(Won’t be a table for four much longer.)

Explanation of WSSs here.

Compilation of past WSSs here.

On Sunday, our neighbor down the street (and family friend from years ago) Jerry came over to snap some pictures of me for his 21 Days project. He’s been taking portraits of a different person every day for 109 days now, and when he started, his intention was to form a habit. (“They” say it takes 21 days to form a habit.) In conjunction with his picture taking, he’s also been playing the guitar and writing a thank you note. These are the kind of endeavors I dig. He just decided to do it one day and boom: Now he’s on day 109. It’s just like me, if you think about it. I decided I was pregnant (after the doctor told me this was a fact), and boom: Now I’m on day 259. Discipline!

He had come over the day before to “scout the location” (that’s fancy photographer talk, right there) and Noah agreed to be his assistant while he found the spot with the best light. I wasn’t home at the time, so I didn’t know that assistants also sometimes get their photo taken while they’re helping. This was a mighty nice discovery.

The next day as my part of the shoot was wrapping up, Rosie bopped through the dining room and into the kitchen and announced, “MOM! YOU FORGOT TO GET ME SOME YOGURT!” Which I had promised her the day before, or maybe last week, who knows. But Jerry called her back in to where we were and asked her if she’d like to have her picture taken, and without skipping a beat, she hopped up on a chair and started mugging. You guys, it was like she was a signed model with Cover Girl, or last year’s winner of ANTM. She took direction. Like, “Move your chin down just a little” kind of direction. I watched the whole thing with my jaw dropped, taking pointers for the next time I want her to put on her pants. Or get in the bathtub. Or do anything that requires direction at all.

What he got was this:

This girl, you guys. These kids. The fact that they belong to me blows my mind on a daily basis.

All photos (except for the ones with Jerry in them) are courtesy of Jerry Burns. Thanks Jerry!

One of the reasons I really enjoy blogging, and one of the reasons I’m really glad I began Yestertiming almost four and a half (wha?) years ago is that this URL can remember things for me that I almost certainly would not recollect if left to my own devices. The overheard secrets Noah whispered to my Rosie-growing belly as I tucked him in at night, for example, or the evolution of a little sister’s attempt at saying her big brother’s name (My favorite was “Wah”) or the reaction of my two kids as they found out they’d soon be joined by a third. (To name a very select few.)

But also hidden between the lines of some of the posts of times past (and sometimes blatantly obvious) has been the undercurrent of my discontent, which in a strange way, is just as important to have recorded. Today I went back and looked at the posts leading up to Rosie’s birth, and noticed a lot of things right off the bat: 1. I way overdid the caps lock, yo. 2. I was still fairly unsure about having a girl. And 3. I was miserable and also probably depressed. More than probably: I was straight up struggling.

It had been going on for a good portion of my third trimester, and had showed up in a bit of my second as well and I remembered thinking at the time that I was just having a(nother) bad day. I probably just needed to stay in bed for this one Saturday (and the next and also the next) and cry and be mad about something—but what was it? I couldn’t seem to conjure a reason. I was fine, though. I was fine. Just tired. Or off. Or …

I think L knew what was going on, and broached the topic with me a few times, kindly (as is his way, always). But it’s a tricky subject to tackle with someone, even (especially?) with someone you love. For one, I felt incredibly defensive about it (which now makes me think, why in the world?) and secondly, I was pregnant and couldn’t see what was happening because of all the simultaneous physical changes that were going on. I’m not sure if my emotional derailment was because of chemicals gone haywire in my brain (perinatal depression—it’s a thing, kids!) or because I was unfulfilled by my job and stay-at-homeness and general lack of direction in life. Whatever the cause though, that was one of the lowest points of my life, those last months of Rosie’s pregnancy. And I feel sad about that sometimes, like I missed an opportunity for wonder and anticipation. Like she could feel my despondency and that meant I had failed her in some way.

But then she was born and POOF: sunshine and unicorns and feelings of looking up after months of staring at the ground were abundant. I felt so much better once she arrived, and the veil of fog was lifted for the first time in a long time. It was a relief, so much of a relief. Mostly because I didn’t know that there was something that was in need of relieving in the first place. (Besides my massive mound of a belly, of course.)

This pregnancy has not been like that. I do not feel a crushing sense of malaise, always over my shoulder, waiting to smother me back under the covers of my bed. I feel happy, content, ready to meet this baby, but not impatiently so. I think about introducing Rosie and Noah their little brother for the first time and can almost get weepy over it. (But in the normal, healthy, crying during Steel Magnolias way.) I love my job and I have great kids and also L who has always been there, steady and sure, and though my time is spent trying to fit hundreds of (dentist, soccer practice, yearbook money, new shoes, prenatal vitamin—don’t forget!) pieces together into a crazy jigsaw puzzle of an existence, I’m just so grateful for all of it. Even more so, I’m grateful to feel grateful.

This is a good life, y’all.

I am trying to keep all the things humming over here—”all the things” meaning work, kids, house, marriage, baby-growing, etc.—and juuuuust managing right now, sort of. Unfortunately, the scales are tipping (literally, womp) towards crazytown, and I am hoping to be able to just hang on by my fingernails until this baby comes and everything becomes peaceful and still and quiet and organized. That’s what happens when babies come out, right? I can’t remember.

Anyway, in case you didn’t see me harping on about it in other places all over the internet, over at the other gig where I write (otherwise known as my full-time job) I wrote a post on people all the time talking about me being pregnant every day everywhere and also all the things I am dumb at now that my brain is occupied with trying not to keel over while schlepping my giant body from point A to point B.

What else. There are things, I am sure of it. I just had them in my brain.

Here are my kids being adorably adorable on Easter:

Though this picture is a more accurate representation of real life:

And with that, I shall bid you adieu.

If you’re going to be made to sit in a corner, you might as well be wearing rainbow striped jammies. Such is life. Such is Rosie.

P.S. I am still talking all over the place about the fact that we’re goingtohavethreekidsOMG! Dude, people have been doing it since the beginning of forever. I need to just get over myself already.