Table for Five

Well, I finally did it.

I took the high chair out to the garage (just skip to the last paragraph of that post to get to the bit about the high chair. The rest of it is long winded and whiny.)
It was tough but maybe not as much as I thought it would be.
After all, it was slightly unsightly sitting in the kitchen being used as a catch all for folded laundry and various paper products that haven't made their way into my filing system. The good news: I found Gage's permission slip to his field trip to Pike Lake. The bad news: the field trip was three months ago.
Whoops.

So I've taken out the leaf in the table and added an extra chair, turning it from a table for four into a table for five. Just like that.
I feel, for some reason, immensely proud of my table for five. Despite the fact that it looks rather shabby-- the once pristine white fabric cushioned chairs are now heavily soiled with spaghetti sauce and alphaghetti.

Maybe it's not despite the stains, maybe it's precisely because of the stains.

I've spent a lot of time reading other blogs. My new favorite: Mommy Wants Vodka. I have just come across it recently, which really pisses me off. I don't know how many times I've typed those exact words into my search engine (that means you, Google, I know you hate me) and gotten nothing but advertisements for discount vodka. Which was actually helpful all the same. But the website is even better. No actual vodka there, though. Just so you know.

Anyways, the one thing that I come away with from reading other peoples blogs is that we shouldn't take our children for granted. And that Lindsay Lohan is out of jail. Which worries me.
Lock your doors.
But Lindsay Lohan aside, people are gracious and courageous enough to post their trials and tribulations and sometimes triumphs over infertility, IVF, the illness of a child.
It brings me back to my reality that my table could just easily have been be a table for four.

But after:
-twenty four months of "trying"
-four positive pregnancy tests
-two first trimester miscarriages
-The delivery of Reid-one hundred plus negative pregnancy tests (I know what your thinking. One hundred pregancy tests in twenty four months?? What gives?? I had a problem, OK.)
-twelve vials of blood for genetic screening
-twenty some serial blood tests for HCG monitoring
-twenty one weeks of exogenous progesterone
-ten early obstetrical ultrasounds
-one post partum check up during which I should have been seven months pregnant instead of six weeks post partum, where my health care provider kindly suggested I "see someone" when I burst into tears at the mere sight of a baby in the waiting room. (Notice how people cloak certain words with other words around me?? She carefully sidestepped the term "therapist", although I'm pretty sure that's what she was getting at.)

Alex Reid Makepeace finally became a member of our family.
And even though, yes, he does have the propensity to spill red sauces on my white chairs, and get bubble gum tooth paste caked in my sink, and he has, yes, thrown the odd sippy cup at my head, I could not for a single moment imagine my life without him.
And when people used to ask me why I kept on trying for that third child when it all seemed in vain, I know now that THIS is exactly what I kept trying for:
To set my table for five.
Although I am not sure how much setting is required for the meal I am prepared to serve tonight: tacos (kids choice).
But anyways. The point is I am immensely grateful for these beautiful children.
Well, at least, usually.
Because it's not that awesome getting hit in the head with a Sippee Cup.
Or when they feed your Mac lipglass to the dog, who then has diarrhea for the next ten days.
And when I say "Mac lip gloss" you know I mean "Blistex" because I ain't spending no sixty dollars to have shiny lips.