The Adventures of SarcastiCarrie

Romance

2012-02-14T13:03:00.000-06:00

Happy Valentine's Day.

In honor of the forced romance of today, Mr. Long-Suffering and I are spending the afternoon in a darkened room - together. With an ultrasound technician. This afternoon is the follow-up to the follow-up ultrasound with the high-risk people at the University of Chicago. I am hoping for uneventful. Is that too much to ask for? (Or grammatically, is that too much for which to ask?)

I haven't mentioned much on the blog about how I feel about this pregnancy, but I am trying to get attached to Muse and yet, for some reason, I keep thinking that I am not getting a take-home baby out of this. Certainly, I've had DBTs before, but these are so persistent that it's disconcerting. However, I continue to go through the motions of washing and sorting clothes, purchasing diapers (but not opening the packages), getting the nursing supplies gathered onto the table in the nursery, etc. It's that old "fake it until you make it" thing. I'm trying.

I also haven't mentioned much about Muse's chromosomes since I don't know anything more, and I don't know whether I will know anything additional about them before he is born. The whole pre-term labor scare thing and 5 weeks of absolute horribleness that followed really shook the genetic fears right out of me. Prematurity was scarier than Down Syndrome to me, so I just sort of let it slide. I, of course, still worry that Muse might have something wrong with his heart (which is why we're going for the fetal echocardiogram today...along with regular ultrasound), but I'm not nearly as fearful now as I was 7 weeks ago.

In other news, I developed two new pregnancy symptoms that are un-fun: vertigo and swelling (neither of the caliber to have us worrying about pre-eclampsia). The vertigo is only if I move my head certain ways (like rolling over in bed, getting from laying to standing, or checking my blind spot while driving). The swelling is the typical feet and hands (notsomuch face, though there is a definite chipmunking of the cheeks) plus swelling of my lady regions (probably because I carry so low...in fact, if you know where a bikini cut c-section scar is, I start carrying about 1" below that).

Monkey went missing before bedtime last night. That’s a tragedy, but we avoided tears at bedtime. Monkey was still missing this morning. Chuckles said it’s in supernanny's car. Supernanny looked. Not there. Eventually Chuckles says….oh, he’s in the closet. Goes, gets him in 2 seconds, and Bobo is thrilled (tears were imminent). Why oh why couldn’t he have done that last night??? (Monkey was a gift given to Bobo from Chuckles on his first day of life...Grandma had taken Chuckles to Target and this is what he brought to the hospital.)

In honor of Valentine’s Day, Hair Nation played GnR's “Used to Love Her” this morning. Totally apropos, right?

My girl scout cookies arrived. Wish me strength.

Chuckles competed in the Pinewood Derby for the first-time ever. Bobo insisted on calling it the Penguin Derby, which was adorable. Bobo and I didn't go. We elected to stay home and go to sleep at a decent hour (Bobo's sleep has drifted into statistically significant bedtime shenanigans and night-time wakings). Chuckles did not win, but he did fine, and best of all, my competitive little jerk (I say with love) was a gracious loser. That is one of the most important things I want him to learn in Cub Scouts and life.

I made pancakes and stamped them with Star Wars cookie cutters. Am winner mother - even if I don't know a Death Star from an X-wing Fighter (though I think the X-wing is actually shaped like an X). I am not sure who was more excited about these pancakes - husband or children. Also, served them with homemade fruit syrup that I canned on Saturday (nesting much?).

Sacrilegiously, whenever I hear "May the force be with you," I want to follow it up by saying, "And also with you."

49ers

2012-02-08T15:28:00.000-06:00

And I’m not talking football.

Although, there was this really big game that happens at the end of the season. It’s the Great Bowl. No, the Fantastic Bowl. No, the Roman Numeral Bowl. No, the Super Bowl (duh duh duh dun). And I like football. Yet, I did not care at all about who won or lost. The one QB is married to a fricken super model and the other one comes from a seemingly nice family of football players. And I still didn’t really care.

I went to a party, discovered I am a terribly picky eater who doesn’t like football food, watched most of the game, did a Sudoku and a crossword puzzle, watched the commercials and half-time showstravaganza, came home, and had cereal. I don’t care for brats and wings. In my defense, had there been chili, I would have been all over that. I had some bean salad, guacamole, and positioned myself near the cheese tray.

My in-laws celebrated their 40th wedding anniversary. Congrats to them. I don’t know whether I will live long enough to see my own 40th, but it’s only 30 years from now. We took the whole family (all of their progeny) out for dinner to celebrate their milestone. All 4.78 of their grandsons were there (our 2.78 boys plus the two boy cousins). The kids behaved at the fancy restaurant, but we came home for dessert (ice cream cake!) to keep our in-restaurant time down.

Speaking of my 0.78 boy, he’s actually 0.8735 of a kid now. I’m about 33.5 weeks. At my last routine ob appointment, I had only gained a pound in the previous 3 weeks. Considering the baby put on about a pound in that time, I felt pretty good about that. While at the ob, I also confirmed that I do not need to sign any papers in advance to get my tubes tied while they are in there performing their baby-ectomy. It seems awfully permanent, but since we don’t want any more kids and I have yet to find a birth control method that I like for nursing, it’s a go. (For the record, there are several forms of birth control that I LOVE while not nursing.)

I received a gift for Christmas, but I hadn’t felt good enough to use it until last weekend. I went to the spa and received a pre-natal massage. If you ever find yourself knocked up, I highly recommend it. They have a special insert for the table with a hole in it so you can lay on your stomach while they massage your (very tired) back. I would pay good money just to lay on their table let alone have someone massage me. One small problem: I could not figure out how to get up when it was done. I really needed to push myself up on my arms and yet there was no where to put my hands. Eventually, I figured it out and escaped.

I have a variety of mild peculiarities. You could call them little minor OCD things, except they’re so minor, they’re more like quirks.

If you were to overlay my footpath every day from the time I enter the factory on the access road until I sit at my desk, it would be the exact same number of steps and route every single day. I park in the same spot, remove my lunch, purse, and laptop from the car using the same hands in the same way every day, enter the building through the same door, take the same path to my desk, put the computer in the docking station, lay my coat on the chair, grab my tea cup and tea bag (and swish it in the 7/8 hot water the same number of times, then fill it 1/8 of the way with cold water to get the perfect temperature), every day.

I am similarly ritualistic with other aspects of my day. I have had my maternity leave fill-in here as trainee for the last few weeks trying to learn my job. He is throwing me all off of my rhythm. He unstapled papers that I had stapled (at a perfect 45-degree angle, mind you). He did not remove the staple. He just ripped them apart. He does not print documents 2 pages per sheet, double sided. I’m so unmoored listing in the rough waters of person invading my space.

And I realize that my quirks are a little…obsessive. It just bothers me so much when he messes my things up (and I have to come back to this when I return). I mean, I staple things so that they stay together when I put them in my awesome filing system. Do not mess with the filing system. The filing system is the reason if you ask me what happened on August 3rd, I can tell you within a few minutes. Also, I never delete an email with any information in it. I have an elaborate filing system and am just a wee bit neurotic about flushing my inbox. In fact, I only have 282 items in my inbox right now. Considering that I receive in excess of 300 emails per day at work, I would say that’s not too bad. Trainee guy doesn’t save email, doesn’t have any personal folders or rules to handle email. Honestly, I have no idea how he survives. He watched me answer a few questions wherein I went to my 2009 email folder, subfolder corporate policies, and pulled out an edict and answered a question. He was awed. I was ticked that he didn’t see the value in saving and filing things. For the future. So you don’t actually have to remember anything other than I heard about that once back in March of 2009.

Speaking of my quirks…I might as well lay it out there. I’m a rigid person who likes to have a way to handle her life. The illusion of control is comforting. I try to keep the skin on an orange in one piece when I peel it. I succeed about 1/3 of the time. On clementines, it’s closer to 90%.

I also have a weird thing about the visualization of time. I imagine the year as a wheel…almost like a clock. The new year is at the 6 o’clock position (and is very dark), July 1st is at 12 o’clock (and is bright white or yellow). A lot of times when someone is asking a question, I remember that we last discussed this around the 10 o’clock position (forward and to the left) and getting lighter, so I can then go and find the file or email pertaining to this with the items from perhaps early May. I rarely remember what we said, but I can usually find my notes within a 2 week time period of when I remember discussing it. This might be some kind of synesthesia, but it’s not any kind of hindrance and probably makes me the life of the party. I just looked synesthesia up on Wikipedia for the first-time ever. Apparently, clock-face based associations are very common. So, very common. Not special at all.

In other news, Mr. Long-Suffering and I went to a professional society meeting last night. We work in the same industry but in different specialties. Let’s say we both worked in a hospital but one of us was in food service and the other in custodial. We would both work in health care but our professional societies would be different. We went to his society and heard a moving lecture on monetary policy. The laugh line of the night was a potshot at Illinois and its propensity for raising taxes without doing anything to control its spending. If you are not aware, Illinois is practically California or Italy (not as bad as Greece – yet). My college minor was actually in economics, and there was a slight political slant to the presentation, which happened to match pretty well with my politics, so overall, I enjoyed myself greatly. The speech was objectively very good as well. In fact, a banquet hall full of 300+ factory workers gave a standing ovation to a speech on monetary policy. That’s how you know it was a good talk. If the guy giving the speech wanted to run for elected office, he’d have a decent start to a stump speech. And his powerpoint slides were not too busy and the font was (for the most part) large enough to be seen in the cheap seats. I recapped the speech at work today and people were actually disappointed that they had not gone.

We arrived home from the meeting around 9:30 to lightly falling snow. And a still-awake Bobo. I gave him some time to see whether he was going to fall asleep, but eventually, I went and checked on him. “I’m huhn-gurry and I need to go potty.” So, that’s how I was exhausted, dressed up, and feeding Bobo string cheese and strawberries at 10:30 last night. Fortunately, despite years of early sleep troubles, Chuckles is able to sleep through all of this Bobo night-waking, new bed, new room shenanigans.

I just ate a Clementine. And I won when I peeled it! SarcastiCarrie is winning at life!

Oh, and the 49ers reference is a nod to the number of days until my due date when I went for my massage and someone asked my how much longer…49 days!

Rooms for Teeth?

2012-01-26T12:47:00.000-06:00

Chuckles got his first 6-year molar and has another wiggly tooth up front (and the new tooth has already erupted behind it). There are big happenings in his mouth. I sense braces in our future. Are those expensive?

Bobo is (basically) potty-trained. I took a big box of diapers back to Target (wrong size, regardless and I have another big box still at home) and traded those size 5 diapers in on teeny weeny, tiny hiney diapers. Those up to 10-pounds diapers are awfully tiny. And so cute. And so little. And I bet they’re soft too since I got the really expensive* ones (not that cardboard sandpaper I had been making Bobo wear since he turned 3). But, I haven’t opened them yet because I do not invite the jinx into my home. I am far too smart and superstitious for that.

I have officially now declared myself all better from whatever the heck that was that laid me out like that. I was sleeping 11-12 hours a day, could not stand for more than 6 minutes, and was unable to walk more than about 200 feet without feeling like I would pass out. It took almost 4 weeks to recover. I had no fever and no other symptoms. I thought I might have just had easy pregnancies before and this is why some women don’t like being pregnant, but I recovered, so I am guessing there was something unusual going on. I was too weak most days after going to work and getting the kids in pajamas and off to bed that I hadn’t checked my email in weeks and hadn’t sent out thank you notes for Christmas gifts (if you know me, you know how horrible I felt about the no thank-yous). I couldn’t even stand up for showers. I sat for my showers (and then needed help getting up and out of the tub). But I am better now. Whew.

Mr. Long-Suffering, while picking up my slack and worrying about me, did remark that when I don’t leave the house (and am too tired and weak to sit at the computer), I don’t spend much money. He figured the good people at Discover Card would be calling to find out if I’m alright. On the upside, we did finally get groceries purchased and I made some really exciting purchases at Target (like tiny hiney diapers and stain remover! And toothpaste, deodorant, and a new Libman Wonder Mop mop head!). I have very little brand loyalty, but my Target list was very specific (Nads, Resolve, Totally Toddler stain remover (which they didn’t have so I bought Dreft stain spray), Libman mop head, and 20-Mule Team Borax). It’s the little things, apparently.

We took the kids to the Sibling Class at the hospital. The movie had been updated since we took Chuckles before Bobo was born (and a good thing too since I could have been the little kid in that movie..and now the movie has PIRATES. Everybody loves pirates.). Both kids enjoyed it, but they displayed their entirely different personalities. Chuckles sat back and observed the entire thing in a most detached fashion. Bobo jumped in when asked about whether there had been any changes at your house (his answer: “I got a new big boy bed that used to be Chuckles’s. Now I share a room wif my brudder. Mike the Painter came and painted my new room. Chuckles got a new bed. And I got a binky hook and a night light.”). One of the families in the class is expecting twins. Kids have no filter. Older son: “When my dad found out we were having two babies he was really shocked!” We all laughed, because yes, that is probably true. Then, he went on to detail all the changes that are happening at their house (lots of painting and organizing…possibly a small amount of panicking).

I know that my boys share a Y chromosome, but I am pretty sure they got all the opposite chromosomes for the other 45. They are so different. One has sandy blond hair, the other has white blond, one is fair-skinned, the other is more medium-to-olive, one has blue eyes, the other has green (though they used to be a crystal clear blue), one has narrow feet with toes that can be bent over to make a fist, the other has wide feet with toes that are all mashed together and don’t bend, one has a chin dimple, the other does not but has a cheek dimple, one has hair that tends toward wavy when it gets long, the other has the straight hair of his mother, one is outgoing, the other is more reserved, one eats veggies, fruit and carbs, the other is strictly meat, beef, and sausage, one is cautious and the other is not-so-much. I figure when they’re older and do things together, the outgoing one will make sure they have fun, but the cautious and reserved one will make sure they don’t get into trouble. It’s a nice combo.

As part of the big room re-org, everyone moved one bedroom counter-clockwise (or something). Mr. Long-Suffering and I gave up the master bedroom (which is only master because it’s largest…it’s not a master suite or anything and didn’t have a bathroom or a walk-in closet like today’s modern homes/McMansions). Both boys are now bunking in there (which has been painted a lovely shade of blue by Mike the Painter…as Bobo mentioned in the Sibling class). Mr. Long-Suffering and I took Bobo’s room, which for all intents and purposes was just the guest room with a crib and some nursery-themed wall clings. The nursery that we made before Chuckles was born is being converted back into a nursery. Chuckles had not wanted to give up his room before Bobo was born, and we didn’t make him so he had been living in the smallest bedroom.

Somehow, that smallest bedroom was also the dirtiest room in the house. We have hard wood floors throughout the upstairs, and if you know how that goes, you know about the dust rabbits I found under the bed and behind the dresser. Did you also know that I had to vacuum out the Zhu-Zhu pet habitat and had to vacuum each Zhu-rat because they were filthy and had been living under the bed? It turns out Chuckles also has a bad case of pack-ratism that I let get out of hand. I found one of my slippers, a missing puzzle piece, an empty apple sauce squeezer container (with cap on so it wasn’t really gross), 14 empty oatmeal canisters (each of which had been cut, colored, stickered, taped or otherwise turned into art, a project, an invention, or a craft with the addition of a paper towel core or some self-sticking foam), two bags-worth of paper recycling, countless strands of beads, plastic rings, fake teeth, super balls, and other goodie bag junk, Valentine cards from 3 years ago, some much-prized mulch, a few shells, and 15 labeled, washed and stacked yogurt containers. His treasures. He’s so going to wind up on Hoarders some day. I did the bulk of the trashing while he was at school on MLK Day. I had off; he had school. I have no idea where his stuff went, if he asks (which is true since I have no idea where it is now).

After the cleaning was done (or done enough to move the furniture), the boys set off for their first night ever of sharing a room/first night in a big boy bed. And it was a school night. But what are you going to do? After about 20 minutes, Chuckles came out of his room, “Bobo is talking to me and won’t let me sleep and is walking around.” So Bobo was put back in his bed, re-kissed and re-tucked, told to stay there, and then we built Chuckles a defensive wall of pillows so his brother can’t see him. It seems to be working (mostly). There have been a few extra night wanderings, but it’s within one standard deviation of the mean, so I’ll call it typical.

Last night, during The Letter Show (aka Wheel of Fortune), I hit the wrong button on the remote. Either that or that giant solar storm that hit yesterday did something to the TV, but I think my remote ineptness is more likely (at least I don’t have one of those Universal Remotes that could accidentally launch a Fail-Safe style nuclear war). Anyway, the screen went black and green letters came up and Bobo asked, “Why does that say ‘video’, and where did Vanna White go?” I was…stunned and not because he knew Vanna’s name. “Why do you think that says ‘video’?” “V-I-D-E-O. Video.” “OooooKay then. Let me get Pat and Vanna right back for you.” Also, if you ask him what he wants to name the baby, he will answer “James Ferguson” (a kid in Chuckles’s first grade class). This would make the Letter Show a lot more fun.

If you ask a variety of people in our lives what they want to name the baby, you will get a shocking variety of answers. Gilbert, Tiberius, John, Anthony, Tony the Shark, Zoltan (apparently the most popular boys’ name in Hungary?), James Ferguson, Munker, and Quayden (but pronounced like John because someone thinks she is funny).

My least favorite part of potty training? When the kid half-way wakes up in the middle of the night because he needs to pee, and starts whining/crying. You go in there, ask if he needs to go potty, he has no idea because he’s asleep and new to the whole pain=potty thing, you take him to the bathroom and as soon as you pull the (dry) diaper off, he pees on the rug and your pajamas pants (the only pair that fits your current girth).

Speaking of jammie bottoms…I just discovered that there is something called pajamas jeans. I am intrigued because I am lazy in many ways. But for forty bucks, I’ll just stay intrigued. I was really interested in Eggies (again because I am lazy...and love hand-boiled eggs), until I saw a real-mom review on GMA one morning before Christmas.

Before Bobo was born, I investigated maternity leave options and was delightfully and pleasantly surprised to find out that we received the two weeks prior to our due date, the 6-8 weeks of disability, followed by 12 weeks of FMLA that did not need to run concurrently with the disability. That gave me 22 weeks off. That’s practically 5 months. I was elated. I had seen an email go out about a year ago saying that we no longer get the two weeks before our due dates off. I was a little disappointed, but it seemed very generous to me at the time, so I figured that during these tough economic times, it made sense to eliminate that perq. You can take vacation for those two weeks or if you’re really miserable, get disability for pregnancy-related conditions (which change to birth-related conditions after birth). Or you can work up to your due date (and beyond). So, I filled out my paperwork for disability and FMLA to get my 20 weeks off (8 of disability plus 12 of FMLA) and was shocked when I got the paperwork back allowing 18 weeks. Nowadays, our disability insurance provider is only offering 6 weeks after a c-section. I’m speechless. That’s…just…I’ve had two c-sections before and am not generally walking upright at the 8 week time frame, let alone the 6 week. It usually takes me a good 9 weeks to feel mostly human again. I’m sure that if I were to have my doctor write a note saying that I was still disabled at 6 weeks, that I could get 8 weeks off of work, but really…the standard has changed? That’s just crazy-talk.

*I had coupons.

One Bourbon, One Scotch, and One Beer

2012-01-12T12:45:00.000-06:00

Here is the story of how the ultrasound played out with extraneous details removed, though I could tell you how our local radio station plays Two for Tuesday and it was George Thorogood or how we got to watch all of Access Hollywood (or whatever show it was) about Beyonce’s baby’s escape from the paparazzi while we waited over a half hour for our appointment.

We had the chatty tech. She’s also pregnant. I would guess it’s her first and a girl based on how she is carrying. She measured the cervix. All is good. It’s tipped or curved or something so a curved line measurement gives >5 cm. No imminent labor here. So that is really, super good news. I’ve been feeling better on the contraction front (though not on the energy front) and have been itching to do exotic things like go to the grocery store and climb stairs. I don’t think I am up for either of those activities yet, but it’s nice to know that if I do them and overdo it, I am probably not going in to labor. I finally did have enough energy to stand at the bathroom mirror and pluck my eyebrows. Three weeks. I can’t believe I went three weeks. It looked like caterpillars were inching their way toward each other.

After the cervix, she moved on to the placenta. It’s receiving good blood flow. The smaller lobe is anterior and the larger lobe is posterior. I don’t think that’s important; I’m just letting you know what I know.

Then she measured structures in the brain. Everything there is fine. She measured the head circumference and it’s fine. Then she did abdominal circumference. That is all fine too.

She went to the face. And the cutest thing happened, I nearly died. The baby yawned while the tech was in 3-D view of the face. And then? Muse fell asleep. He yawned and fell asleep. He’s a genius. He’s a genius who appears to resemble Bobo with Mr. Long-Suffering’s nose.

She moved on to the bowel. She turned the contrast down. She moved a little and turned the contrast down again. Then she did that again. The bowel was not as bright as bone in any of the views and would not be called echogenic. I knew what she was doing, but I couldn’t tell whether it was as bright as bone, so we asked. And she said she is not calling it bright. Whew. Moving on.

She took a photo of tiny baby feet for us. Then, I noticed that yes, indeed, this baby is a boy. I can’t believe I never noticed those parts in ultrasounds with my other children. It was so obvious. I guess once you know what you’re looking for, you can find it. Chuckles, by the way, giggles and gets all shy when he sees ultrasound photos with an arrow saying “Boy”. Very embarrassing.

Finally, on to the heart. She took echos and let us listen to the heart beat, measured the rate, and took several views of the heart. I could see the valves opening and closing. The valves! How tiny they must be (I saw the valves with Bobo too…but way back when I was pregnant with Chuckles, the technology wasn’t good enough for that in a standard ultrasound). She could not find an echogenic focus in the heart either. So that is good.

She mentioned that the baby is breech (no big deal with the planned c-section and not a surprise given placental location and the fact that I know where the head is all the time). She finished up with the weight estimate of 3 pounds and baby is measuring about 10 days ahead (which is normal because I have always had babies measure ahead and be large at birth).

We went in to see the perinatalogist who said that the computers were taking a break because of the unseasonably warm weather (54 degrees in Chicago in January). Only the first half of the photos made their way from the ultrasound room to the computer on his desk (and I think they go through the server located in Bahrain on their way). He popped out of the room to go look at the photos on the machine. He came back and said the tech was already scanning the next patient, so we should go home, he said the tech said everything looked ok, and he would call us that night.

So, we left feeling pretty good about ourselves. We even stopped and got dinner to bring home to the kids. Hamburgers, fries, and shakes! Woo hoo.

True to his word (and I think I love him), the perinatalogist called shortly after I finished eating. He said the echogenic focus in the heart is gone and the bowel is no longer echogenic as well, but that the heart appears enlarged. He said he is not worried about it because we are big people and maybe if it was his baby since he is only 5’ tall that it might be something to note, but since we are big people it’s probably nothing, come back in 4-6 weeks and be scanned again. We really are big people. I am 5’8” and Mr. Long-Suffering is 6’4”. However, I would assume that the heart is large for the baby’s size so even though the baby is large, the heart is large even for that. But I know that without volumetric calculations, large is a subjective thing based on the specific angle of the scanning and so on. I am trying to be quite zen about it. Google is not terribly helpful on this point. Enlarged fetal heart on ultrasound doesn’t yield the kind of useful hits one might like to find. Nothing reassuring, though nothing terribly alarming either. There are three things it could be, and they aren’t that bad: absolutely nothing (I always love it when the most likely scenario is that the scary thing is just something that is totally normal and sometimes seen), a relic of gestational diabetes that will revert to normal within 6 months of birth, and Down Syndrome.

That was Tuesday. Wednesday morning, I had my regularly scheduled ob appointment. I asked about my gestational diabetes screening which I had done right before Christmas. I made a strategic error. I had it done in the morning of December 22nd on my way to work so I had eaten a large-ish bowl of oatmeal and munched on two Christmas cookies right before going. So, I guess we could call that the worst-case scenario. And even with all of that, I still got a 126, which passes (since you need to be <130). I’d never had GD before so I wasn’t terribly worried I would all of a sudden have it. The regular ob was happy to hear that the foci were gone in the ultrasound and glad to hear I am having a follow-up on the enlarged heart, and told me to come back in 3 weeks. I’ll be about 33 weeks then. He said then I would go to every two weeks and we would start additional testing at 35 weeks. I have no idea what additional testing he is referring to and I didn’t think to ask. I can’t remember what it was last time. I figure they’ll check for anemia or something to make sure I am good for a c-section. They won’t be checking for group strep B since I will be having the c-section (and antibiotics) regardless.

So, that is what I know. The baby is a giant genius with a big heart. Who doesn’t want a kid with a big heart?

Baby Names as a form of distraction

2012-01-10T09:56:00.000-06:00

We’re going to talk baby names because I have an ultrasound this afternoon to follow up on echogenic whatsits and ccervical lengthamajigs, and we are la-la-la I can’t hear you.

So, baby names. I believe in naming children after family members, and I am not really a fan of anything trendy (no Caydens, no Braydens). However, Trend-Alert: I hear that traditional names are making a roaring comeback. So maybe I am a trendsetter after all since both Bobo and Chuckles have real-life, non-clown names that would be fit for a king (or a president, pro-athlete, accountant, or farmer).

Also, we’ve pretty much run out of family names because the Italian tradition of naming kids after family members means that many of the names in the family are repeats. With only the boys’ four names, we’ve already honored my father, my step-father, my husband, my father-in-law and his mother’s brother and father, my mother-in-law’s father and both her brothers, and my mother’s brother.

I’ve consulted nymbler and used our names as inspiration. Anyway, please combine the following suggestions in some order to come up with a good name. Or, better yet, suggest similar names that you like.

Joseph
Gilbert
Anthony
Tiberius

Kenneth
Thomas
Ulysses
John
Wesley
Patrick
August

Still Pregnant

2012-01-05T11:46:00.000-06:00

I just thought I should let you know that I didn't run off and have a baby. (Thank goodness, cross fingers, etc.)

I feel I should tell you (since we're totally close like that) that the fetal fibronectin test has a high false positive rate, and one of the things that can make it read positive even though labor is not imminent is, ahem, rhymes with hecks. So, I will just say that, obviously, I wasn't feeling too bad on Christmas Eve.

I continue to recover from whatever little bug I had that made me think a baby was about to fall out of me. Sorry for the worry I caused, but now I can totally say that I can't do that laundry, vacuum that floor, etc, because I feel just awful and need to go rest.

Happier Hole-idays are Ahead

2011-12-29T17:21:00.000-06:00

Post-Christmas Post

2011-12-28T13:12:00.000-06:00

Well, Christmas is over. And it's just as well. Months of planning and anticipation and in a week, it's all done. Here is a photo that captures the magic.

I like the way my (extended and nuclear) family handles Christmas. It makes it lower stress. We tried going to 3 different places on Christmas Day once, and I swore never again. So, a week before Christmas, we went to my aunt's house to do Christmas with my mom's family. It was nice and low-key, and because it was on Saturday, we could stay until a normal, decent adult hour. However, because it was a week before Christmas, I had to get some baking done by then and I had to have some gifts purchased and wrapped, but spreading the deadlines out actually helps. The kids received a few nice gifts that day and really got a chance to enjoy them before the rest of the onslaught began.

Thursday was our nanny's last day of work before the holiday, so that was the day the kids gave her their gifts and she had brought a sack full of things for them too. So, they had those gifts to enjoy fully before more items arrived. The children displayed approrpriate amounts of gratitude and thanks at all gifts received (though there was a close call with some clothes).

Mr. Long-Suffering and I both had Friday off of work, and it was nice. I mean, just lovely. I got a visit from a friend from the old neighborhood (someone who can keep me honest and remembers when I used to rat my bangs). I prepped Christmas Eve brunch, finished up some more cookies, and we finished wrapping presents. I do not think I left our house the entire day. Perfection.

Saturday was Christmas Eve, and I hold a brunch on Christmas Eve morning. This started after the year I swore "never again". We realized that we would not see my mother over Christmas if we didn't come up with something else, so brunch was born. Originally, it was just going to be us and my mom and her husband. However, my husband invited his parents one year, so I invited my dad. All in all, it was brunch for 10, and it was perfection. My dining room table holds 10 in a cozy, cramped, family fashion, so it was just nice. The food was good - though we did realize it's mostly me who drinks the mimosas since most of the champagne was left. On Christmas Eve morning, we exchange gifts with my mom and the kids get to open the gifts that people we don't see sent to us (like my sister, some out-of-town friends, etc). Again, the kids got a chance to enjoy their gifts before being made to go somewhere else. This arrangement even ensured that both Bobo and I got to have naps.

Christmas Eve dinner has always, always been spent with my dad. And when he was a boy, Christmas Eve was the bigger holiday in their family, so that is what we do. We have Christmas Eve with my dad and his family. It was just us and them (and I prefer the intimate gatherings and low-key celebrations). We had a lovely dinner of lasagna (and we have always had lasagna as long as I can remember from way back when my father's mother was the one making dinner) and cookies for dessert. I lounged on the couch and in a chair and did not lift a finger. People served me food and waited on me. Again, completely lovely.

We got home at my bedtime, I put the cookies and milk out for Santa and directed Mr. Long-Suffering on where to find the gifts that needed to be relocated under the tree, but I went to bed (crying because none of my pajamas fit and it wouldn't be until the morning when I would get new pajamas...at this, I told him that I obviously needed to go to bed because anyone who would cry over pajamas is obviously overtired).

I woke repeatedly through the night. Elves? Santa? Chills, urgent trips to the bathroom, back ache, diarrhea, more chills...no, not chilled... too hot...I stripped off the sweat pants I wore to bed. Eventually, I fell asleep and the didn't get up until about 8 (which is crazy, ridiculous late). Chuckles was up a bit after 7, looked down the stairs and told us all about what wonders he saw, but we made him wait for Bobo.

When Bobo got up, I took my sorry self (now wearing pants) down to the living room and plopped on the couch. We did stockings, presents, and had brunch leftovers. I stayed on the couch and put batteries in things. Eventually, it was time to head out to my in-laws' house. I got myself dressed, made Mr. Long-Suffering pack up the food and gifts and load the car and get the kids dressed. We all got in the car and I said, I think you ought to swing by the hospital and drop me off for monitoring. Take the kids to your parents' so they can get some lunch and see their cousins, then come back and get me (it's all very close so this wasn't a crazy request).

So, I sauntered into the ER on Christmas morning (I had actually phoned the on-call doctor in advance so L&D would know I was coming). I was whisked away in a wheel chair by a man named Joseph. I was given a bracelet and two fancy belts to wear (and a gown!). I propped myself up in the bed with cable TV and started watching "A Christmas Story". This is when things started to go...not the way I had planned. I figured they'd hook me up to a monitor for an hour, then let me go.

Well, the on-call doctor wanted an hour of monitoring, an internal exam, and a fetal fibronectin test. Mr. Long-Suffering returned (and hadn't dropped off the food, the gifts, the diaper bag or anything except the children). The nurse did the fetal fibronectin test which is a swab that has to sit in the nether regions for 60 seconds and then gets removed. It was one of the most pleasant (least unpleasant) tests I ever had performed down there. The internal exam however was awful. If there is ever a next time, I am going to request someone other than Stubby perform the test. I want a former piano player with long, slender fingers.

