Busy, as usual, for not the usual reasons

Last week was district training for new teachers, including time in our classrooms. I had Monday off, but I spent a large part of the afternoon meeting with my building mentor, Edith. It was time well spent. She knows what she's doing, having spent many years teaching.

And let's face it, everything's harder when your wife has morning sickness.

Yes, you heard me right. Horyon passed her home pregnancy test a couple of weeks ago. She should have, as we studied pretty hard for it.

I want to apologize to anyone who may be upset that we didn't mention it earlier. At first we kept it under wraps because that's what you do in the first few weeks. Then it started leaking out. My parents. Our prayer/Bible study group. Our friends in the neighborhood. I just realized that we haven't really made any formal announcement, so this is it.

The baby is due next March/April. We have elected to refer to the baby, for the time being, as Bumbleweezle.

Bumbleweezle was one of my early suggestions for a name for Maxine, before we knew whether she would be a girl or a boy. Horyon asked if Bumbleweezle was a girl or a boy name, and I told her that was the beauty of it, it could be either. That didn't convince her.

I told her that it was an old family name. When she asked which side of my family, I fumbled just a bit and answered, "Both." That didn't do it for her, either.

She wanted a unique name for our child, a name that other kids in her school wouldn't have. She had to concede the point to me on that one, but she still refused to name our child Bumbleweezle.

She wasn't really a big fan of the name "Maxine", but when I finally told her that I would give up Bumbleweezle for it, she jumped all over it.

Still, for pretty much the entire pregnancy, we referred to our little fetus as Bumbleweezle, and the habit has returned. So Bumbleweezle is in his or her ninth or tenth week, we're not sure exactly. Whatever week it is, it's the part of the game where Bumbleweezle is continually hitting the buttons that make Horyon want to vomit. We couldn't recall exactly how long this lasted with Maxine, but Horyon was thinking about six weeks.

Throw into the mix, if you will, one more tidbit: I am once again training Maxine to sleep by herself. I've lost track of how many times I've done this. Three or four. This is one of those cultural imperative things, where I feel it is absolutely necessary to train kids to sleep by themselves in their own beds, while Horyon grew up sleeping with her family, sharing a bed, then a bedroom with her sister until Chaeryon moved out.

Circumstances have not been kind to me, but now circumstances are trashing both of us. Horyon has a hard enough time sleeping without a small person who wedges herself between us, turns perpendicular on us, and kicks. All in her sleep, of course. Imagine my surprise to discover that when I wake up getting kicked in the head, I wake up already angry. I wake up with a back-ache from struggling not to roll over on our most prized possession, and find myself drifting off of the course of a day.

So now I put her to bed, and have been for the past week. I've weaned Maxine of falling asleep with someone in the bed, now I need her to sleep even with no one on the floor next to her bed. I'll start on that soon, and am not looking forward to the crying and begging. I also expect Maxine to be upset about it.

On a last note, I need to make some decisions about what health plan to use, i.e. how big a chunk of my paycheck is going to be sacrificed to the actuarial gods. After taxes, insurance, bills and our mortgage, we could very easily end up living on whatever Horyon makes sewing. Don't get me wrong, she's very talented, but she's not up to being my sugar-momma just yet. Pray for us to make some wise decisions here, because, as the magical 8-Ball puts it, "The Future is Unclear."