I took a bath

I just took a bath.

It was HEAVENLY.  It was nap or bath, and since I couldn't relax enough to sleep, I chose bath.  Ran the water and realized it wasn't hot enough, so about halfway through I turned the faucet completely over to scalding hot.  The results were divine.  I sunk into the tingly hot water slowly.  It was not too hot, but perfectly hot enough to make me love every sweet second it took to get all the way into the tub.  I repeated over and over in my head, "I took a bath" and thought about how I would write this blog, which would be the perfect segue into writing down all the things that have been going on in the last month or so.  I sat in the tub, eardrums slowly soaking up the perfectly hot enough water, swishing blissfully my phone-and-infant-and-toddler-and-spatula-free hands back and forth, thinking how I could cover a myriad of topics so easily now, when I before hadn't had any idea where to start... all because I took that awesome bath.

I hadn't felt a bath that fulfilling since the tub at Family Beginnings... where my son was born about a month ago.

It's been an up and down month.

Our son was born, but our friend's son, who's due date was the day after ours, was born still.  Stillborn.  There's so much to say, but it's so difficult to put any words together.  I'm terrified of saying the wrong thing, but also afraid of not saying anything, because the long and short of it is that she and her angel son are very often on my mind.  We are new friends, this mom and I, and our nearly-matching due dates had been the foundation of our new friendship.

She blogs, she's on Facebook; she's allowing her grieving process to be very out in the open. I endlessly admire her honestly, courage, and dedication to her family after such a tremendously difficult and unexpected loss.

I'm learning from her, a lesson from which we all could benefit:  putting on a brave face does not necessarily mean you are brave.  I think it takes much more strength and confidence to bare your [proverbial] soul... to show that vulnerability and be so honest.    (I barely have the courage to hit "publish" on this particular post)

-----------------------------------------------------------------------------------------

"If you know someone who has lost a child or lost anybody who's important to them, and you're afraid to mention them because you think you might make them sad by reminding them that they died, they didn't forget they died. You're not reminding them. What you're reminding them of is that you remember that they lived, and that's a great, great gift.'"  - Elizabeth Edwards

------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------

So... well.  There you go.  More on this and everything (including, eventually, my proper birth #2 story and an introduction to a certain little someone) later. 

(And if you'd send some thoughts and prayers up in honor of our friend, her family, and their angel son, along with all the other families who've lost children too soon or even before getting to meet them, God and the universe will know where to direct them.  Thank you.)

Did I ever tell you about my super awesome baby shower?

I had a super awesome pair of friends throw me a super awesome baby shower.

Or rather, a "Baby Sprinkle," it's called, as on your second kid you don't necessarily need very much.  I certainly don't need much (unless this child comes out with a weiner and doesn't look good in pink, but we'll cross that bridge later) but was excited at the thought of having a ton of friends out to my rather distant home for the afternoon, feeding them, showing them a good time and yeah, getting a few presents in the meanwhile.  I admit it... the presents are always fun.  But honestly I just wanted to have an excuse to get folks to come over en masse and hopefully not forget about me as I prepare my descent into mothering-newborn-antisociality (just in time for the holidays!  and the dead of winter!  ahhhh!  goodbye, social world... see you in May.)

The party was everything I dreamed of and more.  Shelly busted out her creativity and glue gun and made the most fantastic decorations and party favors, all on an elephant theme, and all under the constraints of "unknown gender, secret name, and non-pastel colors."  (alas, I did not make things easy for her!)  It was a triumph of artistic awesomeness.  She used circus peanuts (that bizarre candy made of marshmallow?) as the stands for little elephant signs!  And that's just one among a bazillion other excellent things, like brown bags of animal crackers with an origami elephant pinned to it for the guests to take home... a baby banner... four awesome canvases for baby's room... the best diaper cake evaaah!  And then Loreen, a picture of humility in the kitchen inversely proportionate to her utter awesomeness behind a KitchenAid, made the classiest, tastiest menu of tea snacks and appetizers... and ALL GLUTEN FREE.  And a cake.  With a three-dimensional elephant-carrying-an-umbrella that matched the invitation, formed out of fondant, on the top.

A-maz-ing.

