Round and Round We Go

Okay, so I'm behind. I still am going to blog my week of Thanksgiving, but between an office move, a holiday and an infant who decided that sleeping through the night was for the birds, I've been in a state of "just short of self-combustion" these days.

One of the glories of my job was that it was located a mere 9.25 miles from home - in the opposite direction travelled by anyone else going to work in The Frontier. If you tacked on the short drive to Miss Jan's and back to the office, it brought it up to 10 miles even.

It was a pretty sweet deal, especially after some of the commutes I've had - the longest (mileage-wise) of which involved a bridge-tunnel in the morning, a high-rise bridge in the afternoon and 72 miles of round-trip-stuck-in-traffic-delight. The problem was, the actual office at The Office left a lot to be desired - even for a nonprofit. The rents were high, the cleaning crew was non-existent (we had a "bring-your-vacuum-to-work cleaning party the last week in the office), the landlord unstable and the digs were ... well, balancing on the fine line between modest and terrible.

So, The Office moved to swanky new digs downtown - cheaper rent, cleaner toilets, effusive landlords and space that feels akin to the organizational "feel". It's also only 8.2 miles from my house.

The problem lies in the fact that The Office, while closer to my house now (by a mile each way) is now 16 miles from Miss Jan's. Drive south 9.5(ish) miles. Drop girls off. Drive north 16 miles. Spend .3 miles in the parking garage. Repeat in reverse eight hours later. It's not so much the distance (reference the 72-mile round-trip commute above) or the traffic (after East Cost traffic, this is nothing) or the extra gas/mileage/upkeep costs (still cheaper, more reliable and faster *sigh* than public transit here). It is two-fold: the fact that I have to go south to go north and drive an extra 35+ miles a day and the fact that I arrive home 40 minutes later than usual, exhausted, hungry and cold - posessing two children who feel the exact same way - only to have to switch hats and face my other life. The life that involves dishes, dinner prep, housekeeping (ha - as if that happens), bedtime and prep for the next day (dinner prep, dishes, housekeeping, setting clothing out, etc).

Once this week, it was too much. I was late picking the girls up, the traffic was in rare form (2 accidents, 1 construction zone = nightmare no matter which way I drove) and I just wanted to yell "Forgetaboutit!" and calculate the horrors of moving into a cardboard box and eating top ramen for the next 10 years.

Instead, I hung my head over the sink and sobbed as I wondered how long I'd have to pay for my sin of overindulgence and foolish financial management in my twenties.

The moment passed and the next day dawned sunny and hopeful - as new days have a tendancy to do (even in The Frontier winters). That night, my boss gave me a letter of appreciation and indicated that I'd be receiving a small bonus in my next check. I remembered that he didn't bat an eye earlier in the week when I announced that Miss Jan's relative had died suddenly and she would be closed for the funeral - he merely agreed that working from home would be fine. My paycheck came. Woodstock proclaimed how much she loved seeing her friends at Miss Jan's. Pebbles slept through the night again. I got more than 4 hours of sleep (only 5 1/2 actually, but that's better than 4). I remembered that I had a good, flexible job with a good paycheck in a crummy economy. I remembered that I had a fantastic, dependable, trustworthy, salt-of-the-earth sitter - who only charges me the rate for one child, even though she watches two.

And I realized that sometimes blessings come in the most unexpected moments. I still dislike my new commute, but there are far worse things in the world - and someday, I'll settle into a routine and laugh at how inefficient and inept I used to be.

A Week of Thanksgiving, Part II

As a child, I didn't play with dolls. I did, however, have a beloved teddy bear, for whom my grandmother and mother made clothes.

As a teen, I didn't love babysitting. There was one family, however, for whom I actually enjoyed it. I watched their three children every week for a year.

As an adult, I determined that since I didn't really have an affinity for small children, I probably shouldn't have any of my own. Gratefully, however, my o adwn personal Jiminey Cricket told me otherwise.

I adore being a mom. Today I am grateful not just for my kids but for everything being a mother allows me to feel, to be, to say, to experience.

I love being a mom for the excuses it gives me to relive favorite parts of my childhood without having to explain why.

I love being a mom for the fact that my daughters think I am the greatest human being (next to their daddy) on the planet ... and don't care that the world thinks otherwise. Somehow it makes having a lumpy stomach, chronic dark circles under my eyes and a cheering section in the bathroom when I pee all worth it.

I love being a mom for the excuses it gives me to learn or ponder about subjects in which I haven't been interested since childhood - what kind of bird makes a home in our backyard (a mocking bird), what kind of noises giraffes make (turns out they are mute - thanks to Erin for that!) or which monster on Sesame Street is my favorite (Grover).

I also love being a mom for how close it brings me to divinity. Some say that women are the scorned lot of Christianity in those religions that don't "allow" women to hold the highest levels of authority. I counter that my place as a co-creator and bearer of children is as close to divinity as a flawed human being can get. Through being a mother I've learned about unconditional love, about truly voluntarily bearing the pain and burdens of others, of wanting to be better than you already are, of true sacrifice - the kind that you take on without making big sighing noises and rolling your eyes.

Most of all, I love being a mom for the moments when Pebbles sighs and snuggles into me after her tummy is full or for the times when, like last night, Woodstock pipes up from the back seat and says, "I'm so happy mom!"

This week of Thanksgiving, I am grateful that I have the opportunity to be a mom, I realize it is truly a gift not to be taken for granted.

A Week of Thanksgiving, Part I

Seeing that his wife was teetering on the brink of catastrophic insanity - pushed even closer by a weekend ER visit and a few days of a puking toddler who had the directional sense of a deaf bat in a paper bag - Himself decided celebrating our anniversary early was in order. He booked a hotel, decided on a place to eat, conned (er, persuaded) our sitter to keep both girls overnight (Pebbles is still not reliably sleeping through the night yet - though she does about 75% of the time) and lavished me with little gifts in true Himself fashion (should it be any surprise that his love language is "GIFTS" in all capital letters?!).

It was HEAVENLY. It would have been heavenly to sleep anywhere but my chronically neglected house, but Himself got a room at The Anniversary Inn - a quaint historic home-turned-hotel downtown with themed rooms. Ours was Egyptian themed - complete with cobra snake shower head, sphinxes and "stone" interior. It felt rather like sleeping inside a pyramid (not that I've ever done that). We had sushi. And sparkling cider. And we ate breakfast in bed. And told funny Woodstock stories.

Today, he surprised me with my early Christmas present ... the new Google phone, Droid. I've long had just the cheapest phone on the market because I've had a job that paid for a "cool" phone. However, now that I work for The Company the cool phone perk has gone. I hate my phone. I haven't liked it for the entire almost 2 years I've had it. But at my very core, I'm cheap. Himself isn't (today, it is a good thing, many days it is not). Of course, he was excited to give it to me because it's cool. I was excited to get it because now, effectively, I could do my ENTIRE JOB on my phone. Which makes me wonder why I need to even go into the office, but that's an entirely different story.

Back to Himself. Like all relationships, we have our moments. Sometimes more than others. Especially when one half of the relationship is chronically exhausted, on the brink of having a total anxiety meltdown and the sole food source for a constantly hungry baby and the "go to" person for a toddler who truly believe the entire universe is at her beck and call. There is sometimes weeping, wailing and gnashing of teeth - real or imagined.

And yet ... Himself is still the person I run to with all of the latest news - glad, sad or otherwise. He is still my biggest champion in motherhood and my job. He is a wonderful dad to the girls and doesn't seem to mind that what once resided on my thighs migrated to my mid-section this past pregnancy or that said mid-section is covered in unsightly marks.

Best of all - he loves me enough to re-propose with the engagement ring I (er, Woodstock) lost 9 weeks ago during the new baby frenzy. Of course, we won't talk about putting your wife through 9 weeks of emotional torture and frenetic worry over the fact that she lost an irreplaceable ring. Nor will we discuss the irritation she's had about explaining to the masses that no, she did not in fact exchange her husband for a new baby even though she is sporting a naked finger. He found the ring, mere days after it went missing, had it cleaned, recoated, put in a jeweler's box and gave it to me last night.

Falling asleep with my ring back on my finger made me one of the happiest wives on the planet.

Waking up to sunshine, silence and Himself next to me did it all over again.

During this week of Thanksgiving, I'm grateful to have a partner, a lover, a friend and a father to my girls.

Perspectives

The Sunday before last the speakers were a young (very young) couple who had recently moved into the congregation. It was immediately apparent how young they really were (before they even revealed their ages - further highlighting how very young they are - no one else reveals how old they actually are!) when they began using exclusively stories from high school to illustrate the doctrinal points they were trying to make.

I feel terrible - I don't exactly remember what doctrinal points those were because Himself leaned over at some point and said, "Do you realize she was born AFTER I graduated from high school?!" To which I responded, "But you're OLD!"

It was then I realized that she was 7 when I graduated from high school. That made ME feel old.

And then, one of them (can't remember which one) revealed that the wife is pregnant.

For some reason, that made me just want to leap up and hug her and cry and say, "I'm so sorry," which is an utterly ridiculous sentiment to have because a) she's an adult b) she's married and c) the birth (or pending birth) of a child should ALWAYS be a celebration.

It's hard to see the world through someone else's lens. All I could do was see her life - only 2 years out of high school, no college, young, newlywed, pregnant, and her husband in much the same position (minus the pregnancy, obviously!) - through my lens.

I turned 20 days before I set off on the grandest adventure of my life - a year-long stint in Washington, D.C., which radically altered the course of my life in more ways than one. When I married, I was a college graduate (and had been for a couple of years)and lived in my own apartment 2,500+ miles from home. When I had my first baby, I was well out of the honeymoon stage of married life.

So looking at her life through my lens made me want to cry, because there is no way I would trade what I did and who I became in the nearly 11.5 years between graduating from high school and giving birth to Woodstock. I needed that time to develop who I was, become stronger in some areas and less insistent in others. I needed to develop a sense of self, needed to experience certain things.

That doesn't mean everyone needs to, I keep reminding myself. And yet, it also made me compose a mental list of things I want my girls to want for themselves - an education beyond high school, time on their own as their own people, opportunities to know themselves and their spouses, enough income to cover the basics.

