What's in a name? (part one)

I am thinking of changing my name. This comes as a great shock to me. When M and I had our (illegal) wedding in 2006, we discussed this and decided we would both keep our names. It was a pretty short discussion, really. Neither of us could envision taking the other's name, nor asking the other to take ours. We did come up with an all new name blending halves of each of our last names, and we still use it "internally" to this day, but it's not something we ever gave serious thought to taking on legally.

Until very recently, I've never second-guessed our decision to keep our own last names. I never thought it took away from our partnership, and in fact, I felt good about what it said about our individuality within that partnership. I have told people that I like to think I would have kept my last name even if I had married a man, and I still believe that. If I don't fall asleep before I finish this post, I'll even explain that seeming contradiction to you. Ultimately, I never gave much thought to last names at all... until a little over a year ago when it became apparent we would need to provide someone with one.

The one thing that was never on the table for us was hyphenating. This is 100% MY opinion for MY family, so I hope that I don't offend anyone with my explanation, but here goes: I was opposed for the obvious reasons - it makes for a last name that is cumbersome, long, awkward, etc., but the deal-breaker for me was that I wanted to equip Elliot with a name that would leave him all of the options to make when he is an adult and has his own family. In 20-something years, when he decides to spend the rest of his life with Ms. or Mr. Wonderful, I want HIM to be able to keep his name, take his/hers, or hyphenate the two. Hyphenated names are like T intersections in this scenario - you can turn left or right, but you can't continue forward on the same road. Can you imagine if he took theirs ALSO and had three last names? What if Ms. or Mr. Wonderful has a hyphenated last name of his/her own - they could put them together and each have four! Anyway, I just wanted to make things as simple as possible for him, both now and later, by giving him a straight-forward, single last name. Again, MY preference. I am not placing judgement upon anyone that came down on a different side of this complicated decision.

The decision to give him M's last name was mine. She was pretty uncomfortable with it at first. She didn't want my family to think she asked for that, and she felt bad that he and I wouldn't have the same name. I was adamant for two reasons: First, I felt that since I had the privilege of carrying him, she should have her own unique connection to him as well. Second, I didn't know if and when we would pursue a second-parent adoption, and I figured if they had the same last name, it would grease the wheels for her with his schools, doctors, daycares, and so on. Of course it doesn't make her his legal parent, but it might make some people forget they need to ask, and when you're in our shoes, that's a valuable thing.

I thought I was completely okay with him not having my last name, and once I got over the initial weirdness, I was, for a while. In the last couple of months, I have felt my Mama Bear instincts slowly emerging and I feel this intense need to define our family - K, M & E - as distinct from my family of origin. If we were legally married or Elliot was our direct biological offspring, I think that might alleviate the need for me a bit, but we're not and he's not. I still think we'll complete a second-parent adoption, although I don't know exactly when or how. But I want to do more. 2/3 of my family has one last name and I have another. The answer seems obvious, and yet I feel so much internal resistance.

I would love to unpack that a little more but I'm literally falling asleep typing this, so I'm going to leave it here for now, but I'll be back to work on this more soon.

Da Bears (warning: pics)

OK, I'm going to level with you. I got nothin' interesting to post about tonight, and no energy left to do it with. Today was one of the longest work days of my life. After I got off, I picked E up at daycare and headed back to work to finish up a couple of things, then fought traffic all the way home to drop him off, then all the way back downtown for a meeting, then all the way BACK out past my house to the airport to pick up my parents. Between 5:30 and 9:30pm, I estimate I spent just over 2 hours in the car. I am done.

So, call me lazy, but I'm using the free space on my NaBloPoMo bingo card tonight and posting some pictures. I fully admit it's a cop out.

I don't think I've posted these here before, or at least not all together. I wish we'd thought to take one right after he was born, but it took us a while to find the ground beneath us, let alone do anything that required forethought or creativity.

Without further adieu, I present, The Bear Pictures:

One month old:

Two months old:

Three months old:

Four months old:

Five months old:

Six months old:

Seven months old:

Eight months old:

Where did my baby go?!

