from daycare sweaty and simply coated in sand from head to toe, since they spend the days outside and there's a large sand pit to play in. But he's cheerful and giggling and growing and every day saying new words and sentences--especially adding more verbs into the mix. "Is" is actually pretty new, and I adore how he pauses before and after saying it, giving the "s" a nice long hiss. "Dat...issss...broken, mama!" He came inside from the yard the other day proudly bearing a scraggly bouquet of dandelions minus their seeds, and gave them to us. Candles! he said, because we blow on them. He's also potty training basically on his own, since I had kind of assumed it wouldn't happen before the baby and we were just following his pace. Even a few weeks have made a big difference, and now we have the dilemma of whether to put him in underwear or continue with diapers to get us through the newborn stage.

This week and next I'm studying for my Dutch exams, and there is an awful lot of material to cover. I thought, going into this and knowing that the term would end just before my due date, that Dutch would help distract me from pregnancy/baby thoughts, but the reverse is true. I'm not exactly a dedicated student right now and I kind of figure that I'll do as well as I'll do on the exams (if I even make it to the last one!).

Meanwhile, I'm still having poetry discussion group and book club meetings and doing other fun things. We happen to be discussing Rukeyser again this week, and since I'm waiting for our baby, I especially enjoyed "Nine Poems for the Unborn Child." Here are a couple of sections that I liked...

Nine Poems for the Unborn Child
by Muriel Rukeyser

3
There is a place.    There is a miracle.
I know the nightmare, the black and bone piano,
The statues in the kitchen, a house dissolving in air.
I know the lilac-turreted cathedral
Taking its roots from willows that changed before my eyes
When all became real, real as the sound of bells.
We earthly are aware of transformation;
Miraculously, life, from the old despair.

The wave of smooth water approaches on the sea-
Surface, a live wave individual
Linking, massing its color.     Moving, is struck by wind,
Ribbed, steepened, until the slope and ridge begin;
Comes nearer, brightens.      Now curls, its vanishing
Hollows darken and disappear;     now high above
Me, the scroll, froth, foam of the overfall.

8
Child who within me gives me dreams and sleep,
Your sleep, your dreams;     you hold me in your flesh
Including me where nothing has included
Until I said    :     I will include, will wish
And in my belly be a birth, will keep
All delicacy, all delight unclouded.
Dreams of an unborn child move through my dreams,
The sun is not alone in making fire and wave
Find meeting-place, for flesh and future meet,
The seal in the green wave like you in me,
Child.     My blood at night full of your dreams,
Sleep coming by day as strong as sun on me,
Coming with sun-dreams where leaves and rivers meet,
And I at last alive sunlight and wave.

Late pregnancy ramblings

Today we're at the start of a four-day weekend here in Belgium, but we don't have any plans because, well, you don't really make plans for a long weekend when you'll be 37 weeks pregnant. We are now officially full term, which is exciting because the baby is allowed to come when he's ready without any worries about being "too early." I don't *think* he's likely to come until the due date, but this being a second baby, all bets are off.

I'm in a state of total contradiction: feeling all sorts of urgency about crib setup and hospital bags (to name only the fun things on the list), but treading water in exhaustion and the feeling that there's still plenty of time. Excited about this birth and meeting our son, but utterly unable to imagine what life will be like in a few weeks. Staying still and resting because I should and because I really need to, chasing after Gabriel and getting on with life.

Earlier this week I submitted an academic essay that I've been working on for a while, and because of which I was putting off all sorts of other things. So finishing it was a good and satisfying milestone, freeing me up to focus on other to-dos. And what did I do with my new-found freedom yesterday? I took a three-hour nap and had a prenatal massage, a birthday gift from my parents. See what I mean? Stuff to do! Oof, I need a nap!

(Gabriel made up for it last night...he was awake constantly with his itchy eczema bothering him, poor guy, and ended up in our bed from 4am on, pulling my hair, kicking, attempting to lay on top of me, and asking for breakfast. He finally slept from 6-7am, after which M. took him downstairs while I slept from 7-9, then M. slept from 9-11 while I watched the kiddo. At least it's a holiday today! And fortunately this is not typical for him.)