It doesn't have to take 11.5 years beyond high school. In fact, I wouldn't even recommend it (though it worked for me). I just hope it takes more than 2.

If I Have to Ask

For a couple of weeks now, I've been listening to a relationships seminar by a fairly well-known communications expert and family therapist in The Frontier.

My sister gave it to me several years ago, and I listened to it during my long commutes over the river and through the woods between Virginia and Maryland. That time was also a transitory time - as I anticipated the transition from "married, no kids" to "married, with child." Just as now I am transitioning from "married, one kid" to "married, two kids" - which is a fairly large mental adjustment for me, whatever the reason.

Anyway, long-winded intro aside, there are several key things the seminar highlights that have struck me (they struck me nearly 3 years ago as well, but this time they fairly pounded me over the head). One of those is the speaker's comment that too many of us live our lives thinking:

If I have to ask, it doesn't mean anything (or as much). I shouldn't have to ask if he/she loves me.

It struck me hard, because I was raised in a home (lovingly, to be sure), where that sentiment was oft repeated. "I shouldn't have to tell you, you should just know." Of course, it was probably uttered in relation to the fact that I hadn't gotten around to doing the chores that were clearly explained/posted/expected. However, I internalized it as, "Because you are a part of this family, you should just know what is expected."

The obvious problem is that neither I, nor anyone else that I know of, can read minds. And yet, I, and probably a lot of others, go through life assuming that if someone loves us he/she should just know what I need or want. And if, heaven forbid, I actually have to vocalize those needs/wants/expectations to get someone to recognize them, it is null and void.

Put that way it sounds so obvious. Apparently it's not obvious enough, however, since I can still hear that childhood refrain, "I shouldn't have to tell you, you should just know."

I'm working on replacing it with vocal expectations, prefaced with, "I would appreciate it if..." or "It would mean a lot if..." or "I could use some help with ..."

Of course, on day one I caught myself thinking, "Himself should know I'm trying to be better at verbalizing things ... after all the CD has been playing over and over for days."

Ooops.

The Magic 120 Minutes

I was beginning to wonder how long someone can go about accomplishing everything for everyone else, but getting nothing done on one's personal "to do" list. I vowed I'd not become one of those women who devoted 100% of herself to everyone else and spent nothing of value (time, money or reflection) on herself.

Somewhere about the 3rd month of pregnancy with Pebbles, that happened. Which is how I found myself in my stylist's chair on Saturday for the first time in exactly 10 months. For perspective, the last time I had my hair cut was 3 days before I found out I was pregnant, and I now have a 2-month-old baby.

It is amazing what transformation a hair cut and some highlights can do to a person. I felt a little more like myself and less like the haggard lady in the frumpy mommy costume. Although, if you look too close and the rest of the lumps and bumps on me ... well, there is a ways to go.

It almost seems like the haircut translated into energy. (That and the time change - about which, no one told the kiddos, but it means I got to put both of them to bed early, so I gained an hour last night instead of Saturday night). I washed, dried, folded and PUT AWAY (key phrase here) NINE batches of laundry this weekend. I brought in the winter clothes, put away the summer clothes and my maternity clothes. This morning I deboned chicken for tonight's meal, put the bones/skin/other bits to boil with seasonings, carrots and onions for chicken soup base, which will be a meal later in the week, made scrambled eggs and veggies for Woodstock (she'll eat anything you put in eggs!), dressed and fed myself and both kids, prepped the zucchini for roasted zucchini tonight and got us all out of the house only 5 minutes late.

Maybe I need to get my hair cut every few days ...?

Have You Ever Wondered...?

Have you ever wondered what a giraffe says?

Yeah, me either.

However, Woodstock is going through a (very long) phase of wondering what EVERYTHING says. And, since she managed to get us to scramble and obtain a giraffe costume for her for Halloween (*story below), she is now insisting on knowing what a giraffe says.

And I'm totally stumped. Other than the sound of munching leaves, I'm not sure I've ever heard a giraffe make a noise. And I've seen a lot of giraffes.

Of course, she also insisted on wearing her giraffe ensemble to Miss Jan's this morning. After I dressed her, she was wandering around the house quacking. I said, "funny girl, giraffes don't quack." She stopped, looked at me and said, "Giraffes say?" (translation: "what do giraffes say?")

Um ... still no idea.

Silly mommy.

*How Woodstock came to be dressed as a giraffe instead of a lion:
We'd planned on Woodstock being a lion this Halloween. However, at some point she's developed rather strong opinions on things - one of which is apparently about suitable Halloween costumes. She INSISTED she was going to be a giraffe. For days, every time someone asked her she'd say "I be a giraffe." Every time we'd tell her, "How about a lion?" She'd reply, "No, I be a giraffe."

Oooookkkkaaaaay. Except I couldn't find a giraffe costume that didn't cost a small fortune that would fit her. And I'm far from being one of those moms who can just "whip something up."

The last straw came when she told the pediatrician, who asked what Woodstock was going to be for Halloween, "Not a yion (lion). I be a giraffe."

Fortunately, my mom happened to mention the above funny anecdotes about Woodstock to a friend. Her friend (bless her, bless her!) said, "I have a giraffe costume for a 2-year-old you can borrow!" Happy days. The package (mailed priority) arrived yesterday. Woodstock has only taken it off to sleep.

She does make an awfully cute giraffe.

Thank You Satellite Television

Late last spring, when we thought we were moving to the sunny beaches of California, we had our satellite TV service put on hold. For three blissful months we didn't have television.

I didn't miss it. Even Himself, who always has the TV on if he's in the same room as the TV, even if it's muted (sort of defeating the point, but he doesn't seem to realize that), didn't seem to miss it (then again, it wasn't football season).

However, since we do have to fill our contract, we opted to have it tuned on in late summer, about the time Grover showed up and not long before Pebbles was due to arrive.

And, after a recent discovery, I am SO GRATEFUL. (Words I never thought I'd utter about TV in my life).

It turns out that the BYU Channel has these wonderful, 30-minute segments in the morning and the late evening featuring professors of ancient scripture discussing various scriptures in a round-table format. The ones in the morning right now focus on the Book of Mormon. The ones in the evening focus on the Doctrine and Covenants. Each segment focuses on about 3 chapters and is full of insights, commentary and reading many of the verses aloud.

One of the things I've struggled with since going back to work and having two kids is how to fit in the morning quiet time that I require to be a fully-functioning person. As a true introvert, I require "alone time" to recharge. Usually this is when I would read my scriptures. But with an infant and a toddler and a body crying out desperately for sleep (or falling asleep at the mere opening of a book), quiet time is a rare commodity.

Enter the Discussions on the Scriptures segments. Each morning, I sit, baby and pump in hand, scriptures on my lap and watch/listen to the devotional. I've learned so much and feel that quiet Spirit that is so elusive in my house sometimes. It gives me both intellectual and spiritual stimulation that I have lacked for far too long.

Those 30 minutes a morning make whatever we're paying to have satellite TV, and that channel in particular, worth it.

And THAT is something I definitely never thought I'd say!

Things That Make Your Heart Melt

Sunday was the children's program in church, as a result, the opening hymn was "I am a Child of God."

Woodstock, who loves music almost as much as Pebbles, looked at me with delight - as she knows the words to two of the verses.

She sat there, all 25 1/2 months of her, and sang all the words to the first two verses.

I had to concentrate on the chorister so I didn't start crying.

I love that kid.

One of These Days Is Not Like the Others

This morning, I was woken from a fitful, light sleep by Pebbles gagging and projectile vomiting (1 hour and 45 minutes after she ate). Her acid reflux seems to be getting worse, not better ... and seems to be made worse when I eat vegetables, some fruits, whole grains and beans. In other words, if I eat crap, she's fine. Lovely.

I was too nervous to lie her down again, so I dozed and she slept on my chest until it was well past time to get up. That was the second problem.

The third problem came after I fed her and snuggled with her far too long (she's warm, the living room most definitely is not) - making me even later. That wasn't so much the problem as falling down the stairs with Pebbles in my arms was. Fortunately, it was only the last half of the stairs. Fortunately, my left hip and my right elbow took most of the fall (it's always my left hip!). Fortunately, I didn't drop Pebbles, just scared the living daylights out of her.

She cried. I sat there stunned, wind knocked out of me. Woodstock (whom Himself had just gotten up) cried because "Mamma's hurt. Fall down da stairs." (after she asked, "What's wrong honey?")

From that point on, it was pure chaos. The one day I forget to obsessively stalk the weather and it snows. Woodstock, already the world's pokiest eater, was even pokier than normal (of course, because I was late). It snowed harder.

I finally left the house, 20 minutes late. I took a different way to work than usual, avoiding the bench where the snow tends to be worse. It was snowing hard and I missed the flashing lights of a school zone. Unfortunately, the Sheriff's Deputy out this morning with his radar gun, did not.*

He poked his head in my window - "you were speeding in a school zone," he said. At this point, it felt as if the entire universe was conspiring against me, and I was only seconds away from full-blown histeria.

"Momma, who's dat?" Woodstock piped up from the back seat. The deputy said, "you have beautiful kids. I nodded, "Fortunately the newborn is still alive, I said, this is just the frosting on a really crummy day. I fell down the stairs with her this morning."

He asked if we were okay. I assured him we were - mostly. He said, "I'm sorry I had to do this."

"It's not your fault," I said, wishing he'd just give me the ticket so I could break down in hysterics before I got to work.

What felt like hours later, he came back with what I was certain was my citation. He poked his head in my window to avoid the snow. "You know," he said, "I'm just giving you a warning. You know what did it? I'm human, we all have bad days, but you took responsibility for what you did. I think that's penance enough."

I was glad I didn't have to say anything more than "thank you," because I couldn't. I was so relieved.

Later, my mom called with more good news - she'd tracked down a giraffe costume for Woodstock (who has told everyone she's going to be a giraffe, when in fact she was going to be a lion). I dropped the phone, couldn't reach it.

I was 45 minutes late to work - and I realized I had forgotten my lunch. And now it's really snowing.

But if bad things come in threes, I'm covered. The rest of today should be splendid.

*For the record, I am hyper-vigilant about school zones. I do not speed in school zones. Ever. Well, except this morning. I felt horrible, which just increases my gratitude to the deputy.