Shelly recorded it for party-planning posterity at her blog The Screaming Tomato.  Which I'll lazily just link to (again) since I am not sure if I uploaded the photos yet.  Though there are some super cute ones.  If I don't go into labor today I'll upload them and record them here for my posterity.  Or... Posteriority?  That's the history of my big fat a$$.  Har har har.

But all profanity and joking aside:

Shelly and Loreen... you went above and beyond the call of duty and took time out of your own very busy lives to basically spoil me out of my very mind with all that excellent attention, effort, creativity and care.  Thank you SO MUCH.  It was, aside from my wedding day and the kid being born and maybe some holidays, one of the most memorable and love-filled afternoons of my 32-something years.  Sniff sniff :-)

Here and there

Nothing much happening, but little things here and there that aren't necessarily Facebook worthy but I still need to try and remember somehow.

• our kid was really, genuinely NICE last Tuesday.  We had friends in town visiting over the weekend before that and I think seeing another kid in action, plus the throwing of routine to the wind, turned her into a little poophead.  After much lecturing, bench-sitting, and probably a few whacks on the behind between Dada and I, she woke up last Tuesday and was a really. good. girl. ALL. DAY. LONG.  I mean, shining faced angelic, and not just for show.  She turned to me at one point and said, "I am being a good girl right mama?"  Oh.  Heart melt.  So much that when I offered to let her watch the Goodnight Moon cartoon before commencing the bedtime routine, I started thinking of the limited time with just me and "my little girl" and fell into a horrible crying jag that did not stop until probably an hour later.  Hormones, you suck.
• the flip side of that coin is that occasionally this good little girl will throw a hellacious fit and tell me how her bedroom is NOT HER ROOM and SHE NOT WANT IT and SHE NOT WANT TO BE A BIG SISTER!  This is usually saved for me, because if she pulls this with Dada he throws a similar fit and then leaves the room muttering how he's turned into his own father.  (not a bad thing, mind you... but it's always fun when you make that realization.)
• Since Saturday I've been goin' like a mad woman, trying to get stuff done.  This makes for great naptimes... but makes for exhausted, horrid, limping aching cramping evenings.  By the time I hit bed on Saturday and Sunday, I needed my back pressed and patted to distract from the enticingly suggestive twinges in my hoo-haa that seem to say something is happening. Want more details?  [TMI ALERT!!] It feels like someone is taking a string tied around the uppermost part of my vajay-jay and is pulling on it. It's not terrible but it's unpleasant. I don't remember having it before, but wonder if it's something to do with my stitches "up in thur, up in thur?"  But yet nothing much is happening.  My midwives haven't actually physically "checked" to see if any dilation or anything is going on, but I wouldn't be surprised if I've got a good jump on things.  I swear my pootie is chubbier, whatever sense that makes. I dare say I may have had one or two actual "contractions" - slightly different from the Braxton-Hicks fest that's been going on since 22 weeks or so, but still nothing painful or even unpleasant... just different. 
• Meh, that's all I can remember right now.  Went swimming the other day.  That was fun.  (seriously)

Maternal Black Out

Crossing the 37 week mark in pregnancy numero dos made me realize...

I have no recollection of what happened last time from week 37 (essentially, the day I stopped slinging bras and fat pants at Motherhood Maternity) to week 40 day 2, when I awoke at that eerie 3am-ish moment to find myself in labor during an electrical storm. 

Oops, I lie... thanks to good ol' Spampylandia and a smattering of photos on Picasa I remember that I

• stopped working on July 2nd or 3rd and then had a bunch of out of town friends visit over the Independence Day long weekend
• sat and hand stitched the beginnings of a stuffed bunny for baby - the pieces of which are still in the sewing kit
• effectively freaked out a waitress at Olive Garden 
• ate a lot of Logan's Roadhouse

BUT WHAT ELSE WAS I DOING?  Three, or let's just say two to make it easy, whole weeks of what?  I know I went swimming in the apartment complex pool every few days, so it couldn't have been an alien abduction issue... or not entirely.  It's the solo female version of what I referred to yesterday... Maternal Black Out.  Heck, it might even be Prenatal Black Out.  But surely I was fretting and frothing about every little thing those 2-3 weeks, and now... now?  Yup.  I got nuthin'.  It's just gone.

So today, at 37 weeks 2 days, I head off to Family Beginnings Birth Center at Miami Valley Hospital to turn in my paperwork for the sepia toned zen labor (thanks, Shelly) and delivery of this second child, whose early pregnancy has been wiped into obscurity but whose emergence seems so very important and requisite of recollection. 

