1. I took the suggestion that Mrs. Handy left in the comments section and went browsing at Babies R Us yesterday. In the evening, DH and I talked baby gear over dinner and then I went to the website and showed him some of the stuff I'd put on a wish list for us. That definitely helped me focus more on having a baby and less on "getting through" pregnancy.
2. I know it's always dangerous to say or write this out loud, but I think I may have passed the peak hormone season of first trimester. For the past two days I have had a little less nausea, a little less bloat (the pants I'd been wearing unbuttoned I can wear buttoned again), and my energy level has been better too. Emerging from the fog of tired morning sickness can't help but make a girl feel a little more human.
Of course, when pregnancy closes a door - like, say, nausea - it opens a window - like, say, diarrhea. In case you've ever wondered, it IS possible to have constipation and diarrhea at the same time. We'll leave it at that.
I now feel like I am finally on the home stretch toward second trimester. We have heard the baby's heartbeat, we have seen it twice, we have seen him moving around, and second trimester is only about two weeks away.
In some non-baby-related news, we have managed to hang out with our Little Brother three times already in June. He is such a sweet kid. But it looks like we might be losing him soon! He is going to live with his grandma in about a week... at first he said it was for the summer, now he said it might be for a whole year and they've been talking about enrolling him in school over there (about 500 miles away). Mr. Ibis and I have mixed emotions... we really like him and would be so sad to part, and Little B himself does not like the idea of moving and going to a new school for a year. On the other hand, his home life seems so chaotic, we wonder if he might actually be better off at his grandparents' for a while. He is extremely smart and has complained to us that school doesn't challenge him enough - they are now talking about moving him up a grade. That's a hell of a lot of upheaval for a 12 year old kid, I just hope he can hang in there.
Last night we took him out for ice cream. We all went downtown to this place that makes homemade ice cream. I kinda missed this moment because I started to walk ahead to open the door, but Mr. Ibis later told me... the front of the shop is all plate glass windows and we could see everyone sitting inside. When we got close to the shop, Little B suddenly balked and said, "Those people are all staring at me!" He felt really self-conscious and Mr. I reassured him it was fine. The sad thing is, they probably were staring at him. One of the few things I dislike about our city is that it is very poorly racially integrated. A little black boy walking around with two white adults was drawing curious looks, and I bet all those people in the shop figured we wouldn't notice them staring from behind the window. It was kind of an eye-opening experience for us, because Mr. Ibis and I are not from here - we come from places where interracial friendships and families are much more common, and we tend to be a little oblivious to racial issues like this.
Bringing it back around to baby talk, we have talked for years - every now and then - about domestic adoption, which in our case would most likely mean interracial adoption. When we moved here, I started to wonder if that would be much more complicated than it would have been when we lived in Boston. I think if we did that someday we would definitely have a LOT to learn about racial identity, interracial families, local social politics, and many other things.
3 comments:
Glad to hear you're feeling more positive. Shame about Little bro though. Is there a timescale that he is 'with you' in terms of months etc?
I hope you had fun at Babys 'R Us. It's a bummer about your town and the stares you were getting.
C - when we signed up, the program asked all of us to commit to the relationship for a minimum of 6 months. It's only been about 3 since we met. There's no 'punishment' for breaking the commitment, it's just disappointing.
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