Mobile
Thursday, May 24, 2012
Stray thoughts near the end of pregnancy
Posted By Ailen Arreaza on Thu, May 24, 2012 at 1:17 PM
As my due date looms closer, our days are filled with anxiety. We are scrambling to get things done - install a car seat, finish decorating the room our boys will be sharing, pack the hospital bag. I find myself revisiting the old baby books and websites while making mental goals and challenges for life with this new child: a drug-free birth; breastfeeding for a year; attempting to cloth diaper; wearing the baby as much as possible. I have done this before, I know things don't always go as planned; still, I manage to get caught up in the different parenting philosophies and the debate over that magazine cover. With all this swirling around my head, I often forget the most essential thing - that I am growing a human, that I'm about to make a person come alive.
I dream about my father - who died on Nov. 28, 2009 - almost every night. It's a side effect of pregnancy, these incredibly vivid dreams. He is never fully present in them, though. I always dream that he's traveling somewhere, or that he's dying, or that he has been gone for a long time and I suddenly find a goodbye note from him in his planner. It's ridiculous; my father never had a planner. He didn't write people notes.
I miss him desperately in the dreams, and I wake up to miss him more.
Monday, May 14, 2012
Help me name my baby: Updated with survey results!
Posted By Ailen Arreaza on Mon, May 14, 2012 at 2:48 PM
Despite my not-so-hypothetical love for Gael and Tony's workplace lobbying for Felipe, you all have chosen Gabriel.
As my parent's first child, I have no personal experience with the SCS - you know, the second-child syndrome. But I have heard from my brother and friends who are second children that at times throughout their lives they've felt... not less loved, no, but less, let's call it, indulged than their firstborn counterparts. Before I was a mother, I scoffed at this notion. Second children had it easy! Firstborns pave the way for them to stay out past curfew and start dating earlier and go on spring break with their friends. But now that I am 37 weeks pregnant with my second child and still don't even have a name for him - yes, I guess I sort of understand where my little brother was coming from.
By the time I was 24 weeks pregnant with Luki, we had renovated an entire room in our home and turned it into his nursery. We'd registered for every baby gadget imaginable. We read books and played music to my belly every night. Now, with t-minus three weeks to birth, this baby's (hand-me-down) crib is filled with (hand-me-down) laundry that needs to get done; we have yet to install a (hand-me-down) rear-facing car seat; and the only reason we had a shower is because my friends love me too damn much and ambushed me with a surprise one even though I said I had no interest in acquiring a single additional item of baby paraphernalia. Luckily, we mostly got gift cards which we can use to buy diapers and wipes, the only things I couldn't figure out how to reuse.
I think the most pressing issue here is that this baby still doesn't have a name. So, I'm opening the floor to you, dear CL readers. What should we name this baby?
Tuesday, May 8, 2012
Amendment One: A Christian mom's perspective
Posted By Ailen Arreaza on Tue, May 8, 2012 at 4:51 PM
I have thought long and hard about writing this post because I want to start by saying something I fear might not sit well with most of Creative Loafing's readers: I am a Christian. My family attends church every week; I teach Sunday school; my husband plays in the worship band. We believe in and are followers of Jesus and we aim to be more like him each day.
I hesitated to write this post because I felt like, once I told you I am Christian, you would assume other things about me - that I'm a Republican; that I hold a staunch, unyielding position against abortion; or that I voted in favor of Amendment One. And you would be wrong.
I hesitated because, sometimes, when I tell people I am Christian, I have to supplement it by saying, "but not the crazy-right-wing-nut-job kind," and that gets tiring.
But I need to write this post. As a Christian. As a follower of a Jesus who was a radical; a revolutionary who stood for the poor and the outcast. A Jesus who did not say a single thing about being gay or straight, but sure did say a whole lot of things about love.
I realized I had to write this post when I was talking to my son as we headed out to vote on Saturday. I was trying to explain to him - a not quite 3-year-old - what it means to be married. "Being married means loving someone so much you want to spend your whole life with that person. You want them to take care of you when you are sick; you want to go on vacation with them; you want to play with them every day; you want to cook yummy food for them and read bedtime stories together."
In that very basic, dumbed-down explanation, I realized just how very little marriage has to do with sex. And isn't that the whole big hang-up the Christian right has? Those two or three Bible verses that talk about a "man lying with another man"? (Bible verses which many theologians argue are poorly translated and taken out of context.)
So let's stop focusing on what happens in the bedroom and look at what marriage is really about: spending your whole life with someone; providing for and taking care of that person; loving him or her the ways Jesus asked us to: "like we love ourselves."
"We are going to vote today because some people want to control who you get to marry," I said to Luki as I buckled him into his car seat. "They don't want to allow some people to spend their whole lives with their best friends."
"That's not very nice," he answered with a frown.
No. Not very nice, indeed.
Please, get out and vote against Amendment One today.