I'm calling it a night. I'll do better tomorrow.

p.s. My cousin's baby arrived late last night, by c-section, after a couple of hours of pushing. Her labor experience may have started out differently, but it ended up eerily similar to ours. He's smaller than Elliot was: 7 lbs., 11 oz. and 21 inches long. Everyone is reported to be doing well.

Beware, it's a boring one.

I'm wiped so this is going to be short and possibly probably disjointed.

The kiddo is still awake (over an hour past his bedtime) and I'm sure it's because we had the audacity to disrupt his nighttime routine with a book signing, so yeah, mother of the year again right here. Actually, M has just emerged from his bedroom, sans baby, so perhaps he IS asleep now. We'll see. She says she has doubts he's really down for the count.

My cousin is in labor, as she has been all day. She was induced yesterday afternoon from 0 dilation and 0% effacement after her water broke. As of this morning, she was only dilated a centimeter so her chances of avoiding a c-se.ction were looking grim. Amazingly, her doctor let her go quite a bit over the 24 hour mark and as of about an hour ago, we heard she had made it to 10 and was practicing pushing! I hope it is going well. I know it could still be a while. I pushed for over three hours and that still didn't get him here. What is it with babies in our family taking their sweet time coming out? The nerve!

My parents arrive tomorrow for a long visit. I'm really looking forward to seeing them, and I'm also looking forward to exploiting them for free babysitting. M and I have several dates planned already. I took advantage of their visit to take several days off work, so I'm looking forward to that as well.

Our little stander slept through the night last night. I'm not expecting it to happen again tonight... but it would be nice, wouldn't it? :-) When do Grandma and Grandpa arrive again? Grandma loves the night shift, crazy lady.

good news and bad news

First, the bad: Crying baby at 3am last night. Nooo!

The good (for me): M responded to my 3am elbowing and got up with him. She successfully settled him back down with none of the multi-hour antics he and I went through the night before.

I have a theory. Now that he pulls himself up to standing at every opportunity, I think he's doing this every time he floats toward consciousness, whether he's ready to wake up or not. In the past, he'd probably lay there for a minute and drift back off to sleep, but not anymore.

He has NEVER alerted us that he was awake by crying before. He always seemed to wake up slowly and we'd hear him in his room, babbling contentedly, then go in to find him smiling and happy. Lately, all naps and nighttime sleeps have ended with us hearing loud, unhappy cries and going into find a groggy, grumpy baby standing in his crib. His eyes are barely open half the time. It's like he doesn't really want to be awake yet but his body got him up anyway. When this happens in the middle of the night, he's especially pissed to be awake. Can't say I don't share your frustration, kiddo!

So, will the novelty of pulling up wear off? How do we convince him not to do this in the middle of the night? What a strange (and inconvenient) side-effect of his new-found skill!

shock to the system

I have been very hesitant to admit to anyone to what a completely awesome, amazing, wonderful, fantastic sleeper Elliot is. I'm terrified of jinxing it. The reality is that for a while now (cough, past three months), he has been sleeping really, really well (cough, cough, 10+ hours per night, uninterrupted). We had a hiccup on our recent trip across a couple of time zones where his routine was off enough that he didn't sleep straight through the night, but he was easy to get back down with a bottle and a few minutes of rocking, and after a night or two, he was back to normal.

Last night, he and I were wide awake from 2am until nearly 4am, and dozing on and off until 5am when I finally got him settled back into his crib. I have NO IDEA what was going on. He was acting a little weird (aside from being awake, which was weird enough in itself) and he was covered in a cold sweat, but I suspect the latter was just due to the fact that I was holding him against me in a blanket sleeper for hours and his body was reacting to the sauna-like conditions. Anyway, he seems fine today - no signs of illness or anything. M thinks she might not have fed him enough during the day yesterday (I was out and she had solo parenting duty) so I'm really hoping he was just too hungry to sleep through, then was so thrown off by being awake that he couldn't get back to sleep easily. I am familiar with the horror stories about babies who slept perfectly until 8 or 12 or 18 months, only to morph into sleeping terrors, and I hope hope hope that is not be what we are moving into. My heart goes out to those parents - I truly do not know how they do it. Sleep is so essential to my patience and coping ability.

