J's Birthday

Well #2 has officially vetoed my idea for the girl's to share a birthday.
Or maybe she filibustered?
Either way.

Honestly, it would be too exhausting for me to try and be whole heartedly honest about the day.
I'll just say it was a really-hard-emotion day for me. And throw in whatever comes out as I type.

I was so proud of my gorgeous girl, and so happy to have had two years with her.
And I wanted to be fully present for her happy day.

But this year was way more emotionally trying than last year. Last year was hard to face the anniversary of my c-section. This year had that issue going for it plus, the fact that there is someone inside me about to come out. And well, I'd like it to be soon. And well, I just don't know how it's gonna go.

So the day was full of trying to will contractions into being. Mixed with a lot of flashbacks from two years ago coming up without permission.

We decorated the house the night before while she slept.

 The night before her birthday I was having so much tension trying to mentally prepare for the day I ended up thinking I was going to throw up for a few hours. Closing my eyes to try and sleep, just brought tons of memories up on the screen of my eye lids. Not of the surgery, but of the weeks of waiting and never going into labor. (My fear for this time.) Moments frozen in time.

{I close my eyes and I am going to buy more raspberry leaf tea in hopes of something happening. But on the way out we are caught in a torrential down pour, so that Blake and I just sit ourselves down under an awning and wait for it to slow. We watch the rain. I feel the air, so wet... and loud. It can almost drown out my thoughts. Mentally I'm hearing the midwives tell me that its been so busy lately everyone had been going into labor that week from the crazy weather. I'm sitting there watching rain pour down, like I've never seen, feeling it not do a thing to my uterus of uncontracting steal.}

I open my eyes and try and tell myself its still before my due date.

{I close my eyes and see myself in the hospital bed, unable to move most my body.}

I open my eyes and wonder how sometimes our memories stop being from inside ourself and somehow we see them from an outsiders perspective.

The day of, 

I try and celebrate my girl.

I try and not lose my mind,

hoping my next one tells me she wants to come out.

We went to a really pretty garden here in town.

Pushing Violet in her stroller

We saw the butterfly exhibit.

Daddy's holding a butterfly

Giggling at it

Flapping her "butterfly wings"

Just exploring.

 People stare at my huge belly.

I'm officially to the stage where I hate being out in public because no one knows how to behave themselves around you. (To be clear, the right way is to be totally normal. Hold your hand up, close one eye, visually remove my belly from view, and then treat me like you would if your hand weren't there blocking a belly.)

My two "favorite" treatments from the day were:

Having a girl who was probably somewhere between 14 - 16 years old stare me down with one of the crabbiest, angriest, yet baffled (almost like she didn't realize pregnancy was possible), and unrelenting stares I have ever seen in my life. I still am trying to figure out what was going on in her head at that moment. I don't know where her thoughts were. My two guesses are, she's just a pissy teenager who was starting at everyone pretty awfully through the day, but I was an odd ball to her so I got extra rough treatment. Or, she is struggling through a rough life issue that could have resulted in her, or someone she knows, having a belly that looks like mine and she doesn't know what to do with that. But I don't know. Either way, it was not fun to get that look, especially when it moved into direct eye contact and I didn't know how to get her to stop.

The other "favorite" was: An elderly lady started taking note of J pushing her stuffed animal in her stroller and talking to her. Then moved her eyes over to me and, after I had walked so that my back was to her, having her say loudly "Poor momma."

I couldn't help but think, "Now you should have outgrown that type of speaking to someone, literally behind the back, when you were the age of the girl who just stared me down." What is it about my belly that is sending me back to the awfulness of junior high? 

Also (other than my unknown-to-her-emotional-struggle-of-the-day) what makes me a "poor momma"? 

Assumptive. Rude. And unnecessary.

But I did have fun with J.

And she enjoyed her time out there. 

Got some good giggle time in the grass.

And fun running around and hiding in new places.

Grass on her neck was hysterical!

I also enjoyed seeing a wedding get set up there that day. I keep getting the itch to do more wedding photography when I run into things like this. I love romance. Can't stop myself. But I know I won't be doing photographing of weddings anytime soon. Just tiny feet and hands. (But as much as I love my babies, I'm not a good baby photographer. My strength is couples. And I do miss it lately.)

Telling J about Brides and their special day.

Looking at a baby bunny, back in the grasses.

A kid-sized house of vines

A nice girl took our picture together. 

She loves Violet!

Giggling through the tall grass

I love seeing his love for her in his eyes.

I didn't make a cake.

I felt a little bad about that. But I have a long train of thought as to why:

J doesn't even like oreo cookies, I don't know if she's even gonna touch the cake. 

She likes meat.

I know I want to touch the cake -- more like demolish it, so I can't have it around tempting me to grow a ginormous baby.

There was only three of us around that day -- too much cake for three.

(I am planning to have our families over once #2 arrives.)

I can't just go get her a cupcake because of her diary allergy. 

And I wasn't up for making a single cupcake.

So, I bought her some jelly beans (which I know she likes) put them in a cup and set an Elmo candle on top.  I thought that would suffice until we hold an actual party (whenever #2 wants to set the event into possible play.) 

It worked great for us. 

She loved it.

But I still kinda felt bad to not have cake around.

Elmo-candle was also hungry for jelly beans!

We got her a doctor set with a teddy bear.

She loves checking us with it.

Checking on sister.

(A new favorite past time.)

She calls the stethoscope "doctor"

We play with "doctor" all day long now.

After the day got late enough that I knew the girls couldn't share a birthday, I felt relieved.
Other than the general "please come out before c-section is the only option" ...(which I'm not even really sure what day that is) (which is probably a good thing)... I now no longer have any set ideas on what day she should come out. So I can stop trying to control (at least to a small extent) some of this process.
Plus I'm not sure I could have done labor mixed with all the stuff I was working through that day.
So it was probably for the best.


So now I have a two year old! Wow. How did two years just happen?

And she is earning tons of brownies points by telling her sister to "come out" on a regular basis now-a-days. She's even offering to share her favorite things! (unprompted) What a great girl.