Spiderman's Night Out

Eva Comes Home to Big Brother

I'm sure you will all understand if my posts are short. I'm remembering what it's like to type with one hand.

In the hospital Sam was more interested in the buttons that moved the bed and the diggers outside the window than he was in Baby Sister. But by the time Eva came home on Thursday Sam was looking at her feet and touching her hair and kissing her head and telling her she is his best friend. (Auntie Annie had told Sam that Zachary and Sarah are best friends.)


Our world has definitely changed in a good way, but having Ann here for the transition was absolutely wonderful. She cooked and cleaned and entertained big brother Sammy and held Baby Eva and changed diapers and did laundry and dishes and scooped cat litter, and basically just gave me time to recover from surgery and focus on getting not-so-little Eva to eat. Eva came home to a clean, organized household and a gentle, sweet big brother who loves to help.


TT arrived on Saturday and we were all together for a short time before Ann had to head back to Florida. Sam is very excited that Auntie Annie will be coming back for Christmas and bringing Zack and Sarah.

More photos of Eva's first days at home here

Eva Arrives

Introducing Eva Therese

Born 10/18/10 at 12:12PM
9 lbs 10 ounces
21 1/2 inches

Eva Therese and TT get acquainted

Sam finally gets to meet Baby Sister

Auntie Annie, without whom none of this would be possible

Eva and Mommy


Eva adores her Auntie Annie

Our Last Weekend

Watering the trees while still in our jammies

Two weeks ago Sam and I left Jamie's Play Palace at 4:30pm on Friday and we entered into perhaps the longest, most challenging weekend of my life. Combine the physical exhaustion and heartburn and insomnia of late stage pregnancy with a defiant 2 and 1/2 year old who is used to a Mommy that runs and wrestles and climbs with him, and you're asking for trouble.

Thank God this past weekend, our last weekend alone, was completely different. It's not that the exhaustion is gone or that I am suddenly finding a way to quiet my bladder (or my mind) to get more sleep at night. But I entered this past weekend knowing that this was it, our last full weekend alone with just the two of us. I took lots of deep breaths and let the dishes pile up and didn't spend any time on the To-Do-Before-Baby List.

We created blanket forts in the living room. We built a Sammy Sam Clubhouse that rivals Mickey Mouse's Clubhouse. (Secret password to enter is "popsicle.") We made cookies. We made cake. We ran around the yard looking for holes left by the family of ground squirrels that pop their heads up when we're watching from the dining room table. We played with diggers in the sandbox. We picked flowers. We chased ladybugs. We killed bees and then studied their yellow legs and yellow eyes. ("Where his eyes, Mommy? Where his eyes?") We filled buckets with water and made pools and sand sculptures in the sandbox. We watched movies and ate popcorn ("Can we make MORE popcorn, Mommy?"). We wrestled and tickled in my bed in the morning, playing our little game where our hands are spiders that can talk to each other. Sam's little hands crawl up my leg or along my arm and he lifts a few of the fingers and says "Hi. What you doing?" or "Can your spider come play with my spider?" We blew big bubbles on the back porch, and every fifteen minutes we raced out to move the hose soaking the rootballs of the new trees we had planted last week. ("I beat you again, Mommy.") We inhaled fresh buttery acorn squash that Sammy says "tastes like candy." We talked about Baby Sister coming and how TT is going to take him to the hospital. I asked him what we should name Baby Sister and he said "Baby Sister. Her name Baby Sister." I asked him if we should name her Eva or Theresa. "No!!!!!! Her name Baby Sister!" We sat in the rocking chair at the end of the night and talked about our days and counted the days until TT will be here and the days until Auntie Ann will be here ("When Sarah's mommy here, Mommy?") and the days until Baby Sister will be here. And we both said I love you spontaneously a hundred million times. It's hard to imagine loving another child as much as I love this little man who has completely transformed my life (and my heart), and I know that these moments alone together are going to be so rare starting next week. But I feel so incredibly grateful for this life and this past weekend and the moments we've had together that I will treasure forever.

Sammy's TT

During a cool morning walk, Sam collects "tickleweed" to bring to TT.

Sam helps TT make the best potato soup she's ever made... must be all the love

Sam's last weekend of not having to share TT with a sibling. The next time she comes to visit, he'll be a big brother. Sam and TT had one of their Saturday morning adventures, which, of course, included candy and some new toys.



The pure joy on his face when he first "drove" TT's car was priceless. It reminded me of how much I loved to sit on my dad's lap and "steer" when we coasted down Balsam Way and into our driveway when I was 7 years old.

Fall Sunday

Nothing like Sundays in the fall. We spend all day outside but crank the radio so we can hear what Aaron Rodgers and the boys are doing. Here are some videos from halftime last week...


Sam uses Mommy's gardening gloves to do some landscaping...




