Dream Within a Dream

Have you ever had a dream within a dream? I’m not talking about marriage (with or without a speech impediment), I’m talking about a literal dream within a dream, Inception-style. I’m talking about dreaming that you’re dreaming. More often, dreaming that you’re waking up. And then realizing you’re still dreaming. And then waking up.

This. This is what I’m talking about.

So, this morning, I was trying to go back to sleep. But since Ethan and I set a goal not to sleep in anymore, and since my husband is super helpful and supportive of my goals, he was trying to get me to wake up. And after a while, I finally decided he was probably right. I should get up.

Trouble is, by that time I was already pretty out of it. I mean, one minute I was driving along the Pulaski Skyway, and the next minute, I was waking up to tell Ethan I wanted to go to New Jersey. Then I realized I was still asleep, and I wasn’t talking to the real Ethan. So I woke up and perused my study journal for a bit. I found a spot where I had either been speaking in tongues or falling asleep, and I showed it to Ethan. “Look,” I said. “Why would I write ‘I need to temple my Zebulon’?” He thought it was funny.

And then I woke up. Ethan was lying next to me in bed, watching something on the laptop. I rubbed my eyes and told him I had just had one of those waking-up dreams. I told him about templing my Zebulon. I told him about the Pulaski Skyway. And then I blinked slowly, and when my eyes opened, he was not where I left him. When I closed my eyes, Ethan had been lying next to me. Now he was sitting up, facing the other way. Aw, man.

I started over, this time listening to make sure it sounded like everyone was awake. We weren’t. I could tell because I wasn’t opening my mouth when I spoke. So I woke up again.

I tried again. This time, I could tell right off the bat that I wasn’t awake, so I didn’t even try to talk anymore. I just waited.

After a few tiring minutes, I eventually came to a point where I was pretty sure I was awake. I could speak with my mouth. I could see Ethan. Everything made sense. There was sound coming out of my mouth – audible sound. I told him all about it one more time.

And then I woke up for real. ♦

Growth Spurt?!

My 3-month-old hasn’t figured out the whole “darkness means sleep” thing. Last week I got a cold because I didn’t sleep enough. Saturday night, Little John was up until 2am, squeaking and chirping and eating and being generally pleasant (as long as we didn’t put him down). At least he’s cute about it.

Sunday, we kept him up as much as we could during the day in hopes he’d go to sleep at night. Around 2am again, though, we were starting to think things were not working out that way. He was still up, just a little less cheerful. Same with us.

Eventually, he fell asleep. Yesterday was Ethan’s day off, so we went and did responsible, grown-up things. Picked up his check. Went to a thrift shop and bought some clothes (and books!) Went back to Pioneer Book and bought the fountain pen I’ve been looking at (and books!) We had a pretty good time just spending time together, actually, while John just slept in his carseat. Of course he did. He’d been up all night.

While we were driving around, we were brainstorming ways to get him onto a more normal sleep schedule. We’d already tried most of it, and we ended up deciding to feed him as much as possible just before bed, and then plan on me staying up all night and sleeping all day. Ethan has a job, so he can’t stay up all night. I can catnap during the day when the baby sleeps. And if I’m actually planning on staying up all night, it’s not nearly as irritating when I do.

Armed with newfound resolve, we faced the coming night. We were fairly confident that feeding him more would solve the problem, to be honest. He often falls asleep while eating. Last night, however, Little John experienced an 8-hour growth spurt that probably added at least 2 inches to his height. And by that, I mean he ate everything he could see. His hands. My arms. All the milk in my body. About 11 ounces of breast milk from the freezer. Sometime around 2am, when he had eaten twice and was still visibly chomping, we decided he was old enough for solid foods, and gave him some pureed oatmeal. He was the happiest kid in the world. He ate at least a dozen spoonfuls, then drank some more milk.

By this time, we had decided if we were up, we might as well be up and doing. We cleaned the entire baby’s room, organized the desk, washed some dishes, made food for ourselves (twice), cooked rice for Ethan’s lunches, organized most of the bedroom, and filed taxes. I told Ethan to go to bed. There was no point in the whole family staying up, and he had work in the morning.

John and I stayed up and played and ate and catnapped and woke up and ate and ate and fussed and played and made little squeaky noises and read books and ate some more. Sometime just a little before 6 in the morning, he finally conked out for good, and I could transfer him to his crib without waking him up. I climbed into bed and slept until Ethan woke up late for work.

