Puzzle Me This

My home has been overrun by puzzles.

Not the "hey, I wonder what this is?" kind of puzzle. Not the "whose socks are these?" kind of puzzle.

No.

My home is littered with puzzle pieces of all shapes, sizes, and provenance.

My oldest, Gwyneth, became very interested in puzzles around the age of three. She loved figuring out where the pieces fit together, the magical creation of a simulacrum that mostly matched the picture on the flimsy box. It was a phase she went through and then quickly forgot once she started school three years ago. I'd almost forgotten about all those puzzles.

Then along came Kinsey.

My almost two-and-a-half-year-old daughter has an unnatural obsession with puzzles. She also possesses an uncanny prowess in identifying and organizing spatial and visual elements in her environment. She can take most puzzles and put them together without ever looking at the picture on the box.

She started with the simpler puzzles that belonged to her older sister - a large floor puzzle with 48 pieces depicting sea life. My first clue that puzzles might be her "thing" came when after three attempts, she could accurately put the entire puzzle together without any help. She could also identify all the different species on the puzzle, and responded well to my suggestions, quickly absorbing them into her own self-talk during puzzling: "Mommy! Shark! Fishy face. Body. Shark body?" She was a quick study.

Soon she moved on to more challenging puzzles. The 64-piece Dora and Boots puzzle was merely a challenge to be conquered: she seemed to know instinctively where the pieces belonged, how to manipulate them and seamlessly form the finished product.

But she also kept us in hysterics with her unique puzzle preoccupation. Many mornings in the past two months, Kinsey has demanded, "Puzzle Mommy!" before she's even out of her crib; last night, she broke into the height of hysterics when I told her it was time for bed and she could do a puzzle in the morning (it was 9:00 pm). For several weeks, she would not allow us to congratulate her upon fitting the pieces in the correct location - she would place a piece, then yell, "NO HOORAYS! Not finished yet!" Only once she positioned the final piece would she then shout, "Hooray! All done! Break! Next puzzle!" and immediately tear the puzzle apart and look for another to complete.

Don't get me wrong. I'm thrilled with her mental acuity and her adeptness with manipulating obscure pieces of the puzzles. But it's getting out of control.

Two weeks ago, I purchased three new puzzles for her to try. She had a $50 gift certificate from Grandma for our local toy store, so I used it to get her two 60-piece and one 100-piece puzzle. I figured this would occupy her for a month or two. While I was there, I ordered more puzzles in the 100-250 piece range for my six-year-old.

Foiled.

I came home with the puzzles. Within an hour, Kinsey - with some coaching from me along the lines of, "Where does this [random never-seen-before] piece go?" - had completed both of the 60-piece puzzles and was half-way through the 100-piece one. One of them was even a clever "find the changes" puzzle that had a picture which DOES NOT match the puzzle in the box. The only challenge was getting the box away from Gwyneth, busily mapping the differences, so Kinsey could put it away and start the next puzzle.

Kinsey's current great sorrow is that Gwyneth and I refuse to let her "help" us with the 1000-piece puzzle we're working on this week.

So.... before I head home from work, I'm stopping by the toy store to pick up the new puzzles that came in a few days ago. I'm sure they'll be finished before bedtime.

You've come a long way, baby

Wow.

I can hardly believe it. I started this blog OVER FIVE YEARS ago. And then kids happened and voila... no more blogging for me!

Since then, a lot has happened. My first "precious preemie" (as she calls herself) is now nearly SEVEN years old and attends grade one at our local elementary school.

One week BEFORE she started school, I gave birth - early again - to our NEXT precious preemie.

It sort of sent our whole family into a vortex.

Here we were, a beautiful postmodern family with one kid, a decent income, and a perfectly sized home in a perfectly sized town. Soon my only child would start school full-time, and finally I'd be finished with daycare costs and diapers and potty training and breastfeeding - FOREVER.

But no, let's not get ahead of ourselves. If you believe in a higher power, you could say that said power was having a good old laugh at my presumptuousness.

Just as I started selling off all our baby items, a funny thing happened. Not funny ha-ha. Not really funny at all, to be honest.

In the early weeks of the new year in 2015, I started to wonder if - after four unsuccessful years of trying to get pregnant - I might be expecting. I dropped my twenty on the counter at Walmart and brought home the emotional roller-coaster in the pretty box, ready to urinate my feelings onto it in the hopes of a faint line in a tiny window.

Alas.

No line.

I waited a few days. I tried again. No line. No period. No nothing.

I went to the doctor. I had another pee test and a blood test. Both negative.

Fast forward another week. I ended up in the emergency room with unexplained abdominal cramping. The first question they asked was, "Could you be pregnant?"

I flippantly retorted, "Only if the last four tests in two weeks were wrong."

So... another pee test. Another blood test. An ultrasound.

Nothing.

Just before my mother left at the start of March for her annual three week cruise to warmer climes, I confided, "I think I must have hit menopause." She gave me a big hug and promised we'd talk when she returned at the end of the month.

And what a month it was!

As a high school teacher, I've grown accustomed to stress in my life playing havoc with my monthly menstrual cycle. I've been known to go three months without a period - and not be pregnant.

But for some reason, this time felt different. I wasn't really very stressed at work. I was working part time and feeling like things were going well. I was also aware that having just turned thirty-eight in February, menopause was now galloping headlong towards me from the horizon. I honestly felt okay with the possibility that my time had come to give up buying "women's hygiene" products - hoorah!

I will never forget driving with my husband and our now nearly four-year-old daughter Gwyneth to have some dinner on the first night of March Break that year. From the back seat, a little girl voiced a request that I was sort of surprised hadn't come sooner:

"Mommy, I'm tired of playing with dolls. Can I have a baby sister?"

My husband and I just looked at each other.

"Honey, I can't promise you anything. Maybe you can ask God for a sister if you want one, and Mommy and Daddy will see what we can do," I responded halfheartedly.

I should have known right then that I was in for trouble. Gwyneth has always possessed a sixth sense that would make the stoutest skeptic believe in the supernatural.

The next evening, quite begrudgingly, I dropped another twenty on the Walmart counter. The cashier stole a glance my way and said, "Good luck."

"Yeah, not really," I retorted. "Not exactly what I was hoping for right now." I'm not sure why I was so grouchy, but perhaps part of me knew what that test would reveal.

I went home and blatantly ignored the directions to use my "first pee of the morning" for the test.

I peed on that stick, whacked it down on the bathroom counter, and went out to the kitchen to pace for two minutes while I waited for what I hoped - for once - would NOT be a line inside a window.

When I returned, I had to laugh in spite of myself. For only the second time in my life, I was looking at a home pregnancy test with a positive result.

As I marched downstairs to find Ian and Gwyneth watching TV, I clearly was still taking in the news. I looked at them and said, "Oh good, you're both sitting down. I'm having another baby."

Gwyneth jumped out of her seat and yelled, "Hooray! Hooray! God's giving me a new baby sister! I just KNEW he would answer me!"

My husband looked like I had shot him at point blank range with a bazooka.

My mom and I did have a talk when she got home, but it wasn't about hormone replacement therapy or how to manage hot flashes. Instead, while eating breakfast at a local diner, I watched her facial expression turn from confusion, to disbelief, and then to joy as Gwyneth told her, "Mommy's having a new baby sister for me!"

My pregnancy was another whole post (or two) in itself. But for now, let's just say that on September 2, 2015, we welcomed Gwyneth's baby sister, Kinsey Maeve Rowan Campbell, into our family.

And life would never be the same.