I often wonder how Michelle Duggar even remembers the names and birthdays of her 19+ children, much less any factoids or dreamy vignettes from their individual pregnancies. 

Guess the bottom line is:  I need my own TV show. 

Ten Things...

Thanks, Shelly (The Screaming Tomato) for a brilliant idea... to steal!

Hindsight is 20/20, much like the grass is greener on the other side.

I've a list of about 37 things, not necessarily to "do," but just my own Unsolicited Advice that is eerily similar to the fabulous book, How to Have Your Second Child First: 100 Things That Are Good to Know, the First Time Around.

Since there actually is a second child coming in about 78 days 21 days, let me ponder finish pondering the ten ways in which we may choose to do things differently this second time around.

1.  I will push harder during delivery.  The irrational fear of blowing my backside out, plus possibly a little overconfidence in my body's "beautiful natural ability to birth" led me to get a little lazy and not bear down with all my might.  This time 'round, watch out... I plan to merge these two issues into An Irrational Overconfidence in My Body's Beautiful Ability to POP ITSELF BACK IN!   Should anything end up where it shouldn't be, I'm now quite sure it'll go back... after awhile.  I just will not be pushing for 2.5+ hours this time.  (Oh.  And have kid in tub.  That's on the agenda too)

2.  This child gets a nursery.  This is more of a coincidence than a decision, as this child decided to come along when we just happened to have a house with at least one extra room that screamed "put a child in me!"  (har har... apparently this house made my body scream that too.)  Rather than a hybrid guest room/baby room/office in a two bedroom apartment, the ugly neglected blue room has been painted beautiful neutrals and will become Elena's new big girl room, while her current room is going to be overhauled into the nursery.  With all her old furniture.  Including the 12 year old crib she still sleeps in. 

Hmmm... which leads me to...

3.  No rush on the Big Kid Bed!  Hells bells! Now I almost wish we had actually spent some money on our crib, since we're getting so much use out of it!  Though we've had a toddler bed for her since she was about two years old, our strange little child still enjoys sleeping in her crib at night.  And we still enjoy her inability to escape it.  (Though sometimes we wonder at her complete lack of initiative to attempt escape, as well)  I have no regrets or shame about the fact that my 3.25 year old child sleeps in her crib, because it works for us.

4.  Potty Training and the Parental Black Out.    This is one of the marvels of parenthood - Blacking Out.  You fret and complain and worry and research and bitch and moan for days, weeks or months on a particular subject - nursing/teething/sleeping/pacifiers/potty training - and then suddenly, EVERYTHING MAGICALLY RESOLVES ITSELF and you have no recollection, even just days later, of how any of it went down.  The things that seem to be such huge, all-consuming shit storms today will soon be just a vague memory, only chronicled by whatever evidence you leave behind on Facebook and Twitter.  They seem like things you'll never forget.  But now... timeline?  Nope.  No clue of either when it happened or how long it took.  Did my kid wear Pull-ups for months or was it just a week?  Did he nurse through the night until at a year old, or was it just til 9 months?  When did paci disappear?  Oh, she used a paci?  I had forgotten, [chuckle, chuckle]... because I BLACKED OUT.

I'm vaguely aware of being in the midst of our Potty Training Black Out right now.  I know it was just a few weeks back, maybe... or months?... that I was bitching on Facebook about how hard potty training is.  And yet today my bizarre little child pees into the potty at least four times a day, saving her daily dumperoo for a Pull-up and then segueing right back into Princess and the Frog panties.  Right now I'm cognizant enough to suggest to anyone that they potty train sooner rather than later.  But I'm pretty sure 3+ years down the line I'll be writing another entry saying that now, "since we've tried it both ways, I'll be attempting something entirely different with subsequent offspring..."

5.  Pregnancy Changes.  Technology moves so duuuurn fast, kids... and just gives you more forums from which to hear all the new research telling you how awful everything is.  My goodness!  The fact that Elena doesn't have an eye in the center of her forehead is amazing, considering the amount of  BPA I consumed last time 'round.  It's in canned food and on receipts.  Lo and behold, peanut consumption is now horrible... even vitamins are going to give you prostate cancer, apparently, if you have one (a prostate, not a vitamin).  Seems we're all effing it up somehow.  So just do your best.  Don't worry too much about it.  Don't drink or smoke or walk barefoot through rusty nails, but use some common sense.  Ah, horrors - goat cheese... feta... LUNCH MEAT!  Chillax. You're honestly gonna be okay.  Odds are decent that five years after accidentally consuming that unpasteurized goat cheese and getting an ulcer (not to mention the restraining order from your obgyn) over it, you'll be researching raw milk for the whole family anyway.