You Know You've Grown Old When ...

In my twenties, I lined up for things like concerts, movies, free tickets to the Kennedy Center's Sing-a-Long Messiah, obscure Washington tours, etc. I endured dark, cold, long lines, crowds, and ridiculous crowd management.

Something must have happened when I crossed the threshold into "thirtysomething." I found myself dragging the girls out at oh-dark-thirty to stand in line so Woodstock and I could get stuck by a needle. Except, well, the entire known universe also came and by 7 a.m. there were 3,000 people and a line 6 blocks long for 1,700-2,500 shots.

I took Woodstock and Pebbles out to breakfast instead.

Please don't cough on us.

Over the River and Through the Woods ...

For the record, I love road trips. I love adventuring to new places, seeing new scenery, exploring and feeling the freedom that comes with leaving the mundane behind for a couple of days.

This fall, however, I issued an edict that never before would I have considered: NO MORE ROAD TRIPS. Not forever, mind you, this is merely a temporary moratorium. But after seeing the better part of four states, thousands of miles, two sets of in-laws and my own family, I'm done. It wasn't so much those things that inspired the unprecedented proclamation, it was all of the above PLUS doing it in a compact-car stuffed to its gills with everything required for traveling with children (and the things Himself inherited from his father), PLUS a toddler and a 4- to 7-week-old infant. It was spending 18 days of a 22-day span on the road or at someone else's house, where even under the best of circumstances I don't sleep well, and when it involves a nursing newborn - well, sleep was the one thing I didn't get too much of.

Then there were the adventures. The trip to my parents' house with both girls by myself where the entire car was full of cases of apples (loose - the car was too full of kids and kid stuff to do anything other than dump the the boxes of apples in and let them roam around during the ride). There was the point at which our car refused to start at a rest stop in Oregon (the 3-year-old car that with just over 50k miles should NOT be refusing to start). It added an extra 90 minutes to our travels - ended up being a bad batter. Of course, it meant we missed a horrific dust storm in the wilds of Eastern Washington - so it ended up being one of those "hmmm..." moments. There was the funeral - the whole reason for the longest of the road trips. There was the sleeping in the same room as both kids for 8 of the longest nights of my lie, where they took turns waking each other (and us) up. There was the stopping every couple of hours to feed Pebbles and exercise Woodstock's legs. And there was an abundance of mediocre, calorie-laden food during the long days on the road.

Still, it took until the end of the 16.5-hour drive back from our last road trip before I cracked. Somewhere in the wilds of Idaho, I exclaimed, "We're not going ANYWHERE for a very long time. If anyone wants to see us, we have a guest bedroom (with a bed!) and an extra bathroom - they can come see US!"

Fortunately, Himself agreed. The very next day I issued an e-mail to all relatives explaining that we were not leaving the county for Thanksgiving this year. If anyone wanted to see us, they could come to us.

Anytime I think about having to spend more than 30 minutes in the car, I break out in hives. Every time we got in the car for a week after returning, Woodstock would ask which grandparent we were going to see. How quickly the cry of "My bum is tired!" fade from her memory. (Although, to be completely honest, Woodstock wins the "Toddler Traveler of a Lifetime" award - she was a FANTASTIC road-tripper. Not one tantrum in the car. Not one utterance of "are we there yet?" The only peep that let us know she was as tired of the whole deal as we were was the tired bum comment. Pebbles, on the other hand, loathes her car seat if she is awake. Fortunately 4- to 7-week-olds sleep a lot).

I cannot explain how blissfully happy I am to have banned all road trips in the immediate future. There is something to be said after all about order, familiarity and routine.

There's also something to be said about a good night's sleep, but we're not there quite yet.

Charity Never Faileth ... But Sometimes it Goes Awry

Tuesday night I stood in my kitchen, a newborn happily swaddled and sitting in her bouncy seat on the counter (shhh! don't tell the child safety police), and toddler standing next to me on a dining room chair, peppering with questions like "whas dat?" and "chocat chip?" every 30 seconds. I was attempting to make pumpkin bars for a funeral.

Wait ... first week back at work, second day in, sleep-deprived, infant with acid reflux, toddler who developed "selective hearing" on her second birthday ... BAKING? For a funeral?! Are you insane?

Probably.

But I decided that I need to do more to help others out - because I've been on the receiving end a lot of late, and as much as I'd love to claim that I'm a big-hearted saint of a woman, it's really more half-truth than truth (half-truth because I aspire to be that, but I'm not so much). Besides, how hard is it to bake a batch of pumpkin bars for the funeral of the sister of a woman from church I'm assigned to visit?

Rather complicated, as it turns out.

So the baking went fairly well, but I had to frost them before I went to bed, so I could deliver them the following evening to another woman from church, as they wanted the deserts to be dropped off at 8 a.m. on Thursday - the morning of the funeral - and I'm lucky to get us all out of the house fully clothed and fed by 8:30 these days.

Anyway, the bars hadn't quite cooled, so the cream cheese frosting melted a little into the cake-like bars, but still ... not so bad. Except, remember the toddler, who was still helping - which means that the bars defintely tasted much better than they looked. And the newborn who had given up on peaceful slumber and was wailing that she might starve to death in the next 30 seconds if I didn't drop everything and feed her rightthisverysecond. Instant gratification starts early!

Fast forward to last night (Wednesday). I remember suddenly that they'd asked that we bring the "individual serving desserts" (ie cookies, cupcakes, bars) on something that was disposable, so the family wouldn't have to return the dish. Complication. It appears that in all my stocking-up, paper plates are not to be found anywhere in my house. And since there is no such thing as a "quick trip to the store" when it involves a newborn and a toddler, well ... never mind, I thought, I had to drop the bars off at someone else's house that evening and maybe she would have something suitable.

Meanwhile, it turns out Woodstock can reach way back on top of the chest freezer. Turns out she can reach a lot of things these days I didn't know about (like my vitamins - thank heavens it was just the Vitamin D!) Turns out toddler finger prints make a really big mess in cream cheese frosting. I smoothed it out the best I could - at least her fingers were clean.

I called the neighbor to see if she was home and I could drop off the bars. Pebbles picked that moment to need to eat rightthisverysecond (Murphys Law says that if the baby is crying, the phone will ring, and if you pick up the phone, the baby will start to cry just to spite you). Above the wailing, I heard the answering machine picked up. No worries, the evening was still youngish ... another couple of hours until my eyes would be so bleary I'd have to head to bed, whether or not I had accomplished anything.

Bedtime came and went, two middle-of-the-night feedings came and went (payback for falling asleep early and not waking up to feed Pebbles at 10:30 p.m. - curses!), the alarm clock came ... and went. (Twice this week I've slept through the annoying little artificial birdies that are supposed to wake me). This was the day - the pumpkin bars needed to be on something disposable and delivered to the relatives of the deceased by 8 a.m.

Wasn't going to happen.

I ran through various scenarios in my mind as I seared short ribs in my pjs in hopes that the crock pot would magically turn them into dinner by the time I got home. I could just not drop them off...except that invalidated the whole purpose to begin with and really who needs to be stuck with a sheet pan full of bars frosted with cream cheese, butter and sugar? I could try and see if anyone else in the neighborhood was dropping theirs off - and could they drop mine off too? But that required too much time.

And what to do about the #$%#$%^#%& disposable plate problem? In a flash of MacGuyver-like inspiration, I cut the flap off of a diaper box (of which we have plenty) and covered it in tinfoil. Voila! Disposable pumpkin bar transporter.

I slogged through the morning, barely able to keep my eyelids open. Of course, because I needed to leave the house early, everything (and everybody) moved in slow motion. We left the house at 8:40 a.m. - and gone were both my chances of making it to work or delivering the goodies reasonably close to on time.

I drove up to the home of the family to whom the bars needed to be delivered. Good sign - all vehicles were still present and accounted for. I rang the bell. For a moment I felt sheepish about ringing someone's doorbell at 8:40 a.m. - then realized of course they'd be up - today was a funeral after all.

The man of the house answered the door in his pjs. Odd.

He looked at me quizzically when I said, "These are for you," so I added, "For the funeral." He thanked me, still puzzled. I drove to work, slightly amazed at how much work it took to produce 24 pumpkin bars for a fumerarl, and put it out of my mind.

Until I checked my voice mail on my cell phone this morning.

"Sara, this is Sister X. I wanted to let you know we got the date of the funeral wrong. It is FRIDAY. Not Thursday. So you can drop them off at 8 a.m. Friday."

Odd. I don't remember missing any calls on Tuesday or Wednesday. I looked back through all of my calls ... not a single one that indicated it was missed. I simply just had a voice mail show up.

Creepy.

And aggravating! No wonder the man of the house appeared baffled and in his pjs. No wonder the woman I'd arranged to take my goodies early wasn't home the night before the funeral.

Do you think pumpkin bars - cut and placed on tinfoil-covered cardboard - will last until mid-day tomorrow and still taste okay?

I give up. Maybe I am insane.

End Radio Silence

We're still here.

We're (er, I) am sleep-deprived, a bit overwhelmed and not at all sure if my sanity is in tact, but ... I have two of the cutest little girls on the planet, so that makes most of it tolerable.

Pebbles is starting to make cute baby noises and Woodstock is chattering non-stop about anything and everything and is making herself heard, even when we'd rather not hear her. Like when the phone rings. Apologies to anyone who calls. You'll be met with a shrieking, "MOOOOOOM!" in the background followed by "Who's it?" (who is it). She'll pause for the answer, then regardless of said answer she will respond with, "Talk to her?" (or talk to him) If the answer isn't "yes," (it rarely is), she pulls out all of her 2-year-old weapons of ear drum destruction. Oy.

I was never much for phone conversations, but this takes my telephone hibernation to a whole new level. Play phones are no longer satisfactory now that she's discovered the real ones talk back!

I'm Not Dead ... Yet

Things that make one (or at least me) feel really old:

• Having two kids
• Owning both a guest bed and a chest freezer
• Canning - I did apricots, raspberry jam and applesauce this year, and will likely can green tomato sauce before the first hard freeze (which may be coming sooner than later - yikes)
• Getting excited over leaving the house without having two carseats to buckle
• Most of all ... spending more and more time at home and dreading anything that involves the words "road" and "trip."

