The Future

Our fabulous daughter was eventually born around two weeks after my last post. And yes I have been too busy/tired to write since then. I was very lucky and her birth went down pretty much exactly how I was hoping. I managed to birth her without any pain medication and honestly I couldn't have been more proud of myself. It felt (still feels) like this huge accomplishment. I couldn't have done it without the Husband and My Mom and Sister. I had great coaches.

I had decided early on in my pregnancy that I did not want any pain medication but I had no idea how to achieve that goal. So I did what I always do in that situation- I read. I also took a great birth education class. In the process of all of this preparation I stumbled upon what I think may be "a calling." I wanted to wait until Little Miss was born so I knew more about my brain dealing with labor to see if I thought I could hack it- and now I think I can. So I am officially going to start my Doula training certification process. I-am-so-excited. I have always been fascinated by the human body and the reproductive system in particular. For some reason I became the de facto all female problems and sex related questions for many of my friends. I always felt that was because my lack of shame, judgment, or embarrassment discussing things that can make other women feel ashamed, judged, and embarrassed. I am a straight talker pretty much and I think sometimes that is what people need and that is when they probably most appreciate me. Anyway I have started my process- the first being the choice in my mind and I am stoked. I know that it will take a while to get certified and established but I hope that I become very good at this and it becomes my lifelong career. I want to be 60 years old and a funny Grandma that still drinks Cosmos and says crap a lot; and who also still hunkers down and talk and walks women through the most beautiful experience they will ever have in their life. I have witnessed a birth and it is the single most magical thing I think I will ever see- I witnessed a miracle.

I will write more about my labor and my Darling Muffin another night. For now my comfy bed is calling my name. It has been a very busy day.

Long Time

Ok so it's been a long time; like a very long time. The only excuse I have is that I was really tired in my 3rd trimester of pregnancy. So now I am home and just waiting for the baby to be born; well that and currently trying to get an answer out of Husband as to whether or not he wants to have the family over for dinner this week. That may seem like an easy task but well yeah it's not.

We are all good here. Doc says she thinks baby will be here in the next week or so which is very, very exciting. I am sure once she comes I will have tons to talk about. We will see if I am too tired to lift my fingers long enough to type.

Today I slept in again after scrapbooking with my Sister last night. Then I took a shower and bathed the dogs. Penny was thrilled and really seemed to enjoy the full body scratch that comes with a bath. Lola enjoyed the bath but has been all pouty ever since. She stalked away from us and collapsed in a huff where she slept for an hour only to come around again once people food was offered. She even responded to be called Miss Pouty- yes this is a scary thing. We are hoping the baby doesn't also repond to Miss Pouty someday.

Anyhow so not much exciting going on today with us. We are now going to re-arrange the front bedroom AGAIN because we keep dumping crap in there and now there is no where for my Mom to sleep again after she comes when the baby is born. We are also going to finish straightening the baby's room. So now that I am off work for 4 MONTHS!!!! I will probably attempt to write more. See you soon...

Frampton and Chocolate

My dear, dear Husband and his father are so much alike in some ways it can be pretty scary. I mean I love his Dad so it isn’t an insult. More like some sort of surprise. His Dad once handed me a community college ID card and watched me turn to my Husband and ask when did you attend (blank) college? We had met in community college and I assumed I would know that he had attended there. Husband said, “I didn’t” about the time I note the year on the card and turn back to my F-I-L with a “this is you?!” Well it was and now I have a pretty clear picture of what my Husband may look like in 30 years. They looked that similar at 18.

They are also alike in a few other ways. They both go “HUH?” because they aren’t listening (or heard what you said but feel compelled to say it anyway). They both will consider putting something into a sandwich that I would not consider sandwich material. Both are fools for babies and little kids. He also got his kind heart and his sensitive nature from his Dad. Both are not easily angered at all but you better watch out when you get that far. He Dad passed on his love of classic rock and old cars. His Dad also loves to mess with and build stuff a hobby that my Husband shares. I recently found out they are both partial to clipping toenails and fingernails and leaving them in little gross nail graveyards until someone comes by and starts screaming, “are you freaking kidding me?” This is a line that the MIL and I share.

So all of this to tell you that my Husband and his Dad can both also be distracted; sometimes fairly easily.

