Thanks for all the fun!

Despite being at home with the family instead of living it up at Blogher, it looks like I (or at least the photo of my head) had a great time.

I got to hang out with cool women:

Mayberry with Goon Squad Sarah and Magpie Musing, and with the Bloggess

Mayberry Mom took me all over town. I got cozy with a unicorn's butt, ate cheeseburgers and indian food (this focus on food pictures shows that despite having not met me in person, MM knows me all too well).

More evidence of what a good time my head had are here and here and here. And here.

Thanks!

Edited to add:

Apparently not ALL was joy and glamour for my head. Christy was only able to get one picture before her daughter ate my head. Maybe in retaliation for me spelling her mom's name wrong in a prior post?

No Fiona, NOOOOOOO!

Edited AGAIN to add:
Melissa figured out who the original head on a stick is! The head that Gwen and I found last year is Karen Meg's head! Nice detective work Melissa!

You want a piece of me?

A a month or two ago I sent an email to some of the bloggers I've met over the years, asking if they were planning on going to Blogher, and if so if they would help me with a little project.

As I mentioned when the location for Blogher '09 was chosen, I was disappointed that the event would not be in Portland because I could actually see going if I could use my house as base for the twins and all their stuff. Plus, I love Portland and was excited for other women bloggers to love it too. But ok, Blogher will be in Chicago again. As much as I'd like to go, I decided that attending a conference with twin newborns was probably a bad very idea.


Quick digression/background: Last year, while Gwen and I were standing around cursing critiquing people's shoes and muttering about having missed the free alcohol, she found a photo glued to a stick. We asked around, but never found out who was shown smiling on the picture. We dubbed the unknown woman "Gwen's favorite blogger" and carried her around Blogher, taking pictures and using the head on a stick as a prop when chatting with strangers.

Gwen and her favorite blogger on the way to dinner

(not pictured, Debbie barely tolerating our adolescent giggles)

This was for me a great entertainment. I love theme photos. I am the girl who takes a cowboy hat to a party in order to force people to take pictures with it. When Chris and I moved from Chicago to Rhode Island, my friends gave me a home-made Mrs. Potato Head, which I carried with us on the road trip and photographed checking the map, getting her hair done at a salon, and meeting the locals in our new city. (I had plans to dig up these photos and include them in this post, but then I had the babies and all extra time and energy was sucked into a breastfeeding vortex. I will find the photos in a few more years.)

So, in March I emailed a bunch of people to gauge their willingness to take me along, or rather to take a picture of me along, on their trips to Blogher. I didn't ask that they refer to me as their favorite blogger. All I asked is that if they agreed to have me send them my picture on a stick, that they take it with them to Blogher and take pictures of themselves and stick-head me during the conference, around Chicago, or wherever else it seemed like a good idea.

I quickly drafted an email, hit "send" and then got worried.  What if no one agreed to participate? What if no one even responded? What if they hit "delete" before even reading the message? Luckily, just an hour after I wrote the email I found three responses in my inbox. Three amazing, hilarious, creative bloggers had agreed to take me with them to Chicago. A few hours later the lovely Mayberry Mom emailed to say she was in too. I was sad not to meet her last year (her trip was derailed by her daughter's illness) but at least my face will be near hers this year! Then Melissa and Sarah wrote to say they would do it too. Gwen said she'd take me if she decided to make the long drive from the western suburbs to downtown Chicago.

I emailed this group of women for a variety of reasons: some I know in person, others I meet and liked at Blogher '08, while still others have blogs I have enjoyed reading and I took a little leap. Also, I had their emails on file. (I may be adventurous about asking for goofy favors, but I am still lazy.) So, if I didn't email you, it isn't because I don't want your help. I do want your help - if you are going to Blogher and want to bring my head on a stick, comment or email me and I will send you a head on a stick. My plan is to print out photos this week and then wander over to the post office once I have addresses.

I'd love to travel with you if you are going. My head on a stick makes an ideal roommate. It won't snore, won't steal your drink and you can imagine it saying all kinds of complimentary things about your outfits. (I'm nice that way.)

I am excited to see the pictures people take.

If you think you want to participate, let me know. I would really appreciate it. I am anticipating some long months close to home, and it would mean a lot to me to see my photographic likeness making it out and about.

Christy, I noticed your blog says you are going. No pressure.

And, apropos of nothing:

Mira, Ian

Coming to Terms

Since reading that Blogher found Portland lacking and is returning to Chicago instead, I have felt kind of low. Knowing as I do that Portland is fantastic, I was more than half sure that the Blogher gals would agree and set up their conference here next summer. (No offense to St. Louis, but what do they have other than corporate beer and a big arch?)

Mrs. French and I had talked some about next summer's conference, and how nice it would be to sleep in our own beds yet attend this fun and overwhelmingly stimulating event. Knowing I will be not more than two months post-partum next summer, I tried to convince Mrs. French that at least she should go, so that I might live vicariously through her. She said she'd be more likely to go if I went with her. I admit to wondering whether she'd mind helping me shlep tiny babies across the country. Or be roommates with me and my schedule-free wailers.

Ok, it is unlikely. But a girl can dream, can't she? I think the blue mood that has descended on me since the Blogher announcement is really part of a larger mourning period. When I was pregnant with Ada, the leader of my prenatal class asked us to think about what our big question was. Some of the people in class wondered "what will my child look like?" "how will I do in labor?" or "what happens when I go back to work?"

I immediately formulated my question: "How am I going to come to terms with with the losses associated with the birth of my child?" I understood that while much is gained with a child, parents have to give some things up, if at least for a while. Things change. The trick was to learn how to accept those changes.

The Blogher thing was a trigger, opening me up to thinking about all the things that are going to change when the twins arrive. I am grieving my losses already. Or maybe just in advance.

I have a lot of freedom right now. Having one child lets you do a lot more than you can with two (muchless three). When Ada and I leave the house, we have things pretty well in hand. We shove on boots and jackets and head out, hand in hand. With two infants in tow, popping out the door will be more like crawling, with plenty of return trips for forgotten crap.

It isn't just the idea of getting three kids out the door to the park or the store. It is realizing that for a long time, Chris and I will be outnumbered in a real, constant way. For a time there won't be many opportunities to have Chris take the kids while I clean the house or work on a project or space out in the garden. Three means that we'll be outnumbered and finding space alone will be a lot harder to do. I still want Chris to go to his Sunday basketball games, but I am already worried about how I will juggle the kids. I wonder what I would use my "free" time for, or when I will actually get any of that.

I have been talking to a close friend about this, and we have commiserated about how much harder it will be to spell one another this time around. Last time our children were born a year apart. This time we will likely have new babies at about the same time and won't have the free arms that we happily offered one another when we needed them in the past.

When I was convinced that this last round of IVF would not work, travel was on my list of up-sides.  Having three kids means we are not going to travel as much as we would have with just one. Airfare is so expensive and when you have to spend thousands to get someplace it can put a damper on the whole trip.

This is all pretty whiny, and I know that the pre-parent me would probably have been annoyed reading the complaints of a woman who'd successfully conceived twice. I am lucky to have these problems. Even more, I am lucky that my question this pregnancy is not "how will we pay for three children?" or "will we have to sell the house?" I live a charmed life, even if it is not always the life I expected I'd lead. So now I return to the question I asked myself last time I was pregnant: How am I going to deal with giving up the things I will lose with the birth of my children?