Someone in the coffee area today looked at my belly, even looked for a brief moment like they wanted to touch it, and then said something to the effect of “Hey, starting to show there…”. Uh, starting?

We finally know that the little wiggler making my belly dance is a little girl. Funny thing is, we had a boy’s name all picked out. (And no, it wasn’t the name that didn’t get used when we named Cora.) But the girl’s name has been somewhat more elusive. We think we have one, for at least the first name, but we’re still debating the middle name.

Names are funny things. They give away all sorts of information about the parents. For instance, we’re not big fans of trendy names. In fact, if we think of a name we might like, we go out to the Social Security’s baby names page and check to see if it’s been a popular name of late. Names that rank 100 or higher (as in, there were 100 names more popular that year) do better than names that are more popular.

In picking names, we’ve also ended up linking names with the impressions we’ve had of other people we’ve known who’ve had that name. Names of girls who had bad reps in high school, or who one or the other of us had a reason to dislike, generally get axed off the list pretty quick.

And, of course, you really can’t use a name that’s the name of another kid you know. I like the name Samantha, but we’re friends with another couple who already have a daughter by that name, so it seems wrong to “reuse” the name. Not that we’re in favor of creating original names or spelling names in original ways, but I don’t want to “share” a name with someone too close to us.

Got a few more months to figure it out. I don’t think we’re obsessing about it, but it does occur to me that you do spend a lot of time thinking about names. Wonder how many folks have spent more time thinking about the name for their child than they originally spent weighing the decision to have a child? (No political commentary intended there… )

A couple of days ago, I took a long look in the mirror as I was brushing my teeth. 23 weeks into this journey of body-stretching, my belly’s little turkey timer looks just about ready to pop. It’s one of those things they don’t tell you, that your belly button will pop out, will look as if it’s frantically seeking to escape your body like the buttons that strain your stomach after a way-too-large Thanksgiving dinner. And the rest of the belly is starting to look like a balloon nearing its boundary. But 23 weeks still leaves quite a ways to go, and I know from our first go-around at this (the balloon prize named Cora) that the belly balloon will somehow find a way to grow even larger. So far it’s just a balloon… 12 or 15 weeks from now I’ll be longing for that light balloon as I lug around a summer watermelon.

I just put Cora down for a nap. Normally not worthy of a blog entry, but today she actually _requested_ to be put in her crib for a nap. I was rocking her, giving her a bottle, and she pointed to her crib. I asked her if she’d like to take her nap now, and she answered Yes (in her little baby yes grunt, of course, rather than a coherent “Yes, mother”). I put her in, she tucked into her sleeping position, and… well, she would have drifted off if she didn’t just a few minutes later dirty her diaper. Diaper problem corrected, she’s now snoozing away.

Someone told me not too long go that their toddler would wave bye-bye to them to tell them that they were going to take a nap. I was astounded – it took quite a while (weeks? months?) to get Cora to stop fighting naps, and I never expected that she’d request one. It’s one of those moments that makes you realize that babyhood/toddlerhood doesn’t last forever – which is both exciting, and bittersweet.

Tomorrow is Mother’s Day. As days go, Sundays are pretty packed for us (day of rest? Hah! Not between hubby’s deacon duty, my Sunday school teaching, church service, evening service…), so I’m neither expecting to do much for my mom nor to be getting much pampering myself. For my husband to pull anything off, he’d have to try to cram one more thing in the day, and try to make it fit around the nap schedule of a toddler to boot.

But I’ve been daydreaming – what would the perfect Mother’s Day be like? I think I found an article out there that expresses it wonderfully:
“What mothers need on Mother’s Day is to have their family honor all those parts of themselves that aren’t about mothering. We want tap dancing lessons and purple bras from Victoria’s Secret. We want leather mini skirts. We want instruction in race car driving or playing the saxophone. We want our husbands to rent us a Harley Davidson for the weekend and take off with us to some little motel without the children. We want the part of us recognized that made us mothers in the first place. ” – from an article on Family Fun

Every day of my life, since February 17, 2002, I’ve been a mom. My daughter looks at me that way; much of my day revolves around that fact and its impacts upon my life. (My husband’s life is impacted much the same, to be fair.) I love being a mom, so this isn’t a moan session about that impact. But the perfect way to celebrate Mother’s Day is to celebrate the person who’s the mom, rather than the mom role. Celebrate how she’s unique, recognize that she’s a _person_ who has stretched (and may have the marks to prove it) tremendously beyond her image of who she is handle the needs of her family.

I don’t recall ever talking with my mom about whether she’d dreamed as a kid that she’d have kids of her own. I know that at the age of nineteen (almost twenty), she was married and having her first of three kids. Our mother’s day gifts to her were of the normal variety – the breakfast in bed, promise to clean our rooms and behave for the WHOLE day set. Even this year, I went with the traditional flower delivery, though I did pick to send her a live plant, recognizing that she’s got a green thumb that might appreciate seeing her azalea grow. Truth is, until she took up the hobby of painting after we kids left home, I could have told you very little about what my mom dreamed of doing or what her talents were, beyond raising us kids. Kids think of their moms as moms, not people like them. In the same way that it’s weird to run into your teacher in a department store, your mom is just your mom, even if she’s really good at being your mom. And that’s why, for this one day a year, mothers ought to be given a chance to celebrate the parts of them that aren’t tied to being a mom, and even to expose their kids to the idea that mom isn’t only confined to the role of their mother. For that matter, moms need that one day a year to remind it to themselves!

