Shannon Phillips

My mom was married today, to her friend and partner of many years, Mark Esarey:

Welcome to the family, Mark! I’m glad you two wild and crazy kids have finally settled down. May you have long and abundant years of happiness together.

The newlyweds are planning a honeymoon in scenic, romantic Oakland, which is of course world-renowned as the “City of Love.” No, wait, it’s mostly renowned as the “City of Crime.” But maybe mom and Mark will start a new trend! Anyway, we are very much looking forward to celebrating with them and delivering our best wishes in person.

Well, it has just been the season of seven plagues around here. Thursday evening both Robin and Davy came down with sudden bouts of vomiting. We suspected food poisoning at first, because they seemed to improve with a day of rest on Friday, but on Saturday Robin developed sores on his tongue. That makes hand, foot, and mouth disease the leading culprit: it’s very common among kids, and despite the somewhat-alarming name it’s not a scary illness. It just takes about a week to run its course, and the only treatment is the standard rest-and-fluids.

The interesting thing about hand, foot, and mouth disease is that healthy adults almost never get it. I got it hard.

The immune system is suppressed during pregnancy, to prevent the mom’s body from attacking the baby as a foreign parasite, and I’m still feeling the lingering effects of our last round of viruses, so I’m very immunocompromised right now. Essentially I’m a sitting duck for any hostile organisms floating around. Last night I spent absolutely the worst ten hours I can remember in a long, long time, running for the bathroom every 10-15 minutes, unable to hold anything down despite what developed into a tormenting thirst. On top of all that the constant vomiting triggered another bout of contractions, which thankfully didn’t turn into actual labor because I don’t know how I could’ve possibly handled it. Meanwhile Sam slept in a sleeping bag on the floor of the boy’s room so that he could be right there to help them when they woke up sick in the night.

This morning is better. Sam went out for ginger ale and fresh ginger when the grocery stores opened, and by nibbling on a ginger slice whenever a wave of nausea presents, I’ve been able to guzzle the ginger ale and keep it down. Robin and Davy are holding down solid food at this point. I’m running a bit of a fever and I’ve spent most of the day in bed, while Sam, in all-out superhero mode, has fully taken over meeting the various needs of the household. He seems a little embarrassed every time I sniffle at him about how much it means to me that he’s taking such good care of us.

It doesn’t happen often, but every now and then something comes along that just completely outmatches and overwhelms me, and in those moments Sam always, always has my back. And while these displays of competence and compassion on his part aren’t truly gendered—I mean, if anything, an ability to step up and tend a household of invalids would seem a particularly feminine form of badassery—my response to him in these times is very gendered indeed. I feel exactly like a damsel in distress whose knight in shining armor has just come charging to the rescue. I’m overwhelmed not just with gratitude but with a doe-eyed admiration of Sam’s vast masculine strength. He’s washing the dishes as I type these words, pausing every now and then to fix toast for the boys or bring me more ginger ale, and I think it’s the manliest thing I’ve ever seen because I barely have the reserves to hit “post” and totter back to bed. These are the Big Damn Hero moments of real life.

Well, apparently it was just a prolonged bout of Braxton Hicks contractions. It’s a phenomenon often called “false labor,” but as a sop to us aggravated pregnant ladies, some practitioners like to call it “practice labor” or “pre-labor.”

I kind of like pre-labor, as it implies that some kind of progress is being made. Which is, when you think about it, almost necessarily true. We’re one day closer to Sol’s birthday, whenever that turns out to be.

Since yesterday evening I’ve been having light, irregular contractions—mild enough that I was able to sleep through them, so that’s good. It’s impossible to tell whether this is really the beginning of labor or just an extended bout of Braxton Hicks contractions (“false labor”), but I’ve had a couple of other pre-labor signs and I’m hopeful that this will eventually start going somewhere. It’s still a couple weeks before my due date but that’s completely fine and normal; I’m considered full-term now.

I keep asking myself, are we ready? Are we ready? And the answer is: of course not, nobody ever is. But we’re excited and full of anticipation. I want a little baby to snuggle. I want to sniff his head and kiss his toes and look into his funny little face. Bring it on, kiddo, let’s do this thing.

When I was a girl, my dad used to make little books for me. They weren’t fancy, just sheets of legal paper folded over, with photos stapled in. But Dad would make up funny stories around the photographs, and I loved those books. I still have them!

I wanted to make a little book like that for Robin and Davy, to help them prepare for Sol’s arrival. I thought if I started with a bound blank book it would have a better chance of withstanding life in a three-boy household, so I shopped around online, and ended up ordering this:

Which is the point at which I became aware that I was actually making a scrapbook!

It’s funny because my friend Wendy is a great scrap-booker (scrapper?) and I’ve always admired her fun, colorful books, but never particularly had the urge to make one myself. It was only by approaching the project as a storybook rather than a scrapbook that I found myself dipping a toe into those waters! It was a lot of fun though, and both the boys are super excited about their “brother book,” as they call it. Davy had me read it to him three times this morning.