For the past two weekends my in-laws have come over to help us paint the interior of our house. It has existed in its white expanse for more than 2 years and with a baby on the way apparently I decided that it needed to look like we lived there. My MIL was thrilled. She loves to paint, plant, demolish, and decorate. She also is Southern, loves sweet tea, Drag Races, and trucks. She is great, but I digress. Anyway the first weekend goes great. We paint the kitchen (two different colors), the front bathroom, living room, and the eating area. In fact my MIL balanced herself with two toes clinging for dear life on the top of my kitchen cabinets and the other foot firmly rooted to an extension ladder with a paint roller in her hand like a cartoon spider to get the two walls I wanted in my vaulted ceiling kitchen blue. Aren’t I a lucky girl?

So the second weekend the painting project is winding down. We are down to the hallway (a T), entry way, second coat on bathroom, and nursery. MIL goes to town on the front bathroom, Husband and his Dad start on hall (FIL on edging and H on rolling), and me cleaning house. We are all just happy go lucky painting away listening to the stereo system we have pumping though the house; which is, of course, tuned into our local classic rock station. All of a sudden we hear a “shit, shit, shit!!” At which point we all come running (the picture of MIL on the ladder trying to give me a heart attack from the week before still clear in my head) to see what the heck is going on. FIL is standing in the hallway saying “now umm you wanted the ceiling painted too right?” Husband says, “no why Dad.” We all go around the corner to see that FIL went way zealous and started totally painting the ceiling of the hallway grey. He starts to explain by saying that he was up on his ladder listening to the song just painting away and he didn’t realize. So Husband says, “Your telling I have a grey ceiling because you were rocking out to Frampton?” My poor FIL we all have a pretty good laugh at his expense. My Husband keeps shaking his head at him the whole rest of the day and saying “Frampton huh?”

Now in an effort to be fair…my Husband can’t seem to focus when he is eating chocolate anymore. I mean a few weeks ago we were having fudge bars after dinner and he ends up having this star burst of speckles all over the front of his undershirt in chocolate. How a man of that age can get chocolate all over himself is just well he clearly must have been distracted. Fast forward to the night before last… I have myself a drumstick (baby likes ice cream- doctor not so much) and he has a choco taco. About an hour later we get off the couch to go and get ready for bed and I see this huge (what I think is) new freckle on his ankle. Upon closer inspection it is, of course, melted chocolate from his ice cream bar. Once we get to the bathroom he notes that it is on the opposite ankle as well suggesting that he rubbed his ankles together. To you know further distribute the chocolate. I bring up the fudge bar incident and laugh pointedly at him. I know what a nice wife right? I never vowed not to laugh at him. Anyway his response is “hey you know it runs in my family…Dad has Frampton, I have chocolate.” Which alas I suppose is true. I mean the man talks about Godiva Chocolate Cheesecake like a pregnant woman.

Rachel Moment

Sunday at home I had a “Rachel” moment. All of a sudden it popped in my head that my What to Expect book is great and everything but I haven’t read anything about what to do when the baby is born! So I was like hmm maybe I should get What to Expect the First Year. So while I was at target yesterday I pick up the book. And boy and I am glad I did. Not only is it 800 pages long but I bet about 1/3 of it should be read before the baby is born. It covers all sort of awesome stuff like the pros and cons of breastfeeding, how to be a supportive coach, and advice to help you make some big decisions about sleeping arrangements and working and stuff. As I read through the table of contents I was like crap if I would have waiting some of this would be too little too late you know.

So you soon to be Mom’s out there in blogland. You may want to get some sort of baby reference material sooner rather than later.

Then this morning at work I start thinking about her going off to college; which I really hope she does…now. I mean 18 years from now I may be begging her to stay home you never know but hopefully logic will win out and I will be encouraging her to follow her education wherever it takes her even if that is 3000 miles away. Having said that my next thought was oh no what if she does something stupid like walks in a dark parking lot by herself. I mean I can be forgetful too; am I going to remember to teach her all of this stuff? There is so much I will need to teach her like how to deal with having her heartbroken, how to drive, how to be a good friend, how to be consistent and dependable, how to give back, how NOT to get in a fight, and how to suppress yelling at crappy ass drivers of course. Her Dad has a hard time with this so this will be an actual challenge people. So yes my baby girl who is twisting and turning in my belly (who I think may be a swimmer) please be careful and don’t go away to college and be given your Mama a heart attack. Oh and get good grades cause I’ll drag you home if you don’t. Oh and make friends, play nice, and be the best you can be.