6.  Cloth Diapers.  Sunnovabitch.  Who knew?  The reusables my mom used on me, not to be environmentally friendly but just because it was cheaper than whatever nascent maxi pad of a disposable was available at the time, is now back in style.  And literally, IN STYLE.  How freaking CUTE are cloth diapers?!?

Let me digress a little. I caught the "ahh new baby stuff!" bug when my child was about five months old, and went out of my way to buy every different feeding utensil and flavor available.  It was so much fun! Things to try!  Stock!  Store!  Organize!  Ah, exclamation points!!  Then, as she settled into a routine of eating "meh" and "meh" over and over again (see #4, the Parental Black Out), I realized it was the novelty of buying new stuff that had driven this wild mommy fervor, not the actual nutritional value or awesomeness or even kid's love for any particular product.  This made me skeptical of any such situation in which I had multiple, colorful options in varying price ranges. 

Now, think of cloth diapers as jars of baby food.  Twelve-to-twenty four dollar a piece... jars of baby food.  You can buy them in a set!  You can buy them a la carte!  You can have someone make them; or even make them yourself... from scratch or a kit.  Then from there the combinations are infinitesimal.  Meanwhile your kid couldn't care less that their diaper is made from your old beloved sorority sweatshirt/organic bamboo fleece/personalized $30-a-yard-print.  What they give a bigger crap about is literally doing bigger craps on them.  The novelty did not match the required effort.

Or so I thought. 

Now, seems cloth diapering is becoming much more mainstream.  Enough friends do it that I can confidently spread my stupid questions thin enough among them all that no one person thinks I'm a total idiot.  And here's the shiny, blinking awesome bonus:

I got a bunch as shower gifts!!!!! :-)  

 

Beautiful new customized ones.  Lovely sturdy hand me downs.  Tiny little hand sewn newborn ones in badass prints!  Promises for more later when I've learned what I like and what works (and what gender this freakin' kid is, too).  This bypasses the somewhat scary start-up cost of cloth diapering and just throws us into the thick of doing it.  (and now that I have the diapers, damnit... I have to do it!  Win-win!)

So we're going to cloth diaper.  At least half of the time is the goal, with eyes towards the prize of seguing to "almost always" as that seems to be the way it works for folks.  It'll be fun and interesting and yes, it will be very cool to not have to worry about spending $35+ every 1-2 weeks for disposables.  Disposables that you have to dispose of.  That are made of junk.  That cost too much.  That become a crutch for delayed potty training.  That contain uncomfortable chemicals I wouldn't want held against my hootie.

Speaking of that...

7.  Never Make Your Kid Do Something You Won't.  I can't say there probably aren't a million exceptions to this rule, but this became especially evident to me during our episode with the bummer Flu Mist.  Since then, I've often thought about what all trouble I could be getting my kid into by not following her down the path of, say, ordering matching hamburgers (the horrible story in Food, Inc. where the kid eats a burger but the parents don't, and kid dies a horrible bloody E. Coli type death and parents are left wishing they'd died instead) or having her eat the apple sauce with the high fructose corn syrup in it while I high and mightily refuse.  Little things like that.  Does that even make sense?  What I mean is, just because she's a kid doesn't mean she is a little garbage can.  If I'm going to demand "better" she can have it too. 
(But damn straight neither she nor I will have the Flu Mist vaccine ever again)

8.  Videotape the birth.  I never thought I'd write THOSE words anywhere publicly.  But we've tossed around the idea of having Elena present for Baby #2's delivery, and for all intents and purposes have since tossed it completely back out, unless the situation were to flow in ONE SPECIFIC MANNER.

