Y’all realize we’ve reached the final week to submit to the 2012 Creme de la Creme.  On December 15th around 11 pm EST, I’ll close the list to submissions.  I put that in all red so you can’t miss it.  The entire list will go up on January 1st.  This is also your last chance to help spread word so no one feels left out of the list.

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My heart goes out to Princess Kate who has been hospitalized for severe vomiting during pregnancy.  Actually, my heart goes out to all the non-famous women who are also experiencing hyperemesis gravidarum. (Was the Princess diagnosed with this?  It seems a bit early for that diagnosis.)  With the twins, I began vomiting around week 8, and I didn’t stop vomiting until the day I delivered them.  In between, we were able to get the vomiting down to a few times per day with the help of Zofran and Nexium, though I lost my voice for a bit. (I liked to think of it as my sexy bedroom voice instead of a raspy, raw-throated, vomit-induced voice.)  While it was hellish in the moment, I have to admit that in retrospect, I am very pleased with myself for my ability to vomit and drive at the same time.  Thank you, Starbucks, for making two venti cups the perfect size to hold a car ride’s worth of vomit, and Saturn for providing two drink holders to hold said cups of vomit in each of their vehicles.

So yeah, no good advice beyond avoid spaghetti for the time being (truly, nothing is worse coming up than pasta).  But my heart goes out to you.

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Silas House had a brilliant piece in the New York Times called “The Art of Being Still.”  I read it to the ChickieNob, who immediately understood exactly what he meant.  It is literally one of the best pieces of writing advice I’ve ever read.  Not that you should be reading it.  Because you should be writing instead.

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While getting to the Hobbit is my top film-going concern this winter, Les Miserable is a close second.  Having forgotten chunks of the story (such as Javert’s death), I suggested that we bring the kids to see it since we know that Tolkien will be too intense.  “Uh, I don’t know, Mel,” Josh said to me.  “The war?  Lovely Ladies?”  Pish-posh!  How bloody can the war be?  And the lovely ladies are just really friendly girls who want the boys to take them dancing.

So to prep them for the movie, I sat the kids down and gave a 15 minute, very emotional explanation of the entire plotline of Les Miserables.  Every character, descriptions of relationships, bits of song.  I freakin’ sang “One Day More” for them with tears in my eyes.  And at the end, in a moment of stunned silence, the ChickieNob asked a perfectly reasonable question:

“Why didn’t Jean Valjean go to his sister’s house when he got out of jail?”

Uh… because then he wouldn’t have stolen from the bishop and changed the course of his life!  For the love, child.  Because it’s been 19 years.  His sister has starved to death.

“Wow.  That’s really sad.  But her kid must still be alive if it’s only been 19 years.  You know how he stole the bread to feed his sister’s child.  Where is that kid?  Why don’t you see that kid in the play?”

Uh… dead too?

“Didn’t they have any neighbours?  I mean, that seems a little unlikely that he’d get out of jail and his parents would be gone and his sister would be gone and her kid would be gone and all the people he went to school with as a kid were gone.  This play doesn’t seem very realistic at all.”

Thanks for ruining the story, kid.

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And now the blogs…

But first, second helpings of the posts that appeared in the open comment thread last week.  In order to read the description before clicking over, please return to the open thread:

• “The Wind in the Trees” (Tesseract)
• “Scars” (From IF to When)
• “Emotions of a Minute” (Will Carry On)
• “Two Years Ago Today” (Ksirahsirah)
• “PSA: Freeze Your Eggs” (Yo-Yo-Mama)
• “Leaven Through” (Mrs. Spit)
• “Our Invisible Travel Companion” (Stirrup Queens) — thank you, dspence!
• “Sparkle and Fade” (By the Brooke)
• “Did Kate’s Happy News Make You Sad?  You’re Not Alone” (Mamamia)

Okay, now my choices this week.

Sunny in Seattle has a post about healing from infertility and the role her son’s birth played in that healing.  She admits, “And I remember sitting across from DH at the dinner table, silently berating my body for failing to give my beloved husband the baby that he so desperately wanted too.  I won’t ever forget those moments, and I don’t really want to.  On days when life is particularly stressful, when the kids are testing my limits for the umpteenth time, I do recall how terrifying it felt to face the real possibility that I would never become a mother.”  It’s about what comes after you get the family you want.  Wonderfully honest post.

Unexplained Rantings wins for best last line of a post. (Actually, best last two paragraphs of a post.)  Yes, I am making you click over to read them.

Lastly, My Lady of the Lantern has a brief post that packs a punch, relaying a conversation between two children that gets to the heart of child loss.  It’s about how the gratitude for what she has doesn’t erase the pain she feels when she thinks about her first child.

The roundup to the Roundup: The 2012 Creme de la Creme list will close for submissions soon.  My heart goes out to Princess Kate.  Great essay in the NYT on writing.  The ChickieNob questions the realism of Les Mis.  And lots of great posts to read.  So what did you find this week?  Please use a permalink to the blog post (written between November 30th and December 7th) and not the blog’s main url. Not understanding why I’m asking you what you found this week?  Read the original open thread post here.

Counting down the days to Christmas with a daily morning post containing a photograph of the White House Christmas decorations.  Have no clue why someone Jewish is doing this or how I got all these pictures — read the first post.

