Things to come

Mr. Adventure was watching a friend's four-month-old yesterday.  Every time he held the baby, Hamburglar would say, "No, me!" and try to climb in his lap.  We didn't know he knew the word "me."

Chumbercules had his 18 month check-up on Friday.  Dr. Soulpatch gave me the option of an early MMR vaccine, so we went for it.  And he received his regularly scheduled Hep A.  His next visit is at 2 and there are no shots involved at all!

I had to fill out development paperwork that asked questions like, "Can the child identify two or more body parts." And "Does the child have at least 8 words?" And, "Does the child try to hand objects to his/her reflection?"

Mr. Adventure was worried because he's the worrier, and because Chumby didn't have all the skills in each category. He had at least 5 out of 6 in all of them so whatever.  And the doc said he's doing great. He knows the names for almost his entire body. And he doesn't hand objects to his reflection because maybe he knows it's a reflection?

At 17 weeks pregnant, the crazy dreams have started. I've had two dreams about women I think are horrible mothers and in each dream, my car was stolen. And I had a weird dream last night about being able to see my belly move from baby movement, which was fine until Sean Connery (meaning the baby) pressed his/her face against my belly.  It looked kind of like this, if the head were smaller and there was an additional layer of skin draped across this whole head.

 Photo credit: gabrielchiang.com/

So, there's that. We find out what kind of junk baby number two is packing on Earth Day!

Other than that, Pregnant Chicken says the baby is the size of an iPhone this week. According to my Ultimate Guide to Faux Infant Cannibalism, Sean Connery is the size of an onion, a pear or a baked potato. If you feel like talking on your iPhone while making something delicious for week 17, this potato latke with caramelized pears recipe looks really good. It isn't rated and it looks like a lot of work, but if you love latkes as much as I do... I bet it's super good. So you should make it.  And mail me some. Or just bring them by my house.

And the Ugly Volvo has a new post up!  I love her. I kind of want to move to New Jersey, just so I can make her be my friend.

And I'm thinking about Easter. Particularly what I am going to put in the Easter eggs for my mom's group Easter potluck and party, what I'm going to put in Chumby's Easter basket, and whether or not we are going to color eggs. And, most importantly, should I traumatize wee little Hamburglar by making his sit on the Easter bunny's lap again?

All I know for sure is we are going to the hot springs again for Easter. 

And that's all.

First trip away from baby

I went to San Jose last week for work.  I was worried that Mr. Adventure and Chumbercules would miss me too much.  That bedtime wouldn't happen.  That Chumby would feel abandoned (I think I have not been home for bed time once in the last year and a half, until last week) and I worried that I would miss him way too much.

But, I want to go back.  I loved San Jose and sleeping in the middle of the bed and not being woken up at night.  Also, it rehydrated the weird, desert, lizard skin I've developed.  And Mr. Adventure and Hamburglar were great.  I talked to them both on the phone each day (I left Monday night and was back Thursday night).  One of my conversations with Chumby went like this:

Me: How are you?
Chumb: Yeah
Me: Did you have a good day?
Chumb: Yeah
Me: Are you and dad having fun?
Chumb: Yeah
Me: Is that all you can say?
Chumb: Cat

This, coming from the kid who calls our friend's cat a dog. 

Also, I forgot to update you all on how my visit to the birthing center went.  It was pretty terrible.  The midwife I was hoping to meet (and thought I was going to meet) wasn't there.  This is what I posted to my local mom group page, "Argh. I went to X Birth Center and met with Shaundra. I really want to find a place that isn't a hospital, where the midwife doesn't look stoned, where they don't burn nag champa... I spent my late teens and early twenties going to rainbow gatherings and I went to The Evergreen State College for my undergrad degree. I'm all hippied out. I have tons of time, but I'm just going to give birth in a parking lot or something. Boohoohoo, poor me, etc etc"

And, it turns out I'm not the only one who feels that way about Shaundra.  It was so over the top hippy.  Or, she was.   So, I guess we are hospital birthing again.  Or Mr. A is delivering the baby in a parking lot near the hospital.

Um... 15 and a half weeks pregnant and now I'm having the first trimester symptoms.  I've been super nauseated and have aversions to pretty much all food.  All I want to eat is smoked salmon and Captain Crunch.  With Crunchberries.

But seriously.  Everything sounds terrible.

That's all for now.

Slacking

Man!  I've been really slacking on the blog front, in case you guys didn't notice.

Hamburglar is learning all the new words in the world.  (He said Snake!  And he learned neck and chin last night, but chin is kind of hard to say.  And he sticks his tongue out all the way when he says elephant (and it sounds more like "ellfin")).

He's also still rocking the fluff mullet.

Mr. Adventure and I have both been sick with sinus infections and respiratory infections, but guess who isn't?!  The toddler who runs around the house while we take turns being awake and weakly crying out, "No please stop.  *cough cough* I'm dying".

