The Waiting Game

Well... here we are. 10:17 p.m. Thursday night.

No contractions.

No labor.

No rush to the hospital.

No Tweet.

But... also, no more contagious Benny! So, I guess we've got that going for us.

So, we've held on to Tweet (or, rather... she stuck to the game plan) for a few days longer than anticipated. Benny took the last of his three days of shots and we'll find out tomorrow morning if he has to go in for some more aggressive treatment if he doesn't feel markedly better.

Also, tomorrow we get to go to the doc and check my dialation to see if I've made any progress. And will likely get a cervical balloon inserted (sounds pleasant, doesn't it?) to stimulate dialation. Man, sometimes being a woman ABSOLUTELY ROCKS.

Today was more sitting around waiting for something to happen. I took my mind off the minutes ticking slowly past by getting some work done, watching a little CSI - NY (not as good as CSI: Miami, btw... but it'll work in a pinch) and updating my Facebook status with little known facts about the dog.

For instance, did YOU know that my dog can clear a room... simply by existing? She doesn't even have to pass gas. It's just this odor that follows her around. I've got a theory that it's her skin and a friend of mine has turned me on to a kind of dog food that will supposedly help with that. Of course, it's more expensive... THAT'S HOW YOU KNOW IT'LL WORK, RIGHT???

Seriously... I grew up on a farm with outdoor dogs that were never bathed. Were never shaved. And routinely got in battles with skunks... not to mention the rolling around in deer, fish and chicken carcass. And none of those dogs ever smelled one-tenth as bad as my dog does two hours after a bath and shave with her only visits to the outside world being to pee and eat. It's really quite the phenomenon.

But, I digress. Benny and I are so over the waiting right now. We're ready to move on to the next phase of our life.

Throughout the last 40 weeks and 4 days (but who's counting) everyone we've talked to has said the exact same thing: Your life is going to change forever. (Or some variance of that statement.)

Um... yea. We kinda knew that going in to it. It was kind of the point, you know?

I know that people only mean well by telling us this but, honestly... it gets a bit old. We know it's going to change. We know it's going to be hard... the hardest thing we'll ever do. We know that we'll never sleep as well as we are currently used to. And that's OK! We didn't decide to have a child on a whim. It's not like we didn't have several deep discussions on what we wanted out of life and when we wanted it and how we were going to go about starting our family. Tweet isn't a surprise. We knew we wanted Tweet before we even knew Tweet was here.

And these last few days have only solidified that, YEA!!! Let's get ON WITH IT ALREADY!!

I've been trying to be zen about the whole thing. I really have. I've spent the last couple of days watching the birds feeding at the bird feeders and sitting on my rocking chair on the front porch and watching the world go by, trying to take as much of it in as I can so that I can remember when I had time to myself without a screaming baby or a rebellious teenager turning my attention elsewhere. And it turns out... even with the thought of not having those moments as often as I do now, I still can't wait to be a Mommy.

Carrie sent me an amazing email the other day... one that I will keep forever. In it she talked about Mommyhood and the pressures that come with it. And I must admit, I've been thinking about what kind of mom I am going to be... and have been concerned that I'll fall way short of what other moms do for their kids. I'm not a crafty person. I'm just not. And I'm not much of a cook. And, I really have a hard time relating to kids. I've never even changed a diaper for the love of Pete! And I doubt I'm one of those women who just fall into motherhood naturally and who seem like they're Wonderwoman... cooking dinner, doing the laundry, keeping the house clean, playing with the kids and teaching them about life.

But Carrie... she must have somehow known because in her email was a paragraph that hit me like a brick to the face:

"I'll never be a mom like my mom who sews and bakes bread and keeps up with laundry and cleans every speck of dust, but those things aren't all that important to me. It took me a while to discover, that's what made my mom, my mom. I'm a mom who takes my kids hiking and on adventures, makes art projects, frosts cookies, and leaves the laundry until it is piled high. You'll show Tweet what is important to you and you can be whatever kind of mom you want to be."

With that one paragraph, Carrie gave me my "Aha!" moment and I'll never be able to thank her for that. I get to decide what kind of mom my children will have... and it's okay if it's not the same definition as other kids moms. I have my strengths that I'll play up and hope people don't notice so much the weaknesses.

And if I can be half the mom to Tweet that Carrie is to her kids? I'll be doing pretty well.