In January I posted an entry that’s gotten a fair amount of interest, at least as far as entries on this blog go. The entry was entitled “Girly-Girl”, and had to do with my reactions to my daughter’s newfound love of a babydoll. Two young ladies have responded to my entry, with concerns that I be able to accept that my daughter is different than me (me being about as non-girly as they get, though the maternity clothes might hint at otherwise).

So, I wanted to briefly revisit that entry, and explain something. I love that my daughter is a girly-girl! It just reinforces that this little person that I had the privilege of carrying for nine months (OK, longer, since she decided mommy’s tummy was very comfortable, thank you very much) is a creation unto herself, with her opinions, own attitudes about things, and own outlook on life. It’s wonderful to get to see that developing. She’s now almost 15 months old and able to express herself in more and more ways. She’s not yet talking much, but she usually manages to get her point across anyway. She has a ferocious hug that she lavishes on her stuffed animals and on mommy, daddy, and grandma. Even cuter, that hug involves her patting our backs, I guess in an imitation of how we hug her. She loves the outdoors, and will spend hours wandering around, particularly if there are dandelions to be picked. She’s somewhat shy, but manages to still pull off flirting with lots of folks per day.

Cora’s going to be a big sister in about five months. We don’t yet know if her sibling will be a boy or a girl. We do know our little girl’s world is going to change, and that there’re good odds she’s not going to like it much at first. She’s had mommy and daddy all to herself, and as she’s expressed when we’ve picked up other babies, she thinks all to herself is the way it’s supposed to be! But she’ll have to get used to a new person, a person that’ll have grow to have their own set of opinions and ideas of how the world is supposed to work. Much in the same way that we’re adjusting to Cora’s opinions and ideas of how the world is supposed to work.

From an interview with Nia Vardalos (of My Big Fat Greek Wedding) fame in Border’s bookstore’s “see-all-of-the-stuff-you-can-buy” magazine:

What’s your take on romance and weddings in general? Are you a romantic at heart?
NV: I am. I think the only thing that I caution is, don’t get married before you’re ready because there’s this life clock that everyone else seems to think we should all live our lives by. We all have that aunt saying to us, “When are you going to get married?” and as soon as you get married, “When are you going to have kids?” and you have kids and they go, “When are you going to have another one?” And in terms of that life clock, you want to turn to that aunt and say, “When are you going to die?”

I haven’t yet seen MBFGW (though I have seen the TV show spin-off and enjoyed it), but it’s definitely on my gotta-rent-it list now.

(BTW, the answer to the set of questions is, “we are”, “we have”, and “very soon”. As far as the question for the aunt, I wish I were the type of person who had the guts to say something like that, were it warranted, though I also hope that I’d have the restraint to clamp down on that impulse in the spirit of kindness. Those strangely opposed wishes probably deserve an entry of their own, but I’ll let that pass for now.)

I’m completely and utterly exhausted. And when I get tired, I get cranky. Bear-just-having-been-woken-up-out-of-its-hibernation cranky. Mountain-lion-that-hasn’t-been-fed-in-three-days cranky. Koala-bear-jostled-out-of-its-eucalyptus-tree cranky (I hear those cute, cuddly looking bears are actually real nasty beasts). My recent attempts to stay decaffeinated merely seem to make it worse – not that caffeine would refresh me, really, but it might give me the energy to fool myself into thinking I’m not as tired as I am. Two hours (one way!) on the Beltway this morning didn’t help, either. Bumper to bumper traffic, moving so slowly as to lull you into near snoozeville, and so slow that the ride is interminably long to be fighting drooping eyelids. I remember being tired in college, but not as tired as this, and not for as long as this has been – weeks now, really, where I’ve stolen any chance to take a nap, and spent hours of afternoons hoping fervently that Cora would take a nap so that I could, too.

I think I’m going to bed. If I make it that far before just falling asleep. The pool table’s at least long enough to stretch out, and I wouldn’t have to make it up the stairs.

Sitting here at work, eating cold Chinese food for lunch. After accidentally flipping a forkful of fried rice across my table, I noticed a tiny little bit of Rice Chex hidden beneath my keyboard. Made me smile and think of my daughter, she of the iron-fisted Chex grip. Crushing them one at a time, she leaves little Chex bits scattered around her tray and on her. Apparently one rode on her outfit and then got transferred to me, finally reaching a resting place at work. Instead of take my daughter to work day, it’s take my daughter’s crumbs to work day.

I have to think evolution isn’t the real story, at least based on the concept of survival of the fittest. Every toddler I’ve ever seen has been prone to rip-roaring temper tantrums, mine now among them. (I think we’ve had three today so far. Unknown as the reason – Cora’s language skills aren’t yet advanced enough for her to tell me “Mother, I’m more than mildly peeved that you’ve…”) I just can’t see a cave-dweller armed with a club who’d put up with that for very long. For one, that sound would quickly alert predators that there’s a mini-meal in the vicinity. Similarly, there’d be no potential food for the cave dwellers within a ten mile area of that piercing cry. The healthily wailing tyke would be promptly bopped over the head by their mom or dad, and that would be the end of that kid. Unless there were a whole contingent of toddlers on hand, and they were remarkably quick on the uptake that loud tantrums meant a longer night-night than the usual nap time, kids just wouldn’t survive past the toddler stage. The species would have been wiped out, one wail at a time.