Has it come to this?

We're updating our Elementary Spanish textbook and I had an unexpected visit from the book rep of one of the companies we're considering. 

Suffice it to say, the book rep was...kind of hot.

He came to my door and I was like...👀 Are you looking for moi?

Hot salesmen must make a killing.

He went to my colleague next door afterward. Of course, I gigglingly texted her later: "Is it just me, or was the book rep kind of a hottie?"

This is what we've come to. Old married professor lady giggling over hot book reps.

Still firsts, after all this time.

40 years old used to sound SO OLD to me. Like, in my 20s, the idea of 40s and beyond seemed unfathomable. Yet, here we are. It's so weird. How did I get this old? With kids who are walking and talking...my oldest gearing up for Kindergarten. It's really wild.

In my mind, I feel the same. The same quirky young person I've always been. But then as the generational gap increasingly widens between me and my students, my oldness becomes more stark. My students revealed to me that a rapper named D Smoke came out with a song named after the leader of a slave uprising in colonial Mexico that I was teaching them about and that this rapper used to be a Spanish teacher. Like, what? On so many levels, what? The deficiency of my current pop culture knowledge laid bare. And that's how we ended up listening to gangsta rap in my upper level Spanish class.

But I digress. 

What I'm saying is that even at this incomprehensible age that I currently exist in, firsts still occur. I roasted my first turkey and hosted Thanksgiving for the first time:

We put up our first Christmas tree:

I baked gingerbread cookies from scratch for the first time and decorated them with my kids (they weren't fans of the taste of gingerbread):

I guess it's nice that there are still firsts out there, waiting to be experienced, even at the ripe old age of 40.

Another Postscript

 I really don't want to commit myself to blogging again. But sometimes I want to express something that I don't necessarily want all of my social media connections to be able to access.

What I want to express is that I miss being pregnant.

I will never experience pregnancy again unless something really insane and/or medically impossible happens. (Okay, how about extremely medically improbable?) We are 100% done having babies. We are 100% so done. We are 100% happy with our rambunctious boys and do not want to have anymore. Just the thought of going through the newborn phase again is exhausting.

But. 

There is this teeny tiny, barely perceptible jingle bell that rings in the recesses of my mind when I hear that such and such is expecting or I see a pregnant woman or see an infant. There are times that I find myself daydreaming about what it felt like, trying to remember the wonder of little baby kicks on the inside that felt like a miracle every single time. 

I am very thankful that I was able to bear children and that I was able to have relatively uncomplicated pregnancies. I truly am. When it comes to pregnancy and childbirth, I learned enough to know that nothing's a guarantee. But at the same time, I do mourn a chapter of my life that is over. 

Maybe it would be different if I were menopausal and knew that my body had closed up shop for good. But right now, I know that the potential is still (technically) there. I did enough research and experienced enough to know what the signs are that I'm ovulating and within my "fertile window." There are times where I feel like, "I could technically still get pregnant" but I know that I never will again. 

I will be honest and say that I have even allowed my mind to go to some really macabre and outlandish places, like, what if (God forbid) something happened to my husband and I met someone else who wanted to have a baby immediately (and at this point in 40ish time, let's be honest, it would have to be immediately)? I DO NOT WANT THIS TO HAPPEN. I'm just saying, my brain thinks of dumb and insane things when the baby jingle bell starts to ring.

Our doula got a video of the moment after I gave birth to our second child and they laid him on me. It's embarrassing to watch, because I was out of my mind. What I mean is that there is this intoxicating, euphoric, relieving, jumbled up flood of emotions in that moment. Everything is incomprehensible and inexplicable. I was moving my head from side to side and making a ton of wailing noises and saying, "Oh, my baby!" Like, it's hilarious and just crazy. In moments like these, you are stripped down (literally) to your most vulnerable, raw self. I will never experience that moment of wild bliss ever again.

I'm not having any more babies. But sometimes I think I want to.

What Would Happen If I Snuck Back On the Scene?

I'm done with this.

I was.

But sometimes I'm not. 

Every once in a while, I want to say a thing. 

Just a thought that comes to me that I want to put out into the ether.

Last night, lying next to my husband, enveloped by his freckled arm, I thought: I'm so glad all those other possibilities didn't work out. 