I continued to be monitored. The monitoring is rather neat. There are two belts and three lines on the chart. The top line was the baby's heart rate, the middle was some kind of fetal movemement monitor (which in this case just showed a solid black line the whole time because Muse is a bit of a hyper wrestler) and the bottom line in a uterine activity monitor (contraction monitor). The bottom line was up, it was down, it was spikey and in a sine wave. It was all over the place. There was no pattern and no rhyme (and certainly no reason).

The hour of strips from the monitors were sent to the on-call doctor (whom I had never met). The results of the tests were sent to her as well. It turns out my fetal fibronectin was positive.  Negative is super awesome and means there is a statistically insignificant chance of pre-term labor in the next two weeks...positive doesn't tell you anything...could be today...could be 3 months from now. From my internal exam, my cervix was soft and dilated a fingertip. That's not bad, but hard and closed completely would have been better. And now I was bleeding (thanks, Stubby!).

So, the on-call doctor ordered blood work, IV fluids, a urine culture, and a diagnostic ultrasound. If I thought the guy at the perinatalogy practice who didn't give me a guided tour of my uterus was bad, this was worse.  During diagnostic ultrasounds, you aren't even allowed to look at the screen and Mr. Long-Suffering couldn't come with me (so he watched A Christmas Story instead).    The ultrasound tech apologized about that, but said because of the kinds of work they are doing, he couldn't tell me anything and wasn't allowed to let me look. But he did say he thought I'd still make it to a late Christmas dinner.

It took the IV team two tries to get an IV in (and I have lovely veins, I swear...I donate blood without missing a beat). Everyone accused me of being dehydrated. This is not my first redeo. Of course, I had been drinking water and laying on my left side for almost a day by this point. The blood draw was fine, but I noticed my arm still wasn't healed from the one-hour glucose screening I had on Thursday (whose results I still haven't heard).

The blood work came back unremarkable, the urine culture takes time but I could see that I clearly was not dehydrated (which was everyone's main concern), and the ultrasound showed my cervix was >4cm, but I was still contracting-ish on the monitor. So, I was staying the night.

At this point, I started to cry. Just a little. Because really, spending Christmas night in the hospital by yourself is pretty sad. I texted my friend, texted my sister, called my mom (who is not a comforting and reassuring presence in times of stress but once my sister knew, I had to tell my mom) who freaked out not helping me at all, and I sent Mr. Long-Suffering to go have Christmas dinner because his parents were making the kids wait until we got there to open their presents. I got to have chicken piccata, peas, and cheesecake on a hospital tray. The nurses did bring me pudding and Lorna Doone cookies, though (let's hope the GD screening was clear).

My sister-in-law texted me photos of the kids opening each gift and of my husband opening his. My sister texted me pictures of my niece trying on all her new clothes in a fashion show plus pictures of food and fun. My best friend joked with me that I would do anything to get out of going to the in-laws'. My mom called and fretted. I watched more of A Christmas Story (it was on again and again and again).

The on-call doctor showed up. She is genetics perfection. Apparently she is smart since she made it through med school, she was gorgeous - young, great hair, had been a cheerleader in high school in Texas (I was now watching the Bears-Packers game so it was relevant).   She is the reason other women sometimes feel inadequate. I asked about steroids (betamethasone) for lung development. She said that everything looked OK, but since I wasn't her patient and my strips still didn't look great, I would be here overnight and my own regular doctor could deal with it in the morning. She was very honest about it. She said that right now, I wasn't a candidate for the steroids. I had never heard anything bad about them and wasn't sure why they wouldn't be used, but she said that they lower my immune function and since they thought I had a touch of something, that would be bad, and they can cause pulmonary edema in the mother.   All-in-all not warranted yet.

The overnight was fairly uneventful. My blood pressure was 89/47, which is typical for me and I assured them of that. My IV continued to drip at the slowest rate known to man. It was a series of minor inconveniences that just made me irritable. By morning, I had gotten some sleep, but the contraction monitor was showing regular contractions a minute apart. The nurse was very concerned. She mentioned tocolytic drugs to stop contractions. She headed out to call my regular doctor. Nothing happened for a while. My mother-in-law and mother descended upon my house like a welcome plague, and Mr. Long-Suffering came back to the hospital bearing my stocking which had facial wipes, a toothbrush, hand lotion, and chap stick...all the things I wanted. My stocking was hung from the IV pole with care in hopes that soon I wouldn't be there.

My doctor showed up. He said I was not in pre-term labor, and he was surprised to see me in the hospital since I am usually so level-headed about these things. Mr. Long-Suffering didn't like the sound of that and defended, "You can imagine how bad she felt if she thought she needed to come in." They both nodded and agreed. My doctor said that even with all the activity on the monitor, my cervix is over 4 cm and there is almost no chance of pre-term labor when the cervix is longer than 3 cm, so I am good. He said as soon as the crampy feeling ended, I was free to go home. I felt like crap and basically said so. I was kept until I was able to say I felt good enough to go home. I was also told that if I feel this bad again, it is OK for me to come back and be monitored again (don't think I'll ever want to do that again since this turned into some kind of 30 hour ordeal). I ate lunch, took a nap, and got discharged just as soon as the lady three rooms down pushed out her baby and the nurses could get back to me. (Did you know that people cheer when you have a baby? I had no idea there would be applause. Every time I have had a baby, the people looked grave and worried.)

So, I went home, people fixed me dinner, and I sat on the couch. I called off work the next day (well, I worked from home since I was supposed to be 4 people this week) and took a 2+ hour nap. Another guy asked if I could cover for him Thursday and Friday. I said, "No." I felt really good about putting boundaries in place and not taking on any more work until...not 5 minutes after I said no, the announcement came out from the secretaries that the father of that man had passed away on Christmas Eve and Thursday and Friday were the services. I called him today and told him I would do what I could (since there is no one else), and if not, it would just have to wait until we were all back. Today is Wednesday, I think. I came to work for a bit today since there were some papers I needed to consult and didn't have them at home. I was released from the hospital without any restrictions, so I can work as I feel able (I am still sick apparently).

So, that was Christmas. It wasn't how I had planned on it going, but it will be a memorable one. I'm glad it's over. I'm ready to take down the tree and burn it, but alas, it's artificial, and I am not taking on any lifting or organizing projects this week.

I forgot Number 11

2011-12-21T12:17:00.000-06:00

This should have been front-and-center in my last post. It is such giant, important, earth-shattering news, I cannot believe I forgot to mention it.

Houston, we have a loose tooth.

Chuckles has been claiming loose teeth since the beginning of kindergarten as kids in his class were dropping teeth left and right. I assured him the average age of losing the first tooth was 6.5 and that he was doing just fine. And yet he'd still make me try to wiggle things that weren't even the slightest bit wiggly.

So, when he told me he had a loose tooth Monday morning, I was skeptical, but I dutifully stuck my index finger in his mouth and poked at his bottom, front tooth. And it moved. Ewwww.

I was so proud and sad. My kid is losing his BABY teeth. That means he's not a baby anymore. Why I would be proud, I have no idea because even naughty, disrespectful kids lose their baby teeth, but that's what I was.

I assured Chuckles that Santa and the Tooth Fairy are old friends, and if they both have to visit our house Saturday night, that would be fine (they might even enjoy catching up and the Tooth Fairy will remind Santa to brush after a night of cookie-eating).

I went to work and told all my coworkers about my discovery, and then asked them what the tooth fairy was paying these days. We've settled on a $2 bill for the first tooth and a Sacajewa dollar coin (if available) for each additional tooth.

Three things (that might turn into more things as I get going)

2011-12-19T21:31:00.000-06:00

I told you about the MaterniT21 test that looks for fetal DNA in the mother's blood to determine whether there is a Trisomy (13, 18, or 21) or even cycstic fibrosis, yes? Good. Well, did you know that if you google it (as of last Thursday), the first 5 or so links are to Pro-Life websites? I have nothing against Pro-Life people, though I profoundly disagree with their opinion and often their tactics, but this is ridiculous. Seriously? I mean, it's a test. It gives you information. To say that people shouldn't get the test or that it should be illegal is ridiculous. I want the test. I want the test enough that I faxed my ob 42 pages of journal articles about it because he was having trouble sorting through the bing results (which were even more heavily Pro-Life than the google results). And you know what Pro-Life people? Pretty much no matter what the results of that test, I am not terminating. So there. Nyah. You ought to trust women to make sound medical decisions in the best interests of their families. The End. And nyah.
The same technology that can allow you to test for fetal abnormalities can also be used to determine fetal sex and fetal paternity (very early...maybe 8 weeks or so). So, I can see that there are times and places when the technology might be abused. And you know what? I still don't think that the test should be supressed.
I watched football on Sunday (since I pretty much put myself on couch rest this Sunday on the advice of my favorite midwife who told me Saturday that what I was experiencing at a family Christmas party did not sound like typical Braxton Hicks contractions, and maybe I ought to slow it down). Chuckles often talks about how when he grows up, he wants to be a Green Bay Packer (much to my disappointment because We Are Bear Fans and Packers are our arch-enemy). But, I did tell him that I would root for the Packers if he were one (and that was about the only way I would). Anyway, during this Sunday's Bears' game, Johnny Knox got bent in half backward where the hinge was his spine. I am glad he lived, and I cannot believe he isn't going to be paralyzed after that, but I did tell Chuckles that maybe he might like to be a dentist or a test pilot instead of a football player.
I told someone that I would be proud if my son joined the Air Force (or the Navy, Coast Guard, or Marines but not so much the Army). This person was shocked that I find a career of military service to be something to honor. Well, it is.
I did end up making some cookies from scratch and I made some toffee and Turtles, too. But I am taking it easy now so I might only make two more batches this week.
I am hosting brunch on Saturday (Christmas Eve) morning for the grandparents. We're having mimosas, coffee, egg nog, French Toast casserole, two kinds of quiche but both will have bacon, fruit, and a chocolate Kringle.
I haven't started wrapping presents and am seriously considering asking my husband to do it, but I do like him to be surprised on Christmas morning when he sees what he got for me and the children.
In my little corner of blogs I have ben reading since back when we called the internet The World Wide Web, there is a little mini-baby boom going on (of second and third babies). I'd like to state for the record that I am the farthest along and, hence, can be considered a trendsetter.
I'd like to end with some photos. Remember my first market price lobster? Here it is. I will call him Grabby.
And this picture is my three men looking out the window at the airport watching the ground crew paint lines.

Lastly, 11 years ago, for Christmas 2000, I purchased Mr. Long-Suffering his first digital camera. I didn't know anything about them, and he didn't know he wanted one (and I wanted to know why the camera didn't take normal discs and what kind of racket were they running making me buy some other "non-standard" kind of memory cards?). Anyway, here is a photo of me from that Christmas. I am showing off my new diamond earrings that I got that Christmas, but all I keep noticing is how nicely maintained my eyebrows were back then.

Let's Have Some Fun on the Internet

2011-12-16T13:58:00.000-06:00

I started online shopping in 1998. At Christmas. To buy my dad a calendar. I bought his yearly calendar every year from Barnes & Noble until Amazon started carrying that calendar a few years ago.

My shopping history with amazon goes back to 2003 (which I just viewed since amazon keeps your buying history). In 2003, I purchased 3 items: ISO 9001:2000 Explained, ISO 9001:2000 Internal Audits Made Easy, and The Mother of All Pregnancy Books. That must have been some year (and I was not pregnant at any time in 2003, so I don't know why I bought that one book other than I was eager to have a baby after having been trying for some time already).

In 2011, I purchased 75 items (excluding gift cards). The range of items is wide (from vitamins to food to curtains to books and toys to clothes and cosmetics to magazine subscriptions, home & garden items, tools, and cloth diapers). I've been quite impressed with them (and their affiliates and partners). I always do Free Super Saver Shipping if it is available. Oftentimes, the items arrive the next day or the day after (I don't have amazon prime or Amazon Mom). When they do take longer, the merchants often throw extra stuff in the package to make up for the time delay. You never know what you're going to get (I have the same experience with Oriental Trading Company).

This love-fest on amazon is not a paid promotion and I get no referral fees or anything from them. So now, here is my 2011 gift guide.

Books for Kids: Anything from this series. Books like "E is for Empire" (about New York), M is for Mitten (Michigan), L is for Lincoln (Illinois), G is for Garden (NJ), H is for Hoosier (IN), B is for Badger (WI), etc. I've purchased several of these for kids and they are a big hit.

Gifts for Boys & Girls: 12 Jump Ropes My boys happen to like to tie things up with them or pretend that they are water skiing. I have heard of slightly older children actually using them as jump ropes. A great bulk gift if you need stocking stuffers.

A simple stopwatch. Do not underestimate the distracting powers of a stopwatch on a long car trip. Or use it as a homework timer or a time-out timer. Or race yourself to see if you can make it to the fence and back in less than 12 seconds this time. Do it again. And again. And mom no longer needs to count while you run.

I've been really happy with these curtains. I have a really wide picture window and these were the most inexpensive curtains I could find for such a ridiculously wide window. They are not actual black out curtains but they do room darken (which is not why I got them).

I wanted the kids to love the Kid-o Bilibo (my husband calls it the Swedish Meat Helmet). They have used the Bilibo (to sit and spin, push each other around, and race cars inside), but it's not been the go-to toy I hoped it would be.

I bought two voice changers for Christmas this year. I am sure I'm going to hate myself for this, but I bet the kids love it.

We got a butterfly garden last year and loved it. So this year, I bought one for someone else. (You go online and set shipment of the caterpillars for June or so, they arrive, and you wait for them to cocoon and hatch. It's neat.)

You need a magnetic flash light. Or maybe you know someone who does. Someone with a new car or a new house, perhaps. In case of the zombies. Or a flat tire.

Children's chewable vitamins. Our pediatrician recommends Vitamin D for kids in the winter in our latitude. He also said if you're going to bother, you should get one with iron too. He said Flintstone's Complete was the way to go but those had Red Dye, Blue Dye, Yellow Dye, artificial sweeteners, etc, so I got these instead. Also, avoid gummie vitamins (because they are bad for teeth and don't contain iron.)

Everyone needs more Dilbert in their life.

The shipping on this doll stroller has been lightning fast both times I have bought it (two days with free super saver). I saw on another web site that perhaps I was socializing my boys to be boys (though they did have dolls already) so Bobo got a doll stroller for his birthday (which he uses to push dump trucks around) so I bought another one for Christmas for another boy. I also think this would be a good gift for a girl since it's not pink.

I'm not sure whether this remote controlled helicopter is for Chuckles or Mr. Long-Suffering. Either way, the reviews are better than Air Hogs.

My Dad needed his yearly calendar. Does yours?

The quality on these light-up swords is about what you would expect for the price, but what kid doesn't want a light saber? (And at a fraction of the cost of an officially licensed Star Wars product....one arrived not working but I only needed two...am waiting on word from the company about resolution for the third sword).

I hate winter. This full spectrum light bulb is for me. (Honestly, I hadn't seen the sun in 3 days...no wonder I was crying and doing dishes last night.)

Gorilla Glue. Because my husband said Santa wants him to have nice things in his stocking. Also, J-B Weld.

Chuckles, with his own money, bought Bobo construction paper. This made me tell the kids a story about how when I was a girl, paper only came in white, manila, or yellow if you were lucky enough to get a legal pad somewhere. My husband called bull on me. I was incredulous. I said, "Sure, construction paper had been invented already but you only got it at school...it's not like people had that at home." Apparently, Mr. Long-Suffering had construction paper at home. This is apparently the distinction between middle class and lower middle class circa 1982. He probably got to use tape too.

If you buy someone a tie, you should also buy him a color coordinating pocket square.

As I didn't want to destroy my boys' nurturing side by not getting them dolls, I am also encouraging girls to look outside the doll bed. I bought this Melissa and Doug Fire Chief dress up outfit for some sisters. Chuckles got the police uniform last year and still plays with it often.

I saw this Lip Stix Remix on TV's Shark Tank last year and thought it was a great idea (so did Barbara). I didn't buy it last Christmas, but I did this year. I got it for someone who has a favorite lip stick color and will dig the bottom out of the tube. Now she can remelt and remake new lipsticks out of what's left behind. You can use it on under eye concealer too.

My niece is in to Gnomes this year. But she always likes clothes.

And Muse is getting me this baby keepsake book. Or maybe Santa is.

I didn't buy this aircraft carrier from amazon because the price is outrageous. I bought two of them at my local Target for Bobo and my nephew. Chuckles has a Matchbox Cars aircraft carrier that he loves, so Bobo wanted one too, but we thought he needed one that was more appropriate for a little kid so Imaginext it was.

My mom is getting Chuckles Snap Circuits. I think I need to learn more about how circuits work, so I will play with him. My mother-in-law is getting him some Ninjago at his request.

Love the taste of real butter but hate how hard it is to spread when it comes out of the fridge? If so, you need a butter boat that keeps your butter cool enough to prevent spoilage on the kitchen counter but warm enough to spread.

Did you want to share any items you've found or hot gifts for this season? You can buy until Monday on amazon for Free Super Saver by Christmas (I think).

Different (and not in a good way)

2011-12-12T10:27:00.002-06:00

Saturday night, I sneezed.
.
.
.
.
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And then,
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.
.
.
.
I had to go change my pants. Off to go do some Kegels now.

All is Bright

2011-12-08T15:00:00.000-06:00

Everything is going along swimmingly.

I am 95% done with any and all Christmas shopping for which I am specifically responsible. At some point in the next 2 weeks, my husband will announce that we need gifts for his father and mother. I will laugh at him and tell him that I asked him a month ago for ideas and would have been move than happy in November to take care of that for him, but not now. Maybe gift cards. Or something from amazon. I really do love amazon. Really.

I've decided that Christmas cookies are just too taxing this year and I am buying pre-formed dough from Chuckles's school. I will bake and decorate those sugar cookies myself (with help of children) and pass them off as homemade. I feel more guilt over this than almost anything because I like baking, however....

I have been having exercise-induced Braxton Hicks contractions, and standing and rolling dough and baking just aren't sounding all that fun this year. Other non-fun things: climbing stairs, bending over to pick things up off of the ground, and walking. You would be amazed at how many times per day you do those things. I am really glad that my job involves sitting for 7 hours per day (or more if I don't feel like walking...my young engineers (minions) will retrieve documents from the printer for me).

When not exercising, I still feel quite good. I'm not sore or anything yet, though I am apparently quite large.

We went to a gala on Saturday night. Many, many strangers asked me when I was due. The good news is I look pregnant, not fat. But I thought the rule was you never ever ever (ever) ask that of a woman unless she herself has first indicated that there is a baby in there lest you potentially embarass yourself. The food at the gala was delightful, but the wine looked deliciously off-limits. The band was good as well, but dancing is too much like both standing and exercising, so we ended up dancing to 75% of one slow song. Not nearly enough. The Stanley Paul Orchestra is one of my favorite live bands in Chicago.

I went downtown for a work meeting. There was a bit of a walk from the train to the meeting. I walked very slowly and all was well. I started to feel a little bad on the walk back to the train, but all-in-all, I am still capable of taking care of myself. Although, last weekend, I wanted to ride around Target in a motorized scooter.

Have I ever mentioned that I carry low? Well, I do. Very low. Like between my knees low. In fact, I cannot wear maternity pants that go below the belly because the only thing below my belly is my bikini area...not really the kind of place you want a lot of fabic bunching up and puffing out. So, I wear pants with a kangaroo pouch, but I think I might need to hang my jeans up for the duration because even having non-stretchy fabric below my belly now is getting a little...pinchy?

And the outside kids are doing well too. Chuckles continues to enjoy Cub Scouts and be indifferent toward school (which is fine, really). He delights in locating the Elf on the Shelf every morning before his brother wakes up. He also likes to turn on the Christmas tree.

Bobo enjoys his tumbling class, has made great strides in speech (he's using an L sound now, though he's producing it by putting his tongue against his bottom teeth), and is finding numbers and letters everywhere (that's 3 and I am 3 years old). I keep thinking of him as a baby, but he's not. He's 3. Now, if only he would wear underpants....

Transference

2011-11-30T16:13:00.000-06:00

We had our mini-re-org at work. I was mostly unaffected. I wanted to be left alone to do my job, and that’s been done. However, they want me to move my desk closer to …something. I don’t know. I guess they want me to give up my very remote office in the plant to come to our main office building and work in a cubicle.

I’ve had my own office for 8 years now. I have to say that I am a fan. It’s not a status thing because my office is in a trailer and it’s far from luxurious, but I love it because it’s quiet, no one is around, and it’s private. And mine.

With an office, I have always just pumped at my desk and gone right on working. I never felt guilty about the 40-45 minutes a day spent pumping since it was also productive time. The building they want me to move to does not have a lactation room (and I am pretty sure cubicle dwellers do not pump at their desks). Even with a lactation room, I would have to leave my desk and go to a room and just pump (I guess I could bring a book). But there is no lactation room. And I really don’t want to be that woman who agitates for what the law allows. And I don’t want to pump in the bathroom because it’s a bathroom in a factory. It’s not a place I’d want to feed my baby. I’ve told my boss my reasons for not wanting to move to the cubicle, but I am not sure he understands what a large deal it is for me. And I am blowing it totally out of proportion in my mind, because….

Transference. According to Wikipedia, transference is “the redirection of feelings and desires … toward a new object.” Basically that means, I am worried about something else, but that something else is too hard to think about so I am worried about whether I am going to end up pumping in the janitors’ closet with a wedge holding the door shut while I try to keep housekeeping out by pushing on the door and saying “There’s someone in here.” (True story, by the way, from someone who works in the building where they want me to move.)

I still hadn’t heard back from my doctor about whether he was able to order the fetal DNA test, so I called today. The assistant said it’s not ordered according to my chart but she would check with the doctor and get back to me tomorrow. And then it’s at least 2 weeks after that before I have results anyway (if they can even get me this cutting-edge, brand-new test). And then even if the DNA is good, it could still be cystic fibrosis, CMV, or toxoplasmosis (more tests I guess I should have). And I’m worried. For a variety of reasons. But the biggest reason I worry is that I won’t be a good enough mom to a special needs child.

I re-read the email Sarah Palin (you don’t have to be her fan to read this next part) sent to her family shortly before Trig was born. She believes in God. She sounded so accepting and loving toward her son both because he is her son and also because he is a creation of her God. She just sounded so “at peace” with the whole situation. I don’t know whether I can live up to that. Her email is lovely, though, so I am going to quote some of it because it does give me something to strive for (even for my “perfect” children and even though I don't believe in her God). She wrote the email to her friends and family as if it was from God.

They were told in early tests that Trig may provide more challenges, and more joy, than what they ever may have imagined or ever asked for. At first the news seemed unreal and sad and confusing. But I gave Trig's mom and dad lots of time to think about it because they needed lots of time to understand that everything will be OK, in fact, everything will be great, because I only want the best for you!

This new person in your life can help everyone put things in perspective and bind us together and get everyone focused on what really matters.

The baby will expand your world and let you see and feel things you haven't experienced yet. He'll show you what "true, brave victory" really means as those who love him will think less about self and focus less on what the world tells you is "normal" or "perfect". You will grow and be blessed with greater understanding that will be born along with Trig.

Every child is created special, with awesome purpose and amazing potential. Children are the most precious and promising ingredient in this mixed up world you live in down there on earth. Trig is no different, except he has one extra chromosome.

Some of the rest of the world may not want him, but take comfort in that because the world will not compete for him. Take care of him and he will always be yours!

Many people won't understand... and I understand that. Some will think Trig should not be allowed to be born because they fear a Downs child won't be considered "perfect" in your world. (But tell me, what do you earthlings consider "perfect" or even "normal" anyway? …)

Many people will express sympathy, but you don't want or need that, because Trig will be a joy. You will have to trust me on this.

So, I guess one of my worries is that I just won’t be good enough to be Muse’s mother if it turns out that Muse faces special challenges. Of course, intellectually I know that the chances of anything being “wrong” are low. And of course, my brain knows that I will be an awesome mom regardless (who will pump breast milk in her car, if necessary). But. But, I worry. It’s what I do. I am sleeping and working and having 18 people for dinner (someone brought an extra guest…YAY) and shopping for Christmas and keeping myself very busy so I don’t have time to dwell. But….when I am in the car by myself driving home, I worry. And sometimes, I cry.

I think back to when I was pregnant with Chuckles a million years ago. He wasn’t a big mover. I’d often have to drink some hot cocoa to get any movement out of him for hours on end. I worried. But when he was born, I was so connected with him. He looked just like his ultrasound profile photo that I recognized him immediately. I knew his cry. We were so connected. I loved him so much.

When I was pregnant with Bobo, I assumed it would be the same. It wasn’t. He moved in utero. A lot. All the time, really. When he was born, he didn’t look like his ultrasound, he didn’t look like his brother, I didn’t recognize him (though I did know his cry). The love wasn’t instantaneous this time. It took a while, but eventually, I came to love Bobo just as much as I loved Chuckles.

So, I wasn’t sure which way it would go this time around. Muse moves quite a bit. Probably more even than Bobo. I have these ultrasound photos (now in 3D, which they didn’t have with Chuckles). Muse seems to look like Bobo. Maybe I will recognize him when he’s born. Maybe I will know his cry in my heart as soon as I hear it. Maybe he will look like Bobo but have Chuckles’s coloring. Who knows? I am sure I will love Muse (either immediately, or eventually). I am sure I will protect him and do everything I can for him. But I am fairly certain I won’t be a perfect mom.

The Menu

2011-11-23T14:40:00.000-06:00

If you were coming to my house for dinner tomorrow (and you totally should because there is going to be way too much food for just the 17 of us), you would be dining on the following menu, which I share in the interest of regional diversity. I hear that in the south, they call stuffing “dressing” and sometimes make it with corn bread. I hear that some people have macaroni and cheese as one of the side dishes/casseroles. I even learned about people who eat, gasp, ham on Thanksgiving.

Appetizer course:

Veggie tray with dip (including black olives that children must, by law, wear on their fingers and then eat off)
Spinach Dip and Hawaiian Bread

Main Event:

Turkey (creole butter injected, cajuned on the outside, deep fried in peanut oil)
Gravy (homemade but without pan drippings I can’t quite remember how to do this…I’ll figure it out)
Hungarian sausage made by the little old ladies at the church down the street, possibly sauerkraut and pickled beets to go with it (totally not my thing, but everyone always enjoys it)
Salad (from a bag but I’ll homemake the dressing)
Rolls (heat and serve, or possibly Pillsbury from the tube, I delegated the purchasing of the rolls to a family member)
Mashed potatoes (with garlic, butter, and heavy cream)
Sweet potatoes, candied with butter and brown sugar
Stuffing made with giblets (from my mother-in-law)
Stuffing made with sage and celery (made by me)
Green bean casserole with French’s onions on top
Broccoli Cream Corn casserole (which is a cross between a quiche and a soufflé and has bacon on top)
Corn, buttered (also delegated because I don’t care for corn, but I have heard that children like corn)
My mother is bringing something…I don’t know what it is…she said it has green Jell-o and pistachios in it. I’m not a huge fan of Jell-o salads myself, but she assures me that it is not a holiday without this.
Cranberry Jell-o (which I made for my husband...it's his favorite cranberry and so easy)
Cranberry relish (which is so good…I begged my mother-in-law to make it)
Cranberries from a can, turned out into a pretty dish, with the can marks still clearly visible

The After-Party:

Pumpkin pies, 2, with whipped cream from an aerosol can
Apple slices, sheet cake size
Pumpkin crunch, possibly…I have the ingredients but I’m not sure I’ll make it
Various coffees, creamers, egg nogs, hot cococa, whiskey, rum, Kahlua, and Bailey's for the Irishing
Champagne, Korbel or Frexinet
Beaujolais Nuveau or a Heritage White (served with dinner...water and milk for the children, the pregnant, and the recovering alcoholics)

Skipping this year:

pecan pie
extra pumpkin pies
sweet potato pie
deep fried Twinkies (done in the oil before we put the Cajun turkey in)
any new recipes at all except for the thing my mom is bringing

Follow-Up

2011-11-22T10:28:00.000-06:00

Clarification: I feel like I should say that we’re doing OK. I mean, nothing is certain in life – ever, and certainly, we don’t know that anything is ‘wrong’ with this pregnancy. In fact, it is highly likely that everything is fine. We just don’t know. And for an information junkie, like me, you might think that was a recipe for crazy-making. But it’s not and I’m actually OK. If I was just saying that and didn’t mean it, I wouldn’t be sleeping well, but I am (when Bobo’s cough lets me).

The reason I’m OK: let’s assume we get a worst-case diagnosis (which we probably won’t but this is just for argument’s sake). There are worse things in the world than congenital CMV, Down Syndrome, or cystic fibrosis. In the grand scheme, problems with your baby go from the mild like having a baby elf ear to anencephaly with a whole lot of middle ground like asthma, albinism, and left-handedness (joke!).

So, really, we’re keeping it all in perspective. There are conditions that I would find much more frightening, and there are cases where we would opt for the amnio. And we even agree that there are conditions that would cause us to terminate.

So, the less-than-totally-reassuring ultrasound was on Tuesday. Thursday was my regularly-scheduled ob appointment. My doctor is originally from Long Island (his practice was in Hauppauge for years) so we small-talked about my recent trip for a good while (and the relative merits of dividend stocks versus bonds versus funds of stocks/bonds…good times at the ob). Then I hopped up on the table for my Doppler. I told him I went for my Level II and blah blah blah. He said the placenta thing was no big deal but if it’s not him performing the c-section to make sure my husband mentions it. Then I told him about the two soft markers, and he asked how the amnio went. He was shocked, *shocked*, that we had elected not to do it (and frankly, so am I). I told him my husband was not in favor of it, and I had to defer to him a little on this one (so not like me) because the benefit, in this case, did not outweigh the risk to the pregnancy and Muse.

I asked my ob if I could get the MaternitT21 test. He said, “Sure, if you tell me how to get it for you.” I handed him a piece of paper on which I had written the company’s name, phone number, physician ordering info, etc. He said someone (like a drug rep except, I guess it would be a test rep) had been in to talk to them about it. He said he hadn’t reviewed the journal articles and didn’t know how accurate it was (I said I have but I don’t know how reputable the journal was). So, we talked about that for a bit, and he said he’d call and find out how to get the test for me. Since someone had been in to talk to him, I assume that we are close enough to Chicago metro to get the test. He hasn’t called back yet.

If I don’t get the fetal DNA test, we might elect to have the amnio after the next ultrasound if the soft markers persist. Ideally, I would like the amnio at 36 weeks. If it sends me into labor, no big deal (well, actually 4 weeks premature is a tiny bit of a big deal in a boy but you get the idea). The results take 2 weeks so we would have them before a scheduled c-section at 39.5 weeks. If that doesn’t work out, we’ll probably take the umbilical cord blood at birth and have tests run on it. It’s a plan. And I do better with a plan.

In other news, Bobo had his 3-year well-“baby” visit. He got his new Prevnar-13 vaccine and I could not possibly be happier about this. My husband took him for the visit, so I actually got a call from the exam room to follow along with the appointment. I had guessed that he no longer had an ear tube in his right but still had one in his left. I WIN! Woo Woo. That’s just how it is (he had done the tiniest big of tugging at his right ear on the plane and I noticed a very small amount of drainage from his left during his recent cold…so I figured right side is closed up now and left is not). He passed his eye chart exam, his pulse is good and strong, his blood pressure was fine, he didn’t need a lead screening again. He is 36 pounds and 39-1/4” tall. Those are both between the 75th and 90th percentiles, so he’s proportional. He has a head cold (which we knew…see also, the coughing). He is on track and on target for everything. And every time someone tells me this, I am so happy because we had been so worried about him. But no more.

