The completion of my womanhood

Today Evelyn had her 6 month well visit at the clinic. The appointment was at 8:30, which meant we needed to leave the house by about 8 to get there. Working backwards in my head, I figured I needed to get up by about 6:45 in order to dress, eat, take Chokydar out, and get Evie fed and ready as well.

Getting up at 6:45 makes me so thankful that Evelyn is such a good sleeper. Lately she's been going to sleep about 10:30 and sleeps through either till around 8, at which point we'll get up, or somewhere between 5-7:30, in which case, we go back to sleep, and get up for real around 9ish. In this, I realize, I am very blessed.

It is very funny to me how when you don't want to wake the baby, so much as a sneeze will rouse her, while when you need her to wake up, making all kinds of noises doesn't phase her. I think Chokydar became disgusted with my pathetic attempts at noise making and decided to take matters into her own hands by barking at an unsuspecting neighbor decending the stairwell on their way to work. Of course that did the trick, but surprisingly Evie was in a really great mood for being so abrupted woken. She stretched languidly and was all smiley and warm. A good start to the day.

Once we were all ready and bundled to go, we headed to the car and discovered that Dippin' Dots was running a promotional and had covered all of Baumholder with tiny balls of delicious ice cream! Ok...it wasn't really Dippin' Dots, but it looked just like it--tiny balls of snow strewn all over the streets, grass, and dusting the cars. While very pretty to look at, this meant that the car was probably frozen over. I go to great lengths to avoid going anywhere when the car is frozen over because it typically means I have to crawl in from the passenger side door to get to the driver's seat. Why, you ask? Because in the cold of Baumholder, the driver side door on the Corolla will open, but not shut again because the latch mechanism has frozen.

Sure enough, when I gingerly tested the handle, it felt like I'd better not try it, so I moved all the gear into the back seat so that all 5'9" of me could crawl into our tiny little car. This, even under normal circumstances would be a bit awkward, but with Evie riding behind the passenger seat, it's been adjusted way forward to allow room for her car seat. The really funny part is I've actually become quite accomplished at contorting myself into a little ball and rolling into the car this way, and I hardly even notice the funny looks I get when people see the whole process.

The check up went just fine, and our doctor said Evelyn's looking great. He asked me if I was still breastfeeding and when I said yes, he was very pleased. I struggled to keep a straight face when he excitedly rambled on--

(You must imagine this with his Indian accent for the full effect)

"Oh! Wonderful, wonderful. This is, you know, the making your womanhood complete. The milk from the breast is liquid love, flowing into the baby from the mother. This liquid love, the baby knows, is flowing from you to her and she takes it in and keeps your love inside her. The breastfeeding is liquid love."

I don't know about you, but this empassioned speech, while essentially true, struck me as very funny, and I really had to bite my lip to keep from goofily smiling at the continuously repeated phrase "liquid love!"


LIQUID LOVE!!!!