Why I'm an exhausted pregnant woman...




Sam loves to fall backwards onto pillows...

Autumn Moments

Living room camping

During the last few weeks the world around us has changed suddenly. Hot sticky days with harsh bright sunlight have been replaced by cool, crisp dry days that smell of fresh mown grass and distant fires. Many of the 6-foot-high corn fields have been mowed down, and the guy selling 12 ears for $4 out of the back of his truck has sold out for the season. The soybean fields are starting to turn golden, and maples and ash here and there are flaming red and yellow. It isn’t fall yet, but fall is definitely in the air. We leave the windows open at night, and some nights the brisk prairie winds from the west cool the house so much that I have to get up and close the windows. We leave for town every morning just as the sun is coming up, and as we turn east to head for Jamie’s Play Palace, the blinding sunlight makes Sammy demand that the sun go away. “Go away, icky sun. Go away,” he says.

But the weather is not all that is changing. I am slowing down, trying to memorize and appreciate every single moment I have with Sam. Our last few weeks alone. Our last few weeks before we have to share each other. Every night before bed we rock in the double-sized rocker in his room and talk about what we did during the day. He no longer lays on my lap… partially because my lap shrank as my belly grew bigger but mostly because he always wants to remind me that he’s a big boy, that he wants to sit next to me rather than on me. We squeeze into the chair side by side and I wrap my left arm around him and he leans into me resting his head on my belly. Sometimes he jumps up and makes a joke that Baby Sister just kicked him, but mostly he leans and tries to find a comfortable position for his head. He sometimes takes a while to settle with all the excitement he has when we talk about our day. The walks we took, the vegetables we picked, the friends we visited, the pies we baked, the bubbles we blew. Sunday he was so excited about the 3-man tent set up in the living room and the flashlight we used to read our bedtime stories (until he accidentally slammed it into my nose) that he could hardly sleep. Tonight he told me how excited he is to stay at Jamie’s house tomorrow night.

I’ve decided to give myself one night off every week. A night to recharge and stay horizontal and not have to cook or clean or sit on the bathroom floor next to Sam’s potty chair while he pushes and reads his Elmo potty book for fifteen minutes. I have been looking forward to giving myself these nights off for weeks, looking forward to a relief from the battle of do-this-why-because-i-said-so. But on the eve of my first weekly night off I find myself a little sad, a little unsure of whether I want to give up a night with him when we have so few left of just us, so few quiet nights when I’ll be able to sit and talk and cuddle and share and remember how truly lucky we are to have each other.

Sam discovered a John Deere that he could drive at a neighbor's birthday party.

Tonight on the way home we saw a digger for sale just down the road from where the guy used to sell corn out of his pickup. Sam was telling me for the 25th time that he didn’t want pizza for dinner and he didn’t want noodles for dinner and we needed to stop and buy mangoes. Yummy mangoes. I had tired of the broken record conversation we were having and I pointed out the digger, told him it was for sale.

“Can we buy it?” he asked.

I told him it was big and expensive and we didn’t have enough money.

“TT can buy it. TT has money.”

“No,” I said. “TT doesn’t have enough money either.”

Last week as we were pulling away from the daycare, the father of some of the other children was just pulling up. Outside the window Sammy heard Jamie say “Look whose daddy is here.” After we had turned the corner and gone a few blocks down the road, Sam said “I don’t have a daddy.”

“No,” I said. “Our family doesn’t have a daddy. Just a mommy.”

“I have a mommy,” he said, and I shifted the rearview mirror to see him smile. “Just a mommy and just a TT!”

“Yep,” I said. “You have a TT!” I didn’t remind him that in a few short weeks he will also have a Baby Sister.

Tonight as we rocked in the chair in the 7pm bedtime routine darkness, the flashlight put away on the “big boy dresser” across from his bed, he told me he loved me very much and stretched up to kiss me on the nose. “Sorry I hit your nose, Mommy. I hope your nose is all better,” he said. He patted me on the head with the same soft touch he uses whenever he apologizes to get off the naughty mat and I reassured him that I knew it was an accident, that I was okay. He kissed me on the nose again and repeated, “I love you very, very much.”

[sigh]

How do I take a night off from that?

Labor Day 2010

Again, I wish I had time to write down all the moments I witnessed, the joy exchanged between Grandma and her newest grandchild, the conversations and songs and the secret language they made up. But again, time is moving too fast. It was a beautiful fall weekend, and we spent a lot of it outside... including the annual apple orchard visit. But Sam and TT also spent a lot of time cleaning and cooking and taking care of a mommy who is a little tired of being pregnant.

Photos of our awesome weekend including a trip to the Apple Orchard here.


And here's a video of Sammy sitting in TT's spot while she puts the finishing touches on our picnic dinner: