Thursday, March 31, 2011

Takes "kids are expensive" to a whole new level

You know how when a kid is whining sometimes you feel like your head is going to explode?  My body apparently decided grinding my teeth is a good way to release that stress.  I only grind my teeth when Meg whines.  Not at night or during other stressful situations.  Obviously, when I notice I'm grinding my teeth I try to stop, but it still happens too much.  I found out today I have a cracked tooth.  I need a crown ASAP before the root cracks, causing me to need a root canal.  My dentist says I probably cracked the tooth by grinding my teeth.  He also said if I continue to do it I'll probably crack more teeth.  At $500 per crown, that whining could get REALLY expensive...

Interestingly, my mom also ground her teeth when my sisters and I were little.  She ended up with TMJ.  She tried for years to stop grinding her teeth, but nothing ever worked.  It eventually went away when we got older and didn't whine as much.  I've got too many years left before my kids are old enough for that!

P.S.  When my tooth cracked the filling in it popped out, so now it's REALLY sensitive, especially to sweets.  I've been avoiding sugar completely, which is pretty amazing considering I've been practically mainlining Thin Mints for weeks now.  Unfortunately, tomorrow morning I have my glucose test.  The thought of drinking pure sugar almost makes me cry.  I can't imagine how much its going to hurt.

Wednesday, March 30, 2011

I just keep getting pregnant-er

I’m wearing a maternity top today that emphasizes the belly and it caused me to double take as I walked by a mirror this morning. I look PREGNANT. Practically-ready-to-give-birth pregnant. Out of curiosity, I compared it to the belly shots from my first pregnancy and determined I look about the same now (6 months prego) as I did when 8 months pregnant last time (in the same shirt). If not a little bigger. Plus, I seem to grow all day, so by evening, it looks like I’m sporting the same belly I had when I waddled into labor & delivery at 39 weeks pregnant. It’s not that this is surprising or anything – I know this is totally normal second-pregnancy territory – but it still freaks me out. When did I get so hugely pregnant? How enormous will I be at 9 months? Will I even be able to carry this belly around for three more months? Thankfully, it doesn’t quite yet feel like I’m 9 months pregnant – I don’t have that feeling like I’m all baby – but you can see arms and legs randomly poking out of my midsection.

In other not-surprising news, it seems the bigger my belly gets, the smaller my brain gets. I’ve caught myself absentmindedly putting my hand inside my shirt and scratching my boobs, which are rather itchy, THREE TIMES today while sitting across the table from a male co-worker. Whom I met for the first time this morning. Plus, mid-afternoon someone called from the main office (we were at a client’s) asking for “Ryan,” when all day I thought I was working with a “Justin.” Turns out I was wrong. I spent the rest of the afternoon not getting much done because I was concentrating on “don’t scratch boobs” and “I thought his name was Ryan, but it’s actually Justin, no wait, it’s the other way around, isn’t it?” I sincerely hope none of the other new people ask him about me because I can’t imagine he’s going to describe me as an awesome co-worker. Oops.

Monday, March 28, 2011

Being apart and coming home again

Whenever Thomas or I go out of town for work, it’s hard to adjust to being together again. The longer we’re apart the harder it is (duh). We usually have at least one fight while transitioning back to being together. It was hardest before Meg was born, when I traveled a lot more and for whole work-weeks at a time. I work part-time now, so I’m rarely gone more than 3 days and, really, rarely gone at ALL. Thomas doesn’t travel much for his job either, and when he does its usually just a couple days. It’s more bumpy now than truly rough when we’re together again, because we haven’t really been gone that long.

But, way back when, I remember HATING coming home from business trips. It may stink to leave home, but at least while you’re gone you get to eat takeout all the time (and not pay for it!), spend your entire evening relaxing (no chores!) while watching whatever you want on TV, and having a (usually) king size bed ALL TO YOURSELF (which, may just appeal to ME, as my husband says he doesn’t like sleeping alone). Meanwhile, your significant other has spent the time you were away doing ALL the chores and watching your shows take up more and more space on the DVR. So, while it’s obviously nice to be home, you think the weekend should be spent ordering takeout and catching up on the DVR and your spouse is waiting for you to get off your butt and pitch in around the house.