This past week, I spent 8 days at The Parents' house. I bravely took Woodstock and Pebbles down to visit Grammpy and Papa - a 4-hour drive if one drives 70-75 mph the entire way. 6 hours if one has to stop and pick up apples (for the father-daughter applesauce canning project), feed a newborn, change two diapers, feed a toddler and do two emergency binky rescues.

Fortunately, I am apparently blessed with two children who don't mind the car so much (Woodstock likes it better than Pebbles, but that is to be expected, I suppose), because every relative we have requires a drive of some length. Unfortunately, the whole thing made me want to swear off road trips forever and ever. Especially the drive home, where Pebbles decided 64 miles from home that she had to eat rightthisverysecond. Sitting in a WalMart parking lot at 9 p.m. with a tired toddler and a ravenous infant is loads of fun. Especially when the toddler pipes up from the back seat and says, "Mommy, my bottom hurts! All done sitting!" You and me both kiddo!

Ever the glutton for punishment, I will again be testing fate in a few days as we load up the girls and everything we own (at least it feels like it) and set out for a 700+ mile trek to the Pacific Northwest for Himself's father's memorial service. At least this time there will be two adults, but the trip is 3 times longer - at least until you figure we'll be stopping every 2-3 hours to feed Pebbles, which means about 70 minutes of driving over every 2-hour span - not very good odds. At that rate, we might arrive in time for Thanksgiving.

And all I can do is sit here and stare at the mountain of laundry and the two-page "list of things not to forget for road trip" and try not to cry.

It's times like this when living in a familial compound don't sound so bad after all.

The Power Within

There were three reasons I went with a midwife for this pregnancy:

1. I had a virtually complication-free pregnancy/labor/delivery with Woodstock.
2. The doctor billed me $2,500 just for delivering Woodstock. It wasn't even my doctor who delivered her, but one of the partners. He was around for only a few minutes total. My midwife charged $2,600 for the ENTIRE pregnancy, delivery and post-partum care.
3. I wanted to write my own labor/delivery show (as it turns out, I should go into writing ridiculously "truth is more exciting than fiction" screenplays, given the drama I managed to conjure up).

When I first got pregnant with Woodstock, I had virtually no opinion on the subject - which was probably for the best, since I also had virtually no knowledge of the subject either. Over the course of 9 months, I read a lot, talked to a lot of people and began to form opinions. Between my pregnancies, I continued to read and learn. My pregnancy with Pebbles' brought on a whole new dimension of learning.

Through it all, I've determined one thing - women should be given (and should take) the opportunity to direct their own childbirthing experience, medical complications notwithstanding.

My midwife and I talked a lot about what I wanted Pebbles' birth to be like. I had a great birth experience with Woodstock, but knew I wanted something more this time - more control, more intimacy and more dialogue with the medical establishment. We talked about my birth plan. We talked about my reasons for refusing a 39-week induction - standard procedure for patients on Heparin (standard only because it ensures the patient can have an epidural). We talked about how, after a pregnancy full of drugs, I wanted Pebbles to not have any more drugs in her system than necessary. We talked - and that was the most important thing. We had a dialogue, I expressed my concerns, desires, opinions and questions and she did the same. If she didn't have answer, we turned to the OB and the perinatologist I was also seeing throughout the course of my pregnancy.

It made me feel empowered - even through a pregnancy filled with all kinds of "surprises" (of mostly the not-so-fabulous kind). It made me feel like I was in control of things, which, for a reforming control freak is rather obligatory.

In the end, that sense of empowerment, that sense of directing my child's entrance into the world, proved to be almost divine. There is nothing like childbirth in the world. If you haven't given birth or been at the side of someone who has, you have missed out on one of the greatest moments life affords - because nothing comes close to replicating it. The births of both of my children were incredibly emotional and powerful. However, Pebbles' birth - nearly perfect were it not for Himself's absence - brought with it a whole new sense of power and awe and emotion.

Woodstock entered the world with me relatively calm - mostly because at the last moment, I'd opted for an epidural and could no longer feel anything but pressure below my belly button. I, however, was the only calm thing in the room. The lights were bright (it was, after all 9 in the morning), there seemed to be a dozen people, and the whole thing felt chaotic when she emerged with the cord around her neck. The resident snapped the cord, spraying us with blood. Woodstock was whisked away to help her breathing, then was weighed, measured, cleaned, wrapped and made "pretty" before I got to hold her.

With Pebbles, it was entirely different. I was in agony. No one seems to remember how bad childbirth is and therefore forgets to tell you (or opts not to). I'd forgone the epidural - not out of some hero complex, but because I really wanted to know what it was like to bear a child without having the lower half of my body deadened. I now know. And, truthfully, I really would do it again. It was hell, but it was the good kind - the kind that fills you with power and amazement and love and awe at the end, all of which cloud one's sanity and make you think it's possible to do it all over - just several years down the road.

Pebbles arrived with me the only one in chaos. I remember thinking I hoped the delivery room was sound proof because I was yelling like a banshee. In truth, it helped provide an outlet for my tense emotions so the lower half of me didn't tighten up and keep Pebbles hostage. But it sounded like I was dying. Everything else, however, was calm - almost serene. The room was dim - only one light. The pediatric team (I didn't even realize they were in the room) had been banished to the corner and was banished completely upon Pebbles' arrival. I witnessed the entire birth and felt the miracle of one's body doing everything just right. I watched as the little girl I had co-created entered the world - red, breathing and perfect.

One thing I had mourned with Woodstock's birth was not being able to hold her immediately - it was one of the most important parts of my birth plan. "If she's fine," I told my midwife in one of my prenatal appointments, "I want to hold her immediately. Everything else - including cutting the cord - can wait."

They cleaned Pebbles off as I cradled her in my arms. Eventually, Heidi cut the cord. Eventually, they weighed her and measured her and wrapped her in a cute blanket. But before all of that, I got to sit in the dim room, with angelic lighting, and marvel at the miracle of creation and birth and life. I didn't cry. If I cried, I wouldn't stop. The adrenaline prevented me from mourning the absense of Himself - only when it wore off would I profoundly mourn the one less-than-perfect part of Pebbles birth.

I felt good. (To be entirely truthful, I also felt a lot of pain - no one told me how many painful things happen AFTER the baby arrives!) I felt like I had made the right choice in birthing, the right choice in medical provider, the right choice in birth coach - and once again, I had drawn the right lucky straw in the nurse who spent the night by my side.

It will forever be one of the greatest memories of my entire life.

The experience made me realize just how much childbirth plays into the physical and emotional well-being of a mother, the bonding between mother and child and how empowering motherhood can really be. Motherhood isn't about being susurvient or losing oneself in dirty diapers, baby puke and sleep depravation. It is about holding hands with God, walking the fine line between heaven and earth for a few short hours. It is about creating and delivering the world's most precious resource. It is about being strong, believing in one's body and marveling at the miracle of biology.

It came from feeling empowered. It came from feeling in control and on top of the world. It came from the pain, the discomfort, the yelling - all centered in an oasis of strong, calm women - my village. It came from realization that there is an inherent bond among women when they experience childbirth together. It came from the sense of peace that flooded me as I held Pebbles in my arms - still warm and wet and sticky from her sojourn next to my soul.

For me, it was as close to the divine as I will likely get during my mortal journey. For that morning, I felt as if the veil drawn between heaven and earth was paper thin, and I was at peace.

Bittersweet: Pebbles Joins The Family

First, if you haven't already, you should read Pebbles' birth story here (for those of you confused, I am "Mary.") It's the most accurate version, as there are whole periods that aren't really seared in detail in my memory. Mountains of gratitude to Heidi for blogging the story (and writing it in Pebbles' journal), but more than that, I owe her a debt of gratitude for being there with me during Pebbles' birth.

Heidi (and my mother) are right when they say I attract (create?) drama. I can't do anything without high drama. Including, as it turns out, birthing my second child.

Last Sunday promised to be a quiet reprieve from the chaos of Saturday. I was to babysit two neighbor boys so their parents could attend the dedication of the Oquirrh Mountain Temple. In exchange, their parents would watch Woodstock so I could attend. I have longed to attend a dedicatory session for years, and never have logistics worked out in my favor. I was so proud of myself when I made the arrangements this time for making it happen.

I spent the morning playing blocks and trucks and watching Bob the Builder with Woodstock and the two little boys. I returned home, feeling crampy and exhausted. I flirted with the idea of calling the neighbors and telling them I wasn't going to attend, but talked myself out of it once I thought about how disappointed I would be if I didn't go. I put a roast on and decided to lie down while Woodstock was napping, after which I would tackle the laundry and bedroom that I'd left undone the previous day before heading to the dedication.

I laid down with a book and five minutes later, just as I was beginning to drift off, my water broke. I sat still for another 5 minutes hoping against hope it wasn't really my water breaking. Unable to come up with another option, however, I resigned myself to semi-panic mode. I showered, dressed and began the first of the 37 phone calls it would take to implement (or try to implement) the "How Sara is getting to the hospital and who is going to watch Woodstock and Grover since Himself is out of town plan." As it turns out, it took me clear until contingency plan F and nearly two hours to put plans into place.

My first call was to Himself, who was in the Pacific Northwest visiting his dying father. We knew when we sent him that me going into labor while he was gone was a possibility, since I was 39 weeks pregnant, but I never actually thought it would happen. I cried. I cried because I knew the chances of Himself missing Pebbles' birth were astronomically high. I cried because the last thing I wanted to do was birth my second child alone. I cried because I didn't want to be a burden to all the people I was trying to chase down to help me. I cried because, deep down, as much as I was physically ready to give birth, I was nowhere near emotionally ready.

Heidi arrived at the hospital before I did, effectively making me late to my own child's birth. Not a shocker, since I was also late to my wedding.

You have all the details from Heidi's post ... I spent the first 6 hours trying not to go out of labor and the next 5 trying to be done with labor. At some point I hit a mental/emotional wall when I realized Himself was really going to miss the birth and my inner strength crumbled. I lost my focus and panicked.