Pissy Dust

Recently I spent an evening with some people that and one of our elderly grandmothers was there. It was the weirdest thing she was just really critical of everything that anyone said. If this was normal behavior for this G-ma then I wouldn’t have noticed but she is one of the sweetest old ladies I know. So anyway the next day as I am describing the evening to E at work I comment that she seemed to be all about spreading her Pissy Dust on everyone. So yes I coined a new term.

There have also been several instances in the past year where someone around me (often Husband) said something ridiculously hilarious that needs to be immortalized somehow. I need some sort of repository for awesome quotes. I had a book somewhere but it seems somehow okie to store my quotes about itchy asses, hammers, mental agility, and pissy dust next to quotes from Eleanor Roosevelt and Oliver Wendell Holmes.
So if you have any ideas…

Baby Had Her Hate On

I think I have mentioned before that I read and read and read. I am especially reading a lot right now as I am on my finale tour of uncomplicated reading time before the baby is born. My Mom recently lent me the first book in a series called 1rst to Die by James Patterson. If you have read him before his books are usually easy reads and I don’t know what his deal is but he is able to come up with some pretty psychotic villains.

Anyhow last night I was propped up reading the book on the couch by a lamp while Husband watched his favorite show Heroes. I was really comfortable and for the first time had the book propped up on my stomach. The baby had been moving a lot since I started reading. I am beginning to wonder if I was too into the book and my blood pressured was raised; but anyway I digress. Out of nowhere baby girl kicked the spine of the book so hard it popped up in the air and I almost dropped it! It was so freaking cool.

So I am not sure if she doesn’t like murder mysteries, dislikes James Patterson, or just wanted some sleep. Either way she made her Mommy very happy.

Oh Dear

Seeing as how we are about to have a baby and well eventually that child will remember every thing that we say and throw it in our face, at the most inopportune time of course, the Husband and I have recently had several conversations discussing how we need to start WATCHING OUR MOUTHS.

I mean I would be lying if I didn’t preface this with the fact that the old Chewy Quaker Oat granola bar commercial is my favorite of all time. You know the one with all the children that say terribly embarrassing thing at the worst time and at the end the voiceover says something like “when your kid needs something in its mouth…” These lovely children embarrassed their parents by repeating things like, “My Mom said she thought you’d never show your face in this town again,” and “My Sister dresses like a fluzy!”

So two things happened recently to really bring this home for me.

The Husband and I were discussing how he really needed to cute back on the racial comments. I mean don’t get me wrong he is not racist or anything like that but he doesn’t always avoid a stereotyped comment. I have expressed with absolute clarity that our kids will not be learning that crap from us so he needs to knock it off. As we are watching TV one night and talking about this very thing, because of a comment naturally, we are also looking through his baby book his Mom made. In the section of firsts it is listed that his first word was Mama, second was Dada and the third was of course….cracker. We promptly dissolved into fits of laughter. We are both sure that he was clearly referring to an actual cracker but still…awesome timing.

The second was last night. A really good friend from DC is in town to visit. She came to dinner last night along with the other spoke of our wheel my http://singininthekitchen.blogspot.com/ dear friend. We have a nice time eating dinner, rocking Jeopardy, and playing with Singing’s new baby. We even talk about this exact thing. Any-who as we walk them out I say something like, “Man it is fricking cold out here or Man I have to fricking pee! (Can’t remember which) I promptly followed that up with a proud, “See babe I am trying I didn’t say the F-word!” Not two seconds later as we round the corner of our car to see them off I exclaim, “holy shit you guys that is a huge fricking dog!” The result is that we are all doubled over laughing, I feel like a complete idiot and a bad example for my child, Singing is asking if she can blog about this today, I get a head pat from Husband like “oh wow what will I do with you,” and yes I think my 22 week pregnant body may have peed just the tiniest bit from laughter.

Good times for sure.

