Roughing It

On any given weekday morning, my roommates and I don't cross paths with one another. Our schedules are different enough that we shuffle around our respective morning routines without running into each others coffee cups and hair-dryers.

Last Friday, however, I had taken the day off from work to wake up extra-early, shower, wake up KS at the offensive hour of 6:15 AM and get the car packed to leave for the airport. Our flight destination was San Antonio, but our final destination was Whisper Valley Ranch in Camp Verde, Texas, where we were to congregate with our friends for our third annual reunion with our girl-friends from college.

We all knew this year was going to be different than the past for two small reasons: Lydia and Staples.

"Who are Lydia and Staples?" you ask. Lydia is the 6 1/2-month-old daughter of our friend KM, and Staples is the 5-week-old daughter of my dear old roommate, KB.

To put things in perspective as to just how much of a difference a year makes: last August, KM was barely showing at the reunion and KB wasn't even pregnant yet.

Thursday night before our departure, KS had made homemade cinnamon rolls to bring along for breakfast one morning of the weekend. Because I'm evil, I posted a photo on Twitter of the final product just as the maple and coffee-enhanced frosting was poured on, and after generous sampling we dropped them off at KR's house on Friday morning because she was going to be driving down to the ranch later in the day, with AV and BF and her own homemade peanut butter cup cookies and AV's homemade brownies. Just imagine what their car smelled like for six whole hours. The repetition of the word "homemade" should not be lost on anyone, either.

Some of our friends had flown/driven in the Thursday night prior, but KS and I were the first to arrive on Friday around lunchtime. The ranch we were staying at for the weekend belongs to KB's grandparents-in-law and she and her husband got married there a little over two years ago.

So if you're paying attention, KB gave birth to her first child five weeks ago and is hosting her college friends at a ranch for the weekend. Just pause and consider, if you will, all that caring for a newborn entails, and then pause and consider the pandemonium that 16 girls are capable of creating. Now think about the limits of one's sanity.

Mr. B, the darling man who owns the place, came to the ranch for the weekend, and took those of us in town on Friday afternoon on a Jeep-tour of the property. It felt like being on safari because we saw everything from whitetail deer (which are native to Texas) to more exotic game like blackbeak antelope, scimitar oryx and lechwe.

It took a lot of brain cells for me to remember the names of animals I'd never seen before and more than a few Google searches to get the spelling down, so I felt the need to list all of them. High-five.

We knew going into the weekend that activities like horseback riding, fishing, and skeet-shooting were options, and after our guided tour, Mr. B took us to shoot skeet. Mike and Kenny, who work at the ranch, already had everything set up for us: guns, ammo and shooting earmuffs. After receiving the Reader's Digest version of gun safety (always keep the gun pointed down-range, etc.) they let us take turns practicing. I was less than great- I'm sure it had nothing to do with the ruffly white dress and red t-strap sandals I was wearing and more to do with "holding your left elbow too high" as my brother and father critiqued from the pictures I showed them after the trip.

And people wonder why I quit the golf team after my sophomore year of high school.

I got over my nervousness on Saturday morning because I didn't want to be the lame one of the bunch, so after Mike reminded me for the fourth time to shut my left eye and aim with my right, I ended up hitting five of them.

The rest of our friends starting arriving throughout the day on Friday and we sat and ate enchiladas, drank margarita bombs (don't ask) and talked and migrated around the house well into the night.

Saturday morning I woke up at a leisurely hour to a mostly-quiet house and a "gone fishin'" note from a few of our friends who had decided to get out early. A few of us got the coffee pot brewing and sat down to a Saturday morning free of errands, phone calls and obligations.

I don't know if there are many better weekend mornings that I could imagine than that one of drinking coffee, eating a warm cinnamon roll, staring out huge bay windows at a view of nothing but grass, trees and sky with my favorite people wandering in one-by-one. I challenge anyone to find better than that.

I neglected to mention that The Lodge (the house we were staying in) also had a pool in the backyard, so if you weren't inclined to the ranch-ier activities, you could lie in a lounge chair with a beer and a book.

KB would bring the Staples back and forth with her from the main house the entire weekend so that we could coo at the baby and ask her all of the things you never wanted to know about being a new mom. Lydia slept like a champ (12 hours at night + two daytime naps) and KM would even bring her in the pool with us to play, which she loved. Both moms somehow managed to juggle their always-moving little ones without missing the slightest beat in conversation.

After a full day of ranch activities on Saturday, KB's brother-in-law was nice enough to pick up barbecue for us from a nearby town. He's a year younger than us and most likely thought we were crazy, but he stuck around to make us a campfire for s'mores and stayed around to listen to the cadence of 16 girls talking at the same time.

Truth be told, the entire weekend was a blur of friends, babies, wilderness, good food and rest. This year has been lighter on weddings than the past two, so with friends that don't live in my Dallas radius, I hadn't seen many of them in quite a while. It was easier to part ways this time, knowing that even if I don't see some of them over the course of the next year, I know there will be another reunion.

Come what may: be it weddings, babies or different zip codes... none can stop what was started the day we met each other in College Station, all those years ago.

Summer afternoon - summer afternoon; to me those have always been the two most beautiful words in the English language.

-Henry James

Bundle of Joy

My friend EL and her husband had a baby at the end of September, Lily. She told me yesterday that she was in town with the baby, staying at her parents' house, and since I was going to the suburbs to have dinner with my family for my mother's birthday I asked if I could stop by and meet the little one.

I called when I left dinner and she told me Lily was asleep and to come over. EL has twin siblings still in high school, and one of their friends was on the couch, holding the sleeping munchkin. She passed her over to me and I took her with the same carefulness I give my cup of coffee while walking to my car every morning, so as not to wake her up.

She stayed in my arms for quite a while and I talked to her closed eyelids about how much she looks like her daddy and played with her tiny hands which EL told me she likes to ball up at or around her face while she sleeps. I told EL that my dad always reminds me I would roll my wrists and ankles around as a baby as well as sleep with my arms above my head, and I still do both of those things as a 24-year-old.

Lily started getting squirmy and crying which immediately made me think I had done something wrong, but EL was unfazed, saying she was just hungry. She took her into her family's study and we sat and talked while the baby nursed for a half hour. I asked her a hundred questions about her labor and contractions and how much she's sleeping, if nursing hurts, how often you have to do it, how strange it is for someone to need you constantly, etc. Her answers confirmed that there is so much I don't know about pregnancy or babies, but even more so that things completely vary case-by-case.

It was a surreal experience to be in the room with her last night because we would sit around and talk in the same fashion when we were roommates our freshman year of college... only then it was on our twin beds with coordinating comforters. She was so calm; very much herself, just tired and with bigger boobs. (Crass and off-topic, but it's true!) EL's own mother is very calm even with four kids and she seems like she will be the same way. Lily sleeps fine on her own during the day but apparently likes to sleep on the stomach of a family member at night with her legs hiked up like a frog... a seven-pound, three-week-old frog.

Pretty stinking adorable.

I might just visit her again tomorrow to get a picture.

People who say they sleep like a baby usually don't have one.
-Leo J. Burke

Estrogen Overload

Saturday brought more showers to the DFW metroplex. Rain showers, yes, maybe even some torrential downpours, but also another bridal shower. 

I can always count on AG to comment on how my boobs look if I'm wearing anything other than a nun's robe . I wore a more low cut dress than normally would on Saturday night, attending a 100% female bridal shower and dinner for AG, and I was not there five minutes before (wait for it):

 

"Your girls look good, I like that dress!" If she was a guy, that would have been offensive and sleazy, but coming from AG, I'm familiar with it as a compliment. 

Also a compliment when there are five pregnant women in the room. 

That's right- when the sea of gifts and umbrellas and the line of women signing the guest book parted, I saw my friends SG and EL and confirmed with my own eyes that they are going to be baby mamas in only a few months. 

Looking at SG, who is due in June to have a boy, I was halfway thinking she just had a balloon under her black empire-waist dress. My friend EL, who is expecting a girl, is barely showing yet, but her bump was there too, plain as day. 

Five pregnant 20-something women in the same room as four generations of women, including one adorable two-year-old, complete with a sparkly headband. I was sitting in front of a bowl of green and pink Jelly Belly's on the couch, which she had been eyeing while circling the coffee table, and when I asked if she wanted to sit with me, she climbed into my lap like she'd known me forever. She would talk and talk and occasionally hop off my lap to grab another jelly bean, much to the disapproval of her mother. 

 

The house was completely decked out for the party and there were framed pictures of AG and her fiance everywhere. While roaming the downstairs with a margarita in hand, I noticed the juxtaposition of two photos which happened to be the same place where a basket of tortilla chips was located. One was of AG as a young child carrying her lunch box, bow in hair on her first day of pre-school or kindergarten, next to a picture of her fiance, a West Point grad, in his Army fatigues, smiling with a helmet on and carrying huge rifle. I thought it was funny, at least. 

 

While AG was opening her gifts, I was sitting on the floor in front of her and the two-year-old would come by and show me a card, take my name tag, and then started helping with the gifts. AG was sitting by the fireplace, and when the little one figured out that AG was the one with the captive audience, she climbed up onto the fireplace and started singing Mary Had a Little Lamb while twirling with her arms out. She knew literally every verse.

Spending an evening with pregnant friends and seeing a girl, not much older than us, chasing around her toddler, I know I can only speak for myself when I say that there's a mixed emotion there. On the one hand, living my current existence of me-work-me-family-me-friends-various hobbies-me, I can't imagine having a child right now. On the other hand, your maternal instinct kicks in, you see a precious little girl who looks undoubtedly like her mother, and you think "yep, I want one." 

Eventually...

"Look at my child, at the shine of her flyaway curls and the butterfly flight of her smile... I have known her for two years. But if you took every memory, every moment, if you stretched them end to end- they'd reach forever."

-Jodi Picoult, My Sister's Keeper

The Name Game

I received another "I'm pregnant" text from a friend the other day... this time it hit a little closer to home because it came from my friend EL, who I grew up with and who was my roommate my freshman year of college. The only person I have lived in a room with longer than in a summer camp situation. The guy she married was her high school sweetheart, and they have been married for more than two years now.

I would be sitting at my desk, studying late at night, while she would be in bed talking to him on the phone. More than once I remember sitting there thinking that they had a great deal of their lives planned out for being 18-years-old, and I recall a specific conversation involving what they wanted to name their children.

I know, how do I remember this stuff?

So after receiving that text, I replied with my congrats and asked if she was still naming her baby [firstname middlename] if it is a girl. She was completely shocked that I would remember that, and confirmed that yes, that would be their daughter's name, but that they were stuck on boy names.

I had dinner with my family the night after I found out, my brother was home at the time for Spring Break, and when I told them about EL's pregnancy, it sparked a conversation of the other names which were in contention when he and I were born.

My parents apparently also liked Haley and Halle for me, either of which would have been a mouthful with my last name, but could not choose either. Why? Because the wife of one of my dad's lifelong friends, who was only dating my dad's friend at the time I was born, found out that my mom was considering the name Haley and said "I've always wanted to name my daughter Haley." My parents wanted to be surprised when I was born, so they didn't find out my gender until I was out of the womb. I think that's awesome, by the way, and if I am fortunate enough to have more than one kid then I want to do that with at least one of them. Let God do his thing. My mom, being the peacekeeper that she is, decided I would not be named Haley for this reason, named me Amy, and eventually that friend ended up having two boys. Two sons and zero daughters. Watch out for karma in the delivery room.

So with my brother they learned a thing or two about names, found out they were having a boy, then kept their names closely guarded. My Dad has four boys in his family, only one who goes by his given name (he and the others go by their middle names) and they knew that whatever his first name was, that's what he was going to go by.

My brother, we found out, was almost named Sam or Heath. I think Sam is an adorable name, but Heath does not suit him at all. Heath is the topping on a DQ Blizzard- Heath is not my brother. Like Haley and Halle, it would have been too much with our last name.

It's funny to think of how my life would have been different had I been named something else. How would a different name have altered my life experience? There actually ended up being a Haley H. (my last name) because one of my cousins and his wife named their daughter that. I can live vicariously through her, if need be. I will also mention that five of my friends from college are named Haley (spelled three different ways).

I think I'll stick with Amy... it suits me.

"Any child can tell you that the sole purpose of a middle name is so he can tell when he's really in trouble."
-Dennis Frakes

Expecting

It finally happened. It was inevitable, really. I knew it would, but nonetheless, life as I know it is over.

I found out this week that one of my friends- MY college friends and her husband, are going to have a little boy this summer.

If you are 24-years-old and your world is still right-side up after that, then I'm doubting the realization has sunk in for you yet.

Immediate commentary to myself after an email telling me this was: Oh.My.Gosh. Shut up. You've got to be kidding. Less than eight hours of sleep every night!? Epidurals?? Above all else though, I just thought wow.

Wow.

She's going to be a mommy! To be the person who little arms reach out for and who is the end-all be-all of their world, and who they depend on for everything. What an amazing responsibility. And maybe a little terrifying.

He will undoubtedly have gorgeous blue eyes like both of his parents.

"At one glance I love you with a thousand hearts."
- Mihri Hatun