(I’m thinking mainly of our pre-kid days here, because if you have kids, the stayed-home spouse probably just wants a break from them and the traveling spouse is usually more than happy to oblige, since he/she missed the kid(s) so much. Maybe that’s why it’s easier now.)

I just can’t imagine having a spouse who always travels for work or, even more unfathomable, a spouse who is in the military. Do you or your spouse travel for business a lot? What’s it like for you?

Sunday, March 27, 2011

I hate food

Despite the fact our fridge looks like this:
(this is where the picture of my fridge completely stuffed full of food that I've uploaded and added to the post four times would go IF BLOGGER WOULD STOP SUCKING FOR ONE SECOND)
And the counter looks like this:

(another picture of a counterfull of food)

(the cupboards above that are ALSO full)

There was not one single thing in the house my stomach would deign to accept for dinner. Not that it physically rejected dinner, it just told me in no uncertain terms that if I tried to eat any of those options it wouldn’t hesitate to do so. I’m still not enjoying any foods except sugar. I haven’t thrown up in weeks (maybe a couple months?), but I still fight back nausea every single time I eat anything not containing chocolate. At every meal, I force myself to eat what I deem to be enough to not starve the baby, then quit.

Tonight, I finally decided on this for dinner:
(picture of box of Weight Watchers French Vanilla calcium fortified drink mix)
I’ve never done Weight Watchers (though I’m thinking about starting it post-baby), but my sister is on it and gave me these a few months ago. She was all like: “I know you’re four months pregnant, but you seem to be putting on a lot of weight and I think you might want to slow down a little. Have you considered Weight Watchers?”

Just kidding.

She bought the mix, then didn’t like it, so she figured since I was nauseous all the time, something high in calcium and vitamins that I could drink might be a good way of bypassing food. She was right and I love her. Also, I was not one bit offended to be given the box, even though it did say Weight Watchers. Since liquids are pretty much the only thing I can eat/drink without gagging, I think I need one of those Vita-Mix things, so I can puree all of my meals.  Anyone have one they tried, didn't like, and want to give to me?

Friday, March 25, 2011

Back to December

I’ve mentioned before I associate songs that were very popular during times I had morning sickness with nausea. I STILL can’t hear Pink’s “So What” without vividly recalling a business trip I took when two months pregnant with Meg. Not only was “So What” on all radio stations all the time, but the local radio station there was having some sort of contest once an hour where you had to call in every time they played it. We heard it 10 times in one day. That week was miserable – stuck in a small town with only a DINER to eat at, a diner that had a grease smell so overpowering just walking through the door often made me throw up.

I think the only time I’ve been more miserable in my life is the drive home from the Blathering last fall. I spent the whole trip trying not to throw up AND trying not to fall asleep at the wheel, thanks to a half a Unisom I’d taken that morning. I was listening to Taylor Swift’s Speak Now CD and every song on that CD is now dead to me (except “Mine,” which came out before I got sick, so I was able to fall in love with it without any bad associations). “Back to December” has become the official morning sickness song of this pregnancy since it was (and still is) on the radio ALL THE TIME. I still come thisclose to puking every time I hear it. But I can’t avoid it because it’s played on every station. Please, please, please stop playing that song. Please.

You won’t believe it, but “So What” just came on the radio. Seriously.

Sunday, March 20, 2011

Books!

As I’ve mentioned before, I love to read archives because I like to get to know someone before adding them to my feed reader.  This list has shown up in the archives of most of the blogs I’ve read and it’s never interested me that much, but today I suddenly found it fascinating. I especially like it when people put in a lot of comments about the books they’ve read on the list.


If you’ve done this before, please link to your post (from forever ago, I’m sure) in the comments.


Supposedly, the average American has only read six of the following hundred:

Key
1) Bold the books you have already read
2) Italicize the books you intend to read


1) Pride and Prejudice by Jane Austen (I'm currently reading this.  As soon as I finish it, I’ll be sure to watch the Colin Firth movie/miniseries/whatever it is. I'm sure you're shocked I’ve never seen it.)

2) The Lord of the Rings by J. R. R. Tolkien (My husband loves the movies and I hate them. I saw the first two in theaters and spent the whole time counting the minutes until they’d be over.  If you love the books/movies, can we still be friends?)

