Say hello to my little girl! Everything appears to be normal according to ultrasound number two. The ultrasound technician said she was a “beautiful baby”. I was so proud. Look at those cheeks! Look at that scary eye!

It’s kinda hard to see what’s what, I think things are getting a little squished in there. If you know what you’re looking at, you’ll see her profile and a fist and some ribs, and of course the scary eyeball orbit. Her eye doesn’t really look like that (though if she takes after me, it does), that’s just what the ultrasound waves bounce back. They look right through her skin and see the watery orb that is her eyeball. Spooky!

I put my too-much-time-on-my-hands/baby-brain skills to good use again and made a little count down flip chart thingy (it’s actually resurrected from my Paris count down). I know baby’s never come on the exact due date but I thought it would be fun to add even more daily anticipation into the mix. Plus, sometimes I worry that Toby doesn’t realize how quickly January 15th is really going to get here. So now he gets to look at it on the fridge every day. Oh how he loves me! Unfortunately my tendency to make little crafty things like this is not one of Toby’s most favorite traits of mine. It’s right up there with the “x-the-box-if-you-remembered-to-put-the-toilet-seat-down” chart. (I’m joking.)

The other day he said to me, “Either our kid is going to love art and be an artist themselves or they are going to HATE it.” And he’s right. Not that Toby and I are amazing talented artists or anything but it is so much a part of our daily life. We don’t really have a regular life. We don’t get up in the morning and go to a regular job. Our jobs don’t end in the evening and then we come home and relax. We pretty much work all the time but it’s fun work so it doesn’t seem like work. It’s a strange set up but I think it will work. It’s gotta work! I have no alternatives!

Sure, sometimes I wish Toby could just close his office door and we could have dinner at six on a real table with real chairs. Sometimes I wish he didn’t stay up until 4 in the morning every single night, working. Sometimes I wish his office crap didn’t migrate over onto our kitchen counter and if I don’t keep an eye on it, it would take over the coffee table too. Sometimes I get tired of reading trade magazines and looking at paper samples while I’m in the bathroom. And yes, sometimes I wish the paychecks came at regular intervals. But this is our life and I wouldn’t trade any of the above for my regular job back. I can’t even imagine Toby holding down a regular job.

What I’m trying to say is: while I’m really looking forward to being a stay-at-home/freelance-working-mom, I’m just not sure how it’s all going to work out yet. My latest worry is how a baby’s sleep schedule is going to affect our 24-hours-open-somebody-is-always-awake house. In normal families (or at least in all the books I’m voraciously reading) they always say, “have dad get up and tend to the baby now and then so you can get some sleep…” and I wonder: well, what if the dad is already up all the time and he’s trying to work on his computer? How is that going to work out? Toby likes to work at night because that is when it is quiet and he can concentrate. How is he going to concentrate if there’s a screaming baby waking up every half hour? It’s not like I can take the baby out for a walk at 2 am. Or will it work out perfectly because Toby is always awake when I am asleep? Maybe both he and the kid will be night owls and they’ll have all sorts of bonding time without me? (Oh no! Something else to worry about! Will I get jealous of their time?!!!)

I feel like all these worries are like a puzzle that I just can’t do yet because I don’t have all the pieces. I desperately want to plan out how the pieces are going to fit, but I have no idea what shapes the pieces are going to come in.