'Tis the Season

In case you've been eagerly waiting to read it, I am working on a short narrative relaying the events surrounding Henry's birth.  Some of the details are rather harrowing, & between a reticence to revisit the pain & a lack of alone time with my MacBook, it's been slow going.  Stay tuned.

A Month of Sundays

Since last I blogged, Henry has taken the world by storm.  And by, 'by storm,' I of course mean I've lugged him all over the twin cities in his infant carrier while he maintained a fairly consistent sleep/wail cycle, interspersed with occasional calm glances at his changing surroundings.  

Strange Days

Since Henry & I were discharged from the hospital & Trey drove us home (stopping to visit the Chick-fil-A drive-thru, so Henry knows how we roll), I've left the house once, & that was to take Henry to the doctor.  Other than that, I've not so much as walked to our mailbox.

A Brief Announcement

We Wait

Belly Shots

Opposites

Logistics

Another semester of teaching is now in the books.  If there's any better feeling than laying a semester to rest, it's laying a semester to rest when you're thirty-five weeks pregnant & one dumb, repetitive question away from ending up on the evening news.

Turn, Turn, Turn

To everything there is a season, a time for every purpose under heaven:
A time to be born, and a time to die;  
A time to plant, and a time to pluck what is planted;
A time to kill, and a time to heal; 
A time to break down, and a time to build up;
A time to weep, and a time to laugh; 
A time to mourn, and a time to dance;
A time to cast away stones, and a time to gather stones;
A time to embrace, and a time to refrain from embracing; 
A time to gain, and a time to lose;
A time to keep, and a time to throw away; 
A time to tear, and a time to sew;
A time to keep silence, and a time to speak; 
A time to love, and a time to hate;
A time of war, and a time of peace.  (Ecclesiastes 3:1-8)

The Weeks After Thirty

A few weeks ago, I woke up one Thursday morning & realized I was 30 weeks pregnant.  When your pregnancy rolls over into the 30 week range, it dawns on you that soon, you're going to have an actual baby.  Ironically, while it may seem like an ideal time to hoard sleep, sleep becomes elusive as your belly swells, your back aches, & every night in bed you think of one more item to add to the list of things to do before you hit that magic number, 37 weeks, at which point you're officially carrying a full term baby & the show might begin at any moment.  Don't let a due date fool you!  Don't assume you have another week to buy a few more Christmas presents, as I did when Reagan, who was due December 28, arrived on December 13.    

Behind the Veil

Reagan recently celebrated her third Easter.  The Catholic Church recently elected a new pope.  I just finished a reread of The Great Gatsby in preparation for the May 10 release of Baz Luhrmann's adaptation of Fitzgerald's work.  All this has created a maelstrom of symbolism in my mind that may, or may well not, make sense as I attempt to work through it in this blog.  



I begin with a pictorial of Easter in the post-Reagan era . . .

February 6

On February 6, 1911, Ronald Wilson Reagan was born in Tampico, Illinois.

Miss Digler's New Bed

Shortly after I learned my first child would be a girl, I began an intensive search for antique white nursery furniture to match some antique white pieces I already owned.

HIJKLMNOP

Last Friday, Reagan's Papa had a deposition to take in Dallas.  Naturally, Reagan, my mother, & I accompanied him on his trip over Thursday to make a weekend of it before I grow too large to successfully handle the rigors of a weekend of shopping.  In Dallas.

I Got A Name

A good character is the best tombstone.  

Those who loved you and were helped by you 

will remember you when forget-me-nots have withered.  

Carve your name on hearts, not on marble.

~ Charles Spurgeon  

Like the pine trees lining the winding road
I've got a name
I've got a name

Like the singing bird and the croaking toad
I've got a name
I've got a name

And I carry it with me like my daddy did . . . 

Last summer, Trey & I visited California, a trip I catalogued here.  We spent our last night there in San Diego, & we ate dinner at Croce's, a restaurant owned by the widow of the late Jim Croce who recorded the above lyrics for his 1973 album I Got a Name.

If you think names are inconsequential, you've likely never spent time around an expectant couple, or been the student who, on every first day of class, had to correct the teacher's pronunciation of your name (or, alternatively, bear in silence its mispronunciation for months & months).  If you think names are inconsequential, you've probably never had a conversation with a woman who chose to hyphenate hers.  You may recall that the feud that sparked one of Shakespeare's most famous lines, " . . . that which we call a rose, by any other name would smell as sweet," was inspired by two warring families, generations forbidden to one another because of their surnames.  

Reagan, last night your great-granddaddy Zeigler died.  When my mother's mother died, I was about five weeks pregnant with you.  I sat at my grandmother's graveside knowing there was life stirring inside me.  Again, I find myself in the throes of one of life's poignant moments.  Life & death shadowing each other, whispering hello & goodbye as generations shift within & around me as I carry the very feisty great-grandson of a fine man whose candor was always tempered with a genuine smile.  I see both - the candor, & the smile - in my husband, & I love them equally.  