John’s awake again, just lying on the floor behind me, contemplating his hands. I’ve turned around a few times to see him raising one fist triumphantly, just staring at it (or me). I’m actually alright with all this today. I’ll sleep when he does. In the meantime… I made a human. And he’s growing like nobody’s business. He’ll figure out that whole circadian rhythm in a while. In the meantime, I’ll do some free online classes and maybe do some writing. Or read all the books we have. I don’t know. I’ll find something. ♦

A New Arrival

New Year’s Eve, we went to my cousin’s house, ate bacon-wrapped smokies and chicken pot pie, and joked about going into early labor.

About 5 hours later, my water broke.

I woke up to go to the bathroom, and by the time I got my huge, waddly girth out of bed, I could feel warm liquid running down my leg. Hooray, I thought to myself. More laundry. (By the 9th month of pregnancy, the whole “having control of bodily functions” thing is no longer as much a priority – or embarrassment.) I made my way to the bathroom, discovered my bladder was still fairly full, and wondered idly whether my water had broken. I cleaned myself up, put on some new underwear… and discovered it was wet again.

“Hey, Ethan?” He opened his eyes blearily. It was 5:30 am. “I think my water broke… or I peed myself a lot.” I was still debating whether to go to the hospital, but Ethan was already up and getting dressed, grabbing our hospital bag. As far as he was concerned, he’d rather risk getting sent home from the hospital with a bladder control story than end up with a home birth.

I was checked into the hospital around 6, and by that time, I was pretty sure my water had broken. I was slowly leaking all the way down the hallway to my hospital room, and although I wasn’t having contractions, I was pretty sure this was the real deal. After confirming that my water was broken, we waited an hour or two and then started pitocin to induce contractions.

Now, I’m not going to tell tall tales about the horrors of labor. In fact, I’d like to take a moment to say that I spent most of my pregnancy terrified of giving birth, because of the way people describe the experience. And not just those who go natural – I’ve heard horror stories from people who were heavily medicated, too. Based on some of these accounts, I was expecting the epidural to make about as much difference as a couple ibuprofen. Maybe my labor experience was on the easier side of the spectrum – I don’t know – but I was dilated to 5 cm before I asked for an epidural, and once the epidural was in, I took a nap. I went from a 5 1/2 to a 9 in my sleep. And then I woke up, pushed for under an hour, and suddenly, there was a squirmy, screaming lump lying on my stomach!

He looked like a Smurf. He was cone-headed, gangly, and very, very blue. I took a good look at him and thought, “I’m supposed to love this child. This is one of the greatest moments of my life. I’m supposed to love this child.” And then I reassured myself that I was also supposed to deliver the placenta and get stitched up, so Ethan could love the child while he was getting cleaned off and warmed up. The nurses toweled off the wrinkled Smurf, and the doctor finished up with me.

With a little more oxygen and a little less mess, the Smurf transformed into a super-cute newborn. We named him Jonathan and spent the next 2 days staring at him. He is the cutest baby I’ve ever seen. (Unbiased opinion.)

When I got engaged, people told me to say goodbye to my social life, because that was the end of it. When I got pregnant, people told me horror stories about labor and delivery. And when I was finally sick enough of being pregnant to look forward to labor, people told me I would never sleep again once the baby was born, and that it was much easier to take care of an infant inside my body than outside.

Alright, doomsday prophets, the day of reckoning is at hand. You’re all liars. My marriage was one of the best decisions I’ve ever made – social life included. Pregnancy sucked, but it didn’t kill me. Labor was actually pretty easy, all things considered. And even though I’m writing this, sleep-deprived, next to a squirmy little boy who can’t seem to keep his own pacifier in his mouth, having a baby is way better than expecting a baby. This kid keeps us up all hours of the night, demanding food at unreasonable times, and fussing for no apparent reason at all. And we can’t seem to stay mad at him. We love the little guy too much. We get mad at him, pick him up, look at him, and just kind of melt.

I’m still alive, everybody. Tired, yes. But alive and well. ♥

The Death of a Spider

I was in the bathtub the other night, when I suddenly realized I had seen a spider in the bathroom earlier that day. A really creepy spider. I cast my eyes around, trying to make sure it wasn’t, say, right behind me, or in the bathwater, or dangling above my head. I was clear.

I don’t consider myself arachnophobic. In fact, I feel much the same way about spiders as I do about sharks: if it’s nowhere near me, I’m just fine. As long as it’s not in any of the movies I’m watching. And I’m not in any water that might potentially have sharks in it. Or any smaller fish…. I might have a small phobia of fish and/or spiders. But it’s not generally a crippling fear – just a jolt and a typical found-a-spider dance.

