Dream

Do you ever go through one of those periods where all your dreams are unbelievably vivid and easily remembered? I actually think it has something to do with sleeping less soundly, so that the dreams are existing somewhat closer to the front of your consciousness as opposed to the far recesses, which is where I normally think they are.

Well, I've been going through one of these vivid dream periods. Some of them are super intense.

Last night I dreamed about my baby, only it wasn't this baby, it was the next one. I already had a daughter who was about five-ish and asian. She was beautiful, but definitely had received some genetic information from somewhere other than J and myself. Strange. But it's a dream.

In my dream, I gave birth. I don't actually remember the birth itself, although I know that at least some of it was in the dream. What I do remember was that I had to go back to work the very next day, so J was taking care of the kids. At some point I called him and (aware that going back to work the day after giving birth was wrong, even though I was dreaming) told him to bring the baby to me. He came to visit, with our other daughter carrying the baby in the sling. She taught me how to wear the baby in the sling, told me to be very careful, and went off to play somewhere. J was off doing something, so I had the chance to spend some time with just the baby.

Her name was Emily Rose (which is not something I would ever name my child ... no insult to anyone, I just tend to go for names that are significantly more "out there"). She was a beautiful little girl. She had dark red hair and one brown eye and one blue eye. Even though she was only one day old she could already laugh. Amazing.

Totally random ... I just wanted to write it down somewhere so that I could remember the dream.

Life Lessons Learned

Here's what I've figured out ...

No matter how prepared or ready you think you are, no matter how much you know or can really intelligently theorize, no matter how smart you are ... when it comes to taking a new step in life, nobody knows shit.

All I've ever wanted to do with my life is be a mother. Honestly, that's it. If you ask my mother what I wanted to be while I was growing up you'll get a very wide variety of answers (cocktail waitress, chemist, prima ballerina, astronaut, inventor, etc.) but the one constant throughout all of that was my desire to be a mother. And now here I am, 10.5 weeks left until my first child is due and let me tell you, I was UNPREPARED for this.

I'm still unprepared. I still have no freakin' clue what the hell I am doing now or am going to do when the baby shows up.

It's a human being. That's the thing that keeps getting to me. It's a human fucking being and I'm carrying it around inside of me and then when it comes out, it's mine to take care of and love and protect and teach and enjoy, etc. But it's a human being! What do I normally do with human beings? I play with them when they're fun, ignore them when I want to, listen to them talk about their problems. Sometimes I hurt them, because I want to or it's easy or I just don't care.

How do you take what you normally do in regular old everyday life and turn it into a parenting style? How do I take myself and turn myself into a parent?

And yet, I don't even really need to figure that out, do I? Because in 11-ish weeks I am going to be a parent regardless of whether or not I've figured out how to be one.

Yes, I'm totally babbling here. Yes, I'm pretty much the most exhausted and sleep-deprived person on the face of the planet. Yes, I'm on an emotional roller-coaster that won't slow down for about 18 years. And yes, I should just stop talking.

But aren't you all lucky that I trust you enough to put fingers to keyboard so that you can read this?

just a quick note

My parents are coming to visit! I'm so excited that I can hardly breathe! They'll be here on the 28th to check out my new town and my giant belly and then they're leaving on the 2nd. I get to see them so infrequently that for me this is like a super huge treat ... it's the third time this year!

Yay, yay, yay!!!!!