I've been having weekly physiotherapy appointments because of the pelvic pain, and that has definitely helped realign things as much as possible. While it is mostly manageable pain that happens with certain movements, I had a bout the other day of severe, sharp pain that didn't go away and that left me pretty immobile. It went away after a few hours of rest and stretches, but I'm worried about it happening again. As my physiotherapist said, a little too cheerfully, it probably will! Another reason for baby to come sooner rather than later, but also another reason I'm worried about labor (or specifically, about delivery).

Our final ultrasound is tomorrow morning, and I will get to meet our OB for only the second time before we have the baby. I hope to have a good conversation about our birth plan and aforementioned pelvic girdle concerns, and I'm looking forward to making sure everything looks good with our Junebug (or Maybug?).

From the outside, he looks like an acrobat, making increasingly insane-looking lurches outside of the normal ovaloid outline of my belly. He's almost constantly on the move, especially when I'm seated, and everyone from friends to my physiotherapist have been very amused by his antics. Last week I attended a doctoral defense of a friend here (very cool to see--extremely formal, involving men wearing funny academic hats and gowns filing into towering wood podiums from which they grilled the candidate) and the friends sitting next to me couldn't help practically squealing when they were distracted by baby's contortions from the serious philosophical intonations up front.

It continues to rain and barely get into the 60s, so I will be packing warm clothes for baby to wear at the hospital. When I found out we were having a June baby I was kind of thinking warm-weather baby, that his wardrobe would be the opposite of Gabriel, a February baby. But fortunately I didn't go out and buy summer rompers or anything, and he'll be able to wear all of Gabriel's early clothes. As I wash and fold them they look so tiny! I'm pretty sure this one will be a big baby, but even big newborns are tiny, and holding itty bitty onesies has me excited to hold an actual baby of that size. Brand-new size.

Say my name

Before Gabriel was born, we talked about what we would like to be called as parents. Most parents probably have an obvious answer to this question, or don't even think about it, but since we were working with two languages, and we both had some opinions about parental nicknames, there were a few things to discuss.

In Catalan, most parents we know use mama/papa, but M. grew up using mare/pare (pronounced mar-uh and par-uh), which literally mean mother and father but sound, in terms of formality, closer to mom and dad. As per his experience, he preferred, then, using mare and pare--or at least preferred the latter to the "papa" option.

Meanwhile, I didn't particularly like mommy/daddy, although I'm not sure why, since that's what I called my parents when I was a child. Maybe it didn't seem to suit us or seemed too American for our little international family. I liked mama and papa, but if M. didn't like papa, I thought we should just go with mom and dad from the beginning. So, our plan was that we would be--and refer to each other when speaking to our baby as--mom (or maybe mama) and dad in English, or mare and pare in Catalan.

As I'm sure you've guessed by now, the best laid plans regarding unborn children are always likely to alter radically in the face of actual children and their actual quick little minds.

When Gabriel started speaking, he called us "mama" and "dada" and honestly, I have no idea how that came about. I suppose we started out by referring to one another as mom and dad and he baby-fied the terms until we ourselves were soon using those names. I don't know why we didn't even think about "dada" ahead of time, but I rather love it, as it's not as grown-up sounding as "dad" and not as twangy as "daddy."

I loved hearing Gabriel say our names, even if he was crying--and in the very beginning, that's when he'd say them. A wail that could be identified as a name, the long vowels letting us know he needed us. It seems he made the choice, in the end, about what to call us.

But it doesn't end there, because as he's grown he's adapted to saying various versions our names, as well. "Mommy" seemed to appear somewhat spontaneously, and he still calls me mommy from time to time, especially when yelling for me. Of course, I don't mind as much as I thought I would. I think in part this came about because for many months his pronunciation of "grandma," his name for my mother, sounded nearly identical to "mama." So "mommy" was a way to distinguish the two.

Meanwhile, our families kept referring to us as "mommy and daddy" or "mama and papa"--both sides are still getting used to "mama and dada." So Gabriel would hear others refer to me as "mommy" and it didn't take much for that to sink in. Even recently, when M.'s family was here, Gabriel referred to him as "papa" because he heard others use it. Children are such mimics. (Every once in a while, and this I find hilarious, Gabriel will also call us by our first names because he hears us yelling for each other.)