So as I lay naked and vulnerable in the bathtub, I took comfort when I saw no big, brown house spider anywhere near me. And then something caught my eye, just under the sink, on the handle of the water valve. I saw a long, thin, delicate black leg extend like a ballerina’s and slowly creep forward, followed by another spindly leg. I couldn’t see the body, but the legs were long, and the whole operation just seemed too sneaky for my taste. I yelled for Ethan.

Ethan compassionately came to my rescue, first bringing a shoe, and then realizing that the spider had chosen a very difficult spot to reach. As Ethan pondered the best means of killing the spider, the fiend slowly crept up the pipe and hid underneath the sink. After ratcheting about a bit to get at the thing, Ethan left the bathroom and returned with a cigarette lighter and a can of cooking spray.

With a few well-aimed puffs from his improvised flamethrower, Ethan cleverly toasted the fiend. The smell of hot, burning oil filled the air. The remains of the spider flew up, then floated to the ground, still intact but delicately roasted. The bathroom smelled a little like a Chinese restaurant. Ethan puffed out his chest, proud to announce that until he grew a mustache, he had never before killed a spider with a flamethrower. Clearly, his mustache was enhancing his raw manliness.

Upon further inspection, Ethan found red markings on the spider’s front and back. This was no ordinary spider. This was a black widow – a deadly spider! Ethan’s chest swelled yet again. He had saved his naked, helpless wife from a venomous fate by rushing to the rescue and torching the beast! And all thanks to his new mustache.

He burned the body outside as a warning to the rest of its kind. Then he came back inside to groom his ‘stache. Happy Movember, everyone. ♦

In Which We Accidentally Prove My Father Right

Over the summer, while I was going through the wonders and delights of my first trimester, the temperature shot up to the high 90’s and low 100’s. Our apartment does not have air conditioning. My dad, concerned, asked what we were going to do about it. “Set up a fan,” we said. “Sleep in our underwear, and spray cold water on ourselves before bed.”

“What about moving?”

“Not in the budget,” we said.

I lay on the couch fighting morning sickness while Dad relayed information to Mom. “They’re probably going to rent month-to-month until they can find another apartment with air conditioning.” That’s not what I said at all, I thought. What I said probably just came out as moaning. It’s hard to win an argument while you’re trying not to throw up.

So we set up a fan and slept in our underwear and soaked our clothes and managed to survive the summer. It was hot, but we did it. And now it’s cooling down, and we’re very happy about it, and we’re looking around, saying, “Hmm. We need to make room for a baby.”

A few days ago, some friends told us they were selling their contract for a two-bedroom apartment. Hmm. Two bedrooms would be nice. We went to take a look at it. This is much bigger than our current apartment, we thought. This would be nice. We took a look at our budget. We can afford this. And, since our landlord still hasn’t gotten around to writing out a year-long contract for us, we’ve been renting month-to-month. Almost in spite of our best efforts, we have proven my father’s words correct.

But hey – we’re moving! As of next month, we’ll be living about a mile east, and with significantly more space. Hooray! ♦

And the Floods Came Up…

This morning was interesting.

Ethan’s alarm went off at 5am, but happily, Ethan had the day off today, and he just turned the alarm off. Unhappily, I felt like a donkey had kicked me in the small of the back. I have no idea why, but apparently pregnancy means you should not sleep on your back. I had fallen asleep that way and slept most of the night with steadily growing back pain. It took me an enormous effort to get onto my side and curl up, and the pain in my back eventually died down enough for me to fall asleep again.

Several hours later, Ethan got up because he heard knocking at the door. Nobody was there anymore, but after a few minutes, he tried to turn on the water and found we had zero water pressure. Not good. So he went to check with the neighbors in the studio apartment next to us. Apparently, our neighbor had gotten up early to discover his kitchen floor was wet around the door to the laundry room. When he opened the door, a wave of water came flooding through his apartment. The water heater had exploded – or at least, there was a sizable hole in it, and the laundry room had accumulated nearly 12 inches of water.

Fortunately, our neighbor is competent and clear-headed, and quickly shut off the water valve to the whole house. Also fortunately, our manager is much more proactive than our past management, and we had the problem fixed by noon. In the meantime, Ethan kindly massaged my lower back until the pain went away. No lasting damage to apartment or body. Just small-scale adventure. ♦

What To Expect When You’re Expecting

I’m pregnant!