In different other news, in between the ultrasound and the ob visit, we had Chuckles’s parent-teacher conference. Not the most amazing conference I’ve ever had about him. The teacher asked us what our long-term plan is with him, “With all his eccentricities, are you going to put him in a lab school?” Uh, no, we were hoping you were going to teach him something here in our suburban, well-regarded, well-funded school system. Guess not. We’re holding on to hope for 3rd grade when they finally start the clustering by class for kids of same ability.

Chuckles is a handful, this much I know. He’s bright, but he is not a hard worker (or maybe just not self-motivated yet). He’s easily distracted and chatty (but I keep telling myself, he’s 6…seems normal and typical to me). He needs to learn about the joy and value of work. He’s never had to work at anything in his life (nothing, really..he’s athletic, has friends…once he gets over the shy thing, artistic, funny, somewhat musical, and smart…he even cooks and has family members ask him for the recipes he’s invented). I would really like him to have a teacher who would challenge him (as his father and I do…we do not accept that he’s only a kid and let him go on not knowing about internal combustion engines or WWII). I think if properly challenged in a classroom environment, he could learn about struggling to understand a concept and about the reward/payoff that comes with mastery. You don’t get that sense of accomplishment when someone asks you to count to 100 or tell time to the hour when you’ve been doing that for 3 years. I do understand about state standards and being measured against a standardized test…that’s how our school district got well-regarded, but this is my kid and I really would like them to teach him something.

So, he has an enrichment folder, but he needs to be self-taught and self-motivated to complete it in his free time (while also being expected to do the regular grade-level work…which I was assured is mandated by the state curriculum law). He feels a little punished because he has to do “more” work than the other kids. The teacher said he should feel grateful for going to such a good school that even offers him these opportunities. I see her point, but I think I understand Chuckles’s point more. He does not like to be singled out (that’s the shy). However, there is at least one other kid in the classroom with a folder and he likes her so I told him that he needed to step up and get some of the work done because she was getting ahead of him (very competitive, that child). We’ve already seen some improvement on the folder front, so we’ll see how it goes. And I already know who I am going to request/suggest he get as a teacher next year.

In other, other news, I have 17 people coming to dinner on Thursday and we’re frying a Cajun style turkey (again). We get raves over the turkey every year so we just keep hosting the holiday. I can't wait to turn the cranberries out of the can onto a pretty crystal plate. That contrast is the highlight for me.

Things for which I am thankful: my family, our health, our love.

Level II

2011-11-17T14:55:00.000-06:00

I don’t know where to begin, so I will start in the middle. It seems like the right place to start.

As I mentioned, I am AMA (queue forboding music). One of the perks of being a geriatric pregnant person is the Terrorist Threat Level Orange ultrasound (aka Level II). Because I live in a major metropolitan area, I have my choice of several maternal fetal medicine practices. I opted to go with University of Chicago because of geographical proximity (and it’s not like U of C is Joe’s Ultrasound Quik Shop).

I have been extremely satisfied with their practice (even the billing that’s all messed up is corrected quickly and cheerfully). Because well over half of all births in Indiana are paid for by Medicaid, my regular OB’s office often feels like one of those overcrowded trains in other countries where the people are crammed into the train with a very nice but firm stick (I’m thinking bullet trains in Japan and stereotypes of India). We’re all crammed in there together. The MFM practice is calm. Relaxing even. Well, it was once we found the volume knob on the TV.

So, on Tuesday, they scanned Muse for an hour. The ultrasound tech said very few things during this time. I kind of prefer a guided tour of my uterus but since he was typing captions on the photos, I was able to keep up. 4CH means a 4-chambered heart, CX is a nice photo of my 4.75 cm long cervix, Chor Plex is tasty, tasty brains and so on. Because this is a MFM practice, you go from the ultrasound room to a meeting with the doctor to go over whatever they saw (which I like to call the part where they just tell you your baby is big, beautiful, and they wish all their patients were just like you). However, we couldn’t go right in to see the doctor because he was delivering triplets just then. So, we had to wait. No biggie. They told us to go get something to eat and don’t bother coming back for at least a half hour.

So, Mr. Long-Suffering and I went for chili cheese fries and a chocolate shake at 10 am. I don’t think I could have looked any more like a stereotypically pregnant person if I had been holding my back and walking around barefoot. When we got back, The View was on TV (see volume adjustment). As a total aside, the correct answer, when asked “Are you sexually attracted to children?”, is “No.” I would also accept “Hell no!” or “Oh my god, no.” Anyway, it was only a few more minutes and we got in to see the doctor. He went over all the photos but they weren’t in the order they were taken and they weren’t in the order on his review sheet. Three kinds of pictures were saved for the end.

The first was the photos of the placenta. Apparently, Muse has a two-lobed placenta that does not cross the cervix. It’s a minor concern in a planned c-section. If it was undiagnosed, a vaginal delivery, crossed the placenta, or had umbilical insertion in the connecting tissues or on the smaller lobe, it could be a concern, but in a planned section, it’s fine. It is worth knowing about, though, because it’s important that both lobes are removed to avoid retained placenta and all the pain and blood loss associated with that.

Next, we looked at the heart (4CH). There must have been 30 pictures of the heart and Doppler blood flows thereof. The heart has an echogenic intracardiac focus. This is just a small area of the heart that is brighter (white) than everything else. It could be a small calcification or something – nothing of clinical significance. It could also be a soft marker for Down Syndrome. It’s a weak soft marker (depending on the study, it either doubles a woman’s risk or makes it up to a 1% chance).

Lastly, we looked at the bowel. It was echogenic as well. An echogenic bowel can be caused by one of several things: nothing at all, the fetus swallowed blood during a bleeding/spotting episode earlier in pregnancy, cycstic fibrosis, toxoplasmosis, CMV, and Down Syndrome. At this point, I really had wished we’d been able to do the combined nuchal screening and blood tests. As he rattled off possible casues, I had an answer for everything. My bleeding was between 3.5 and 5 weeks, which is before the fetus had a mouth so could not have swallowed blood. I am not a carrier of CF (checked while pregnant with Chuckles) so even if my husband is a carrier, the baby does not have CF. I was negative for toxoplasmosis in August, our cat lives indoors, and I haven’t been cleaning her litter, and I wear gloves when gardening and wash my hands afterwards. I donated blood (which pregnant, actually) and am negative for CMV, and Bobo does not go to childcare or pre-school. I do not visit elderly relatives in nursing homes.

And Down Syndrome. I told the MFM that I had the quad screen done, and I screened negative. I did not know my specifc numbers. My age related risk is 1:270. The receptionist called my OB. The office said my chart was down in medical records and it would take a half hour to get it faxed over. Ok, then. In the meantime, we went over family history, I was given a neuro exam to check the 12 nerves of my face, I had to breathe and be listened to. We were offered the amnio. We said we’d like to wait on the other test results before we decided. My husband (out of nowhere) said that the amnio results aren’t actionable, so why bother. I contradicted and said that we might choose to deliver at a different hospital if we had a known problem, plus I might make support arrangements for nursing if there were going to be any issues (though lip and palette are both cleft-free). The doctor merely said he had to offer it, but that he could talk statistics and odds with us. He said that no one really knows for sure but an echogenic focus in the heart and bowel are both weak markers for Down Syndrome. Possibly, they increase the background risk (not the age-related risk) by perhaps up to 10x (he really did hem and hawa nd perhaps and possibly that much...the studies just aren't there). He said that it isn’t really known how much, but it does increase the risk. I asked about the MaterniT21 test (it's new...it looks for fetal DNA in the mother's blood. It's highly accurate and non-invasive). He said it wasn't commercial. I said that it's been commercial for a month but has limited availability but is available in Chicago (apparently, not at U of C, though). It's only $235...if you can find someone to give it to you.

I said that I would want to amnio if my "new risk" were greater than my age related risk. My husband didn’t want it no matter what but said that it was ultimately my decision. I asked the doctor whether placental placement in my specific uterus meant that the procedure was riskier than typical (answer: no). He asked us about blood types (both O+) and allergies to metals (yep, nickel) and drugs (yep, penicillin), etc.

Then we were asked to sit back in the waiting room. After an hour of that, I called my OB’s office and asked where my test results were. Many, many happy smiling patients and families clutching ultrasound photos came and went in the time we waited. Each of their consults lasted about 10 minutes. Ours had already been more than half an hour and we still weren't done. At this point, I was so happy I had eaten. Then the doctor came in, called my OB’s office, read them the riot act, and our results were faxed over. My age-related risk of Down Syndrome is 1 in 258. My Age+Screen result is <1 in 5000. So, even using the worst case scenario numbers of 10x increased risk, we’re still only looking at <1 in 500. That’s >499 in 500 are genetically normal. We opted not to get the amnio, and left the office about 5 hours after we had arrived. I am getting re-scanned in 8 weeks to follow-up on the heart.

That’s all I know.

Oh, actually, I convinced my husband that even outside of termination (or, interruption, as the doctor put it), results of an amnio are actionable. I convinced him that if there were a heart defect, I would prefer to deliver at the hospital where any necessary surgery could be performed. I wouldn’t have to be separated from him and the baby while they were transferred (or something). Though, my husband did say he would like to ride in a helicopter (but not with a critically ill neo-nate).

Lawn Guy Land

2011-11-10T16:01:00.000-06:00

Hi all. I’m just back from my first-ever trip to Long Island and the Hamptons. Oh, I know what you’re thinking, “What’s a frugal girl like you doing in a place like that?” Well, it’s simple. It’s November. The off-season is a great time to travel to expensive vacation destinations.

I felt like an explorer to a foreign and strange land trying to find out everything I could about Lawn Guy Land in the 2 days I was there. This was my first-ever trip to eastern NY. I had been to western (or Upstate) New York before but the Finger Lakes is not exactly the area people think of when they think of New York. I did not go to New York City firstly because I was staying 60 miles away out on the Island and secondly, because the marathon was going on and I wasn’t running it.

Let’s start with the day of departure. I left Chicago via Midway airport. Security through MDW was fine on a Saturday morning. Chuckles’s awesome car seat did not fit through the x-ray and was subjected to advanced interrogation techniques. I almost wish they had waterboarded it because it is just that dirty. I brought my umbrella stroller to hold the two car seats plus diaper bag. It did a serviceable job.

Our flight was not full so we had the whole row to ourselves. Car seats are only installed in the window seat. The way the belts buckle on your lap means that the buckle is directly in the middle of the children’s backs when the seat belt is used to install a car seat. Bobo was quite enarmored with unlimited access to apple juice and tiny bags of cookies (and fruit snacks). The kids were awesome fliers.

It was a clear day and I could see the following things from the airplane: all of Chicago and its skyline, my work, where we take our wave runner on Lake Michigan, Michigan City, Kalamazoo, Detroit, Lake Huron, Lake St. Clair, Ohio, Lake Erie, Ontario, Cleveland, Buffalo, Niagara Falls!!!, Lake Ontario (that’s 4 of the 5 Great Lakes…just HOME, no S), Albany, mountains, snow, Connecticut (which has lakes with some kind of odd shading in them like maybe depth changes or algae), Long Island sound, the car ferry, and finally the airport.

When we arrived at Long Island’s MacArthur Airport in Islip, we stopped to go to the bathroom and by the time we got to baggage claim, the whole thing had cleared out already and they were paging us to get our luggage. Very quick. Our rental car was an HHR. I ordered a full-sized car and this is what I got. I thought I would be getting an Impala or similar. The HHR was tiny with awkward to reach LATCH points for the car seats. Turns out, car didn’t have breaks either and my husband returned it the next day and got us a 4-door Ford Fusion, which was really nice and roomy (with good acceleration and satellite radio).

On Sunday, we drove out through the Pine Barrens to the Hamptons. I did not see anyone rich or famous. Actually, I may have seen rich people but they don’t wear signs indicating as such. I did not see anyone being trailed by a TV crew for a reality show. Everything seemed very old (or new but looks old). We saw churches that were founded in the 1600s. We saw a graveyard that I wanted to check out to see what the dates on the head stones were, but we were killing daylight what with the changed time and all so we needed to head. I saw BMW of the Hamptons, Lexus of the Hamptons, Audi of the Hamptons, Ferrari, Maserati, Jaguar of the Hamptons, and then not a quarter mile down the road, I saw K-Mart (of the Hamptons). It was a very nice looking K-Mart and had (faux?) cedar shake shingles and a low roof line. We also saw a Crab Shack (not Clementes, link unavailable) on the side of the road. Based on the traffic right there (and the pedestrians crossing the highway), I would guess the food is pretty good. It looked like it was situated quite near a tide pool.

We went all the way to Montauk, which has a lighthouse that we climbed. We saw THE END (that’s what they call the easternmost tip of the state). Next stop: Lisbon, Portugal. The weather was glorious, especially for November. We spent a fair amount of time at the beach, which was rocky looking at shells and rocks and driftwood. It was high tide at about 4 pm, so there wasn’t much to the beach. We all touched the water (though I had touched the Atlantic Ocean before).

At this point, the sun was starting to set so we headed out to a local restaurant right on Lake Montauk where we watched the sun finish setting over the bay and I ordered my first-ever market price lobster. Turns out, I am not a fan of plain lobster. I like lobster bisque and lobster ravioli and lobster with pesto and pasta, but just a steamed lobster is not my thing. Pity.

On our trip back for the night, we needed the defogger for the rear window so both Mr. Long-Suffering and I were looking down at the stop light. When I looked up, the car in front of us was already through the intersection. Refreshingly, the car behind us had not beeped the second the light turned green.

The next day, we went to the zoo and then to Port Jefferson to watch the car ferry come and go from Connecticut while we ate lunch (crab cake on a bun and seafood bisque). Apparently, there are people who commute on the ferry every day. I hope there is a monthly pass.

We enjoyed the waterfront and Port Jefferson Harbor. It was low tide while we were there so there were a bunch of docks over land (and many of the other docks float as they might in a reservoir). I found it odd that on Sunday it was high tide at 4 pm and on Monday it was low tide at 2 pm, but then it was explained to me that Long Island Sound and the Atlantic Ocean have vastly different tide times and levels. I found that disturbing. Aren’t they connected and not all that far apart?

Lastly, we headed to Cedar Beach at Mt. Sinai Harbor and hung out at the beach throwing rocks into Long Island Sound until the sun set. This time, it set over land, but it was still gorgeous. The weather had been wonderful (cloudless, cool but not cold).

That night, we were told we should try pizza. Now, I have lived most of my life in Chicago, where we know pizza. I loves me some Giordano’s or Edwardo’s, Lou Malnati’s or even Uno’s. So, I was skeptical. Once in a marketing seminar, I learned that the corridor from Chicago to Milwaukee is the only place in the country where frozen pizza sellers sell sausage pizza. In fact, many of the Chicago style deep dish pizzas have a sausage disk on the bottom, then a 6” layer of cheese (slight exaggeration), topped with sauce. So, we called and ordered 3 medium pizzas (cheese, “sausage”, and pepperoni). We were informed that their “pies” only come in one size. OK then, I guess we’ll take those. Also, a serving is called a “slice” not a “piece”. In Chicago, we say “peace-a-pizza” as all one word. I felt like an anthropologist in this strange and new world.

When the ~~pizza~~ pie arrived, we opened the box and were faced with these enormous triangles. You see, in Chicago, deep dish is served in wedges of the circle (then eaten with a fork and knife), but flat pizza (thin crust) is cut into squares (or as close to squares as one can cut a circle). So, here we were with these huge slices of pie that you do not eat with a fork. Apparently, you are to fold it so you can eat it. The sausage was not little pieces of cooked meat but more like an Italian sausage link cut into very thin slices a la pepperoni. It was different – salty - but not bad. I still prefer deep dish (and in fact, we are having that tonight because we have out-of-town guests for Bobo’s birthday party this weekend…he’s (sniff sniff) three).

On Tuesday, we headed back to the airport and did some mid-island (non-coastal) sightseeing in Patchogue (which I think I can finally pronounce thanks to repeated corrections from our host/tour guides). I’ve traveled in the US a bit, but this was only the second time I had ever seen day laborers standing around on the street waiting for work (the other time was in Vegas back during the housing boom…they would hang out at Home Depot and wait). Chicago is union territory. I think you could get your construction site firebombed for picking up day laborers.

Long Island was much different than I expected. I had heard that it was densely populated and somewhat suburban. It did not feel either. It felt exurban-to-rural where we were. Maybe if we had been in Western Long Island (Nassau County) instead of Suffolk County. There were no sidewalks, everyone had septic instead of sewer, the water was unfluoridated, the speed limits on the roads (which were never straight or in a grid) were crazy-high, the mailboxes were down at the street and not on the houses, and hardly anyone had a garage let alone a two-car garage or an attached garage. Overall, I’d say we liked it. It just was not what I was expecting when I was thinking about suburbs of NYC. Maybe I was expecting Levittown.

Oh, the weather clouded up for the trip home so there wasn’t much to see from the plane but we did go closer to NYC and I saw bridges and probably the Statue of Liberty (which I had really wanted to see on this trip…I can’t say for sure I saw it, but probably). Once back in Chicago (where people are surly and rude…unlike on Long Island where everyone was nice and smiled), Bobo melted down in the airport, flung himself to the ground, and promptly got run over by some woman’s rolling suitcase. I’d say she was tailgating.

By the time we got to baggage claim, our luggage was the only luggage still on the carousel, but no one was paging us and helping us get our things together like they did at LIMA airport.

All-in-all the trip gets a thumbs-up from this would-be anthropologist (and apparent cultural historian/architect).

Now, you tell me: How do you like your pizza?

Livin’ on a Prayer

2011-11-02T12:06:00.000-05:00

Bobo wanted to quit trick-or-treating pretty early. He had a yellow sucker in his bag and could see no reason to go on. I mean, if I go home, I can have that sucker now, right?

Also, why oh why does Bobo, when given a choice out of a big bowl of candy by a kindly neighbor, choose Mounds or Almond Joy? Have I not raised him right?

Chuckles got in with a roving group 6-year old boys and ran roughshod over the neighborhood. I (and the spare candy bag and glow sticks) caught up with him a half mile away and made him trick or treat back toward our house so he could go to the neighbors’ (and the house that had a haunted tent on their front lawn that you had to go through to get to the front door).

That haunted tent house was much too scary. For me.

There was a car in the driveway with two mannequins and a red strobe light. Then in the tent there was dim lighting, a smoke and fog machine, chain saw noises, and as you were walking through the part with spooky, murderous mannequins, one of them jumped out screaming at me. With a chainsaw. Scary.

The guy with the chainsaw didn’t jump out and scream at the little ones. He saved that for me. Lucky me.

Snickers…it really does satisfy.

But 11 Fun Size Snickerses (is that the correct plural?) does not satisfy 11 times more. It just leaves me wondering when I can have an egg or some cheese or something with protein.

Also, how many peanut butter cups does it take to equal a serving of peanut butter?

Any candy that had the potential to remove Chuckles’s fillings from his head was confiscated and brought to work. My co-workers’ dental bills are not my problem.

One might wonder why I would even allow a kid who already had 2 fillings eat candy. I asked the dentist how a kid who brushes every day, flosses, and uses fluoride rinse got cavities. The answer was that it appears to be a genetic weakness. Whenever there is a genetic weakness in the children, I blame their father.

Our local utility sent us an energy usage analysis where we were compared to our neighbors (on a per square foot basis) to see our energy usage. Apparently, there is an entire psychology thing to this…some kind of keeping up with the Joneses thing. My husband and I were quite smug about our exceptionally below average energy consumption (which is higher now that there are people in our home all day and we keep the thermostat up overnight for the child who refuses to cover himself with blankets (name redacted)). I bet back when we were DINKs who kept the thermostat low, practically off during the day, and kept it cold at night, we would have been considered positively miserly. We were the 1% (of lowest energy users).

Because we have a third son coming (soon!) and two already-active boys who show no signs of stopping eating, we “need” a new refrigerator. A bigger fridge. Much bigger. A fridge that is half crisper drawers and can hold 12 pounds of apples per week. Our current fridge is about 10-ish years old and came with the house. It’s about 17 cubic feet. We have a wall on one side of the fridge hole and a counter/cabinet on the other. There is 35-5/8” of room there. We found one 23 cubic foot model that will fit there. And we bought it. It’s pricey, but much cheaper than moving the fridge locale, which is what I was going to do. Expensive tall fridge is cheaper than mini-remodel. And it will save us over $100 a year in electricity. At that rate, it will almost pay for itself by the time it stops working in 15 years. Pay back period. ROI. Buzz Word Bingo. I’m surprised I got the capital outlay approved, but husband is far too smart to argue with pregnant wife. Smart man. Very smart.

On Halloween, I was the room mom (parent, but I have yet to see a dad) for the class party. There were 4 of us. I ended up just taking over because we had an hour and six activities. I am ruthless with a schedule. We finished on time barely…I had some super-short intervals on the CD player for hot pumpkin.

The saddest thing happened at the party. We were doing some Freeze Dancing. I was operating the CD player (Monster Mash, Witch Doctor, Purple People Eater) and would periodically stop it to make sure everyone froze. Two kids weren’t dancing. One said he just didn’t want to. The other was not allowed to dance. I felt bad that we planned a fun activity and the poor kid had to sit out. Had I known we would could have skipped the dancing and done two rounds of hot potato instead. I am going to email the moms for the other two parties and let them know.

As to the title of this post: Ohhhh, we’re half-way there…Whoah, Livin’ on a Prayer. 19.5 weeks down. Only 19.5 weeks to go.

“Fun” facts about me and Deep Thoughts from Jack Handy

2011-10-24T14:16:00.000-05:00

I try to use air quotes ironically, if at all.

I gained another 2 pounds at my last ob appointment, which is awesome by my standards (65 lbs with Chuckles and 60 with Bobo).

My due date was officially changed to March 24th.

I think the world would be a better place if I did the traffic studies.

I’ve only given the finger while driving 3 times. But I have wanted to do so 16 times today already.

I have never smoked pot.

Even though I sometimes drive stick, I think driving stick shift takes too much brain power, but I will insist that my own children learn how to do it.

The car I drove today is 13 years old, and yet still gets 35 mpg. Yay for the ’99 Accord.

My other car is a “mom car”.

I silently judge other people way too much.

I walked a 4k on Friday and lived to tell the tale.

I do not own any apple products, with the exception of actual, you know, produce apples.

I have never purchased a song download, a ringtone, or an app.

My average household spending for clothes and shoes is usually less than $150 per year. We’re going to blow that this year with the Cub Scout uniform, maternity clothes, new running shoes, a knee-ripping epidemic in first grade, and two coats/jackets whose zippers failed catastrophically with metal fatigue. For now, Chuckles and I are pulling our zippers up with our fingers (to be fair to my coat, it is 10+ years old).

It took me just 37:39 to walk that 4k (which isn’t much slower than I could run it in). The “winner” did it in under 14 minutes. That’s fast. Like 5:45 per mile fast. But he only looked to be about 22 years old, so I figure kids have a lot of energy.

Last night for dinner, I made a recipe I saw on America’s Test Kitchen a couple of years ago.

I call it dinner, not supper.

I have decided not to give a crap about breaking Bobo of the binky.

I don’t really take many photos (of my kids or anything else). I didn’t grow up in a house that did that, and it’s just not that important to me.

I am incensed that a 5-pound bag of sugar now only weighs 4 pounds. Ditto a 12-ounce can of soup being 10.75 ounces. It’s messing up my fancy recipes that require cream of mushroom soup in a 12-ounce can.

I was recently at a family party and overheard someone say that no one flosses anyway and was shocked! Am I really the only rule follower out there? Here I thought I was all bad since I only floss about 5x per week. (Note: I also floss my kids’ teeth.)

However, to prove I am not perfect, I have been known to, ahem, “help” clear my nose when blowing just doesn’t cut it, if you know what I mean. Pick pick pick.

I do not have cable television (nor satellite nor U-verse nor Roku). We have an antenna and digital TV, which was supposed to be awesome, sucks (the picture is unusable when it's windy...at least with analog you could live with the static...digital just isn't there).

I talked to a woman over the weekend who had unplanned, surprise twins 5 years ago. I do not think I said anything stupid.

I watch Wheel of Fortune more than any other show on TV (it’s on 7 days/week and never has any objectionable material in it at all so is OK with kids…plus Bobo is learning his letters this way and asks for The Letter Show).

I am learning how to parent and discipline different children differently. It’s a humbling experience. My two kids could not be more different. One needs a gentle touch and the other needs MORE (more everything…mine goes up to 11).

That makes me a little scared to have another (hi Muse!) but gives me confidence that I will be adaptable.

I try hard not to compare my kids to each other (and to others), but I fail. I think I took too many comparative blah blah blah AP classes in High School. I make comparisons on everything. I note similarities and differences everywhere. What I don’t do is verbalize these comparisons to the kids.

There are two rules in my home that are the most consistently enforced: (1) no shoes on the carpet and (2) we don’t fight about clothes. You will often see an adult on hands and knees crawling back through the living room to fetch an errant lovey before we get in the car or a child at the grocery store in pajamas.

I really don’t think first graders should get homework because most of them are not in control of their own schedules enough to do it by themselves. And then it’s just my homework. And I have enough to do already. I’m thinking 4th grade might be a good time to start. Or possibly middle school.

I’m a little sad that I’ll never have a daughter. I was kind of looking forward to raising a girl the same way I raise my sons to see whether the girly behavior is nature or nurture. I’m fairly mannish for a woman, so I was looking forward to playing ball and building blocks with a daughter. I have tried to get my boys interested in playing dolls with me. They will humor me for a few minutes and then move on.

I was asking my husband why in the world peanut butter and jelly are still sold in glass containers. It seems that from a cost perspective, it would save money in terms of shipping costs, etc to package and sell those in plastic. He looked at me like I had a third eye. The next time at the grocery store, he pointed out that almost all of it is in plastic…just not the kinds we buy. Apparently, no high fructose corn syrup in your jam gets you an express ticket to a glass jar. Also, buying peanut butter whose only ingredient is peanuts also gets you a glass jar. Who knew?

Muse just rolled, and I am the only one who gets to know that.

I don’t believe in cold medicine. I also deny the existence of ghosts.

I’ve never been to Europe, but I have a passport and have been to 3 countries outside the US…one of which I would never like to visit again.

Athletic shoes are referred to as "gym shoes" and are frequently worn on the weekends while running errands.

I think I would run a great meth lab and would meet all applicable safety and environmental regulations, but I am not the entrepreneur type, so it will never happen.

During Prohibition, I probably would have had a still at home, though. (Have you been watching Ken Burns’s documentary?)

Generally, I do not find long hair on a man to be sexy. Ashton Kutcher just looks skeevy.

Real men have facial hair.

Marketers do not have me as an identifiable demographic segment, and it has been 5 years since I saw an ad that “spoke” to me (that was an ad for Canon printers, by the way).

I get a thrill when I remove a particularly bad stain from a favorite piece of clothing, and I just figured out how to remove yellow underarm deodorant stains from colored clothing. I feel like a rock star.

Once, in high school, we sporked a girl’s front lawn. She was a friend, and it was a friendly prank. We would have even helped remove the sporks from her lawn if she’d come out and noticed them. However, she didn’t come out until the next morning, and we were long gone by then. When we saw her Monday morning at school, she was on crutches and in a cast. She had come out in the morning, wanted to take a look at the extent of the sporking, and fell off her front porch breaking her ankle. I still feel kind of guilty about that, but I want to file it away under freak accident. These days, she’d probably sue. Torts!

I pronounce the word caramel differently depending on context. It's a CARE-uh-mell apple (like an Affy Tapple), but it is car-MULL corn (like Fiddle Faddle or Crunch-N-Munch).

My name is Carrie. It is pronounced like the word carry. It rhymes with Mary, marry, fairy, Harry, hairy, Gary, Larry, and non-dairy. People from Philadelphia get this wrong. They pronounce Carrie and carry differently (and put a horrible, grating nasal sound into my otherwise fine name).

Pumpkins and Corn

2011-10-14T16:05:00.001-05:00

On Wednesday, I took half a vacation day (the half? 10-2...love my boss for letting me do things like that) and chaperoned Chuckles's field trip to the pumpkin patch. My favorite part was probably the pumpkin trebuchet (where the pumpkins landed with a SPLASH into a nearby pond). The kids? Their favorite part was a giant pit of dried corn into which they could fall and jump and dig (but not throw).

It was primarily uneventful though there were a few rough patches. Each child was supposed to bring a lunch. One child did not bring a lunch. The child is also severely allergic to peanuts (and the Epi-Pen is not allowed out of the nurse's office and did not go on the field trip with us). Most kids brought PB&J for the field trip, and that's what the cafeteria was going to send for the kid's lunch. If I had a severely allergic kid, I really think I would make every effort to be a chaperone on that trip because I could bring an Epi-Pen from home. At the very least, I would pack the child's lunch every day including field trip day. It scared me a lot, and I am very glad that child was not assigned to my group (heck, I ate PB&J that day...there was no real handwashing facility, so I brought hand sanitizer with me). In the end, everything worked out OK. I think the child had a cheese sandwich, a apple, a water, and some pretzels for lunch and didn't end up having any reactions. Not bad, really.

Another child fainted in the classroom right before we were going to head out for the buses. Better at school than on the trip. The child went to the nurse's office to rest while waiting for a parent, and we brought a pumpkin back for him/her.

Lastly, I got a really good group of kids (boys...since the groups were all boys or all girls which meant that the family of triplets did not all go with their dad). I was so lucky to get a good group (and I thanked them all at the end of the trip for being such good partners and buddies for me).

There was a group with two best friend boys who punched each other the entire time on the bus (in a good-natured friendly way, but it would have freaked me out). There were two boys who did not listen - at all. They were told 572 times to sit down and face forward on the bus, they needed to be held back (physically) so as not to dart into traffic in the parking lot, wandered off without paying attention to whether anyone saw them wandering away, etc. Certainly, there could be special needs going on there, so I don't want to complain about the behavior of the kids, but I think those kids should have been paired up with the teacher, the aide, or the student teacher since a parent with a group of kids is not really capable of providing the one-on-one supervision necessary in a public, group setting like that. One mom who got such a group was exhausted when she got back on the bus, said she focused all her attention on the one kid, and was just really glad all the other kids followed her around as she chased after him. I hope that's not how every day goes in the classroom where most of the attention is focused on a few children (who really do need the extra attention) and the rest are left languishing because they'll take care of themselves.

All-in-all, the pumpkin patch was an awesome experience, and Chuckles is so glad I went (and so am I). Now I know most of the names and faces of the kids in his class (and many of their parents).

++ We now return to our regularly-scheduled pregnancy blogging. ++

On Wednesday (aka field trip day) 3 separate people in three separate incidents asked me when I was due or whether I was expecting another baby. I though the rule was that unless the woman or her partner told you or you actually see a baby leaving her body, you were never ever to ask. Apparently, I appear pregnanct enough for people to feel comfortable enough to ask such questions. 17 weeks, ladies and gentlemen. It's only going to get bigger from here.

Speaking of bigger, I went to get my blood drawn this morning for the Quad-Screen. They needed my weight for some reason. I had no idea how much I weighed, so they weighed me. I haven't gained any weight so far, probably. I don't really know how much I weighed before pregnancy, but it's within a pound or two of where I am now. So, that's weird. I think I gained 30 pounds in my first trimester with Chuckles (of course, I'm already at that weight this time around).

