Its Fall!

Its officially Florida fall because there is a cool breeze blowing and we've opened all of our windows to enjoy it. After my big belly, sweaty summer I'm feeling this weather change profoundly. Its actually not cool enough to have the windows open AND do anything so I'm taking this opportunity to lay around catching up on my favorite radio program, Wait Wait, Don't Tell Me while Kent cusses under his breath and cleans house. (Yes, ladies, my husband cleans house while I lay on my bed listening to his Ipod. AND he's making me sushi for dinner tonight. AND he's a sexy beast. Fair warning, though: my pregnancy hormones are in such an advanced state that if you look at his ass, I'll pop your head off using just my thumbs.)

I probably shouldn't end this entry with such a silly threat. I mean, I'm a six foot, 200+ pound pregnant woman. My ability to respond to familial threats with the ferocity of a rhino should be kind of apparent, right? Its like crossing the street or parking lot. I don't worry anymore about how fast I waddle into Publix. There's no excuse for a car to hit me.
"Um, I didn't see her!"
"You didn't see the 6 foot, 200+ pound pregnant woman waddling across the parking lot? Turn around so I can get the handcuffs on you."

I should, instead, write about celebrating Tallulah's birthday yesterday and how cute she was, including a charming anecdote about how she got so excited when we were singing 'Happy Birthday' to her that she turned to me and hugged me-- like she just had to do SOMETHING with her excitement level. Or how she said her favorite part of the day was playing on the playground with her friends and cousin, as though she doesn't play with her friends on at least a weekly basis (and opposed to the annual event of cake+presents+singing+balloons)

But I'm getting overheated with all this typing. Its FLORIDA fall, after all. Its still 85 degrees.

In the third trimester, I'm far from nausea

I'm being led around by my stomach. Besides the obviousness of my huge stomach preceding me into rooms and around corners, its also guiding all my actions.

Today I was preparing for Tallulah's fourth birthday. She wants a ladybug birthday so I thought I'd go get some real ladybugs-- I'd seen them at Home Depot awhile back. So I go to Home Depot and I ask if they have ladybugs. No, they say. We stopped carrying them a couple months ago. Oh, well, I'll just take a hot dog from the hot dog stand, then.

They suggested I try Target's garden center across the road.
Do you have ladybugs? I ask the garden center.
No.
Oh. Are those soda flavored jelly belly jellybeans?

And they were. Root Beer, 7-Up, Orange Crush, Grape Soda, and Dr. Pepper flavored. Um, yes, please. They are awesome. Of course, pregnancy for no rational reason makes me appreciate soda in ways I never do when non-pregnant. I LOOOOVE Dr. Pepper with this pregnancy. But I don't want a flipper baby so I try to stifle my urge to chug 2 liters daily.

Another amazing candy discovery with this pregnancy? Cherry cordial flavored hershey's kisses. I think I will love these even when I'm not pregnant. Unlike the Dr. Pepper. I usually hate Dr. Pepper-- its a beverage Kent gets when he doesn't want to share with me.

So, a hot dog and bag of jelly bellies later, I'm leaving Target and I have to pass by a Pizza Hut kiosk next to the exit. Ooh, they have little personal pan pizzas all made up, ready for me. No, no, I tell myself. You must resist! And I do. But don't feel too proud of me. I was only able to resist because I knew I had a frozen pizza waiting for me at home for lunch.

So this is nesting

I don't want to write or think or read. You may have noticed by the way I've successfully avoided this blog for the past few days.

What I want to do is clean my house and do dumb art projects with Tallulah. I haven't been actually cleaning my house for awhile because the cleaners we use have been making me nauseous and lightheaded since I got pregnant. I haven't been complaining since my husband has been catching the slack (Yay, Kent!) but lately I've been getting this urge to have sparkly clean surfaces throughout my house.

So yesterday, I gave away our noxious cleaners and made my own natural cleaners with baking soda, lemon juice, and grapefruit essential oil. Then I wiped down a bunch of surfaces, washed the dishes, did a few loads of laundry, organized more baby hand-me-downs, and made ladybug hats with Tallulah. This is nesting, right? Because if I had written about this type of day before being pregnant it would have been titled "Oh my God, Kill me now." But I'm feeling kind of smug and content with my projects.

Tallulah's future

He still has crazy

I am sick and pathetic.

