Tomorrow I head out to the hinterlands of Massachusetts for Thanksgiving. I am looking forward to it in the sense that it will be a nice change of scenery, and I get to see pretty much all of my relatives in one go. Part of me is very much looking forward to the attention I’ll get as the preggo in the room, and part of me finds that kind of intimidating. I find I still deflect a lot – when people ask about the pregnancy, I still move off of the subject more quickly than I want to because I’m just convinced people are being polite and aren’t really interested (which I’m sure is the case at least some of the time). I have not resolved my feelings about being public about all this – I still feel very conflicted when dealing with the pregnancy vs. other people. And yet (Ugly Tunafish Sandwich Moment coming) I still get jealous when married friends announce their pregnancies on Facebook and get pages of congratulations, even though I denied myself this by not mentioning it on Facebook. So there’s this endless conflict in me where I want to be private, and at the same time I do really get a kick out of whatever positive attention I get. And then I worry that since I may only do this once, I’m not allowing myself to celebrate enough. But at what point does my celebrating get annoying to other people? At what point do I become that pregnant woman who always drove me nuts before? I don’t want to be that woman. So for now I’ve sacrificed opportunities for celebration in order to not annoy people. I don’t really know if that’s in my best interests or not, or if I will come to regret this decision later.
Had lunch with a woman in her late eighties yesterday who wanted to take me out because she was excited about my “news”. She never had kids of her own and said she always wanted to, but it just never happened. I often wonder how many infertile women of her era had some minor issue that today could be fixed with just one round of Clomid. It makes me sad to think her generation missed out on so many of our technological advances. I was walking the dog today and thinking about my aunt and my mother – both born in the early 40s – and though both had two children and didn’t have fertility issues, still had to deal with the dogma of their times; being teenagers in the 50s, young mothers in the 60s and 70s when everything was changing. How neither of them, really, got to do what they wanted in their lives. How dependent both were on men and male attention and approval. My aunt stayed married; my mother didn’t, and had to struggle with single motherhood at a time when women couldn’t even get a car loan without a male cosigner. What a pain in the ass! I absolutely give her all kudos imaginable for surviving in those tougher times, especially when society was so much crueler and more judgmental of women. I don’t take my freedom for granted one moment of any day, believe you me.
Continuing to read the “Love & Logic” book. Another issue that came up that I have questions about is the idea of punishing a kid for doing something wrong without giving any warnings or explanations. The logic behind this is, “well, in the real world you don’t get second chances.” Which is absolutely true. But is it ok to punish a kid if he didn’t know something was wrong because it hadn’t come up yet? If he was just experimenting or curious? Should he just have “known better”? Last night Sally peed on the couch. I don’t know why she did this – she’s never done it before – and all I could think to do was say “no” a bunch of times, let her know I was “displeased” and then not let her back on the couch. Sometimes she gets discombobulated when she gets back from the kennel, and she has been known to have the occasional accident. I genuinely don’t think she does it on purpose to be bad or make a point. She’s just old and when I didn’t respond to her barking to be let down (I thought she just wanted to be petted), she peed. I decided to treat it like an accident. I don’t know if this was the right thing to do or not. So, if your kid does something because you didn’t communicate at that moment and he just didn’t know what else to do, do you punish him, or do you understand that it was an accident? I guess this is one of those case by case/age appropriate situations, in which at a certain point your kid does in fact know better and is just acting out or being naughty. But when they’re really little and they don’t know better…? Ah, so many questions.
So tomorrow I get to deal with the fun of Thanksgiving travel via LAX. I am not terribly worried about the physical part – I’ll reserve all my worry for my New Year’s trip to North Carolina – but I do expect it to be “demanding”. I’m going to try to be good to myself, eat well, drink lots of water, and get up and walk around the plane. I booked all aisle seats for just this purpose. I wish everyone a Happy Thanksgiving!
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