It is the kind of head-throbbing, still-air, make-you-feel-like-a-maniac HOT outside. The kind of hot that never goes away. Where you walk outside at 6 in the morning and even though the sun has barely been up for 30 minutes, you get smacked in the face with heat. Soup.
We get to the zoo at 7:30am because I know that by the time it is 10:30 and we have spent 3 hours of carousel-riding, splash-ground jumping, animal-seeing, sting ray-petting, penguin-watching and train-riding (all in the shade and all for free before 9am), the heat will melt us as we trek back to our car. Milo’s face will be a neon shade of pink despite hitting every giant mist-fan on our walk out of the place. I will be contracting and dizzy and delirious and exhausted, pushing Oliver in the stroller up the hill to our parking space.
And yet. We fill our days with early-morning adventures. We go to the science center, the playground, the City Museum. We plan play dates and pool trips and looooooong walks around Target just to get out of the house. Why? Because I am waiting. Waiting to go into labor. Waiting for the week to pass so I can be thismuchcloser to NOT being pregnant. Ever. Again. I remind myself that I could be as little as a week(!) away from baby time. I remind myself to get through the day. The afternoon. The hour.
Yesterday I cried literally all day long. For no particular reason. Well, I didn’t sleep the previous night and Oliver has been on nap-strike for quite a few days, but nothing catastrophic. By 3:30 I was blotchy-faced and weary from sobbing over nothing. So. I guess I must be close. Closer, at least.
Emotional wreck. Nice to meet you. These are my two young troupers who ask me, “Mom, why are you sad?” and “Oh-tay, Momma??” Yes. I am okay. And will be more than okay when I get to meet one more of your beautiful faces. Soon.
And as a side-note, in an attempt to get Oliver to see himself as a big boy rather than the family baby before the new baby arrives, we ask:
“Oliver, are you a baby or a big boy?”
“Man.”
Kinda small, but I guess he’s now a man.
He makes me want to snap to attention and salute.
Hang in there, Lauren! YOU are the real soldier! And what a great role model you are for Milo and Oliver.
“Man.” — HAHAHA I love it! So sweet, so innocent! Hang in there, Lauren! This heat is killer and I can imagine unbearable for you. Tell Andrew to set you up on an ice block with a big tub of ice cream. 😉
Who is going to set me up with some ice cream?
Aw, hang in there Mama! This heat…and this baby, has to break soon! Hope you can manage to keep cool enough until then! And, just so you know, I’d cry too if I was surrounded by men constantly! 🙂 Maybe tomorrow he will decide to be just a boy again!