As for mare and pare, since I refer to M. as "dada" even if I'm speaking Catalan, "pare" hasn't caught on. But M refers to me as "mare," and of late Gabriel has taken to that, especially now that M. is doing the daycare pickup in the evening and talks to him about coming home to me. Every day I can hear Gabriel's little voice from down the street and as they come in the front door, excitedly clamoring, "mare! mare! mare!" He runs to me, giggling and happy, flings his arms around my neck, and I am so proud to be his "mare" as well as his mama, or mommy, for that matter.

I'm sure that some day we'll phase into the more grown-up titles of mom and dad, and mare and pare, depending on the language we're speaking, some day when he knows we're just fallible human beings. In the meantime I love and savor every utterance of his childhood names for us. Because when he calls me mama, or some variation thereof, I am everything that word encompasses: powerful and wise, beautiful and calm, able to soothe every worry, every fever, every tear. Even if I know I'm not those things, he believes that I am.

Mama: a beautiful name. I love it for being universal, uniting me to a world of amazing women who have shared the crazy and wonderful experience of motherhood. But I mostly love it for the person I am when my particular child says it to mean his particular mother. To be sure, it's not my only name, nor my only identity, but it's my newest name, the one that I treasure for my child's faith in who I am and always will be.

34 years, 36 weeks, 34 pills

I turned 34 yesterday, a birthday which was hardly on my radar at all, due to all of my energy and focus being geared toward getting a complaining, tired body through the end of this pregnancy. Probably because of my lowered or nonexistent expectations, I had the most wonderful day. The Mister surprised me with thoughtful and awesome presents throughout the day, including a bouquet that little Gabriel handed to me exclaiming, Fowers! Fowers!, when they got home.

I took myself to a bookstore and browsed quietly, picked out frilly pastries at the bakery to share with a friend, had a satisfying nap, skyped with our families, and ate dinner at an Ethiopian restaurant with my guys. The temperature almost got up to 70 degrees (even if it was gray and rainy, as per usual). Plus, Dutch class, a physiotherapy appointment, and a movie rental watched while eating chocolate ice cream. All in all, pretty perfect and low-key and cheered me up immensely.

Also cheering me up: today, we reached the 36-week mark, which means a month to go (and only one week until the baby is full term!). I counted out my Zantac today, and there were 34 pills, just enough to stave off heartburn for a couple of days past the due date. I really hope I won't need to ask the doctor for a prescription for whatever the equivalent is here (she was very surprised that I could get Zantac over the counter in the US). Thanks to the physiotherapist I saw yesterday, I now have some new tools at my disposal when experiencing pelvic pain (it's ramped up lately, even though I'm resting more, walking less, and hardly carrying anything) (besides a gigantic baby). I also have a better idea of what positions and movements are better and worse for the problem, some of which were a bit counterintuitive. Plus, I think I'm finally starting to get over this cold and congestion that's been plaguing me for weeks.

All the big changes are so so close, and I know these last weeks will go by in the blink of an eye, even if it seems like time is dragging now. Just looking at those 34 pills made the days more tangible: I could hold them all in the palm of my hand.

Home stretch

It is finally May, which means I'm having a baby next month (or this month!), which makes me both relieved and nervous. We're only five weeks away from the due date, and while I would love to have the baby sooner rather than later in order to relieve all of this discomfort (and meet our new son), I really don't want to have a baby without my mom here. She arrives June 2. So I guess we'll wait, then (as if it were up to me)! There are also a crib still to put together, baby laundry to wash, and hospital bags to pack.

The Mister has juggled his work schedule in order to be able to do the daycare pickup and dropoff, and we finally found a store that will deliver groceries. So the main obstacles that we were facing last week have been solved, although it's quite a schlep every day for M. to get from home to daycare to the train station to Brussels to work, and vice versa. We're getting ready quickly in the morning so that he can hustle Gabriel out the door. Fortunately, Gabriel has been a complete doll this week, sleeping well every night until 7am, and behaving so beautifully in the mornings and evenings.