It’s the First Dog, Bo!  Bo was hanging out in the front hall of the East Wing.  He paused to let us snap a few pictures, and then continued on to sniff at a Christmas tree before heading outside for a walk.

I was at the White House for a meeting, and I looked up to see someone I knew from the school where I used to teach, accompanying some students on a tour of the space.  It was the perfect moment for seeing someone familiar, especially someone I actually liked.  We only had about twenty seconds to talk before he had to continue on with his group (and about fifteen of those seconds were used up exclaiming that we couldn’t believe we were seeing each other).  The last time he saw me, I was more than a little lost, leaving teaching to try to work out of the house so I could be with my newborn twins.  I had no idea what sort of work I could do from home.  And now, seven years later, I was at the White House for a meeting, two books published and two under contract, and the newborn twins learning how to do two-digit addition problems.

I wish the Melissa of 2005 could have glimpsed the Melissa of 2012.  Not that she would believe all the things that were about to happen.

Not that she’d believe what wouldn’t happen as well.

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Because that’s it, isn’t it?  It isn’t just marveling at what has taken place since.  I’ve obviously accomplished a lot; things I didn’t even think were possible much less probable back when I left my job in 2005.  It’s also that other plans we had for ourselves — a different neighbourhood, a third child — haven’t come to fruition.  And how you view these years is all a matter of whether you’re someone who sees my glass half full or half empty.

From the inside, I usually see my glass as fairly full.  Though, as I’ve said, sometimes I’m carrying that ghost child, though at this point in my life, with the exception of all of you, I don’t think most people who interact with me on a daily basis would suspect that my brain is keeping track of three people — two that they can see and one that isn’t here.

Such an odd thing: to have something occupy my thoughts so completely that it almost becomes corporal.  And yet no one around me suspects the ghost child.  Maybe they did when the twins were little, but now that they’re eight, no one asks anymore.  In fact, when I’ve brought up having another child, most of my new friends look a bit surprised, even though I’m still young-ish.  At least, I see myself as young-ish.

But they didn’t know me before.

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I am the queen of nostalgia.  My friends joke that I become nostalgic BEFORE an event has ever taken place.  I am already sad about the twins graduating high school.  Did I mention that they’re eight?

But I chose not to go to my high school reunion this year, which was an odd choice for me.  There are a bunch of reasons for that decision — the largest one being financial — but it also boiled down to the fact that it felt more right to not go than it felt to go.  I wavered the night of the actual event, and I feel a bit of regret looking at the pictures.  But the decision was made, the event passed.

The reality is that I was in a very bad place at the last reunion, ten years ago.  It was a few months before we got to the RE, and I was already massively depressed.  When we got home that night, Josh went to sleep and I wrote in my journal about listening to everyone describing their children.  Standing there with a frozen smile on my face, repeating over and over again to each person who started a conversation that no, I didn’t have kids too.  Wow, their kids sounded great.  A handful, a real blessing, wow, that must be so hard.wonderful.sweet.fulfilling.

This time, I could go back armed with the answer I wanted to give.  Yes, I could tell people, we have eight-year-old twins and they rock harder than your children.  But what was the point?  You know?  Going backwards, trying to fix something that happened years ago.  I couldn’t fix my high school years by revisiting with people now — as lovely as those people probably turned out down the road — and I couldn’t fix how I felt at that past reunion by going backwards either.

That night would have been the wrong type of nostalgia.  Not the sort that makes you sigh happily as you relive a moment in time.  More the sort that would bring out the ghost child, and I would be carting her around the room for the evening, feeling shittier and shittier as the night wore on.  Sometimes I want to forget about the ghost child, but more more often than not, even if we’re not talking about her, I want to be around people who know that there is someone else in the room with us; at least mentally.

Maybe I will go to the next one five or ten years from now.

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Where does this leave me, the mother of a ghost child, one that I don’t want to carry nor do I want to set down?  Not that I really believe that I could set her down.  Ghost children are somewhat like flesh-and-blood children in that they demand your attention and don’t come with an on-off switch.  As I said, more often than not, I want to be with people who know that I have a ghost child.  Who know that I’m counting a third person who isn’t here.  I have friends and family who also have ghost children, and when we are together, our ghost children can have a ghost play date and it doesn’t require explanation.  We all just know.

Which is to say that the situation itself is not the thing I am trying to fix at the moment, but rather how I approach everything around the situation.  Am I continuing life?  Check.  Am I working on re-doing the house?  Check.  Am I parenting the children I do have well?  Check.  Am I taking opportunities and make plans for the future and surrounding myself with people who understand me?  Check.  The ghost child will stay or go, but I can choose whether or not I am focusing on what is here or what is missing.

Right now, I am focusing on what is here, trying to fill the glass, even if I know that life has a way of always keeping it at half.

Counting down the days to Christmas with a daily morning post containing a photograph of the White House Christmas decorations.  Have no clue why someone Jewish is doing this or how I got all these pictures — read the first post.

Patriotic ornaments from the Gold Star tree in the Garden Room.

Counting down the days to Christmas with a daily morning post containing a photograph of the White House Christmas decorations.  Have no clue why someone Jewish is doing this or how I got all these pictures — read the first post.

The front hall of the East Wing.  You can see the floor-t0-ceiling boxes from this post.