(Something like this [cue sepia tone and dreamy zen music]: my mom is already in town, house is cleaned, I go into labor, labor mostly at home while everyone naps/chills/bakes things for me, we go to hospital, Wonder-Doula Tabby shows up to help, mom and kid come also and eat early dinner/watch movies in birth center lobby while I labor, and then mom and kid stand in the doorway for the last 3 minutes of a lovely peaceful water birth for cute "hi baby!" moment photographed for posterity... and then she and my mom both fall asleep in a recliner watching Dumbo.)

Since the odds of that happening so perfectly are pretty low, I instead hope to have at least a "A Baby Story" style snippet of each stage of labor (a la "the daddy cam") and then all the good stuff at the end (from the head-down, not bottom-up angle!) so that we can show Elena just how things went when her baby brother/sister arrived on the scene.  PLUS... since we honestly, totally have no clue what the gender of this little person is, I want to be able to relive the moment where we find out.  Err... hopefully I'll want to relive it!

9.  Gender Martyr.  Yeah, it's really fun not knowing what your kid is until you actually meet them and hold them in your arms.  But maybe it'd be fun to find out too.  So if there comes a little baby #3 someday?  We will find out.  We'll have done it every way then.  Found out supah-dupah late... didn't find out... and bada-boom-bada-bing, ultrasound the nether regions please and give me those 20 extra weeks to obsess about it.  Might as well try everything once. 

10.  Doing differently...  everything.  While I guess we have no major course corrections planned, we do realize this is an entirely different baby. The pregnancies have been different, and the resulting human will be different too.  It's a new time, a new house, a new situation as "second" child... we have new friends to help, farther-away parents to miss, and winter weather to endure.  We're older, and supposedly wiser, but who the hell knows what all might happen. 

One thing that isn't going to change is that we'll love this little baby like nothing else on earth.  

At least we'll be nourished

That 99 cent per pound chicken was no joke. 
But there had to be a catch.  The catch was it was "split breast with rib."  But that also meant that the poor unhealthily-raised and mercilessly factory-murdered Tyson chicken was ever-so-slightly closer to it's original natural state, and that made me feel a little better for not caring about the first part (unhealthily-raised-murdered etc).  I'm quite happy to pull off a little skin when it gets me meat at dollar menu prices. 

But the awesome price also meant it wasn't even worth the effort of getting out a cutting board and separating the chicken breast from it's ribsI threw about two pounds of chicken into the crock pot with two cups of vegetable broth.  In a few hours I was dismantling that juicy goodness with ease - seriously easy - there was a ton of meat and just a few ribs! - and had a lovely pile of chicken breast.  Half of the batch went into a rather concentrated base for chicken soup to be frozen, and the other half went into a giant bubbling cauldron of taco soup. 

I froze three quart bags of "chicken soup" (copious amounts of chicken with a thicker broth base with carrots, onions, and spices, with each bag duly labeled "Add broth and noodles/rice!"), three quart bags of taco soup, and four quart bags of homemade refried beans.  These were added to an already frozen food stash including 2 quarts worth of taco meat with black beans, three meat loaves, a buffalo chicken dip, and a few bags of Johnny Marzetti that I actually am going to give away because we can't eat the whole wheat noodles in it anymore. 

There were shadier items found in the recesses of our basement freezer... some Onam 2010 avial, which may or may not be edible.  Virgin chocolate ice cream from the "oh my goodness Saby go get ice cream!" panic that took place about 10 minutes before Elena's 2nd birthday party.  (note:  she's now well past three)  Lots of frozen hot dog buns - why?  Some of that awesome Sam's Club frozen salmon - score!  And a few shady batches of old meatloaf that I'm currently slacking out in the fridge upstairs, in order to sniff and see whether they'd make a passable soup meat...

I thought I was way the hell behind in every form of preparation, but maybe it's not so bad.  We'll at least have some food. 

34 Weeks

Greetings, greetings, from 33 weeks and 7 days worth of baby George-ness.

The clock is ticking, people!  At 30 weeks, it was all novelty.  It was the beginning of the "hey stranger, you're really really pregnant aren't you?" stage so it was pretty novel and fun to do things like pick up and go to Florida or leave the kid for a weekend and take Dada on a whirlwind tour of Kentucky's Bourbon Trail.  Sure, there needed to be a body pillow involved, plus continuous guaranteed bathroom access, but poo... 10 weeks to go?  Party time!  Excellent!

But now, with 34 weeks just a day away, let me quote from that fine Pixar film, Monsters Inc., and say that:

"now is the time to PANIC!"