Recalibrating: Sixteen

2011-10-07T13:37:00.000-05:00

So, under the new, compressed timeline, I am 16 weeks today (or maybe yesterday). What's a couple of days difference? Really at this point, I'm just happy to be in the ballpark of how far along I am. I'll just get the month right. I'm recalibrating.

That being said, I am no longer comically large. I am actually appropriately large. No one at work has noticed (or at least not said anything). I'm full-time in maternity wear now. And why shouldn't I be? I mean, I'm basically 4 months along.

And now, here is the list of 8 reasons I took the wrong due date news so hard (when really, it's good news):

I don't like to be wrong. No one does. But I am knowledgeable about pregnancy and the female reproductive system. It's sort of a hobby of mine reading up on the various indignities our bodies must undergo. How could I be so very very wrong on this specific topic?
This isn't my first rodeo. How did I not notice? Though, to be sure, there was nothing to notice (except for the bleeding...which I joke is how I figured out I was pregnant the last two times). But as I said to my mom, sister, and aunts when I told them the story...bleeding is the universal sign for I'm not pregnant, so how could I know?
I did things in that month that I would not normally do while pregnant (hello water skiing), and I really hope I didn't jeopardize the health or well-being of Muse. This is really the #1 reason, but I wanted to start off a little more light-heartedly. In fact, I can't even remember what I did in June and my blog archives were no help in telling me whether I took prescription mobic back in June and early July.
I know I took Allegra which is pregnancy category C because animal studies indicate slowing in fetal weight gain and survival with doses 3 times higher than typically used. Of course, I am not taking Allegra now so I don't anticipate any issues with that. Let's assume I did take mobic (I am sure what I find will be reassuring).
Mobic is pregnancy Category D (after 30 weeks, C before 30 weeks) because taking Mobic during pregnancy can harm the unborn baby (heart defects, still birth, and lower neonatal survival). If I did take it, it wasn't for very long and at a very low dose (much lower than what I was allowed to take by prescription and significantly lower than the levels found to affect a fetus). However, I will mention it to my doctor, and I will have them inspect Muse's heart at the 20.5-week ultrasound. That reminds me, I forgot to mention that the placenta (as seen in the confusing ultrasound) was high and in the back so probably very little chance of previa or accreta. I asked specifically for location information (cervix is 5 cm too).
As for the alcohol consumption, let's just say it was moderate and I was never drunk and in a condition where I couldn't dirve a car or care for my children, so we'll assume I was caring for the one on the inside as well. I would have been about 3.5 to 4 weeks along, so I don't even think I was supplying nutrients yet. The literature is pretty biased on this front, so there isn't much to read. March of Dimes is in the abstain during childbearing years camp and some other literature says moderate throughout is OK, so I'll go with it. Can't change it now. "But why would you drink when you were trying to get pregnant?" you might ask. Well heck, I was trying to get pregnant and had just gotten my period, so awesome! Except it wasn't my period. It was...uhmmm...I have no idea what, but not my period, so we'll just say I was consoling myself slightly with spiked iced tea.
Deadlines. My Gantt chart is all messed up. We have a host of things we'd like to accomplish before Muse is born. I'd like to get some of them done. If we don't, it's not the end of the world, but I don't really want Muse to have to spend his first night at home sleeping in a laundry basket. And I need to find a place to put Chuckles in the car. His car seat will have to be moved to the completely inaccessible third row, so I would like to get a captains chair for the center row so he an access the back without crawling in the tailgate. Plus we need a bigger refrigerator (regardless of Muse, really). And to get a bigger fridge, we have to reconfigure some of the kitchen (I actually hope we can just find a larger fridge that will fit in the hole we already have because doing a kitchen remodel while pregnant sounds totally un-fun...and in the winter when grilling is harder).
It might sound brilliant to skip ahead a month and make pregnancy a little quicker, but it's not. This is my absolute last baby ever and I guess I would've liked to have savored and enjoyed it. I mean, obviously I felt fine that first month so I could have enjoyed my little secret for a while. This sounds kind of sentimental. I'm not really like that, but I'd like to have known, probably mostly because I don't like being wrong.

I did call the doctor and talked to the nurse about changing my due date. Why is the nurse at the Ob's office so confused about reproductive matters? I would assume she talks with pregnant women all day, every day. Further, I would assume she has read a book on pregnancy and perhaps even had a baby. Why did I have to spell round ligament pain for her? Why was she confused when I said that i needed to change my due date due to an ultrasound? I mean, I cannot possibly be the first person to whom that has happened. I've even seen an Oprah show on "I didn't even know I was pregnant and then a baby fell out of me", so it's not like being a couple of weeks off can be all that uncommon. She did agree to put the order for the Quad/Multiple Marker Screening up at the front desk for me and I retrieved it, so now I just have to go have the blood drawn.

Other than that, things are progressing at light speed here. It seems like just last week, I was only 11 weeks along and here i am 16 weeks already.

****Totally new topic****

Chuckles does not care for school. He likes recess and lunch and gym/art/music/computers/library/science, but when it comes to things in his actual classroom, he's not so fond. I'm having a really hard time with it myself. I can sense his frustration, but I don't know what to do to help him. I'm waiting for the first grading period reports to come out so I can schedule a conference with the teacher.

Part of it is the material they are teaching. He knows it. They do 90 minutes of phonics drilling every day. That is not what he needs. I don't even think they do math every day. He loves math. I just taught him guzintas the other day. What? You don't know guzintas? It's division (goes into), but I don't call it that for him to make it sound more fun. We do it at night when I am tucking him in. It's dark and quiet and just the two of us and we talk about how many groups of 5 it would take to make 15 or 20 and how many groups of 9 it would take to make 27, etc. Or if you took 35, how many groups of 7 guzinta it?

A while back, he discovered the dictionary I got when I graduated 8th grade. His children's dictionary didn't have the word he wanted to look up (I think the word was sullen). My encyclopedic dictionary interested him for weeks. He taught himself Roman numerals and proceeded to answer his homework (5+1=) one night in all Roman numerals (both his answers and the numerals were correct, by the way). The teacher was not amused. I didn't really care since his answers were right. Maybe she doesn't know VI or XIV so she couldn't evaluate. I am trying to teach him the importance of following directions and conformance except, for the most part, I don't really believe it. Sure, sometimes you just have to suck it up, but isn't that a lesson that can wait until he's a corporate drone?

He also discovered the list of presidents in the back (ending at G. H. W. Bush, since you know, the book is old). He then taught himself how to figure out how old they all were when they died (subtracting year of death minus year of birth). I don't know how he did it exactly because he doesn't know borrowing yet, but I showed him a couple of tricks and he did OK.

He needs more (or maybe less) from school, but he is no where (not even close) near mature enough to advance to the next grade. He needs differentiation. Is the school required to give that to him? They gave it last year (and then I found out that information was not passed along to this year's teacher). I had similar issues in school, but I liked school. I didn't mind doing the busy work because it was easy, and I liked being good at something, graded, and ranked. He hates the busy work.

And the amount of homework! He knows the answers, but his fine motor skills for writing out the worksheets are not so hot. Sometimes a stupid read the story & answer three questions about the story sheet will take 40 minutes to complete (including me leaving the room because I get so frustrated...because if you would quit complaining and just do it already, you'd be done) and him crying because I insist that he form the letters the correct way. Usually I just leave the room or go do dishes. I've put Mr. Long-Suffering in charge of the homework on a few occasions because Chuckles and I are so similar we do tend to butt heads.

I'm out of my element here, but let's just hope I figure it out because I have two more coming up behind him and I don't want to have to reinvent the wheel every time. Once I figure out how to advocate for my child, I will be set. I'm sure each child will have his own set of superspecial issues I'll need to address, but once I have a framework in mind for how to phrase it with teachers to get what we need (positives and win-win for everyone), things will be easier.

Most Confusing Ultrasound I've Ever Had

2011-10-04T12:02:00.000-05:00

So....I went to the awesome perinatalogy practice today for my nuchal translucency test. The sonographer started by telling me I would have blood drawn and the computer model results if she could get the measurements she needed. Ahhh, so I knew then that I would get the blood tests. Good. Uncertainty ended.
So I lay back and noticed and awesome second monitor on the wall showing the images. Awesome! Then she put the transducer on me and whammo. A baby. Moving. Yay. She took the first measurement. I had googled it and found that the CRL should have been about 52 mm at 12 weeks with a NT of 1.46 (at 50th percentile). The crown rump length (CRL) measured over 100 mm (4"). Then she measured the head diameter. Heartbeat was a nice strong 153 bpm. Then she said she couldn't do the NT measurement because the baby was too big.

What the heck?!?!? She then took measurements on CRL, head diameter, femur. All the results came back saying I am either 15w3d or 15w4d. What the heck?!?!? I had a period July 12th. I remember it well. Heck, I blogged it. You are all my witnesses. However, I am approximately a month more pregnant than I thought. I had thought this was my first pregnancy without first trimester bleeding. Guess not! I don't know whether that was implantation bleeding or miscarrying a twin or something else, but apparently, I was pregnant then (and water skiing, going down water slides, drinking like a fish since I had my period on a not-so-great vacation, and taking anti-inflammatories and allergy medicine (and prenatal vitamins too, but still)).

I started crying. Because once I have an image and a plan in my mind, it's just hard for me to recalibrate. No wonder I am comically large for only 12 weeks. It's because I'm 15 and a half weeks. Yesterday I actually thought I felt movement but told myself that was not possible yet because I wasn't even 12 weeks yet. Hah! Totally possible.

I need to call my regular doctor and get the regular multiple marker/sequential/triple/quad screening blood drawn since I am pretty sure you do that now. They said we'd discuss it at my next appoinement, but I'll be 18 weeks then. So I probably need to get that drawn before then.

So, I scheduled my anatomy scan with the perinatalogists for 21 weeks in early November.

Oh, and Muse is a boy because I am far enough along that you can tell that the baby is a boy. What the heck?!?!

My three sons.

We interrupt the regularly scheduled programming

2011-10-03T15:37:00.000-05:00

Tomorrow is the nuchal ultrasound, but in the mean time, let's talk about other stuff.

First, an apology to my friend. I nearly killed her with my evil eye when she said that morning sickness would only last another 3 weeks - tops. But she was right. I'm feeling much better. In fact, I ate some actual vegetables and fruits in the last week. Normally, I eat tons of fruits and veggies and yet....just not in the last month or 6 weeks because ick ick, gross, blech. I have a terrible sweet tooth and wanted nothing to do with sweets, but please pass the chips and salsa and also the salt shaker. What do you mean we don't even own a salt shaker? So, that's improving.

With the no longer constant nausea, I have started to do things around the house again. Things like scrub toilets, wipe counters, iron clothing, and prepare food that requires more than just being heated into the microwave. I spent 2 hours this weekend sewing badges onto Chuckles's new (and highly prized) cub scout uniform. My son is now a part of a Christian paramilitary organization. I'm highly conflicted, but he is really cute in his neckerchief. And he's totally excited about a rocket launch and something about crossbow target practice. And selling popcorn. I need a thimble.

Since I had told my children and all my various parents about Muse, I decided to tell my boss because I am pretty sure that if you actually look at me it is completely obvious. My clothing has become quite comical as I attempt to hide my rotund-ness. I sit behind a desk though and rarely see any actual people (I do a lot of email and telephone) so I don't think it was ridiculous - yet. I haven't taken to carrying a box of files in front of me at all times....yet.

We're awaiting a re-org at work. Apparently I was up for a promotion (that I do not want and have told everyone I don't want it, and yet somehow they were still considering me for it). I figured if I told my boss about Muse that would derail any plans of a promotion. Apparently not. They are having succession planning meetings today, and my boss asked me if he was OK to go public with my "secret". My boss is awesome. I told him that was fine if he thought it would help keep me from the promotion (of course now, they probably have to give it to me to avoid pregnancy discriminiation lawsuits). Wish me luck on all kinds of things.

Stupid is as Stupid Does

2011-09-29T12:47:00.000-05:00

Well, we told the kids about Muse. It might seem a little early since I think we waited until about 7 months to tell Chuckles about Bobo, and if Bobo were our only child, I'm sure we could have waited again. BUT...we have Chuckles, and he point-blank asked me why my tummy was so big. Dude...you haven't even seen big yet. Also, we were going to see all the grandparents that weekend and I am in maternity pants pretty much full-time now. Someone would've said something.

So, we told the kids on Friday night (after pumping them full of pizza and ice cream because we like to soften a blow).* Bobo was like, "La la la, babies are tiny, let's build with Duplo riiiiight now!" Which is really kind of how he rolls.

Chuckles was nearly in tears. He said he didn't want a baby and hated the baby. At toothbrushing time, he elbowed me in the stomach because he said he wanted to hurt the baby**. He was promptly and unceremoniously tossed into time-out (I would like to point out how nurturing and reassuring of my love I was prior to that lest you think, "Of course, he reacted poorly...you chose the baby over him"). In the morning, he was a little better but told me he had a nightmare about the baby turning into a monster and trying to get him. However last night, he was looking forward to me taking an extended maternity leave and being home next summer. He even was trying to come up with names for the baby. He's adjusting. We all are.

Bobo, however, would still like you to build with him, OK.

* Our entire little family of 4 went out for dinner at Pizza Hut and then for ice cream at the local stand for under $20 including tax and tip because of the magic of coupons (and the tip was on the pre-discount amount). I hadn't been to Pizza Hut in about a year, and really, it's not awful (for a once a year kind of thing).

** You can see why this took me almost a week to write it up. I was a little stunned, kind of saddened, and maybe a wee bit horrified that I was raising the next sociopath. I had to wait to find out how the story ended.

Advanced

2011-09-23T16:45:00.000-05:00

Well, I had my first official OB visit. Here are the stats.

I was 10 weeks. I'd lost 2 pounds. My blood pressure was 115/80 (high for me, but they'd had me waiting for almost an hour so I was a bit miffed). We could not get the heartbeat on Doppler though I swore he got it last time at 8 weeks. I told him it was OK, I was thinner in the midriff back then.

Then I suggested he get the nurse to roll the portable ultrasound in. Who doesn't like to play with their gadgets? He was shocked I hadn't gotten an ultrasound earlier for dating purposes and because of my ADVANCED MATERNAL AGE. I am pretty sure my AMA is going to be a theme since everyone kept bringing it up. Anyway, there is one singular embryo in there (in 3 days, I will begin calling Muse a fetus). I did not hear a heartbeat, but I saw it. I also saw a lot of wiggling and shaking. It took me a while to put my amateur sonographer hat on. It's been 3 years since I looked at an ultrasound. You get rusty.

Anyway, I also saw a spine, feet, legs, arms, hands, and most impressively: two hemispheres of brain. I was offered a regular ultrasound and a fancy-pants ultrasound at the perinatalogy practice for the NT scan (I could have had both of those, in fact). I turned down the regular ultrasound since scheduling these things is difficult, and it's less than 2 weeks until the NT scan (which is really no big deal this time around. Last time it was an ordeal finding someone locally who did them. This time, they gave me a paper of two places they use who do electronic records sharing. The march of time....it's good for something.).

I am to continue with the progesterone until 12 weeks (and getting that script filled is a nightmare, but I will spare you the story of the (young) pharmacist who told me she had called other pharmacies to find out how to make the suppositories). There is scant clinical evidence to say that the progesterone supplementation does anything, but no one wants to stop it since it doesn't hurt. And good luck finding double blind subjects for your trial who are willing to take the placebo (kind of how they are having a hard time doing studies on whether bed rest is a good thing).

The doctor told me I'm his favorite patient because I have a good feel for statistics and risk. We talked about placental issues (accreta and previa) because I am at increased risk for both, but again, a doubling of the risk is still a small absolute risk. At the ultrasound, I will ask where in the uterus the implantation is so that I can prepare myself. I'm hoping for top of the uterus toward the rear because that minimizes all kinds of bad things and means I will feel kicking earlier. Oddly, the risk of placenta previa is 1 in 200, regularly. I've had it before, I am over 35, and I have had two previous uterine surgeries, but my risk is still only 3% according to the March of Dimes.

My personal risk of placenta accreta is probably on the order of 0.5%. I've already given my doctor the go-ahead to perform the hysterectomy, if necessary. He said accreta and before he could say another word, I said hysterectomy. He was impressed. I'm decisive and have no more use for my uterus. Oh, and I don't really want to die.

As to my advancing maternal age, my age-related risk of a trisomy (21, 13, 18, X, and Y) is 1 in 156 (probably actually higher than that as the number refers to pregnancies that are live births not miscarried or stillborn). That's only about 0.6%, but we have screening tools for the trisomies, so I am going for the NT scan. They will check CRL, NT, bowel (bright/not), choroid plexus (cysts/not), umbilical cord (number of vessels), and nasal bone (present/absent). I think I am also having blood drawn for the complete test, but I'm not entirely sure. I do better with lots of information, but whether or not I am having blood drawn doesn't really matter unless any of the tests has the "wrong" result.

When I called to schedule the NT, the receptionist asked the reason for the appointment, and I said advance maternal age. She actually replied, "Ohhhh, so you're a young mother then?" And I was like what? Did she just call me old? I responded that I was actually, "a third-time mother." Wow. You would think she hears that every single day and would've learned not to comment at all. In 1970, approximately 3% of babies were born to women over 35. Today it is about 14%. That's 1 in 7, so it's not like I am a two-headed hydra. (Side story: my grandmother was first married in 1951 at age 38. 10 months later, she had my father-her first and only child-at age 39...now there's a woman who was a statistical outlier on maternal age and probably a circus curiosity at the time.)

**** The asterisks are my way of indicating a slight topic change.

After Bobo was born, I got rid of all my maternity clothes (and tiny baby clothes). So, I have no clothes. I went over to Goodwill and bought some tops and pants. All-in-all, I spent about $30. I was feeling very bad about spending that money (because I am so ridiculously ~~cheap, thrifty, fugal~~ cheap), but then I remembered that recycling clothing is a green alternative, and the $30 I spent there pales in comparison with the costs to have and raise Muse. I still need pajamas and a dress for the holidays, but I think I can beg/borrow those.

Some might ask why even both with pajamas...why not just wear your husband's sweats or no jammies at all? I always wear pajamas. I love pajamas. And I get large. Like very large. Much larger than any piece of my husband's clothes. And not just big like buy some 2X jammie pants big but pregnant with a future linebacker big.

I went to the baby shower of a woman once who was 7 months pregnant with her first and she said she just went out and bought some "really big" clothes a few sizes up from her normal size. The dress she was wearing at her shower was supercute. Then she mentioned it was a size 12. My normal size. *Sigh* Anyway, she was young. I'm sure she bounced right back in to her size 4 jeans.

Tinth

2011-09-19T21:45:00.000-05:00

Here's the promised photos whose copyright I now own. I can't believe how young we look.

It's a conspiracy. Blogger will not upload photos right now. I'll wait and try again.

OK, I'm back. Let's try again. Insert Image. Browse. Wait. Spin little symbol. Spin.

These are not the photos I wanted to share, but the good ones are bitmaps. Blogger does not support .bmp files, just proving that I was married a long, long time ago.

I'm ten weeks tomorrow, and I have a doctor's appointment (with the man in the practice). I hope we get the thump thump on Doppler. I'll ask about continuing the progesterone. I'll ask about getting the NT screen (I got one with Bobo but finding a provider was a bit of an ordeal...of course now, I know where I can go).

I was negative for the toxoplasmosis (I believe it was reported as less than 0.9) and our cat, Lisa the Loud, has been treating our whole house as a littler box, so it's awesome to walk past a pile a cat poop and not be able to clean it up (doesn't sound so bad until you realize sometimes my husband isn't home and it can be hours with crap in the middle of the floor and me keeping two very active kids out of it). Lisa is very sick. That's what I keep telling the kids. One day, Lisa might go to live on a farm. For now, I'm going to go lock her in the basement while I sleep lest she poop on my bed.

Nine (for the gold)

2011-09-13T16:26:00.000-05:00

I'm 9 weeks today. I am still a nice pale shade of green most of the time. My jeans no longer zip so I'm going business casual to work in khaki and olive drab pants. It's a good look with my metatrsal boots and flame retardant jacket. There is general churn and turmoil in my department, so I am waiting to see how the inevitable re-org works out before I mention anything.

Here is a photo of Bobo at his new gym class today. His form is bad. He’ll never beat the Bulgarians for the gold medal this way.

Ten

2011-09-06T13:07:00.000-05:00

Friday marked my ten-year wedding anniversary. I now own the copyright on my wedding photos. So, I guess I could call our photographer and go get our negatives. I could post pictures for you right here. But, you know, the photos are on the other computer so that seems like a bit of a pain. Maybe another day.

Since it was our super-romantic wedding anniversary (Tin....or as I told him: "Happy Sn Anniversary"...I also tried "Happy Tinth Anniversary"), my mother-in-law insisted that we go out for dinner. We went somewhere we had a gift card for (romance! and thrift!). We haven't told our families that I am in a delicate way, so I was all, "Ohhh, the malbec was so good" when we got home...at 8:15. We had worked all day, we were both exhausted, and we work in a factory. It was 95-degrees out on Friday. It was draining. Nevermind that I have morning sickness starting promptly at 3:45 every afternoon lasting until I go to sleep.

So, we went out for dinner. It really wasn't bad. It took about 2 hours. The food was good. I only ate half of everything so I had leftovers. Did I mention that I look approximately 4-months pregnant? Well, I do. I was reading pregnancy week-by-week (I feel as though I should treat this the same as the last two, so although I could probably write it and I find stuff that's not true in there, I still read), and they said that if it's not your first pregnancy, you might already have a pooch. Never were truer words written. I was in my regular clothes with Chuckles until 17 weeks. I just went to read my archives to figure out how far along I was with Bobo when I surrendered to the elastic pants (14 weeks, really?), but all I noticed is that how I was with Bobo is exactly how I am this time with Muse. Yes, I think I have just given this embryo a nickname. Muse. And I am sick and tired and happy and grateful and on progesterone, so if you want to know how I'm doing, April 2008 is a good place to look. And I guess it goes from 17 weeks to 14 weeks to 11 weeks for maternity clothes (if in fact I can make it 3 more weeks...I am 8 weeks today). The pants, they are snug.

I owe you all an update

2011-09-01T21:12:00.000-05:00

So, who in their right mind announces she's pregnant and then disappears for 2 weeks? Exactly.

So, I had my appointment at the doctor's office but only with the nurse practitioner because the doctors are far too important and busy to see you that early. First you see the nurse, get the blood drawn, get a super-awesome internal exam, pee in a regular cup, pee in a clean catch cup, and other super awesome fun stuff like getting weighed and having your blood pressure taken.

After all that totally normal stuff was done, it was decided I needed two more non-routine blood tests with my history, so they checked for progesterone and something because I had a cat (toxoplasmosis, I think and I am way too lazy to google it).

Two days later I got a call on my cell phone while I was at work: "ObGyn" said the display. Of course, I excused myself from a meeting and took it (I actually walked outside to take it). The progesterone was 15.4 which does indicate I ovulated and can be OK for a pregnancy, but let's say that a number that lower doesn't inspire confidence. They wanted to make sure I hadn't been spotting (no...a pregnancy first for me) and ordered me onto supplemental progesterone (suppositories...or bullets as I call them). I then had to locate a compounding pharmacy (it's OK...I know where all 4 of them are).

All is well, and I started them and still no spotting. Because of no spotting, I didn't get an ultrasound. I have never gone without an early fluttery ultrasound. I need that ultrasound. How do I know this is real without some kind of confirmation?

I was then supposed to fill a script for pre-natal vitamins (free at Meijer even if you have insurance. Yay Meijer) and make an appointment for my "new Ob" with the same old doctor I had the last two times. The practice is a man and a woman. The woman delivered both of my boys (performed the c-sections). Our kids used to go to day care together. I could not get in to see her before 12 weeks. She's just booked. I want the nuchal translucency test (since I will be 36 come April) and I really need to get in at 10 weeks to have time to schedule with the perinatalogist. Same thing happened with Bobo. So, I will again do all my prenatal visits with the man, and just hope the woman is on-call when I start hemmorhaging or however you know it's time to go to the hospital to have the baby extracted.

ACOG just came out with new guidance saying that VBA2C is safe. I'm not interested for a variety of reasons but the #1 reason being I don't like the way safety is calculated. Pretty much the only complication that matters to me is death of mother or baby. Infection, longer recovery, and all that is great, but I don't care. From a strictly mortality perspective, the planned repeat c-section is safer than the VBA2C. Also, totally frivolous but I know what to expect from a c-section, I get two additionl paid weeks of maternity leave for a c-section (though people who've had babies both ways tell me those two weeks are wasted not laughing and holding your stomach when you cough), and my nethers have never had a baby pass and my abdomen is already ruined, so why destroy a second geographic region?

Also, Chuckles started first grade, and it's OK. It's really still too early to tell. I'm not thrilled, but I might be eventually. I really wish there was some kind of half-day first grade option because the half-day format suited him so well last year. Also, they do a 90-minute reading block every day where they drill phonics and whatever other theory of teaching reading is popular right now. I just hope they leave him alone and let him read. He gets really irritated after about 5 minutes of review. I get his point, but sometimes you need to be a team player and just go along with it, but he reads, so leave the kid alone.

The teacher said they'd be doing 5 weeks of review. Another mother and I were joking that we're just holding our breath for the end of the 5 weeks. I hope they hurry up and put her kid and my kid in a reading group. I know there are 3 strong readers in his class who did pull-out reading last year. I requested that they be put in a class together so that they wouldn't have to do pul-out (because Chuckles hates being singled out and felt punished by having to do "extra" work last year). If there are 3 (or more!) of them all doing the same things, I don't think he'll feel persecuted (and maybe he'll stop acting out...he rushes through his circle-the-letter work and then disrupts class...he's a handful, but I'm rather fond of him).

Recap of my Vacation

2011-08-18T12:56:00.000-05:00

Just back from a tour of the West Coast. The West Coast of Michigan, that is. We hit up the chain ferry in Saugatuck, the lighthouse at Grand Haven (in an absolute downpour during a Red Flag rip current warning), Manistee (including Michigan's largest make-your-own-sundae bar with over 50 toppings), the East Bay of Grand Traverse Bay in Traverse City. We also visited the Grand Traverse Pie Company (I had chicken pot pie) and North Peak brewery where I had a fine root beer float. Additionally, we road the steam locomotive at Clinch Park (the kids were wearing their Thing 1 and Thing 3 shirts...why had I left Thing 2 at home they all wanted to know). We enjoyed playing Venice of the Midwest walking along the docks on the Boardman River behind Front Street.

The East Bay is pretty neat. It's shallow (as you can see in the picture) for miles. You can start at the beach and just start walking into the water, and it doesn't go over your head. Chuckles and Mr. Long-Suffering set out and walked for 20 minutes. It never got over Chuckles's head and was at its deepest only at Mr. Long-Suffering's waist. It started to get shallow again, so they turned around and came back. They had wanted to walk to the drop-off, but alas, that wasn't to be.

But the best part of the whole vacation? There was a water cooler in the lobby of our hotel that dispensed ice cold water infused with fruit essence. The hotel was nice with a good (free) breakfast, but next time, I think we'll stay at the Holiday Inn.

Oh, and I saw a billboard on US-31 for Michigan's Finest Medical Marijuana dispensary in Saugatuck. I never saw the shop (nor did I smell it), but it's there should you have a need.

On the other hand, all 3 hotels we visited while in Michigan were 100% smoke-free on the grounds (must be 25' from a doorway). I don't know if that's the law or just good business, but I liked it.

My frugal travel tip if you're staying at a hotel without free breakfast: I pack instant oatmeal packets, spoons, and disposable coffee cups. I use the hotel coffee pot to heat the water. The kids eat it while sitting on the king-sized bed and watching Cable TV (which we don't have at home so they got to see their first-ever Sponge Bob). Another frugal tip for West Michigan: have lunch at Russ'. Russ' has some great specials, and their kids' meals are only $1.99 and come with a peach half (and if your kids are like mine, in a restaurant they eat ice, crackers, and the peach half, then demand a snack as soon as we're in the car on the way back to the hotel).

So I mentioned that I had donated blood back on August 2nd during a heat wave and people were faring poorly? Yes? Good. I did well at the donation. No issues. However, the next day I felt awful. Like hit by a bus, OMG I can't lift my head. Awful. I felt better Thursday but still not great. Friday I think I fell asleep on the couch after dinner. Saturday, I had a really low fever of about 99.3, but I rallied and went to the beach (to play with my wave runner...but only 300' or more from shore). Swimming the 100 yards out to the wave runner was not so much fun.

Sunday morning I woke up around 4am, rolled over, felt ill, and realized something was not right. I got up to go to the bathroom, decided to pee-on-a-stick, and I married your brother. Anyway, the plan was to pee on the stick, drop it in the drawer, and come back to it in the morning. However, while I was washing my hands, I glanced over (in the dark with just the little night light) and saw OMG two pink lines, what the hell is that? I have NEVER seen pink lines so dark. (And then I had to wait FOUR HOURS until morning to tell my husband...who was shocked!)

Now here's the weird part...the dates are all crazy. LMP is July 12th (the day of ridiculous PMS rage). The ONLY time I had marital visitation that entire month was July 24th. I had morning sickness starting on August 3rd (3w1d...who has morning sickness that early?) and got the absolute darkest hpt+ of my entire life on August 7 (3w5d). So, dear internet readers, what the heck? I had ess-e-ecks one time and got pregnant. What am I? A teenager?

I debated whether to tell you since it's so early (5w2d), but why hold back? If something awful were to happen, I want my internet posse behind me leaving me comments telling me that it sucks, and that I'll be OK. I even don't mind comments like "it's probably for the best" since I kind of roll that way anyway.

Because (apparently) I am not infertile, when I called the doctor's office, they didn't want to send me for a beta or anything. Sheesh! So, I have my first pre-natal appointment on Tuesday, August 23rd (which is 6 wks), and they will probably just have me pee on a stick or something (I don't actually know any fertile people in real life, so can anyone who had a non-medically assisted pregnancy tell me what happens?). I think I am going to tell them that I'm not sure about my dates, because this whole thing seems highly unlikely to me. I've only ovulated a handful of times in my life and never before CD20+, so this would just be crazy-talk. If I'm not sure of my dates, they'll send me for an ultrasound, right? And since it would be 6wks or more, there should be a heartbeat. Thump-thump-thump. For now, I'm operating as pregnant until proven otherwise.

And now you know why I had a root beer float at the brewery.

Best. Day. Ever.

2011-08-09T12:34:00.000-05:00

Every night before bed, I ask the kids what their favorite and least favorite parts of the day were. Then they ask me the same. Usually, my least favorite is something like traffic or mosquitoes. Rarely, I will say that it was when they fought or something. Every once in a while, I say that there was no least favorite, it was a great day overall.

Sometimes, their answers surprise me. Yesterday, the kids went to Borders to buy discount-business-closing books, Office Max, and Office Depot. They were each given a quarter at Office Max and Office Depot to buy whatever penny filler paper or dime binders they wanted. They were so excited. While they were out, they also stopped by the State Farm office to pay car insurance.

When bed time rolled around, and I asked about favorite part of the day, do you know what they answered? Not dime binders or penny paper. Their favorite part was drinking water out of those little triangular cone cups from a water cooler at the State Farm office.