3) Jane Eyre by Charlotte Bronte

4) Harry Potter series by J. K. Rowling (love! I don’t know how many times I’ve read them, but it’s a lot!)

5) To Kill a Mockingbird by Harper Lee (HATED. I thought this book was terrible, and so was the old movie. But I was forced to read it my freshman year of high school and then watched the movie in class, so perhaps I wouldn’t hate it so much now? If you love it, feel free to try to talk me into re-reading.)

6) The Bible (I’ve even read Leviticus – that’s the long rules-filled one, right?)

7) Wuthering Heights by Emily Bronte

8) Nineteen Eighty Four by George Orwell

9) His Dark Materials by Philip Pullman

10) Great Expectations by Charles Dickens

11) Little Women by Louisa May Alcott (My mom gave me her old copy when I was 8? 10? and I love it so much.)

12) Tess of the D'Urbervilles by Thomas Hardy

13) Catch 22 by Joseph Heller

14) Complete Works of Shakespeare (Complete works? Seriously? That’s a lot.)

15) Rebecca by Daphne Du Maurier (Gorgeous book)

16) The Hobbit by J. R. R. Tolkien (BORING. This book is the reason I didn’t read the LOTR trilogy, which may be the reason I didn’t like the movies.  But I was pretty young - middle school, maybe? -, so maybe I should try again?)

17) Birdsong by Sebastian Faulks

18) Catcher in the Rye by JD Salinger (Horrible, horrible book. It was assigned for some English class I took in high school. If I remember correctly there is nothing in this book except sex and swearing. At least it’s really short.)

19) The Time Traveler's Wife by Audrey Niffenegger (I liked the movie.)

20) Middlemarch by George Eliot

21) Gone With The Wind by Margaret Mitchell (I’ve always intended to read this.)

22) The Great Gatsby by F. Scott Fitzgerald

23) Bleak House by Charles Dickens

24) War and Peace by Leo Tolstoy (This would probably take me a YEAR to read.)

25) The Hitchhiker's Guide to the Galaxy by Douglas Adams

26) Brideshead Revisited by Evelyn Waugh

27) Crime and Punishment by Fyodor Dostoyevsky (Ditto to War and Peace. Or am I getting them confused and only one of them is insanely long?)

28) Grapes of Wrath by John Steinbeck (High school English.  We also had to do an art project based on the book - how lame is that?)

29) Alice in Wonderland by Lewis Carroll (Did you ever see some made-for-TV movie or miniseries called Alice in Wonderland that had a long part (or what seemed long) about the Jabberwocky in it? It scared the CRAP out of me and my sisters.) (Not to be confused with the Disney Channel series that was pure fluff.)

30) The Wind in the Willows by Kenneth Grahame (I love this book, mainly because there was some TV show or miniseries or something based on it that was wonderful. (We didn’t have cable growing up, so we saw a lot of PBS-type stuff))

31) Anna Karenina by Leo Tolstoy (WONDERFUL book, but takes a while to get into. I don’t think I would have stuck with it if it wasn’t assigned reading and I’m SO GLAD I had to.)

32) David Copperfield by Charles Dickens

33) Chronicles of Narnia by CS Lewis

34) Emma by Jane Austen

35) Persuasion by Jane Austen

36) The Lion, The Witch and The Wardrobe by CS Lewis (I really should read the rest of the Chronicles of Narnia, I know)

37) The Kite Runner by Khaled Hosseini

38) Captain Corelli's Mandolin by Louis De Bernieres

39) Memories of a Geisha by Arthur Golden

40) Winnie the Pooh by AA Milne

41) Animal Farm by George Orwell

42) The Da Vinci Code by Dan Brown

43) One Hundred Years of Solitude, Gabriel Garcia Marquez

44) A Prayer for Owen Meaney by John Irving

45) The Woman in White by Wilkie Collins

46) Anne of Green Gables by LM Montgomery (What teenage girl didn’t read these books? I own the whole series.)

47) Far From The Madding Crowd by Thomas Hardy

48) The Handmaid's Tale by Margaret Atwood (I just read this last week and I'm still processing.  I'm not sure how I feel about it.)