Here is the story I wrote around the pictures:

Robin and Davy are brothers.

Robin is the big brother. He was born first.

When Robin was a baby he lived with Mommy and Daddy in San Francisco.

He liked to go to the park. But he had no one to play with.

One day Mommy said, “I have a new baby in my tummy!” Daddy said, “Yay! Let’s move to Oakland.”

When the baby came out of Mommy, we named him Davy. Robin helped Mommy and Daddy take care of him.

Now Robin had a little brother to play with.

Davy grew quickly. Soon he could walk and talk.

He wasn’t a baby any more. He was a little boy!

Robin and Davy did lots of things together.

They helped around the house.

They went to the Oakland zoo with Nanita and Markie.

They even went to school together. Robin taught Davy how to eat his lunch at the table.

They liked to watch movies on the couch.

At Hallowe’en they went trick or treating together.

Sometimes they went to sleep together.

One day Mommy said, “I have a new baby in my tummy!” Daddy said, “That’s not a baby, that’s a puppy.”

“That is Thora and she is our puppy,” said Davy.

Mommy said, “Yes, but there is also a baby. I need Robin and Davy to help me take care of the baby when it comes out!”

Robin remembered when Davy was a baby. “Babies are a lot of work,” said Robin.

“That’s true,” said Mommy. “They are a lot of work. That is why I will need help taking care of the baby.”

“Robin and Davy will be good helpers,” said Daddy. “Because they are such good brothers.”

The End

The kids have been home sick from school all week, though they’re on the mend now—I think they’ll be able to go back tomorrow. Still, it’s been a pretty wretched week of coughing and snot and being all cooped up in the house. So this afternoon I decided it was time to do something fun, and I set the kids to a project of making Valentines for their preschool friends.

This year we went all Martha with it. I found this idea for making Valentine’s cards using vegetable stamps on the Martha Stewart website, and it seemed both cute and fun, so we tried it out. The radicchio we brought home was too wide to make a good stamp, but we had better results with Brussels sprouts and the end of a head of celery:

The kids really enjoyed playing around with the vegetable stamps (and the white-ink pen), although their cards tended to fill up quickly with undifferentiated smudges and scribbles. So I ended up making most of the Valentines that we’ll actually give out. Still, the results are cute and a good time was had by all, so I’d call this project a win. Thanks, Martha!

I got a much-needed boost this afternoon: I had an ultrasound scheduled, to check on the positioning of a previously low-lying placenta. (As expected, it’s moved into position now and everything is green to go.) But while we were peeking around in there, the baby showed up clear as day playing with his toes! It was absolutely the cutest thing, seeing those little fingers grabbing and then releasing his own foot. I laughed so hard the sonographer had to ask me to hold still.

Sol is doing fine by the way, measuring at four and a half pounds (though ultrasound weight estimates are not terribly accurate, and in any case he’ll put on a couple more pounds before he’s born). I’m closing in on my due date—March 13 based on the first couple ultrasounds, though his growth seems to have slowed a bit recently, and the latest ones have suggested an adjusted due date of March 20. I’m starting to get excited. I think this weekend I’ll get the baby clothes out of storage and give everything a good washing.

I haven’t posted much in a few weeks—it seems like we’ve all been dealing with a string of colds and coughs that just. won’t. go. away. Davy has been the hardest hit—we finally took him into the doctor today and learned that the poor little guy has RSV, respiratory syncytial virus, and a piggyback ear infection. And possibly pneumonia. The doctor gave us antibiotics for the infection, which will likely knock out the pneumonia too if it’s there, but the only treatment for RSV is rest and lots of fluids. It’s one of those things that’s really mild in older kids and barely noticeable in adults, but can be quite serious for babies. So in a way I’m glad we’re dealing with this now, and not in a couple months when we’ll have a newborn in the house.

Davy hates the medicine, and hates us for forcing it on him, and hates the cough that wakes him up in the middle of the night, and hates not being able to go to school or have playdates with his friends, and generally is a very crabby two year old right now. Poor little tough guy.

1. The bad guys trapped Batman in the fields. And Wonder Woman wanted to save him. She had really strong bracelets and then they were scared and they went in the garbage truck. Batman got out. Then the garbage truck brought them to the forest. Then Batman said bye to Wonder Woman.

2. Once upon a time there was a blue dragon that lived on the bay. It was so fluffy. One day the dragon saw a monster. The little dragon ran away. Then it got fire on the monster. The end.

3. My story starts in this kitty. Yeah. I got my kitty. I’m hugging it. The kitty needs help! The kitty needs help! The kitty needs help for the dragon. And then the kitty got the dragon. The end!

Robin’s artwork series, in his own words:

“When you’re happy, you got a heart on you.”

“When you’re sick, you got germs on you.”

“And when you’re covered in snakes, you’re not alive any more.”