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I doomed myself, didn’t I? I said I’d have more words today, but I suspect that might not be the case. I have client work I need to do, and we spent most of the afternoon at a birthday party and running errands, and everything I said yesterday about the sick and the tired? Still true.

The only other thing on my mind right now of any import is poop. (Not mine, thankfully, but still.) Since that’s not likely to be interesting to anyone reading this, I am going to shut up now and get to work. Better luck tomorrow? Yeah, that’s it.

I have spent almost the entire day sneezing, and I am starting to wonder whether I will ever be able to hear out of both ears at the same time again. I don’t know if it’s allergies or a sinus infection or both, and I am both too lazy and too chicken to visit an actual doctor to find out. Instead, I am self-medicating with hot tea and toasted cinnamon bread and am heading off to sleep. (In large part because I have fallen asleep typing at this here computer three times already this evening.)

I may not have anything more interesting to say tomorrow, but I promise I will use more words to say it. (That may not be a good thing, I’ll admit.)

For those who are currently fighting with infertility, the thought of a single week to be “aware” of it is laughable. It consumes every single waking moment of your life - the hours spent in doctors’ offices, the time spent taking inventory of your medications, the endless worry about insurance and how little it covers and trying to figure out how you’ll ever be able to pay for the treatments you need just to try to become a parent. The futile Google searches that you hope will just tell you what you want to know: when will you…WILL you…ever get what seems to come so easily to so many others. The hours you spend crying because the money you’d so carefully saved up for retirement and your unborn childrens’ college funds is all but gone, and nothing to show for it but bruises on your body and on your heart.

Even when you’ve gone through this journey and come out the other side, the reality is that the strain is still there. The knowledge that we are compromising our daughter’s college fund in an attempt to give her a brother or sister is not easy to sit with. We believe that it’s the right thing to do, but the need to make these choices hurts. Watching our daughter hug her cousin, or a friend’s baby, and hearing her ask for a baby of her own hurts.

It’s definitely different the second time around. Some of the questions are different. Some of the feelings are different. I’m a mother now, and no one can take that away from me. If all I ever have is Abby, then I have gotten my miracle and am so grateful for that.

But especially now that I really know what it’s like to have a child, I know that what I want the most is more of what I finally have.

I spent this evening, toddler in tow, at the new offices of my old employer. They moved into new office space over the summer after outgrowing the old “new” office space after I left. Well, it was pretty well outgrown before I left, but they completely packed them in once I was gone.

It was interesting to see the new offices and catch up with old coworkers and clients. The new office has the same vibe that the old one did in a lot of ways, but it’s a little bit more polished and “grown up” in some respects. I worked with these people for over six years (a long time in this industry) and still do some freelance work for the company, so there’s some feeling of never having left when talking to most of them. The fact that I’d never set eyes on almost a half-dozen of the newer employees, though, reminded me that time has marched on indeed. (Just in case I hadn’t noticed that my tiny baby is actually getting to be a little girl now.) It was fun to introduce Abby as “the reason I don’t work here anymore” - and to get the consistent reply of “And who can blame you? She is SO CUTE!”

I’ll freely admit that there are times that I think going back to work full-time would be easier than the juggling act that I’m doing now. The ability to actual focus on one thing for more than the length of a nap and having guilt-free time to read up on new things and stretch the creative muscles a bit would be nice, but as much as I might like my old coworkers, I do usually have a lot more fun spending my days with Abby than I did with them.

As I’ve mentioned before, Abby’s second birthday is coming up, and we are having a party. Last year we had cupcakes at playgroup and a “party” that involved our immediate families and closest friends. This year, we’re having an actual party. For the kids. With invitations and decorations and all the related “stuff” that implies.

Now, I am not entirely insane - we are NOT having it at our (oh so small) house. Knowing that having the party here is actually where my personal journey (further into) insanity began. Where do you have a party for a dozen or so TWO year olds? The ever-popular Chuck is just too much for my feeble mind to handle, and most of the other “kid-oriented party places” are still too old for this crowd. They’re not exactly going to sit nicely and do crafts or something, after all. The new community center has a gorgeous pool with a nice party room attached, but asking everyone (parents included, at this age, obviously) to plan on swimming at the end of November didn’t seem like it would go over so well. I really wanted to have it at a park somewhere, but again - the end of the middle of November? The stress of watching the weather reports would have killed me dead.