49) Lord of the Flies by William Golding

50) Atonement by Ian McEwan

51) Life of Pi by Yann Martel

52) Dune by Frank Herbert

53) Cold Comfort Farm by Stella Gibbons

54) Sense and Sensibility by Jane Austen (Yes, I haven’t read a single Jane Austen book. I'm working on it.)

55) A Suitable Boy by Vikram Seth (Vikram!  This just makes me think of Friends)

56) The Shadow of the Wind by Carlos Ruiz Zafon

57) A Tale Of Two Cities by Charles Dickens

58) Brave New World by Aldous Huxley

59) The Curious Incident of the Dog in the Night-time by Mark Haddon

60) Love In The Time Of Cholera by Gabriel Garcia Marquez

61) Of Mice and Men by John Steinbeck

62) Lolita by Vladimir Nabokov

63) The Secret History by Donna Tartt

64) The Lovely Bones by Alice Sebold (I read half of the first chapter and instantly tried to wipe it from my mind. I can’t read about things like this, I just can’t. I KNEW it would give me terrible nightmares and I just couldn’t go on.)

65) Count of Monte Cristo by Alexandre Dumas

66) On The Road by Jack Kerouac

67) Jude the Obscure by Thomas Hardy

68) Bridget Jones's Diary by Helen Fielding

69) Midnight's Children by Salman Rushdie

70) Moby Dick by Herman Melville

71) Oliver Twist by Charles Dickens

72) Dracula by Bram Stoker

73) The Secret Garden by Frances Hodgson Burnett (Also a book my mom gave me her old copy of. I loved it.)

74) Notes From A Small Island by Bill Bryson (I’ve read a few Bill Bryson books, but so long ago I can’t remember which ones. I remember I liked them!)

75) Ulysses by James Joyce

76) The Bell Jar by Sylvia Plath

77) Swallows and Amazons by Arthur Ransome

78) Germinal by Emile Zola

79) Vanity Fair by William Makepeace Thackeray

80) Possession by AS Byatt

81) A Christmas Carol by Charles Dickens (I don’t think I’ve ever read the book, but I’m fairly certain I read parts of it in an English class. It could have been the whole thing, I don’t really remember.)

82) Cloud Atlas by David Mitchell

83) The Color Purple by Alice Walker

84) The Remains of the Day by Kazuo Ishiguro

85) Madame Bovary by Gustave Flaubert

86) A Fine Balance by Rohinton Mistry

87) Charlotte's Web by EB White

88) The Five People You Meet In Heaven by Mitch Albom (At least Eat Pray Love isn’t on the list. I have no reason to group those books together, other than I think of them both as “fad” books. I haven’t read either of them. Still, I intend to read them to see what the fuss is about.)

89) Adventures of Sherlock Holmes by Sir Arthur Conan Doyle (Snoozefest. Could barely get through it, but I finished the whole thing because I thought it must get more interesting. It didn’t.)

90) The Faraway Tree Collection by Enid Blyton

91) Heart of Darkness by Joseph Conrad

92) The Little Prince by Antoine De Saint-Exupery

93) The Wasp Factory by Iain Banks

94) Watership Down by Richard Adams (This is about animals, right? Similar to the Redwall books? I loved those books.)

95) A Confederacy of Dunces by John Kennedy Toole

96) A Town Like Alice by Nevil Shute

97) The Three Musketeers - Alexandre Dumas

98) Hamlet by William Shakespeare (I've read parts of it.)

99) Charlie and the Chocolate Factory by Roald Dahl (I believe I read every book ever written by Roald Dahl when I was in the 4th grade. I do think this one is the best, but James and the Giant Peach is great, too.)

100) Les Miserables by Victor Hugo (I own this book and I’ve seen the broadway show twice (not actually ON Broadway, though – the traveling show))

Thursday, March 17, 2011

Are you wearing green today?

