But The First Joey Has Not Left the Pouch Yet!

we were at the zoo recently and the volunteer gentleman manning the kangaroo zone told me all about how kangaroo babies come out super undeveloped and somehow burrow their way up from the mom's baby hole to her pouch and live for months in there, suckling constantly on 1 of her 4 teets and how she can make a whole other baby (or two or three) in the time that the first one is still growing in her pouch and....something about her having two vaginas and making separate milk for each baby and...

i don't know. i stopped paying attention when the screaming in my head got too loud to focus properly.

but i was thinking this weekend, as i marched across a major city carrying my 35lb two year-old while 8 months pregnant, that in a lot of ways he has yet to leave my pouch. he's not still suckling on me, but he is still very much dependent and always reaching for me. i love it and i'm sure there could be some co-dependence discussed if i were open to discussing such a thing (shut up! you are!), but we need to start working toward a wee bit of detachment. not just for when the baby comes and he has to share me a whole lot, but now, while i'm hugely pregnant. while this may be totally groovy for a mama kangaroo, i'm a little worried that maybe part of the issues i'm having with my umbilical cord pressure being high is this hefty weight i'm lifting all the time.

and so, we introduced the concept of me not picking henry up anymore at about the WORST time we could have this weekend. a mile from our hotel in a large city.

neat.

we had a super fun, but also super exhausting and schedule-destroying weekend with my parents in the big city. we'd done it all! seen it all! eaten it all! and henry was sugar-loaded and under-slept and totally overwhelmed. we finished the shopping we were doing and then i had to pull him away from the blocks the store had conveniently provided to entertain tiny folks.

well.

he had the biggest hissy fit i've seen to date. and it lasted the whole mile down a busy sidewalk back to our hotel.

i thought for sure we were going to get stopped by a cop, or at least a concerned citizen, for kidnapping this little blond boy.

because, while WE knew that robb was trying to contain him in his stroller or carry him or walk with him holding his hand while i carried bags and herded him away from traffic and such, what it LOOKED like was robb carrying a screaming child against his will, hollering for his "MOOOOOOMMMMMMY" who was, clearly, not the lady hurrying along next to them or SURELY she would have just picked him up, RIGHT?!

to be honest, after a while it got so ridiculous and embarrassing that i stopped caring if he used the pregnant belly as a trampoline if it would mean he stopped crying. but even giving in and picking him up didn't help at that point. he just needed to get through it.

which he did, eventually. but hoooooo-doggy.

so....we're working on getting him out of my pouch. even if it means just by one toe at a time.