August 27, 2008

Pregnancy Update, Part I

Part I: All the Complaints Fit to Print

Last week we took a belly shot (sadly the photography kind and not the Spring Break tequila kind) and I layered it over a shot from three weeks prior and then animated a little camera one/camera two gif so you could clearly see the staggering growth I've undergone lately. My plan backfired a little, however, since the way my shirt was situated in the first photo made my 20 Week belly look larger than my 23 Week belly, which I can guarantee you is NOT THE CASE, but oh well, I'll just take another shot this week and, by golly, this time I will make damn sure I look as enormous as I feel , even if I have to fudge the perspective or stand next to something miniature, like, say, my bras. My bras, which don't fit. (As opposed to "my bras that don't fit," the former construction specifying that my bras, collectively, all of them, no longer contain what they where designed to contain. Thus endeth the grammar lesson and thus beginneth the too much information.)

But I must say that having boobs is awesome, and now that that prayer has finally been answered after, oh, about seventeen years, I am free to use all those falling-star and water-well wishes on other things. For starters, I wish I were free of the weird acne-like eruptions that are taking place between my new boobs, making it really hard to show them off properly in a low-cut shirt. I don't know whether it's a hormonal thing or a summer-slams-the-Bay-Area thing, but boy oh boy do I sweat a lot these days. I am a fountain of body oil. I am making my own gravy. I am considering naming the baby Sebaceous. After I shower there's a gray slick around the drain. (I tried to blame it on Simon, but the process of elimination quickly fingered the culprit as yours truly.)

And speaking of things you didn't want to know, the second thing I do after I come home from work (after going to the bathroom again, because it's been fifteen whole minutes since last time and that teaspoon of urine is signed, sealed, delivered, and marked URGENT) is *TMI TMI TMI* change my underwear because over the course of the workday I have soaked it through with a combination of sweat and something else that is most definitely hormonal. (Hey, I warned you.) This is where I was going to link to a picture of Fergie (not the royal one but the Spring Break tequila one!) and say that at least I didn't wet myself, but then I remembered (NOT THAT I HAD FORGOTTEN) that this morning I sneezed and a little pee came out. So there's that.

Am gross. Call Hazmat.

The heat is also either causing or at least aggravating the one symptom that's actually popped up during the same week my BabyCenter newsletter said to expect it: swollen feet. I have to admit that I was excited to finally overlap with at least one symptom on one official pregnancy timeline, but then I shifted my gaze southward again, beheld my honest-to-goodness cankles, and felt a surge of fear course through my soul because I simply cannot afford to go up a shoe size. I'll cut the toes out of my current pairs if I have to. On the bright side, at least maybe now my fattened calves will fill out the shafts of my awesome boots and I'll be able to wear them with skirts without the danger of crumbs, stones, and small animals falling into the gaps.

Let's see, what else...If you don't smell me coming, you can usually at least hear me. I grunt, I groan, and the things that come out of my mouth that aren't gutteral muffles fall under the following general categories:

--I am gross.
--I am hungry.
--I have to pee again.
--I have to do this for how many more months?!
--Would you be so kind as to help me attain a standing position?

But oh my god, you guys, I am having the time of my life. I can't wait to tell you all about it tomorrow.

p.s. (Or is this an update to an Update?) I just remembered a few other annoying things:

1. For several months now I have been propelling myself through space like a speed skater. What I mean is that when I walk, I swing one arm behind me for momentum. Not at all silly looking!

2. Although I'm still carrying super low, things are starting to move up and get a little crowded in my thorax (thoraxic?) area. Sometime when I bend forward my stomach sends up a little shotglass of stomach acid. Par-tay!

wrote Leah at 12:45 PM | Comments (13)

August 25, 2008

Celebrate

Simon and I don't have a proper anniversary. Our relationship began in what some might call an "unusual" way (okay, more like a tale of Shakespearean proportions), and so there are several times during the year that we kinda sorta half-assedly mark as our Couplehood Milestones. There's the first time we actually met--March of 2002 (which I don't actually remember)--and the second time we met--March 2003 (which I totally remember because I was completely charmed)--and then December 2003 (officially smitten, even though I was newly engaged and he was several years married)--and March 2004 (begin COLOSSAL crush)--and then all the dates that go along with your usual song and dance: broken engagement, yadda yadda, divorce, blah blah, heartbreak and drama and rending of garments and then bliss at last, albeit complicated bliss...you know how it is.

