Thanksgiving

Here is wishing you and yours a happy Thanksgiving weekend!

piggies

Today on the way home from preschool, Jonathan was chatting away to himself in his car seat:

"Pants on. Shoes on. Socks on. Piggies on. Market. Home. Wee wee wee"

melancholy

I have been having a tough time the last week and a half. I'm trying to put on a brave face, and to stop and enjoy the (finally) crisp fall air, to notice the breathtakingly red and orange treetops against the clear blue sky. I'm trying to take each day as it comes and focus on the blessings I have today. But it hasn't been working. I have had an overwhelming sense of helplessness and disorientation, a feeling that I am stuck here in this season of melancholy with no way of controlling much of anything.

I haven't been feeling overtly sad about the miscarriage. But it sneaks up on me in little, unexpected ways all the time. From not worrying about an extra cup of coffee or a glass of wine, to finding the baby-bjorn I'd bought the week before the miscarriage. Getting the bill for the D&C in the mail, putting up Jonathan's outgrown 12 month pants in a box with the other clothes we are saving for a future baby. And all of those little pings are building up in my psyche. My subconscious keeps them all stored up until they leak out in weird and disturbing dreams, diffuse bouts of melancholy, sudden teary episodes in the grocery line, or crazy schemes that stem from my desire to find new direction in my life.

I guess this is how grief from loss always goes. You feel absence around every corner, and over time new loves and patterns soften the edges and fill in some of the little holes. But the big ones stick around for a while. I think the only thing to do is to try to keep moving forward. To keep choosing to love and see the present moments for what they are and to dwell in the joyful bits of each day.

the grass is always greener

Jonathan has starting wanting things simply because he is told that they are out of reach or off limits or belong to someone else. If he is anything like his momma he will be struggling against this defiant streak for the rest of his life. I am simultaneously amused and disturbed by the strength and consistency of this trend. Tonight, for instance, when it became clear that he was avoiding the carrots on his plate, carefully maneuvering around them to only eat pizza, I piled them all up in a neat pile on his plate and declared that that they were mine. I ate a bite or two and then commented again that they were Mommy's carrots. When I told him that they were "not for Jonathan", his response was immediate. He went from blithely stabbing at pieces of pizza with his fork to honing in on the carrots exclusively (and stabbing at me with his fork when I was in his way). He ate 4 or 5 chunks of carrot in a row before going back to his pizza and continued to give me the stink eye if I so much as made a move to eat one off of his plate.

While I am delighted to have found this bit of trickery, I am nervous about encouraging this unhealthy instinct by capitalizing on it. But it worked with beans and rice last night, carrots tonight, and sweet potatoes last week. And I'm pretty sure my parents used similar techniques with me. Hopefully I am not sowing the seeds of his therapy sessions 20 years from now.

18 month update

Jonathan went in on Tuesday for his 18 month appointment and so I thought it would be a good time to share some random facts about the most amazing 18month old in the world:

-He continues to be in the 10% for weight and the 90% for height

-When the doctor came into the exam room for his 18 mo appointment, Jonathan looked at him, and proudly said "Hi Doctor!" then pointed to an empty chair and said "Sit-down!". The pediatrician was a bit taken aback, but impressed!

-Currently he is crazy about trash-cans. He points them out wherever we go- from quite far away. This week he has also taken to finding bits of trash around the house (stray bits of lint or clumps of dog hair or pages ripped out of a book) and then parading through the living room declaring "crash-keen, crash-keen" until I unlock the cabinet where the trash can lives and he can throw the offending bit of lint away.

-Almost nothing is as guaranteed to make him as happy as suggesting that we go outside.

-We just weaned him from his morning bottle this week. He maintains a fierce love for his evening bottle and so we are continuing it as part of the bedtime routine (don't tell the doctor)

-Still hates to drink milk from a cup. Thankfully loves yogurt and cheese.

-Loves waffles for breakfast.

- Has 10 teeth

-Still loves balls- particularly soccer balls. (When there is a team practicing soccer in the field across the street it is like a dream come true.) He can correctly identify a baseball, football, basketball, and soccer ball and knows that soccer balls and footballs are for kicking and that basketballs are for shooting. If you make your arms into a a hoop, he will 'shoot' the basketball through the hoop and then *sometimes* say "Go Duke!"

-Says his name and the names of all 8 children in his preschool class as well as the 3 teachers.

-LOVES pushing buttons and pretending to talk on the phone. He holds the phone up to his hear and says "Hi" and then a few random words and then "Bye" and then puts the phone down. If you ask him who he was talking to he usually replies "Grampa"

-He calls his toes "piggies"

-Talks non-stop from the moment he wakes up until the moment he goes to sleep.

Halloween

Jonathan had his first "trick-or-treat" experience this year. He still doesn't know what candy is all about, so there was no actual tricking or treating, but we did take a cruise through the neighborhood with his toy car in costume to say hello to the neighbors. And, in my totally unbiased opinion, Jonathan rocked the dragon costume! I'm especially fond of how his tail bounces as his little butt waddles away!