Just the Two of Us

Today is Mike and I's first wedding anniversary.  It was a year ago today that most of our loved ones trekked from across the east coast, the islands and even Bolivia, to watch a teary-eyed couple exchange vows (2 hours after they were scheduled to begin) on the stage / alter of the Miami Beach  Botanical Gardens.  It was such a perfect day and I remember that all I wanted was for the day to continue, to remain in that moment as long as I could.  

And now, at the end of our newliwededness, I find myself in awe of our first year as man and wife.  I am 8 months pregnant!  We live in a beautiful apartment in Pompano of all places.  I finally got the bedroom furniture I'd been talking about for our entire year and a half of engagement.  We are both gainfully employed, we live on a budget but are finally NOT broke, we have a lot of fun just sitting in our apartment going back and forth and he still manages to make me laugh, feel beautiful, smart and appreciated each and every day.  It is not your traditional fairytale but definitely my fairy tale.

This weekend, we spent a night at the Hyatt Bonaventure Resort & Spa....a last hurrah if you will, a weekend "away" for just the two of us before we begin the awesome stage ahead.  We slept in a kind size bed with no less than 20 pillows (yes, I know it is hard to believe but Mike and I don't have a king bed!  despite our obvious mass).  We ate out the whole weekend, spent  hours lounging by the pool and yes, I had pancakes!  My husband also treated me to a much needed foot treatment at the Red Door Spa at the hotel, my first spa experience and unfortunately for him, I think I'm addicted.  We came back home and topped off the day with a shopping spree for baby!  I could have bought out the store, it was all just so cute.  Mike didn't give me the chance, he pulled the cart into the check-out and started scanning items before I could scoop everything up.  Probably for the best as despite his best efforts, our tab was definitely higher than expected.

Today, as I reflect on the year we had, I am grateful.  I am happy.  And I am optimistic about our future.  I know this is the first year of many.  

Perspective

Someone emailed this to me...one of the many chains we all get. But it was good timing I think. I have periodic panic attacks about this massive responsibility that is about to come my way (8 and a half weeks to go!). But this defintiely puts things in perspective. Not to say I beleive in all of these things but, it's a reminder that there's no need to go overboard!

TO ALL THE KIDS WHO SURVIVED THE 1930's, 40's, 50's, 60's and 70's!!

First, we survived being born to mothers who smoked and/or drank while they were pregnant. They took aspirin, ate blue cheese dressing, tuna from a can and didn't get tested for diabetes.

Then after that trauma, we were put to sleep on our tummies in baby cribs covered with bright colored lead-base paints. We had no childproof lids on medicine bottles, locks on doors or cabinets and when we rode our bikes, we had baseball caps not helmets on our heads. As infants & children, we would ride in cars with no car seats, no booster seats, no seat belts, no air bags, bald tires and sometimes no brakes. Riding in the back of a pick- up truck on a warm day was always a special treat.

We drank water from the garden hose and not from a bottle. We shared one soft drink with four friends, from one bottle and no one actually died from this. We ate cupcakes, white bread, real butter and bacon. We drank Kool-Aid made with real white sugar. And, we weren't overweight. WHY? Because we were always outside playing....that's why!

We would leave home in the morning and play all day, as long as we were back when the streetlights came on. No one was able to reach us all day.. And, we were O..K. We would spend hours building our go-carts out of scraps and then ride them down the hill, only to find out we forgot the brakes. After running into the bushes a few times, we learned to solve the problem.

We did not have Playstations, Nintendo's and X-boxes. There were no video games, no 150 channels on cable, no video movies or DVD's, no surround-sound or CD's, no cell phones, no personal computers, no Internet and no chat rooms. WE HAD FRIENDS and we went outside and found them!

We fell out of trees, got cut, broke bones and teeth and there were no lawsuits from these accidents. We ate worms and mud pies made from dirt, and the worms did not live in us forever. We were given BB guns for our 10th birthdays, made up games with sticks and tennis balls and, although we were told it would happen, we did not put out very many eyes. We rode bikes or walked to a friend's house and knocked on the door or rang the bell, or just walked in and talked to them. Little League had tryouts and not everyone made the team. Those who didn't had to learn to deal with disappointment. Imagine that!! The idea of a parent bailing us out if we broke the law was unheard of. They actually sided with the law!

These generations have produced some of the best risk-takers, problem solvers and inventors ever. The past 50 years have been an explosion of innovation and new ideas. We had freedom, failure, success and responsibility, and we learned how to deal with it all. If YOU are one of them? CONGRATULATIONS!

You might want to share this with others who have had the luck to grow up as kids, before the lawyers and the government regulated so much of our lives for our own good. While you are at it, forward it to your kids so they will know how brave and lucky their parents were.

Kind of makes you want to run through the house with scissors, doesn't it?

Working at an organization that works with and for people with intellectual disabilities is an interesting sensation when you are pregnant. When I applied for my initial position at Best Buddies two years ago, I had no personal connection....I was just desperately seeking a job in Miami and thought, Special Events, why not?

In the last two years, I have learned so much about people with intellectual disabilities. I have learned that there is much more to personality than IQ and that although these people may be lower functioning than the "average" person, they may also be higher functioning in another area. They have their talents and things they can contribute to society and perhaps more importantly, conversation. They don't need to be shut down. This is a far cry from my initial thoughts on ret**ted people, a term I now know is nothing less than offensive. And although I am not always as patient with this group as I should be, I do now value them.