I finally announced him on the blog in September of 2005--three years ago, my god--and even though it would make more sense to reflect on this in a couple of weeks, on the actual anniversary of that post, I'm pretty much over any attachment to having an official Day on Which to Celebrate Our Love, and so here I am, celebrating him, celebrating us, today, because why the hell not? Every day's a fine day for love. (And bacon. And lemon sorbet. And sugary cereal.)

Although now that I've vamped for two paragraphs, I'm not quite sure what it is I want to say. What prompted this train of thought in the first place was that this weekend Simon had to drop off and then pick up something Petaluma that would keep him out of the house all day Saturday, from about 1 to 10 p.m. (with a big stretch of nothingness in between), and I had the option of tagging along or staying home alone to tackle some of the dozens of house chores that I've been fixating on for weeks. The smart choice was to stay home and work, but hey, we're not exactly known for our smart choices when it comes to each other, and in fact those not-smart choices are indeed the very things that have gotten us to this point at all--we're the poster children for making bad decisions, he and I--and so it was that I threw responsibility aside and decided to tag along for the day, not because I could be of any help or because it made sense or was "smart" but because I couldn't stand the thought of him being away so long. Going to work for eightish hours a day is one thing, but staying home on a Saturday for nine hours all alone when I could be enjoying his company? No contest. Maybe it's codependence, but maybe it's also just three-plus-year-old goofy-ass love. In short, merely the thought of him being away all day made me miss him, so I let that be my guide, and thus passed our relatively unproductive Saturday, spent not completing tasks and to-do lists but wasting time and holding hands.

From the get go he was clear about not pressuring me one way or another, but when we finally got home late Saturday night, he confessed, "I'm really glad you came along. I love spending time with you." So that's really what I wanted to say. I love spending time with you too, babe. I always keep it in my back pocket that I never in a million billion trillion years thought we'd make it to this point and I should count my lucky stars every day for the opportunity, and I do. But even without all that drama and history, I'm still just knocked off my feet by how much I love being around you every chance I get. That sparkle you have in these photographs: you've still got it. And I still feel a spark when I look at them. You are a handsome devil, yessiree. In all of these ways and a million billion trillion others, every day is an anniversary and a reason to celebrate. Just keep the pink champagne on ice for another few months so I can share it with you, eh?

wrote Leah at 03:41 PM | Comments (17)

August 21, 2008

Making Room

So...ah...how do I say this? We...ah...put together the crib Monday night.

Why is that embarrassing? Why does it feel so weird to admit? Why does this feel like a confession? Why is the best word I can come up with to describe the process of setting up an unborn baby's room "presumptous"?

I guess deep down (or maybe not so deep), it still seems odd and perhaps a bit foolish of me to assume we're actually going to get a baby out of this whole thing. Honestly, rationally, I really really really believe we are, but I guess it just still seems so...early? No, that's not it. Self-indulgent? No, not that either. That it feels like we're "playing house" when we're really just kids ourselves? Maybe a little. Or that I've thought about, pictured, fantasized, fetishized these milestones for so long that I can't actually believe they're happening, to me, right now, for reals? Yes, that's it exactly.

I mean, holy cow, we have a CRIB. In our HOUSE. What's up with that?!


Simon needed a martini to get him through the transition. I recovered the next day with a Filet o' Fish. We all have our crutches.

Maybe the Jews have it right and our living space should stay baby-stuff-free until there's an actual baby here. If nothing else, it would keep our living room from looking like this, except it's now three times as bad, it being two months since that photo was taken and hence two months during which all that crap those essentials have frequently and lustily engaged in hot, plastic orgies without condoms, a side-effect of which is the crap multiplied all by itself, I swear. Well, that plus all the shopping we've done because ohmygodlookatthelittlehatwithears and it'sahoodedtowelembroideredwithpirateducks!PIRATE DUCKS! MUST! HAVE!

Not that all that stuff has been sitting in our living room and ew, reproducing for two months, oh no. We'd shoved it all into the tiny front office, where, all stacked on top of itself and hidden behind closed doors, it didn't occur to us that we'd have a space problem later on. Later on being now.

