Nasc & Nat

1. There's a yellow cake baking in the oven. I'm using a bundt pan and once it cools, I'm going to drizzle it with chocolate glaze. And then I'm going to get a chunk of it accompanied with a cold, tall glass of milk.

2. I came home from work to find my husband assembling our baby's swing. So, once he was done, of course, I had to do this:

3. I couldn't even get past the first half of Moana without having a meltdown. 

4. Zoning out more often than normal, I keep thinking about how weird it is that I married P, a guy I had barely spoken to before we had coffee that one time, and then we were engaged 8 months after that. It's weird that we've only been married for 2 years, and now I'm carrying his child. I'm not saying I feel like I don't know him or anything. I'm just saying, one day, he was this unknown guy in a hoodie, and the next, he's my baby daddy. It's weird how quickly things can change. Like, one day I was a student in Georgia worrying about comps, and the next I'm a professor in Kentucky with a soccer ball belly and a really Irish last name.

5. P and I read Baby J a story in Spanish. He can hear now and will be able to recognize our voices when he enters the world. We read him Huevos verdes con jamón, the Spanish version of Green Eggs and Ham, alternating pages. (Spoiler alert: Sam-I-Am's hispanophone alter ego is Juan Ramón. They had to make it rhyme with "jamón.") I really think little boy listened and liked it because after we finished, he started moving around like crazy. Like maybe he wanted to hear another. 

6. I'm going to get another piece of cake.

Gentle Man

A gentle man makes me cry. He's reserved, unassuming. He's soulful, creative. I think some people mistake his quietness for passivity. But I know the passion. The wells of empathy that ache. We all come with a backstory.

I came downstairs, ready for work, and he pulled out French toast kept warming in the oven. Vanilla caramel tea with the right amounts of sugar and milk were already in my to-go cup. These small things. They're scribbled messages like the ones I used to leave him propped up on the computer when he taught a class in the same room right after me. I am grateful. I appreciate you. I do not take you for granted. I want to take care of you.

The crib that my father-in-law told us he'd buy arrived. It's only a big box in our living room now, but what it's for is what made me cry. It's for our baby. We put a crib on our registry because we need it for our baby. Because he will need a place to sleep. Those are things I know, logically. But the big box in our living room is tangible. Physical. Bodily. Like the little boy inside me. My gentle man, comforting. Smiling his shy, knowing smile.

A couple invited us over for dinner last night. A kind professor on my hall whose gray hair belies her girlish face, married to a gentle man, also a professor, who has the same name and is the same kind as my husband. Their brown, curly haired, dimpled daughter. It was an open adoption, she tells me. The one thought that moved me to tears: How does a mother say goodbye?

I learned about the former wife at a previously attended dinner party. An off-handed comment. I learned that the former wife died when the kind professor took a short walk down the hall and chatted with me for a while. Her husband, the gentle man like mine, is also a poet, like her. An accomplished one. The book he published was a part of processing his grief, she said.

The former wife was mentioned again last night after dinner. No details, but a sad story, I surmised. When my body got up this morning at 6, unable to sleep any longer, I looked up the gentle man's work. After reading just one poem, I knew. Even though he didn't give explicit details, I didn't need them. I knew. I knew what happened to the former wife and at least a piece of why. And, once again, I cried.

Now I understand a part of his quiet passion, of his wells of empathy. When he smiles the same shy, knowing smile my husband does, I understand a part of the ache. We all come with a backstory.

The Tipping Point

That's the title of a book by one of my past writerly crushes, Malcolm Gladwell. I even emailed him once and he wrote me back. It made my entire life.

So, I'm getting to the point where certain articles of clothing I have that aren't maternity wear but could still work as maternity wear are beginning not to work as maternity wear anymore.

So, yeah. I have the feeling that this is the last week or so I'll be able to wear this non-maternity dress to work.

I'm 100% knocked up now. Not like I wasn't before, but this week it's just straight up girl, you pregnant. My walks to and from work aren't as brisk, but I'm still loving it and I guess enjoying my still relatively unlimited mobility.

The only area where my mobility is starting to be limited is bending down. Is this the bending down tipping point?

I have a nice hand rest while I'm teaching now. I just kind of interlace my fingers and just prop my hands up on my belly while I'm explaining the nuances of the progressive tenses or what have you. It's kind of nice.

What's not nice? Seeing those numbers on the scale. Every time I dare get on the blasted scale, as my students would say, I'm shook.

Gummy bears and brownies. Are they healthy? Nah. Shall they be consumed tonight? You better believe it. And no, I'm not "craving" them. As if I have some sort of inexplicable primal desire for them. Ain't even gonna lie. I just like brownies and gummy bears and now I have a pretty solid excuse to stuff my face with them.