The _______ Life of Brent and Erika

 Preface: This post has taken me a year to write. I'm not even sure exactly when all the edits happened. I started writing on Valentine's day, and then 2020 unfolded from there. This is a birth story, but also a 2020 story, because how could it not be? I'll try to make it clear when there's been a time jump. Here we go!  *** It is Valentine’s Day; I am sitting at my work computer and pumping while my husband and kids play with their cousins since I’m preparing to throw a party for other couples. It seemed too soon to leave our newest babe with a sitter, so here (and there) we all are. It seems as good a time as any to start writing out Alice’s birth story.  This pregnancy was a long one, because I really feel like it started in November of 2018. Back then, I found myself unexpectedly pregnant, a phrase it’s weird to even type because when you experience 7 years of infertility, unplanned pregnancy just doesn’t seem like it will ever be part of your story. Yet, there I wa...

I'm pretty sure no one reads this blog, so it won't be a surprise to anyone that it's taken me longer to do an update than I meant it to. But I do kind of want to check in at least monthly to see how my year of no fast food is going. Right now I'd say it's going...okay. I did really well the month of June. I think I ate fast food on six occasions: 1. Right before my sister's play, which was allowed because it was date night but we were late. 2. The night before Father's Day, because that's where my father-in-law wanted to go for dinner. 3. & 4. Brent and the boys brought me lunch twice. 5. While visiting my sister-in-law and looking at her new house, we bought everyone lunch. 6. On the way to my parents' house, we got food because I'd just had surgery and couldn't cook. The last week of June, I made an appointment with a surgeon to talk about my pesky gallbladder. It hasn't been giving me a ton of grief, but since Felix was ...

I turned 33 on Saturday, which seems to me to be a perfectly fine age. Approaching my birthday, I've had a lot of thoughts swirling in my head and if I don't write them down they'll get lost in my busy life and busier brain, and I don't want to lose them. About a month ago I read two things that are still bouncing around my brain. First, I listened to The Year of Less  by Cait Flanders. It's a memoir documenting Cait's experiment going a year without buying anything other than necessities (food, cleaning products when they run out, etc.). That experiment is interesting, but honestly the book becomes more about coping mechanisms. Before the book Cait quit drinking and changed her diet to lose weight; during the book she ends up going through some fairly significant family troubles, and finds herself unable to turn to drink, food, or shopping to dull the pain, so she turns to Netflix. And discovers that is also unhealthy, so she turns to friends. It's really...

It is 6:02 AM, and by a cruel trick of the universe I cannot get back to sleep. Sometimes, in those times when I should be sleeping but my brain can’t turn off, I think of all the things I don’t want to forget. I don’t want to forget web team meeting at 12:00 today. I don’t want to forget to buy better picture-hanging nails. But most pressing this morning was this: I don’t want to forget the details of Felix’s birth. And so here’s the story that I wasn’t wrong in thinking it would take me four months to write. Here’s Felix’s birth story. As I wrote in my last post, this pregnancy was hard for me. Physically, it was so challenging, but towards the end it was really mentally tough. Because I was due at the end of December, I wasn’t even sure what year this baby would be born, and for some reason that was really hard. I didn’t know what to plan for. Some time in November, our families kept asking us when we thought would be a good time for family Christm...

Surprise! It's been forever since I've blogged. Oh, well. This blog serves as the place where, when I'm having a moment of insomnia, I can come to and frantically type out a bunch of things I want to remember. So, since I've hardly documented it at all, here are some things about my second (or, rather, fourth) pregnancy. I had a miscarriage over a year ago. It was so early in the pregnancy, I almost feel guilty even calling it a miscarriage, because I feel like there is so much pain and heartbreak and medical drama wrapped up in that word. I'll call it what it actually was: a chemical pregnancy. It was more mentally hard than physically (because when you miscarry at 5 weeks, it's basically just a really heavy period), and felt like yet another punch to the gut in my reproductive life (you thought it might be easier the second time around? Think again!). But at that point, we hadn't even been trying to get pregnant for a year; we've kind of accepted t...

Does anybody blog anymore? Clearly I don't, at least not really. I sort of micro-blog on Facebook and Instagram if that's even a word that anybody uses anymore. This short-form memory snatching has its benefits, but there are aspects of my memory-keeping that just beg for something longer. Right now my baby is sleeping, and though there are dishes to do and rooms to clean, I'm sitting here instead. There are things about motherhood that I find amazing and beautiful, and there are days that I am terrified I will forget them all. The way Calvin's knees carried soft bruises in the weeks that he first learned to crawl; the way his knees now carry perpetual scrapes because his new-found run just isn't as graceful as he'd hope. The way he lights up when I come into a room. The way he pretends to sleep just to be funny (who taught him that?!?). The way he is so determined to snuggle Brent in bed that he nearly forces Brent out. Will I remember that he eats hummus ...

Growing up, my mom was diligent in creating baby books for all of her children, a documentation of those early moments and years with narration and pictures in order to help us see where we came from. I loved (and still love) to look at those baby books, even the books for my siblings, because they were fun and adorable and also represented some of the most important stories in our family. Inside one of my brother's baby books (Alex, perhaps?), there is a picture of my mom that I love. She's dressed in a hospital gown, laying on her back in a slightly reclined bed. She's smiling, and she's tired, and running down her face are large, dark mascara trails. She looks so happy, but so spent. It's the picture that always comes to mind when I think about birth, a single image that proclaims it for what it is: labor. Real, true, exhausting work, but so rewarding you just can't believe it. For so long I've wanted that picture of myself, that picture that shows ho...

I'm in the process of writing Calvin's birth story (and by in the process I mean I started it when he was about 4 days old and haven't returned to it since...), but in the meantime here's a holiday gift for you: a recipe for my favorite side dish. It shouldn't be a secret to you that the most delicious way to eat nearly any vegetable is roasted. Roasting is the way I've seen asparagus-haters turned into asparagus-likers (love is still probably too strong a word...), and one of the only ways I'll eat broccoli. Roasted potatoes are hard to mess up, and over the past few years I've honed in on my favorite way to season them. I call them Scarborough Fair Potatoes, and they're the best. You're welcome. Scarborough Fair Potatoes Ingredients: 4 or five red potatoes, cubed 1/2 an onion (I prefer white or Vidalia sweet, but I suppose any will do), sliced 1/2 lb whole green beans (fresh or frozen; if you use canned and this recipe is disgusting, d...

It's been a while since I've posted, and a lot can change in 6 months. It seems like it's time! Sometimes, you give up hope on something. You make peace with it. You save your money, plan for a future when you'll be able to achieve your goals with medicine or adoption, and you accept your life as it is. You hear stories of miracles, and you still believe in them, but you acknowledge that miracles come in lots of different shapes, sizes, and timings, and you can wait for your own miracle. Sometimes that happens. You throw yourself into work, which is easy to do since you're opening a new gallery, hanging your first show and working way more hours than you ought to. And then you get called to be the primary president. And then you take a pregnancy test because you had a dream. And you discover it's good news on all fronts. And you still can't believe your life. Okay, clearly we're not talking about you; we're talking about me. I am 14 weeks pre...