I have a cold and I feel ten times worse because I'm pregnant and sneezing makes me pee a little bit and I can't run for the tissues when I feel the snot coming and my back hurts times two because of baby pressure AND sickly aches. And Tallulah wants to cuddle, but then I sneeze and snot gets on her head.

And my husband's going to leave me.

Being sick always makes me suspect this because I realize how gross I am and why would anyone want to spend a lifetime with a snotty, sneezy, complain-y whiner? And then being pregnant makes me suspect this because I'm huge and complain-y and unable to do anything fun like drink too many White Russians and sing ridiculous versions of Bryan Adams songs at karaoke.

So I spend a lot of time moping around the house giving my husband sad eyes because any minute now he'll start packing his stuff even though I tell him it'll make him a bad person when he leaves me for a younger, hotter, non-pregnant, non-sickly, non-insane woman. And I'll be fine because I'll form an undefineable friendship with a middle aged woman and solve crime and learn horticulture and he'll still be a bad person for leaving me. (I rented the BBC series Rosemary and Thyme which is basically a British 'Murder She Wrote' with two middle aged women who run a horticulture business and oh, just happen to solve murders. Its sweet and charming, but I may be a little impressionable right now.)

And he, when he notices my mopey expression or my teary eyes, says, "I'm not going to leave you for being pregnant and sick." Which is smart because it reminds me that these things are not permanent and my feelings are just a response to hormones and illness. Also, it doesn't rope him into too big of a promise. Because notice he doesn't say, "I won't leave you for being crazy."

Weirdo Mom Alert

I have the opportunity to share car-pooling with another mom to my daughter's preschool. The preschool is 20 minutes away on a good day and this mom lives just a few streets away from me. The other mom has suggested I drive the girls to school and she, her husband, or her nanny will drive them home after. But I'm not down with the plan.

Oh, you're thinking, since the title of this blog entry is weirdo mom alert, you must be about to tell a funny story about this mom's idiosyncracies which keep you from wanting your child in a car wih her.

No, no. I"M the weirdo mom. I can't stand the thought of
A. missing out on Tallulah's face when she sees me come to pick her up. It gives me a little synopsis of her day-- generally joyous. She just lights up.

B. missing out on a chance to get a little taste of her day from her teacher. Her teacher walks the kids out one by one to the parents and gives them a little chat about how the day went. From these chats I've learned about Tallulah's favorite kids, favorite activities, and first meltdown-- I wouldn't have known any of this otherwise.

C.missing out on the 20 minute ride home which doesn't generally give me any information (see previous entry) but I hold out hope. At the least I get to hear Tallulah sing songs from the day.

And D., the one that positively makes me a weirdo mom, I can't stand the thought of twenty extra minutes without her, especially 20 minutes of her being in a car in traffic. This has nothing to do with the driving abilities of the other mom, her husband, or her nanny. This has to do with a completely irrational need for any car accidents Tallulah is involved in to also involve me. If she's going to be bleeding at the side of the road, dammit, I want to be right there bleeding with her.

I'm pretty sure the last one is a pregnancy induced irrationality and once the baby is here not only will I not think about car accidents anymore, but I will beg the homeless people in the park behind our house to please take my car and go pick up my daughter from school so I can get an extra 20 minutes of sleep.

I'm going to go ahead and run with my inner weirdo, though. I've actually regretted it when I've tried to ignore her in the past. Its only happened twice: Once at the pediatric dentist when they wanted two year old Tallulah to get her final fluoride treatment without me (hello, she's two! Why would you even WANT to be in a two year old's mouth without a parent around?) and again during a swim class when her best friend was crying hysterically out of fear and the instructors kept expecting Tallulah to ignore it and keep swimming. That was awesome because Tallulah began resisting the instructors and crying during class out of solidarity for Grace. But both times my inner mom weirdo said, who cares if this is standard practice? THIS DOES NOT FEEL RIGHT!

I tried to ignore this feeling. Stop it, you weirdo, I told myself. Obviously this is how it works. People are going to realize you are weird if you make a fuss. And then afterwards I kicked myself. Sure, the nurse was in with the dentist, but what if he was a pedophile? Tallulah wasn't even verbal enough to tell me anything. And besides that, I didn't get a chance to see the dentist and ask any questions (which I think was the actual point.) And I tell Tallulah to be caring towards her friends and pay attention to them if they feel bad or are hurt. Why would the rules change in swim class?