Over the holiday weekend we had nine people in the house, all of M's family--his parents, sister, brother-in-law, and our nieces. They took over the shopping, cooking, and Gabriel-watching duties, and I stayed at home while they went on trips to museums and parks. This was fantastic in so many ways, since I really needed the rest and am still getting over this horrible cold-congestion-cough thing. But hard for me in other ways, since it's not easy to sit back and just let it all happen when it's your own house. Just letting go. Plus, everything was topsy turvy and busy and noisy and extra muddy (due to our street construction, which seems to consist of digging holes and more holes, continuing in the rain). We did have a couple of kind of springy days where we could even go without jackets, and I sat and read in the garden for the first time this year. (Of course, after that it was back to pouring cats and dogs.)

I'm going to Dutch class and making short little errands but otherwise sticking close to home and taking long naps. I am sleeping poorly at night, since everything throbs or itches or aches or or cramps or burns or is congested, so naps suck me into their deep vortex reliably every day. There is work to do but my brain is too foggy to do it well. Hardly any of my maternity clothes fit any more, since my belly has taken on proportions that it only reached just days before Gabriel was born, and my hips seem to be widening so that even formerly comfortable yoga pants cut into my waist.

I take great comfort in knowing this will all change drastically very soon, and five weeks--a month!--seems much closer than six or seven weeks did. I have no idea how everything will go when we become a family of four, but I'm looking forward to challenges that are different than this slow achy wait.

SPD

This morning I went to see my doctor to get all the pain I'm experiencing looked at, and to get a prescription for iron pills, because I was pretty sure that lack of iron is one of the reasons (aside from just, you know, being pregnant) why I'm getting dizzy and feel so exhausted.

It turns out that along with the cold and cough and backaches and dizziness (and I was right about the iron), I have something called SPD, symphysis pubis dysfunction, which is why my lower abdomen, lower back, and pelvic bone hurt so much, why standing up from the couch or bed is painful, and why I simply can't lift my legs separately at all.

The ligaments holding the two sides of the pelvic bone are stretched out more than normal due to the hormone relaxin and due to carrying excess weight: the baby, but also groceries, the stroller, Gabriel, and so on! I don't seem to have a super extreme case, but I'm still supposed to go see a physical therapist and learn how to manage it, to prevent it from getting worse.

More importantly, I'm not supposed to walk as far or as much as I've been walking, and certainly not carrying weight. Which presents a problem in terms of the two hours I spend each day bringing and picking Gabriel up from daycare (and, most days, loading up the stroller with groceries). My doctor said a car or even a bike would be better than walking to daycare, but unfortunately we don't have a bike (I should have gotten one early in this pregnancy, like I wanted to!) or a car. She didn't exactly prohibit me from going, but said I should reduce the distance I walk by as much as possible. So we're going to have to figure something out. And here I thought the one good thing I was doing, exercise wise, was walking to and from daycare!

The grocery thing has been a problem, even before I was pregnant, because I'm always loading up my trusty cloth bags with as much as I can carry (or more than I should carry), and I still end up going every day or every other day! Just the basics--bananas (which we go through like water), milk, cereal, yogurt, canned beans, rice and pasta, fruit and vegetables--end up being super heavy, no matter how choosy I try to be. And none of the shops are exactly around the corner. We've looked into delivery, but all of the supermarket chains here only offer "online shopping" that involves you choosing the items, them boxing them up for you, and you picking them up. Which clearly does not resolve the issue of carrying them home when one doesn't have a car. Argh.

Anyway, it feels good just to have a "reason" for this pain instead of feeling like I'm just out of shape or weaker or older with this pregnancy. But there are still six-plus weeks to go, and things were already hard enough without the added complication of additional rest and restrictions on walking too much. Argh again. Still puzzling this out in my head and trying to think what we'll do. The good news is, the Mister's family arrives tomorrow, so at least for a long weekend we'll have help.

Carrying on

This is going to be a complaining-type post, but I realized that I was holding off on posting at all because I didn't want to complain, which is not necessarily a good reason not to post. I had such a good bloggy momentum going last month but this month it's hard to find the time and energy to write!

We still have six or more weeks to go before this baby's due date, but we're struggling to keep our heads above water. I'm feeling increasingly wiped out and limited by the aches of pregnancy, all compounded by the past three days or so of a cold (fortunately this is the first time I've gotten sick since October). The cold has brought a sore throat that joined forces with burning heartburn to set my entire esophagus on fire, achy joints to join lower back pain and upper back pain and abdominal pain, and a throbbing head to add to the fun. Between Saturday and Sunday I developed a knot in my back so painful that I could only cry or lay down by the end of the day.