Fortunately, I was surrounded with three strong compassionate women - Heidi, my midwife and my nurse, who didn't believe what I was saying and made an epidural-free delivery happen anyway. I think my first words were, "I'm never having another child!" But after having a so-far not-too-painful-complicated recovery, I might reconsider going through all that again.

At 2:43 a.m., August 24, Pebbles arrived - perfect, healthy and wide awake (and hungry!). She has the most delicate features, brown hair, hazel eyes and was nearly a full pound (and a full inch) longer than Woodstock was. 7 pounds, 1 oz. 20".

So far, she is the most calm, content baby I've ever seen - beating even her older sister, who was also born with a very serene disposition. It is a bit surreal to snuggle with Pebbles and realize that she is also my child. It's an odd feeling to realize that one can love two offspring equally, and yet so differently.

Pebbles is here. After eight months of drama and a last week of complete insanity, our perfect little miracle is in my arms - quite litterally.

From the Mixed-Up Weekend Files

Exhaustion and boredom and gratitude and overwhelming surges of every emotion known to man (or woman) would sum up the last few days of this past week.

Starting with the whole "Drama Tuesday" that included a sideways Pebbles and a dying father-in-law I have rocketed through the rest of the week with Himself's last-minute gold-plated (or cost enough it should have been) flight to (and 5-day stay in) the Pacific Northwest, a car rental employee who hooked Himself up with a 5-day rental for a total of $72, including tax, twice-a-day chiropractic visits (which, even with the co-pay each day, are still cheaper than whatever my share of a c-section would be), another midwife/OB consult (in tandem, since my midwife leaves for vacation in three days and doesn't handle breech babies anyway), a massive work project that has consumed me, my intern leaving, an inability to sleep or eat much, a networking gig I had to staff, a toddler whose vocabulary has grown to include the mysterious phrase "shame on you!", a near record-breaking heat wave and a house set to self-destruct.

This morning, I woke up at 3:30 a.m. I'd felt very little fetal movement the night before and none in the quiet hours of the obscenely early morning. Because Pebbles position (while back to head down on Thursday) is tenuous and there is some concern regarding the cord position, my instructions are to "Head to L&D the minute your contractions become regular, your water breaks or you stop feeling movement." I lie in bed for an hour, wondering who on earth I'd call at 4:30 in the morning to watch Woodstock while I drove myself to L&D for lack of fetal movement. I then realized that I'd left two days' of kitchen mess, and there was no way I could possibly admit anyone to the house who could witness that.

So I got up. I scrubbed the kitchen, re-organized two cupboards, unloaded and re-loaded the dishwasher and cleaned the guest bathroom before Woodstock decided to get up at 6:30 a.m. - a full hour early. By this point, one thing had led to another, and I needed to get her fed, dressed and presentable if I needed a sitter. She then "helped" me water the lawn, sweep and half-heartedly mop the kitchen/dining room, straighten the upstairs rooms and throw the kitchen rugs in the washing machine.

By 8 a.m., I was ready for a nap. Besides, I still had to try the sugary drink (oj) and food trick and lie down on my left side to get the baby to move. I fell asleep on the couch before Pebbles even woke up. Woodstock, free to roam the house, got bored with the Food Network programming I had selected and wandered into the dining room. I woke up 20 minutes later covered in spread-out napkins. Woodstock, who was sitting next to me calmly said, "Go to bed, mama. Woodstock cover you up." Hard to be too grumpy about picking up 20 napkins and re-folding them (in addition to the trail of napkins left from the dining room to the living room) when one's child has done it to make sure one is "covered up" for one's nap.

With slightly more energy (and slightly less sanity), I decided to quickly tackle the basement bathroom and take a shower before I started calling to find a sitter. Mostly because I really just wanted Pebbles to move on her own. I straightened the family room, ran a batch of towels through the wash, scrubbed the basement bath (minus the tub - my belly is too big to effectively lean over the tub to scrub it) and vacuumed. I threw the last stray items into my hospital bag - just in case. I showered, much to the delight of Woodstock, who kept pulling back the shower curtain to peer through the sheer plastic curtain and exclaiming, "Mama's naked!" while giggling.

At that point, it was 11:30 a.m. and Woodstock was starving. Feeling the need to make sure she was fed before I called anyone, I made lunch for both of us. She sat in "Grover's chair" across from me at the table, chin resting on its surface, and kept up a running commentary. I focused on eating more than I had at breakfast.

Whether it was the work or the food and the nearly 60 ounces of water consumed in a few hours' time, Pebbles woke up, did a dance and stayed fairly active for half an hour.

The relief was palpable. Woodstock and I celebrated by taking a long early afternoon nap.

I'm now trying to get up the energy to inflate and fill Woodstock's pool for an afternoon diversion (curses to Himself who couldn't get the $6 plastic kiddie pool and had to get the fancy inflatable one that requires an army - not to mention a whole lot of patience - to set up).

It's the strangest week/weekend I've had in recent memory.

Enter the Drama Queen

My mother finds it a very amusing thing to tell her friends that I attract drama like honey attracts flies. I, of course, find it not-quite-as-amusing, though at least she says "attracts" and not "creates," because I do not actually create drama, it just sort of follows me around incessently - like a puppy or a toddler.

Heidi would call it being a "crap magnet" - although not all of my drama is of the bad sort, just, well ... dramatic.

Unfortunately, I have to agree. Especially after this week. This week was going fine until I mentioned I felt a gut feeling that something was "off" and the midwife ordered a non-stress test and ultra sound so I didn't drive myself crazy.

As it turns out, Pebbles, after being compliant and facing head down since 29 weeks, is now BREECH - lying sideways across my belly and trending toward moving vertical - only with her head UP. Woodstock was breech, but she was breech the entire time until 37(ish) weeks when she turned. I'm due in EIGHT DAYS and my child turned breech sometime in the last week when I wasn't paying attention.

Transverse babies cannot be delivered vaginally, for obvious reasons. On the flip side, doctors normally quite happy to "prescribe" a c-section don't want to, because who wants to perform surgery on a patient fully anti-coagulated? Not only that, but if I went into labor I would then need an emergency c-section with general anesthesia (no time to un-anti-coagulate, eliminating all spinal anesthesia possibilities). Two bad things about this: a. I miss the birth entirely. b. Me and general anesthesia are better off staying far, far away from each other. Five surgeries. four had complications. two had life-threatening complications. The odds aren't so fabulous. Never mind the fact that I DO NOT WANT a c-section.

This sent my perfectly planned world into a tailspin. Suddenly I can no longer wish to wake up in the throes of labor pains. Suddenly I have to sit with my rear in the air and tilted right, holding a bag of frozen spinach to Pebbles' head in hopes of persuading her to relocate to another position. Often. Repeatedly. Suddenly, I'm going to the chiropractor's office twice a day to fix my badly misaligned pelvis in hopes that will coax Pebbles to settle down and cooperate. Suddenly, it's twice-a-week non-stress tests and ultrasounds and midwife visits to "keep an eye on" the baby so when she turns we can take action (I'm very empathetic to Kristin at the moment). Suddenly, while I'm still technically "working" I'm spending most of my day driving all over The Frontier.

Then the phone rings at 1:30 a.m. It was Himself's sister letting him know that FIL1 had had a heart attack, was rushed to the hospital and had a second one - it's related to his cancer treatments, they're not sure he'll make it. Himself so eloquently put it at 2 a.m., "He's not dead ... yet."

Up until 3 getting updates and dealing with the adrenaline that comes from being woken up mid-sleep cycle. Himself went back to sleep. There was to be no more sleep for me - once I'm woken up, I'm up. I did the dishes, straightened the kitchen, checked my e-mail, found a chiropractor and played solitaire. I fell asleep watching some baby show at 5:30, only to have to wake up at 6:30.

Today I've spent the day coordinating with the midwife and perinatologist and chiropractor and waiting for updates from Himself and surfing for cheap tickets to the northwest in case he decides to see his dad this weekend. And trying to concentrate on the never-ending "to do list" I have at work.

Maybe mom is right - I may not create drama, but I certainly seem to attract it. I'll gladly share, if anyone is feeling left out and getting too comfortable in the "life is grand, nothing ever changes" stage.

Note to Self: Read the Label, Dummy!

When all else fails, read the drug label.

Normally I obsessively read the drug insert label on new prescriptions. And I look it up in the Physician's Desk Reference. But when I filled my prescription a week or so ago, I didn't bother, after all I've been on it several times and so I know (more or less) what to expect, even if I haven't been on it in two years.

The last few days I've been complaining (excessively probably) to Himself about the extreme fatigue I've been feeling during the day - but especially between 8 a.m. and early afternoon (only then to run into my normal afternoon slumps, which lead into dinner time, then the exhaustive "I'm 9 months pregnant and need to go to bed two hours early" tired spells, which effectively makes me fatiqued all day long).

I've also felt "off" - just slightly - like everything is a little fuzzy around the edges - especially in the mornings.

I just read the drug insert. "May cause fatique and diziness."
I think I've found the answer - seeing as I take it every morning at breakfast, which is, hmmm .... right around 8 a.m.

I think I'll be taking it before bed from now on.

**(Side note: In my defense, I have never had this side effect before, but the side effects of the injection drug I'm on also list diziness and fatigue as potential side effects - I think the two together are maginifying the issue - well, that and Pebbles sucking the very life out of my brain, bones and energy stores).

Woodstock at (almost) 2

Woodstock hit the 23-month mark on Sunday. Which means two things: a) I must figure out ASAP what on earth we're going to give her for her birthday and b) Pebbles is arriving SOON!

I don't blog often about Woodstock - her antics are, like any first-born child, typically trophy and giggle worthy (after all, the starry eyed first-time parent hasn't worn off yet), but no one else needs to agree (or labor painfully through my ruminations on how delightful she is).

