Electronica Photographica

Along with our latest digital camera and the iPhoto app came our sudden inability to actually print any photos.

And there's no chance of ever making a photo album--we simply take too many pictures.

So, no baby book. This blog is pretty much it.

Since I saw Kath's baby book for Emma today, I'm going to "baby blog" Lyric's words. When my faulty memory tells me in 30 years that she was reciting the opener to to "A Tale of Two Cities" at 9 months, we have something more reliable to fall back on.

Thusfar we have, in rough order of word acquisition:

Mama

Dada

Hi

No No No No No

Meow

Nana (Once meant "banana," and devolved into "I want that!" for all desired objects)

Ball (Bah!) 

Nose

AH! (short for Arf! Applies to all animals to which Meow does not, which is not many)

Her breadth of understanding is far more extensive, which is neat.

She even sits on command (when the Commander is holding a treat. It is a bit too much like having a puppy.)

Rain on the Parade, Blood on the Stick

One unused pregnancy test left in the box. Thought I'd give it a whirl this morning.

It's funny (sad funny) how much I looked forward to taking those first two tests tests, and how long I laid in bed dreading taking this last one.

As I stood waiting for the little clock to turn into a YES+ or a NO-, I got my period.

 My uterus has a really dark sense of humor this month. 

The perpetually screaming nannyshare baby arrives in 15 minutes.

I need to go hide in my room. 

Two little, One little, No little pink lines

According to the two pregnancy tests I peed on this morning--"just for fun"--I am no longer pregnant.

I tell you this as I finish reading the Yahoo! blurb about Angelina and Brad's brand new twins, Knox (ooooh, silent letters!) and Vivienne, and while I listen to the hippies downstairs have loud, banging sex against their living room wall while their kids are at day camp. (This surprises me because the wife normally seems to loathe her husband. Maybe she's actually bludgeoning him. Or maybe it's the Orkin man.)

I thought the first pregnancy test I took this morning was broken--99% accuracy means 1% dead-wrong. Right? So I ran out and bought the overpriced test with LED screen displaying a black-and-white "NO-:=" or "YES-", leaving no room for "is that a line? Is it pink? Is it dark enough? I wanted no room for interpretation.

Until I saw the NO-.

For two seconds, I hoped I had it upside down and I'd be writing about how it the electronic test was just "-ON" and boy wasn't that funny.

Now I understand why We (I speak here of My People, the Creators, XX, Womyn, Grrls, etc.) are counseled so thoroughly to wait 3 months before spilling the fetal beans.

I have told a couple of dozen family members and friends about the pregnancy. Now I have to untell. At yesterday's family party, I was **so** interesting. Today I'll be pitiful and silly for having jumped the gun.

Apparently, a quarter of all pregnancies are believed to end in an early miscarriage. But as my boss said recently, "Common is one thing, but your life is very different."

Some doctors even advise against using the "We can Tell you're Preggo Faster Faster Faster!" tests for this very reason. Next time around, I shall heed that advice.

My heart hurts. 

At my cousin's recent soccer game, we hung out with a suburba-dad who was with his "almost 3!" little girl Kaitlin and her little chubbo brother Jack, who was just two days younger than Lyric is. They were exactly the same age distance apart as Lyric and Baby Doe McCarthy would have been, had the little seedling stuck to the wall like he was supposed to. They were so adorable together (Jack and Kaitlin, not Lyric and the fetal poppy seed). 

Now we start over and I try not to think that there might be something wrong with my Systems. Of course, the pregnancy test I bought lists a main cause of a "false positive" as being "pre-menopausal." Yeah, thanks for that. 

Kevin just brought in the mail, which included an appointment reminder from the ultrasound doctor. Not much to do but shake my head and snort cynically at that particular postcard.

Everything I do the next time around will likely have an ominous pressure surrounding it,  becoming the The Reason It Didn't Take Again. The cat slept on my stomach! I drank a Very Berry wine cooler! Someone stop me before I kill again. Sigh.

I called the doctor's office to see if I could come take a "real" pregnancy test, but I don't think it's worth it at this point. Even if they say yes, I'm pretty convinced I'm just waiting for the biological evidence to emerge.

And yet I'm still 1% hoping for a great big happy surprise. There's 1% room for error in every test, after all, right?

The Thin Pink Line

A few months after we had Lyric, and no offense to the newborn, our main takeaway as: "well, we're not doing *that* again anytime soon."

But in our early parenthood delirium, we decided we were now getting too much sleep. Our new sleep vampire emerged even more quickly than the first. Practice makes fetus!

For about 20 minutes after I watched that second faint pink line emerge, I was clinging to the "oh shit" side of the fence, thinking of how I will leave the house--or use the bathroom--with an infant and a toddler dragging me down. But then Lyric awoke and was her usual awesome self, and all I thought was convenient and cute it will be for her to have a live playmate and minion. 

I hope the new Sibling has some well developed cajones (cajonas!), as Lyric has had plenty of "older sisters" explain the merits of bossy big sisterhood. As an only child, it's hard for me to understand the Older Sister chip the'yve all carried since the day they were replaced complemented with a younger model.

Her new nanny share partner may be a vehicle for teaching Lyric to Share. Currently, she understands only how to Take, Destroy, and Whack.  

Things I worry about 20 times a second: 

1. Lost or damaged fetus. 

2. Being too financially stretched to send two kids to Waldorf, Montessori, University. Or piano lessons. Or the public pool

3. Failing to ensure Lyric isn't as devastated by the new creature as my Original cat was by my smaller cuter cat. After 12 years, she's not recovered. 

4. Entering the second half of my life without any time available in the next decade to be groundbreakingly daring or creative. In the past 9 months, I went from being Swinging Editor in San Francisco to Marketing Mom in the Midwest.

5. Knowing my kids will never see me as a young person. Knowing we'll be dying when the kids reach the age we are now. Leaving them without family. 

Things I am very excited about 20 times a second:

I'm pregnant! I want to tell everyone I see. But I can't yet. But I want to. But I can't yet. But I want to.