Sometimes I think if I had a viable Twitter presence that writing about this would be much easier. Except for those few—as a proportion of total Twitterers—people trying to have a real go of Twitter-As-Art-Form, rising above the base ratt-a-tatt-tatt spaghetti-on-the-wall noise to live stream the birth of our second daughter and provide quicker but less-considered (and arguably less-hyphenated) feedback would be simpler and require less effort, if at the slightly higher cost of more periodic disruptions. The results might in the end be better. They’d certainly be less wordy.
The above alone would’ve required just over four tweets, and I’d have probably given up after the third. In fact, maybe that would have been the better course of action. Nonetheless, here I sit at the end of day one in our transition from DIOK (dual income, one kid) to DIDK while Mama snoozes in the versatile Stryker bed behind me, Thalia presumably sleeps in the nursery for a bit (though who knows what havoc she causes the nursery staff before they cheerfully bring her down to our room for her next feeding), and Siena, also presumably, sleeps at home with Mo keeping a watchful ear out for her nighttime stirrings.
Mo arrived Saturday night after a lengthy drive from her home base in Virginia. Animals, including the pooch and the new chickens, remained at home under care of Granddad. Siena slept poorly Saturday night because of a cold attempting to settle into her system, but she seemed to beat it back Sunday while having a great time with Mo and Mama. I painted yellow three walls of the room that was formerly my office and will eventually be Thalia’s bedroom; the fourth will be an accent green color, similar to what we have done with Siena’s room, which is a medium blue with an orange accent. I wonder if green will be Thalia’s favorite color. Orange has become Siena’s favorite, and she loves pointing out the Schneider trucks on the highway. “Oh there’s an orange truck! That’s my favorite.”
Sunday night we went out to a park and then to a Not Your Average Joe’s for dinner. Siena had her usual chicken fingers, I had the tasty Chipotle Chicken Salad (yummy sugared pecans), Mo had a breaded haddock, and Mama picked up two appetizers for her dinner. Neither proved spicy enough to kick-start herself into labor, though Thalia did do a final bit of jumping and tumbling at the end of the day (“till night by arriving has finished our play”).
After a late bath and a day in which she never peed in her pull-up once, Siena proceeded to give us an even better gift: Sleep, blessed sleep. Siena got up only as we were getting ready to leave in the morning at 5:20. In the first sign of trouble, Siena had some separation anxiety as Mama explained to her she had to go to the hospital. They managed to calm her down a bit, and Siena was satisfied to see our car no longer in the drive way and anticipate that she’d be going to school and then seeing us in the afternoon.
As we got onto the highway, Mama commented that it felt like we should be going on a vacation, not going to the hospital. She explained, “We left Siena with a grandparent, we’re up early, we packed the car, we’re out on the highway, we’re going away for four days. We should be on our way to the airport.” However, we were headed north on the highway, not south towards the Pike and on to catch a flight. It did have that feel, though, of heading out on a new adventure. And probably that’s what it is. On one hand, we’ve done this before: the surgery, the first few days of settling in with the nurses to help, the panicky first night at home still to come. But on the other hand, it’s new all over again, augmented by a new dimension of having a big sister around. Each day at a time, I suppose, and we’ll see how everyone fares tomorrow. But I get ahead of myself; I will still need to write about Thalia’s Birthday (with a capital B).
If I were tweeting, it would be “tired, off to bed l8r.” Instead, let me say thanks to family for all their support (more of which to come) and friends for all their kindness and well wishes to Mama and me today and over the past weeks, months, and years.