But there are some things just too good to pass up:

• Recently, Woodstock has taken to vanishing for periods of time. For all of 5 minutes, I was concerned - how does one lose a toddler in one's not-terribly-big house?! I wandered into her room - no Woodstock. It was the last room I checked, so I said, "Woodstock? Where are you?" And a little voice from underneath the crib (which has a bedskirt, so one cannot immediately see under it), "Hiding mama!" As to what she was doing under there? Well, most times she is sneaking a hit on the binky (banned at all times of the day other than bedtime). Sometimes she is hiding with contraband (lately something she swiped from Grover). Sometimes she is simply hiding from bedtime or anything else she doesn't want to do. The good thing is, she always lets us know where she is - she hasn't quite figured out that "Hiding" means not admitting to it.
• On Sunday afternoon after her nap, Woodstock called to me, "Mama. Come in here." I followed her into Grover's room/toy room/guest room. She pointed at a spot on the floor and said, "Sit here mama. Project." Miss Jan has "project" bags - bags that contain a puzzle or alphabet letters or other such things - Woodstock loves them and now "project" is code word for "puzzle" at our house. She set me up with one of her puzzles, then grabbed my scripture bag and her (large) purse and her plastic keys, & hoisted all of them over her shoulder (leaving her to walk a little tipped to one side) and said, "Bye bye mama. Got to go." She got as far as the front door before she had to come back to check on my puzzle progress.
• On Saturday, I set up the bassinet in our bedroom and got out all the newborn diapering supplies for the bassinet changing table. Woodstock "helped" me put all the diapers in the drawer. Unfortunately, she figured out how to open the drawer - and newborn diapers are just so cute she can't keep her hands out of them. This morning I was dressing in my closet (she had shut me in). I hear her little voice on the other side of the door, "Mama, yie down (lie down). Yie down mama, change your butt." (Heaven bless Himself for teaching her the phrase "change your butt" - just what I want my daughter to be saying). I came out. She was convinced she was going to put the newborn diaper on my rear end. I was convinced if I lie down, there was no getting off the floor in my condition. She was not happy about that in the slightest.
• While camping, my mom kept Woodstock and my niece happily occupied by giving them baby wipes and letting them "clean" - the side of the truck, the camper windows, the table, etc. Woodstock found this delightful. Since then, she has demanded to wash the windows at least once a day. Of course a dry tissue is not acceptable. It must be a "wipey" like the ones Grammy gave her. I am hoping Grammy wants to wash the insides of my dining room windows when she comes up over Labor Day - since, after all, the whole cleaning toddler thing was her idea.

There are days I feel so bad lately because I barely have the energy or strength to pick her up, there is no room on my lap to cuddle and rock her before bed (necessitating that she now sit in her bed for me to sing to her), and her diet has gone way downhill since she discovered all of the wonderful things Grover eats (none of which are healthy). I figure that's why God made toddlers indestructible - so they can survive the late stages of their mother's pregnancy.

Bless her little heart, Woodstock seems to be taking it all in stride - so far. After all, she's not quite 2 yet.

The Good Stuff

Besides the obvious "good stuff" of pregnancy (ie the fact that it results in a baby - the end point I keep reminding myself is worth all the not-so-fabulous stuff one endures on the way there), there are a couple of really fabulous things about my body and pregnancy that I am definitely going to miss in a couple of weeks (?) when Pebbles makes her arrival official.

Like the hair/skin. Okay, I'm in dire need of seeing a stylist, as my hair last got cut two days BEFORE I found out I was pregnant, but pregnancy changes the composition somehow and my scalp doesn't get oily. In fact, I can only wash it twice a week, for the most part, or it gets too dry. I certainly enjoy the extra minutes in my day that affords me. Additionally, the same thing happens to my skin - pregnancy is the ONLY time in my life since hitting adolescence that I haven't had to contend with acne. It's the only time my hormones are balanced enough to have clear skin.

And the dairy. I have severe lactose intolerance - to the point where I can handle about 4 ounces of dairy a day, max. Some cheeses and most yogurt don't bother me, but I absolutely cannot drink milk. During pregnancy, it all goes away - Poof! I can drink milk (and chocolate milk, which I uniquely crave during pregnancy) to my heart's content. No ill effects. As I was lying in bed during one of my insomniac moments last week I thought how my milk-drinking days were nearing to a close soon, resulting in a drastic uptick in my dairy consumption the last couple of days - sort of an "eat, drink and be merry, for tomorrow we may give birth" sort of thing.

Allergies - or the lack of them. My normal, seasonal allergies, which are bad enough that I'm typically on round-the-clock medication (except while prengant/nursing) completely abate while I'm pregnant. Pollen? Bring it on. Grass? Nope. Not an issue (well, I still can't roll in it - pregnancy only "cures" my nasal allergies, not my skin/contact allergies). Springtime? It's lovely when you can see it through clear eyes and fairly clear nasal passages.

Headaches. I frequently suffer headaches. Last pregnancy? Three, total, in 9 months. This pregnancy? Two. Not such bad odds. Which is good, since I'm pretty much prohibited from taking anything medicinal while I'm anti-coagulating my blood and incubating a human being.

Sure pregnancy comes with injections, bruising, aches, pains, 32 weeks of morning sickness (that showed up again last week for another round - just for good measure), swelling, chronic stuffy nose, cramps and all the usual "symptoms" - but I definitely enjoy having the skin of a thirtysomething instead of a 13-year-old, the reduced-maintenance hair, the extra milk, the allergy-free springtime and the vanishing headaches.

Unfortunately, if it's anything like last time, all of the "good stuff" vanishes the moment the real "good stuff" shows up - I don't even get the 6-week postpartum window to adjust.

I've added chocolate milk to the grocery list for what is likely the very last time.

I Would Just Like to Point Out ...

...That I have, apparently, learned something in the last two years.

Two years ago, it took us forever to put together Woodstock's bassinet (recounted, along with the resulting ruined dinner, here). And that was with two people, the box and the instructions (which, in hindsight, might have actually been the problem to begin with!)

Wednesday night, in a fit of desperation more than true nesting (nesting has come and gone - it seems I have neither the fortitude or the energy I had last time), I decided someone had better get around to putting up the bassinet, just in case Pebbles decides to come in the next week or so (highly unlikely, but I am considered "full term" tomorrow). Of course, Himself was working, which left the bassinet assembly up to me.

Of course, I could find the instructions to the bouncy seat (not that it actually needed instructions, the stroller (but not the carseat - ack! - that's the next project, and the mobile, but not the pack-n-play bassinet. I was more than a little paranoid, remembering the adventure last time.

10 minutes later, I was ... done. DONE. DONE!!! I couldn't help but feel like I'd done something horribly wrong and the whole thing was going to collapse in a fit of poorly assembled (or engineered?) plastic, metal and fabric. I kicked it. I put my (half-packed) hospital bag in it. Nothing happened. I drug out the hand sanitizer, the not-at-all-scented baby lotion (anticipating she's as allergic to fragrances as Woodstock and I...), the bottom cream ... nothing happened. It remained standing.

I'm baffled. How is it that it could take us half and evening last time and less than a quarter of an hour this time? It just doesn't seem possible.

Then again, it does feel sort of nice to realize I have learned something since I've become a parent.

Beware of 4 a.m.

One should beware of online activities at 4 a.m., especially if one's wallet is in reach.

This morning I woke up early, as usual. What wasn't usual was that I woke up at 3:30 a.m. Normally "early" involves a 5 in the hour. I had acid reflux (again) that was so bad I'd gross any of my 2.7 readers out if I was to describe it, so I'll refrain. Suffice it to say, it was miserably bad - bad enough that sleep just wasn't going to happen again. At 3:45, I heaved myself out of bed.

Since I was in a class all day yesterday, I logged on to check my work e-mail - in case anything specatularly interesting had happened that I just might have to deal with before I showed up at 9 a.m. While I was at it, I decided to browse for a few things we need, that we've been putting off because I just didn't have the energy to go to a furniture store and "browse."

So I browsed online. Read reviews, compared prices, clicked on buttons and made mathematical calculations in my sleep-addled brain.

By 4:30 a.m., my online shopping cart contained one full-sized mattress, one full-sized box spring, one bed frame and one 5.0 cubic foot chest freezer. Grand total: $530, plus tax and delivery ...I think the 5 showing up in my total (instead of in my awakening hour) was what did it ...

I woke up enough to realize that the delivery charge was more than it would cost us to rent a pick-up (or cajole a neighbor) for the day, and Himself and the two teenage boys inhabiting our house (Grover and Nephew) this week are more than enough manpower to move a full-sized bed and a small freezer into the 70s palace.

Never mind though. That wasn't enough to stop me, I reserved it for in-store pick up on Saturday.

Beware of 4 a.m. - suddenly your excuse for not buying Himself corn dogs (lack of freezer space) will no longer fly and your guests (and Grover) will have somewhere to sleep besides a trusty air mattress.

And your bank account will still be stinging.

"The End"

We had "the talk" this month. The one where we both confessed to each other, out loud, that this might be my very last pregnancy.

It's hard for me to imagine, less than 4 years after having "the talk" that determined we needed to try for a child, that we would be having the talk that would book-end it, discussing whether or not this second child would be "it" as in "the end."

I'm making no decisions, no promises, no anything else, for a couple of years, but I don't want to look back and mourn the fact that I didn't properly appreciate what may well be my final pregnancy. I don't want to lament that I didn't cherish the good parts of pregnancy - the internal acrobatics, spontaneous hiccups (except when they occur near a very full bladder), the feeling of being able to protect one's child from absolutely everything - even if for just 9 short months.

The whole thing has been on my mind a lot lately, as my pregnancy draws near to the end (3.5 weeks until the "estimated" day of delivery). Every time I outgrow another outfit, every time I lose my breath walking up the stairs, every time I look like a circus sideshow act putting on my granny hose in the morning (I can no longer reach - or see - my feet), every time I feel Pebbles kick ... I think, "this might be it." Yet, having the courage to voice it out loud has been nearly as difficult as finding a suitable real-life name for Pebbles.

Last night, we did it. We opened the door of possibility. I didn't know what to expect, how to feel - but a myriad of emotions washed over me. Tentative relief. A bit of sadness. A dose of selfishness and guilt. After all, my body is apparently (surprise, surprise) able to conceive and carry children. The same body, however, is apparently bound and determined to make it as difficult as possible each subsequent time. All of the testing indicates that all subsequent pregnancies would require the same treatment as a precaution - the 6+-month course of expensive, painful injections. The numerous lab visits, the coordination of care with a perinatal specialist, the side effects (extra fatigue and nausea). It all seems like such a small price, but I'm feeling barely human these days. Twice in the past two weeks I had to nap before I left for work at 8:30 a.m. One day I nearly danced in glee that I had to stay home with Woodstock who had a mysteriously high fever for a single day - because it meant a 2-hour afternoon nap.

