associated in random thought

watching the ticker.

my little countdown ticker on the sidebar announces that sparky is set to arrive in 3 days. babies are rarely born on arbitrary due dates, and my body has been giving me conflicting information: she may come early, or she may hang out awhile longer. in any case, i will give birth to my daughter very soon.

for those of you who have been checking in for updates, i apologize for my reticence here. i have actually kept up a separate blog throughout my pregnancy (and journey to conception). i didn't want to completely bombard bananie.com with the boring details of fertility and pregnancy, and yet, i've found over the past 9 months that there's been very little more to talk about in my life. go figure. so, please accept my apology for how boring this blog has become, and know that once sparky is born, there will surely be updates, but bananie.com will essentially have become a mommy blog. i hope you're okay with that. (and, if you'd like the link to the blog that steve lawson affectionately dubbed the "muff blog", let me know.)

so yes. i am still very pregnant, with a belly that precedes my entry to a room. my midwife tells me i am carrying a very long and lean daughter, with very little hair. she is currently in the ideal launch position, with a perfectly tuckable head low in my pelvis. i have a lot of contractions these days, and i waddle. and yet, helen and i try to walk every morning or evening, and these moments of waddling with my love have become the essence of this season of waiting.

helen has been done with school since may, and so we have every day, all day, together. there have been a bazillion appointments to attend--weekly midwife checkups, pediatrician interviews, meetings with our adoption lawyer, etc--but mostly, there has been quiet. we rest a lot. naps are commonplace. we go to movies. we read books. we poke at my disproportionate belly, as sparky sticks out her butt for a pat. we laugh. we wonder. we lie wordlessly together, with my belly between us, and wait.

and we walk.

the brutal texas summer has arrived early this year. most days over the past month have been temperature record breakers, and though the local meteorologists are downright giddy about this fact, we just grumble at the television every day. mornings and evenings in our rural-ish neighborhood are divine, however. we have a constant breeze to keep us company, and no traffic. and so we walk, side by side, down the streets with no sidewalks. we wave good morning to the horses and cows and chickens, and breathe deeply the freshness of the day. mimosa trees are in bloom, and it is not uncommon to catch us stealing a bloom and inhaling deeply. our morning walks are perfection.

just last night, i said to helen as we drifted off to sleep, i am so grateful for this time with you. she held me tight and kissed my head.

our daughter will be born very soon, and this season of time-out-of-time will abruptly end, only to be replaced by a new season of time-out-of-time that includes a hell of a lot less sleep. i have never been so mindful of my days, of the long threshold between the now and the not yet. every morning wakes me with the wonder of will i hold my child today? and every evening that i go to bed still pregnant, i fall asleep with the gratitude of i have had another gift of a day to be alone with my love. all is grace, i am learning. every single moment.