Trey with his parents & his Granddaddy Zeigler on the day I took their name:

Thank you for a life well lived, & for your good name, Mr. Zeigler.  Despite its breach of the i before e (except after c) rule, something I, an anal grammarian, grapple with, in the three years since I adopted it, it's sparked many interesting conversations with people who admire you, & has, I suspect, on occasion been the reason I received superior customer service in local establishments.  I pray I raise two Zeiglers who bring you, & your name, honor.  

AZ

My Masterpieces, Volumes I & II

In May of 2011, Trey & I began preparing our former home to put on the market.  Trey bought the house in 2005, & Sophie & I joined him in October of 2009.  From the moment I saw the inside of the oven, I knew the day would come that it would have to be cleaned in order for us to sell the house.  I don't know how much of the gunk that had accumulated was Trey's doing, as I didn't look inside the oven when he originally purchased the house, but regardless of fault, I knew I'd spend a long while scraping the inside of the little white oven.  I was right.  It was a lengthy & disgusting process, during which I ripped open the skin on my left hand.

The Nones

Awhile back I bookmarked this article.  Then I got lost in the holiday maze & was further distracted by my iPad & a few novels & I forgot about it, until now.

Point of View

So, yeah.  I haven't been writing much lately.  I've returned to teaching, though I don't think that's the main culprit.  January is, in general, so blah.  The weather, the end of college football, the Christmas decorations that linger . . . blah.  I think perhaps most of the blame for my idle keyboard can be placed on Trey, who gave me an iPad for Christmas.  It's fantastic, & serves many purposes, however, it's no MacBook & thus, I don't sit & type.  Nevertheless, my book club met a few weeks ago, & that discussion has been lingering in my mind, & has now festered to the point that I've set my iPad aside for a moment.

Take a Bow, Mr. Orwell

Pronouns

To begin the year, a brief discussion of pronouns.  That's right, pronouns.

In the text I use in my English classes, there's an entire chapter dedicated to pronouns.  A pronoun, of course, is a word that takes the place of a noun or another pronoun.  Initially, students are usually perplexed that we're going to spend several class periods discussing pronouns.  Pronouns are easy, they say.  As we delve into pronoun case, a lecture that ends with the forever problematic who/whom & whoever/whomever issue, they begin to rethink their original assessment of pronouns.  Who & whoever, by the way, are subjective, while whom & whomever are objective.  Here's a hint: always think of Hemingway's For Whom the Bell Tolls.  It's not For Who the Bell Tolls, because whom is the object of the preposition for, hence = objective case.  This isn't always helpful to my students since most of them have never heard of For Whom the Bell Tolls.  *Eye roll*

A pronoun must always agree with its antecedent.  If the antecedent is singular, so too is the pronoun that takes its place; if the antecedent is masculine, so too is the pronoun that takes its place.  My text refers to pronouns as feminine, masculine, & neuter, or gender neutral (such as it), & this always gets a laugh from several students.  

If you're still reading, I'm reaching my point, I promise.  Earlier this week, I received a call from my doctor's office.  They were rearranging Dr. Sheppard's always hectic schedule & wanted to know if I could see her this week instead of next, as originally scheduled.  Given that I currently have no schedule as I've not resumed teaching, I gladly said that was fine.  They moved my doctor's appointment up a week & also offered to go ahead with the eighteen week ultrasound that was scheduled for January 10th.  Thus, it is with joy & a bit of surprise that has yet to subside as of the time I write this that I announce that Reagan's younger sibling can now officially be referenced as he.

During the early months of both my pregnancies, it was bothersome to me when people referred to the baby as it, because a baby is definitely not neuter, or gender neutral, & these instances always made me think of my pronoun lecture.  Yeah, you don't want to know what goes on inside my head.  Perhaps a word or two later about the detrimental push for gender neutrality in our culture.

Here he is:

He's sucking his thumb in this one:

I know you can't tell he's a boy in any of these, but out of respect for my unborn child, I'm not going to post those pics online.  He's a he, I promise.  I knew it the moment the technician placed the wand on my belly.    

 We're told all looks well.  I am measuring a little larger than 17 weeks; I always measured a little ahead with Reagan as well.  He appears to have long limbs, like his sister, who is currently seeing eye to eye with a few four-year-olds we know.  I'm happy the appointment was moved up a week, because now I can spend my last week of Winter Break figuring out what to do with the mounds of girl clothing we've accumulated in the last two years.  My first thoughts upon realizing he is a he were these:

-Oh, I have so many girl clothes

-Now I can buy tiny argyle sweater vests

-I have a son

-It's not true that you're sicker when carrying a girl

-Only one wedding to pay for

I've got to go.  Since moving in our house a year ago, we haven't done much with the front bedroom, though the closet is full of tubs of Reagan's clothes.  The plan is to pull out all the gender neutral stuff (which is basically a few white onesies), & I guess haul the rest to the attic.  I need an empty closet to work with considering that my mom left the doctor's office after the ultrasound & headed to Spoiled Rotten to buy boys Christmas clothes on sale, size: 6 months.  Oh boy.  

  

AZ