I worry constantly about what all the medications are doing to Pebbles. I know statistically she'll likely be fine. But neither drug was studied for long-term use, and drugs, as a general rule, aren't studied using pregnant people as subjects. I worry about what they are doing to MY body - and then feel guilty. Anything that has "death" listed as a side effect tends to make one a bit queasy, but there is an internal component built into mothers that automatically makes them sacrifice for the good of their child. I just don't want my sacrifice to be so great I leave two little girls without a healthy, fully functioning, stable mother.

And then there is the anxiety - the feeling of losing absolute control when there are more than 3.5 people in the room at any given time (it is artifically high this week, given I have charge over two teenage boys and a toddler while 9 months pregnant). Chaos makes me physically ill - completely unable to function. We already guessed this would limit our "creating humans" capacity, but I'm only beginning to bring it out into the light of reality to examine it.

I knew the minute I gave birth to Woodstock that I wanted another child. I had baby lust FAR more after giving birth than I ever had before. Pregnant women, women with new babies, women planning on more babies, all made me pine for another one - even when I had a barely-sleeping-through-the-night infant of my own at home. I knew as strongly as I knew anything that there was another child waiting for me. It makes me wonder what crazy emotion will wash over me this time in the after-delivery delirium that makes women insane enough to think "it wasn't so bad, I can totally do this again!"

If it says, "Have another one," so be it, but I have to be prepared to give the "okay" to myself, to my body, if it doesn't. If Pebbles really is my last baby, I resolve to be the best two-child mother I can be and focus on those delightful spirits entrusted me, knowing I left no one out.

Still, there is something so ... final, so emotionally draining about even uttering the words, "The End."

The One Where the Pregnant Lady Ventures Into the Wilderness

Again.

No, the camping trip 4 weeks ago didn't cure me of my need to commune with the great outdoors this summer - though it did cure me of wanting to sleep on the ground the rest of the pregnancy. Himself's work schedule is a mess, so he couldn't get off. Grover was visiting relations in the Great Frozen North, so I took Woodstock and we set off on a 230-mile journey (36.5 miles of it on a dirt road in the middle of nowhere) to join up with The Parentals, my sister/bro-in-law/niece and a couple of other family members for four days of "luxury" camping.

It is "luxury" because I got to sleep in my parents' trailer. Although don't be too jealous - the bed was only slightly softer than the ground, and I did have to share a sleeping space with Woodstock, who would wake up each morning with the sun at 5:45 a.m. and declare, "All done sleeping mommy!" Um, sure. Me too ... I guess. It was also "luxury" because on this annual camping trip (I've gone 25 or so of my 30+ years), we eat like queens - an abudance of food was available at all times of night or day, in addition to the fabulous meals whipped up by The Parentals and my sister.

The only problem was at 36 weeks pregnant I got the a-okay to go from my Midwife only if I promised to not hike or take "long walks that other people would consider hiking" or do too much. The Parentals translated this as, "Sara should do nothing." Aggravation. I felt alternately useless and exhausted. The Parentals waivered between grateful I could come and paranoid that I'd go into labor at 9,000 feet, 2+ hours from the nearest (small) hospital.

On the way down, under strict instructions from The Parentals, I caravanned with my aunt who was also joining the family camping trip in the camping spot across the street. She told me I had to navigate, as she never could remember exactly how to get there. I joked that once we hit the dirt road, you spend the first 20 miles convinced you're on the wrong road (little to no signage) and the last 16 miles or so convinced you've passed the campground because the mileage sign (the ONE mileage sign) is wrong. I will admit, as fiercely independent as I am, I was a little nervous making the return trip today sans an escort - through nearly 40 miles of barren wilderness with no cell phone signal. I could just imagine getting a flat tire, being unable to change it due to my "condition" and having to hike (er, walk) the remaining lonely miles to the nearest town - population a few hundred people - with Woodstock on my back and a 9-month-pregnant belly.

Fortunately, lots of prayers and good fortune abounded and we made it home filthy, safe and only slightly grumpy.

Six hours later, I've unpacked, done three batches of laundry, bathed, gone to the grocery store (clean but unkempt), ordered Chinese food and tried not to think about how exhausted I am after four days of doing nothing but chasing Woodstock and sitting on my tail end.

Four weeks left (approximately), and I think I'm all adventured out.

The One Where The Pregnant Lady Ventures to the Pool

There comes a time in every mother's life where she must risk personal humiliation to provide a stimulating activity for her child. It would do said child a great deal of good to remember this when she believes at the wise old age of 13 that her mother is purposely trying to humiliate her. Turnabout is fair play.

Grover is here for his summer visit. In an attempt to engage both he and Woodstock in an activity suitable for a toddler and a teen (and a pregnant woman), I brought up the idea of venturing to the neighborhood aquatic center for a few hours over the weekend. Both kids loved the idea. Woodstock exclaimed happily over and over "poo! poo! poo!" (not to self: work on pronunciation of the letter "L").

An hour before our departure time on Saturday morning, I began to panic. Taking a teen to the pool is no big deal - at nearly 13 SS is old enough to merely be in the same room, not under constant eyeballing. However, taking a toddler to the pool would require that I myself get into the pool - 8 1/2 month pregnant belly and all.

The first challenge was finding a suitable bathing suit option. Since it is quite likely that I will not venture into a swimming pool more than a handful (if that) times in the next 5 weeks, buying a maternity suit was quite out of the question. Last year's ridiculously ugly tankini was also out, because it looked like Hilda the Hippo was trying to cram herself into someone's itsy-bitsy-teeny-weeny-yellow-polka-dot-bikini. (Not that it was either a bikini, polka-dotted or yellow, but the general effect was the same).

I ended up fishing a two-piece out from the depths of the garage that I bought back in college and wore for years pre-childbirthing/stretchmarks/poochy stomach days. It fit (if you consider "fitting" to mean it stayed on my body without glue, suspenders or looking like it shrunk in the wash). Of course, there was no way on earth I was parading my large, late-pregnancy belly (complete with stretch marks - old and new - and enough heparin bruises to make me look like a bad accident victim) in a two piece to a community pool (I wouldn't even wear it in my fenced-in backyard, after all). I dug deeper into the garage and came out with a long tank that covered everything from my neck to my upper legs.

But, oh, the legs. In my haste to be maternal-figure-of-the-year, I had neglected to think about the fact that there was no way to escape my legs being the object of attention during this venture. They are lily white. As white as Woodstock's, who have never seen the light of day without being slathered in sunscreen repeatedly. And my skin is translucent, which means you can see every vein, scar, spot and ... every single spontaneous heparin bruise. Not to mention I hadn't shaved my legs in recent memory - thanks to the fact that they are stuffed into granny socks for 15ish hours a day.

I set out to rectify the problem, forgetting that I can't even see my legs when I look down, let alone maneuver well enough to get a razor to be effective at all. Not to mention I'm currently mildly phobic about razors, given my propensity to nick my ankles and my current regiment of anti-clotting drugs. After 30 minutes of trying, I gave up. I have no idea what the end result looked like, and at that point, it didn't really matter anyway. What with the ghetto bathing suit get up, the big belly and the white, bungled legs - a little bit of hair on my lower legs certainly couldn't make me look that much worse ... could it?

It was about this point when Grover declared he had a headache and was no longer interested in this mixed-up family outing. I considered calling the whole thing off until Woodstock ramped up her pleas of "poo! poo" which were unsatisfied by her baby pool on the back lawn.

I schlepped us both to the aquatic center, where Woodstock promptly decided the water was better from a distance and clung to me like lint on a sweater for the first 30 minutes. While the water helped buoy up her 25 pound bulk, it did nothing for my image as an uber-cool mom ... standing there in knee-deep water with a toddler suctioned to my right hip, my belly sticking out under a wet tank and my spotted legs available for closer inspection.

About 30 minutes in, Woodstock abruptly changed course and decided that pools were fine as long as she could WALK by herself, sans parental supervision. This would have been fine in the zero-depth entry portion, but she wasn't content to stay where she could actually touch the bottom with reliability. I spent the remainder of the time praying that I would be able to move as fast as my lightening-quick toddler, who suddenly delighted in the "poo" and the water and the other kids and felt she was much too advanced to be tethered to her mother. I'm sure the lifeguard kept her eye on us, just waiting for me to do a belly flop as I dove after Woodstock, wondering what kind of sane pregnant woman dons a bathing suit and takes a toddler to the pool by herself.

I myself was wondering the exact same thing. I'm filing this under "things to think about more thoroughly next time before commencing activity."

The Martyr's Lament

This month's issue of The Atlantic has a "thought-provoking" (stab-yourself-in-the-eye-with-a-pencil-due-to-the-sheer-idiocy-of-the-argument kind of thought-provoking) article on the "outdated institution of marriage." (Side note: why must it always be referred to as an "institution?" - no wonder people are all for its demise. "Institution" sounds like somewhere youd send someone to be strapped to a bed and attended to by men in white lab coats, not something I'd actually wish to participate in.)

It starts by the author confessing to an extramarital affair. It then proceeds to detail her thoughts on how marriage is something best left to the 19th century agrarians where "it was considered to be a kind of trade union for a woman, her protection against the sexually wandering male."

People are entitled to their own opinions, though my brain is still sore from the verbal whiplash I endured as I bounced back and forth between her self-centered diatribe against stability, men in general and that venerable "institution": marriage.

The author, in the end, decides to get divorced, primarily because marriage takes (gasp) work - and while the author spends paragraphs assuring us she knows how to work (and is not afraid of it), alas, "Do you see? Given my staggering working mother’s to-do list, I cannot take on yet another arduous home- and self-improvement project, that of rekindling our romance."

Wait a second. So the thing that should be most important above all in your life is being flung by the wayside like a used tissue because you are too tired after being a working mother to rekindle the romantic spark? Clearly she had some time to kindle some kind of romantic spark, given that she's just confessed (to the world, her therapist and her ex-husband) to having a brief extramarital affair.

