Posts from — September 2008

On Monday I went to my 34-week appointment, where the midwife informed me that I am still pregnant. Hi, and welcome to the No Shit Sherlock Clinic!

However, I also learned that the baby is in Roger That Houston We’re Ready for Launch position, which is helpful and reassuring news. I believe the words she used were “engaged in the pelvis,” which would be a fun phrase to try to work into normal, non-childbirth related conversation. To confirm that LG is in fact head down, we got to have a third ultrasound, which is something we didn’t get the first go around. She looks pretty much the same as she did at 20 weeks – ten fingers, ten toes, a head, legs, arms, etc., except now she looks a wee bit less comfy. I actually thought I heard the “Mmmmfff. Errrgh. Ummmphhf.” coming out of her tiny toothless mouth. Then I realized no, nope, that’s me again. Pregnancy: the era of embarrassing noises.

I’m trying not to get my hopes up too high that her station status means an early arrival. Bug was early (11 days) and came fast (5 hours) but I’m keeping my expectations low in case I instead end up at 41 weeks participating in the Guinness Book Record Breaking Marathon Labor of All Time. Because this might cut down drastically on my potty sailor mouthiness at the hospital. As if such a thing were possible.

But if she were to come right on time, I would have, just off the top of my head, about FIVE WEEKS FOUR DAYS SIX HOURS TEN MINUTES AND FOURTEEN SECONDS left of pregnancy.

Give or take.

We’ve started having the privacy discussion these days. It’s not going quite as well as I had hoped.

Bug’s idea of “privacy” means laying at my feet while I pee instead of draping himself over my lap while I pee. In other words, his idea of “privacy” is WACKED OUT. So I started to work on this issue with him by introducing a radical concept into his world. CLOSING THE BATHROOM DOOR.

This helped create two more feet between him and me at certain crucial times, but the whole entire time I was “washing my hands” (or “powdering my nose” – insert whatever euphemism you’ve ever heard your grandmother use here), he’d practically get a permanent dent in his nose from the position he maintained at the crack under the door. “Mom are you HAVING PRIVACY? Are you done yet? HOW ABOUT NOW? Mom can you see me? Can you see my fingers? Here’s my fastest car, Mom! See how fast it goes under the – oops! MOM! I HAVE TO GET MY CAR FROM THE BATHROOM! MOM! I HAVE TO COME IN REAL QUICK! MOM!”

Also, there is the whole debacle known as Taking a Shower.

As you well know, if you have read this blog ever, we do not have a bathtub. (P.S. Also, just in case you forgot, this is MUCH TO MY GREAT BIG CHAGRIN.) But not only do we not have a shower, we have a clear shower stall. And, our bathroom is very much visible through the windows of our living room. Therefore, if the bathroom door is say, thrown wide open during my shower, our front windows become akin to a nudie peep show movie screen. (A horrible, terrible, TWO THUMBS WAY DOWN say Ebert and Roper nudie peep show.) Not to mention the fact that inside the house I have a front row audience for my washing up time. And I have enough to deal with these days without having to respond to comments like “Hey what are you doing Mom? Shaving your legs? You haven’t done that in a REALLY LONG TIME!” from the three year old peanut gallery.

So I’m going to keep working away diligently at this until he learns good and well that “Mommy needs privacy” means “OPEN THIS DOOR UNDER PENALTY OF DEATH.”

Until then, you can purchase tickets to the Big Bare Bottom and Belly Show at the house across the street. Performances daily.

My original intent for today’s post was to post pictures of all the awesome/scrumptious/thoughtful things I received for my birthday, but then a small glitch happened: THE INTERNET RAN OUT OF SPACE FROM ALL MY UPLOADING.

Seriously I got so many incredible gifts: Facebook messages, phone texts, blog comments, cake, muffins, homemade cookies, homemade pottery, Blockbuster Access subscriptions, restaurant gift cards, oh, and a Big! Fat! Lime! Green! Chair! that now sits in my living room:

(Thanks Mom and Dad!)

I really felt the love yesterday. I had a great girls night out, calls from friends, cards in the mail…and to top it all off, this:

One (1) hairbrush, lovingly and carefully picked out by Bug for me on my big day. I don’t know if you got the memo about this, but his former favorite colors, blue and silver, have been kicked to the curb, and ORANGE is all the rage these days. He has an orange bookbag for school, an orange toothbrush, favorite food is now Cheetos (who can blame him?), you get the drift. And so when he came upon this creation in the store, Lorso reports that he knew he had found IT, THE ONE. “Because,” Bug says, “it’s kind of pink. AND it’s kind of orange. So it’s BOTH our favorite colors.”

