36 weeks

day two of being an official stay at home mom. nine months pregnant and wobbling around the nest , picking up twigs and sticks and stuffing found objects into corners. three and half weeks-ish to go before baby number two. this baby that we can't quite picture because we don't even know the gender. it still seems a bit like an idea we had one winter night and not the future direction of our household dynamic.
yesterday i sewed myself a shirt, covered two lampshades with fabric, created an art piece to take up the huge wall in the bathroom and organized the baby's stuff in our bedroom. in between these things, finn and i played with foam shapes, felt boards, beads and pipe cleaners. the marathon of last year's 'project runway' played in the background and for dinner we ate leftover pasta shells with eggplant and sausage that bryan made and finn told me 'you made the best dinner, mommy.' i totally took credit for it and said thank you so much.
  
i'm a little numb right now. not physically, although that would be fabulous since everything physical feels multiplied by elevenhundred and i can't even sleep at night because turning over on my side takes all the breath out of me and i lay there, restless leg syndrome and all and i think about bank accounts and mismatched paint and curtains. i am overwhelmed by everything i want to get done before this baby comes and i feel like drowning and lamenting the fact that i have WEEKS to go and i feel like i'm being swallowed by my swollen body and i know enough to know this time that giving birth is not going to make me feel better. that feeling better won't come for months and i will be tethered to this body i don't recognize and inside myself and outside myself at the same time and i will complain about how clean the floors are because i can't control anything else. some people make it look so easy. so i'm numb. and i fall asleep and think about past relationships and who i would be if i had stayed in certain situations or if certain situations had stayed in me.
 
twice before i thought i found 'the one.' one was my first real love and the other was never even a boyfriend, never really mine to begin with. somewhere between young love and ill timing i walked through the landmine that is another person's heart and tried to bury myself somewhere along the walls, etching my name with sharp fingernails to prove i was there. i wonder sometimes if the tag is still there or if it was painted over, remodeled. i suppose it doesn't really matter but one can't help but wonder. i don't look back at any of my entanglements with the romantic comedy fueled regret of missed chances or mistakes made. it's more of a killing the cat kind of thinking, tiny babies grabbing ribs and grazing parts of my heart that got me from here to there. to 'the one' i chose out of all the others. the one that chose me back. the one who agrees with me that there is more than 'the one' that makes us able to bear this life together because we are never enough for just one of anything. it takes a lifetime of mistakes to know the difference sometimes.