2008-09-12 - 12:56 a.m.
YOU'RE ONLY A DAY AWAY (or two or five or whatever)
Oh my goodness. We're like DAYS away. It could happy at ANY MOMENT. This whole time I've kinda gone back and forth on an almost daily basis from being nervous to excited to scared to nervous to excited to scared, but now I think Charity is in more of a "let's get this over with already" kind of a mood. Which is to be expected, I would think.
I mean, nine months, that's a long time. These two little babies have been the focus of our lives for the entire year of 2008 and yet we still don't even know them. I am very much looking forward to meeting them. I hope they like me.
Charity plopped down next to me yesterday and said "I think I could do this again". Referring to being pregnant. I was like, jeez, let's at least wait 'till we see how this order turns out before we go back for seconds.
But I know what she meant, because from the opinion of this outsider, her pregnancy has gone pretty smoothly. I think the biggest thing she was worried about, other than the obvious "are the babies okay" concerns (they are A-OK), was being pregnant through the summer. Both our moms were pregnant over the summer months at some point and both had horror stories about it.
But summer was really mild this year. Only in a handful of days back in July did the temperature ever go over 100 degrees, so that certainly helped. Yesterday it was in the 50's already. The worst part was the bad weather with the tornados and such, which I wrote about last time. But we made it through that unscathed.
You know, I have really started to become... jealous isn't at all the word I want to use, but for some reason it's the only one that's popping into my head at the moment. I will try to explain better than with just one word. I have really started to become... very aware of how fortunate I think our daughters will be, and how special I think their lives will be, because of the fact that they'll be growing up with Charity as their mom. I think about it and it kinda puts me in awe. Like, wow. That's like winning the mom lottery.
I love my own mom and she was a great mom. But I would tend to doubt that, throughout the course of her life, people talked about what a great mother she was going to be some day. And with Charity, her whole life has been building up to this. Even since we were little kids, she has wanted to be a mom. She’s going to be so good at it.
It's like... despite the fact that my mom wasn't born for mothering, I think I turned out pretty good. And my sister turned out exceptionally well. So how good are our kids going to turn out by getting to have Charity as their mom? It boggles the mind.
Melody and Madison, we're pretty sure those are the names. Melody Elizabeth and Madison Victoria. I actually picked those names out myself. Well, the first names, Elizabeth and Victoria are family names. But this is the one decision regarding their upbringing that I'll actually get to make, so I'm pretty jazzed. Although, really, I had names I liked more, but Charity didn’t like those. So I only sort of made this decision. But I’ll take what I can get.
I read that it was important with twins to not give them rhyming names because it confuses them when they're learning their identities. When the names sound too similar, they have a hard time knowing which name is meant for them. But Melody and Madison flow together nicely with the alliteration and both having the same number of syllables and whatnot. And their middle names have the same syllables too, so their full names will be even and everything. I think it works.
Plus, I think both names sound good if one of them is in trouble and I have to shout their full name to show them I mean business. That's important.
Our house is about to become party central in the next few days. My sister is coming on Saturday, which is news I like very much. She's the only person who will actually be staying at our house with us. Charity's sister is coming on Sunday. The due date is next Wednesday, BTW, so both our sisters just figured they'd come out around then and hang out for a week or two.
Other relatives will be coming after the babies are born. I just learned that my Nana... you may recall her from last year's post about our vacation... is going to be flying out. That is nothing short of an epic bombshell being dropped right into my lap. Nana hasn't come out here since I was about 11. But these are her first grandkids, so I guess she's excited.
GREAT grandkids, I should say. Only three of her kids have kids, and one of my cousins is only 20 or so, and the other just turned 15. So I'm the one providing the great grandbabies. That oughta get me a totally sweet check come Christmas!
I meant to update sooner because Charity hated -- HATED -- my last post, and I wanted to get it off the first page. She thought it gave the impression that she's been eating nothing but junk food, which is certainly not the case. She only occasionally partakes in junk food. It's probably a 90/10 split. Well, 80/20. 75/25, that's as far as I'm going.
It's just that when she does have junk food, especially food outside of our home, I am usually involved in some way. And as this is MY blog, it tends to reflect on things I am involved in. So I am involved in getting her food and stuff. But it's not like pizza crusts and all that stuff is the only thing she eats. I did not mean to create that impression.
Really, though, I know it didn't come off that way. She was just having one of her "bad" days when she read it. You see, for reasons known only to the big man upstairs, Charity's hormones tend to give her quite a butt-kickin'. Prior to this whole pregnancy business, when she had her "cycles" and whatnot, there would be bad months and then there would be... worse months.
Probably 8-9 months out of the year, Charity's "cycles" are accompanied with terrible cramps. When I say terrible, I mean terrible. Like "none of the pills they give women for cramps help her" type terrible. I remember one time, I think we were juniors in high school and we had the same class together at lunch. The class dismissed so we could go eat and I had been talking to Charity, who was finishing up something at her desk, and then I turned to talk to someone else as I got my silly lunch ticket thing out that we had to give to the cafeteria people so they could punch it when we went through the line.
Anyway, I turned back to face her... I couldn't have been looking away for more than a minute or so... and suddenly her face had gotten all pale and there were tears welled up in her eyes. A really bad case of cramps had come on just as quick as that. She couldn't even walk she was in so much pain. I ended up carrying her down three flights of stairs and halfway across the school to the nurse's office.
And as we're going down the main hallway, the principal was passing by and he never really liked me much. And when he saw me carrying her, he probably thought we were goofing off, because we had been known to do that on occasion during lunch. So I saw him walking towards us about to say something, but then he saw Charity's face and he just stepped aside and let us pass without saying a word. That's how bad it gets.
Like I said, that's 8-9 months out of the year. The other 3-4 months, she's perfectly fine. Physically. Mentally, on the other hand, she gets... shall we say... rather testy. Actually, more like... somewhat irrational. Actually... she's completely insane. On a 1 to 10 scale, if the cramps are a 10, then so is the crazy.
I want to stress that I would happily take 12 months out of 12 months of her acting nutty, as opposed to her being in pain. I hate seeing her in pain. It's the worst thing in the world. And I think I handle the mental change pretty well. No matter what she says, I agree with her completely. Which usually just pisses her off. And then she gets more upset, but on a dime she'll start crying and telling me she's sorry. Then she'll be mad again.
She hasn't had cramps at all while she's been pregnant, but those crazy days tend to pop up out of nowhere. It's usually just one day, then it's gone the next like nothing happened. Anyway, long story short, she was having such a day when she read my last post. Golly, I sure hope she's not having one when she reads THIS post.
I don't really remember where I was going with all this. I'm having trouble concentrating. Did I mention that this could happen at ANY MOMENT?
That's really all I have to say anyway. Plus I'm kinda tired.
I SHALL RETURN.