A Time to Say Goodbye

To every thing there is a season, and a time to every purpose under the heaven:

A time to be born, and a time to die; a time to plant, and a time to pluck up that which 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 together; a time to embrace, and a time to refrain from embracing;

A time to get, and a time to lose; a time to keep, and a time to cast away;

A time to rend, 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

I feel like I should provide some official closure for this, my project of 15 years. After this long, I feel like some sort of formality is due, rather than just leaving things hanging in perpetuity.

I started this blog when I was 23 years old, having just graduated from college (yes, it took me 5 years to graduate with a double major and a semester abroad). I'm ending it as an almost 39-year-old married mother of two. Complete with a PhD, a career in academia and a mortgage. 

It's been a long journey. There's a part of me that doesn't want to end this, but there's a part of me that also knows when it's time to say goodbye. It's not cutting my losses so much as it is knowing that this blog has fulfilled its purpose for a particular time during a particular season of my life. 

Right now, I'm at the kitchen table, trying to overcome a sense of inertia to prepare syllabi to be ready to get back to the grind next month after (a second) maternity leave. That's a far cry from, I don't know, analyzing why I broke up with my first boyfriend. 

I know I'm the same person I was back then. But I also know that I'm not. 

I'm not going to erase this blog. It will remain in the ether. An artifact. An account of my existence that I'll return to from time to time. Will my grandchildren care? Grandma was so weird, oh my God. Will English even be their predominant language? 

What an old person thing to do. To care about what your nonexistent grandchildren would think about you.

I will leave you with a snapshot of me surrounded by what matters most to me at this point in my life. Thank you for joining me on this journey.

The Reason(s) I Haven't Posted Lately

Sigh...I keep going back and forth over whether I should just give up the blogging ghost. Should I try to keep it alive? Recognize that it's served its purpose and let it go? I dunno. There's a part of me that will always want to return to it, I suppose. It just won't be regularly. And that will have to be okay (for all 2 of my remaining faithful readers). 

So, I gave birth. Again. About a month and a half ago. This time around was wild. I mean, thank God everything went well. I don't mean anything negative happened. I just mean that it was...let me try to explain without going into all the gory details. Remember, I was induced. Basically, I was administered some agents to kickstart the process. Once I reached the halfway point, let's say, my water was broken for me. And less than two hours after that was done, buddy was born. Now, if you've never given birth, you might be thinking, well, that seems reasonable. Let me try to put things in perspective for you. Last time, I went into labor on my own and reached the hospital at that same halfway point. Seven hours later, my first little buddy was born. What I'm trying to say is this: what built up over a seven-hour period the first time was condensed into a two-hour period the second time. Like I said, it was wild. 

What was funny (in retrospect) is that the doctor thought he was going to just, er, check to see how things were going, and I was basically like, naw, playa, the baby is coming, I have to push NOW. And homeboy had to deliver little bud with one hand because he didn't have time to put a glove on the other hand. 

Here he is, a month and a half later:

Big bro is in LOVE. We have to tell him (constantly) not to love little bro too roughly.

Why did we name them with the same first initial? We'll be calling them each other's names from here on out, I guess. And I am outnumbered for life. Because we're done. Us four and no more.

The Second Time Around

This is probably going to be the last time I blog before our second little buddy gets here. 

Long story short, I'm being admitted to the hospital tomorrow night and being induced on Monday moring. Everything's fine. It's just that I have high blood pressure, am on medication to control it, and one of the known side effects of the meds that it tends to make the baby small. So, hypertension + being on meds + small baby = we're gonna induce you. It's really not a big deal. Women get their labor induced for all kinds of reasons all the time. At first I was bummed because I wanted to be able to go into labor on my own, but it's for my health and the baby's health, and that's the most important thing. 

A bit of really good news...the hospital is going to make an exception for me and allow our doula to be present! It was not what I was expecting at all, and I truly praise God that something that really meant a lot to me is possible for this birth as well.

I feel like I haven't quite had time to process it all. We're in this weird netherworld of having everything prepared but still not quite feeling prepared. 

I also feel this inexplicable sadness over my two year old not being the only child anymore. We always planned to give him a sibling, but now that that reality is practically here, it's almost like I don't know how to feel about it. 

Even more inexplicably, I feel another type of sadness about this being our last child. Like, this is the last time in my life I will experience pregnancy and giving birth. I'm not saying that my husband and I aren't in agreement that two is enough for our family. We totally are. It's just the simple idea of something being the end of a certain season of your life.