Weighty Things

My back hurts. I should say that my back always hurts, but yesterday and today…it really hurts. Like the kind of hurt that my mom had when her little 5 foot nothing body tried to heave open our big, heavy, wooden garage door, and then her back hurt, kind of hurt. When I woke yesterday to find that the vertebrae in my back had seemingly fused together while I slept, I began scrolling through the events of the previous day in my mind only to realize that I did nothing out of the ordinary. A real puzzler.

A couple of hours later I honed the inner sloth in me where my movements were slow and calculated in order to load a squirmy Josie into her car seat, and then offered a little prayer as I tried to heave Jameson’s car seat into the car, all the while thinking, “Please don’t drop him! and please don’t drop me!!” Being stuck on my cold garage floor with two screaming babies hollering at me from above is a nightmare of mine. Thankfully, though, with a grimace and a loud groan I was able to heft him into place. I eased myself into the driver’s seat and we were off to Jameson’s 6 months check up.

I had time to think of when I sustained my back injury while in the waiting room, but still came up with nothing.

Finally, they call us back. “Take off his clothes to his diaper and we’ll weigh him.”

Okey dokey. I, too quickly, spring into action, trying to disguise my excruciating pain to the doctor…in hindsight, duh! I should have let it shine, she is the one with the prescription pad for the good stuff! and we took Jameson to be weighed.

18lb 2 oz. 6 months old.

Then, the pieces start to fit together.

18 plus pound butter ball + mom, with the bone structure of a sparrow up top (*special to note only up top. structure more like an elephant down below). holding him all the time = very sore back.

This is the simplified version. Other factors to be included would be lazy night time feedings with very poor posture on my part, and residual damage from his three siblings.

Oh, but he is worth it. Sweet and squishy, every bit. The doctor was asking developmental questions and stated more than asked, “He recognizes when someone is unfamiliar and pulls away,” but this couldn’t be less true. If you get in his face, he is happy to have you there as long as you are smiling at him. No stranger danger yet. This is a far departure from Josie. She was pretty much birthed being skeptical of everyone (besides her mama of course). What’s important is he is healthy. Healthy and heavy.

Onto lighter things. I took my kids to a big indoor bouncy house place. I had been holding it over them forever trying to get desired behavior from them, and when I knew I had milked it too long I gave in and we went.

Here is Josie after she finally warmed up to her strange surroundings. She had a lot of fun, but it was short lived since she soon after got a messy diaper. I did take some pictures of the boys, but my camera isn’t fancy enough to keep up with all of their movement. Just blurs. While we were there I noticed a lot of other moms there with their kids and they bought the pizza and drinks that the place offered, and their kids had pockets full of change for the arcade, and I started adding up how much this excursion would cost them, and it was easily close to $70! and I swear I heard one say to the other, “Meet you here next week?” Who has that kind of money?! I love my kids, but not like that. I love them more like, “Who wants to help mom with the dishes? I’ll let you play in the bubbles afterward!” I was clearly out of my league there, especially since we used coupons to get in at half off. Besides, I have a bad back, I can’t carry around that kind of financial burden. I suppose we are all better off this way

*Post edit: I just looked and at the same age Josie was 3lbs lighter, but an inch longer than Jameson. I knew he seemed round.