In the end, we decided to have it at My Gym (the not-Gymboree where we take classes). It’s not as cheap as I’d like (I am a bit of a cheapskate at heart), but they’re all set up to handle everything, including entertaining a dozen toddlers and a few older kids. All I have to do is show up with cake and balloons. And paper supplies. And drinks. And order pizza. And gift bags? Or something? I don’t know - the whole thing is actually stressing me out. Do I need a theme? (Last year was easy - a quick Google for “1st birthday party girl” gave me plenty to work with, and party supplies for already-doting grandparents and aunts and cousins don’t exactly get much critical scrutiny.) Can I just get some random pink plates and napkins and call it a day?

All of this decision-making is driving me slightly batty, and for the first time, I am beginning to understand where the birthday crazies begin and how hard it can be to resist them. I mean, there was a (very, very brief) period of time that renting a petting zoo to come to our back yard almost seemed reasonable. (Almost. But not really. But FUN! Baby animals! Miniature horses! Many hundreds of dollars!) She is only turning TWO, for the love of Pete - I can just imagine how much harder this will get when she has actual opinions of her own on the subject, not to mention the ability to be swayed by peer pressure. I am pretty sure that the smartest move would be to relocate to a very, very remote village somewhere before she gets much older.

Like a lot of toddlers, Abby has some very definite ideas about what she likes to wear. She recently discovered (for the first time) that pacifiers are fairly interesting - especially when paired (upside down) with a pair of boxer shorts as a very stylish shrug.

She tried some festive boxers more like they were intended, but that didn’t really seem to work out as she hoped.

Fake fur is always fun, although a fur-trimmed sweatshirt in August might be a questionable choice on anyone with less confidence (or a less winning smile).

But any woman of a certain age will tell you that you just can’t go wrong with gloves and a hat.

It used to be that the glorious weekend in the fall when Daylight Saving Time ended was my cue to snuggle in and stay in bed until I physically could not stand it any more. All of you who are parents totally understand why that thought makes me sort of want to cry now. Not because my daughter is an early waker by any definition - 8am is pretty average, 7am is almost unheard-of early, and 9am is not outside the realm of possibility, especially if there has been teething or sickness going on. But the thought of long, lazy mornings spent in bed with pillows and blankets and maybe a magazine for that time when my mind wants to be awake but my body is still happy to nest? Oh, sweet weekend mornings, how I miss you. (Not that I would trade to have them back - not for a moment - but I don’t think I ever fully appreciated them while I had the chance.)

Since morning routines and the time change were already on our minds, it was funny that we got a phone call this afternoon about her swim lessons. Swim lessons have been at 10am for…well, ever, basically…but now they want to change the class to 9am. I’m really a bit irritated about it, to be honest, since getting somewhere by 9am with Princess Abby is a challenge that begins with the need to actually wake her up in the morning. WAKE her UP! I mean, who DOES that?! WAKE UP a TODDLER? I am certainly insane to even consider it. What’s more, she is my daughter - if I have to wake her up, there is no easy transition to breakfast. She won’t want breakfast until SHE decides she wants to be awake, which might be a good hour or more after I drag her sadly out of the crib. The entire process from wake-up to in the pool promises to be frustrating and annoying for both of us, which hopefully will not entirely defeat the purpose of the class - namely to get us out of the house for something fun. And also tiring, to better achieve the holy afternoon nap. Which is a very long time AFTER 9:30am when the class is now supposed to end.

I will give it two weeks to see if it works, but I will not put the entire family through torture if it doesn’t work out. I’m sure I can find some other pseudo-enriching activity to exhaust my kid if I have to.

For a variety of reasons, we are currently using COBRA* for our family’s health insurance. J’s employer continues to promise that they’ll be implementing a group health plan “real soon now” (and have been for over six months, so we’re not holding our collective breath over here). Because of my medical history, I am considered “not medically insurable” under any individually available insurance policy. Until we’ve exhausted our COBRA period or become eligible for another group plan, we’re stuck between a COBRA and an uninsured place.

