She indulged me and suggested I come in for a blood test if I wanted to be sure.

“So if the blood test comes back negative, is there any chance I could still be pregnant?” I asked.

Nope, not so much.

If you know me at all, you know what I did next. Yup, I went for the blood test. I was pretty sure the results would be negative after talking to the nurse, so when the call came this morning confirming it, I wasn’t surprised. Still a little disappointed, but not surprised.

It’s not so much that I didn’t get pregnant – after all, it was really only our second month “trying” – but that I’ve somehow skipped a period for some other reason.

It could be due to stress, despite my newly achieved zen(-ish) state about the career-related goings-on that had me in quite the tizzy in recent weeks).

But more likely, it’s because I’ve now reached the “35 and over” period of my life where, apparently, I can skip ovulating for a month just because that’s what happens when you get older. (At least so says the all-knowing nurse. Ok, I’m being unnecessarily snippy – she was actually quite nice.)

So I’m generally OK with this, I guess, except for that it’s never, ever happened to me before and that kind of freaks me out (especially since I really have felt on-and-off nausea for the past week, including today, and don’t know why).

Also, I now have no idea when my next period will be or when I might be (hopefully) ovulating again so we can keep trying to get pregnant. I guess I’ll just work on the assumption that this is just a skipped cycle and my next one will pick up as though I didn’t miss one. I had just ordered some ovulation test strips online before I really thought I was pregnant anyway, so I guess I’ll trot those out starting next weekend and see what happens.

Again, fingers crossed …

Today is day 34 of my cycle. I was always a regular 28-day-cycle kind of gal until my most recent foray off the pill about 4 months ago. Since then, it’s been 29 or 30 days.

There have been only three other times I can recall when my period has been this late – the two times I went off the pill and had to wait a bit longer than normal for that first cycle, and when I got pregnant with Lexie.

But here’s the thing – despite obsessively taking pregnancy tests about every other day since Saturday (today is Thursday), I’ve yet to see a positive. Nor do I have the same symptoms (or rather, symptom) that I had that made me strongly suspect I was pregnant a few days before taking the p-test with Lexie – super duper sore breasts.

I’ve been peeing a lot (I always do). I’ve been getting really hungry (I always am). I’ve been feeling periods of light nausea on and off since the weekend (is it all in my head?).

To be clear, this would be a much-wanted pregnancy. We’ve only been officially trying for two months, so I would feel incredibly lucky to have it happen so quickly for us again. I know that’s not always the case for second pregnancies. And according to the experts (the Internet), it’s very common to actually be pregnant but not have a positive test at this point or even much later.

Of course, Andy – true to form – refuses to really engage on the subject until he sees solid proof. He honestly doesn’t understand why I need to obsess about it and fight off the urge to pee on a stick every hour.

Ah, men.

It’s just hard to forget when every single time I go to the bathroom (which is often, see above), I’m reminded that my period has yet to arrive.

When I’m out in social situations and need to decline the drink everyone else is having.

When I’m drinking my sizeable mug of morning coffee and stop, mid-sip, and think, “Hey, I should probably lay off the caffeine at just in case.”

When I’m starting to become so convinced I’m pregnant that this afternoon at my desk, I seriously thought I could actually feel my breasts starting to swell (seriously! it was like a lower-level version of that feeling when you’re nursing and the milk flows in, I swear) and actually checked my bra (which has become sadly loose in areas post-Lexie) to see if it was fitting more snugly. (Yes, I was in a bathroom stall when I did this. I haven’t completely lost it.)

I even sneaked a pregnancy test to work in my purse today and took it, convinced there was a flaw in the result from the one I took at 2:30 this morning. (Ok, I have good reason for this. I was going to do it first thing in the morning because they say that’s the best time, but I woke up at 2:30 and really, really had to go, and I figured it was better to just do it then instead of waiting until 6 a.m., because it wouldn’t be as concentrated since I’d just gone at 2:30. And yes, that’s way too much thinking for that time of night which is why I figured I just did it wrong.)

So that’s the current state of things in our household (and in my head). I’ve been meaning to get started writing here again and with this going on, it seemed like as good a time as any.