There hasn’t been a St. Patrick’s Day I can remember when I didn’t wear green. Not because I’m insanely proud of my Irish roots (I’m not even really Irish – my ancestors came from Northern Ireland, so they were actually British), but because I don’t want to get pinched. I learned very young if you didn’t wear green on St. Patrick’s day EVERY PERSON YOU SEE ALL DAY will pinch you. Dramatic much? But I seriously believed that and I think every other kid in my class did, too. Even if every person you see wasn’t going to pinch you, almost every classmate would. My mom forgot to put me in green once when I was too little to really know which day was St. Patrick’s day (probably kindergarten?) and I got pinched. I’m 26 and I still feel panicky at the thought of forgetting St. Patrick’s day and ending up not wearing green. I pick out my outfit at least a week in advance (by which I mean I go through my closet looking for something, anything, green, because there’s pretty much none in there), then every morning all week when I wake up I make sure I’m 100% positive this isn’t the day before I let myself leave the house not wearing green. The week is actually stressful for me because I’m scared of somehow messing it up.

As I was composing this post in my head, the behavior of the would-be pinchers – who got REALLY excited when St. Patrick’s day was coming, because they might get the chance to pinch someone and claim they shouldn’t get in trouble – started to sound a lot like bullying, but it wasn’t really like that. Nobody was going to corner you at recess, hold you down, and pinch you until you started crying. It wasn’t even really the thought of the pinching itself that bothered me, it was the thought of being singled out as not fitting in over and over again all day long.

I understand pinching would be considered bullying today and might even get you sent home if the school has a zero tolerance policy. I’m not against that, per se. Kids shouldn’t be pinching other kids based on what they’re wearing ANY day of the year. It’s just when I was young I feel like it was different.

I went to a small school (graduating class of 69 people) and everybody knew everybody. Everybody was friendly with everybody. We weren’t all friends in the sense we’d go over to eachother’s houses after school, but even when we were in high school and there were groups/cliques, people weren’t really mean to eachother (except for the kind of relentless teasing people would dish out to someone they had a crush on).

I think we all kind of felt like siblings. We had the smallest class (the average class size was 100) and almost all of us were together from kindergarten all the way to graduation. My sisters both graduated with well over 100 people (around 120, I think) and they would tell you my class was very different from theirs. For whatever reason, we had almost no kids who moved in or out, and when you’ve known someone since you were both five or six you develop camaraderie and it’s easier to be nice to them. Or, at the very least, easier to see them as a real person with feelings.

Wow, this post about St. Patrick’s day went in a whole different direction, didn’t it?

Wednesday, March 16, 2011

Allergies?

I’m not the biggest fan of one of the MOPS nursery workers. Any hint of a runny nose and she won’t let the child in the room. Even if it’s the middle of winter and we’ve just come in from the cold. I thought everyone’s nose ran when out in the cold. Is it just me (and my daughter)? Every time Meg even steps outside the door for a few seconds I have to wipe her nose. She doesn’t have a cold. She’s not sick. She just has a very runny nose (as do I). But every single meeting, I’d have to “discuss” her nose with the nursery and practically scream SHE’S NOT SICK. Believe, me when she WAS sick, I didn’t bring her. I get that a cold could be RSV and that there are babies in the nursery. I agree that even if it’s just a cold, it’s not nice to pass it on. So I don’t. But sometimes a runny nose is just runny because it’s cold out, right?

Well…maybe not. The nursery lady kept insisting that if it wasn’t a cold, it must be allergies. I insisted NO, she didn’t have a cold and she didn’t have allergies. Due to her abrasive attitude, I didn’t really consider her suggestion. But after a few months, I did have to acknowledge Meg always has a runny nose. I swear, it’s not always a cold. I thought all kids had perpetually runny noses. But I suppose it could be the fact she sleeps with 15 stuffed animals, several of which were mine when I was little and none of which have ever been washed. It’s likely she sleeps with a LOT of dust mites and perhaps that bothers her nose. Although I don’t know that I’d call it an allergy – probably more of an irritant.

I’ve become more convinced it must be environmental this week, as I’ve noticed my own nose has been behaving similarly. I don’t have a cold – whatever it is is completely confined to my nose –and I think the arrival of spring weather this very week has something to do with it. My mom has hay fever and I’ve always had a touch of it. Some years I’m miserable (although not as miserable as her) and some years I have no more than a runny nose. If the symptoms are bad enough to take Claritin, I do and it helps. I was even prescribed Flonase once, which smells awful but really works. Since I’m pretty sure what I’m dealing with right now is mild hay fever (I suppose it will probably get worse as spring progresses), I am fairly convinced Meg does have a mild allergy to something. Abrasive lady was apparently right.

