Hi. This is Mom.
I've been thinking about creating a blog for you for ages and, typically, haven't gotten to it in between all the working, eating, stressing and dreaming that comes with waiting for your arrival. But we're 32 weeks now, and I saw a friend's gorgeous blog this morning, and typically, now I want one.
So, here it is.
And I don't know where to start. Dad left for Durban at 5am this morning, and I'm feeling a bit mees. Not because he's gone til Friday (altho' that's pretty shitty) but because I was sleeping so deeply when he left that he didn't want to wake me to say goodbye. So when I woke up, he was gone.
No suitcase by the cupboard, taking up most of Ingwe's corner. No green light on the alarm. Gone.
I felt very sorry for myself for about 15 minutes. And a bit weepy and superstitious about not having given him my usual pre-business trip prolonged squeeze and kiss goodbye. But then you kicked me gently in the ribs and I remembered that I probably won't be really alone again for 18 or 20 years...
Thank G-d you're a girl...
I made a cup of coffee and felt better.
(Um, about that... I love my coffee. I really do. It's pretty much why I get up in the morning without killing someone - read: Dad. So if you've had a horrible time in there as a result of Mom's caffeine addiction, I am very, very sorry. I did give up sushi, tartare, carpaccio, most of my wine habit and a fair bit of runny cheese, but I can't do without my two cups a day. I seriously hope you're not an ADD-afflicted lunatic. But if you are, at least caffeine will give me the energy I need to keep up with you...)
And now that I've had my coffee and am feeling better, it's time to freshen up, face the day and get on with it. There's a long list of stuff to do to get ready for you - and that's not a guilt trip, honey, because when you're a bit bigger you'll see how much Mom loves lists - and I now have a month til my end-Feb-means-four-weeks-to-go deadline to get through it all. But there's one thing I forgot to mention...
Why 'Thumper'? You're going to ask me this at some point, I'm sure. Everyone else does. So here goes...
When Dad and I went for our first preggie ultrasound (at what we thought was 8 weeks, but what was actually 6.5), your amazingly strong little heartbeat made us both blub a bit. Especially Dad :) So we started calling you Thumper. (You'd been 'Flipper' before that, because of Uncle Saville's inappropriate jokes about birth defects.) And it stuck. Altho' Yaya calls you 'Fumpa' (in her Mommy's Boy dialect).
Eep.
The problem is that I think of you as Thumper. Dad thinks of you as Thumper. It's 'Thumper's room', and 'Thumper's kicking' and Thumper's things' and 'Hello Thumpy Bumpy'. So the Thumper thing is going to be a hard habit to break. Especially now that I have a Thumper T-shirt, and you're coming in the Year of the Rabbit, and all that good stuff. But at least Thumper's a bit more elegant than 'Spundi' (Dad's childhood nickname) and a lot more inventive than mine ('Noonoo'). So that's something...
May you be the best of both of us.
Love you.
Mom x