Until next time – fingers crossed

Lexie, Annabelle (l.) and Maddie at her first birthday party.

After Mommy, Daddy, and of course, Jennifer (our fantastic nanny), Lexie’s two favorite people in the world are her cousins, Maddie and Annabelle. After all, she’s spent the better part of most every day with them since she was 11 weeks old.

Maddie, who is 7, and Belle,  who recently turned 4, are delightful – if at times challenging – kids, and spending time with them always makes me both fearful and excited for the years ahead with Lexie (and her future sibling). Watching how they interact with each other and how Lexie reacts to them is a funny, scary and highly educational experience (and sometimes makes me hope our next child is a boy so we don’t have to deal with sisterly squabbling).

Today, we all got to hang out for awhile when Andy and I met Laurie and Jeff for lunch and playtime at the park with the girls. The scene when Maddie and Annabelle walked into Potbelly was typical: Lexie’s face broke into an excited grin when she spotted them, and she called out, “Belle!” (It’s one of her favorite words these days. When we read a book, she often points to little girls and pronounces, “Belle!”)

The girls were all over her as usual, shouting hellos, hugging, patting and otherwise pawing at her as they (especially Annabelle) tend to do. Andy and I do a lot of eyebrow-raising over these enthusiastically physical displays of affection – it seems like that kind of high-decibel, body-rattling attention would be rather overwhelming all day long for a 1 year old – but Lexie is used to it, continuing on with her eating, reading or whatever else she’s doing with impressive equanimity. I love that she’s learned to stay calm amid the chaos that defines gatherings of more than two kids under 10.

At lunch and later, at the park, I felt like taking notes as Laurie and Jeff deftly fielded potential conflicts: heading off Maddie getting upset because she wanted her own sandwich instead of sharing one with Belle by promising, “I’ll buy you more if you finish that half”); calming Belle’s tears when Maddie pushed her down while rushing to climb a piece of equipment: “It was an accident, honey”; Jeff making sure to split time with the girls when Maddie was riding on his back and Laurie offered to take Belle but “No, I want Daddy!”

On days like today when we’re all together, it often exhausts me just thinking about the difference between our busy-but-manageable life now chasing after Lexie and keeping her content and what lies ahead once we have two kids with their own needs, agendas, and of course, the all-important ability to talk back.

But on the flip side, I also get to see all the great benefits Lexie is getting – and will get in the future – from spending so much time with these two special girls. First and foremost, of course, they adore her (even Belle, who took a bit of time to warm to the idea of this tiny intruder taking over her status as baby of the family).

They encourage her and watch out for her; they teach her practical skills like patience and sharing and fun skills like making faces and feeding her baby doll; and they make her laugh and laugh, maybe even more than the funniest man on Earth (Daddy, of course).

Of course, I know there’s a down side to come, too. When little kids – especially girls – spend a lot of time with older kids, they tend to grow up a little faster, or at least be aware of more-grown-up things than they otherwise would be. But with all the positive effects that have and will come from this three-way relationship that Maddie, Annabelle and Lexie are building, I guess I’ll just have to suck it up and deal with the day she comes home begging for Hannah Montana diapers and asking if we can post pictures of the Jonas Brothers in her crib.

This silly little action captures a signature trait that I love in Lexie and really, most kids. They’re just so new to the world that the answer “because we’ve always done it that way” just isn’t enough for them. They want to learn for themselves.

Sure, it would be better if she would take our word on questions like, “Why can’t babies run into the street to get a closer look at the car?” But for the most part, I get a huge kick out of watching her make her own sense of her surroundings – even if her answers don’t always make sense to me.

Sunday, 9/12: Watching football with Daddy. Andy put the barrette in (not surprisingly, I’ve had a bit of trouble with it) – we were trying to get it far back enough so that she didn’t notice it and pull it out. At any rate, the child is transfixed by football, probably at least partially because it’s pretty much the only time the TV is ever on when she’s around. But we have had baseball and other shows on occasionally, and football is definitely her favorite. The girl is hard core, and destined to follow in her mother’s footsteps as two-time fantasy football champion (and counting!).