Today, they went to the County Fair. I joked with the nanny this morning that even though they are going to see farm animals and daredevil motorcycles, they will probably say that their favorite part of the whole day was the hand sanitizer station or something. I just got the following picture as a text from the County Fair:

Yep. They found a water cooler and are drinking out of those triangular cone paper cups (and sharing!). They are also wearing matching outfits...the better not to get lost in a crowd (their shirts say "Thing 1" and "Thing 3"...their cousins are 2 & 4).

Hot Potato

2011-08-08T16:52:00.000-05:00

I just got a really nice comment from creatingbalance on my last post about how I spring up in the comments sections of blogs she reads. This post is in response to that.

We are a pretty tight-knit blogging community. I go through periods where I comment a lot on my favorite blogs and other times, not so much.

I hang out on lot of the parent/ing blogs & blogs of the formerly infertile, but you might find me elsewhere too (Laura Ingalls Wilder-related blogs, politcal blogs, Freakonomics, the Tribune comments section on anything having to do with reproduction/adoption, and twitter). I use SarcastiCarrie everywhere as my name, so you might see me on google photos or youtube as well. Or even on mapmyrun, if only I were still running.

My half-marathon is this weekend and I am not running it. I got injured in April (tendonitis) while training for the Shamrock Shuffle (which I ran anyway!), and I am just now able to walk a half mile without too much pain.

The wave runner we bought at the beginning of the season is awesome. We've been having a lot of fun, but I got a federal ticket, which was bogus, but I am guilty. The thing is the rule is not fair. It's discriminatory, in fact, but I'm sure my $125 will help the debt ceiling. So what's the deal with the ticket? I was within 300' of shore (at idle speed) in a no wake/idle speed zone, but personal watercraft can't be there under power, only boats can be within 300' of shore at idle. I have to anchor 300' out and swim to shore (with both kids and a cooler of snacks). A small jet-powered PWC captained by a conscientious driver is much less damaging to ecosystems than a boat, but I digress. It's true that I did that illegal act in the National Lakeshore...which is why it's a federal ticket. And I found out later that the feds were just out flexing their authority because of a jurisdictional pissing match. Whatever. The ticket will be paid and the kids are getting a lesson in Why Mommy Likes Limited Government.

(Getting the ticket was quite a scene because of the whole jurisdictional angle...other police groups came out while I was being ticketing to make sure the Feds weren't overstepping their authority, then my dad stepped in and started arguing with the park ranger, then Bobo came over and started covering my feet with sand, then the town council president from the town where I was (the one with the jurisdictional issues) came out, then about 25-30 people started gathering around to find out what was going on. Big fun. Not embarassing at all.)

----
I gave blood last Tuesday. It was a hot day in Chicago. The room where the blood drive was held was not air conditioned. Blood donors were dropping like flies. Since I had been spending so much time at the beach, I was acclimated to the heat and did just fine. I even took the kids to a National Night Out Against Crime celebration that evening. It was 91 degrees at 8 pm. I had recruited several of our new hires and interns to be first time blood donors as well. they did not fare so well, but they all promise they will give again....come Fall.

First Ever

2011-08-01T15:58:00.000-05:00

It is far easier to ignore my blog than to figure out how to sum up the last month. But I’m going to fill you in.

I went on “vacation” with my in-laws, who are lovely people, but are not my parents. Hence, things with them are just different. And it’s OK (sometimes tense, sometimes passive-aggressive) but OK. However, at a certain point, a certain 2-year old’s meltdowns coincided with my husband announcing that he was going fishing for 5 hours 5 minutes from now (not asking, but proclaiming) first thing in the morning after I had gotten 4 hours of sleep because of various child-related overnight waking things, and I had my first-ever bout of PMS. And I lost it. I lost my shit all over the place. It was not pretty. In fact, I had never actually hissed anything before.

My husband and I have been married almost 10 years. We had never up until that “vacation” had a fight before. We had disagreed about things, but never what I would classify as a fight. I stormed off the next morning with the kids. I took them to McDonald’s for pancakes and then the pharmacy since Bobo developed some kind of rash. I had actually contemplated putting them in the car and driving them home by myself. That’s when I knew I was blowing things out of proportion. Royally.

And wouldn’t you know the next time I went to the restroom, I had my period (and had not packed in a vacation supply of “supplies”). Yay! It was Cycle Day 25 and was one of the most classic PCOS periods evah! It lasted 2 weeks, which is super awesome, was gone for a couple of days, and then came back. For good measure.

I guess my husband was mad at me after my outburst, for which I refused to apologize because, really, who leaves during a child’s tantrum when I’m supposed to be on “vacation”? So I didn’t apologize, and he didn’t talk to me for two weeks. It was all pretty gruesome. Eventually, I apologized for overreacting. We have resolved that we have a difference of opinion as to how vacations should be spent.

Mostly, he thinks he’s on vacation and should get to relax and he thinks I should dump our kids with his parents so I can spend my time alone.

Except, I want to spend my vacation spending time as a family since in our real lives we get very few chances to do that. And I don’t want to be alone because I work in a building by myself all day and commute to and from work by myself. I spend a ridiculous amount of time by myself as it is. I want to spend time with my husband and children on vacation. And if children are going to be dumped upon my in-laws, I really think it is my husband who should do the dumping because they are his parents.
So, our “vacation” usually involves him going off to relax by himself to do whatever he wants to do and me taking care of both kids by myself in the Northwoods of Wisconsin without the benefit of our normal toys or routines.

So, we’re not sure how to get past this, but this is the 10th or 11th time I have gone on this vacation and the longer we have kids, the worse this gets because the work load on me increases every year. Potty accident overnight…I’m washing sheets out in the sink and hanging them over the railing of the cabin’s deck so the kids have somewhere to sleep the next night. I keep telling myself (every single year) that it’s just one week and I need to suck it up because this is the only thing my husband looks forward to all year, and yet, I hate it so much, I don’t know how I can possibly go back next year (and we’re already booked for next year since he reserved our spot when he paid the bill).

It’s an agree to disagree kind of scenario. Oh, and I had dreams this year, since we bought the waverunner, of me just hopping on the waverunner while he was out and taking the kids on long rides, except it was so cold and rainy that it just wasn’t possible much of the time...nor was the park, the nature center, the guided nature walk, the wildlife rehab center. The only fun indoor thing I found was a hotel that would let you pay to go to their pool. That was a blast.

So, great and powerful readers, how would you resolve this conflict? (Note: I only get 3 weeks of vacation so taking another week-long family vacation is not going to happen because my vacation time is used for the first day of school, the class parties, field trips, parents' programs at school, volunteering in the classroom, Christmas, and covering the nanny's vacation days.)

Office Hours

2011-07-08T14:39:00.000-05:00

I don’t want to leave that last post up any longer, so I’m posting this just to have something else up top.

Last night, we received a phone call from some friends asking us to be the guardians of their children should anything happen to them. We agreed. It seems as though we might be everyone’s go-to people for guardianship. We’ve told all of them that we agree, but they are not allowed to fly on the same plan as any of these other people, and that if any of the other people for whom we are guardians pass away, we need to pass on the opportunity to be your children’s guardians. So anyway, here’s the tally of what would happen if all our friends and family died on the same day.

We have two kids of our own.
We are guardians for my sister’s daughter (my niece).
My husband’s sister’s sons (my nephews).
My own (half) siblings (one almost-18 year old boy, and two girls).
The children I mentioned in my last post, a boy and a girl (and we went ahead and said we’d be the guardians because we do think we’d do a good job, even if it meant rearranging our lives and maybe having a full-time SAHP…mostly because we think those kids are worth it).
And the two daughters of my husband’s best friend.
(Plus I begged my BFF to let me be her son’s guardian because he is adorable and I want him, but I don’t think she’s going to let me. Maybe I can just borrow his cheeks. I think his cheeks could light my house for a week.)

Obviously, we won’t wind up with all 12 kids. I assume we are the choice because we have a very stable life. There is not a lot of drama in our household, which would be an excellent thing for children who were already undergoing such upheaval. We also live in an excellent school district. So, all-in-all let’s just hope all of our friends and family live long and happy lives.

**Abrupt topic change**

I’ve been trying to keep up in the blogosphere with all the talk about NCLB, Affirmative Action, white privilege, and standardized testing, etc. Obviously, as a libertarian, I am not comfortable with anything other than a strict meritocracy. But I keep hearing how the deck is stacked against some kids. I want to tell you why that’s probably true, but I still call bullshit.

My parents were teenagers when they got married and had my sister. Shortly thereafter, I came along. My parents divorced. I grew up in a racially diverse area in an inner-ring suburb on the south side of Chicago. The suburb was a mix of small single family homes and rentals. It was very blue collar middle class. Most of the dads worked in factories and the moms stayed home or did clerical work. We were, at times, what is now known as “food insecure”. By the time we moved when I was in 7th grade to an area with purportedly better schools, my suburb was majority minority (which is a phrase that doesn’t make sense…it was majority non-white).

Fast-forward: I went to college. I was the first person in my family to go to what I call “sleep-away” college. Plenty of people in the family had taken some courses at the local community college, and some had even finished 4-year degrees at commuter colleges, but I was the first person to go to college. And I didn’t go to just any college. I went to a fancy-pants elite college.

I was one of the only people at college I knew there whose parents were divorced, one of only a few receiving a Pell Grant and a Supplemental Education Opportunity Grant. I always assumed college students were struggling and cheap (and eating ramen). Everything I knew about college I learned from watching TV and movies like Animal House and Simpsons episodes.

I was way out of my league. But I am white. There were plenty of under-represented minorities there, and they got to go to the college 6 weeks before school started to take classes on study skills, learn to use the library, interact with faculty, explore different majors, and familiarize themselves with the workings of college. Some of them came from families with other college graduates. Some of their parents even went to college.

I’ve long thought that racial preferences and programs don’t really address the real problem with student achievement and the minority achievement gap. I would bet that the achievement gap is based on socio-economic status and educational attainment of the parents. It probably just so happens that in America that is often confounded with race.

So, everything I knew about college I knew from TV. I thought that there was a way things were supposed to be in college, and I tried to make my college experience seem like what I thought it should be like. I thought I should be drinking (I never drank in HS). I thought there should be partying (though I am not much of a partier). I thought we’d all be poor and scraping by, eating cheap food and wearing the same clothes we’d had for years. I was so wrong about all of it. I don’t recall ever having seen a TV show or movie where the kids were bright, studied all the time at college, got internships, and did laundry on Friday nights. Even on Beverly Hills 90210, the kids had money during college, but they weren't studying all the time.

If you’d ever been exposed to college before, you might know what office hours are. I had no idea. At the beginning of all my classes, the professors would write their office hours up on the blackboard (or pass them out on the syllabus). I would dutifully write them down in my binder (which was the same binder I had used for a class last year and had removed the papers from because I didn’t have $3 to spend on a new binder…and death to the professor who required that homework be done on green engineering paper which was $6). So I would write these office hours down, but I didn’t know what they were. Why did he tell us when he’d be in his office or lab? Why would I care? I just had no idea. I never went to office hours during my entire college career.

Unsurprisingly, I was offered work-study as part of my financial aid package. Dutifully, within a few days of getting on campus, I got a job in my dorm sorting mail in the mailroom. It was brutal work at the beginning of the year when many students had shipped large boxes to their dorms. We would deliver the boxes to the dorm rooms (with no elevators and just a hand cart) so that the boxes would be waiting in the room when the students showed up. Had I known anything, had a clue, or had parents who could guide me, I would have waited until the engineering department lab jobs were posted a few weeks later. It would have been easier work and given me a better resume. But I just didn’t know. By the time I figured out that lab jobs were cake and got you on the good side of professors, I had worked my way up to mail room supervisor and didn’t want to move to a lower-paying lab job. Money was tight and I had rent to pay and groceries to buy.

I never went to a library orientation. And for the record, during my entire 3 years at college, I never once checked a book out of the main library (I did check a book or two out of the engineering library, though). Last night, for the first time ever, I asked a librarian at my local library how the books were organized because I couldn’t find an Adult Biography. I’m 35 years old and still intimidated by all the knowledge I think I should already magically have and which I assume everyone else in the library has.

So clearly, I think there are obstacles to success for poor kids from the south side. I don’t, however, think those obstacles are greater for minority kids than they are for economically disadvantaged white kids, but maybe that’s just because I see what I had to overcome and think everyone else should be able to do so as well.

I'm just not good enough

2011-06-22T21:42:00.000-05:00

We had an-almost sort of opportunity to maybe become guardians to a boy. It's kind of confusing, but anyway, there is a boy. And he could potentially have needed a family, and someone called us. Someone out there thinks we are good parents and wanted to know whether we might possibly want to parent this boy. I have met him several times. He's a nice kid. Boy Scout, adorable smile, flirtatious eyelashes, a friend to all the girls, athletic with all the guys.

We almost sort of kind of maybe perhaps want a third child, and this kind of fell into our lap. (Can you tell how very much awkward this is to write about...almost and kind of?) We did not go out and seek to adopt a child. Before Chuckles was born, I would have done almost anything to become a mother. My husband was less sure. He was fine with any fertility treatments we would need to undergo, but he stopped short at gamete donation and adoption. It was crushing to me since I just wanted a baby. Any baby.

Now, here I am potentially possibly turning down a child. The young man is older than Chuckles and has Fetal Alcohol Syndrome. When I think about all the things I want for my children in their lives, I realize I just want them to grow up, become independent adults, and be happy. That is very hard for kids with FAS. I have no experience with it, but I did a very cursory google search and realized that this child has moderate-to-severe FAS. He will probably never be able to live independently and probably can't live in a home with a family. He needs boarding high school, and the intensive therapy and structure that comes with that. The statistics on FAS are grim: incarceration, unplanned pregnancy, bankruptcy, alcohol and drug addiction, chronic unemployment. There is even a little saying: The girls get knocked up, and the boys get locked up. That is not the promising future one hopes for her child.

It crushes me as a mom and me as an infertile to say that we need to pass on this young man. He has a family already. They adopted him as an infant and were unaware of the FAS. We were only asked to be the guardians should anything happen to them. The original guardians are backing out as the problems mount and everyone realizes that even as age 18 comes and goes, he would still need a guardian if anything were to happen to his parents. He will probably need parents for the rest of his life. His mother and father are already in their mid-50s, so even if they live to 85, the young man will only be in his 40s. He'll have years of needing help ahead of him. At that point, perhaps his younger sister (also adopted as an infant) could care for him or maybe she won't want to. Who knows? So the parents want a plan. As it turns out, we are not good candidate parents for him. At least not right now while we're in the Parenting Small Children Red Zone. Maybe when Chuckles and Bobo are grown and out of the house, we can reconsider it.

And you know what? I'm pretty angry at the birth mother. Pretty really angry. And I probably don't even have the right to be angry at her. But on behalf of this young man, I am angry at her. FAS is the only 100% preventable birth defect. Anger, seethe, anger, bunch of other words and unformed thoughts. Least eloquent post of my blog's history. So in summation, I feel like crap because I am just not a good enough person/parent to say, "Yes, if anything happens to you, I absolutely will step in and take care of your kids for you." I suppose it's good that I know my limitations both for my own kids and for these two kids. We just don't have the emotional resources now to handle this.

And that makes me wonder about the potential possible third baby that we might happen to want and maybe even get. What do I do if the luck of the draw says that I get a special needs child? I guess some might say you just accept it and soldier on. You don't go looking for trouble, but if trouble finds you.... I just don't know. Mostly though, I am just going to focus my anger at the birth mother since that is easier than searching my own soul and being angry with myself.

I am not your sister-in-law

2011-06-16T12:42:00.000-05:00

I was all sure how I was going to tell you, dear readers. I was going to title the post "I am your sister-in-law" and then the post would be a photo of two pink lines showing that I was all fertile and pregnant after just one month of (ahem) not-exactly-trying. First time we tried!!!

But alas, that's not how this post is going to roll.

Today is Cycle Day 35, aka new Cycle Day 1. I could've saved a buck and the dollar store test I took this morning if only I'd waited. I even have a rule about not testing before CD35 for just this reason (it will usually be obvious before I would get to the test).

But I'm not really disappointed...for a variety of reasons. The first is that I got my husband a wave runner for Fathers' Day. I would be mighty bummed if I couldn't ride it this weekend. (A wave runner is like a jet ski but you sit down on it.) The second is that I am going on "vacation" with my in-laws in a few weeks, and I would really like to spend most of the week slightly intoxicated (or on the wave runner...and stone cold sober).

The third is that I am highly ambivalent about a third baby. I want one, but if I don't get one, I will be A-OK and just fine. Really. I swear. We aren't even really trying. I can prove it! I have a prescription for progeterone suppositories in my purse, and I haven't even filled it (yet?). I own a fertility monitor, and I am not using it. I didn't take an OPK or my temperature this month. I only had marital visitation with my husband when I wanted to, not when the stick, the clock, the calendar, or the doctor told me to.

A word to the wise, women who are not taking The Pill have wild desire and mood fluctuations during a cycle, whoah. I guess I have never before in my life had an ovulatory cycle where I was not actively trying to get pregnant so this was crazy new. I'm starting to understand things like why women joke about PMS and mid-month libido. I've never known that before, and it's really amazing. I'm a little jealous that I never got to experience this before.

The 4th reason I am not bummed is that getting pregnant this month would've put me with a due date in February (my 36th birthday, actually). I would prefer to take my maternity leave over the summer. I know that infertile women don't usually indicate a preference, but if a teacher can say she's aiming for a summer baby, a not-really trying woman can say she'd prefer to give birth April - June. Beggars can't be choosers, but I ain't begging.

Lastly, I am taking prenatal vitamins because it's just a good idea for a woman who is not using any birth control to do that sort of thing responsibly. I am prudent. What I am not is pregnant.

Details

2011-05-27T11:49:00.000-05:00

So, as I was going through the digital photo archive to find the 5 photos that capture the last 10 years, I stumbled upon a photo that pretty much summarizes how photos can tell the whole story of my life.

This photo here pretty much sums up 2003-2004 (this is 2/9/2004). There is my beloved cat, Abigail (now deceased). She was on top of me while I slept, but I didn't mind because she is awesome.

If you look at the nightstand, you can see my basal temperature thermometer, some Pro-seed, a symptothermal chart, the tissues that I used with the progesterone suppositories, an alarm clock (haven't used one since Chuckles was born because he's awesome for getting me up every single morning of my life, no matter what), a book of erotica, and a book I read for pleasure. I assure you the erotica was not for pleasure.

I tried to zoom in on the clock to see how decadently late I was sleeping but the resolution just wasn't there. If you can give it the full CSI treatment, let me know.

Five

2011-05-26T21:36:00.000-05:00

Nov. 11, 2001 I was 25. We're newlyweds. We'd married just 2 months earlier, right before 9/11. Check out my husband's giant glasses.

12/29/2002 (26 now. It was windy this day. And I had a giant pimple on my forehead that lasted from 12/2002 to 2/2003. It was horrible.)

Nov. 30, 2003, same hat, same coats (As a matter of note, I am still using that same hat and we're both still wearing those same winter coats. We're a thrifty people.)

12/12/2004 I was pregnant with Chuckles and we took a babymoon to Las Vegas, so NO COATS in December. Woo Woo.

Last weekend. 5/24/2011 There is a lighthouse just over my hand. New camera. Once kids arrived on the scene, the photos of the husband and wife (alone, together take by the husband's outstretched arm) decreased in frequency. I convinced my husband to shave his beard a few weeks ago. I hadn't seen his face since 1999. The beard had gone mostly grey and I thought I might like this clean-shaven look. I was wrong. I'm ready for him to grow it back. It's too hard to kiss a man without a beard. Also, the pimple on my forehead is back. With a vengeance.

Mom

2011-05-13T15:24:00.001-05:00

I want to tell you about my Mothers' Day before I forget. I also want my blog to be the #1 internet destination when someone searches for "Chuckles does not sleep...ever".

Mothers' Day started out at just after 6 am with a gleeful Chuckles ambling into my room and up into my bed because he was just so excited to give me the gifts he had made for me in school. There was a bound book that he wrote and illustrated all about how awesome I am (and I am). I had a face and in lieu of hair, flower petals.

There was a second book...a cook book. Recipe:
1. Get some dough with eggs and chocolate chips
2. Shape cookies.
3. Bake at 900 degrees for 3 hours (the way I yell "Stay away from the oven, it's hot," he might think it's 900 degrees and when you're waiting for cookies, it seems like 3 hours.)
4. Let cool
5. Eat.

It was so adorable, I nearly died. But it was so early and uncaffeinated and untoothbrushed. I love that child more than Godiva liqueur, but when will he start to sleep like a normal person? I can't complain too much. On Saturday, both kids and husband permitted me to sleep until 8:30 am.

The last 4 Sundays I have hosted a party. A random family get-together. Easter. Chuckles's birthday party. Mothers' Day. I am done for a while, I think. That's enough merriment and table cloth washing. But Mothers' Day was lovely. We cooked out. The children and their cousins frolicked and played. I not sure I was in a condition to the the adult-in-charge as...Many (many) bottles of champagne were consumed and at one point, my husband brought out a record album of the best patriotic hits of 1959 and my mother and mother-in-law MARCHED around arm-in-arm to "The Battle Hymn of the Republic" and then the Army air corps song. It was patriotic and drunken and lots of fun. The next morning, I had a wee bit of a headache, but some coffee, fluids, a day of work, and a good run took right good care of that.

It was so much fun to have a laid back day cooking out on the grill and hanging out with the family. Very nice. I even ~~shaved my legs~~ wore capri pants and ~~painted my toenails~~ sandals.

Everything went alright on Tuesday with the mirena removal. I had to use some lamaze breathing. I would say that the removal was much worse than the installation (technically, I think it's "insertion" - whatever). Apparently, insertion is no big deal immediately post-partum, which is when I had mine. So, my removal was worse than insertion. It is the opposite for most people (insertion being worse than removal).

So, it's out. My body, which even in the best of times has no idea what it is doing, is still trying to normalize after that. I'm not "trying" as the infertiles might know it. I'm just not preventing. There is no forced death-march sex (man, you might think "trying" would be fun, but trust me, it is not), I'm not staying in bed after, ahem, wink wink nudge nudge, I'm not peeing on any sticks, or taking any morning temperatures. I did ask for a script for progesterone suppositories because ... just in cast. Progesterone and I have a long history. And that's about it.

I should say that I feel totally selfish and stupid and greedy "trying" for a third baby. I already hit the jackpot twice. But then I realize that I only feel this way because of the history of infertility. In fact, my insurance won't even cover fertility treatments this time since I already have two kids. Like two is some kind of magical ideal and you shouldn't want any more than that, you greedy whore. So, well, yes, moving on. I am selfish, but it wouldn't be that way if I were regularly fertile. Just another way infertility has screwed me over...removing the joy and spontaneity of a potential third baby. A girl baby, perhaps.

Don't get me wrong. I love my boys. If I get another son, I'll be thrilled with My Three Sons. But whenever I think about a third baby, I think about a girl baby. I mean, I got rid of all my baby clothes already, so I'd need new stuff anyway. Might as well be pink and lavender and lime green with dragonflies, right?

And my first baby....he only has 20 days of kindergarten left. Boo Hoo.

Maureen

2011-05-05T12:20:00.000-05:00

For Easter, my mother (Mimi) sent us cookies from Williams Sonoma. She sent us several items, in fact. The first several arrived about a week before Easter. She advised that cookies were on their way.

As the Wednesday before Easter arrived, and the cookies still hadn't been delivered, I got a little nervous, but they came on Thursday. I didn't want the kids to see them because they were a surprise. So, rather than open the box, I opened the shipping label, receipt, and packing slip.

The cookies were going to be personalized with "Mom & Dad", "Bobo", and "Chuckles". I realized then that not only had I ceased being "Carrie" and my entire identity had been subsumed within "Mom" but also that I now had to share my cookie (in addition to sharing my bedroom, bed, and Easter basket).

As it turns out, Mimi was not making a statement about my relative worth as an independent person. The cookies just come in packs of 3.

On Easter Eve, the "Easter Bunny" began assembling the baskets in the hallway outside the bedroom doors. The cookies were removed from their packages, labeled Love Mimi & Papa, and set atop their other Easterly treasures (jump ropes, whizzer whistles, pajamas, a Starburst, some coins). First came Mom & Dad, then Bobo, and finally Maureen. Guess I should have opened the box when it came. The Love: Mimi and Papa sticker was moved to cover up the personalization (after I took a photo for posterity).

All day Sunday, I just kept thinking about how Maureen must have felt crying on Easter because her grandmother thought she was a "Chuckles".

Fever

2011-05-03T21:06:00.000-05:00

I'm sorry I haven't been blogging. I've had this fever. It's been very distracting. I keep thinking about it. I think it will go away and it does for a couple of days, then BAM it's back in full force. I'll go a few days without any symptoms, then BAM fever.

I'll be driving in the car, and then BAM fever hits and I get all woozy and disoriented.
I'll be sitting watching M*A*S*H (which is not really all that funny) and then BAM fever hits and I get all weepy and sweaty.
I'll be preparing to go out running (and somehow only making it out 1 in 5 times, thanks winter that never ends), and then BAM fever hits and I wind up crying in the shower.
I'll be sleeping soundly (thanks, kids - love you), have a bad dream, and wake up panting with my fever.
I'll be hosting Easter (or a 6th birthday party...by the way, how did that happen), loading the dishwasher, someone will ask me a question and I'll absentmindedly answer truthfully that her outfit doesn't match and then BAM fever.

As I said, it's been distracting.

So, I took my temperature, and it said 97.3F. Then I took it the next day: 96.8F. The next 98.1. Then, I figured it out and made a doctor's appointment. So, next week I am going on Tuesday to have my mirena removed. I'm going to kick this baby fever even if it means I have to have another baby. So, if I had a status update to give you, I would tell you that I am, uhhh, stupid and lucky and hopeful. That is all. Moving on. Nothing to see here.

Heredity

2011-04-14T12:53:00.000-05:00

There are two lots near my home that are vacant except for the pumping station in the corner hidden by some shrubbery. My town, in a fit of neighborhood beautification, put in a couple of benches and a sign on the corner calling it a "park". Lamest park ever. No walking track, no playground, no tot lot, and surrounded by detached garages and an insurance office. But sure, it's nice insofar as there are no buildings on the two lots and it is green-space.

The other day, we were driving past this "park", and the following conversation occurred in my car.

Chuckles (drolly): That looks like a fun park.
Mr. Long-Suffering (touching the top of Chuckles's head like some kind of faith healer): The sarcasm, it is strong in this one.
Me (blushing and beaming proudly): He gets that from me.

(And yes, yes, I understand that in America the punctuation mark is supposed to go inside the quotation marks, but you know what? That doesn't make sense outside of the she says comma open quotes capital-Go ahead period close quotation marks usage. When one single word is in quotes and the period is not a part of the direct quote, it doesn't make sense. Oh sure, you could say that these are rules for clarity,and we're just supposed to follow them. But then I would say, "Rules are made to be broken." And I might call you a "sheep". I'm a rule-breaker. What can I say?)

Also, the doctor's office called and either my foot is not broken or the fracture is too small to be seen on x-ray (that clears it right up, no?). Orthopedist appointment tomorrow!

Darndest

2011-04-12T13:14:00.000-05:00

This morning, Chuckles woke up and came bounding down the steps into the kitchen where I was making my lunch.
Chuckles: I woke up and wrote a song, do you want to hear all about it?
Me: ~~Oh absoluterly, my superspecial snowflake, tell mummy all about it.~~ Uh huh, go'head.
Chuckles: Well, it's called "Everything is Better with a Cherry on Top".
Me: ((I have now died from the cute and am laying on the floor.)) Oh, please sing it for me.
Chuckles: La-la-la-la, singing singing a song I wrote, blah blah blah.

THE END?

So, the big job title realignment and standardization? Yes? Well, it was official on April 1st, and we were all to be notified in person by our managers by Close of Business on the 8th. I'm still waiting for my meeting. Efficiency! And adherence to self-imposed standards! Did you my trusty coworkers have your meetings yet?
==

Many moons ago, I wrote that I was doing/did Couch-to-5k. Well, back in the fall, I ran 2 races. I signed up for an 8k back in January. 8k is about (roughly) 4.97 miles. A little over 2 weeks ago, I went out for a leisurely 6-mile training run (as if there is such a thing). Two hours after I got home, I was hobbling around becuase my left (or sinister) foot hurt quite a bit. I took 10 days off of running, went on two short practice runs last week of 2-3 miles each just to make sure everything was OK. It was.

This past Sunday was the Shamrock Shuffle. I ran 4.97 miles with 40,000 of my closest personal friends (in the hottest temperatures we had seen in 6 months). Thousands came out to cheer me on. All those signs that said "Go MOM Go"? They were for me.

Around the 4-mile mark, I realized something in my foot had snapped or broken, but I was already 80% of the way done and the pain was not unbearable, and it didn't actually affect my ability to run at all, so I finished (61 seconds below my goal time!) and ahead of about 8,000 people. However, I landed myself at the doctor's office and subsequently radiology yesterday on suspicion of a stress fracture. So now? I'm just sitting at my desk, drinking some lukewarm tea (decaf green), waiting for the doctor to call, and having my youthful coworkers fetch my documents from the printer. I'm in a rolling chair too, so I can get around my office if need be.

The human body doesn't want to run 5 miles is the lesson I learned. I think I make a much better 5k runner than half-marathoner. So, there you go. Takeaway lesson: you don't get stress fractures being a sloth who watches TV. Is it Must-See-TV Friday yet?

Careerism

2011-04-05T12:28:00.000-05:00

I am so excited to learn that we all work together. It's like, "OMG!  Meet you in the break room for lunch!"

While we're eating lunch, we can discuss strategy, team build, and explore our interdepartmental relationships so that we can actualize synergies and capture the economies of scale we've all heard so much about. During these ~~trying,~~ ~~difficult~~ times of opportunity, we should not let our sense of urgency waiver. It's during economic times such as these that we can realize greater efficiencies and improve our market share as we bring key resources back on line as demand for our Random Three-Letter Acronym product rebounds.

I want each and every one of us to come together to be proactive, not reactive, to put our customers and stakeholders first. We need to continue to improve our on-time delivery performance while not sacrificing our corporate commitment to safety, quality, and sustainability.  Let us look forward to the future to explore new strategic partnerships to bring additional value to our brand.

Also, I believe a memo came out letting us know that we are to cooperate fully with Scott Adams and Tom Fishburne as they occupy the cube on the left aisle about half-way down near the coffee pot.

I also found this on the most ludicrous job interview questions ever, and I wanted to share with all my new coworkers. So, don't get fired, but I am pretty sure the answer to the first question is ONE, but the more interesting question is what is the smallest MAXIMUM number of guesses it could take.

I did want to tell you that my kids are awesome. However, "school" is still kicking my rear-end. There is so much parental involvement in "school" (and I am not talking about homework and reading to my child, etc) that it is really a drag on me. It's the system. The special formatting of envelopes that return items to school (order forms, permission slips, signing homework to prove my kid read to me, and really, a standardized way of writing envelopes?!?!), the gym shirt with child's name written on front and back in letters 2-3" high, fall and spring picture day, spirit day, wear a hat day, wear funny socks day.

