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Kick!

Tuesday 24 October 2006

We felt L move some time ago — last week, we finally saw her move. That’s rather like saying “I saw the wind blow.” We saw the effects of L’s movement: a bump on K’s belly that grew and shrank and grew again, moving about slightly before disappearing.

Almost nightly, rubbing K’s belly, I say in amazement, “There’s a little person inside you!” Despite K’s increasingly rotund belly, the pregnancy is still so abstract. The coming responsibilities and joys are still little more than a daydream. It was like imagining being “grown up” when you’re a kid: you know it will come eventually, but it’s so nebulous that it might as well be a fairy tale.

But during those moments, when L is thumping and bumping about in K’s belly, it really settles in. The “we’re going to be parents” morphs into “we are parents.” We just haven’t met our little girl yet…

Autumn on the Parkway

Sunday 22 October 2006

Yesterday, K and I took the Hoary Ones out onto the Blue Ridge Parkway.

Last year we did the same, but the autumnal colors were dim, to say the least — a dry summer and a drier early autumn meant that the leaves just turned dark and fell off.

Parkway Autumn II

This year, there was some color. Nothing like what’s possible in New England, but colorful all the same.

Parkway Autumn VI

More pictures available at our Flickr account.

Washboard Babies

Friday 29 September 2006

There were about thirty couples altogether. A good general mix, but a surprising amount of young people.

“I’m starting a family about ten years later than most people here,” I thought as we walked in, looking at the young faces.

Tonight, we went for our first of eight two-hour birthing classes.

What an odd thing — classes on how to give birth. Our great-grandparents would have laughed at us. “You might as well be going to a class on how to peel potatoes,” they might say.

Still, there we sat, listening to the symptoms of premature labor and discussing what to do about it should it happen to us.

“The rate of premature births in less industrialized nations is much lower,” our instructor pointed out. “We have amazing technology, and we do a great job of keeping premature babies alive,” she continued, “But we’re relatively lousy at preventing them.”

Push-button ease has put our babies at some degree of risk. We don’t move as much as people in the non-industrialized world. We wash our clothes by pushing a button and take our trash by car two hundred meters to the apartment-complex dumpster.

Ironic: technology has both helped cause the problem and effectively dealt with the result.

Clothes

Thursday 24 August 2006

One thing about expecting but not having is the clothes.

Clothes

All clothes, but nothing to fill them with.

Kinga and Dress

Lena

Tuesday 1 August 2006

“We have to have a serious talk with your parents about pink.” We were leaving the clinic after the confirmation: by some time in late December, we’ll have a daughter — Lena Maria.

Lena Scott I

For months now, she has been an “it.” Rather, we’ve referred to Lena as “Bączek.” “Little fart” in Polish. “This means she is no longer ‘It,'” I thought, when the ultrasound technician said, almost immediately, “It’s a girl.”

“It’s a girl,” and the name dilemma washed away. “Lena” has been our choice for a girl for some time, but for a boy — nothing. Kinga had plenty of ideas, but for some reason, none of them made me feel much of anything. “Lena,” though, has such a warmth, a strength, a beauty to it that I liked it immediately.

Lena Scott II

“She” means directions and details for the dreaming that were never contained in “it”. Vague imaging becomes focused. At some point, she will break some boy’s heart. At some point, her heart will be broken. She will have a favorite book and a favorite game. She will come to me one day, crying with a childhood injury. At some point, I might find myself dancing with her at her wedding. Yet these thoughts are all so distant that they’re just as unrealistic as when we knew nothing more than the potential: “I’m pregnant,” Kinga whispered in my ear one morning, many weeks ago…