Tuesday, 9/14: Jennifer texted me mid-afternoon to let me know that Lexie had downed a 10 oz. bottle (an achievement, since she also seems to take after her mother in a bit of a distaste for milk at times). I told her I needed a fix and asked her to send a picture. They were heading out to pick up Maddie from school.

What gets me about this one, aside from the ever-present crown, is the expression on her face – so content, with a bit of a faraway look in her eyes like she’s remembering something nice.

Wednesday, 9/15: I love this one for two reasons. One, she’s doing a classic Lexie pose: pointing out the window and whispering in a tiny voice, “car.”

Two, check out the socks. She found my socks on the living room floor (yes, I’m a slob) and insisted Andy put them on. He pulled them all the way up because they were so big, expecting her to quickly pull them off. But she loved it! She marched around in them the rest of the night – they looked like little legwarmers. I guess it’s true – the 80s really are back!

I don’t know why it didn’t happen yesterday, when the air in the kitchen (and most of the house) was thick with the aroma of soup, but whatever the reason, the memory struck me hard tonight, and it was bittersweet. It’s been several years since both my grandmother and grandfather – my mom’s parents, who we always celebrated the Jewish holidays with – passed away, and it feels like so long ago that I stood in their white-tiled kitchen, inhaling that same comforting scent.

It’s not just that I always miss them around the holidays, as people always tend to do with loved ones who’ve passed away. It’s that the holidays just aren’t what they used to be in our family, and I know that I – and Shelly, and probably everyone else – miss all the old rituals, the traditions that were so ingrained  in me growing up that I can still picture the scenes in my mind like it was yesterday.

It always started with the walk to temple, on mornings I always remember as cool, gray and damp. We’d meet at my grandparents’ house, the same one where my mom grew up, and parade the few blocks over in small groups. Some of us carried the well-worn, maroon prayer books with our families’ last names penned across the edges of the pages; others brought the blue velvet bags embossed with silver Hebrew writing and decorations that held the tallis (prayer shawls) that belonged to my dad, uncles and grandfather.

Once we arrived – always entering through the unadorned back doorway instead of the grander main entrance – we’d wait in the hallway for the right time to go inside. The services there seemed perpetual; I don’t remember ever actually seeing one end or begin, though often we were there for more than two hours. While we waited, Shelly, Jen, Laurie and I would search the old, black-and-white class photos on the walls for our moms, who’d attended Hebrew school there, or walk up and down the long hallway, dimly lit and faintly buzzing with the hundreds of tiny bulbs decorating the small, rectangular memorial plaques that lined the walls.

Soon enough, we’d file into the hushed sanctuary and find my grandfather sitting in his customary spot in one of the front few rows on the left-hand side. His family had been among the temple’s founders, so these prime seats belonged to our family (a fact I later felt slightly guilty about, given that we only came on the High Holidays).

Even though we never stayed for the whole morning service, our time there always seemed interminably long at our young ages, and we had various tricks for keeping ourselves amused. When we were really little, we’d make our way over to the steps that led up either side of the blue-carpeted, dark-wood-paneled bimah (the elevated platform where the rabbi, cantor and choir stood), climbing and playing there until a parent came to herd us back. Sometimes we’d whisper requests for TicTacs to Grandma, who unfailingly had them in her purse (the pale green, wintergreen kind was her favorite). Often, we’d sit on our dads’ laps, twirling the fringes of their tallis through our fingers.

When I was older, I’d stare in wonder at the soaring stained-glass windows lining the walls on either side. Each bore the name of a Hebrew month and one of the 12 tribes of Israel and were decorated with related scenes, beautifully depicted. I was proud of the fact that my grandfather’s family had donated one of those impressive windows, with their names on the bottom and all.

But no matter how old we were, there was one game that never got old, and that was counting the pages that were left until we reached one particular prayer. We’ve always called it B’Rosh Hashanah – those are the first words – but it’s known more often in the temples we attend these days as the Unetaneh Tokef. It’s a beautiful, solemn piece, a centerpiece of the service, but for us growing up, it had extra sigificance  - it was the signal that it was almost time to leave, for we always crept out once it was over.

It was on page 361.

I can see it now, displayed in big, block numbers on the white placards they kept perched on a stand on the bimah to help the congregation follow along. We’d fidget in anticipation as pages rustled and the cantor began to chant.

