I love the blog posts I’ve seen others do that are written as if we’re sitting and having coffee today. I’ve had all sorts of random thoughts floating through my head, so it’s time for a coffee date!

Today over coffee, I’d tell you …

Time flies when you’re not looking. I know many moms of young children (myself included) wish some of the endless witching hours would go away. We hate it when people say, “Treasure these times! They go so fast!” because they feel interminable when things are not going well, aren’t fun, and are fraught with stress about discipline, illness, and other “are we making the right call?” choices.

My littlest moved into his big boy bed the other night. My daughter had a father-daughter dance this weekend and looked too grown-up in some of her pictures. I went with my oldest on a field trip to the zoo and he wrote a narrative zoo journal about his trip.

My catalogue of tiny baby memories for each of them is growing the tiniest bit slimmer every day, but I’m adding to their bigger kid catalogues. It’s wonderful and bittersweet. Time does fly, at least outside of those crazy times.

Did you hear that Iran wants to start promoting their country as a tourist destination? I would love to someday visit Iran as a tourist. Yes, really. There’s so much history and so many beautiful places to experience. But seriously … The risks of traveling there seem to far outweigh the non-risks. I’ll content myself for now with dreaming of a someday trip to Cuba. Maybe one day more “forbidden” places will be safe and open for travel.

It’s almost time to start my Hypnobabies again. Except I seem to have misplaced my workbook … Ugh. Hypnobabies is a self-hypnosis, guided meditation and relaxation way of prepping for labor and delivery … And the last trimester of pregnancy, and the early postpartum days too, in my opinion. I know, I know – how crunchy.

I started HB during my pregnancy with Nora as a way to last longer before the epidural. (You can read more about her birth here.) I used it again, although not as diligently, when pregnant with Jude. (His story here.) Even if I still end up the epidural route, HB helps so much in the mental processes around pregnancy, labor, and delivery that I still think it’s worthwhile. It’d be nice to NOT have the epidural (and the possibility of a spinal headache, the epidural shakes and chills, the dropping blood pressure), but I’m not going to presume anything. I’ll aim for a positive experience in whatever way that comes to me and this baby.

And HB helps me sleep better. I can definitely use some of that!

My job is … Fine. I’m not in a super-excited place about it, but I’m not super-negative about it. Maybe it’s contentment? That’s at least something to aim for. And super excitement isn’t something I necessarily want leading up to maternity leave. This may be a good time for exploration within the job and the possibilities I’ve been too busy to examine during other periods.

I think this baby likes yoga. I haven’t been as good about getting a short practice or two in during the week. I did 20 minutes tonight, and I could really tell the (tight) difference in my hips and legs. After even just those 20 minutes, the baby started moving around and kicking more than I’d felt other evenings. I think s/he appreciates the room around their room now!

One of these days I’m going to leave an entry exactly as typed and auto-corrected to see if it makes any sense at all. The iPad just changed “baby started” to “baby’s tatted” in the last paragraph. I mean, come on.