34 weeks.  34 weeks means 6 weeks til baby's due date.  Six weeks.  42 days.  

(Yes.  I realize that the due date is an estimate.  Baby will come when baby is ready, especially considering baby came into being rather unexpectedly anyway.  I've had friends go to upwards of 43 weeks in their pregnancies, all resulting in healthy bouncing babes.  My panic may look pretty silly six weeks from now when I start 2+ weeks of uncomfortable waiting, praying to not have a Christmas baby.  Baby could also come a few days early [see: baby came into being rather unexpectedly] as well, since we don't know exactly what was going on in my lady parts at the time of, err... the stork's deposit.  I've had other friends pop kids out a month, two weeks, three weeks early.  But w.t.f. does it matter what your friends have done, you ask?  Ha! Good question.  The only experience that really should matter is my own.  My prior pregnancy was due on July 20th and boom - July 22nd evening, we had a kid.  So going by the 100% success rate we've had before [and ignoring that oft stated adage that "each pregnancy is different"] I'm saying that between December 5th [2nd in a pinch] and 8th, we will pop this kid out.  But preferably the 6th, because that's a Tuesday and Tuesdays are nice.)

I wouldn't be in such a panic if it weren't for our super mega awesome track record of getting things done, as correlated to the amount of things needing to get done.  As we neared "100 days til baby's due" I aspired to write a 100 point list of things we would/should/wanted to get done or do before the little bugger's arrival.  That list topped about 34 items at it's peak, and I think we've checked about 7 off to date.  Each weekend comes with great fanfare and enthusiasm and ends with, typically, guilty high fives all around for the completion of?   The most awesome-est naps evah.  Some epic cooking and eating binge.  A successful fantasy football week.  *sigh*

Meanwhile, midwife-wise we're up to the point of having check ups every two weeks versus every month, which adds another sense of urgency and finality.  We need to re-tour the hospital (planned with friends who are also expecting, because after touring four bourbon distilleries with them last weekend, we just cannot imagine doing it any differently), investigate whether there's a "refresher" course for the birth center (because birthing classes are fun, if just for the conversation fodder later, i.e. "can you believe the valley girl accent on that Mennonite chick?" and "did that one couple really not know what a fundus is?!"), and then do logistical things varying in importance like HOLY SHIT GET THE FREAKING BABY'S ROOM FINISHED and, ahem, rather more calmly, settle on a revised car seat layout in the car.  

But we're not entirely unprepared.  The bouncy seats have been moved to the furnished part of the basement, as phase one of their three-step reintroduction to full functionality.  (much like immigrants arriving at Ellis Island, they must first be quarantined to make sure that are free of any diseases or bugs acquired in the musky, cobwebby third world, er... unfinished basement.)  There are three meatloaves in the freezer.  I have been sitting in straight backed chairs and doing pelvic tilts in order to encourage this burgeoning baby to flip into anterior position, versus the jolting posterior position that it appears to have taken.  We are researching flights so that my mother can come and do her thang to help out in early December - namely fold endless piles of laundry and spread peanut butter on apples for Elena.  (just her mere presence will guarantee that Elena does not play with matches or run with sharp sticks and therefore be a huge help)   

Chicken is $0.99 a pound at Kroger this week, too... I think we'll give that frozen meatloaf some company.

We're all a little busy

Hey kids, long time!  I've been busy.  Busy pretending I wasn't pregnant, first of all - did it work?

Baby's been "around" since April, coincidentally discovered via positive pregnancy test on our penultimate day of babysitting the E-mac.  (bye E-mac!  We miss you!  I still occasionally panic thinking I've forgotten there's another child in the house!)  April was then spent training (Move2Lose), discovering my pregnancy-induced gluten intolerance, sleeping, and freezing. (either the initial stages of pregnancy or the gluten intolerance made me completely unable to regular my body temperature.  I became, essentially, a cold-blooded animal.  I now understand why lizards and snakes are so pissy.)

The whole pregnant thing was a bit of a surprise, really.

Why pretend not to be pregnant?    Well it's not any huge secret that I think baby making is none of your damn business.  My least favorite question to be asked is probably, "Are you guys trying?"  Are we WHAT? WHAT?!?  You mean, are we having unprotected sex?  Really?  Want to come watch sometime, since you're so curious?  Shall I give you a play by play?  Shall I start texting you pictures of my bowel movements too? 

