When I was pregnant with Alex, Jeremy would laughingly tell our friends "We're going to have the perfect baby". I had the perfect pregnancy- no morning sickness, very few aches and pains, and then the perfect labor - 11 hours of steadily progressing contractions, no drugs (I eventually took a Tylenol the night after Alex was born, since I was a little sore), no shouting at Jeremy during contractions, just a simple easy birth experience. Of course it followed that our baby would be perfect, too. And he is! He came out with a perfectly round little head, not the strange scrunched up face and body of a newborn we were anticipating, and he came out sounding more like he was talking than crying. By 6 weeks he was sleeping through the night in his own crib. And from there he has progressed beautifully, and perfectly.
He has a lot of me in him. I have no doubt that his ability and enthusiasm for talking comes from my side of the family - thanks Dad! And We're often told how much he looks like me (particularly now that I'm pregnant and my face is rounder than ever). But his Perfectness must come from Jeremy's family. Alex is very precise. He already tries very hard to color between the lines. He likes things a certain way, and lets us know exactly what that way is.
Tonight he systematically cleaned up all of his trucks and placed each one in a row on his bookshelf. Considering that I've never seen anyone in my family actually able to park their car in their garage (aren't garages made for holding the overflow items from the house?), and that Jeremy's family tends to have garages you could eat off the floor in, probably even after parking the car in them, I'm sure this comes from his side.
Alex has a potty chart to put stickers on each time he uses the toilet. I just taped a piece of paper to the wall in the bathroom and wrote "Potty Chart" at the top. Nothing too complicated. Then we started letting him pick a sticker and put it wherever he wanted on the paper each time he used the toilet. Without any prompting, he has lined up all of his stickers, making a perfect animal parade across the paper. And now that he's gone through one sheet of stickers, he's started placing matching animals together. So, if he picks another monkey, he places it right next to the monkey that's already in line. He loves things that match. He loves things to have a proper place. He loves to know which street it is we're driving on, and where we're going next.
We had a busy day yesterday. At breakfast Alex wanted to know what our plans were for the day. After I told him he said "OK, Bible Study, then lunch, then the hospital [for a doctor's appointment] then cookies [to eat on the way home from the hospital], then dinner, then the fish hatchery [a boys' night out for dinner and fun]. " Just as we were leaving for the hospital, we received a call that our doctor wasn't available, and could we please come tomorrow, instead. Alex had to adjust his thinking. "OK", he said, "Bible Study, then lunch, but no hospital." He's like a walking day planner.
As we draw near to meeting baby number 2, I have a growing suspicion that he's not going to be The Perfect Baby. At least not in the same sense that Alex is. This pregnancy has gone very well, I have no complaints, but it hasn't been quite as perfect. I did have some morning sickness, and now my hips have given up, but the contractions are what really are making me feel differently about this one. For a couple of months I've been having some strong contractions. One night in Omaha I was having contractions every 5 minutes for over 7 hours. By the next morning they had stopped, and I obviously didn't have the baby that night. Since then I've had random spurts of contractions, that randomly just stop again. By my doctor's appointment last Wednesday, I was already 4 cm dilated, looking like I could have the baby at any time, but, again, here I am, definitely still pregnant. Yesterday I started having fairly regular, intense contractions around 3:30. By 9:00 at night I was wondering if we should call Jeremy's mom to come pick up Alex. By 11:30 they had almost stopped, and I went to bed.
I'm sure this baby will be perfect, in his own way. But for now it's hard to imagine that he will be the perfectionist that his big brother has been since day one.
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4 comments:
Wow, Alex does sound like a perfect baby and little boy. Our first was so hard, pregnancy until about 4, and our second was so easy compared to her. You would be SO lucky to have another easy baby. I guess you might as well hope for the best, right?
Alex is easy in ways, but then he drives me crazy too, since he is a perfectionist, and I most certainly am not! I think this second baby may be as scatter-brained as me - "Hmm...maybe I'll be born today, oh wait, there's an interesting sound from mommy's tummy, I guess I'll stay and listen to that awhile....maybe I'll be born next week..."
i am anxiously waiting to hear when this "scatter-brained" baby makes up his mind and comes down the chute!!
I felt the same way about Nathan before Katya was born, and I can definitely say they were two totally different people from day one. It has been tricky at times to look for the "perfect" things about Katya, since they are certainly not the same as the "perfect" things about Nathan, but I have to say that she is easy and hard in her own way. Can't wait to see what your experience is! Hang in there.
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