But, it is one thing to accept and appreciate something outside of your life and family and quite another to think about it inside those sacred walls. All of my tests have been perfect and I have had a wonderful pregnancy. And knock on wood, it will continue to be so and my baby's delivery will be complication free. But in the past two weeks, I've found myself in many conversations with my coworkers on the lives of two of our other coworkers who have intellectual disabilities. Margaret has down syndrome and Joyce, well I don't know that she has a specific condition, I think she just has a low IQ. Both of them are close to 60 and live with their mothers, who I always imagine to be somewhere near 100.

Mike and I were watching the Final Four last week and every time they zoomed in on a player's parents, I would joke that Mike and I need to start saving now so we can go watch our son play in the Final Four. I have fantasies about all of the vacations we will take across the country and the globe, exposing our baby, child, tween, teen to all that travel has to offer. I've already told Mike that we need to encourage all of our kids to go away to college because my college experience away was just so fantastic! And I've thought about whether it would be more beneficial to play the piano or the guitar. Would we be able to do all of those things, dream those big dreams, if our baby had some sort of "situation?" And what is it like to be 60, 70, 80, 90 and still worrying about whether or not your "child" can take care of herself? The thought is overwhelming.

I really don't have any feeling that my baby will have any type of challenge. He/She will be perfect - healthy, strong, smart, funny even :-) And something tells me that despite challenges, I'd probably be convinced by baby was all of those things anyway. But it does make you pray a little more, watch your diet a little more closely, not push those limits. And I think this whole chain of thought has the potential to make me better at my job...it makes everything a bit more personal. Perhaps even makes me a better advocate for a population I ignored only 2 years ago.

Itchy Belly, Swollen Feet and Sexuality

As I round the home stretch (10 weeks to go!), I find I am working harder and harder towards that inner peace and optimism that seemed to come so naturally only two weeks ago.

It's taken me a while to be able to admit this in cyberspace, but I am the unfortunate victim of what seem to be some pretty serious stretchmarks. They are bright red - like actual wounds....and span the very bottom of my belly (underneath, that part I can't really see) all the way up to the belly bottun which they frame in all it's popped out glory. They are really horrific and no matter how much I lather on the cocoa butter and the baby oil, they are only getting larger. It's sad really, I had really nice skin on my belly....my husband always pointed out how smooth it was.

I used to wear a 7 1/2 shoe....the last pair I bought was a 9....can you believe that?? And, like stretchmarks, I've heard the larger feet don't ever go back to how they were. It's a miracle people have so many kids; with all of these permanent dysfunctions it's hard to imagine feeling sexy again. The worst part of my foot situation is the swelling. I could probably manage an 8 1/2 if the width of my feet didn't double towards the end of each day. I mean, the saying "my feet swelled up like sausages" was never more true. Instead of being flat on the bottom and kind of flat across the top, my feet are literally cylinders from which peep pink Vienna sausages. And kneeling down - forget about it! I tried to look under the bed today and my legs are so swollen that it felt like I might actually burst.

I am also very much on the irritable side. I berated my husband for not doing the laundry or the dishes....as if miraculously he would begin doing something he never does. I got home today and knocked a glass over. The shards still fan around the kitchen because really, I can't bring myself to deal with it. And my patience for other people is waining. Today when I left work, I had 4 bags to lug to the car and, as per usual, no one thought to ask me for help. And usually I ask for help because why make myself suffer because other people are lazy or rude. But today, I just couldn't do it. My feet looked like sausages (as seen through the house slippers I put on to leave work), I was walking at a snail's pace - hobbling really - quite obviously struggling to put one foot in front of the other and my bags kept falling off of my shoulders so I'd have to stop and slowly teeter downward without loosing my balance to pick it up again. It was really pathetic. And although people can comment on how big my belly is and say "awww, baby" 100x, they don't seem to notice (how convenient) when I may need some common courtesy. Really it's a shame. And I just didn't speak to anyone on the way home...I couldn't play nice - I was pissed!

But since this is supposed to be my positive space, I will end on some more positive notes.

My baby is quite the little gymnast. He/She flips and kicks, punches and turns around, plays head, shoulder, knees and toes, knees and toes and then flips around again. It's amazing to watch.

My husband told me yesterday that the impossible has occurred - my belly dwarfs my chest! My whopping triple D's look puny compared to the wonder that is Baby Fuller. I had to laugh at that since I'm sure he NEVER could have imagined calling anything about my breasts small.

I daydream about a slimmer, happier Mr. & Mrs. Fuller frolicking around a park with our baby. I feel like he/she can make us better, make us push ourselves to be the best we can be (not to be cliched). So I hope that we will get in shape, continue our ambitions and be happy and I can see it. I can see it. It is out there in the universe waiting for me.

And the last high note, a check-out person in ghetto a** Pompano Beach.....she asked if I was having a c-section and I said "I hope not." And she said "oh lawd...I had two babies and they had to cut them outta me, I couldn't push them out. They would've stretched my junk all big" - picture a woman in a McDonald's uniform holding her hands in a circle about the size of a watermelon. Mike and I just laughed at the insanity. Then, the next customer is a man and she asks him if he has kids and he does. So she asked if his wife delivered vaginally (at McDonald's!) and he said she did. And the checkout lady makes that face you make when you walk by a stinky dumpster and asks "that didn't make you loose your sexuality for her??" I just had to walk away, I had to take a step back.....your sexuality for her?? What is wrong with people. LOL.