What I've been thinking about lately.

For starters, I am pregnant. I smiled as I typed that; it feels good to push that news out further than my family and hometown friends. I've wanted to post it on facebook, but things keep making me wait. And since I've gone so far to write that sentence, I might as well explain what those things were. Because of the title and all.
I always have an early ultrasound now, because of my past ectopic pregnancy. When the doctor had searched for only a few seconds, she said, "And it looks like there's two in there!" Sure enough, two beautiful, black circles were in the pictures we took home that day. She scheduled another ultrasound in three weeks, to get heartbeats and make sure everything was ok with the babies. For three weeks, Jason and I pictured our lives as parents of four, as a family of six. We thought about the extra baby equipment we would need, whether or not we'd get two boys to balance out the two girls we have, what it would be like to go places with two little babies, pictured each of us holding one in church. We weren't able to hold back our excitement, and told almost anyone with working ears. It was so hard to wait for that next ultrasound, so hard to wait to post those pictures on facebook for the whole world to see.
But the next ultrasound picture had one baby. The doctor said the other twin "absorbed." I'm sure that's supposed to be a less painful way to announce that kind of news.
And you know what? It's really hard to know the right way to grieve and celebrate all at the same time. It's hard to tell people here our sad news, and still tell others whom we haven't talked to recently our happy news. I really thought that maybe some time this week I would tell the cyber world that we're having a baby; that maybe that would help some of the excited feelings I wanted to express to get flowing. But one friend announced a pregnancy last week, and another this week. And . . . I don't know. I don't want this baby to seem like "another baby" to someone else. I want this baby to be special, to have it's own important announcement.
And so I wait. And I pray. And sometimes I cry. And I try to sort things out.

So as not to leave anyone feeling depressed, I'll share the other things on my full plate of everyday thoughts. Jason is in Israel for two weeks. He left yesterday. Two weeks, People! He's never been away that long. And after only one day of him being absent, Elsie has learned to say, "I want Daddy." Which would be sweeter to me if I didn't now have to explain X number of times per day for the next 13 days where he is. To a child not yet two.

Speaking of Elsie, we're potty training. We started last Monday, and had almost zero results for 3 days. I was not really expecting that. I mean, I was expecting her to fight me sometimes, but I wasn't expecting her to scream nearly every time we walked into the bathroom, or for her to knowingly "hold it" until a time when she wasn't on the toilet. By day four it was mildly better (only sometimes did she scream), and then she got sick. "Throwing down" kind of sick. Strangely enough, I think this has been a fortunate turn of events in the potty training scheme of things. We put her in diapers, but kept taking her to go potty, and she started having more hits than misses. Or at least, equal amounts of hits and misses. And I've noticed now that she doesn't cry when we go to the bathroom unless she is really not going to go anyway. AND -- sometimes . . . she comes up to me and whines, and when I ask her if she needs to go potty SHE SAYS YES. (Well, ok, she says, "yeah." She doesn't actually say "yes" yet.) And then she goes potty! It is truly amazing to me how I thought some of these things would seem routine or old hat with child number two, and they are so not. I am so stinking proud of Elsie sometimes that I think the zipper on my sweater is going to burst.

The last thing that I'll mention is that my kids are really cute. Tonight we were eating dinner. It was a lot quieter than normal -- in fact, there was almost no noise at all. Usually we're all vying for Jason's attention and conversation (because let's face it, the three of us have spent ALL day together and we have nothing new to say to each other by the end of the day). But the silence wasn't uncomfortable or boring. I just used it to stare at my girls. To marvel again at the grown up faces Elsie makes that look so ridiculous on so small a child that I laugh out loud. To look at Natalie one more time to make sure I'm not missing anything, because she's growing up so fast. To look at these beautiful faces that walk around my house everyday like they belong to ordinary people. And I'm so glad I'm their mommy.

My thoughts. Just in case you were wondering.