Also, they don't send home paper report cards any more. And as far as I can tell, they no longer assign letter grades (at least not in kindergarten like they did when I was a kid).  The parents are supposed to log into the computer system and view their child's performance relative to state standards.  It is 'graded' as met or did not meet. And there are about 100 categories of things that are checked from specific information (tie shoes, recognize numbers 1-31, write own name, etc) to Successful Learning Behaviors (listens attentively, respects adults, etc). I'm finding it all stressful and draining. That said, Chuckles likes school enough, we've moderated some of his annoying behaviors, and he's doing fine. That's good.

But school is killing me. And don't even get me started on the PTO. I volunteer, I swear. I would even volunteer more if any of the opportunities were outside the hours of 8:30 am to 4:30 pm. Oh, sure, there was an opportunity to volunteer at the fun fair but the planning meeting was Tuesday at 10 am. And just let me write you a check. A nice big one. I don't want any Market Day, wrapping paper, Scholastic Books, spring term school photos, overpriced bags of popcorn, coupon books, happy ads on the announcements, or raffle tickets for an ipod touch.

Competencies

2011-03-22T21:17:00.000-05:00

Since my work-blogging went over so well, I am going to do some more. We're "aligning" our corporate something or other and we're all going to get standardized job titles. I work at a HUGE, giant, ~~soulless~~ multinational corporation, so this is really quite an undertaking. But rather than, say, giving us titles that in any way reflect our relative importance in the company or what we actually do, we're going to be given titles that I'm pretty sure are just code. So, here is my version of the (powerpoint, corporate template) slides teaching us all about how awesome this change is going to be, or maybe some HR goons just needed to justify their existence and the large contract they have with the consultants. Whichever.

{Begin Slide complete with picture of innocuous nature scene or earnest child in underdeveloped nation studying}

Purpose of Major Job Title ~~Inflation~~ Realignment

Standardize something
Get new business cards! Maybe something in grey! FONTS!
Ensure competencies at all levels of the organization
Total rewards/compensation
Succession planning (for when that old guy who writes the schedule finally retires)

{End slide and have it disappear left with a little zinging noise as a new slide fades in pixellated}
{New slide, wherein we forget everything that was on the last slide}

New Job Titles, Decoded

P1 through P6 not eligible for new business cards, just cross stuff out and write with pen
S6 are all the commsioned sales force, they get to work from home, have cell phones, business cards, company car, and expense account, and no we won't tell you the career path or succession planning for S6 jobs, but just know that it's not S5 that feeds into S6, k?
C4 plastic explosives
D1 through D9 are now called Seven of Nine
M1 through M3 are your boss, but you have a dashed line to M4
M4 is out of the office on business
MI6 don't ask

{End Slide and fade to a black background with the word: "QUESTIONS?" in white letters, then refuse to answer any questions about actual jobs/titles or the specific letter-number combination that goes with any specific job function}

So long as my checks keep getting direct deposited into my account, I don't really care, but it's fun to watch the young engineers who are in their first jobs out of college actually care about this kind of thing. I used to care about it. But now, as long as the checks keep coming, I just don't care. Give me the title of Chief Cook or Underling #17 or even Sr. Peon. I'm cool with it.

So, for 6 minutes this weekend, both Mr. Long-Suffering and I wanted a 3rd baby (at the very same time). It was awfully amazing. But since I have the mirena and those 6 minutes were while we were serving the kids lunch, we were unable to act on it. However, after those six minutes, one kid backtalked and the other one puked, so there's that.

And now Mr. Long-Suffering is sick. There is very little more pathetic than a sick husband. He did put up the large fever numbers though just to prove it and get out of bedtime duty. Any adult with a 103.1 degree fever gets a pass on bedtime duty (mostly so he doesn't infect Bobo...sweet healthy Bobo).

Chuckles went on Monday (Spring Break!) to get his hair cut. I let him pick for himself. He asked the nice lady for a Beiber. Heaven help me. This is the first time he has ever indicated a preference for anything other than a spiky Mohawk. It's just the beginning, and I am not fully ready for his autonomy yet. I think I need another baby to get me through.

TLA

2011-03-11T14:54:00.000-06:00

My post title is TLA. It stands for Three-Lettered Acronym. We use a lot of jargon at work. To make fun of ourselves, we call something a TLA when we make up a word for it. On my buzzword BINGO card, one square is called "Random Four-Lettered Abbreviation Pronounced Like a Word".

Anyway, there is something that happens at my work called a Lightning Bolt. Rather than call it an LB (because clearly that would eventually be shortened to #), we call it LGBT, which of course, always makes me think that we're talking about Lesbian, Gay, Bisexual, and Transgender manufacturing issues. I giggle a little whenever a giant PowerPoint presentation comes up with that in it, because if they only knew what I was thinking....

You want to know what else is on my BINGO card?

Synergies
Proactive, not Reactive
impactful (gah, kill me now)
these trying/difficult economic times
world-class or dynamic
ROI
Key Performance Indicators
Urgency, sense of
sustainability, corporate responsibility, green
strategic
safety
progress

Part 2: THREE

I am jealous of people who are certain that their families are done. Done done done. My little family is done, but I want another sweet little baby to hold and nurse. I don't even like babies. They're all need-filled blankets. And yet...I want one.

When I was 25, I didn't want any kids. When I was 26, I wanted one, some day. When I was 27, I wanted one rightnow. I got Chuckles at 29. After his traumatic birth, my infertility, his no sleep ever ever, and my difficult adjustment to motherhood, I was sure that I could be one and done. Then I quit my job and was a SAHM for a while and was sure that I did not want any more kids thankyouverymuch.

Then I went back to work and had Bobo. He was conceived relatively easily (only one drug required!), I felt pretty good during the pregnancy (placenta previa and pelvic rest notwithstanding), the not-totally-unplanned c-section was very easy, he slept through the night from 6 weeks to 3 months (and not again until age 2). He nursed, grew, and slept. And I thought about having another. I actually like being pregnant, and I don't mind nursing.

But my husband is done. He's just done. Consequently, I am done. We have two (beautiful, healthy) kids. He doesn't want any more. He said if we had an oops, he'd be OK with it, but he just can't decide to have another. He wishes we didn't actually have to decide. He says normal people have too much wine and wind up with a baby.

So, we agreed that we're done. There are a few remote conditions where I get a third baby but they aren't very likely (an oops, we win the lottery (we don't play), someone leaves a baby on out front porch, or my 16-year old sister or one of her friends gets pregnant and wants us to adopt the baby). So, you can see that I don't get to have another baby. And yet, I want one. I never thought I would want 3 kids, but I do. Chuckles was about the age Bobo is now when I started thinking about having another one. Maybe that's some kind of hormonal thing. I wouldn't want my kids more than 3.5 years apart so I have less than 6 months to get pregnant. I guess I better go buy lottery tickets.

Subpart 3: I signed up to run a half-marathon in August (since I'm not having another baby and won't be pregnant then). I am crazy stupid, but whatever. It's done. Now I am training. I don't even like running. And the worst part? The other night I ran, came home, went to bed, and then dreamed I was running. Can I count that on my training log?

Answered

2011-02-23T21:48:00.000-06:00

I believe I mentioned that I bought myself the entire Little House collection on e*bay, yes?

Well, as I was reading it, we came upon Laura's 5th birthday. She was spanked 5 times...once for each year plus one to grow on. So, now we know it was not just a custom in my family, and it goes back at least a hundred years before my birth.

In fact, I think Baby Carrie Ingalls was born about a hundred years before me (106 according to Wikipedia). So, there you have it. Mystery solved. (We just finished the chapter on the sugaring dance. I've never read Little House in the Big Woods before so I am enjoying it as are my husband and sons.)

Thirty-Five

2011-02-17T15:50:00.000-06:00

I turned 35, and I lived to tell about it.

I pitched a minor fit and told my husband we were going out to dinner. Period. So we did. We left the kids at home with my m-i-l. She didn’t have much to say about how it went and Chuckles was not forthcoming with details either, but everything looked OK when I got home.

For dinner, I had a glass of malbec, an apple and pine nut salad over baby greens, stuffed eggplant, and tiramisu (shared) for dessert. The husband had a glass of pinot noir, a calamari salad, penne piscatore, and the other half of the tiramisu.

Then we got $60 in gas for my car and a car wash (I have a 22-gallon tank and needed about 17 gallons of gas). I also got a new cookie sheet, a box of oatmeal, some hot mitts, and an optical mouse. I bought myself the entire Little House collection of books from ebay. Thanks to Julie ALittlePregnant I wanted them. It was nice. We got home right after the kids’ bedtimes, and they were in bed (supposedly sleeping though I know Bobo was not..he's a polite and quiet Night Owl). Chuckles was up well before dawn (I suspect to make sure I actually came home).

I am having a rather hard time with 35, as I said. It's not particulary because I think I am old. (I swear I don't look a day over 28.) It's because I am realizing how much (or how little) time I have left. It's the rare person in my family who has made it to 70. Usually, an unusual and rare accident befalls my people cutting their lives short (hit by a meteor, crushed by industrial equipment, fatal plane crash, and so on). Occasionally, someone dies of natural causes. It's invariably fast (which is good) but unexpected.

I suppose this means I have finally reached adulthood. I no longer feel immortal. I'm also more closely enmeshed with the future and wanting to be around for it. For my kids. And my (theoretically probable) grandkids. I'm also realizing that my time with my own parents is limited. Though, truthfully, my parents are still quite young. My mom is 56 (though she acts much older). My dad is 58 (and he acts quite a bit younger). I asked my dad if it made him feel old to have an old daughter. He said that he feels plenty old on his own, but when my sister turns 40, he's not going to be happy about it.

Maybe that's the way it should be. Maybe this will make me slow down and appreciate my parents more. Maybe. Maybe not.

As a total aside, we always got spankings on our birthdays (one for each year, one for good luck, and a pinch to grow an inch). We weren't routinely spanked as punsihment, and this was a more playful tradition. My husband had never heard of it. (Also, something about having to keep quiet until you had your first bite of cake or the wish you made when blowing out your candle wouldn't come true.) Really? Did my family just make these up? Have you heard of these things?

Hair

2011-02-12T22:17:00.000-06:00

I'm about to turn the big 8. Wait, not that's not right. Three-five. Thirty-five. Right, yes, moving on. I'm going to turn 35 in a few days, and I'm having a rough go of it. By rough go, I mean, last Sunday I cried intermittently for 3 hours while children and a husband randomly brought me juice, their special soft blankies, cookies, a binky, and Valentines trying to cheer me up.

Also, I grow my hair for charity. Actually, I do not grow my hair for charity. I cut my hair for charity (Pantene Beautiful Lengths). I've done it twice before (October 2006, November 2008). Since the last time it got whacked two years ago, my hair has been getting longer and stragglier and stringier. I've been dying to cut it. I went to the hair cutting place (beauty shop?) around Halloween, and they told me if they cut 8" off, I could get something in a spikey butch soccer mom. As I was already having an "I'm an unattractive mother" existential crisis, I opted to wait and let it grow out a while longer.

In the meantime, it got stringier and tanglier and darker. I'm blonde (mostly naturally) but in the winter, my highlights disappear with the new growth. So, usually, in the winter, I highlight. Except my long hair was too long to pull through a cap and frost/tip. It was sad-making.

Finally, today I said enough is enough. I am cutting my hair and no matter how short they have to make it, it is going. So, I went. Here is me before. Note I am not wearing my good flannel for going to the beauty shop. I wore the shirt with the hair dye stains. (side note: I didn't wear a coat because it was a balmy 34 degrees here today, and I did run since I am "training" for the Shamrock Shuffle 8k. This photo was taken post-run, pre-shower.)

When I got home, of course, I noticed that all the blonde parts had been cut off, so I immediately set about pulling my hair through a vinyl bonnet and putting two-part bleach on my hair. Once it turned the appealing shade of dried straw, I washed the bleach out, tossed some super-hold mousse in and voila. After:

It's not so bad. By the time this picture was taken, it was late. Wine had been consumed. And cake. I'm ready for bed, but mostly, I think it turned out OK. All told, they cut off about 10" of hair. So, it could be worse.

In case you don't find me to be one-hot-mama though, I am including a picture of the cute. This is Bobo with two binkies in his mouth (and I cannot for the life of me figure out how to rotate this photo here (I could've done it before uploading but could've should've)).

And here's a picture of us digging ourselves out after Snotorious B.I.G. on Groundhog Day. 23" in 24 hours they say. 23". Not too shabby.

Lastly, here is one of the cakes I made for Super Bowl. I'm not a pro, so this can't go to Cake Wrecks. And why would it? Everything is spelled correctly and there is not a single sprinkle, baby butt, edible photo paper, or creepy guy on a bearskin rug.

Goodnight old lady whispering "hush".

Crisis

2011-02-08T13:22:00.000-06:00

I want to talk for a minute about the global economic crisis. I will start by saying that I have not been terribly inconvenienced by the implosion of our economy. The only thing that happened to me was that I was unable to sell my house and move my family with me to start our life over in a new town with my new job. Incidentally, that is how this blog started. I started it to chronicle quitting my job, getting a new one, selling my house, buying a new one. Instead it turned into me living apart from my family working at my new job and eventually quitting to be a SAHM for a few months while I looked for work back near the house we still owned. For the record, I am a terrible SAHM. Hats off to people who can do it and like to do it and are good at it.

But I don’t want to tell you the story of me not selling my house. I want to tell you about the time I did sell a house. But first, I’ll tell you about how I came to own a house.

When I was fresh out of college, I moved from Chicago to Ohio. I lived outside of Akron. I rented a $425-a-month 2BR 1Ba apartment with car port. I was living large. This was right after the stressful break up with 343, wherein I was living in an $860-a-month (gorgeous) 1BA 1 Ba apartment with spotty on-street parking and windows that barely closed and clanking radiators.

My new apartment had air conditioning and electric baseboard heaters. A garbage disposal. A double-sided sink for handwashing dishes without a dishpan. It was awesome. Except it wasn’t home. It was an apartment. It was bland. It had no character.

That apartment I couldn’t afford back in Chicago…it had built-in glass-front cabinets, a built-in China hutch, Tiffany light fixtures, plaster, a cute little woodburning fireplace that was not allowed to be lit, original oak floors, and barrel back walls in the spacious kitchen.

The new apartment had off-white, paper-thin walls and beige carpet. It also featured avocado green appliances and Mediterranean-style kitchen cabinets.

I worked hard that first year, deprived myself of many things, and saved up a lot of money for a down payment on a house. Why did I want a house? This is where I play Monday Morning Psychiatrist on my 22-year old self. I came from divorced parents. Life and home had been in turmoil for many years. I had just planned on setting down roots and forming our own family with 343 and that went horribly wrong. I wanted to buy a house, have stability, permanence, and a place for my geriatric cat to live.

Just before my 23rd birthday, I made an offer on a cute, 1400 sf Cape Cod with 3 BR and 1.5Ba. It was all-brick and had a true 2-car garage with opener. It had hardwood floors throughout, a gas fireplace, natural gas forced air heat, and central air conditioning. It was built in 1952 so the walls were an inch thick. I bought it for $96,000 two weeks after I turned 23. I put a conventional 20% down payment on it thus cleaning out my entire savings account. That first month as I needed things (so many things: a locksmith, a plumber, a garbage can, a snow shovel, a rake, mulch, washer/dryer, blinds, insulation, etc), I just kept thinking about my Citibank bill. Eventually, I rebuilt my savings and went on to love that house. It was cute. I had little slopey ceilings in my bedroom which was the whole second floor.

Eventually, Mr. Long-Suffering moved in with me. I made him pay rent. We had a lease contract to protect us both. Mr. Long-Suffering is 6’4”. He didn’t like the cute little slopey ceilings and he didn’t like that his shoulders almost touched both walls as he walked down the hall. But, since the entire mortgage payment was less than his rent had been (and he was only paying half), he liked it just fine. I owned it, and I let him tinker with the plumbing and wiring to his heart’s content. He is not a good renter because he likes to wire things. And hang ceiling fans. And cut holes in the wall. He made a great tenant for me. He would do any household projects I needed done, including adding outlets where there had been none.

Time wore on, and we married. We started to think about having a family. We decided to relocate back to Chicagoland. Mr. Long-Suffering got a job first, I put the house on the market and started looking for work. Eventually, we found a house in NW Indiana close to his work, and we bought it without selling our first house. After a few months, I found a job in Chicago near our new home and moved to Indiana as well.

Our home in Ohio still hadn’t sold. We were confident we’d find a buyer. It was a cute house, updated, and lovingly-maintained (tear-off and new roof with architectural shingles! Remodeled bathroom! Refinished floors!). We could afford the two homes for at least a year. (I could afford the entire Ohio house by myself obviously, and Mr. L-S could handle the new house without issue, so it was fine. Stressful, but fine.)

A buyer came along and made a great offer. We couldn’t refuse. We accepted. They didn’t get the mortgage. They still wanted the house. They asked us to give them $3,000 credit at closing (that’s where they pay you more for the house but you don’t get the money, you give it back to them and they get a bigger mortgage…basically, they finance the down payment). The offer was written up for $115,000 but we would only be seeing $112,000 since we were giving them $3,000 back.

Well, the couple still didn’t get the mortgage. So, the brother of one of them came in and was going to buy the house and the couple would live in the house and pay the mortgage and the bills. The brother, it turns out, had a bankruptcy on his record so all 3 of them had to complete credit counseling to get the mortgage.

At this point, if I had been financing the sale of the house myself, I would have run away. But, this was 2003. Times were different. Banks were throwing money at people who were not credit-worthy. The couple who were going to live in the house were both in their 40s. And together, they didn’t have money for closing costs or any sort of down payment. That tells me they had no savings. Any unexpected bill or home repair could derail them. I have no idea what kind of jobs or income they had. I don’t know whether they had medical bills or legal costs or student loans. I don’t know why they didn’t have the money for the house, but I know they didn’t.

I would’ve given up on this for the time being, rented something nice, and saved money for a year. But, this couple was undeterred. Perhaps, like I had wanted 4 years earlier, they wanted to put down roots and establish themselves as a family unit. The couple who wanted to buy the house was a same-sex couple. Maybe they wanted to prove something to someone by getting a house together. Maybe I decorate in a way that makes my homes irresistible to lesbians. I have no idea.

The credit counseling was done. I think they skipped the home inspection because it cost too much money. I transferred the warranties on the roof, the garage door, and the bathroom fixtures to them. We closed on the house. I have never in my life been so anxious to cash a check before it bounced as I was that day.

The next time I was in town, I drove by the old house. They had done some landscaping and added a window air conditioner to the slopey ceiling bedroom (brilliant!). The house looked nice. They got a dog. My old neighbors told me that they were good neighbors (no loud parties, kept the grass cut, parked in the garage). I was glad I sold to people who kept the neighborhood up.

A year or two later, the police had been called. The one whose brother owned the house was throwing the other one out. The house slipped into foreclosure. Recently, I looked it up online. In 2010, the home that I bought in 1999 for $96,000 and sold in 2003 for $115,000 (officially recorded sales price) sold at auction for $85,000. Whenever I think of the housing crisis, I think of this story. A bank or mortgage broker made a loan to people who were clearly unqualified for a mortgage, and it backfired. If this sort of thing (medical bill, divorce, job loss, etc) were to happen to all the sub-prime borrowers out there, I understand how so many homes are in foreclosure. I understand how home values are plummeting (I can only imagine how horrified my old neighbors were when a house on their block sold for $85,000 thus bringing their property values down and wiping out all the equity they had earned).

What I don’t understand is why the bank gave the brother the mortgage in the first place. Why? Sure, there probably was money to be made, but I can’t imagine that closing costs and jacked up interest rates can make up for the fact that so very many mortgages were made to people who could not afford to repay them. I’ve heard it said that the banks assumed that if people couldn’t pay, they would foreclose but be able to resell the homes for loan value. Perhaps true if 20% down payment were still required, but in a market where borrowers need credit and credit gets scarce, it just isn’t happening.

Anyway, that is the story of my first house.

Cold

2011-01-27T12:43:00.000-06:00

It's been a good run, but Bobo got a cold. He had a case of the sniffles back in the fall, but this is more.

Obviously, children get sick. And you know how much I hate sick-blogging because ... gross.

However, I am going to say that when you have a Bobo (a kid with ear tubes, an unusually long list of previously contracted ailments, a history of developmental delay, once suspected immune deficiency, and a lifetime ban from child care), a cold can make the twitchin' set in.

Mrs. Marie is home with Bobo today. I held him in my arms while he slept pathetically last night. His face is raw from the wiping (we've abandoned tissues and have moved on to the supersoft cloth diapers for nose wiping). He's still teething, so his chin has actually been chapped from drool for over a week already. He asks for Vaseline by brand name and wipes it onto his own face (just a week ago getting cream on him was like trying to get a cat into a carrier, but apparently he's seen the error of his ways).

But, I think he's going to be fine. We instituted quarantine at the first sign of the sniffles Monday morning. No library, no play group, no stores, etc. His body seems to fight off infections just fine so long as he doesn't contract a second thing at the same time.

We're watching to see whether he develops ear drainage. If he does, we'll be on the lookout for another yeast infection of the ear (or who knows what other plague may befall us this time).

I suspect this cold will blow over, and it will not even be a footnote to our lives. At least, that's what I hope.

++++++++++++++

If you follow me on twitter, you would have seen a tweet Monday that went something like: "Got a call from the teacher today. Chuckles's behavior was 'suboptimal'."

The teacher gave me the whole thing. It’s long and not all that interesting, but let’s say, he had to write his name on the board for being noisy in the hallway and the hallway is a known Quiet Zone. He wouldn’t do it, so she did it for him, and then he went up there and erased it. You might be saying to yourself, "Oh no, he didn't!" But, oh, yes, he did.

Then he was given a time out in the coat closet ("I'm not going to drag you there, you have to bring yourself"), and he kept himself there for 15 minutes because he wasn’t ready to come out. He eventually came out and had a good day otherwise.

When he got home at lunch time, he freaked out, started crying, went to his room, put himself down for a nap, got up, freaked out, and then colored his behavior chart all green (where there had been some yellow warnings…he colored over them because he’s never bad, according to him). He also kept wailing that he was no good, bad, and was worthless. He's a challenge.

By the time I got home from work he was defiant and lying like a sociopath right to my face, so I got all matter-of-fact. I made him apologize to me and his father for every separate thing he did wrong, then we brainstormed ways he could have handled things differently/better. Reassurances of our undying love were given. Then, I made him write his teacher a letter apologizing for his naughty behavior. He hates to write and practice handwriting, so this was quite a punishment. He did a really nice job. (Although he didn't believe me that the word listen has a T in it, so he wrote lissen instead. <-- Stubborn, that one is.)

By Tuesday, he was excited to give his teacher the note. She was happy to receive it. And she emailed me to tell me what a good job I'm doing with him. Parenting FTW!

Name

2011-01-12T21:05:00.000-06:00

I’ve been spending more time on twitter lately, and less time on the blog. Which is fine, but the blog is good for long form, whereas twitter is where I can express frustration at traffic and fake my own enthusiasm for life. Joie de vivre and all that jazz.

(double line break to indicate an entirely new train of thought)

I doubt you want to hear what I think about the Tucson shooter. Instead I want to talk about what my mom thinks about the Tucson shooter. My mother watches TV all day long. My stepfather flips among HLN, CNN, MSNBC, and FoxNews. In the immediate aftermath of the assassination attempt, the talking heads on TV were insinuating that political discourse had something to do with it. I tend to believe that legitimately crazy people sometimes do very bad things.

My mom said, “Isn’t it just awful the way politics is so confrontational now?” I replied, “No.”

And she carried on with, “I can’t remember it ever being so hostile before with the rhetoric.” I stammered, “Mom, you were alive in the 60s and 70s. JFK, RFK, MLK, Kent State. Things in recent times have been pretty calm.” I am not the first person to have this realization.

She continued since apparently the bubble heads on TV were onto a meme, “Aren’t you just worried about the future of our country where something like this can happen?” And I stammered some more, “Mom, there have been streetside assassinations in Sweden. A political figure is murdered in Mexico every week, and it hardly makes news any more. Benazir Bhutto. I really think our country is just fine, and doing alright. Maybe needs some tweaking around the edges, but basically, we’re a free and open society. We tolerate a lot of hate speech because we value free speech. It’s often difficult to pick out the serious threats from all the wingnuts.” Then I told her I was glad she was recovering from her bronchitis and to get some rest. Well, I guess I did tell you what I think after all. I think that the person responsible for the act of violence is the person who pulled the trigger.

Moving on, Victoria and David Beckham are expecting their 4th baby. I wonder what ~~weird thing~~ they’ll name this one.

When I was 20 years old and engaged to 343, we used to talk about the future and the kind of life we would lead. Where he’d live, where I would live, where I would go to grad school, whether we would have two kids or three, what their names would be if they were boys or girls or boys and girls. We had one name picked for a boy and another for a girl. Back in the post about 343, I mentioned that his wife was expecting a baby. Well, Monday, the baby arrived (healthy). It’s a boy. The new baby’s middle name is the old boy name. Now, that kind of makes me laugh, but not because I think there’s anything wrong with using that name. Because you know what? That boy name? It’s Bobo. I did it too.

((The train left the station and a whole new thought train came chugging in))

I have overnight houseguests coming Thursday afternoon. The panic cleaning has commenced. Since it’s been quite a while since we’ve had overnight guests, I’m doing the best of my panic cleaning including swiffering under the beds and cleaning the shower walls (not just the tub). However, I just realized I neglected something. Clean sheets on the guest bed - check. Towels folded neatly in the linen closet - check. Porn removed from the night stands and bedside tables - check. Undies removed from the shower bar - check. White noise machine to block out Bobo's "tension releasing"? Hosting Fail! What am I going to do? I will be running a fan and a humidifier, but the guests have two kids of their own. This could be awful. Maybe tomorrow will be different.

I’m turning 35 in about a month, so I have been having more panic than just cleaning panic. I’ve been having “I feel old” panic. From the “If you don’t want to feel old, stop dressing like a Blind Mom” camp: Monday, I wore (bottom to top): black ballet flats, red socks, dark blue jeans (now featuring muffin top), a red shirt with a light denim button down over it. That’s right. I wore jeans and a denim top. I do not, however, have a mullet.

Speaking of my hair, though, it’s almost time for me to cut it off and donate it to charity again. Then, I am going to go platinum with little skinny hot pink streaks. I mentioned this to my dad (what you don’t talk to your dad about your hair?) and he suggested that I get some of that spray in hair stuff just to see whether I like it. He’s so wise. He also said he thought I would look better with pale purple streaks than hot pink so who knows?

I woke up Saturday to the sounds of Chuckles reading Pirates Who Go Potty to Bobo. He was rapt. Ahoy Potty, prepare to be mounted. And when he flushes, Anchors Away. Squaw. (There is also a Princesses Who Go Potty book for those of you with girls.)

I put Bobo down for nap Saturday and 20 minutes later, he comes walking down the stairs saying “Hi mom, Good nap.” Uhhh, hellllooooo, you were in your crib and now you’re not?!?! So, yes, I then rearranged his whole room and cleaned the floors and vacuumed, he pooped, and then went to sleep for 2 hours in his rearranged room. Scary stuff.

I moved the crib away from the bed. The crib had just been tossed into the guest room and I’d pushed it right up against the bed two years ago. I figure he put his foot on the mattress of the bed and launched himself over that side and onto the bed, though I have no proof. The crib is now against the wall. It’s nice. Room looks huge now. And it’s so clean and shiny now. Just right for guests. Which I have coming.

My friend Jamington then told me that I am probably wrong about how he got out of the crib, but I retorted: I am probably wrong about how he got out, but he seems totally captivated by the fact that he can now touch the mini-blinds on the window. Open. Close. Open. Close. Open. Close. I don’t think he’ll be looking to escape for at least a week. (And the blinds are cordless and lead-free so they do not pose a strangulation or poisoning hazard). Blinds go up, blinds go down. Open. Close. Open. Close. Up. Down. Up. Down.

A guy friend of mine with interesting hobbies and a full life just announced that he met a new girl. This is not unusual. He always has a new girl. They never seem to last. However, there are two things about this that are unusual. #1 It is winter in Chicago. Usually, if you don’t have someone by Labor Day, you aren’t going to meet anyone until Spring. All the cute boys and girls just stay inside for the winter hibernating. #2 He actually thinks she might be a keeper. She has a full life with interesting hobbies as well. She plays the washboard in an Old Tyme Jug Band. Because she has a full life of her own and her own interesting hobbies, he finds her extra attractive. Plus with her own outside commitments, she won’t be available whenever he calls. A little hard to get goes a long way. Let this be a lesson ~~to the single ladies~~. Live the life you want and the rest will follow.

Blinds go up, blinds go down.

RIP

2011-01-05T12:16:00.000-06:00

In this post just a couple down from here, I mentioned that Gerry Rafferty was the soundtrack of my life for the early 2000s. He passed away yesterday.

His 1978 song "Right Down the Line" was the first dance at our wedding reception. There is a line in the song that goes "...when I wanted you to share my life, I had no doubt in my mind. It was you, woman, right down the line." And so it was.

Chirp

2010-12-31T09:59:00.000-06:00

I feel I should mention that I signed up for twitter.

I'm always on the cutting edge of this technology stuff. Next thing you know, I'll get an AOL account.

Music

2010-12-29T16:44:00.000-06:00

Santa brought the kids a recorder and some bath tub water flutes. This is what led to me playing “Ode to Joy” on a plastic flute during bath time last night. If this portion of my life had a soundtrack, it would involve a lot of harmonica, drum, kazoo, tambourine, and “Itsy Bitsy Spider”.

Which, of course, caused me to think about the soundtrack of my life in 5-year increments.

Second Half of the 1970s: “I’ve Been Working on the Railroad”, Bee Gees, Pink Floyd

First Half of the 1980s: “Gimme Three Steps”, “Borderline”, "Eye of the Tiger", Care Bears on 45s
Second Half of the 1980s: Bon Jovi, Poison, Skid Row, Def Leppard (on cassette)

First Half of the 1990s: Guns-n-Roses, Metallica, Nazareth, Meatloaf, Pink Floyd
Second Half of the 1990s: Counting Crows, Deana Carter, Barenaked Ladies, Violent Femmes, Meryn Cadell, They Might Be Giants, Garth Brooks, “The Macarena”, and “Lightning Crashes” by Live

First Half of the 2000s: Kenny Chesney, Ella Fitzgerald, Gerry Rafferty “Right Down the Line”
Second Half of the 2000s: 4 Seasons, Albert Hammond, Jackson Browne, “I’ve Been Working on the Railroad”, “The Erie Canal Song”, “Happy Birthday”, “Jingle Bells”

What will the first half of the 2010s bring? Who knows? Maybe I will have to start listening when Chuckles starts listening to….I was going to write the name of some currently popular singer but I don’t know any currently popular singers. Everything I came up with is lame and probably not cool at all (Miley Cyrus, Justin Beiber, Train, Katy Perry (on whom Chuckles has a crush ever since he saw her singing with Elmo on youtube)).

So, what is the soundtrack of your life?

Over

2010-12-27T22:06:00.000-06:00

Yippee. Yahoo. Christmas is over, and I survived. I am so glad it is over and done. Done done done.

The children are nestled all snug in their beds
While visions of MORE presents dance in their heads
With her new pressure cooker, mama is a chef
and so on

They're so spoiled (it's not me...it's their six grandparents).

I hate Christmas, and I'm just glad I survived. The stress was so, uhhh, stressful. I was wound tighter than armature. But I made it. Barely. Thanks be to champagne and NSAIDs (but not together). I spent most of today on the couch with a fever and stomach ache (psychosomatic, I'm sure).

