both sweet and bitter

A week from today is my last day of work before maternity leave. 7 days. But with the way the last couple weeks have been going it's gonna feel more on par with 7 millennia. And I only exaggerate .0000000023% of the time so you can trust my similes absolutely.

It's not that I haven't been busy enough at work to solicit my rapt attention, or that my work is especially painful in any way. It's that - and I may be/probably will be eating these words in 8 days or so - I can't wait to have nothing to do but to spend the very last of the Jordan-only days with Jordan, only. (Ok fine, I also have to pick up and purify this pit of an apartment and do countless things in preparation for baby and set up a bedside nursery that will suffice as this kid's sleeping arrangement for the next few months and finish 763 started-and-neglected projects and pack a hospital bag and purge the last of unneeded and unwanted crap so there's room to breath around here but, potato potato.)

It's the end of an era. Never again will Jordan be the only. Which is so, so grand by the way. I'm thrilled to the core to see her become a big sister and to expand this little family. To see Sean become a dad all over again, and to have a newborn just melt into body in the way only snuggly and helpless newborns can. But I have this overly keen sense of nostalgia about pretty much all things, and to be so sharply aware that a pivotal period in my life is coming to an end gets me a little weepy. I wish I meant figuratively but, so it goes with the hormones and the mood swings and the pregnant not-sanity.

Just look

That's Sean accentuating the importance to "cheeewww" the saltwater taffy as Jordan piledrives hand over pudgy fist

I mean, what buds these guys are. And what a treat to add to their exclusive posse another little deviant that will jump on the bed while Mom is obliviously washing the dishes; hide behind doors and scare said unsuspecting, long-suffering Mom; splash about in the pool nightly; watch '80s music videos on YouTube. But these two years of just he and she: they will be treasured and preserved in my memory and in the massive photo folders as that time Sean and I learned about a whole new type of love and bond. It's crazy different from anything that came before it and it is a mother of a ride.

So yes, 300 months pregnant as I may look and feel, I have ambitious plans to make the last two, three-ish weeks before this buddy makes his entrance stage-birth canal the ultimate for the Jo. Zoo trips, cookie baking, marathon coloring sessions, playdates et al. I know she knows something's up, she senses change, and she's reacting accordingly.

But she can cling all she wants for now, because the concept of "share" that she's been struggling with is about to get a lllllot harder. Cling on, Captain. Cling on.