Yet, life must still happen: daycare pickups and dropoffs in the rain, lugging groceries home, dragging the stroller through our muddy, rocky street and hoisting it up to the front door, feeding the family, making beds, carrying laundry up and down narrow stairs, keeping up with Gabriel and the messes he leaves in his wake. Plus, I have an academic essay due in a few weeks for which I need to do some serious work. I had my book club here on Friday night, something I had been looking forward to, but that meant cleaning the entire house, which meant that the Mister cleaned the entire house, because I am simply unable to sweep and mop right now. Or load the dishwasher. Or pick up legos from the floor. Or...

M. left work early to pick up Gabriel and go to the grocery store the day I got sick, while I lay down in a guilty funk. The same day that he mopped and swept everything. Meanwhile, he's trying to write his thesis in any extra time he has. He had to go to Paris for a meeting related to his dissertation, and we didn't realize it coincided with my book club day. So he changed his entire schedule, stayed in Paris for barely two hours, and made it home in time to take care of Gabriel for the evening (bearing Parisian macarons, no less!). We had guests over for lunch yesterday, and I made the food but once again he did everything else, and found time to work on his dissertation in addition to massaging my aching back and putting Gabriel to bed and...and...

I guess what I'm saying is: I might be carrying this baby, but he is carrying me. I really don't know how I could do this without the Mister. Which is not to overlook the fact that this is hard on him, too. As you can imagine, things are very stressful right now: he's exhausted, and it's not exactly fun to rush home from work (an hour-long commute from Brussels) just so he can juggle everything at home as well. I at least have my days open, go to Dutch class, take naps (whether I want to or not...they happen). We don't go to bed early enough, so we don't get enough sleep at night (and the quality of my sleep is pretty abysmal lately) and Gabriel has been waking at 6:30...guess who gets up with him to let the other parent sleep an extra hour?

We have managed to fit in some fun things, still. Since today is Sant Jordi, the day of the rose and the book in Catalonia, we spent good chunks of Saturday in the library and bookstores, picking out books for one another. There's time with friends (the reason I didn't cancel book club or our lunch guests even though I didn't feel very well). Gabriel is a real treat these days. And we have our family from Barcelona coming for a visit over the holiday weekend starting on Thursday. That of course presents its own logistical challenges--four extra adults and two children staying here for four days requires some air-mattress purchases, plus bedroom rearrangements, and more cleaning, shopping, etc.--but it will be lovely to have some help and spend time with them. Plus! I had another ultrasound last week and the baby is looking fantastic, and rather *huge*--no wonder he's putting me through my paces. Aside from the aches and pains, I'm healthy too, all tests perfectly normal.

So. Six weeks to go when I already am feeling so miserable sounds impossible but somehow we'll make it. Then there will be an entirely different kind of not-sleeping, messy, hormonal chaos, but at least we'll have a break from regular life for a little while...five days in the hospital, paternity leave, help from family, and so forth. And finally, a few weeks after that, I should be able to stand up without some part of my body protesting loudly. Something I'm really looking forward to!

I told you this would be a complainy post, but it feels good to write it all out, anyway.

Easter break

We're back from our two-week trip to Catalonia, and I'm so thankful to be home, and thankful that I don't have to get on an airplane again before we have this baby. Even apart from the baby belly and baby aches, I really love coming home again after a trip, getting to sleep in our own bed and getting back to our cozy life. I'm a homebody with a travel bug, so as much as I love going places, I love coming home again just as much.

Gabriel did very well, by and large, on all of the flights. Our most difficult moment came when we boarded the 6:45 am flight back to Brussels and realized that the check-in person had given us separate seats. With the Mister across the aisle and stuck in the middle seat, no one wanted to change with him, because the aisle seat guys had, as they legitimately pointed out, *paid* for an aisle seat. So we grinned and bore it, until the dude next to me finally relented after Gabriel realized he wasn't M. and started screaming "Dada, dada!!!" and lunging over our laps. (Good job, Gabriel!)