Over the course of several days this week, we've moved the library from the sunroom to the front office so we could move the nursery into the sunroom, which meant we had to move all the baby stuff into the living room before we could set it up in the nursery (got all that?) except, oops, the nursery is also tiny (about 6x9 feet), which means it fits exactly one crib, one tiny changing table, one orange velvet settee, and eventually one small human boychild. There is no room for the bouncer and the rocker and the Boppy and the bath seat and the bath mat and the highchair and the stroller and the carseat and the Ergo and the books and ALL the clothes and ALLLL the blankets...And we don't even have any monstrous plastic toys to contend with yet.

I know that most of this stuff will be spread throughout the house when it's actually in use, but until then I'm just not sure what to do with it all. It seems wrong to let it clutter up my pweshus nursery nest, although that's certainly a better alternative (or at least less weird) to storing the bath seat in the bathtub and the Boppy on the rocking chair and the carseat in the car and the stroller in the trunk and the cosleeper in the bed and the highchair at the kitchen table for the next four months. Right?

Speaking of the highchair, we couldn't resist setting it up for just a few hours (okay, a few days) merely to confirm how bitchin' it looks in the kitchen. (It matches perfectly while clean and not covered in pureed whatever, which is awesome because that's the main reason we got it. No price comparisons, no safety research, no what-kind-of-highchair-did-Christina-Aguilera-get; we just thought it would look cool in our house and yeah, it totally does.) (Also, it was $35! Suck it, Graco!)

Simon added some props for realism. Click to see the notes on Flickr.


I think we're ready!

wrote Leah at 04:43 PM | Comments (17)

August 19, 2008

Gearing Up

Our big weekend outing was a trip to a rightly named "baby superstore" to get an Ergo carrier because I had a $15 coupon, and whaddya know we ended up coming home with that plus a highchair, a carseat, a changing pad, some glass bottles and extra nipples, the silliest chapeau ever (Simon calls it "Fauntleresque"), a great idea for another (less-humiliating) hat that I can handcraft on the cheap, and a handful of used books, although those weren't from the baby superduperstore but from the smelliest used bookshop I have had the displeasure of spending ten minutes in (and that was even before the owner's friend showed up with his wretched burrito and made me want to hurl and then also burn down the place he'd bought it from).

After that we went to a real brick-and-mortar JCPenney to exchange some things from my Linden Street promotion, which you can read about as soon as I've had a chance to rub my naked body all over our purchases. (Towels and sheets, people. TOWELS AND SHEETS.)

And then we went to the mall because it was right there and we were starving and hey, it was A Mall, which, for two kids raised in suburbia, is always a little like going home and being fourteen again, although we were so much more mature and well-mannered and better dressed than kids these days, don't you agree?

But the best purchase of the weekend, aside from the cheesy chicken quesedilla we shared (I think I've entered the Everything Tastes REALLY Good, Can I Have Seconds and Thirds and Fourths, Please? phase of pregnancy) was the Ergo, which is stylish and cool and the perfect solution for all our hands-free babywearing needs. Or, you know, something fun for the cats. You can see we didn't hesitate to try out on the first one we could catch:


And get this: they LOVED it. Both of them. I carted Linus around for a good ten minutes, purring his little ears off, and then Simon, against my warnings that she would not like it one bit, no siree, hefted Eve into it and voila another purring cat content to play baby surrogate for just a few months longer. I'm only half kidding in the video below when I say that I don't want a baby anymore, this one is fine, and besides, he's (usually) self-cleaning.



Here's one of Simon and Eve. (Apparently "going to market" is something I plan to do with my child a lot. Not sure what that's about, as I've been going to the "grocery store" my entire life thus far.)



In other, more disturbing baby news, I spent way too much time at makemebabies.com (I just love the imperative nature of the site name), and lordy did it churn out a real looker on the first go:

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GAH.

I emailed it to Simon with the note "We made a baby douche!" and he replied with "I'd sooner cut my kid in half than let someone style his hair like that." Happily, the results got better, although also...curlier, which, wow, I don't have a clue how to deal with curly hair.

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I guess the answer is to always make him wear a hat.

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Or be amphibious.

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wrote Leah at 10:14 AM | Comments (25)