In short, I'm SO out of practice on the nighttime duty (on accounta being luckier than any girl should be and I'll understand if you all hate me now) and I'd love to stay that way, if it's not too much to ask. Pretty please and thank you. :-)

an hour well spent

Warning: Mushy baby story ahead. Proceed (or not) by your own discretion.

As I mentioned a couple of days ago, there's a baby gate in our house. I don't know why this feels worth talking about considering there's an actual BABY in our house, so the gate is pretty small potatoes, relatively speaking. I guess it's just one of those iconic items for me. I spent so long feeling like stuff like that belonged in everyone else's world but mine. But what do you know? We brought one home last week and M screwed it into the studs at the top of the staircase into our basement. It is clear that a baby lives in our house. Crazy.

He has become so mobile so quickly over the past few days. He went from crawling to zooming around to pulling up to furniture-walking in a matter of days. He's also 8 months old today. The speed with which he is growing up is affecting me a bit, I think...

I was trying to put Elliot down for a nap this afternoon and he was putting up one heck of a fight. When he gets really tired, he gets super-cranky and he stiffens and thrashes and can't relax enough to sleep. He's really strong and it's hard not to get frustrated when he fights like that. I'll admit that it is usually with no small sense of relief that I settle him into his crib after one of those episodes. When he finally did pass out this time, he was nestled against me so perfectly that I couldn't bear to let go of him. I put the foot rest up, leaned the recliner back, and laid there with him sleeping on me for almost an hour. As I was holding him, I tried to soak up every last bit of the experience; to memorize the feel of him. I know that before I know it, he will be too big and too "cool" to snuggle with like that. I feel hyper-sensitive to how quickly these days will be gone and how little sensory memory I'll be able to take with me.

overheard

A parent that shall remain nameless said the following tonight:

"You know what I like about this stage as opposed to, say, three weeks old? He isn't the source of my bad moods anymore, and actually, he fixes my bad moods. I come home feeling lousy and he's here and he's happy and it's just impossible to be grumpy around him."

One of the sayings in our house is "I am filled," which is our own shorthand for "I am filled with love and affection and pride and a thousand other good things toward you."

I am so filled.

snuffleupagus

That's what I call Elliot when he's extra snotty, and it's the perfect reference for how I feel at the moment.

We got word today that M's mom was diagnosed with H1N1, or as my co-worker calls it, The Swine. Of course this news comes (a) on the heels of M's visit to her parents' house last weekend where her mom was sick in bed the whole time and (b) at the beginning of me coming down with some illness that has me feeling like my head is full of cotton balls. Awesome. I know H1N1 is respiratory (right?) and what I have seems much more like head-cold-with-a-side-of-sore-throat, so hopefully it's all just a coincidence.

Also in the "I hope this is just a coincidence" category, all reports from Elliot's daycare today were that he was inconsolable. I hope it isn't because he is getting sick, too. Maybe it's teething. Yeah, that's it... teething! (Please.)

He's been a little crabby at home the last couple of nights, too. I have chalked it up to the fact that he has become incredibly mobile overnight (literally) and he resents the restraints we have imposed upon him. I hope that is really all it is. It's been a big week in terms of his independence. He went from tentatively crawling a few steps at a time to speeding from one room to the next in the blink of an eye. We finally installed a baby gate at the top of the stairs last night, so that gives us a little peace of mind. We're still trying to figure out how to safeguard our brick fireplace hearth. He pulls up on EVERYTHING, but he hasn't yet learned to sit himself back down when he wants to move on to the next activity, so he looks around panicked for a minute and then starts whimpering to be rescued. It's both cute and nerve-wracking because I'm constantly watching him, trying not to intervene more than I have to but terrified that he's going to let go of whatever he's holding on to and crack his head on the ground. He hasn't yet, knock on wood. He seems to understand that he can't let go of whatever he's holding on to, he just can't figure out what he CAN do yet.