Shit, my inner weirdo was right! Which of course means that I'm trying to listen to my instincts. It also means at some point I will do something truly weird in the name of good parenting. Probably something extremely embarassing for both myself and my children.

I can't wait. And more importantly, neither can Tallulah.

The passage of time

I'm closing in on 30 weeks and reaching that big, awkward, mouth breathing, 'huff and puff if I move too quickly to the freezer for some ice cream' stage.

This pregnancy is so weird in the way time passes. First of all, I've lost the ability to do math. I've been counting by the week because it started out as a coping technique for my early-ish nausea (twelve weeks, if I can only get to twelve weeks, I'll stop puking constantly and be ok. All right, 24 weeks, if I can only get to 24 weeks I'll stop puking constantly and everything will be ok. And so on....) And then the week thing stuck. But real people don't care about weeks, they ask how many months. I find myself just spitting out ridiculous numbers because I absolutely cannot do the weeks to months conversion without a pen, paper, and a nap. How far along are you? Umm, six months. No, eight months. Five. Months. Weeks, Minutes. Shut up!

This came to a head recently at Whole Foods when a chatty checkout girl asked me how much longer. Six weeks, I blurted out. Oh, so when are you due? she asks innocently. Mm, November 30th, I say. And I see her expression change as she does the math in her own minimum wage head and gives me the 'I'm about to totally screw up your change and you won't even know it' look. Just give me my vegan chocolate chip cookie and stop asking me questions, Miss Nosy Pants!

The other way this pregnancy is passing differently from my pregnancy with Tallulah is my celebration of milestones. With Tallulah, I was working in Labor and Delivery as a nurse and I had all of these odd nurse-y celebrations. Like 20 weeks is when pregnant women are allowed to go up to the labor and delivery unit if they have to go to the hospital. So at 20 weeks I was like, woo hoo! If I have to go to the ER, my baby will be monitored!

Then at 24 weeks, woo hoo! Viable! If I deliver my baby after 24 weeks, I'll have a choice to try to keep the plucked chicken baby alive!

28 weeks, viability with lowered risk of neurological damage!

32 weeks, possibility of no long term neurological and sensory damage!

34 weeks, possibility of short term stay in the NICU!

36 weeks, possibility of completely perfect baby!

37 weeks, full term!

With this pregnancy, I'm far enough out of the hospital mindset that I can randomly think about her development without immediately worrying about what ifs. Which is lovely and makes me feel much more sane and calm and zen momma-like. But it reminds me of this story:

I loved my charge nurse at the hospital and had invited her to my baby shower even though I had been on midwife recommended work-leave for a couple months. The day of the shower came and went without my charge nurse showing up, however, and I wasn't surprised by the message I received on my answering machine explaining why she hadn't been able to attend. ON MY ANSWERING MACHINE (keep in mind, I am 33 or 34 weeks pregnant at this point) she explains that she hadn't been able to make it because there had been a maternal mortality that night and she was stuck at the hospital with all the paperwork and red tape.

Maternal mortality, you ask. Why that sounds like somebody....
Yep. That's right. Dead momma. She dead-momma'd a pregnant woman's answering machine to excuse herself from a baby shower. And the thing is, I know she was just upset and not thinking clearly. Dead mommas are a VERY RARE occurrance in labor and delivery. But still.

Tallulah is torturing me

Today when I pick Tallulah up from school she hugs her teacher, waves goodbye to two friends, hugs a third friend, recites the s-words she learned with her teacher (and they aren't the s-words she picks up when hanging around with me, thank goodness!), and skips to the car humming a new song.

Then we get in the car for the 20 minute ride home and this is the conversation:
"What did you do today, Tallulah?"
"I don't want to tell you right now."
"Um, ok. Who did you play with?"
"I said, I don't want to tell you right now."

a few minutes later...
"So, what did you play with today?"
"Nothing"
"You didn't play with any toys?"
"Nope"
"Did you play outside?"
"I don't know"
"What friends did you play with?" Lilly? Brooke? Vincent?
"Nope. Nobody."
"You sat all by yourself, not playing with anybody or anything?"
"Why you keep asking me?"

