apple pie

i am waiting for apple pie. my legs are full of cramps and cankles and the air conditioning blows right on me at night so that i can sleep. my doctor tells me i am carrying a large baby so we bought a maternity belt and i feel a bit like a body builder or warehouse worker while i walk around the toy store. bryan's son is visiting us for two weeks and i am understanding more and more how much two lives affects the parents more than the kids sometimes. i see it from a new perspective, twelve years old with a packed bag and he is unable to get a moment's peace from finn because she worships him so. my own pre-teen packed bags used to sit in the guest room of my dad's house and i remember sitting in foreign restaurants and asking permission to get something from the kitchen, at home and yet not.
i am waiting for apple pie because i have eaten all of the chocolate and ice cream in the house and dessert makes me happy. i look forward to it, after struggling through the day just to walk from here to there, taking a nap after a trip to the store because i simply can't stay awake a moment longer. somehow this baby seems abstract still, not knowing whether we have a boy or girl. our girl's name is pretty well agreed upon, barring any unforeseen changes of mind. the boy's name is a different matter entirely. i think about the roll of the dice we take with genetics at times and wonder if we are going to have children that look nothing like each other, their own faces entirely. bryan's son looks just like him, freaking out our friends.
bryan told me i was 'on point' today and he meant my mood. that i was a bit on edge and i'm thinking it's this lack of control, this struggle with financial freedom, this idea that we are crazy enough to think we can be good parents to all of our children in this kind of world. i watch episodic television that deals with unsavory and unsettling storylines because i cannot handle the real things people do to each other, sometimes unsolved and barbs of blame stuck inside the skin of each other. i shouldn't read the news while pregnant.
i think about how i wish we had a fancy backyard, a few years' worth of savings, a perfect nursery that would be photographed for style blogs and i realize my first world concerns are born of such ridiculous notions that i cannot help but get irritated and wait.
for apple pie.