Who knew that such love could be blended together into eighty eight bristles of cheap plastic?

Thanks to everyone who made my thirtieth birthday a truly great day.

About six months ago, Bug got into the habit of yelling this nonsensical phrase “Thirt-dee-DEE!” randomly throughout the house. Sometimes he said it to call me, sometimes he said it to call Lorso, sometimes he was just in his Happy Place and would sing song it while he played. It never ever failed to make me laugh. Something about the way he said it was so Alice In Wonderland/Looney Tunes/My Crazy Random Kid at His Best. Thirt-dee-DEE! Thirt-dee-DEE! (The emphasis on the last dee being the crucial bit.)

Thirt-dee-DEE has been retired for a while now though, and we’ve moved on to SILLY GOOSE and the ever popular BONKY, but lately, i.e. this weekend, I’ve really wished he’d conjure up that oldie but goodie one last time for me. Maybe then I could find a little bit of levity in the sound of Thirt and Dee.

Because today I turn thirty.

If you had asked me oh, six years or so ago what I might wish my thirtieth birthday to be like, I’m pretty sure I would have said 1. BIG PARTY and 2. LOTS OF DRINKING. Here’s what I would not have said: 1. BIG BELLY and 2. LOTS OF SNOT. I really think that when I saw that plus sign on the pregnancy test this year, one of the first things I thought was “Great, now I’ll have to party down with O’Douls for my thirtieth birthday.” This of course was after 1. Holy Shit I’m pregnant? and 2. Holy Shit I’m Pregnant! (followed by some happy type thoughts also, cross my heart.)

But no, for real, my thirtieth birthday has been on my mind for a long time. It seems like the biggest milestone birthday I’ve had yet – bigger than 18 (Legal: Lottery tickets! Voting! Jail!) bigger than 21 (Legal: Wine coolers! Coronitas!) bigger even than 25 (Legal: saving $10 on my car insurance!). I’m not even really able to pinpoint why exactly it seems so huge to me. It just does.

I think I also had the thought that being a jillion months pregnant might actually be a boon for a thirtieth birthday because it would distract me from any and all doom and gloom thoughts I might have on the subject. However. I did not really think about the fact that I would need something to distract me from BEING A JILLION MONTHS PREGNANT. Hey, I know, how about the fact that I’m turning thirty? NOOOOOOOBLEEEARGHHHH.

See how this is not working?

So here is how I am solving the problem: I am asking you, Internet, to deliver to me today on my birthday any and all distractions from 1. being a jillion months pregnant and 2. turning thirty. I will consider this the best of gifts. Tell me a funny story! A dirty joke! Your deepest darkest secret! What you had for lunch! Your grandmother’s middle name! Send me YouTube links! Recipes! (Ok, NOT recipes. They’re not really my bag. I got carried away.)

But you get the drift. Any and all randomness will be read and appreciated. And possibly even responded too – something I am not great at on a regular day. The wackier the better.

And I hope that you, whomever you are, wherever you are, and however old you are have a glorious September 8th. You didn’t know how monumental this day thirty years ago was, did you?

Well now you do.

I alluded to this the other day, but it bears repeating and expanding on: school has morphed Bug back into his old dapper, charming, walk-old-ladies-across-the-street self. I don’t think I had even registered the magnitude of this summertime change in him and how it was affecting me until my crazy breakdown last week. I had been sinking into that Bad Place for so long that I forgot that parenting shouldn’t make you feel like you need two Valium with a vodka chaser on a daily hourly basis.

Please understand I am not blaming my bouts of summer misery entirely on Bug. It was a mutual decorum erosion – his and mine. I simply didn’t have enough resources for him and did not ask for enough help to make up for it, and he responded the way any normally developing three year old would. He went out of his gourd.

Not all of this summer was bad. We went on some pretty great trips together, enjoyed some baseball, hobnobbed with celebrities, and occasionally scored some playdates. So there was that.

But there was also a lot of Time Out and Stern Looks and Are You Listening To Me Mister and If You Do That One More Time and tears tears and more tears. It was painful, it was humbling, and more often than not it made me feel like in the big Monopoly game of parenting I kept drawing the Go To Jail, Go Directly to Jail card.

Do not collect $200.

So can I just tell you that right now, right this minute, Bug is sitting next to me on the couch with a Where’s Waldo book quietly and diligently searching for Odlaw and Wenda. He’s letting me work on the computer for 10 more minutes at which point I promised him that I will close this laptop up and search with him. And I will keep that promise, even if I haven’t had a chance to read this post over again to see if I kept the same verb tense or split any infinitives. Because we’re a work in progress, me and him. And even though we surely don’t get it right all the time, we’re doing our best.

And sometimes our best is pretty great.