Let it hereby be known that as far as you're concerned, we don't do that... and you're a dirty dirty thing for even implying it.   Our babies are miraculous little things deposited by a stork into my belly button or originating from spider bites that swell up all crazy-like.

We flew through the first trimester on stealth mode, telling just a few people because an unplanned baby is different from a planned baby, much like a second baby is different from a first.  We wondered if something might happen early on.  (hey, I'm getting older... it happens)  We were still getting over the surprise.  We were, honestly, a little nonplussed.  Is that horrible to say?  Naw.  We certainly love this baby, but it is just different the second time around because it's all been done before.

Plus... and here's where I'd like to remind you that I'm an opinionated, judgmental beyotch:  I am not a fan of folks over-publicizing a pregnancy, especially early on.  Give baby a little privacy, please.  Positive pregnancy test picture on Facebook?  No.  Big public to-do of announcing at six weeks?  No.  My philosophy has always been that I'm not the first person to ever be pregnant, nor will I be the last.  There are plenty of people who don't care.  There are also plenty of people who care so very much, because of a past loss or losses, and just don't want to hear your premature celebration.  And there are so many stories of late breaking bad news [the cousin whose newborn lived two days... the miscarriage at five months... the unexpected fetal silence prior to delivery] that I just feel like the longer you wait, the safer things may be.  It's part superstition, part past observation, part self-soothing justification.  And also, though I absolutely LOOOOVE being pregnant (and being a mother), it's not what I want to be my number one defining feature.

So... we kept quiet.  Until Elena in her Big Sister shirt showed up tagged on Saby's Facebook.  And our genius (actual genius - no sarcasm there) friend commented, "Big sister to who?"  So it's out, and then we do all the catch-up work of calling close friends in far away places to apologize for not telling them personally.  And my boobs are telling their own story by just getting bigger, and bigger, and bigger...

So anyway, the whole point is, I've been a little busy.  But the hope is to start updating this thing more often.  I've spent the morning reading through old posts, back when the E-unit was still just Spampy, and I realize I am actually pretty funny and moderately interesting.  Or there's always the old fashioned "it's for posterity" thing...

So if you're new to Spampylandia, realize this is a blog dedicated to whatever I please:  part pregnancy, part motherhood, part "things I can't bring myself to say on Facebook" (that's also the purpose of my much neglected Twitter account), and a whole lotta random crap that really defies the point of putting buttons or tags to any of this garbage.  Occasionally there will be links to my India blog, Caroline in Kerala!  That's fun... go read that one too.  If you have time.  Cuz I know we're all busy with one thing or another.

"Michael... a 5K is five KILOMETERS, not five-thousand miles!"

On Saturday, May 14th, I "ran" my first 5K race with my buddy Loreen.  It served as an unofficial capstone to our 12 weeks in the YMCA's Move2Lose program, during which neither of us lost much weight... but we did move quite a bit.

We ran ran ran... then walked a bit.  Then ran ran ran... and walked some more.  And finally... ran ran ran ran [then I dropped my phone agk!] and ran ran ran [pant] [pant] until we crossed the finish line.  Loreen totally could have taken off without me, but she stayed by my side.  Awwwww.  Thanks Loreen!! 

It was good fun, and I am finally beginning to understand that vague concept of "runners high."  There's another 5K at George Rogers Clark Park on May 22nd, and I think I might run that one too.  Yum yum, this sort of torture is fun!

Dude

Arrggghhh!  This is much more of a Twitter or Facebook sort of post, but I just have to write it:

WHYYYY do these poor bitches on A Baby Story go to the hospital when they're 2 cm dilated and then do nothing but lay in a bed and expect to progress miraculously? 
Walk around!  Do some squats!  Sit on an exercise ball!
DON'T EVEN BOTHER GOING TO THE HOSPITAL UNTIL YOUR CONTRACTIONS ARE CLOSER TOGETHER!
Jeeze Louise.  

I realize TV doesn't realistically portray the passage of time, but if someone told me to lay in a bed for 4, 6, or 8+ hours (under any circumstances!) I would not be game. 

You can be put on bedrest in an effort to completely STOP labor and preserve a pregnancy.  Why would the same technique help you to HAVE a baby?

Instead of just laying there you should read up on how fun the recovery from a c-section is.