One of the reasons I haven’t updated this blog very regularly is, frankly, I didn’t want to include any information that implied that I was expecting. It’s not that I’m not excited (because I am. So is my husband.) It’s just that, if anything went wrong early on and I ended up miscarrying, I didn’t want to have happy well-wishers telling me congratulations all the time while I was dealing with a personal trauma.

But, having seen the doctor, everything seems to be going well, I’m nearly 10 weeks along, and it looks like we’ve got a cute little baby cinnamon bear hitching a ride in my abdomen. I’m likely going to survive the first trimester – which is nothing short of a miracle, really. Especially when you consider that my husband might also survive – and still seems happy to be living with me. This is one of my favorite qualities about Ethan: his ability to tackle perilous situations head-on, and still laugh through it.

One example of a perilous situation: the refrigerator. Prior to pregnancy, I was hoping to lose weight. Now I’m packing as much instant breakfast mix into my milk as I can dissolve, in vain hopes of getting some calories into my body. It’s not that I’m craving certain foods – it’s that I’m craving no foods. There are no foods right now that sound good. There are one or two I can handle without gagging. Last night, I opened the fridge to get a yogurt (holding my breath so I didn’t have to smell anything), and ended up fighting the urge to vomit because I had seen food that wasn’t yogurt. Egad.

Emotional imbalance is another peril that Ethan faces on a regular basis. (My imbalance, that is.) While we were at the doctor’s on Friday, we were filling out paperwork in the waiting room, which was very happily decorated with pictures of babies and with lots of toys for the multitude of small children in the waiting room with their expectant mothers. There were no smells. The staff was very kind. It was air-conditioned. It was absolutely perfect, until I tried to do paperwork.

I have discovered that there are certain times during pregnancy when a woman’s brain simply shuts down, with no warning signs whatsoever. I develop a vacant, cow-ish look, and fail to recognize any input. Often, I manage to answer a yes/no question, and forget to stop shaking or nodding my head. At any rate, my brain failed right about the point where the receptionist gave me some paperwork and asked me to sit down. Ethan and I sat on a bench, where we could fill out forms and watch Mulan, which was playing for the kids in the waiting room.

I stared down at the form, trying to get my brain to work. There are only about six blanks here, I thought to myself. Come on, Rachel. You can do this. After hovering my pen over one question for about two or three minutes, Ethan looked over at me and said, “Would you like me to fill those out?”

“No, I’ve got it,” I said. “What’s today’s date?”

“The 13th,” he said. “Your birthday was yesterday, remember?”

“Oh, yeah,” I said, filling in the date slowly, thinking hard about the year. Then I hovered over the question that read, “Date of Birth,” stumped again.

Ethan gently took the paperwork from me as I got distracted by Mulan, and began to weep openly. “What’s wrong?” he asked.

“I’m hungry, and I don’t want to eat anything, and I’m so tired, and I can’t fill out this paperwork, and I can’t watch Mulan anymore!”

“What’s wrong with Mulan?”

“She’s so sad! Look at her! She’s a disgrace to her family, and her father’s going to die in a war, and her reflection doesn’t show who she is inside!” I sobbed. I just couldn’t handle it. I was totally losing it in the waiting room.

Ethan put his arm around me. “I really love how empathetic you are,” he laughed. “Do you want to lay your head on my shoulder?”

“No!” I said, and stubbornly sat there, watching Mulan. Then I put my head on his shoulder, and he pulled some grapes out of my purse for me to eat.

Thus far, I’ve come to conclude that pregnancy makes a woman emotionally five years old. I really hope my five-year-old stomach (and the gummy bear inside) gets a little less picky sometime soon. In the meantime, I’m drinking instant breakfast, eating yogurt and bagels, and avoiding any and all Disney movies. I don’t even want to talk about how hard I cried watching Lilo and Stitch. ♥

 

I Should Have Been a Boy Scout

We got a Dutch oven for our wedding, and naturally, we were too excited to wait for a camping trip to use it. Fortunately, we have a fireplace in our apartment (jealous?), so within a month of being married, we started cooking in our own fireplace.

It. Was. So delicious. Pork ribs and potatoes. Peach cobbler. Pork ribs and more potatoes. Peach and pineapple cobbler. More pork ribs.

Okay, so maybe we don’t really have the variety part down yet, but we’re too poor to buy fancy shmancy meat. But in the meantime, we’re getting really good at making pork ribs and potatoes.

And by “we,” I mean that Ethan is really good at making pork ribs and potatoes. Because for the most part, all this fireplace cooking has been his arena. I mean, I can light a fire – you give me matches, I can light just about anything on fire – but I think Ethan’s got good reason not to trust me with matches. And Ethan is really good at fire-building. And Ethan already knows how to cook in a Dutch oven. Excuses, excuses, and I don’t have to do the cooking.

