Tooooo sleepy to title.

The Partridge Family Returns

As we are still child-free, I'm scraping the bottom of the content bucket once again. This will all end on Sunday morning, when we will be driving to Hinckley for a kid handoff. I like that we're meeting at Hinckley...it makes it feel like a hostage exchange. I'm hoping to meet Marj and Neil in Tobies' busy parking lot, hand them a briefcase stuffed with $20s, and then hurry the kids from their car to mine. Surely I can count on a hawk-eyed trucker to look up from his chicken fried steak and alert the Feds that a possible deal is going down.

Tales reaching us from Duluth-town are spotty, but it appears that the twins are quite taken with the northern environs. I have to be honest: I'm a little jealous. They get to hang out all week, go swimming, go to the zoo, lounge. All the awesome things I did up there before we had kids. Oh cruel switch of fate. In the meantime, I get to go to work and spend my free time missing them. Cruel indeed.

Let's see...what else...umm....hhhrrmmm...I can discuss my day! I worked at my place of work during the alloted time. I built lots of flashy flash content, which is riveting while I work on it but just doesn't leap off the page now when I write about it. I had an everything bagel in the morning. With cream cheese.

Okay, I'm giving up.

What did I ever write about before kids?

Day one hundred and ninety four.

Goats!

It's 11:19. I'm out of words. Having the girls in Duluth has dried up my well of zany kid anecdotes, and I think a third straight post about miscarriages would be cruelly macabre.

Unable to write either about having kids or not having them, then, I'm forced to take the night off. The Stalkers bailed me out by sending some entertaining shots from Island Lake and the Duluth Zoo.

Day one hundred and ninety three.

Oh. My. God. Look. At. That. Size. Difference.

(I. Find. It. Charming. To. Emphasize. Points. This. Way.)

Lily, in happier times when she still had her entire right arm.

Rumor has it, Abby was in love with the goats. Who doesn't love goats??

Lily powered cars go 120 mpg (miles per "gah")

"But I want a goat NOW!"

"Absolutely, Veruca, first thing in the morning."

Tales from the 8 percent.

After rereading my overwrought entry from yesterday, I'm quite eager to shake off the gloom. First, some facts from the last week:

Jen did in fact go to the doctor on Friday to find that our 10 week old little guy (yeah, we'd been calling him a he) was in fact no longer going to be any longer. After some time, we both came to the realization that we were desperate to go through with our trip to Duluth over the weekend; maybe not to put our minds off of it so much as to try and outrun some grief. Jen, however, informed me that her doctor had told her not to go.

"But I still really want to go," she said. "It would be really nice to be up there right now."

I replied instantly. "I hate doctors. They're dumb. Let's hit the road."

And hit the road we did. The car was packed, the girls were strapped in. We had barely broken the Blaine barrier when Marj called us to inform us that she had contacted a couple medical professionals, gleaned some advice, and we were in no way to attempt the drive or else we would have to find someplace else to stay when we got there. Gotta love mothers.

On our way back home, Jen came clean and told me that her doctor had informed her no less than five times (five times!!) that she was not to be travelling or going to Duluth or existing without easy access to a hospital. She had not, however, given Jen any orders on not misleading her husband.

In a show of ridiculous sympathy and generosity, Marj came down on Saturday to help out during the weekend, and then just took the kids outright on Monday when she went back north. So we've been kidless this week, at once a great blessing as well as a gnawing loss. But we're enormously grateful to our fantastic mother and father/-inlaws for snatching our kids away and letting us deal with all this by ourselves.

I would be remiss, as well, if I didn't say "thank you" as well to all our friends and family who have written and called to wish us well (and to Katy, the flowers are beautiful).

Having said all that, I'd like to point out some Fun Facts about miscarriages that you may not know. We didn't know anything about this until it happened to us, so I'd be tickled to save somebody else the embarrasment. Here's what I've learned:

- Clinical miscarriages occur in about 8% of pregnancies. This differs greatly from the 89% that many people seem to be quoting me in an effort to make me feel better, god bless 'em.

- Despite that 8% figure, everyone you've ever known has had a miscarriage.

- Our kind of miscarriage is technically called a "spontaneous abortion", which dovetails nicely with my new year's resolution to be more spontaneous. Check!

- People have it all backwards about miscarriages. They can be a lot of fun! You get to go to Walgreens! You get to try and improvise a non-toxic reply when the cashier asks how your day is going! You get to use a heating pad in August! Plus there's all that super freetime you get if you still have to wait to pass the fetus! Suck it, Wisconsin Dells!

- If you are driving somewhere on an errand while waiting for the inevitable spontaneous abortion to happen, and you catch yourself absent-mindedly drumming your fingers along to a new Weezer song on the radio, you will absolutely feel terrible about yourself for it. And I kinda hate Weezer now, too.

- There is a very finite amount of things you can say to your spouse about what is happening.

- I think a lot of marketing could be done to cater to people who are spending the weekend having a miscarriage. Walgreens could offer half-off all issues of People, extra absorbent pads, and Hershey's chocolates. Papa Murphy's has had worse ideas than a "Spontaneous Abortion Meal Deal" - Two large pizzas and a 2-liter of mello yellow.

