The Seversons

Tomorrow I am working. For serious. Even more than a full day. Dropping baby at 7:30 a.m. and picking him up probably around 6 p.m. It is the kickoff of what is going to be an insanely busy month that will include work in 5 states. I will take the Southeast by storm. If there is a college here, I will probably be there. Well, I will be if any of the advisors or pre-law groups on campus ever return any of my emails.

Because it is the first trip I am trying to approach it as a happy fun new thing. I will get to wear one of my awesome new dresses. I will get to show off my new hair. (Did you know I’m a redhead now?) I will pretend I am the lawyer version of Joan Holloway, because, let’s face it, even with the Spanx that will be underneath the aforementioned dress, things are still pretty darned “curvy” these days. I prefer looking “curvy” to looking “fat” or looking “pregnant again.” (And Joan Holloway definitely looks curvy, but not fat or pregnant.) I will focus on all of the good things, and maybe with all the work I will either find the motivation to make time for the gym, or I will just be so busy that the pounds will go flying off.

Even if things don’t work out this month, at least when they slow down again in March-ish (assuming they do slow down in March-ish) I can probably get that sparkly new gym routine going. I came up with the concept and it seemed perfect until my life got in the way. So I haven’t yet joined the gym. Instead, I have bought another pair of post-baby jeans and a good, sturdy belt because it might be a little while and odds are good there will be more babies someday.

Eventually you just realize that you are not the girl who has already lost all her baby weight before she leaves the hospital. And you are not the girl who loses it in a month or two. And you are not the girl who loses it in six months. You did not get those genes. Just like you didn’t get the genes that give you no stretch marks. (If you think it’s cocoa butter, think again. Genes!) There are lots of very nice people who say don’t worry about it that first year. For the first few months I thought those people were crazy, did they realize how long a year was? Now I am realizing those people are very smart. The first year is kind of insane. Especially if you have a job. Or a very willful baby. I have both. Plus a husband who works unpredictable hours.

Speaking of the willful baby, he continues to be like most babies, with his own strengths and weaknesses. In the strength category, he eats like a champ. Yesterday he got his first veggie, sweet potatoes, and downed them like a starving child. I don’t think he cares too much what he eats, he just likes eating. He still highly enjoys sitting, too, and is turning into the kind of baby you can just plop down for a good while. (Which is incredibly awesome.)

However, he does have his weaknesses. He hasn’t laughed yet, which isn’t really that meaningful, but I would like to hear a little baby belly laugh. Mostly he just opens his mouth very wide and smiles and screams. He wants desperately to crawl, but tends to prefer screaming until you give him whatever thing he can’t reach instead of trying to reach it himself.

His major hangup these days is in the nap department. The books say that a baby will start to get in a nap routine and then settle into 2 naps a day long before now. Grammer definitely got in a nap routine, which consisted of napping about 5 times a day. It used to be more like 8 times a day, back in the horrendous days of the 20-minute nap. Now, it appears that he is finally getting into the 2-nap thing (despite the fact that by now he should be heading towards the 1-nap thing) and it is not a smooth transition. He gets seriously pissed whenever we put him down for a nap, most of his naps are insanely short, and every now and then he’ll go for one long stretch. I am trying to figure it all out, but I can’t quite find his new rhythm and I’m not sure he can either.

One thing that has happened is that those post-baby hormones have so kicked in. Having another baby doesn’t exactly sound desirable at the moment, but it sounds very do-able. Like pregnancy is just one of those things you do instead of the most miserable 9 months possible. Because we are doing lots of future planning stuff right now, I have found myself thinking more and more about baby #2 and his/her time frame.

That also means I’ve found myself thinking about baby #2’s name. Because that is what I do. I cannot help it. Ever since I renamed my Cabbage Patch Kid because I was convinced that Phoebe didn’t sound or look like a real name and was just something a toddler made up and renamed her Alicia Margaret, naming is just something I do obsessively. If #2 is a girl, we are so set. We are more than set. If #2 is a boy we are in trouble. We used up all our boy ideas on #1.

When we were waiting on #1, Eric restricted my name talk. Recently he made the mistake of telling me that this wasn’t because he dislikes name talk, it was just soon-to-be-parent jitters, which are obviously gone now. Little does he know that he’s opened the door, and now I’m free to obsess over what on earth we are going to name hypothetical boy #2 that will work as a companion to Graham and the name we’ve already chosen for hypothetical girl #1. It is a monumental task, but I am very much looking forward to it. I am trying to think of another classic-but-often-overlooked literary figure with a wonderful name so I can have another child whose name is an homage to a great author, but I cannot seem to think of any. I suppose it’s a pretty tough order to fill more than once.

And there’s an awake baby. Apparently we have been transported back to the 20-minute-nap world. Until next time.