So, do I take the stuffed animals away? Would you rather have a runny nose all the time or be banned from sleeping with your loveys? I know Meg would say, without a doubt, RUNNY NOSE. It really doesn’t seem to bother her much and she loooooooooves her animals. She may refuse to sleep at all if we take them out of the crib. But should I do it anyway? Will prolonged exposure make it worse or help her build up a resistance?

We do rotate her very favorite animal (kitty) and store the extras in the freezer, which is supposed to kill dust mites and some germs. Do I just make roast and/or ribs every day for a month to clean out the deep freeze so I can fill it with stuffed animals?



P.S. You want to know the only other annoying thing about the arrival of spring? Japanese beetles (those little ladybug-looking things) EVERYWHERE. I am lucky enough to sit by a window at work (it’s awesome), but the window isn’t sealed very well, so it’s freezing in the winter and swimming with Japanese beetles in the spring. I swear I kill one at least every 10 minutes. They’re driving me craaaaaazy.

Tuesday, March 15, 2011

I heart DST...this year only

Good morning!

I think this is the first year in my life I’ve enjoyed Spring Forward DST. Ironically, I feel so much more rested this week than I do every other week. I'm practically chipper.  Instead of losing an hour of sleep, we just skipped an hour of awake time and it seems my body loves 23 hour days (while pregnant, at least). Our church made it “We Say When Sunday,” as in, they decided the time change would happen at noon (after church) instead of 2 a.m. It was GREAT. We got up at our normal time (which was technically an hour late). After church we had my family over for a St. Patrick’s Day celebration. Thomas smoked a corned beef brisket and made boiled potatoes and cabbage. (I made…iced tea. With an iced tea maker. It was tough.) Anyway, having lunch at our house was perfect, because my family played with Meg for two hours and wore her out enough she took her nap at the new 2:00 instead of the old 2:00 and, just like that, we were on the new DST schedule! I still can’t believe it was that easy. Since this was my last time change with only one child, I’m grateful it went so well. I probably won’t have a time change that easy for years and years…

Monday, March 14, 2011

Our poor children will never have "cool" stuff

Thomas and I are both cheapskates. We don’t like to spend money and agonize over spending more than $50 on anything. Even (or maybe especially) if the money was a gift. I never spent all of my birthday money (my birthday was in September) and I haven’t spent ANY of my Christmas money (my family tends to give money for special occasions instead of gifts and I LOVE that.

My idea of a splurge is going to Half Price Books and browsing the 50 cent paperbacks, spending like three dollars on books. Heck, I’ll only go to the library if I do it on my way home from work, because I don’t want to spend the gas money (or time) to make a special trip. (I just looked it up and the library is 6 miles from my house. Not exactly bank-breaking.) I never buy new books, unless I’m desperate to read something the library doesn’t have. If they DO have it I just get on the waiting list, even if its months long.

I just can’t spend money. Because once you spend it, it’s gone. What if what you buy doesn’t live up to your expectations? What if you come across something else you want even more than what you already bought? The what ifs drive me crazy. They even go as far as not wanting to buy something because a new improved version of it is going to come out someday and when that day comes, I might regret not just waiting. I’ve wanted an iPad ever since they first came out. But, Thomas and I both thought it made sense to wait for iPad 2, because the second generation of Apple products usually has several bells and whistles the first generation doesn’t have. It really doesn’t make that much sense, because I’ve almost never actually regretted buying anything like that (like past iPods or my smartphone).

I almost spent some Christmas money on a Kindle or Nook – I’d actually decided to get one and the only decision left was which one. But I just couldn’t decide. Now I have neither. But it doesn’t matter, because the iPad 2's have finally come out. I have more than enough money to cover it, which means if I’m disappointed – unlikely – I can go buy something else. (If the something else is a lot cheaper.) Of course, they went on sale Friday and I haven’t yet brought myself to actually pay for one. But I’m really going to, I swear!

Monday, March 7, 2011

A post with too many references to my butt

1. I’ve become addicted to Freecycling. Yesterday I posted 12 partially used bottles of lotion/body spray/random bath products. I had eleven responses. People are falling over each other to claim my years-old lotion. A radio-controlled tarantula (given to Thomas as a gag gift because he’s scared of spiders) had people begging me to give it to them. At this point I’m so addicted to the “please pick me!” emails, I keep looking around for stuff I can list. Next up, a bunch of old bottles of nail polish! How many responses do you think I’ll get?

