embracing enthusiasm, and other ramblings

Something I've learned about myself in the last few years is that I seem to have a hard time letting myself really get excited about things. I don't consider myself that much of a pessimist, and it isn't that I don't get excited about things, I just subconsciously hold myself back from fully engaging in the enthusiasm for some reason. I think about this periodically, and especially now with this pregnancy. I mean, if there is ever a time where I am allowed to be unabashedly enthusiastic it's while having the easiest pregnancy known to man, right?

With this in mind, I've been trying to make sure I'm more engaged with the little preparations I'm working on. But let's be honest, it's hard to be truly excited about something if it doesn't feel concrete, and in my experience, pregnancy didn't feel that concrete until I started feeling movement this last week. Now I feel like things are really rolling.

If I had known how long it would take before I started to
show at all I would have taken a "before" picture so you could
understand that this is showing for me.
I know it doesn't look like it,  but believe me, the raptor is in there.

I've discovered that time has a funny way of warping around pregnancy. All at once I feel like I have no time to learn about and decide on a million different things from the type of medical care I want to what baby stuff needs to be procured when, but also feeling like March is ages away and this little creature is still so small. I'm afraid that I might wind up giving Tim whiplash from my sudden changes in focus and stress, though I know at least some of that can be chalked up to hormones. As a side note: calf cramps. Why are these a thing at all, where to they get off happening in the middle of the night for no reason and hurting so badly that you wake up and then limp for the rest of the day, and why are they so commonly associated with pregnancy? Most physical changes and symptoms make sense, but that one has me completely stumped.

A week from today we'll finally find out what we're having, and I'm consciously working to embrace and feel the excitement that I can sense lurking below my surface. I can't say that I have any specific hopes; I'm just excited to have another ultrasound and get confirmation that everything's okay.

Of course, not everyone chooses to find out the gender of their children before they are born [I just learned recently that my mom didn't know for any of us until we arrived]. That's really a pretty cool way of doing things, and I can see how it might help some to focus on the blessing of each individual child regardless of traditional markers. For me, though, to develop attachment I need details, and I'm really looking forward to having this one in particular to help ground my growing understanding of this little one's personality.

In anticipation of this, I've started to shift my question from "who will you be" to "who are you?" As interesting as it can be to speculate on the first question, it also carries a measure of anxiety since I'll have a pretty heavy hand, at least initially, in the answer to it. Also, in this moment, the first question doesn't tell me as much. Children are not beings that we create from scratch, persons that we have complete power to mold however we choose. They are eternal beings. Parents have a vast degree of influence, true, but these little ones come to us already in possession of themselves. This raptor is new to me, but that doesn't make them new, and this is actually really encouraging for me to remember. It's easier for me to feel like I can connect, knowing that this spirit may be as old, or older than my own. Oddly, this comforts some of my anxieties about parenthood as well, because it gives me further direction. My responsibility of helping this child to become who they're supposed to be is more like archaeology than construction. All the pieces they need will already be there. We'll rediscover them together.

there was originally going to be a central topic, i promise

You know you're on the right track when you're evaluating potential baby names based on how easy it would be to teach the kid to say it like a Pokemon when they're two.

We have our priorities in order here.

It feels like my to-do list has exploded in the last few weeks between baby stuff, student journal edits beginning, and various other tasks, but my energy level has yet to catch up. Everyone says you're supposed to get your energy back in the second trimester? Lies.

In all the chaos, a few good things have been growing. It has been months since I last touched the transcription of my hand-written first draft, but I picked it up again this weekend. As guilty as I feel for abandoning these characters for so long, it's encouraging to find that I'm still as invested and interested in them and their story as I remember being. I might be 60 by the time I consider it to be anywhere close to readable, but hey, if I'm not writing for my own enjoyment first, then what's the rush?

Fall has indisputably arrived here, a double-edged sword for me. I love the cooler weather and the colors that come when the leaves change, but the lingering darkness in the morning is also a reminder of winter to come. You really can't beat the sunsets though.

I've been looking into online editing sites as a potential form of employment that I can fill once I'm home-bound. It's a side project that I really ought to be spending more time on, though this current application is really tripping me up. There is a long list of poor job application questions that have been and continue to be asked, but I swear this one takes the cake. To be fair, based on the rest of the questions, I feel like this company is going for "fun and playful," but knowing that doesn't make it any easier for me to answer this: What is your unfair advantage? Now, I had a horrendously difficult time writing those short little self-promoting essays that all college applications seem to require. Why would this be any easier? I struggle enough with modest self-promotion, but this feels like they're encouraging you to be completely pretentious. The kicker is, you know there's a line here between "appropriately pretensions" and "well, you're just full of yourself," and I have no idea where it is. Am I allowed to edit your application process? Because I would just remove this question outright. What's the weirdest/worst thing you've ever been asked on a job application or in an interview?

Now, if you'll excuse me, I'm off to go see a movie for the first time in forever before attempting to wedge our current couch through the narrow birth canal of our hallway into the second bedroom in order to fit new furniture into the living room tomorrow. If you come over in the next few weeks and see a large, tarp-covered, sofa-shaped object in the kitchen where our table usually is, just pretend with us that we succeeded.