I can't believe he's nearly 8 months old. If I'd gotten a BFP when he was born, I'd be due around now. Baby time goes so much faster than waiting-for-baby time.

some random thoughts

Thank you so much for the input on my Creme selection! It's so hard to be objective when it comes to your own stuff. I appreciate the advice.

So, I recently underwent a little project to clean up my blog. Those of you following on readers are aware of it because you had random posts flying at you about IUIs and BFNs and sperm counts each time I had a date-stamping snafu. When I moved to this blog from my former home, I copied all of my previous posts into one big catch-up post. This worked fine to catch people up, but lately I've been wanting to go through some of my archives and it's hard to find things when they aren't separated out by the date they were written. It's done now and my clean, chronologically-sound archives index makes me feel all warm and fuzzy inside. My next project might even include... wait for it... tags. I know, I know, I am truly a blogging wonder.

An interesting thing happened to me while I was working on my little project. I made the mistake of copying them over in reverse chronological order, so like from try #9 (or something like that) back to the beginning and into our pre-ttc planning stages. Reliving your journey in reverse is a truly horrifying experience and I don't recommend it. With each post I copied over, I was getting more optimistic and bubbly instead of less. It was like watching a car crash in slow motion and knowing there is no way to stop it. I wanted to shake the computer monitor and scold myself for my naivete: "It doesn't work! That never worked! Nope, this time will not be different. Ugh, you sound like such a sucker going on about this symptom or that hunch! I am embarrassed for you, truly." I was so adorable and clueless. It's one thing to smile and nod at another bright-eyed newbie. It's another when that bright-eyed newbie is yourself. I really had to fight the urge to edit out some of my Pollyanna musings during those first few tries.

That said, it was neat reading through my thoughts from other times along the way. M and I were talking last night about my blog (I made her vote on the Creme nominees, too!) and she mentioned that she is really glad I kept one throughout our process. From a practical standpoint, it provides a record of what, when, where and how everything took place. It's amazing how many details we have forgotten already. From an emotional standpoint, it's an invaluable time capsule that contains my every thought, hope and fear as we moved through each stage. At some point, I'd like to print and bind the entries from the beginning through Elliot's birth. I think I'd even like him to read them someday. He would need to be old enough to understand it and not get freaked out by it, so what is that... about 35 years old? LOL. I might edit out a few of the more graphic details (but everything relating to breaking laws is in!) and some of my angrier rants, but when he is old enough to see the forest and not the trees, I hope he would read it as a story about how much M and I love him, and have always loved him, even before we knew him. I like to think he'd be proud of how hard we fought for him and impressed by some of the gutsy things we did to get him here.

In mostly unrelated news, I read this hysterical blog where the author has a daughter exactly one month older than Elliot, to the day. She just posted about planning for an FET in the spring. *crickets* Seriously?! I guess that would give her (us) kids about two years apart. Holy crap. I am soooo not ready to go through ttc again any time soon. (Go ahead and exhale, M.)

ETA: I was thinking about this post in the shower this morning and I realized I wanted to clarify this last bit. I am in no way judging this woman for her timeline. My brother and I are two years apart and I always thought it was a good separation - probably one I would try to replicate in my own family someday. My "Seriously?!" wasn't aimed at her making the decision to pursue an FET in the near future, it was in reponse to the reality that we're approaching that time and if we wanted our own kids to be two years apart, we'd have to start trying again in a mere six months or so. That thought is just very overwhelming to me and my hat is off to those who are able to face it head on!

eeney meeney miney...

It's time for The Creme de la Creme again! I have to admit I like the Roundup Extravaganza better - it's so nice to be relieved of the pressure of choosing your own best post! I am very bad at the choosing. Case in point = this post.

I have narrowed it down to three options but now I'm stuck so I'm asking for input. If you aren't drowning in NaBloPoMo posts and have time to read three more, take a look at these and let me know which one is your favorite.

1. A nod to KD on our first Father's Day.

2. A bittersweet reckoning of our infertility journey.

3. A dispatch from my final days of pregnancy.

Thanks to anyone who wades through these and gives me their input! I would be positively thrilled to return the favor if you're having trouble picking your submission. 'Cause you are submitting something, right? ;-)