Today is my youngest son’s birthday. Eddie is nine years old. I spent my morning wrapped up in memories.
His is a magickal story.
See, Mike had decided that he wanted to have another son. It was early June of 2001 and Michael was about 18 months old, and we’d talked about having two kids that weren’t too far apart to relate to one another.
I wasn’t ready. I had this 18 month old poop machine on speed already, and I found myself questioning my stamina in doing what I was currently doing while pregnant. Not to mention the end result would be me, home all day with a two year old and a newborn.
Ummm… No thank you.
Mid August, my period goes MIA. CRAP!
I go get a sonogram a week later and am told that, although I’m only 2 weeks late for my period, I am in fact 9 weeks pregnant. Turned out that back in June when he told me he wanted another baby… I was pregnant within a week of that discussion. I just had one light, spotty period afterward, and had no idea I was pregnant.
So now it seems that this baby had God’s blessing because ready or not, here he was coming.
Time stood still passed slowly as the all God damned day morning sickness started in, my hips and back went out, and the nearly two year old went berserk.
I was losing my mind, hormonal, and nauseated 24-7… I needed help. I felt like I was drowning when Thanksgiving time finally rolled around three months later.
21 weeks down, 19 weeks to go. Please God, send me a life preserver.
The day before Thanksgiving, when Mike came home from work, he informed me that he’d been told that day that the company had been bought out and was moving a couple hundred miles away. He would have a job through the end of December, but at the turn of the new year, he’d be unemployed.
And he was.
December 30th he came home at 4:30 and never went back to that place again. By then I was 25-26 weeks along and becoming increasingly uncomfortable and immobile. I was no longer capable of picking up our now 2 year old son, and found myself in the sudden position of not having to.
Mike basically took over the house after that. The company was happy to pay him unemployment benefits for a full 6 months, and it saved my life and my sanity. We downsized considerably to create balance around our new, much lower income, but just as we always have, we pulled together as a team and kept our eyes on the prize and kept on moving forward.
April 18th, 2002 @ 8:36am I woke to my water breaking. I had no pain at all for the next 12 hours.
Finally at 8:30pm they gave me a tiny hormone pill that was placed along the rim of my cervix that caused it to dilate and brought on the pain. But it was all over a mere two hours later when @ 10:36pm, exactly fourteen hours after my water broke, my mini mister FINALLY released his grip and came out to meet us.
And Mike was still home for another two months after Eddie was born so I had an extra set of hands at all times. The only way it could’ve been better is if he also came equipped with an extra set of breasts.
* * * * * * * * * * *
I am so excited that Spring has finally begun to REALLY show itself. All the trees have buds. All the greens are getting greener.
We took a walk out through the woods that is the back half of our property yesterday afternoon. We haven’t been able to do this much in summer because there’s a massive amount of poison ivy and I swear to God everything out there has death spikes prickers on it!
We’ve been wanting to clear out the brush and yuck so we can actually USE all of our property, but until now there have been too many other projects already in play. Not anymore.
Mike went and got himself an awesome set of pruners/trimmers. They’re super sharp, easy to use, and will cut surprisingly thick things like it’s nothing. They’re RAD!
So he spent most of the day yesterday clearing out brush and yuck along the back edge of our yard. His goal is to work when he can and slowly work his way back. After our walk, I got my own plan.
There are very pronounced deer trails all through our back two acres of woods. I’ve always wanted to be able to hike our property, and now I’m going to!!
This morning, instead of going for a jog or walk, I took the Mister’s new pruners and went for a walk out back in my mud boots. I asked the wood faeries to bless my pathways and I spent an hour moving slowly down one path, cutting back giant pricker bushes, spiked trees and over grown brush.
Because our ground is a very solid, thick clay, and because our house sits on top of a hill, the excess ground water creates small tunnels through the earth that spill out into the woods and create small streams of flowing water. Could I love THAT more? Not likely.
And we found this spot, out back, over a small cliff (only because hill seems slightly inadequate) there’s a flat plateau that would be BEAUTIFUL as a camp site! I’m looking forward to playing there :)
But, I figure if I keep walking it and trimming it for a little time every day or so for the next couple weeks, I should be able to cut it all back enough that the paths will be walkable and poison ivy free.
I’d also like to start on the east side of the backyard and cut a path along the actual property line, all the way around to the west side of the backyard so I could walk a giant circle (square-ish but whatever) around the perimeter of our 4 acres.
I already like to walk just around the front perimeter of the yard, and I always thought it would be super, major awesome to have a walking/jogging track/path that went all the way around the 4 acres and through the woods out back!
* * * * * * * * * * *
I’m also REALLY looking forward to Beltane in two weeks! As I’m clearing brush, I intend to find us a Maypole!! And all the brush that we accumulate will be lit in our Beltane bonfire celebration the night of Saturday, April 30th and into the early morning hours of Sunday, May 1st~
Here’s a cool article I found about Beltane this morning.
* * * * * * * * * * *
