Exciting News

No, the exciting news is not that I am turning 31 today.  At this point, each birthday that passes is just that, another birthday and another year closer to the end, so I prefer not to look at birthdays to seriously unless I look at it as the 10th anniversary of my 21st birthday which makes it seem a whole lot better.  Instead, the exciting news that I allude to in my title is that of my wife being pregnant with our second child, who at this point, is about the size of a large marble, albeit with a growing brain and a beating heart.  8 weeks old, our child is there and making its presence known already.  I will get to that in a little bit though.  My wife and I had actually been trying to have another child for a few months when, lo and behold, it turns out my little swimmers are in really good shape and one of them happened to beat out the rest and firmly plant itself in its new home.  I know, a little crude, but it works.  The timing worked out just the way my wife and I intended it to with our son being about 2.25 years old when our new child will enter the world.  We wanted to have our children closer together so that they would have companions growing up, not too close, but not too far apart either.  Leading up to it, my wife and I even debated having another as we love our son so much and have had such good luck with him so far.  Yes, there are those trying times, but he has been such an awesome baby and now toddler that we didn't want to go against the grain.  Another aspect that we debated came from our own history growing up.  My wife was an only child and as such, couldn't necessarily envision having a second child.  I, on the other hand, grew up with a younger brother and definitely wanted a second child.  In the end, it didn't come down to me forcing my wife to have another, but rather her seeing the benefit of having a second child and having someone that our son could grow up and play with outside of his own friends that he will eventually make.  We also wanted to have our children closer together for a couple of other reasons.  One of those reasons is that we didn't want to be getting older and still have children in our house, we actually want to enjoy our lives later on without the burden of younger children at home.  The other reason being that with my brother and I being 7 years apart, it took a long time for us to grow closer and we didn't want that to be the case with our children.  (My parents wanted to have my brother and I closer, nature just had different plans). 

 

So back to our 8 week old child making itself felt already.  This time around has been 10 times worse for my wife in terms of morning sickness and exhaustion.  While she has finally kicked the nausea for the most part, the exhaustion is really taking its toll, driving her to lay down almost from the point she gets home from work till the time she goes to bed around 8/830.  Every experience parent has said that it is due to the fact that we have a 20 month old running around and draining her energy even more than the first time around did.  I would have to agree with their assessment.  This time, however, its taking its toll on me as well.  So, I must apologize to everyone if I have been a little more on edge of late (although I have tried not to be), as I have been burning my candle from both ends and holding a match in the middle as well.   Not to detract from my wife who is currently eating for two, has our child growing inside of her, and dealing with all of that plus work and our child, but almost everything else has fallen on my shoulders.  From the moment I get up and take the dogs on a walk, write my blog, get our son up, make breakfast, get my wife and son out the door, get ready for work, go to work, work all day, come home, watch our son till he goes to bed, make dinner, do the dishes, get lunches ready for the next day, actually eat dinner, and work on projects after my wife goes to bed, I have nothing left when I go to bed around 10/1030.  Yet, I am taking in all in stride.  I would much rather be doing everything that I am than feeling like my wife is.  I applaud her for dealing with all of this as well as she has been.  I know I would probably be a cranky s.o.b. if I were in her shoes.  Yet I am sure that is why men don't get pregnant and women do, because they can deal with it and we would just be big babies about it.  Yet, this past weekend, that we just went through made me realize how much getting older sucks.  That is part of why I choose not to recognize birthdays as a big event in my life anymore, just another day that signifies I am getting older.  So it all started on Thursday with myself almost falling off a ladder.

 

The fact of that matter is, I didn't fall, yet it was the closest I came to falling in a very long time.  It was mostly my fault for not paying as close attention as I should have been on my gorilla ladder, which was a little off kilter.  I went to go step over the top to straddle it.  As I placed my foot on the other side, it slipped.  I managed to catch myself with my legs, leaving two bruises that are the least of what hurt.  It turns out that I jolted myself in such a way, either twisting my back or something, that I got progressively worse throughout the day on Friday and essentially slept all day Saturday because it hurt so much.  I had a splitting headache, my muscles were super tight up and down my back, and even today, I am not back to a 100% yet.  I can only imagine what it would be like if I wasn't in as good shape as I am.  The worst part was, or the part that I felt worst about, was that I couldn't even watch our son on Saturday.  We had to call in the reinforcements to help out around the house, my wife's mother, who we are both eternally grateful for.  With my wife feeling the effects of pregnancy and me being laid up, it would have been the worst day in the world had it not been for my mother in law.  Now I know what my wife must feel like not being able to help out around the house, because I felt absolutely horrible about it.  Luckily yesterday I was better and was able to do a lot more.  Today, I am grateful that I can go back to work (yes, even though its my birthday, I am self employed and still must work) and get some money.  But back to our exciting news.  I know its still a little early to start spreading the news, but we did just get an ultrasound on Friday and things are perfectly normal.  We will continue to assume the are perfectly normal unless something happens, which we are confident won't.  My wife actually knew after only 4 weeks that she was pregnant.  She just had a feeling that she was, but it was obviously way too early then to tell anyone.  Even the pregnancy test wasn't sure if she was pregnant or not, but she was.  I guess you can call it mother's intuition.  So there will obviously be more news in the future as her pregnancy progresses, yet none of it will be about the sex of the baby.  Once again, we will not find out until our child enters the real world whether it is a boy or girl.  We don't want to take one of the few surprises possible away from ourselves.  So for now, I celebrate my 10th anniversary of my 21st birthday and our new child growing inside of my wife.