2. Either the dryer shrunk my maternity pants or I gained at least 10 pounds since last Wednesday. My pants are really tight, to the point I’ll probably have to go buy new ones this week and its ticking me off. Sadly, I’m almost certain I actually DID gain 10 pounds and all that stuff about how you should buy your pre-pregnancy size because only the belly grows is CRAP. My thighs have expanded a LOT in both pregnancies. They have stretch marks. I also have stretch marks on my behind from my first pregnancy. I’m sure more are forthcoming. Since I started this pregnancy 20 pounds heavier than I started the last one, I did expect to buy new pants, but I was hoping to get more than a couple weeks out of the old ones.

3. A headline just popped up on my news-thingy saying “Sheen Fired from ‘Two and a Half Men’” and I read it as “Shots fired at Two and a Half Men.” For a second, I honestly thought Charlie Sheen had finally gone all the way crazy and shot up the (hopefully empty) set. And I believed it. When I re-read the headline correctly I was like…that’s it? No shots? No new quotes? Just fired? Totally not breaking news, people.

4. In other lovely pregnancy news, I am rapidly becoming crippled. My lower back and, um, areas lower than that, are KILLING ME. Walking is torture. I can’t sleep. So, bonus, today I had to take a new employee on a tour of our office and surrounding buildings! We walked for an hour and I could barely hobble back to my desk by the time the tour was over.

5. Relatedly, where exactly is the sciatic area? I’ve gathered its somewhere in the butt region, but that knowledge came from Friends, so it may not be entirely accurate. I’d like to say something a little more nuanced than “my butt hurts,” but if I’m going to turn myself into an 80-year-old by saying “my sciatica is flaring” I’d like to be sure that’s actually what’s happening.

Saturday, March 5, 2011

Pregnancy cravings are nothing to laugh at

Lately I’ve been crying all the time for basically no reason.  There have been little triggers here and there that get me started, but once I start, I don’t stop. 
For instance, earlier someone mentioned something about cake batter ice cream AND something about how she didn’t like sprinkles, which led me to instantly NEED a Birthday Cake Remix from Cold Stone (cake batter ice cream with a brownie, sprinkes, and chocolate sauce mixed in).  I needed it RIGHT THAT VERY SECOND and, no, I was not going to get it myself.  My husband HAD to go get it and when he suggested we go out for ice cream after dinner instead of right that second I burst into tears and didn’t stop crying for 45 minutes.  But, because I felt so pathetic crying over ice cream, I left the room first so he wouldn’t KNOW I was crying over ice cream, which means even though I was VERY VERY upset, he still didn’t get me the ice cream.  It’s been five hours at this point and I’m still upset.
I’ve spent those five hours crying over various things, like the fact my husband and child want to see with me and won’t, for the love of God, leave me alone.  I just want to cry in peace!  Also, my sister sent an email asking if various dates would work to throw me a baby shower and I cried for a good half hour about that, because it’s just so NICE.  She’s been testing recipes for all sorts of goodies and excitedly planning a shower for my SECOND baby.  Then, Thomas wanted to know what meals I feel like eating next week so he could do all the grocery shopping, but how could he even ask that when he should have known perfectly well I can’t think about regular food because all I want is ICE CREAM?  Ice cream which he has NOT yet bought me.  Of course, I didn’t say this because, again, I don’t want to seem too pathetic, but I still couldn’t come up with a single meal I wanted to eat next week.
So he planned all of the meals himself, took Meg to the store, and did all of the grocery shopping.  He came home with Breyers Vanilla Caramel Brownie ice cream, which again made me cry.  Yes, Breyers is my absolute favorite buy-at-the-store ice cream and vanilla caramel brownie sounds divine, but grocery store ice cream is NOT GOING TO CUT IT.  I need Cold Stone and have I mentioned I haven’t yet gotten it?? 
I feel like a giant whiny brat.  My 21-month-old has acted more mature this afternoon.  I swear, I will never laugh the same way when pregnant women on sitcoms get cravings.  I always thought it was exaggerated, but I get it now, I totally get it.