She's THREE!! How can anyone torture their mother this badly at age THREE? Now, I know she's having fun at school because she's happy to go and affectionate with her teacher and classmates, but I want to know what she's doing! Her teacher tells me things are fine and Tallulah is fitting in nicely, but I want to know all sorts of things-- who does she gravitate towards? what kind of activities? Is she outgoing? Friendly? Well-liked? Is she the kid who sits in the corner picking and eating her boogers while the other kids groan and complain? Because my kid could easily go either way.

Tallulah's future alma mater, part deux

Today's signage reads: Succeeding with Determination
I know I'm reading too much into this, but come on. Its high school. Failing takes a certain amount of determination. Some of my friends had to burn serious brain cells in back of the gym huffing and smoking random chemicals to achieve failure. Meanwhile the rest of us coasted by, succeeding without a helluva lot of effort.

Plus, last week's sign also discussed determination. Perhaps I should place a thesaurus next to the sign writer's gin-laced coffee.

Booker High School gives me a bad attitude. With Determination.

SubText

At the grocery store Sunday....
Me: Hey, we need some cereal. Wanna get Golden Grahams?
Him: I hate Golden Grahams.
Me: You do not. We get Golden Grahams all the time.
Him: I only pretended to like Golden Grahams because you were putting out. Now that you're not putting out... I hate Golden Grahams.
Me: Weirdo.


Later that day....
Me: Mmm, I should have gotten the Golden Grahams.
Him: Golden Grahams? I love Golden Grahams.

Owl Love

Last night as I was going to sleep, I heard a hooting sound and freaked out.

Backstory: Our house is on the edge of an Old Florida natural park. Its dense with trees and walking paths and has a frizbee golf course and a little play area. Its lovely. BUT, with so much development downtown, the downtown crime has been squished up into our neighborhood like toothpaste so as not to bother all the rich people. In the political gameshow of the city, we've won parting gifts of
*two middle aged, frizzy haired prostitutes who keep returning no matter how many times the cops pick them up (I guess that's not the only people picking them up). They apparently have found friendship and a home here. Aww.
*Random homeless guys living in the underbrush of the park. They're ok since they keep to themselves. Well, unless they start a fire in the dry season.
*Crackheads. Or, as I like to call them, the zombie contingent. They stumble around the park like extras from Shaun of the Dead or 28 Days Later, making the park uninhabitable by the living until the afternoon when the potheads come out to play frizbee golf.
*and most recently, gang activity. I haven't actually seen any gang activity, but they've tagged all the signs in the neighborhood.

So when I heard hooting sounds loud and close by our windows, I was sure it was some human messing around and I got MAD. Kent got annoyed because he was ready to sleep.
"Will you please let me sleep? Its just owls."
"Listen to that." I yelled. "Those are the fakest owl calls I ever heard. What owl really says, hoo hoo? Damn gangsters should do calls they're good at like barking or meowing."
"Meowing? Are gangsters good at meowing?"
"You know what I mean. Sounds that really happen in a neighborhood."

So I turned on all the outside lights and flashed my flashlight out the window, at which point the sounds got really loud with a weird growly sound interposed underneath. So I was really sure it was gangsters and they could see me in the windows until I looked up into our pine tree and saw.....huge wings flitting from one branch to the other. Then another pair of huge wings follow.

Kent and I run outside to check it out. We probably saw this guy and he looked like this

I feel much better about our neighborhood. I love that we have loud mating owls in our trees. The same trees that house giant woodpeckers, scrub and blue jays, cardinals, and robins. Of course, we've also got snakes, rats, humongous skinks, raccoons, and these weird little beetles that like to play dead in our driveway and then waddle away when they think we're not looking. But its neat to live in the middle of a city and have a bit of nature with us. Maybe that's why the crackheads love our neighborhood, too. And really, who can blame them?

Tallulah's future alma mater

Today, driving past Booker High School, the marquis read "Determined to Make the Grade." Its just vague enough to be a goal, isn't it? We're determined to make... you know, a grade. Maybe something in a 'D'.
A 'D' is nice.

I might be a little sensitive to the signage at Booker, since Tallulah is zoned to go there for high school. And since they're the people whose marquis brought us gems like "Degenerate" and "Melancholy" for their "word of the week". Maybe before Tallulah starts high school, I'll go over and slip some Zoloft in the gin-laced coffee cup of whoever makes the marquis decisions.