We had a perfectly lovely stay on the Costa Brava, in the tiny apartment that the Mister's parents own. It rained almost every day of our week-long visit, but actually that was just fine with us, since the Mister had to work on his dissertation for a few hours every morning and a few hours every afternoon. We settled into a nice rhythm of breakfasting together, then M. working while Gabriel indulged in cartoons and I indulged in reading (as well as, once he had watched a couple of shows, epic sessions of reading books, coloring, stickers, etc.), then a short walk if it was clear, then lunch and naps (I had a nap every single day, lucky me!).

The afternoons were much the same, working/tv/reading/coloring and another walk before dinner unless it was raining. Gabriel went to bed without protest nearly every night, sleeping through the night in his own little room, which made our evenings that much more relaxing--we mostly spent them watching documentaries or doing more reading. (I know, we like to live on the edge.) No internet meant we truly were able to disconnect from everything. We went out for a meal just once, to a pizza place as soon as it opened at 7pm (all the other restaurants open at 8 or 8:30, well past Gabriel's bedtime), with no one else in the place but us. (One thing about the Iberian lifestyle that I can't get over now that I have a kid is how late children go to bed, in part due to late mealtimes!)

During our trip I read four and a half books, only one of which I really loved: Jennifer Eagan's A Visit from the Goon Squad. I also read two short story collections, and I was reminded why I love short stories but not short story collections: each story should be read on its own and savored, instead of jammed shoulder-to-shoulder with others. Plus, especially for vacation reading, I really miss the momentum of a novel's plot, the kind that drives you forward and makes you lose track of time as you devour masses of pages. One of the collections was a Don Barthelme set, and his books of stories have been on my wish list for ages, which made me anticipate them greatly and then be disappointed greatly (plus, it was prefaced by maybe the most glowing introduction I have ever read, by Dave Eggars, and set me up for even more disappointment when I wasn't a fan). Finally, I read John Irving's Last Night in Twisted River, which was all right plot- and character-wise, but which I found repetitive and relied overmuch on that temporal overlay writerly crutch: "Later, so-and-so would remember how the..."; or "When he thought back on that night as an old man, he saw..."; etc.

We actually did have a few sunny mornings, including Palm Sunday and Good Friday, during which there were delightful events. Palm Sunday, all the children carry elaborately woven palm branches to the church and wear their best new spring clothes (see my description from a couple of years ago here)--since this was a family town, the area in front of the church was jam-packed with kids, strollers, and families taking pictures. On Good Friday, the same plaza held a wonderful market of artisanal cheeses, breads, and pastries, including Eastertide confections, bunyols, which are sweet anise-flavored fritters, fried dough formed into small donuts or triangular shapes and rolled in sugar. We bought samples of all of the above. Plus, there were espectacles or shows for children, and Gabriel got to watch clowns and dance very charmingly with other little tots.

We were back to my in-laws' for Easter, and Easter morning we attended church in the city, but I was badly disappointed by the service, with its lugubrious synthesized organ renditions of what should be joyful Easter hymns, and a complete lack of flowers/trumpets/choir or other signs of Easter festivity. It's the day of the year, I realized as I spent half the service in quiet tears, that I am most homesick for the US and the traditions of our family and churches past. Plus, there was no nursery as advertised, and Gabriel fell right away while clambering over the pews, so M. had to take him out of the sanctuary while he screamed his head off for half the service. (He was literally the only child in the room, which is often the case at the churches we attend in Catalonia.)

Things got a little more Easter-like (in a secular fashion) once we returned home and staged an Easter-egg hunt for Gabriel, his cousins, and friends of theirs visiting from France (where egg-hunts are also a tradition, although they are not in Spain). The five kids loved scouring the courtyard for chocolate and hard-boiled eggs, and each carrying his or her own little homemade paper basket. On Easter Monday we did the Spanish Easter tradition, which is the mona, a cake for each child topped with large chocolate eggs or other shapes, candies, and colored feathers or other decor. Traditionally, each child receives his or her cake from the godmother, but in our family we just make them for the kids. As we discovered, five cakes is an awful lot of cake!

As usual, we came back to a very rainy and quite chilly Belgium, but the flowers are bursting and it still feels like spring. (Ironically, I often feel colder in the spring because the temperatures are still low but I've abandoned the idea of mittens and parkas and wool hats.) Our street is a vast mud pit, which I have great difficulty getting the stroller through, since the wheels get stuck in the mud, and I can't or shouldn't lift it out. I've had to ask for help from strangers, or abandon the stroller, take Gabriel to our door, and go back for the stroller. None too fun. Our shoes are permanently coated with clayey orange mud. But again: it's spring. We walk past adorable parades of ducklings every morning on our way to daycare, and the sun does peek out every once in a while, promising nicer things to come. It's good to be home.