- Reading up about ectopic pregnancies on Wikipedia is almost enough to make you feel better.

That's about all the wisdom I can muster for the night. Despite that much of this sounds depressing, we know we're incredibly lucky for the two beautiful children we have, and largely because of that fact, we are doing okay.

Day one hundred and ninety two.

Life is absurd, so why not end with a picture of a turkey? I was leaving work late yesterday, and this little fella was pecking furiously at his reflection. He was so irate, I was a little concerned that he would peck my achilles tendon off if I made a break for it. I made it out unscathed.

Phone or Door?

I passed one of the least pleasant times of my life on Friday waiting for the phone to ring or the door to open. I agonized as the minutes dragged on. I was exhausted, so I tried to nap on the couch, but gave up after my thirty ninth futile attempt at finding a comfortable position.

The phone would ring. Sure enough, any moment that phone would ring.

I turned the tv on. I turned it right back off.

The girls had just gone down for an overdue and well-earned nap, and still I considered getting them up, two perfectly designed distractions. I decided two tired and cranky kids would be worse than no distractions, so set my mind to pacing. Pacing. I've never really been a pacer, but on Friday I did my fair share of laps around the dining room table, on which rested a mostly-checked-off list of things to pack for our weekend in Duluth. I'd already packed. Packing was supposed to take a long time, supposed to keep my mind off the door or the phone, but we were planning a short weekend; I only had to stuff a few items in a bag and I was finished.

A car pulled to a stop outside. My heart exploded. I looked out and saw it was only our neighbor, Carolyn. I watched her corral their dog into the house, watching for as long as I could until her door slammed shut.

I went back to pacing.

I've known Jen for a long time, so I knew very well what she would do. We hadn't discussed it previously, but I knew anyway. She'd never be able to keep me waiting with good news, so she'd call right away. Conversely, she would not dream of calling me with bad news. So that's where the door came in. Phone or door.

Not sure if I'd done everything I could, I rechecked our packing list. I'd done everything I could. I spent a moment trying to picture myself at the Stalker's house, imagine myself standing in freezing cold water on the point. Even better, I imagined myself in that fraction of a second after jumping off their dock, that hanging in midair, in disbelieving suspension as I watched the lake come up to meet me. Finer moments in life are hard to come by. Yet, this thought brought nothing for me.

Back on the couch, I remembered how this had all started. It always starts as nothing before it turns into something.

"I'm spotting," Jen told me. This was on Monday.

Somehow I could sense her unease from outside the bathroom, as if the sound of the flush itself sounded concerned. I responded in some half-assed manner that strained to be either sympathetic or confident but ended up neither.

"It happened with the twins, when we were in Seattle, so I'm sure it's nothing," she said, covering for my inadequacies.

"Yeah," I responded. "It must be just a normal thing for you. I bet it goes away in a bit."

It didn't go away. It didn't lessen; quite the opposite. By Thursday, I would give her a look every time she came out of the bathroom.

"It's the same."

(pause)

"A little worse."

We hugged. The worse it got, the fewer words we shared about it.

The phone still hadn't rung yet, which was strange. All I needed was to hear that damn thing ring, and I would know everything would be okay, I'd know everyone was healthy, I'd know we'd still need a minivan in March and a new nursery and all the insanities of a third kid. If it didn't ring, if Jen came home without calling, that would all be gone.

How does something start to go wrong? I was back on the couch, lying again, and I'd started to actually find my mind letting sleep in around the corners. Good god, this appointment was taking forever. I looked out our window to see a hundred maple leaves fluttering in the breeze. A hundred green maple leaves, perfect shapes in every way.

I slept for a bit. It wasn't long until I woke at the sound of the door opening.

Day one ninety one.

The walking tongue.

Sunflower, revisited with pollinator. Being allergic, I risked my very life to get this shot. Oh yes.

Fleet foot floating finely.

They are wobbly. They are fleeting. But Abby has begun taking some very strong first steps.

We've sent the wee Blonde One back and forth between us a bunch of times now, and her little waddling gait is starting to take shape. She's showing balance. She's flirting with poise. She even stopped a couple times, stood, then restarted walking.

I can imagine that it will only be a couple weeks or so until she finds some firm footing and starts making her way around the house.

The fear from the dog is palpable. The cat is nonplussed. We're ecstatic, of course.

Day one hundred and ninety.

Lilian flushing out the wildlife.

La Lengua.

Feeling blah.

I'm feeling rather ill right now. Illness has come to mean a much different thing than when I was a kid. When I get sick now, it's a strange, "blah" thing that just makes me want to sleep for days and not do anything at all. And I get seriously achy. My upper back is throbbing right now. And I can't control my temperature...I'm freezing one second and sweating the next. I feel like a gecko.

This is my continued excuse for not writing much. My apologies. This morning, Jon and Suze came by and had pastries and coffee. They brought their new dog Sadie, a very cute dog who ran circles around Olly. Our staid beagle dealt with the puppy excitement for a few minutes, then curled up on the bench, choosing to remain clear of the fray.

Abby got some frosting stuck in her hair, and Sadie tried to eat her head, in a cute puppy way.

Day one hundred and eighty nine.

Brownie.

Blondie.

Footie.

Sadie.