Today we got the paperwork for the health plan’s new open enrollment period - the annual exercise in frustration where we get to decide which limbs we’ll sacrifice in the hope that we’ll not go bankrupt if someone actually needs health care in the next year. Because we’re on COBRA, the cost is…high. The cheapest plan available for the next year is more expensive (monthly cost) than what we have now, and the copays for everything are also going up. Office visits will run $5 more per visit. Prescriptions will run anywhere from $10 to $30 more per copay. My first pass at estimating monthly expenses for next year? $1650. Just for health insurance and monthly prescription copays. God help us if anyone actually gets sick. It’s starting to look like I may need to get a job just for the option to get health coverage under a group plan.

What’s really sick? The thought that our health insurance costs alone are more than the monthly mortgage payment for most people.

(* Basically, for those of you lucky enough not to know every painful detail of the U.S. health “insurance” system, what that means is that we are allowed through the graciousness of law to pay full cost (plus some percentage) in order to continue our health coverage from J’s last employer. We can carry this insurance for up to 18 months or until we’re eligible under another group plan. Once we’ve exhausted our eligibility (in 18 months), THEN (and only then) we can purchase an individual (or family) plan. We could (in theory) purchase an individual plan any time, but they’re not required to actually accept your application for insurance unless you’ve exhausted your COBRA eligibility. What’s more, since we can’t keep COBRA insurance for just one member of the family (i.e., me) and buy (much less expensive) individual insurance for the rest, we’re pretty well stuck with COBRA for 18 months.)

My parents are not going to be at my daughter’s second birthday party. They will not share Thanksgiving dinner with us. They will not visit us for any reason during the holidays, and we will not be seeing them at their home. All of that makes me a little bit sad, and I really want to be angry with them about it, but I can’t.

Because they’ll be in Australia for three months instead, while my (sort-of but not-really) retired father helps a client with a project. The client will provide an apartment for the duration, so the only real cost to my parents is my mother’s plane ticket. (And the sightseeing and inevitable shopping that will occur.) While my dad will almost certainly be working a good bit, they’ll have weekends and holidays to explore and will probabably stay an extra week or two when the project is done. It’s really the chance of a lifetime in some ways for them, so even though I want to be upset about it I really can’t quite work up to it.

Angry, no. Jealous? Oh yeah. (And I sent them an invitation to the party anyway, just to make them jealous in return. Because my baby is way cuter than anything Australia has to offer, I’m sure!)

We took Abby trick-or-treating for the first time last night. I expected her to last a few houses at the most, but she kept on going and going until we’d done two full blocks plus some and we’d been out for over an hour. Her haul almost outweighs her, which means that J will be taking a LOT of candy to work soon. (It cannot sit around this house, that’s for sure.) She had a great time, and it was probably the best Halloween in my memory, too. Not just because I got to see her get sucked in to the fun of it, but because it helped open my eyes to what’s been right here all along, and I think I needed that.

We’ve been really down on our neighborhood for awhile now. It’s an older neighborhood (the kind with no HOA), and to be honest, it has its problems. Not everyone takes particularly good care of their property, and the homes are of an age that they really do need to be looked after. There have been some ugly issues around overcrowding and immigration - not unique to our area, but a bit of a lightning rod in an important election year (which it is, locally). On the other hand, there are a lot of people who have owned their homes since they were built (going on forty years now) or who bought homes here specifically because there’s no HOA. Prices are (for the DC area) pretty reasonable, and so there are also a lot of homes that really do show the love.

For whatever reason, it’s not a very “neighborly” neighborhood in a lot of ways. Too many people work long hours, and kids don’t run around playing in the streets like they used to. Even with two dogs and a toddler, we’re on more than a “nod and wave” basis with only a few people. After last night, though, I think that’s changed, at least a bit. What’s more, last night made me like our neighborhood a lot more than I did two days ago. Everyone we met was friendly and open and welcoming, and more than one person was heard talking about how nice it would be to plan some neighborhood get-togethers to create a more neighborly feeling.

The cynical side of me would say that we’re all probably stuck here (since selling a house is a fool’s errand at this point), so we’re neighborly in that sort of death row cellblock way. The optimist in my says that maybe this is a silver lining to the fact that we’re all stuck here. Maybe when the real estate market picks up, we won’t all be in such a hurry to move out.