Thirty

The weather has been beautiful here in Leuven, and it's making our walks around town a thousand percent better. However, although I know I should be floating in the delirium of spring, I am plodding around in a fog of fatigue and weightiness. I wake up exhausted after sleeping poorly, I take naps prior to 10 am, and only guilt about the Mister doing so much of the housework and child-wrangling on top of his busy job and dissertation-writing provokes me to get the laundry done, make and clean up dinner, and pick up toys (squatting or on all fours, because--oof--the bending over thing is just not good).

My belly is, I am convinced, as big as it was with Gabriel shortly before he was born. And we have ten weeks to go. It's sticking out like a giant torpedo, probably because all of my muscles have given way entirely. Wherever I go--church, book club, daycare, Dutch class--people assume that I am on the verge of giving birth. Yet: ten weeks to go. At thirty weeks with Gabriel, I was still only just starting to feel *really* pregnant. Hah!

In comparison with my first pregnancy, I am doing very little by way of body-strengthening and stretching, and I imagine this is in part to blame for the aches and pains. I took yoga and birth movement classes with Gabriel, but here I haven't been able to find a prenatal yoga class that's accessible to me. I know I should just do some yoga at home and figure it out on my own or via podcasts/youtube videos, but somehow a nap always sounds better. At least I am walking at least four miles a day, no matter what, so there's that. But I do want to start working on stretching and yoga practice, so I hope registering that desire here will spur me to do so.

The best part about this pregnancy with Junebug is how much he is in motion. He is continuously stretching and rolling, more than I remember with Gabriel. It's not a pummeling or a kicking feeling as much as a sensation of smooth but seriously pushy-outy gestures. I'm constantly grinning in wonder as I watch a little fist or foot make a visible path across my skin, sometimes strong enough that I feel like I need to press back with my hand lest he bust out of there! (Even if I'm not stretching enough, *he* certainly is!) It's very easy to feel his little head or rump, probably due to the aforementioned stretched-out and separated abdominal muscles, and I love poking at him (although he probably doesn't appreciate it as much). I'm convinced he moves in response to Gabriel's voice or cry, and he always wakes up and starts moving in the morning when Gabriel comes to our bed asking for a banana.

Gabriel still doesn't have much of a clue what is in store, even though we've gotten a few books about a new baby and try to read them regularly, in addition to talking about (and praying for) his new brother. He knows that my belly is "baby," but I don't think he realizes that the baby will come out and be one of the babies in his books, or the babies we see of our friends and family. I'm very curious to see how he reacts to a new sibling, and find it hard to predict what response he'll have. A friend suggested that we let him pick out a gift *from* him to his brother, an idea I like a lot--helping him feel big brotherly. We shall see!

I have a lot more to say about Mr. Gabriel, who is such a delight and a handful these days. We got him a new bed at Ikea, and he transitioned perfectly well from sleeping on a mattress on the floor to sleeping in his bed, which we are very relieved about. "New bed!" he says. He's busting out with new words and phrases all the time, in all three of his languages, and it's pretty adorable. Our favorite is "Extra yum!", which comes from an adorable book called Little Pea, about a pea who hates the candy his parents give him for dinner but loves spinach for dessert: "yum, yum, extra yum!" Gabriel gobbles up most of the food we give him, in portion sizes about equivalent to ours, so the phrase is apropos. Anyway, now I'm rambling on about Gabriel and I will try to write a separate post soon.

We leave for Barcelona again shortly...there is a general transportation strike on Thursday, the day we are scheduled to leave, and our flight is cancelled, so we are currently trying to reschedule and don't know yet when that will be. Could be as soon as tomorrow night. We'll be gone for 10 days, much of that time without internet when we head up the coast. I'm looking forward to a longer, quieter break from our regular routine, and the weather forecast is looking good. So I don't know how much I'll post during that time. By the time we get back it will be well into April, which...wow! Ten weeks is going to fly by.