Little Ears

So I read about two weeks ago in my babycenter email that Baby Charlotte is really starting to hear now. They encouraged the parents to talk to the baby and play the baby classical music and so on. Now Husband is like Classical? How about some Zepplin? I tend to agree with him. I am sure the baby could learn more about musicality and good creative writing skills from Zepplin that Chopin but hey that’s just me.

So one night we are sitting on the couch going round and round what should we do about dinner? We had forgotten to take anything out of the freezer and we were doing our “what do you want, no what do you want, what are your top three dance.” And yes it is truly as annoying as it sounds. So annoying in fact it makes me often want to throw up my hands and yell “never mind I am NOT hungry anymore;” which would we both know would be utterly untrue. So I take a break for the pointlessness of our conversation and redirect. This is how that goes:

Me: “You should talk to the baby.”

H: “Hi baby”

Me: “ No I mean say something to her (as I move his head lower to my stomach) tell her something important.” I expected him to say something like I really love your mom or I can’t wait to me you but no of course not. Could he make it that easy? Instead I get…

H: “Baby your Mom thinks she is right A LOT. And I just want to make sure you know right now that she isn’t always right. I get to be right sometimes too.”


I could hardly hear the end over my belly roll of laughter. I wanted to swat him but you know what he was right. At least the kid isn’t getting boring parents right?

Update

This week (20th ) marks the point of where I really started to feel our baby. Several weeks back I had a icky flutter feeling that almost felt like I was getting a stomach ache and then it would subside a bit and I realized what it was. It was not very strong and intermittent and when I would feel it I would try to hang on as long as I could but how can you hang on to air? BUT earlier this week I definitely felt a push on something. It is almost like a small muscle twitch except it doesn’t repeat itself right away. It is definitely like the coolest thing so far next to actually seeing her. And I am happy to report friends that it looks like we are having a very healthy baby girl. We only have one test left to go as a double check and I am excited to see her again. Sadly this next scan will be the last time I likely see her until she is born and that seems so far away! Pregnancy is so long!! I am sure it will start picking up from here. I will have more nights where I almost fall over in the shower trying to reach my ankles, nights getting up to pee, mornings trying to find shoes (so some things don’t change).

I can’t wait for Husband to be able to feel her too. It should be soon!

Sick= Ugh

I don't like being sick. In fact I truly hate it. My boss may think I like being sick because of how much it seems to happen; but really I don't. In fact I go to great lengths to prevent it. I am one of those people who religiously always washes her hands, with soap and warm water, for at least 20 seconds and opens every door knob on the way back to my desk with a paper towel where I promptly sanitize. Now some of you may think that is insane and I am creating super germs blah, blah, blah whatever. I know the truth which is that the world is covered in feces and I am just smart to avoid it. There is no less than one article a week on MSN that supports my claim. I do not do this at home, we do not remove our shoes while we are indoors (yet), and I do not even lysol at home unless someone has actually been sick.

Normally these tactics work great for me. I do get headaches and this pregnancy seems to be causing me a constant minor cold but other than that I usually do pretty good. Then this week I either get a cold or a bad allergic reaction and I am down 3 days; it blew. But now Husband either has what I had or some breed of something else and it really, really blows. It physically pains me to see him ill. Maybe someday when I have seen it a few more times I will get used to it but he so rarely gets sick usually. I just hate that he isn't well and that there isn't anything that I can do to make him feel better. He also is a man of course so he talks back at any sort of treatment and is belligerent at times. He has been considerably less whiny this time than last but he is fighting me on fever reduction. All of sudden he won't drink any water and he refuses to sleep with a sheet only. I am like give me that blanket my Mom said so! So hopefully by the time he wakes up tomorrow (I just put him to bed after his 2 hour nap on the couch) he will be getting better already. He usually recovers in half the time I do so that is possible.

So to any of you out there whose spouses are sick (probably much sicker than mine) I sympathize with you in the purest of ways. I cannot imagine how hard it will be to stand by and watch this child that I am carrying when it is sick or heartbroken. How as parents can you stomach life? I keep thinking that when my Mom had me this country was in a terrible recession and then she saw prosperity for a while. Although I still feel this world is worth bringing a child into I cannot help but be discouraged. When will we find a cure for cancer? When will adolescents not beat up their friends and post it on You Tube? When will be all be financially solvent and what will we look like when it happens.

See this is what happens when I am stressed and worried and up past my bedtime on the internet.