We weren’t just excited to leave; we looked forward to joining in for the refrain, too. It was one of the first songs most of us could follow along with, and we sang with gusto, Papa beaming proudly at our sides. After it was done, we’d read the English translation along with the rest of the congregation. It was one of the few non-Hebrew elements of the service, but it’s a mainstay because the words so perfectly encapsulate the significance of Rosh Hashanah, Yom Kippur and the time in between. As we sing in the refrain, “On Rosh Hashanah our destiny is inscribed, and on Yom Kippur it is sealed.”

B’Rosh Hashanah yika-teyvun; uv-yom tzom kippur yeychateymun.

After my grandfather passed away several years ago, we stopped going to our old temple. It wasn’t just that it was relatively far from where any of us lived and that we didn’t have a place to congregate nearby after my grandparents’ house was sold; the once-conservative congregation had become orthodox over our last few years there, and it just wasn’t home for us anymore.

Since then, we’ve tried multiple temples but just can’t recapture the magic of the holidays of old. There’s no meeting early to walk over together; no designated seats where we’ve sat our whole lives; no cantor marching slowly up the aisle, chanting the Hineni to begin the morning service; no stained glass windows bearing our family’s name. And there’s no gathering in Grandma’s warm kitchen afterward, slicing shiny brown loaves of challah and breathing in the scent of soup as it heated, then gathering around the dining room table to eat. Nowadays, we meet at temple and have lunch afterward at a restaurant nearby. It’s a nice but somehow too casual, too unceremonious, gathering.

The first few years were the toughest, especially since the congregations we visited didn’t do a lot of the same tunes we were used to for the standard prayers, most notably the B’Rosh Hashanah. I remember vividly the first time we heard the old tune at one of the new temples – the nostalgia was so overwhelming that I started to cry.

I still fight back tears every year, remembering. I’m fighting back tears now.

But I need to get back to the business of this blog. Where’s Lexie in this long-winded memoriam of holidays past?

Lexie is the wake-up call. Lexie – and her cousins, and any siblings and cousins to be, as well as me and my sister and my cousins now – are the reason why we need to do better. We’ve had plenty of excuses for keeping the holidays simple in recent years, but we need to do better. We need to create new traditions and rituals of our own that we – and Lexie and the next generation- can embrace and pass on.

And it can all start with the soup. Next year, instead of Shelly and me crowding it into the weeknight, post-work hours like an unpleasant chore, I’m going to suggest we celebrate it. I’m going to set aside a Saturday or Sunday before the holidays and invite my sister and my cousins and their families over to make soup. Everyone can pitch in, and we can spend time together and teach the little ones what Judaism has always really been about for all of us: family, and tradition.

L’shanah tovah!

Today was one of those days. It’s Rosh Hashanah (the Jewish New Year, for all the unaware goyim out there), and I took the day off to go to temple and spend time with the family. Of course, we weren’t planning to actually bring Lexie to services. Sure, some people certainly do bring young children and even babies, but a) I’m not that hard core and b) I wouldn’t punish myself, or the rest of the congregation, in that manner.

There are some one-year-olds who could sit quietly through most or at least some fraction of a two-hour temple service, but Lexie is most certainly not one of them. I’d give her three, maybe five minutes tops of sitting angelically on someone’s lap before she either crawled down to go tearing through the aisles, started loudly calling out “ball” upon spotting anything remotely resembling a circle in the near vicinity,  launched into a tantrum because she wanted to tear out the pages of the prayer book and we wouldn’t let her, and/or started hungrily chewing on a stranger’s yamulke or  the fringes of someone’s tallis.

So you can see why the plan was, instead, to have Jennifer spend the morning with all three of the girls as usual and then bring them to meet us for lunch after services. But since we didn’t need to leave for temple until 9:30, for the early part of the morning Lexie was all mine.

It was glorious.

