Joy

This morning as I lay on the examination table, just as I had a fistful of clear goop smeared on my belly, I realized I didn't have my cellphone.

"Wait a second," I said, "is it okay if I record this for my husband?"

The nurse-midwife smiled and got my purse for me, and I hit "record" as I listened to my baby's heartbeat for the first time.

What a beautiful hello, this first tangible contact with my baby's existence, his life.

As little as a week before getting a positive test I would have told you I'd be more than happy to get pregnant again at any time, and that was true. So I felt guilty and a little confused when my first emotional reaction to finding out was so ... mixed. Weirdly, I found myself wishing that it had come just one month later. I can't give you a good reason why. Just hormones, I guess.

But walking out of the midwife center into the sunny morning, my heart was shining and I couldn't stop smiling, and I felt so, so grateful for this new little life, for our growing family.

Keith took Michael with him to adoration this morning and was on the bus when I sent the sound file of the heartbeat. He texted me back to say Michael smiled when he heard it.

When I met them at the Oratory I was struck by how much of a baby Michael still is, even though he turned 13 months yesterday, even though he is not a "little baby" as I still so often call him. I know that by the time his sibling arrives he won't be a baby anymore. He'll be a toddler. So while this pregnancy is flying by of its own accord, I wouldn't rush it, or him, or his sibling, not for anything.

How beautiful God's timing is. How much He has given us.

Roots

I have some joyful news that I've been waiting to share until it was absolutely, signature-on-paper certain. And now that it is, as of yesterday morning, I finally feel comfortable talking about it on the internet.

Keith has a job. In Pittsburgh.

YAY.

It's going to be a craaaazy few months, because the job starts in July, which means he has to finish writing and defend his dissertation by then. But. We are staying in Pittsburgh. Praise God.

I have just finished reading this book--and again, I cannot recommend it too highly for all you fellow homemakers--and there is a quote in it from Simone Weil (who is one of my favorites). I just spent a lot of time trying to find it in the book, and I can't for the life of me, but I did find it online:

"To be rooted is perhaps the most important and least recognized need of the human soul."

It has been such an anxious waiting, not knowing whether or not we'd be able to stay here. Here, where our families and friends are; here, where we have established our roots. So while this job may not be perfect, it is a huge blessing.



We are hoping, now, to buy a house by the end of the year. The interest rates and real estate prices in Pittsburgh right now are such that we wouldn't be paying a huge amount more in taxes and on a mortgage than we are in rent. We got a little overexcited and started looking at houses already before realizing that we couldn't exactly afford a downpayment pr get a mortgage until after Keith starts work. :-P But not before we fell in absolute love with a house.

It was a beautiful stone house north of the city, close enough for Keith to commute but also nearer our parents. It had a beautiful backyard to send kids out in, a flagstone patio, and doors that opened up top. It had wooden floors--some of which were covered by ugly carpets, but that's easily remedied--a working fireplace, five bedrooms, a big rambling and slightly creepy basement, plenty of closet space (especially considering the house was an older one), and a built-in china cabinet in the dining room. It was a bit dated; but who doesn't love the idea of adopting a house in need of a little love and making it their own, their home?

Keith can fall in love with a house almost instantly. It takes me a little longer. I get sad about the thought of leaving our apartment and our current little neighborhood; change overall is hard for me, and I find it difficult to initially picture any particular house as ours, filled with our things and molded to our lives. A house has to inhabit my imagination for a bit before I love it.

Well, when we realized we wouldn't be able to afford this house until August--and that it was highly unlikely it would still be on the market by then--Keith was able to resign himself to that and detach from it.

But me? I pictured my owl cookie jar on the counter in the kitchen. I imagined which bedroom would be our library, and how the shelves would be arranged. I pictured myself doing laundry in the exciting basement, while toddler-Michael had adventures in the dark corners. And I loved that house more with each image that flickered unbidden through my mind. Maybe it would still be around come summer.

And then on Wednesday the listing was removed, and our real estate agent told us someone had made an offer on it.

And while Keith is okay with that, I am still really, really sad. In my mind that house had started to become our home; I have nothing to replace it with, and when I imagine us living in a house, those are still the images that come to mind.

Well, I am trying to be patient. Before the house was sold (so far as we know) I prayed, Lord, if not this house, then please have a better one in store for us! ;) So, we will see.

On the writing front ...

Today I met with one of the members of my manuscript committee. (I have another meeting with the chair of my committee on Thursday.) It was immensely helpful. She helped me see certain patterns that I tend to fall into with my stories, some of which I had almost-sort-of realized by myself before; but there's something about an outside voice pointing things out that can make things so much clearer.

We talked lightheartedly about the possibility of Baby coming early and complicating things, and she said something about my being able to wrap this thesis up in two weeks. I don't think that's possible, especially considering the essays I need to grade and the ten page paper I have to draft (both by next week), but ... perhaps I could conceivably have this thing ready for binding and committee signatures by the end of the month? It would be nice ...

Meanwhile, I got an email from an old professor asking if I would submit something to the literary journal I used to edit in undergrad. So soon I will have another publication under my belt. Pretty awesome!

Twelve.

1. Happy fourth of July, everyone. Happy last-holiday-as-a-single-woman, self.

2. This is how I count things. In terms of holidays, of tubes of toothpaste, of how many more times a certain day of the week will come and go. (One more Sunday, two more Tuesdays.) I have five multivitamins remaining in the pill bottle. They won't last me into my marriage.

3. This weekend we have created a seating chart; started the ceremony programs; ordered place cards and favors, all of which will hopefully arrive by the end of next week, or the beginning of the next; had a trial-wedding-hair-run, in my case; filled out the paperwork for the marriage license just before the office closed.

4. This week I will pick up the marriage license on Tuesday; stop by the jewelers at some point with Keith to pick up the rings; fetch my wedding dress and veil on Wednesday.

5. Although we've had several minor mishaps, things nonetheless seem to come together. I just have to keep reminding myself that when I get stressed. I would like every moment of stress to become, instead, excitement for the day that's drawing near, so quickly and so slowly.

6. I have been busy knitting--a rehearsal dinner shawl, because I am crazy, and many many teal flowers for the tables at the reception. (See photos!) None of them have been seamed together yet, so they all have loose threads hanging from them. I need to make at least four a day to finish on time, which is about an hour's worth of work, maybe a little more. I also still have to block several shawls. More on this Wednesday.

7. Keith is growing a beard until the day of the wedding, at which point he will shave it off.

8. I just finished Alice von Hildebrand's By Love Refined: Letters to a Young Bride, and may pick up The Temperament God Gave Your Spouse again this week.

9. One of the aforementioned mishaps was that my makeup artist bailed three weeks before the wedding. I don't want to do my makeup myself, and I don't want to place that responsibility on a friend's shoulders either, so there was a mad scramble to find someone else. This is a story unto itself, but in the end I found a lovely Mary Kay lady with a devotion to St. Therese, so I feel that my favorite saint once again has stepped in and sent beautiful gifts my way.

10. Yesterday Keith and I went to dinner with some friends. Since I am currently living with my parents, this was probably the last time I'll see most of them until after the wedding.

11. The schola is, after all, singing at our wedding. Partly in Latin.

12. I've had a story accepted at the wonderful literary journal Dappled Things. And because it's getting printed after the wedding, it will be published under my married name. :)