She then laments: "My domestic evenings have typically revolved around five o’clock mac and cheese under bright lighting and then a slow melt into dishes and SpongeBob … because yet another of my marital failings was that I was never able to commit to a nanny"

I'm confused. So her life would have been better if she had a nanny? (No offense to nannys or those who hire them - I, after all, do my part to keep a sitter employed) But you can't conjure up a better evening than mac-n-cheese and SpongeBob? She goes on to complain about pondering these things in the middle of the night while dodging the elbows of her grade-school-aged girls.

Wait a minute.
She appears to be trying so hard to paint a picture of herself as a martyr that she is inadvertantly painting herself as rather inept at life in general (or so it seems). Not that there is anything wrong with mac-n-cheese (my own kid loves it) or SpongeBob (at least according to Himself) or snuggling with the kiddos, but I see a self-centered woman who overindulges her children because she's too tired (or something) to parent and tosses away her 20-year-marriage over a fling because it's more work than she can cram into her "woe-is-me" working mother schedule.

Here I feel, in some ways, qualified to comment. I'm a working mother. I work 40ish hours a week, in an office. It's hard. It's tiring. It's something I'd rather not do for the rest of my life. But that does NOT absolve me of my responsibilities as a wife, a parent and a citizen of planet Earth. Nor does the sacrifices that being a working mother/wife require earn me martyr status. I am not a single parent, underemployed, working multiple jobs or on public assistance. Neither was the author (until she chose single parenting over the "work" that rebuilding her marriage would take). And her selfish pursuit of excitement, lust and the easy way (over-indulging the children versus having an adult relationship with their father) certainly does not qualify as either sacrifice or martyr status.

I can only imagine the shock and awe that would result from Himself if I waltzed in the house day after day and said, "Oh I can only manage to cook dinner from a box and stick Woodstock in front of the TV, because I can't possibly be expected to do anything more for anyone - I am, after all, a working woman." Never mind the fact that Himself (and the author's husband) are both employed as well.

Which brings me to the next portion of the essay in which the author joins a friend to rail against her friend's spouse (who holds a job, cooks, chauffers the kiddos and generally dazzles all of their friends), because *gasp* he is too "stable."

In one sentance she lauds his goodness: "More accurately, [she is] reheating dinner; the dish is something wonderfully subtle yet complex, like a saffron-infused porcini risotto, that Ian made over the weekend and froze for us, in Tupperware neatly labeled with a Sharpie, because this is the sort of thoughtful thing he does." Several paragraphs later, she gleefully skewers him for his faults, while at the same time absolving her friend's faults because she "She sees herself as a failed mother, and is depressed and chronically overworked at her $120,000-a-year job (which she must cling to for the benefits because Ian freelances). At night, horny and sleepless, she paces the exquisite kitchen, gobbling mini Dove bars. The main breadwinner, Rachel is really the Traditional Dad, but instead of being handed her pipe and slippers at six, she appears to be marooned in a sexless remodeling project with a passive-aggressive Competitive Wife."

As I see it, women have created (by and large) their own monster. We have begged, pleaded, groveled, yelled and demanded to be treated not as mere equals to men but AS MEN. In the process, we emasculate men, demand that they take on everything we can't possibly handle as "poor working mothers," and then whine because they turn into "passive-aggressive Competitive Wi[ves]" - who are probably leaving their partners without intimacy because they are TOO DARN TIRED TO DO ANYTHING ABOUT IT after a day of working, whipping up healthy meals and shuttling the kids to and from everything. Sure, they should focus on the relationship too, but if we're too busy crying "martyr!" and shoving everything into their laps, we hardly have room to complain.

Now, to be clear, I'm all for equal division of labor ESPECIALLY because I work. I want a partner in parenting, in household tasks and in life - in addition to someone who is also a romantic partner. But I'm not going to get that if I insist on whining about how rough my life is to be the main breadwinner, so therefore I cannot possibly be asked to do anything else. Isn't that the whole 1950s "Man gets home, gets pipe and newspaper ignores family" scenario that we as women have been campaigning against for some 50 years, only with the gender roles reversed?"

I want to know what is wrong with the "stable men" she rails against in her article. What's so wrong with being stable? Stable doesn't have to mean boring, and if it does, maybe she'd best look at herself as she critizes everyone else ... look where it got her ... at least now she can play the "woe is me, SINGLE working mom" card.

The problem is, she seems to confuse Love with Lust - which even a scientist would tell you are two completely different things - from a cellular level right on through your marital vows. That is never more clear than in her last paragraph, in which she states:

Avoid marriage—or you too may suffer the emotional pain, the humiliation, and the logistical difficulty, not to mention the expense, of breaking up a long-term union at midlife for something as demonstrably fleeting as love.

That just leaves me speechless.

Moon Walks and Vampires

On Moon Walks
20 years ago today, I made my first trek to the National Air & Space Museum in downtown D.C. I was spending the summer at my aunt and uncle's house in Virginia, and was mid-way through indulging myself in what would ultimately end up being a life-changing experience.

We had made several trips downtown in previous weeks - the first being for the not-to-be-missed 4th of July celebration on the National Mall - but we hadn't yet ventured to the Smithsonian museums on the mall's south side.

I certainly didn't recognize the significance of the day until my arrival (with hundreds of thousands of other people) at the air and space museum that day - the 20th anniversary of man's first walk on the moon. I touched a moon rock, gazed at real and replicated space craft and learned more about space in a few hours of reading every museum sign I could lay my eyes on than I had in all my nearly 11 years of life up to that point. It was, after all, only 3 short years after the Challenger disaster, my last real interaction with space, which had left me a bit skeptical and slightly bruised.

I remember feeling kind of important for being in a place so significant on the anniversary of such a great historical event. It was, ultimately, one of the things that gave D.C. such an incredible pull over my psyche. Standing in the middle of history was intoxicating - so intoxicating that it never quite left me, until I migrated back as an adult resident.

It's hard to believe 20 years - and so much more history - has passed. Today, as I listen to the recaps of the 40th celebration of man's walk on the moon, I can't help but reflect that for me, the lunar landing happened not on July 20, 1969, but on July 20, 1989, as I had the chance to re-live a piece of history in a city known for staging some of the most significant historical, political and social acts of the 20the 20th century.

That day, D.C. became my town.

On Vampires.
It surprises me, looking back, that the thing that terrified me most about my first surgery (at age 14) was not the surgery itself, or even the anesthetic (something I learned to fear with the next surgery, which left me in critical care on life support). Rather, my greatest fear was having my blood drawn and typed the week before surgery. It wasn't the needle so much as it was the fact that I had to sit and watch vials upon vials (or so it felt) of my blood leak out of my arm.

Today, as I journeyed to the hospital lab for my fourth blood draw in 12 days, I realized just how grateful I was that I go over the whole thing a long time ago. As it turns out, if one ends up with a blood clot while pregnant, one ends up spending a significant amount of time getting to know vampires phlebotomists on a first-name basis. I have one more draw this week until the doctors determine if I am medicated at the correct level. Then I get to repeat the whole process in 10 days when I begin another drug that may or may not interact with the first one, requiring another two weeks of vampire lab visits every three days.

The whole experience has taught me something though - if you have to go in for frequent lab work, go to a hospital. Himself confessed that hospital vampires phlebotomists generally have more experience overall (not to mention much more experience with difficult veins or people like me who now artificially bleed like a stuck pig upon the slightest abrasion) and are more skilled with a needle. I don't want to risk jeopardizing the streak yet, but so far, 5 sticks with needles (counting the one where I got stuck and didn't bleed - odd) and not a single, solitary bruise. A significant event, given the fact that this medication makes me bruise spontaneously.

It still doesn't make me terribly fond of vampires blood draws, but at least it makes it tolerable. Plus, they give Woodstock a dum dum sucker if she happens to be with me, which makes her find my lab visits downright thrilling. And anything that makes a toddler happy, makes a toddler's mother very happy.

50 Days

Okay, really I have 49.5, but who is counting?

This baby will be "fully cooked" in 49(ish) days. 7 weeks.

Nesting has still not kicked in. I haven't done more than surface clean in several weeks (other than the bathrooms, since I've had a slew of house guests who are fortunately quite tolerant of the random non-organizational chaos of the 70s Palace). I haven't cooked a meal all week. And I just realized that the ground beef I took out for dinner tonight got left out all day, which means we won't be eating anything fabulous tonight either.

I did get to check one thing off my very long ridiculous list of things to accomplish yesterday: Buy coming home outfit for baby.

If baby is a boy, we're in big trouble. It's pink and has fuzzy bears.

The list of things to accomplish in the next 49 (ish) days however, looms long, including:

We do not have a name for Baby. Not even a list to narrow down. We just can't seem to motivate ourselves to discuss it. And the semi-proposed middle name isn't the most user-friendly name, further limiting choices. Baby does, however, have a screen name. We're happy to announce that Sara, Himself, Grover and Woodstock will be welcoming Pebbles to the family.

We also don't have a clue where Pebbles will be sleeping when she arrives - other than in her bassinet - because wherever she goes requires re-arranging furniture, and I'm too tired to think about it, let alone actually DO it.

I have not taken any childbirth classes. Ever. Yes, this is my second child. The first one I kind of winged it. I don't have that luxury this time. I do not want to be induced, which means I cannot have an epidural, even if I decide 80% of the way through labor that I want one like last time. I hated the way it made me feel, so I have no regrets about limiting my epidural options, but I am a bit clueless in the pain management techniques of labor. I've read a lot of books. I will be reading more over the next 7 weeks, I believe.

I'm torn as to whether I'm ready or not for this to be done. This may well be it for us. It may well be my last pregnancy (my body is rather hoping so, but the rest of me refuses to commit to any decision regarding further children for a minimum of 2 years post-delivery). Given that, I'm loathe to say I'm ready to be done, but I am ready to no longer feel as if I'm carrying a bowling ball between my legs. Woodstock never dropped until I was in transition. Pebbles has been riding with her head practically engaged for the last four weeks. And, if I'm being totally honest, after 5 1/2 months of injections twice a day, I really could do without the needles. But I want a healthy, happy baby, so I'm not ready to have her quite yet.

Besides, I still have 49 days and at least that many things on my list.