I’d hoped she might sleep in a touch, maybe until 6:30, but she was up at 6:15 and we headed downstairs for breakfast. Afterward, we played and read books and watched through the picture window in the dining room as all the neighborhood kids walked (slowly, unenthusiastically) by on their way to school. Just as exciting for Lexie was watching the parade of moms driving their kids to school in their minivans, SUVs and those newfangled station wagons (that pretend not to be station wagons but most certainly are). She’s particularly obsessed with cars and trucks of late, though amusingly, only says the word “car” in a whisper.

Such an adorably quirky (some might say eccentric) girl.

Around 8 a.m. I loaded her into her stroller to walk down to Jewel to get milk and a few other basics (eggs, strawberries, turkey, avocado – some of her favorites). The weather was gorgeous, and Lexie was happy to sit and watch the world go by for the duration of the trip. We passed the rest of the morning until naptime to leave with more play, and then I got to see her again when we arrived at the restaurant for lunch around 1 p.m.

She looked impossibly cute as she waited with Jennifer and the girls outside, watching us approach and calling, “Mama!” Jennifer had even managed to get a tiny pink barette into her hair, matching her pink collared onesie and navy jumper. (Hilarious side note: We’d all wondered at the fact that she allowed the barette to remain in her hair – it’s just unlike her somehow. Later, Andy and I realized why – she didn’t know it was there! The second she spotted it in the mirror in front of her carseat on the way home, she tore it right out.)

She behaved beautifully at lunch, spending most of the time doing laps around the big square of long tables we had in a small private room. The only threat of a tantrum came when we wouldn’t allow her to leave the room and roam the dining room freely, stopping to stare intensely at various sets of diners as she is wont to do.

Once we were home, after her nap (an hour and a half of her lying in her crib, chatting with Ducky and occasionally fussing but not actually ever sleeping), we were back in the stroller, heading to the park. The lack of sleep didn’t hold her back from cavorting all over the slides, swings and other climbables. The best was watching her practically glow with glee as Daddy held her up higher and higher on the swing.

Now it’s a little after 8 p.m. and she’s been down for an hour. Andy and I are relaxing with our laptops and the first football game of the season. I’d meant to catch up on a little work, but then I remembered my vow to write regularly here again. Is today’s entry the most interesting story ever? Not so much. But most of all, I’m writing here for me, so I can go back and remember all the small moments that add up to this time that everyone keeps telling me goes by so, so fast.

And it’s days like this that I want to remember especially.

Last Saturday, she spent a splendid morning romping around the park with her little neighborhood friends. Grace, Parker and Payton were all well turned out, adorable as can be in their coordinated summer outfits and shoes.

Then there was Lexie. She did her climbing, running and sliding clad in a most unusual getup:

1) pajamas (the typically loud baby kind, this particular incarnation consisting of white pants dotted with multicolored hearts and a blue shirt that spells out “LOVE” in colored letters),

2) hot-pink sandals, and (of course)

3) her crown.

OK, so the first two selections say more about me than they do about her (why change her from her pajamas just to walk down to the farmer’s market – our original plan – and why buy a second pair of summer shoes when she loves the sandals so and will grow out of them soon enough?). But the crown is all Lexie.

The child literally spends days at a time with the plastic, yellow tiara perched precariously atop her tiny head. It often comprises her vision (or at least, seems like it should) but always looks impossibly cute (if a bit eccentric).

And, by the way, she insists on wearing it upside down. If you try to turn it the “right” way, she’ll quickly (and unamusedly, I might add) correct the error.

I may have posted a photo of her wearing the crown on here before, but I’m not sure I got into how hilariously attached she is to these things. She unearthed them (there are actually two, Lord have mercy) from the seemingly endless cache of toys at Laurie and Jeff’s and has been besotted ever since.

Some more-disciplined (but less-fun) parents might let not heir be-crowned daughter wander anywhere and everywhere, limiting such a toy to playtime, but Andy and I adore it. It’s such an obvious expression of her blossoming personality – fiercely attached to her favorite fixation of the moment; unabashed silly; determinedly defiant; and unselfconscious as only a 1-year-old can be. And lest we forget the obvious, an inherent need to accessorize (gleaned from her female genes if not, sadly, from her mother directly).

What a pistol that girl is.

Well, OK, maybe that’s not a hallmark event for all little girls, but for Lexie (and probably more so, for us) it was a big one. You see, the child is obsessed with ducks.

