So ready, in fact, that I’ve decided to put Peep’s crib together much earlier than I’d planned.  Because one of my projects is making her crib skirt.  Which I’m super psyched to do because I’ve never made one before.  And I can already see it in my head.  It’s beautiful and perfect.

Once that is done (or as that is being done), I have three knitting projects I want to start and Sophie’s quilt to work on.  And Sophie’s quilt is much larger in both size and scope than Peep’s quilt was.  Which is why I need to have the knitting going in order to break up the quilting work.

Oh, and not only am I dropping off my beloved white sapphire to be set into a ring design we love (which is to say, I will get to wear my engagement ring again for the first time in nine months), but I’m getting my wedding dress cleaned too.

If for no other reason than motivation, I kinda love this Peep like crazy.

What we did have was a key to the garden across the street. The mythic garden, which we were tending, but which became overgrown with weeds after three heavy rainfalls and which we have not set foot into for some time. The plan was to have a pool for the kids, a barbecue and drinks for the adults and just hang out. Needless to say, things did not go quite as we’d expected. From the very start.

For one thing, the pool was way bigger than we intended it to be. I thought we’d have a largish kiddie pool. John found a large pool for a great price, but that pool was twelve feet by six feet and two feet deep. After inflating it (by pump, of course) in the bedroom, it became clear that the only way to get it out of the apartment was to lower it from the balcony. Except that it was too wide to fit between the railing and the ceiling. So. John deflated the pool half way, tied a rope through the drainage hole, suspended the pool from our balcony, and re-inflated it as it swung in the breeze.

Once the pool was lowered and installed in the garden, John came across the next problem, which was the lack of faucet for the water supply. It took a few hours and the purchase of a pipe and a hose and a ratchet and a visit with the extremely loquacious woman who oversees the garden, but John managed to get to the water. Except that there was no pressure. And the best that we could do was a pathetic trickling. After two hours of trickling, there was maybe an inch or water in one corner of the pool. But we forged on.

We brought down the ten or so boxes of food and soda that we’d ordered and set up the tables and hung the balloons and were packing beer into ice when a parks’ services guy comes walking in out of nowhere. Apparently, we are not actually allowed to have a party in the garden. We are definitely not allowed to barbecue. And he will have to stand there and watch until every hint of alcohol is gone. This, after we’d grudgingly sweat in the directly shine of the sun getting everything set up.  And even though there is a family that barbecues and drinks in that very garden every other weekend.

Quick thinking led to our holding the party right in the little courtyard outside our building. We moved the party and its decorations into the comparable shade and started the grill. At which point the party became a quick success.

This was a lean year for photos. My main focus was to remain hydrated and John’s was feeding people. There are a few more pics of guests in the Flickr set, but only a few.

Tomorrow is Sophie’s birthday party.  Hopefully I will be able to stand upright in the exhausting heat that’s predicted.

On Friday, we registered for the aforementioned basics: infant car seat, stroller, sling, bathtub, onesies, diapers, that kind of thing.

Turns out.  Babies are really frickin’ expensive.  Even when you’re only getting the basics.

A friend of mine coined the phrase prepartum depression in reference to her pregnancy and I think it really fits here.  Assuming that Peep’s birth will herald in the long period of delight and intoxication that Sophie’s birth did, I am really looking forward to feeling less emotionally rank.  Less unsettled and unsure.

For one thing, even in my healthy, happy, functional marriage, pregnancy, and its inherent hormones and physical changes, is getting in the way.  John and I are so thrilled to meet our baby.  We marvel every night that she is in here, our daughter, growing and stretching and kicking.  There is a person in my body that we made together.  That we will love and raise and care for together.  And we are deeply in love with ourselves and each other and our family.  We are closer than we’ve ever been.  But we are also farther apart than we’ve ever been.

Our energy levels are so different these days.  And the hormones make all of John’s silly, quirky traits, the ones I’ve always loved and enjoyed, mildly intolerable.  So I am regularly battling with myself to just keep quiet and ride it out because there are only a few months left and they will have passed before I know it and it will all be back to normal then.  In effect, I am holding myself hostage until this pregnancy is over.  Because there is just no reason good enough to rock a smoothly running boat.

And my body belongs completely to Peep.  Groin pain, after an hour of walking, leaves me limping at night.  Which is fucking unacceptable.  There is pressure on my pelvic floor from Peep’s head, which is already in its Southerly position.  There is swelling and  discomfort.  There is nothing marital or sexual about me right now.  Everything is just big.  And ungainly.  And unnavigable.  At night, when we get into bed and I normally curl against my husband, with my face in his neck, there is now a wedge between us.  I mean, an actual foam wedge to hold up the Peep while I’m sleeping.

I miss us the way we were before all of this.

And then there is Sophie.  The days when she is spending the night at her dad’s place, I feel lost.  When I say good-bye in the morning, knowing that I won’t see her later, I get a cramp in my stomach and a headache.  I don’t want her to be somewhere else.  She should be here with me.  Each time it is harder and harder to let go.  To say have a great day, I’ll see you tomorrow.  In the mornings, when she is sleepy and stumbles over to where I am sitting and checking email, I hold onto her longer, embrace her with all of the love I have for her, because that is the only time she will keep still and let me play mommy just a little bit longer.  It is that five minutes of holding, her standing the whole time because there is no lap to sit on, which has to sustain me.  On all days.

Conversely, yet simultaneously, I am like a little pregnant island unto myself.  Most of the time I just want to be left alone to sew, grow, and watch reruns of Law and Order.  I don’t want to cuddle or snuggle or be lovey at anyone’s behest but my own.  I don’t want to be asked for anything or expected of.

But I don’t want to be lonely and uncared for either.

And there are darker, harder things to write about.  The vacation we leave for in a few weeks, where I will see my mother for the first time since December.  That is a whole other can of worms that has nothing to do with pregnancy or hormones, but has an impact on everything.  Maybe I will feel up to getting that stuff out soon too.

It’s a good thing I have some extra energy these days.  Even if my body doesn’t always agree with me.