The kids were none the worse for the wear though. They were happy enough to crawl on me and bring me books to read them. Plus, apparently, I have established myself as Alpha Mom as they kept asking me whether it was OK for them to do certain things (that I was incapable of stopping if they had decided to go ahead). It was pretty awesome. I love those crazy kids.

Bobo's favorite toy: Stacking Robots.
Chuckles's favorite toy: Lego Creator Toys (various)
Mr. Long-Suffering's favorite toy: Wireless Motion Sensor Porch Light
SarcastiCarrie's favorite new toy: Fagor Pressure Cooker

This post is not sponsored by amazon or anything and I'm not getting anything (no kickbacks) in exchange for letting you know what we got. It was just a very amazon Christmas.

Meme

2010-12-23T12:20:00.000-06:00

There’s been a lot of talk on the internet and the blogs lately about what you would like to tell your 16-year old self.

People have offered up answers from “It gets better” to “I will wind up happy…eventually”
I’m intrigued by the notion of going back and slapping my stupid 18 to 22-year old self. At times, it seems like I could have made better decisioins by flipping a coin than I did using my smarts.

But, if I went back, surely that would change where I am now. Would I really want that? Certainly I would like to warn myself: Do Not Eat The Hummus.

But beyond that, would I want to tell myself not to do this or to do that? If I had done things differently, I wouldn’t have the two great kids I have now, but I would probably have other kids that I love just as much, so while I wouldn’t have Chuckles and Bobo, I might have Elizabeth and Gracie. That wouldn’t be bad. It would be different, and I wouldn’t know about the two great kids I missed out having. I would only know about the two great kids I have.

++++

Once upon a time, my father asked me what I thought was the one decision I made in my life that had the greatest impact on where I was today. It’s a hard question, to be sure. I came up with something lame about my major in college.

My dad disagreed. He said that he thought the one decision I made that had the greatest impact was …wait…this needs back story or the sentence won’t make sense. When I was about 12, we lived in a euphemistically-labeled changing neighborhood, and we really needed to move to get me into a safe high school as mine was neither safe nor academically rigorous.
I was a good, smart kid who was capable of making terrible choices. Getting me out of the old neighborhood would limit the range of bad choices I would be able to make (or so the reasoning went). My mom gave me two choices. We could move to a really nice, 3BR-2Ba condo in a really neat building (with attached garage) that would have me going to one HS or we could live in a tiny 2BR-1.5Ba condo below street level next to a trailer park. I chose the trailer park because its HS was better (see... I was capable of making good choices too, plus I didn't have a boyfriend just then so I didn't feel the need to stay closer to him).
So, my father believes that the one decision I made that had the greatest impact was choosing to have my mom buy the condo in the better school district. It enabled me to excel academically, get into a good college, get out of the entire south side and away from the bad decisions I could make there, major in something that would get me a good job upon graduation, etc. It landed me in Ohio to meet, marry, and rear children with Mr. Long-Suffering.

What one, single decision you have made in your life has changed where you are today the most? It could be to marry who you did, to have (or not) kids, to have (or not!) a drink before driving, whatever it is you think that’s put you on this trajectory.

ONE!

2010-12-10T12:41:00.005-06:00

We all need to be #1 at something.

I installed google analytics on my blog, oh, about a million years ago. But today for the first time ever, I looked at the report generated.

I am happy to say that if you google "corn dextrin fiber supplement" the #1 answer that comes up is a link to a review of fiber supplements I wrote while pregnant.

You know what would be better though? If I'd been #2 on the google search results.

We all have to be known for something, and now I am known for being constipated. Awesome.

Ring

2010-12-10T12:40:00.000-06:00

Well, the feast of immaculate weight gain has begun. Someone brought cookies into the office today. I keep looking at those cookies with their tasty artificially colored red and green sprinkles. I think, “Mmmmm, cookies.” I want to eat one, but then I remember those magic words and think, “Ick, ick patooey.” The magic words? Anise flavored.

++

The other day, I was asked why I wasn’t wearing my wedding ring. I figured you guys might be wondering too (because I know you can see me through the power of the internet). Normally, I wear three rings on my left hand, ring finger. I wear my wedding ring (a nice little diamond number with nine, round recessed diamonds in 10k gold…the diamonds are of such low quality, you can see the inclusions with your naked eye), my engagement ring (a glorious brilliant, flawless, cathedral mount affair, which was a Long-Suffering family heirloom mounted into the 18k gold setting of my choice), and lastly, a very inexpensive 2 mm 14k gold band from K-Mart given to me by my kids for Easter.

I took all three rings off the other day and tucked them away for special occasions. It’s funny, but it still looks like I have rings on because of the tan line. Either I wear the rings too much or I spend too much time in the sun (not possible). Anyway, I took the rings off and proclaimed that I would only be wearing them for fancy, dress up occasions.

Now, in many families, this might make the husband a little nervous that his wife is ready to go whoring about, but not so in the Sarca-Suffering household. You see, work has come down with a new set of rules (actually, old rules that are now being enforced) about wearing jewelry in a hard-hat area…as in you may not.

I am notoriously forgetful, so I would frequently walk out onto the factory floor while wearing earrings, a watch, or my rings. Sometimes, I would remember to remove them and place them on the little clip on my key chain that I have for just such a purpose, but more likely, I would be out and about as a scofflaw. I don’t want to lose my job, so I’ve decided that the default, weekday position is No Jewelry. Mr. Long-Suffering was already respecting the rules and going ring-less, so I’ve just caught up to him.

I was telling Mr. L-S that I figured I should just get a tattoo on my ring finger. He said it’s a little trashy. I told him if it’s good enough for Angelina Jolie, it’s good enough for me. Then I was musing as to what I would get. I was thinking a little vine with some flowers wrapping around my finger in a thin line. He said, “My name, of course.” Hilarity ensued.

Romance

2010-12-08T12:44:00.002-06:00

I bought a dishwasher. I got a Maytag Jet Clean. It's a middle of the road dishwasher. It has some things I don't like (stainless interior and hidden controls) and some things I do like (a bar/handle across the front where I can hang a dish towel). The price was right, so I ordered it online. It will be here the 15th. As my Christmas gift, Mr. Long-Suffering will be installing it for me (and for Mrs. Marie, poor thing has been doing the breakfast and lunch dishes by hand).

==================

I had my meeting downtown yesterday. It was much warmer than I thought it would be. It was in the 20s. Downright balmy. I jetted over to City Hall, dropped some things off (and the Pedway goes there!), then I headed back to the train station to go up the Mag Mile. The stores were just starting to open between 9 and 9:30. It was awesome to see that snooty woman at Cartier vacuuming the vestibule area.

{This is an aside to people who aren't used to it...in cold weather, you are supposed to use the revolving door even if there is a regular door. It functions as an air lock and is an environmental choice for keeping the warm and cold air on their respective sides of the door. Use it. Even if you have a lot of stuff with you. Make it work. Also, from a chivalrous perspective, if the door is already moving, the woman goes first. If it isn't, the man is supposed to go first to get it moving and the lady is to follow behind.}

I did my meeting on the 18th floor of a building (capacity utilization this, forward-looking into 2011 that, pricing pressures here, competition there). The view was sublime. I was far enough north that both the east and north views were lake views. The south view was a City Lights view, and the west view was a west view of Chicago. Then we went across the steel for lunch at a grille. They had a gorgeous walk in wine cooler. I had corn chowder, crab cakes, and key lime pie. It was fabulous.

Then I bundled up for the walk back down to the train station. When they found out I had walked, everyone offered to drive me, but really, I wanted to walk because I was under no time pressure and all the stores were open (and I was ALONE).

I hadn't gone far when I realized I needed the ladies' room after all the tea I had consumed at my luncheon. I ducked into Victoria's Secret assuming they would have facilities. They did not. I reoriented and thought I was going into Saks Fifth Avenue. It was really the door next door and I walked in to a store called Zara. I'd never heard of it before but I passed 3 more before I headed home.

I declined to go into H&M, Forever 21, and some Russian Ballerina Store. I did not go into the Disney Store either. I went out of my way to go to the Lego Store (up two escalators and down the hall). I love the Lego Store. I would like to know where the Lego Store found so many extroverted nerds to man their store. I mean, really! People talking (with passion) about Legos and making eye contact. I have hope for our future yet. Santa purchased something for each of my kids.

I skipped Van Cleef & Arpels and the Chinese bakery. I skipped La Perla. I stopped at a kiosk selling cell phone accessories, but they didn't have anything for my phone (which was discontinued two weeks ago...about a week after I got it). I crossed back over the river and stopped at a little tourist shop and got a Chicago skyline Christmas ornament for some friends who are moving to Long Island.

Then, I headed over to Daley Plaza and stopped at Kristkindlmarkt. I did not get any beer nor any spiced, mulled hot wine. I admired the large tree, which is sponsored by the electric company and Underwriters Laboratory (UL). Santa was not there. The photos are free, so I was going to stop and have one taken with the big guy. The kids would've been jealous, but I needed to let Santa know that I really want world peace this year. Perhaps I'll just mention it to the Elf on a Shelf at my house.

Then I wandered around the streets for a bit and wound up in the Cook County courthouse (I think) during their building Christmas party. They had two chocolate fountains (one white, one milk), a harp player, a train going around, fresh fruit, and general merriment. I found the genial mood annoying, so I bahumbugged out of there.

Eventually, I found my way back to the train and made it home long before my normal after-work arrival time. No one was any the wiser.

When I mapped it this morning, I realized I had walked a little over 4 miles in my dress shoes.

Snow!

2010-12-06T21:45:00.001-06:00

In honor of winter finally hitting Chicagoland this weekend about a month late, I offer the following:

In the lane, snow is glistening. #firstsnow
Driving in #firstnow: The ruts are your friends.
A traditional snowman has 3 balls but only one carrot. #firstsnow

Have you heard Olivia Newton-John’s version of “Ave Maria”? Go ahead, try it on youtube. Then get Bob Dylan’s “Must Be Santa”.

I have a meeting downtown tomorrow, so my plan was to take the train up and walk. It’s only about a mile straight up Michigan Avenue (a magnificent mile, if you will) so it should be scenic and festive and pleasant. But then, I saw the weather forecast. They’re predicting 6 degrees (Fahrenheit!) for tomorrow. Sure, it’s warmer near the lake, but 14 isn’t exactly balmy. Perhaps I can just duck into La Perla and Tiffany to warm up on the way. (The Pedway, sadly, doesn’t go north.)

Fling

2010-12-06T11:04:00.002-06:00

{This is the third (and final!) part of the story. It’s the story of how I grew up and came to be. Writing Part 2, the story of 343, was not good for me. I didn’t realize how crappy I was going to feel after I wrote it. I thought it might be cathartic. It wasn’t. It made me crazy. For days afterward, my eyes felt puffy like I had been crying, I was not sleeping, which is a shame since the kids both were, and then on Thursday night, I woke up in cold sweats, and went to the bathroom and threw up. I was a train wreck for a couple of days here. So, I quickly had to write Part 3 – The Palate Cleansing Story of Fling.}

Since Minnow and 343 each got their own entries, I feel like Fling should get one too, but he’s so inconsequential to my life. He was important at the time, but in the grand scheme…notsomuch, except maybe as a placeholder. This part isn’t so much about Fling as it is about me.

When 343 and I broke up, Fling swooped in to pick up the pieces. It’s like he had been waiting for such a thing to happen…to have his chance. It was less than a week before he wanted to come visit, ostensibly to help me through this difficult time. Fling had been engaged once too, and it ended, so I figured he must know some tricks for getting through it. Fling was in grad school, and I was 4 hours away in Chicago.

I cried for months over 343, but when Fling would visit or I would go visit him, I would just bury all my baggage way down deep and pretend to be happily dating. I knew what happily dating was supposed to look like, so I could fake it. I didn’t particularly like Fling, though I didn’t dislike him either. There was nothing wrong with him, mind you, but there was no spark. I felt nothing for him. He was a nice guy, and he treated me like royalty. I needed that.

Blah blah blah, I don’t know what happened or why I was dating him. We were so poorly suited for one another. He was nice. I am SarcastiCarrie. He was nice. As an example, one day we were sitting in a window booth at a diner and a man who was not out exercising walked by wearing bright orange lycra spandex biker shorts. And Fling would not participate in mocking the stranger. I knew then that the relationship was doomed. However, I didn’t end it. I was not yet secure enough to be single.

I only saw Fling once or twice a month on the weekends. During the week, I had all of my freedom to come and go, study, work on my thesis, interview for jobs, cry, write a million emails to 343 and save them as drafts never to be sent. On the weekends I saw him, it was nice to have companionship. I was still defining myself somewhat in terms of a relationship, but this long-distance thing gave me a chance and the mental space to become myself.

He graduated in December and so did I. We both looked for jobs. I had multiple offers on the table. I took a job in Ohio and started in at the factory February 16th (my 22nd birthday). Fling eventually got an offer that also took him to Ohio (though we weren’t really trying to move to the same state). I was near Cleveland; Fling was in Columbus. Those two places are not exactly close. We continued dating on the occasional weekend for another few months. I still spent my weekdays trying to figure out what the hell had gone wrong with 343 (and crying and trying not to call him). I spent my weekdays doing my Al-Anon program, reading, sleeping, crying, working out, petting my awesome cat, and going to work. Working was great for me. No one at work knew anything about 343 or Fling or the disaster I had made of my thesis. I got to prove myself from scratch. I was living in a working class town. I fit in there with my work ethic, K-Mart clothes, and pick up truck.

One night, I came home after a night of significant boozing with my coworkers. It was St. Patrick’s Day 1998. There was a message on my machine from 343 asking me to call him. I hesitated, but my resolve was not very strong. Behold, the power of the drunk dial. So, I called and apologized for calling while drunk, but I didn’t want to leave 343 waiting since I don’t think he had ever called me before that (though somehow he had my new number). He said it was fine. I don’t remember why he called.

After my spectacularly bad timing with the drunk dial and the person I drunk dialed, I swore off the sauce for about a year. I was just so inconsiderate calling someone who was in recovery while drunk. I needed to stop and think about how my actions affected other people. I needed to grow up.

The relationship with Fling just sort of petered out that spring. It was at least a two-hour drive to see him, and to be honest, I didn’t care that much. Minnow was dating someone (and it turned out he married her a month or two later). 343 was dating a sorority girl back at school whose name rhymed with mine. I was single and actually loving it. I still cried occasionally over how I had squandered my entire college career. I could have studied more, I could have dated more, I could’ve been better to my friends. Could’ve, should’ve. I was filled with regret, but the self-loathing was finally starting to end (thanks be to Al-Anon, again). I blossomed into a capable, independent, self-confident woman.

My lab partner from my entire college career was about to graduate in June. He was one of the few people I didn’t alienate during college thanks to my excellent analytical skills and ability to carry him through classes. He got a job at the same factory where I worked. He moved to Ohio and started in at the factory on June 29th. Mr. Long-Suffering also started in at the factory that day. They were orientation group buddies.

Lab Partner and Mr. Long-Suffering joined my softball team (since I had already been in Ohio 4 or 5 months and had a network of friends and social activities). They joined our Friday night happy hour groups, our ski trips, our bowling parties. It turns out that Mr. Long-Suffering grew up in Northwest Indiana. I grew up in the south suburbs. We grew up less than 5 miles from each other. Lab Partner suggested that Mr. Long-Suffering and I car-pool back and forth to Chicago for holidays and whatnot to save on gas, save on tolls, reduce boredom, etc.

We did this carpooling thing for months and months until finally on one trip back to Chicago, I realized I wanted to spend my time in Chicago with him. That was twelve years and two weeks ago. We’ve been married for more than 9 years now. I often tell Mr. Long-Suffering that I don’t need him around. I want him in my life. (And I mean that as a compliment to him. And to me. I’ve earned it.)

{Oh, and you know how I gave you an update as to where Minnow and 343 wound up today? Well, I’m not even curious what Fling is doing these days. But Mr. Long-Suffering is trying to fix our dishwasher right now...something about the circuit board and ribbon cable being more expensive to repair than to replace the whole thing. I think I know what supremely romantic appliance I am getting for Christmas.}

2010-12-03T12:18:00.002-06:00

If I was on twitter, you would receive thousands of fascintating twits from me every year. They wouldn't be quality twits, but they'd be mine. And you'd be reading them.

I need 10 cc's of Holiday Cheer. Stat!
Achieved. Just heard Run DMC's "Christmas in Hollis" on the radio.
Then I heard "Jingle Bells" by barking dogs, really.
"The Twelve Days of Consumerism" #songsyouwon'thearthisyear
"Baby, It's La Nina-Induced Cold Outside" #songsyouwon'thearthisyear
"O, Come All Ye Secular Humanists" #songsyouwon'thearthisyear
"We Three Kings of {redacted ethnicity for PC reasons} Are" #songsyouwon'thearthisyear
"O Little Town of Bethlehem, Pennsylvania" #songsyouwon'thearthisyear
"Hark, the Harold & Kumar Angels Sing" #songsyouwon'thearthisyear
With Taylor Swift, The Cast of Glee, and Wham! I have had enough of "Last Christmas" already, and it's only the 3rd of December.
"All I Want for Christmas is a Good Night's Sleep" #songsyouwon'thearthisyear

Feel free to join in...in the comments...since I'm not on twitter. Feel free to make up your own song titles for the Dysfunctional Family Christmas Album.

PS - To Cloud- not the same university. Yes, I went in Chicago, but the other one. I went to the one in the Big Ten.

343

2010-12-01T21:40:00.003-06:00

{This is long. That's your warning. Part 1 is below the photos from Thanksgiving.}

Imagine: It’s 1994 and I’ve just dumped my boyfriend of 3.5 years because I’m infatuated with someone else and want to “see other people” and “expand my horizons”.

My parents have always been supportive in their own way, but they aren’t even remotely cheerleader-y. I didn’t know then that I am smoking hot (I know now). I didn’t know how smart I was. I didn’t know how to try hard at something, succeed, and feel proud (things had always either been easy or I didn’t do them). I wasn’t the smart daughter, I wasn’t the pretty daughter, and I sure as shooting wasn’t the friendly daughter (my sister was those things). I had yet to learn the social graces (I know them now). Back in 1994, I didn’t have much in the way of self-esteem. I’m immune to most criticism and peer-pressure these days. I march to the beat of a totally different tympani player. Heck, sometimes, I don’t even march. I skip. It’s all these years I’ve spent in the manufacturing plant. They’ve hardened me….but in a good way. I have excellent self-esteem now.

Things were different on the south side than they were in Livonia or the North Shore or San Jose. HS Football games routinely had police to prevent large outbreaks of gang-related violence. You didn’t go to the other side of the viaduct if you were white, and you didn’t go to the other side of the same viaduct if you were black. Fights broke out on the playground, in the cafeteria, on the bus. Girls in junior high had babies.

I had a somewhat rocky home life so going off to college was a perfect time to reinvent myself. However, I was a girl from the south side who went to public high school and paid to take her AP exams with financial aid help. I was smart, driven, motivated, and poor. Of course, I chose to go to an elite university that was rife with kids whose parents were paying full-tuition for them (and buying their books, paying for their laundry and picking up the cost of pizza and beer). How did I not realize that I could not possibly fit in with my K-Mart clothes, my work-study job, and my used textbooks? Again, naiveté.

I don’t know the exact first moment I met 343, but I remember the first weeks. It was a blurry time, filled with NEW and exciting and free. I already could tell that I was not going to fit in with the crowd at the Private College. 343 wasn’t your typical private school guy. Sure, he’d gone to a private college prep HS, but it was a Catholic school in the City and his family was working class Catholic from the South Side too. He was also helping put himself through school.

Those first few days of new student week were a whirlwind of defining yourself, meeting people, getting acquainted, and I’m sure I was supposed to be touring the library, finding my classes, and taking placement tests or something too. I spent the week staying up late, walking around, having deep and meaningful conversations about what it means to be, and having the first booze I had had since middle school. It was so enlivening.

343 was in my new student orientation group. Neither of us was really interested in listening to the speaker – the university president who retired shortly thereafter. The president was droning on and on (and on and on) about something and the future and ethnographic studies. I still can’t hear the word ethnography without thinking about how 343 and I snickered and mocked through the entire speech. I’m still the snickering and mocking type. At one point, I had to go to the bathroom. I found two twenty-dollar bills in the toilet. 40 bucks! Big money! I fished it out, and 343 and I ordered Giordano’s for dinner. Woo hoo. Good, Chicago-style pizza. Free!

343 and I became an item after a week or two. He had a hometown girlfriend, and I had Minnow. We agreed that when we were at school, we would be with each other but when we were at home, we would be with our hometown honeys. (How'd that work out for ya?) 343 was a really great guy*.

By Christmas break, it was over. It was a wrenching break up for me. I was dumped. I had never been dumped before. My self-esteem was so low that I think I was tying my own self-worth to how others perceived me and whether or not I was good enough to love. The break-up proved to me in the way only an 18-year old can believe that I wasn’t good enough to be loved. And it showed me that I had made a terrible decision dumping Minnow. Somehow I was still tying all my self-identity up in how I was or was not coupled. And my grades that quarter were pretty bad too.

A few weeks after we returned from Christmas break, 343 and I were on again. We were off again by the time school was out for summer (but my grades were much, much better). Whenever I was in the presence of 343, I was a totally different person. I wasn’t better…not like I am when Mr. Long-Suffering is around. I was clingy, annoying, insecure, fake. A few weeks into the summer (the same summer I tried to be friends with Minnow and last saw his parents), we were on again.

We stayed together through Christmas 1995 and got engaged to be married. (The ring, by the way, was gorgeous. It’s almost the exact same style, size, shape of the ring I wear today. My tastes in men may have changed, but a diamond is forever.)

Somewhere in Spring of 1996, we were off-again, only to be on-again a month or two later. The next year was more of the same. When we were on, we were on. When we were off, there was yelling in the street at 2am, tears, slammed doors, name-calling. When we’d reconcile, he would promise it would be better. Things would be different. We’d work on it harder. When things went south (again, inevitably), I would cry saying that I didn’t think I could do this for the rest of my life. I was right. I would not have been able to do that the rest of my life. Or possibly, my life would have been smaller.

I’ve mentioned Mimi on the blog before. She is my mother and my children’s grandmother. The doting Mimi of today is a far cry from the mother of my youth. My own mother tied most of her self-worth up with who she was dating or not. My mother had never lived alone. She moved from her parents’ home straight with my father. When they divorced, she had me, and when I went to college, some man she was dating moved in with her. I was following in her footsteps in all the wrong ways. During those years between my parents’ divorce and me leaving for college, I took good care of Mimi. I was a nurturer, a worrier, and her caretaker.

Not only was I repeating her mistakes in tying my own self-worth up with who I was dating, I was trying to take care of 343 the same way I had taken care of my mom. Dating FAIL.

So, we continued on and off. Off and on. I have no idea what our friends thought. This situation had alienated most of my few friends. No one ever really said anything to me about the destructive spiral I was in (and if they had, I wouldn’t have listened). No one ever really mentioned that I was a complete and total doormat. (No one except 343 when we were off-again. If I had listened to him half as much as I loved him, I probably would’ve ended it once and for all because he was right about it all. I was a doormat.) Things were dramatic. Turbulent. Erratic. Passionate. Possibly even exciting, if we’re being honest.

Things had never gotten violent (yet). But it’s the yet I feared most.

The summer between junior and senior years, I went off to have an internship and so did 343. He was in DC, and I was in Michigan. We talked when we could, but his schedule was hectic. I enjoyed this kind of freedom too. It was nice to know that I had someone who loved me no matter what and the security of being coupled but the freedom to come and go as I pleased and to work late when needed. It’s almost as if I liked the idea of having a fiancé without all the difficulty of actually having a second person in the relationship. Since 343’s career would cause him to move around a lot and mine would keep me tied to the industrial Midwest, the summer of 1997 was actually a lot like how my marriage would have been.

When school started back up in the Fall, we were living together. It was weird. After the whole summer apart doing our own things, I had trouble adjusting back to coupledom. 343 had developed some paranoia along the way. He didn't trust me, didn't trust what few friends I had, was suspicious. Somewhere in here I had done something stupid and irresponsible with my thesis and lost my advisor, so I had to start my two-quarter project thesis over. No one can self-sabotage the way I can. (See how my self-esteem has improved...I think I'm the BEST...at self-sabotage.)

I don’t remember the fight that ended it all. I had made a big pot of chicken soup for 343. He always liked my chicken soup. He was in the living room on the fold out couch where we had been sleeping until we could get a bed. 1-800-MATTRES, leave off the last S for savings.

I remember the light in the room. The living room faced east, but it was a courtyard building so there was a wall directly to the south of the window. It was a really bright white light, but it was filtered and a time of day that made it dark in there, though it was still light outside. He left, and he never came back. Not really, at least. He came back and got his couch. I returned the ring.

A few days later, I sent an RSVP to my BFF declining an invitation to her wedding. I just couldn’t go and be happy for her. I was crushed. I cried for a few days non-stop. I would wake up in the night, go into the bathroom and cry. I would have to get a drink of water just to have enough left for tears.

He had left his kitchen table in the kitchen, but I felt weird about using it, so I put a folding table up in the kitchen next to it and used the folding table instead. I couldn’t afford the apartment on my own, so I started looking to find someone to sublet. I had no idea where I was going to go, but I knew I couldn’t stay – mentally or financially. I started a mad search for a job. I bought waterproof mascara, so I could cry and interview. Surprisingly, I got a lot of job offers.

The pot of chicken soup sat in the refrigerator for weeks unopened. It felt like a betrayal to eat it. It felt worse to throw it out. When it was time to move, I was going to throw the whole thing out - pot and all, but a friend convinced me the stock pot was too nice to waste. So, I kept the pot and flushed the soup down the toilet when I moved out. Poetic, no? (I still have that stock pot. In fact, I handed it to Chuckles last week when he had a mysterious vomiting illness.)

I had enough credits to leave school at the end of the quarter, so long as I could finish my thesis up. I worked my tail-end off finishing everything up by the middle of January, and I high-tailed it out of town. The quarter had ended in December and I got an incomplete on my thesis, but they put it in retroactively so I was able to move to Ohio and start in at the factory just in time for my 22nd birthday. I had given up the apartment in December, so I spent a month staying with different people while I finished my thesis. Essentially, I was homeless but for the kindness of friends and family.

The asterisk up above? 343 was a really great guy*. The asterisk is a place holder for “when he was sober”. 343 was a really great guy when he was sober. When he was drunk, he was a colossal jerk. An asshole even. He might agree with that statement; he might not. He might feel bad about the way things happened. He might not. He might remember them differently. He might think I was a clingy stalker who wouldn’t leave him alone for 3 years. He might regret jerking me around. I don’t know. I haven’t spoken to him since graduation.

I came back from Ohio to walk at my graduation ceremony that following June. Senior week was a lot like Freshman orientation had been. There was no work to be done, no deadlines, no papers, just a lot of time to stay up late talking about what it means to be. He and I went for coffee. 343 was chain smoking and drinking a lot of coffee. I don’t remember what we said, but it was over. It had to be. 343 was sober now, but I knew that since I was a part of his drinking past, there would always be a codependent part to any relationship we would have (thanks be to al-anon). The how and why he quit drinking are his story to tell, not mine, so I won’t, but I’m glad he did.

I sent him an e-card to congratulate him when he hit one year of sobriety. I haven’t communicated with him since.

I’ve been thinking a lot about friends and acquaintances and people who come into your life and then disappear. Maybe it’s because we just celebrated Thanksgiving or because I am going to turn dirty-jive next year. Perhaps I’m suffering from some sort of maudlin ennui. I’ve been thinking about how people who were once very important to you can disappear without a trace.

343 has a common name. Have you ever tried to google 343? You get a lot of hits. Many companies have model numbers with 343 in them. It turns out 343 firefighters died on September 11th. So, I have never really kept up with him or known what he’s been up to. But once I found out about Minnow’s wife and parents, I was curious what had happened with 343. Did he stay sober? Did he finish up school and graduate? Those aren’t really the kinds of things you can find from a google search anyway.

A quick look on facebook tells me he got married last year. His wife is currently expecting their first baby. She looks absolutely lovely in all the belly shots posted on twitter. He taunts her by eating her favorite sushi in front of her. He founded his own company. I saw his blog. He’s still sober. He’s still chain smoking. He’s still haunted by some of the same old demons. I wish him nothing but the best.

Scenes

2010-12-01T21:10:00.003-06:00

Making stuffing. Nothing says love like a pound of mozzarella cheese.
With No. 1 Son.
With No. 2 Son.
The table set for ten. There was also a kid's table behind me (you know, a card table covered in a nice table cloth set up in the middle of the living room. I just graduated from it myself quite recently.)

Canned cranberries on a pretty plate in front of some Waterford crystal with the can marks still clearly visible. It wouldn't be Thanksgiving at my house without it.

Minnow

2010-12-01T11:40:00.001-06:00

Before Mr. Long-Suffering, there were 3 boyfriends. Two of them were serious, multi-year affairs and one was a short fling (short, by my standards, is about 6 or 8 months). We will now give them nicknames to differentiate. In chronological order: High school boyfriend will be known as Minnow, college boyfriend will go by a number…how about 343, and fling will go by the name Fling.

So, Minnow and I were on the math team together. We founded the Bridge Club (playing cards not building coalitions) at our high school together. If it weren’t for the fact that he was male and I am not, we probably would’ve just been really good friends. But alas, the romantic aspect was present, so we dated for about 3.5 years. We went to prom twice. I wore the same dress both times.

Minnow went off to college after my sophomore year, so we did the long-distance thing for two years. Now kids, this is back in the day before rampant email (it was still nascent email at the time) and this is just at the beginning of discount long distance (on landlines). I was paying about $0.15 per minute for the long-distance phone calls.

Usually, I would say that the long-distance thing doesn’t work out and when you go to college you should go and be open to new people and experiences. However, if your boyfriend is going to an all-male college and you are busy at home with a job, several extra-curriculars, and school, it could work out since no one is going to meet someone else. So, it went well.

I liked Minnow a lot. We had quite a bit in common. His family was very nice. They were very stable. I liked that. They ate dinner together every night. Minnow’s parents knew what classes he and his brother took in school, showed up for some functions, supported them in their endeavors. They were good parents. In fact, I am trying to be like them as I raise my own kids.

Eventually, I graduated from high school and went off to college myself with every intention of sticking with Minnow while he finished his degree at the all-male college and getting married a few years after he graduated. I even thought about moving into married student housing for my last two years at university, etc and on and on as the dreams of a teenaged girl oft are.

He lasted a week, ten days maybe. I was horrible to him. I know it now. At the time, I was so infatuated with someone else (the someone else was 343), I didn’t see how truly awful I was. I called him and told him I wanted to “see other people”. This was after 3.5 years. He deserved better. Just awful. He came to visit once (since we were still seeing each other and I was also seeing other people). He brought a blender with him to make me my favorite banana shake. I wasn’t my very best. Minnow had been my best friend for years and years, and I wanted him to be happy for me and the new life I was living and the new people I had met and the new “school” boyfriend I had. But, obviously, he couldn’t be happy for me for that. Somehow I was a self-absorbed 18-year old (redundancy alert).