I partly blame myself. I’ve always been partial to baby wear, toys, books – you name it – decorated with ducks. There’s just something so sweetly babyish about it, and it doesn’t hurt that duck decor is firmly non-gender specific. But what really started Lexie’s infatuation was when my cousin Leah brought her a stuffed duck, and it became the first toy we let her sleep with in the crib.

Ducky (alternatively known as Mr. Duckers, Duckety Duckers and, I’m bit ashamed to say, Peking Duck and The Donger), is one of those odd creations they make for babies that’s really a blanket with a head (hence the occasional addition of Ghost Duck to the name game). Lexie utterly adores this duck (though, fortunately, she can sleep with the substitutes we regularly rotate in to protect ourselves from a dreaded loss). Sometimes, she’ll spend half an hour deep in conversation with it after going down for a nap or nighttime sleep.

At bedtime when story time is over and she lies fussing on the bed as we zip her into her sleep sack, Ducky’s appearance is usually all it takes to calm her down. If she’s clutching some sort of other object (sippy cup, book, block, etc.) as she often is, the offer of Ducky can always convince her to trade.

That’s probably why “duck” was one of her first words besides “Dada” and “Mama” and one of the first things she was able to identify on sight. It’s also why she now (and for who knows how long) identifies anything with a beak, feathers and/or wings as a duck (yes, even penguins).

So you can imagine her (our) excitement when we took her to a small, local zoo over the weekend and she finally came face to face with the real thing.

When we first spotted the snowy white duck swimming and quacking in a little pool, we were slightly concerned that she might not even identify it as one of her most-beloved species. After all, it wasn’t bright yellow (or blue) with a pronounced wing like she sees so often in her picture books. But she knew right away. ”Duck!” she announced confidently, arm outstretched and finger pointing.

We moved on to the next pool, full of a gaggle (herd? flock?) of ducks of all different kinds, and she once again called out to her feathered friends: “Duck! Duck!”

Still, I have to admit my own excitement probably outmeasured hers. In all honesty, she didn’t really seem any more excited to see the ducks than the sheep, horses and cows. She took the biggest shine to a large plastic cow near the entryway (it looked much more like her storybook cows than the giant-headed, all-black real one that we saw) and, somewhat distrubingly, a sleeping white boa constrictor, whose window she plopped down contentedly in front of and later kept wandering back to.

At any rate, the whole afternoon was simply spectacular. It’s such an incredible joy to watch a child for whom every new experience is a thrilling discovery, whether she’s shouting “neigh” at a horse or offering to share her ball with the sheep. And she was just as fascinated observing the other children around her as she was watching the animals.

I know that someday, maybe even soon, some other toy or animal will win her favor away from her first love, but for now, her duck infatuation sure has been fun to watch. I just hope it lasts through Halloween, since we already have her costume planned …

Last week was the big one – Lexie took her first steps!!! It was just a little while after Andy and I got home from work Wednesday night, June 14th. What an amazing feeling it was to see her stagger across those few feet with the biggest, proudest, most wonderful smile on her face! We’ve spent as much time as possible since then encouraging to do it more and more, and her improvement in just that short span of time has been quite impressive, I must say.

But the walking is only part of it. She’s climbing up (and down!) the stairs (with Mommy or Daddy right behind, of course). She’s using her own spoon more and more to eat her oatmeal, yogurt and fruit purees (though just as much ends up on her tray, her hands and in her hair as in her mouth).

While just over a month ago you couldn’t get her to sit still for one minute to “read” a book, now she  climbs into our laps and stares intently at the pages, pointing at her favorite pictures (ducks are always a favorite).

And then there’s the talking. It’s been some time since she’s mastered Dada, Mama, “yeah,” and “no.” Then there was “dog,” “duck” and “ball.” Adorably, her latest thing is animal noises. Just a week or two ago, she started saying, “baa” and “moo” when asked what the sheep or cow says. Today, she added a new one  - “neigh” – for horses. It’s unreal (and impossiby cute) to be flipping through a book with her and have her see a picture of a sheep and say “Baa!” It’s to die, seriously.

It just keeps getter better and better, doesn’t it?