Oh, Doug

Doug has seriously been the best husband in the world this whole time.  He’s the one keeping the house clean, me in non-smelly pajamas, our house stocked with food that sounds good to me.  He doesn’t complain that I don’t want to leave the house to socialize, when I wake him up in the middle of the night by crunching on crackers or when I really could just be nicer to him.  I could not have asked for a more attentive husband and I’m so incredibly grateful to him.

He’s also really into this whole baby thing.

When we came back from the first appointment, Doug put the iPod on my belly and played Three Dog Night’s “Joy to The World” as homage to The Big Chill.  After the song was over, he cupped his hands around his mouth, put them against my belly and said, “Baby…this is your Daddy.”  It was the sweetest thing I had ever witnessed.  I didn’t have the heart to tell him that the baby didn’t have ears yet.

Now we’re at 18 weeks and we’re starting to discuss our fears…since things are beginning to get real.  As in tummy-is-showing-and-people-are-patting-it real.  While my fears are more sensible (like not effing up my kid so that they’ll allow me to be an involved grandparent, or not ever finding myself wishing for my old life back), Doug’s fears are a little more…difficult to qualify.  While he does worry about the logical – paying for childcare, being a good Papa, etc. – he’s also terrified (safe to say) about pulling the wool over our children’s eyes by playing Santa.  We actually stayed up in bed discussing this the other night.   How many bites of the cookie does he eat?  How will we know when the children are asleep?  He’s really frigging anxious.  I keep reminding him that he’s so incredibly creative he’ll be the best Santa ever, and ps, I’m also going to be there to lend a hand.  To no avail.  He’s really sweating bullets.

His other big fear is that at one point, he’ll lose his temper with our child and scream at s/he.  That the child will look at him and go, “Is that how you treat your social work kids?”  And he’ll have to recant.  Or worse, he’ll say something like, ”I’m your effing father, I can treat you however I want.”  Knowing how I react when Doug puts on his social-worker-we’re-not-playing-anymore voice, I don’t think he has ANYTHING to worry about.  If anyone else has heard it, you understand, we know when this man means business.  Plus, let’s be honest, we’ll both make some heavy mistakes, but here’s hoping we won’t murder anyone.

Speaking of his job, Doug was talking the other night about work and he said that he has gradually come to this realization that for the rest of his life, he’s going to have 3 roles: Husband, Father and Social Worker.  It was a pretty neat thought to grasp, knowing exactly what one’s goals are for the rest of one’s life.  I kind of bubbled up with pride a little, knowing that while my life is barely figured out, I have this wonderful man in my world who knows the directions he’s taking and feels pretty darn good about them.  

I don’t know if you knew it, but Doug is pretty spectacular.

Wanna see some new pictures?  Lovelovelove.

16 weeks

I'm feeling so much better and not nearly as nauseas.  It's amazing.  I still have to eat immediately upon getting up in the morning, but gosh.  I could eat anything...except chicken.  Burph.

17 weeks

May or may not be partially due to some Christmas cookie overindulgence.

This is also the week that I felt the first little flutter kick.  :)