{As an aside, my “school” boyfriend and I both still had hometown honeys. So, we made the agreement that when we were at school we were exclusive to each other, but when we were at home on breaks and whatnot, we could still see our old people. How we thought that would work, I don’t know. Call it naiveté.}

Let’s say things went sour with the “school” boyfriend and by the beginning of summer after freshman year, I was single again. Minnow wanted me back, but after my taste of freedom, I didn’t want him back as a boyfriend. I wanted him as my friend. We tried the just friends thing for a week or two. It didn’t work out, but I still loved hanging out at his house with his pesky little brother and his awesome parents for that week or two. And his mom’s cooking. She was such a good cook.

I might have exchanged emails with Minnow a time or two after that. We ran in some similar circles online for a while. I think I last heard from him in 1998 when he was in grad school. At the time I was pleasantly single, and he was dating a girl somewhat seriously.

I’ve been thinking a lot about friends and acquaintances and people who come into your life and then disappear. Maybe it’s because we just celebrated Thanksgiving or because I am going to turn dirty-jive next year. Perhaps I’m suffering from some sort of maudlin ennui. I’ve been thinking about how people who were once very important to you can disappear without a trace.

I had googled him a few times over the years. Not much came up. Well, I recently looked Minnow up on facebook. He’s not there. I googled one more time and my mad keyword skills must be getting better because a whole trove of stuff came up this time. Including an obituary.

Now, I bet you know where this is going, but it’s not. It wasn’t his obituary. It was his wife’s. The somewhat serious girlfriend from 1998? They got married in 1998 right around when he probably graduated from grad school. She passed away on Nov. 23, 2006. I don’t know how she died. They did not have any children. I almost want to send a sympathy card, but it has obviously been far-too-long since her death to do so and to do so now would be completely inappropriate since I don’t want to rekindle anything. I would just like him to know that I am sorry for his loss. Sorry I treated him so crappily, and hope he finds some happiness.

Now, that little bit of googling caused me to look his brother up on facebook. Just to see whatever happened to the pesky little brother. It appears that the little brother is all grown up now. He’s an officer in the Navy. He is married and has a couple of kids. I scrolled through his list of friends, and I noticed he had friended his mom. How sweet! I always looked up to her. She was a strong woman, a mother, she worked outside the home but seemed to balance it all so well. So I clicked over to her facebook page. Her profile photo is a picture of her grandkids. Wow, a great mom and a great and doting grandmother! Her relationship status was “in a relationship with” someone who wasn’t Minnow’s dad. Then I noticed she was using her maiden name on facebook. Of course, this made me fear that Minnow’s dad had also passed away and that I hadn’t sent another sympathy card (although it was probably too late to send one again since his mom was already dating again).

So, I did a little local obituary search for his Dad. Nothing came up, but a public record came up instead. Minnow’s father filed for divorce from Minnow’s mother. The divorce was final in 2001. I saw them in 1998. They had just finished celebrating their 30th wedding anniversary with a weekend trip to Cybaris. It’s like the kids grew up, graduated college, and they got divorced? How does that happen?

Next Chapter: The story of 343.

Snippet

2010-11-29T11:49:00.002-06:00

Overheard at my house on Thursday: I have a pound of butter on the counter, and I'm not afraid to use it.

And use it I did.

As usual, I had one thing missing from my Thanksgiving dinner: six extra people.

We had:
an artichoke dip from Target's Archer Fams which was notgood with Hawaiian bread
a veggie tray with ranch dressing and French Onion Dip

crescent rolls from a can
corn bread muffins
cranberry relish
cranberries from a can served in a pretty dish with can marks still clearly visible
deep fried cajun injected turkey
stuffing (homemade with mozzarella cheese and country sausage...a recipe that is quite good)
gravy made from turkey neck simmered in canned, low-sodium turkey broth since the fried turkey makes no pan drippings
Hungarian sausage homemade at the church at the end of the street boiled and then grilled
garlic mashed potatoes with butter and half-and-half
green beans with pearl onions and balsamic reduction
green bean casserole with the French's onions on top
candied sweet potatoes
sweet potatoes with ginger snap crumble

pecan pie
two pumpkin pies
apple pastry
whipped cream and ice cream

Korbel champagne
coffee with choclate syrup, whipped cream, and an assortment of boozes for the Irishing

What we didn't have: salad.

What we are thankful for: family, friends, security, and me yelling from the kitchen during the toast "Health".

Image Center - Olan Mills Portrait Studios

2010-11-22T19:09:00.000-06:00

Image Center - Olan Mills Portrait Studios

731

2010-11-17T12:56:00.002-06:00

Bobo turned two years old yesterday. Chuckles promptly vomited his entire festive Thanksgiving Feast from school (where I had volunteered as a Milk Mom to help serve the fesat). The good news is they were both able to consume cupcakes before bed and no one missed his field trip today.

Soup

2010-11-16T13:07:00.001-06:00

Recipe for Butternut Squash Soup

4 tsp olive oil
1-4 leeks rinsed well, tough green parts removed, sliced thinly
8 cloves garlic, peeled and pressed or chopped roughly
2 cups water
2 cups broth (or one can broth and enough water to make 4 cups total)
½ tsp freshly ground black pepper
1 medium butternut squash, peeled, seeds removed, and cut into 1” pieces (about 4 cups)

Heat olive oil in a small stock pot, sautee leeks and garlic about 10 minutes.
Add the rest of the ingredients and simmer (uncovered) for 20-30 minutes until squash is fork tender.
Blend until smooth with an immersion blender or put in a regular blender with center of the lid removed and a towel over the hole to allow steam to escape.

Down

2010-11-15T08:13:00.002-06:00

Un-Worry

2010-11-11T21:39:00.002-06:00

Once upon a time (which we will call Spring), I was worried about Bobo. That might be my understatement of the day. I worried about his growth, his ear infections, his development, his autism, his health, his hatred of books, his dismissal of people, his refusal to eat, his love of binkies, his not-sleeping-through-the-night-ness, his sickness, his health, his life, his liberty, and his pursuit of happiness.

Officially, as of today, I am no longer worried.

Tonight, Bobo didn't want to go to bed. "No bed. No nigh-night. Rock Caca Room." Which basically means he doesn't want to go to bed but wants to rock in the rocking chair in Chuckles's room. However, Chuckles was already in bed with lights out (8:05...but don't be jealous...I'll see Chuckles again before too long...usually 2 am, 5:30 and from 6 on).

So, Chuckles was in bed, and Bobo did NOT want to go to bed. So, we danced the sleepytime dance, read Where's Spot, and then started in with "You can have your binky if you're in bed for sleeping. Night night. All your friends and blankies are in bed." He said, "No. Book." And picked up a book and started to "read". On the very first page of the book, there was a picture of a sleepy little baby overtired and crying. Bobo looked at the picture and said, "No baby. No Cry. Go night night. Bed. Binky." Then, he went to where we keep the binkies, got one, and tried to shove it into paper baby's mouth to make her stop crying.

He, however, still did not want to go to bed.

Redemption

2010-11-03T09:23:00.002-05:00

She lost. Whew. The headline of the paper today was:

Adams first Republican to win countywide office in 60 years

Link to the atricle

Electoral

2010-11-02T21:45:00.002-05:00

I voted my conscience. Rebecca Sink-Burris (L) got my vote. You might recall that I couldn't decide between her and Dan Coats. According to the WaPo, Dan Coats (R) won, so I don't feel as though I threw away my vote.

I have to say that Sink-Burris did really well in a statewide election. She got 5% of the vote. That's really good for a Libertarian candidate.

Candidate Votes %
Coats 888,280 55%
Ellsworth 649,791 40%
Sink-Burris 86,759 5%

How sad is it that when I googled Election Results 2010 Indiana, the first site that came up was WaPo and not something a wee bit more local?

So, you may recall that I mentioned that one of the candidates for local office was currently charged with a whole host of falsifying documents crimes and other unseemly things....so, of course, I voted against her (I didn't so much vote for the other person as vote against her). Of course, innocent until proven guilty, but she wouldn't even say whether her father was deceased (something about claiming a homestead exemption and senior citizen exemption in someone else's name blah blah blah and she wants to be the TAX ASSESSOR???). Her own party basically said that they can't endorse her, but they encourage you to vote a straight party ticket while holding your nose and not actually voting in that race.

Well, the race is too close to call at this point. It's too close to call!! Which sickens me. The last prelim results posted to the County election website were at 3pm. If someone were to get those results and then decide to "get out the vote" this election might swing. Lake County politics is not known for its clean elections. My county touches Chicago and our machine is every bit as well-funded and tactically deceitful as anyone else's machine (complete with actual election ballots found in an actual bag at the bottom of the harbor).

Time for bed. Night night.

PS - Bobo has been saying, "Ding Dong. Bowl." all day. I am pretty sure he either saw the Wizard of Oz without me knowing about it or he wants to go Trick Or Treating again and get shiny packages out of people's bowls. (I do not think he is aware that the shiny packages are filled with candy. Please don't tell him.)

Moo

2010-11-02T21:32:00.002-05:00

Sunday, on the spur of the moment, we took the kids to Fair Oaks Farms to see where our milk comes from. I had a coupon for buy one-get one admission (Thank you Entertainment book fundraiser from the school).

Fair Oaks is not organic milk, but the cows get to walk around and live in relative comfort (for dairy cows). The cows don't get antibiotics (unless they're sick) and they don't get added hormones, but their feed is conventionally grown, so the milk isn't organic. It's just....less tainted.

Anyway, they runs tours and whatnot.

I really enjoyed the farm. We didn't take the tour to the milking turntable because it involved a 45-minute bus ride and Bobo is not so much for the sitting down these days. But they had plenty of other things to do like drive tiny tractors, eat ice cream, climb a rock wall, sample cheese, jump on a giant inflatable pillow (which was a real hoot), drink milk, a 4-D mooooovie, and much, MUCH more. If you act now, they will throw in the string cheese maze for free!

I went to the birthing barn and watched a cow give birth to twin bull calves. 60 pounds apiece. It's the first time I have ever seen something born in real-life. Yikes. It was a little gross as I imagine traditional childbirth is (and beautiful too...yessiree I am sure childbirth is beautiful...and slimy). Anyway, we didn't know a second calf was coming and then the cow midwife (she wasn't a vet, just a woman who helps the laboring cows) stuck her arm (up to the shoulder) into the cow. I figure she was trying to get the placenta. When her arm came back out, she had hold of a hoof. She grabbed both, and pulled. I mean, really, pulled. And out slid another calf.

The mother cow was quite interested in her first calf and was licking and stimulating it. She wasn't all that interested in that second thing that came out of her. I was really hoping she was going to maternal up and that we wouldn't see neonatal cow death. So, the midwife dragged #2 around to the front end of the cow and eventually, she gave her calf a cursory lick and went back to #1. After about a half hour, #1 started to get up and walk away, so #2 got a lot of attention then. Everything worked out OK in the end. I never saw the calves nurse though. They get to stay with their mothers on the farm for about 80 days.

Aquaria

2010-11-02T21:27:00.002-05:00

We took the kids to the Shedd Aquarium today. My company is a corporate partner, so the tickets were free. We got all access passes. All Access. Woo Hoo.

The kids? Well, they were most impressed by an area where you could put on a penguin costume and go down a slide on your belly. So, right, glad I didn't pay $26 each for those tickets.

Progress

2010-11-01T13:20:00.002-05:00

I ran another 5k over the weekend. I improved my time almost 3 minutes. From 40:11 to 37:14.

Many people ran in costume. I chased a giant M&M for 3 miles. I vowed that if I caught her, I could take a bite. Will run for chocolate. Four or five guys dressed up as KISS (in full jumpsuits, wigs, make-up, and carrying guitars). They also ran it under 20 minutes, so impressive all around. The guy who ran in the 70-and-over age bracket beat my time, but I'm closing in on him. The best costume though was a Golden Retriever dressed up as a frilly pink poodle.

Today? My legs are like Twizzlers. And every time one of my joints in my knee or hip is bent, it’s like Crunch. Even my Skittles have been jostled into Mounds. I've been trying to think of myself as Good-N-Plenty, but some days, I just feel Chunky. But Mr. Long-Suffering thinks I'm cute and the kids give me a Bit-O-Honey, which makes me feel Almond Joy and sends my feelings into the Milky Way. They really are my 3 Musketeers. Now all I need is a Pay Day for a 100 Grand, and I will be all set like Baby Ruth.

Happiness

2010-11-01T13:16:00.002-05:00

Chuckles had a bowl of cereal this morning (Honey Sunshine) topped with M&Ms. I am a winner mother with a good sense of humor.

The kids pulled in 144 pieces of candy last night. That number makes me so geekfully happy seeing as it is (a) a gross and (b) 12-squared.

Bobo dumped his bag onto the living room floor last night and shuffled his feet through the pile as he had been doing to piles of raked leaves all weekend. He did not say, "Trick or Treat" at a single door, but he did say, "bell" and "Ding Dong" about a million times. At one house, he pointed to a chair on the front porch, said, "Chair", and climbed into it and sat down for a rest. This irked Chuckles because, I mean, there is still free candy that people will give me if we keep moving. Gotta make good time.

Both kids stayed out almost the full two hours. They needed mittens. For the 5th consecutive year, Chuckles wore my mittens around because I forgot to bring his and had mine in my pocket.

Hope

2010-10-22T09:49:00.000-05:00

Election Day is coming, and I'm excited. Hope and Change. If you find my somewhat right-of-liberal views annoying, you should stop now. I don't want to upset anyone, but I am a Libertarian and I blog about that in addition to the stuff about kids, gardening, cooking, etc.
Libertarian views in a nut shell: Fiscal Conservatism with Social Liberalism. Also, Just Leave Me Alone to Live My Life.

Yes to the following Liberties: Gun Ownership (I'm OK with restrictions for felons and criminals), Free Speech, Property Rights, Gay Marriage (though some of the most Libertarian will tell you that the state has no business in civil marriage of any kind and I can see the argument, though marriage is so entrenched in society it would be hard to un-do), Abortion-on-Demand with minimal restrictions, low interference from the state on just about everything, local control of more, central control of less (but I can see how the Fed is required for some things like enforcing the 14th Amendment in the South during Jim Crow).

No to the following intrusions on personal liberty: Speech and dress codes (ala Burqa ban in France and speech codes in Canada), high tax rates, government mandates of all kinds, unnecessary licensing requirements, liquor laws (why doesn't Indiana allow wine.com to ship to me?...because the wholesalers and distributors have convinced the politicians to allow them to keep their monopoly in the guise of public interest), zoning laws, property covenants, unions, incentives that reward undesireable behavior, politicians who buy the votes of the electorate with my money.

So, I am hopeful that some things in Indiana (and the Nation) will change after November 2nd. I think we might get our first Republican county-wide official elected this year since the 1950s. The democratic candidate for assessor is currently charged with a felony and probably doesn't actually reside in the county. Her own party machine isn't endorsing or backing her, but the higher-ups are urging people just to vote a straight party ticket. If she wins, it will be a sad day for an imformed electorate.

I'm not sure for whom I will vote in the US Senate race. The democrat and republican have both sent many many mailers to my home and their positions on the issues are very similar (almost indistinguishable by my way of reading...rhetoric about working families, low taxes, pro-jobs, anti-abortion). I think, in this case, the devil is in the details. One says he's pro-jobs by spending tax dollars to pay people to do things. The other says he's pro-jobs by lowering S-corporation tax rates to encourage job creation in the private sector.

Evan Bayh decided not to run for re-election after it was too late to hold primary elections, so the democrats put up Brad Ellsworth (he's for bank bail-outs, pro-Obamacare, and anti-gay marriage). Dan Coats (a former US Senator) is running as the Republican (he's backed by the Tea Party, who I swear to you is not a bunch of angry racists no matter what Newsweek's coverage tells you). Libertarian Rebecca Sink-Burris is also running. Her views most closely represent my views (although she's Pro-Life too, sort of...she doesn't seem anti-abortion...it's like she says I'm Pro-Life (who isn't?) and then sounds sort of reasonable on the issue...very strange position), but she has a snowball's chance of being elected. So, do I vote my conscience, or vote as closely to my conscience as I can with a candidate who actually has a chance in a tight race? Therein lies the rub.

Pain

2010-10-22T09:48:00.000-05:00

Speaking of the blind following of rules, handwriting practice. Chip starts his letters r and n and the bottom line, pushes up, then pulls down, then pushes back up and curves them over. Every time he does this on his handwriting worksheet, I erase it and tell him to start at the middle dashed line and pull down. He whines, he pouts, he cried because I am so mean, he draws out the worksheet for an hour when it could reasonably be done in 3 minutes. There is just a way you do things. And you need to learn and develop muscle memory so that one day you can just sit there and write without thinking and have it be legible. I do not believe that longhand is going anywhere just because of electronica.

My point is that things are going well. Quite well. Swimmingly. I am happy (mostly). I am contented. I have pangs of wanting a third baby, but I don't think I actually want a third baby. Although, who wouldn't want to be able to say My Three Sons?

Joy

2010-10-22T09:04:00.003-05:00

Last Week, Moxie posted the question: What's going on with you?

SarcastiCarrie answered: My life is absolutely wonderfully fabulous right this very minute and I want to stop time right here and stay here forever and ever and ever. But, alas, that is not how life goes, so tomorrow, something will hit the fan and someone is going to the pediatrician and so on.

Well, the fates did not strike me down after that comment and the only reason Chip wound up at the pediatrician is beacause he got his first varicella vaccine at 51 weeks of age and the State says it doesn't count if it is given prior to 51 weeks 4 days (I shit you not). Never mind that his brother had chicken pox, and he didn't get it, which proves his immunity and also should count as a booster shot. He got the shot, got a sucker, got his FluMist, and we all carried on with our lives. I did not even storm the statehouse and demand they make an exception, nor did I ask for the exemption papers to decline vaccinating. I believe in herd immunity. I don't believe in the blind following of rules, but sometimes, it's just easier.

UPDATED: I forgot to mention that what brought the issue to a head was a phone call from the principal wherein she threatened to "exclude him from school until we resovle this matter". Threats. Great. I did sign a paper saying that they do NOT have my permission to give Chip's vaccination records to the state through electronic records sharing. So, whatever. It's over an done. Maybe when I am out of the throes of childrearing I will fight for commonsense vaccination programs.

Fear

2010-10-21T10:41:00.002-05:00

I have mentioned before that I work in heavy industrial manufacturing. Mr. Long-Suffering does too. Twice a year, he works a big blitz at work. Two years ago, when I was enormously pregnant with Bobo, he had an accident. He was injured at work when something broke loose and went flying across the building. He was very lucky. He was hit in the arm.

This morning at my desk, I got the same email forwarded to me by 15 different people. It was a safety notice of a fatal accident that happened during the big blitz that Mr. Long-Suffering is working this week. The guy who was killed is named also named Mr. Most people know Mr. and I have different last names and most of the people prefaced their emails with “That wasn’t your husband, was it?” It was not my husband, but I really think those people should have called instead of emailed. There’s an etiquette and a protocol to these things. If you're notifying a woman that her husband might have just been killed, you should call. Or stop by her office.

It was some other mechanical engineer named Mr. working on that exact same piece of equipment, and if it had happened on day turn instead of midnights or if Mr. Long-Suffering had been working midnights (like usual) instead of days this week it would have been him. Tearing up a little at my desk. OK, actually, tearing up a lot.

Guilt

2010-10-21T10:19:00.003-05:00

So, why did we, after 5 years, baptize the kids?

Guilt.

Mr. Long-Suffering had been getting occasional digs from his parents for 5 years. He had finally had enough.

Neither of us is what you might call religious. We've never regularly attended church together, though he went as a child and I went some as an adult (just to learn about the Bible so I would be better at Jeopardy! Oddly, the church doesn't actually teach you about what is in the text of the bible.).

Mr. Long-Suffering is an introvert and rather sensitive to criticism, and the fact that he was disappointing his parents was crushing him. The comments only came up 2-4 times per year, but he internalized their disapproval, and it wore on him. Plus, in his family, a baptism is a custom, a tradition, and he felt like it was something we should do because it is what people do.

This is not a custom or tradition in my family. My sister and I were not baptized nor christened. My niece was not either. We did not regularly attend church as children, though occasionally, my grandmother would drop us off for Sunday school, or we'd go with the neighbors. I am a polite non-believer (of all religions, though I do think Judaism is pretty neat). Agnostic really. I'm culturally Protestant. Some of my family is devoutly religious. My own father is an ordained member of the Presbyterian church (though how that happened was sort of an accident....million-to-one shot doc, million-to-one).

Mr. Long-Suffering and I were married in the Lutheran Church (LC-MS) 9 years ago, and I did agree to raise my kids in that Church (though truthfully, I somehow never thought it would happen).

So, when Mr. Long-Suffering floated the idea of getting Bobo and Chip baptized, I said, "Sure, OK, you plan it, and I'll show up." That was about 2 years ago. The idea surface every few months since then. I always said, "OK, I won't stop you." Though, truthfully, he's not the planner in this relationship so I never thought it would happen.

Now that we have Mrs. Marie, though, we have a lot more mind-space time. I have 3 hours per week to myself now, and I assume Mr. L-S does too. So, he arranged a baptism. I planned a party. I even made sure our family went to church the weekend before the baptism so we'd see the place, get the lay of the land, meet the pastor, etc.

So, it's done. And I feel just awful about it. I really didn't want to baptize them. It sort of goes against everything I believe in. If they decide that they are believers when they're grown, they could get baptized then. On the other hand, I remind myself that as a non-believer, it doesn't really mean anything and nothing has changed, so no big deal, symbolism, blal blah blah, pleasing the elder generation. If they decide they are non-believers when they grow up, it's not like they can un-do it (though really, as a non-believer, it doesn't mean anything any way, so no harm - no foul).

The funny part about it is that Chip has been dumping buckets of water over Bobo's head three times in the bath and saying it's a baptism. Which is really adorable.

Champange Punch Recipe (Bellini Recipe, Peach Champagne Deliciousness Recipe)

2010-10-04T13:52:00.002-05:00

This is the recipe I ended up serving, and it was wonderful. I googled and I googled and I ended up just winging it. You can increase/decrease to the number of people you have.

This served 20 adults for 3 or 4 hours.

The night before, make an ice ring:

Put a pound of frozen peaches (or your own peeled, pitted, and wedged peaches) into the bottom of a Bundt pan (or any other decorative pan or tupperware). Cover peaches with Sierra Mist Natural (I recommend this only because it is made with sugar not HFCS. You could use 7-Up.). Place in freezer overnight or until frozen solid. To remove, put pan in sink of tepid water to loosen and then put it in the punch bowl trying not to splash (or put it in before the liquids).

4 bottles of chilled, cheap Champagne or Sparkling Wine (I used 2 cheap, 2 moderate bottles because that is what I had on-hand: 2 J Roget, 1 Korbel, and one Frexinet), any brand, any Brut, semi-dry, spumante, etc.

1 bottle of peach schnapps (the cheaper the better...mine was $9.99, but I am pretty sure a cheap-o bottle can be had for $7 or $8).

4 twelve-ounce cans of Peach Nectar (at my grocery store, it was found on the Latino Foods aisle). All the brands said 100% nectar on the front and had sugar/high fructose corn syrup listed as an ingredient. I don't know whether it was sugar or HFCS, but how is that 100% nectar?

1-2 cups of Sierra Mist Natural, to taste

One ice ring with frozen peaches

serve with ladle from (borrowed) punch bowl (or heck, a stock pot would work) into Solo Cups (or you know, champagne flutes if you're feeling fancy)

This recipe would be very easy to scale down to one bottle of champagne (and in fact, I made a three-bottle batch and then a one-bottle batch after it was clear that the punch was moving).

Oh No! Not Again!

2010-10-01T14:15:00.001-05:00

We have a child in our house who has learned the word "no". Send help. And wine. And maybe chocolate.

PS - No champagne punch recipes? Really? Are my 6 readers all a bunch of teetotallers, because I don't know if we can have that.

Well now

2010-09-28T21:32:00.002-05:00

So, two posts down, that guy leaning against the truck, he totally was checking out my @$$. True. True that. And why wouldn't he be?

Next! I love mapmyrun. I go out and I run and I come back and see how far I've gone, or I plan out a route before I go. Tonight, I said I wanted to go out and run about 3 miles. I ended up needed to go to the bathroom about 35 minutes into it (it's usually about 40 minutes), so I went right home. I mapped my run. I ran 2.99 miles. (So a good ti:me and a good time.)

Next! Physical therapy is going well. I'm not excellent about doing my exercises outside of PT though (who has time? and good form?), but I'm making excellent progress. Today I was lifting weights with the arm that was, for all intents and purposes, dead to me just a month ago.

I think weaning was a factor in the bum shoulder. I maintained such good body mechanics and posture when nursing (with a nursing stool and multiple pillows on my lap and behind my back) and I always did a c-support with the hand on the side I was nursing (I only know how to nurse in cross-cradle). The support hand would throw my shoulder back into good posture. Must find a baby to nurse now. Anyone have a spare? Oh wait, I'm not lactating any more. Oh well. Exercise then.

I had a wonky mole removed. It's benign. I'm allergic to Neosporin, so they prescribed something that had no generic for me to put on it. It was $200. Yikes. There is another form of it that has a generic and would have cost $6. Why would they prescribe a white cream instead of a greasy ointment with a generic when the active ingredients are the same? The biggest bummer of the whole thing? I had an allergic reaction to the $200 Bactroban cream. Dang. I have 45 mg of it that will go to waste and now I'm going to scar (at least it's my arm and not my face).

The kids are good. They are being baptized on Sunday. I could write an entire post on this, but I am sure I would offend both the religious types and the secular humanists with my gross generalizations, so let's just say the kids are wearing matching outfits (white shirts, courduroy trousers), I am wearing a sheath dress that would go great with a pillbox hat, Mr. Long-Suffering will be wearing whatever I tell him to, and we're serving fried chicken, cake, and champagne punch at the reception afterward. I need a good recipe for champange punch, so please leave one in the comments. I googled for it. If no one comes up with one, I'm going with strawberries, sprite, champagne, peach nectar, and an ice ring.

The Life and Times...

2010-09-21T20:39:00.002-05:00

Well, where have I been?

We took a little getaway vacation this weekend. We stopped at the Volo Car Museum and saw famous cars (like Doc Hudson, the Batmobile, Mach 5, the Flinstones car, Herbie the Love Bug, The Blues Brothers car, the General Lee, the station wagon from Ghostbusters, the Delorean with flux capacitor from Back to the Future, and much more). They also sell classic cars there. We did not buy anything, but my very first car when I was 16 was a 1968 Chevy Camaro RS 327 with the small block Chevy engine. They had one at the car museum. I got my picture taken with it.

Then we stopped in Lake Geneva, Wisconsin for dinner at Popeyes. We got balloon animals. We walked around a bit and look at the spillway, beach, boats, and a horse that was on the street to give carriage rides. You can feed him carrots.

Finally, we checked in to our hotel, Lake Lawn Resort in Delavan, WI. We parked our car on Friday and didn't see it again until Sunday afternoon when it was time to leave. The staff there was friendly and attentive to children. There were plenty of activities for the kids including nightly bonfires (and they sold little s'mores kits in the gift shop), crafts, mini-golf, scavenger hunts, and an arcade. It was just wonderful (as any place with an indoor pool would be). We got a lot of time in as a family. We even got some sleep. The kids each got souvenir Pillow Pets, so everyone was happy.

We're back living regular life now. It's good. Bobo had speech therapy today. I had physical therapy (every time I have PT, I wind up with crushing head pain for several hours afterward...whatever they're doing to my neck and shoulders is working...and moving the pain elsewhere).

I'm supposed to be running right now but it's a severe thunderstorm warning. I'm not that dedicated. I do have another run planned for the end of October though. It seems I am quite goal-oriented and won't actually run if I don't have some kind of training plan for something. Who knew?

Word List

2010-09-17T08:21:00.002-05:00

My BFF from the old neighborhood sent me a list of words her 16-month old knows. So, it got me to thinking about Bobo's language skills. The kid is clearly "all there" in the brain department, he's just a man of few words (redundant).

Speech Therapy is going well, but I don't think it's the reason he's talking more now (because really, I couldn't have thought to TALK TO HIM or to REPEAT THE SAME WORDS OVER AND OVER and what not). So, here is Bobo's expanded vocabulary list.

Mama (which can mean anything from referring to Mom, or "Mom, look at me", "That is a car like the one my Mom drives" or "I am not wearing a hat!")

Dada

Keys (give them to me so I can beep the horn)

Beep Beep

Car

Yogurt

Cheese (which is really quite a shame since he and dairy don't so much get along)

Papa (for grandpa)

Mimi (which is my mom and also Mrs. Marie)

Buh Bye (said like a teenage girl)

Mine (which does not specifically mean “mine” but rather, “I have been wronged, avenge me”)

Up

Down

In

Out

Boat (For the record, he also calls life jackets "boat", but really I can see his point.)

Yeah (and he has not learned the word that is the opposite of this yet, so let's not tell him about the word that starts with N and ends with O.)

Got Poop (which is often correct, and when he’s wrong, I think it means he tooted. If he was developmentally on-track with everything else, I would start him potty training now, but I'd rather focus on language acquisition and worry about the potty after we're able to have more in the way of conversations.)

Cookie

Cracker

Nana (which is a banana, but it doesn’t mean we should give one to him, just that they exist on the counter. Do not get this wrong and try to feed him a banana. You will be sorry. And you will be cleaning the ceiling fan.)

Woo-Woo (this is, oddly, a telephone. I'm guessing it's either because of the ring it makes or because we say "hello" when answering it)

Wall (wallet…give me your purse so I can get your wallet, woo-woo, and keys...and then I will beep the horn...again. and lock your car in the garage from the living room couch.)

Bay-Bee (that’s anyone smaller than Chuckles, but quite possibly as big as Bobo)

Buy (that’s bike)

Wa-wa (water, give some to me)

Opie/Open

Muh (more)

Cat (which means Cat…and Dog)

Duck/Quack (I have no idea what he’s actually saying but that’s what he means)

Brella (umbrella)

Ball, Ballloon, and Buh-Bull (bubbles)

The Adventures of SarcastiCarrie

Romance

49ers

Rooms for Teeth?

One Bourbon, One Scotch, and One Beer

Baby Names as a form of distraction

Still Pregnant

Happier Hole-idays are Ahead

Post-Christmas Post

I forgot Number 11

Three things (that might turn into more things as I get going)

Let's Have Some Fun on the Internet

Different (and not in a good way)

All is Bright

Transference

The Menu

Follow-Up

Level II

Lawn Guy Land

Livin’ on a Prayer

“Fun” facts about me and Deep Thoughts from Jack Handy

Pumpkins and Corn

Recalibrating: Sixteen

Most Confusing Ultrasound I've Ever Had

We interrupt the regularly scheduled programming

Stupid is as Stupid Does

Advanced

Tinth

Nine (for the gold)

Ten

I owe you all an update

Recap of my Vacation

Best. Day. Ever.

Hot Potato

First Ever

Office Hours

I'm just not good enough

I am not your sister-in-law

Details

Five

Mom

Maureen

Fever

Heredity

Darndest

Careerism

Competencies

TLA

Answered

Thirty-Five

Hair

Crisis

Cold

Name

RIP

Chirp

Music

Over

Meme

ONE!

Ring

Romance

Snow!

Fling

Tweet

343

Scenes

Minnow

Snippet

Image Center - Olan Mills Portrait Studios

731

Soup

Down

Un-Worry

Redemption

Electoral

Moo

Aquaria

Progress

Happiness