On the other hand, it does make all those schools that talk about 'excellence' and 'achievement' seem a bit overzealous.

A Factoid about my Husband

I've brightened up my life. Literally. Well, Tallulah's life.

The bamboo blinds in Tallulah's room snapped their up-and-down string ages ago. Today we hung some light colored curtains that I MADE (oh yeah, that's right, I made something. But don't look too closely at the hems!) to combat the cavelike feel of the room. Apparently, I don't mind making Tallulah play mole or bat-like in her room, but I'm starting fresh with this new baby! Fresh air, natural light, yep, this baby's gonna get the world!

However. In the process of hanging these curtains I made an observation about my husband. Some of the screws in the hanging hardware for the blinds were stripped and I asked him to help me. He did, but when he was done he left the screwdriver, wrench, and leftover screws and stuff on the windowsill next to Tallulah's bed. Not to mention the drywall dust that fell in her bed and on the windowsill which he didn't remove. So I take the tools and put them on the desk in his work area, then go throw away the old hardware. On the way back to her room I notice he had PUT AWAY THE TOOLS. In the five seconds since I put them down in his work area.

Huh, I think to myself. Is this a fluke or are things consistently put away when they end up in his area? Because this could create a whole new style of housecleaning on my part. Clean laundry? Put it on his desk. Dirty dishes? His desk. Ooh, the possibilities.

Of course, I needed the tools again (Hello, that's why I didn't put them away in the first place!) so I go into the tool storage and get the stuff I need, but then I discover another stripped screw. Hmm, the chance for a little experiment.

When he's done using the tools, he places them on the windowsill and goes off to do..whatever and I take the tools and put them in his work area and wait.

And wait.

My experiment failed. Apparently, the clearing of the work area caught him in the midst of his system of cleaning (more on that later-- its very intricate) and was not a new excuse for me to put random dirty items on his desk. Damn.

The windows, however, look fantastic. You don't even notice the hems, its so bright in there!

Block 'O' Cookie, part 2

Tallulah made it through half the block 'o' cookie which is, what? The eqivalent of 12 graham crackers? Before giving up and setting the block on the table to "leave it for the bugs."

Block 'O' Cookie

Sundays, Kent, Tallulah, and I go out to breakfast and then do our weekly grocery shopping but today we were all party hungover from a Tallulah's friend, Owen's, birthday party. Tallulah had been so excited from the party she didn't sleep until 11pm and I think I was dehydrated from the heat of the park and Kent stayed up late reading his D&D manuals, so this morning we just had breakfast at home and stumbled to the grocery store around 10.

We started this whole breakfast-and-groceries thing when Tallulah was going through her "I won't sit still in the grocery cart and I want to pull every item off them shelves" phase as a sanity preserver for me, the primary shopper. Its evolved into a nice little ritual. But this morning, Tallulah was still sleep deprived and making outrageous demands like "I want that bouquet of Spongebob balloons!" and "Lets get lots of donuts and eat them forever!" After her third round at the apple pie samples, the free cookie at the bakery, the corned beef slice from the deli, and a few temper tantrums in between, Daddy decided her naptime should begin immediately upon returning home. Which I was cool with-- it obviously needed to happen-- but by the time I put away the groceries, had a snack and settled down for my own nap, it was almost seconds before Tallulah was up with her normal bright and shiny, "entertain me" demeanor. Grrr.

So here I am, stumbling around for the rest of the day, sleep deprived, crampy with back aches and Braxton Hicks contractions, and counting the minutes to bedtime.

Which brings me to today's nomination for Worst Mom of the Year Award.

So I'm trying to figure out a relatively healthy, extremely easy meal to make for my crew when Tallulah discovers a centuries old box of graham crackers. "I have these, mommy?" Sure, why not. So I hand her one of the rectangled packages of cookies thinking she'd spend some time figuring out how to open it, grab a couple, and be satiated until dinner. Hah.

I look over at her a few minutes later and she has chewed a hole into the wax packaging and is gnawing at the cookie crumbs within. I take the package from her, open them, and hand them back without comment.

Which leads to this:


The best part is, she doesn't want the crumbs, she wants the satisfaction of chomping into block 'o' cookie, so after every bite, she shakes the crumb destruction left over from her bite onto the floor.
Don't bother asking if I stopped her or took away the block'o'cookie. You know I didn't.