But this week, I finally put my foot down and told myself I had to learn how to use this thing. I mean, it cooks delicious food. Why would this ever be a bad skill to master? Never, I tell you.

So I told Ethan that I was going to cook dinner in the Dutch oven. “Do you want me to show you how to use it?” he asked.

“Nope.”

“Do you want my help building a fire?”

“Nope.”

“…Do you want any tips on how to build a good fire before you start?”

“Nope.” I’m stubborn. Ethan is a teacher at heart, and I could see him deliberately biting his tongue. I think he really wanted to share all the cool stuff he knows about fire-building. I also think he wanted to make sure that dinner didn’t end in blackened, inedible barbecue sauce and tears. But I was stubborn, and he was patient; he told me how to oil the oven so it didn’t burn everything, and from that point, he left me to my own devices.

I brought in some firewood and sat in front of the fireplace for a minute, kind of trying to map out a good fire. I thought back to girls’ camp when I was a teenager. And some family camp-outs. And that one month I crashed Cub Scouts, because my dad was a Scoutmaster and I was a tomboy. I put together something like a “log cabin” with a “lean-to” on top of it. (I think that’s what they’re called.) Then I stuffed some crumpled paper underneath and lit it.

And it totally worked! I had a good fire in only one try! Ethan looked impressed, and a little relieved. I put together some barbecue/sweet-and-sour sauce from one of my mom’s recipes, changed the measurements to make it a little thicker, and put some chicken drumsticks in the Dutch oven covered in spicy goodness. Took some coals out of the fire. Tried my best to imitate Ethan when he cooks in the fireplace. Made some rice on the stove in the meantime.

And guess what! I didn’t burn the house down. And I didn’t burn the chicken. And I only filled the living room with smoke twice. And I managed to cook some pretty darn good chicken, first try, no fatalities. I’m so impressed with myself!

Those Cub Scout days must’ve paid off. Either that, or I’ve got a guardian angel watching over my dinner table. Either way, I’m crazy proud of myself. ♦

Dinosaurs Attack!

A couple weeks ago, we went to the BYU Paleontology Museum (for free, people! For free!) It was fantastic. They have an Allosaurus skeleton, the only known Utahraptor remains, and a triceratops skull bigger than me. It’s fantastic!

And then, while wandering through the library a while ago, I found a dinosaur book bigger than our freezer. With full-color illustrations, also bigger than our freezer. And there are so many dinosaurs I’ve never heard of!

Which is great. Except that there’s one that looks like a crocodile, called “The Irritator.” And ever since reading that page, Ethan’s been running around sticking his fingers in his ears, yelling, “I am The Irritator!” This is not my child. This is my husband. And it is, in fact, very irritating. ♦

Noodle Arms!

Last night, like most nights, I lay dozing as Ethan read a book. After a while, he clicked off the lamp, curled up next to me, and wrapped his arms around me.

Trouble is, I had just developed some weird kind of restless leg syndrome … in my arms. Specifically, my left arm. Put it here, nope. Put it there, nope. Put it behind me,  under me, over me, nope, nope, nope. And all of this was while I was trying to let Ethan sleep. I deliberately placed my arm down against my side and determined to keep it still with only my willpower.

Have you ever had an itch you couldn’t scratch? I had my leg in a cast once, and when that leg itches, you just want to scream – the solution is so simple, but you just can’t manage it. That’s what my arm felt like, lying still like that. All I want to do is move around, said my arm. Why are you torturing me like this?

Meanwhile, the mutiny had spread to my right arm, and it was growing impossible to keep my upper body in one position for longer than 30 seconds. My legs were tired, my body exhausted, my eyelids barely openable, but I blearily removed Ethan’s arms from around me and slid out of bed, desperate to do something.

I ended up at the foot of the bed, doing push-ups on the floor. When my arms got tired of that, they were still a little antsy, so I boxed imaginary bad-guys, still with my eyes barely open. Then I started waving my arms around like noodles, dancing like a lunatic.

I’m really glad Ethan didn’t wake up for any of this. If he had, I think he would have assumed I was sleepwalking – and I’m not sure I would have denied it. “Are you awake?” …”No. It’s a metaphor. Leave me alone.” But by the time I was done noodle-dancing, my arms were a little more calm, and I came back to bed. Fortunately, this time I could hold still long enough to fall asleep. ♦