Week 14 Day 1: Within the glass

We bid farewell to Granny Marilyn today. But not to my cold. Or Gavin's. But we're so much closer to fine, not to make an Indigo Girls' reference or anything. We're over the sick hump, if you will. Eww.

Marilyn's visit was pretty damn good, I must say, and not even just by mother-in-law standards. It's amazing what a baby in the mix can do. Everyone has common ground, everyone has something to talk about and focus on. And while at times she was a little crazy making (like when she insisted that Gavin's first word was "No" and that it was said to her or when she insisted that she knew what Gavin wanted or asserted herself in some way that felt a little too much like "anything you can do I can do better." But these moments were few). Gavin and Marilyn get along swell and that's what matters. And how we all love, love, love that boy.

We dropped Marilyn off with her friend Connie at a McDonald's in Hartland. We were meeting Connie halfway or something. I don't know geography. On the way home Stacy, Gavin and I went to the Twelve Oaks Mall to let Gavin play in their playpit. He LOVED it. And he was a hit with the other kids. He was swarmed as soon as we put him down. A boy who was probably 3 or 4 had his dad's cell phone (at least I'm assuming it was his dad's) and stood there taking photo after photo of Gavin. I don't think he really knew how to work the camera phone feature, but he was sure trying. It was a little strange. When I took out my camera a little kid ran up to me and asked if it was a Nintendo something-or-another, thinking I'd just whipped out my handheld video game system. I told him that, no, it was a camera and he asked me if he could take a picture with it. I told him thanks for asking, but I would just take the pictures myself. Kids in Novi are weird. Also weird is the playscape there. Gavin was playing on what were obviously larger than life toy blocks off to the side, but the bulk was confusing. While at the Oakland Mall they had a very clearly discernible animal theme, the Twelve Oaks Mall playscape, according to the mall's Web site, "features a health and wellness theme in which children can skip, frolic, and step along the ribbon of gauze to the mending Teddy. Healthy messages teach healthy lifestyle to even our youngest visitors!" This would explain why sayings such as, "I love my doctor" and "Don't talk to strangers" were emblazoned throughout. I highly doubt the majority of the mall's "youngest visitors" could read the messages, nor that any of them knew that they were running along a Green Giant-sized strip of gauze flowing around a wounded stuffed bear. Gavin didn't care. He had a great time standing up and moving between blocks. He had no shoes or socks on so you could really see his toes in action as he stepped around. God, I love his toes. Even his oddly angled sideways little toes. I'm in love with my son's feet.

On the way home from the mall Stacy brought up the issue of a sibling for Gavin. She really wants him to have a sibling because she really liked having a brother growing up (her brother is a year older than me, which means two years younger than her). She said that she thinks it would be ideal for them to be two years apart which means she'd like to be pregnant by October. Which, really, is like the day after tomorrow. My head exploded a little bit. There's a lot to consider. For one thing, how the hell would be fit two kids into our tiny house? "We'll have to get a bigger house," Stacy says. Yes, yes we would. But how? But setting our current one on fire? Because I don't see how we could ever sell it. (Note to our insurance company: we would never set our house on fire intentionally. Come on.) There's also the issue of mechanics, which is not at all the right word. But eggs and wombs and procedures that cost lots of money and aren't covered by insurance. There's the option #1: Stacy gets pregnant using her own eggs, which means intensive egg-cultivating therapy/harvesting/and in vitro fertilization (we aren't going to mess with IUI again since it didn't work so many times before. Straight to the big guns). Of course, the last time we did this we ended up, after all of the rigmarole, with one good egg, not the leftover frozen embryos that right-to-lifers fight over stem cell researching. Stacy is not a good egg producer. Granted, she produced the one most perfect egg ever which became our Gavin. But there's a good chance we could do it all again and get zero eggs. So. This is where my eggs come in. We could do the egg harvesting from my guts and implant a fertilized egg into Stacy's guts. Or I could get pregnant, which seems like the easiest option on the surface, but isn't really. For one thing, I don't have a stable job or stable insurance. Stacy does. Since I can't legally adopt Gavin, she wouldn't be able to legally adopt the child I carried, which means he or she would be stuck with deadbeat Mama D's insurance or whatever program kids qualify for who have parents like me. I also don't want to get pregnant. I mean, I know, miracle of life and all, but I don't have that baby-carrying urge. However, Stacy really hated being pregnant. That wasn't a fun nine months for either of us. I was terrified that she'd end up with severe post-partum depression and I'd end up taking care of her and a newborn baby myself. Thankfully that didn't happen. And Stacy has said that if she'd known it was Gavin in there making her feel sick and uncomfortable, she would have felt differently. Instead it felt like an alien invader. Maybe this time would be different. Who knows? I don't. I don't know anything. Our plan moving forward is a pretty solid, "Who knows?"

Fun fact: "in vitro" is Latin for "within the glass."