The weather was nice last weekend, so we spent a lot of time at the park, because Chumbercules needed to burn off some energy and I needed to go somewhere where there was limited access to sharp objects.

We've recently hit the milestone where you can't leave anything anywhere, unless it's REALLY high up.  Because toddlers have hands and wants and needs and decent enough coordination and thought to plot to make their desires realities.

I was making dinner the other day and Chumby pushed one of the kitchen chairs over to the counter and climbed up on it to see what I was doing and steal pieces of cheese (I think he may be part mouse).  I turned my back to put something in the garbage or the sink and HE GRABBED THE KNIFE OFF THE KITCHEN COUNTER AND WAS WAVING IT AROUND!  He was really happy about it and having a good time.  I yelled something like, "WHATAREYOUDOINGOHMYGODGIVEMETHATKNIFEAAAAAAHHHHHH!"  and took the knife from him.

Um, lesson learned without bloodshed or a trip to the hospital.  I call that a success.

I'm thirteen weeks pregnant now and saw the midwife yesterday.  The heartbeat is 151, for those of you who like to predict gender based off those things.  Chumby was in the 140s the whole time.  But yeah, with being pregnant, sick and having a toddler, I feel like I'm dying.

I'm going to San Jose for work in a couple weeks.  It's just me and a coworker and I'm leaving Hamburglar and Mister Adventure home for three nights while I get paid to get a full 8+ hours of sleep every night in a three star hotel by the airport.  I'm so excited.  And fresh seafood.  And the Winchester Mystery Mansion.  And work stuff, of course.

I found this really rad book at the library called Do Chocolate Lovers Have Sweeter Babies. It's written by a scientific researcher or something and it's really good.  It talks about how gender is determined and how and why super thin ladies are more likely to have girls and how only 20% of the male population has gender specific sperm and it's hereditary and how millionaire men are 60% more likely to have sons....  If you like to know weird things and the reasons behind them, you should totally check it out.

Did you know that, at 13 weeks, your baby has fingerprints?  The Pregnant Chicken talks about it here.  And this is an older Ugly Volvo post (from the beginning of the month) but I think it's funny.

And I'm taking time off work tomorrow and Hamburglar and I are going on a hot date to get new tires on the car.  We are going downtown so we can wander to lots of fun places and visit our favorite bookstore and maybe get lunch before nap time.  Then I think it's purging and spring cleaning time and getting rid of everything and re-organizing bedrooms and whatnot.  I think we should move Chumby to his fancy race car bed that we found on the side of the road last year.  I just need to peel off the stickers and maybe find a new mattress.  Or maybe use his crib mattress and see how tall he is come September?

And that's all.

This cheating heart

I have a confession.

I have plans to be unfaithful to my midwife.

I saw her last week and, the more I think about it, the more the idea of a hospital birth is filling me with anxiety.

Long-time readers will recall that a hospital-based certified-nurse-midwife was mine and Mr. Adventure's compromise, so everyone felt comfortable, since there had been complications with the Little Miss's birth.  And the birth itself was fine, it was staying overnight in the hospital that sucked balls.

So, today, this afternoon, after work, Mr. Adventure, Hamburglar and I are going to check out a new-ish birthing center that was opened by a midwife that used to work with my midwife at a different hospital!  (Is that like sleeping with your husband's cousin?)

I'm pretty excited.  It looks perfect on paper.  They include a doula as part of the service, they do the newborn exam right there (none of that pesky, waiting for a pediatrician to release your babe from the hospital) and they come to your house 24-48 hours after the birth to check on you, so you don't have to put on pants or load a million babies into your car (in case you have a baby/clown car).  The doula will come to your house while you're laboring if you like, or she will meet you at the birth center.  And they have yoga classes and birth classes and childcare classes, all right there!  I'm pretty excited.

Also, you come in for postpartum checks after 1 and 3 weeks, instead of just once after two weeks.  I definitely thought something was seriously wrong with my junk/I was dying after 1 week.

And I am thinking, if I decide to go with this new midwife, I should probably tell my current midwife in person?  I don't know.  But I'm already pretty excited.

In other news, I had a "bitch-be-crazy-and-thinks-everything-is-a-miscarriage" ultrasound last week.  Everything looks fine and it turns out, Sean Connery is a week younger than initially thought.  Which means, my new EDD (estimated due date) is two weeks before Chumbercules turns two.

So, NOW I'm ten weeks pregnant.  And I already told my boss and coworkers.  They're all pretty excited.

The nice thing about pregnancy the first time, is you can totally be an ostrich and ignore what happens at the end until the end.  But this time, I know what's coming and I keep thinking about the birth part.  I need to mother-fucking relax and start living in the mother-fucking now.

Two other things:

Thing one:
Hamburglar loves Chu's Day and Chu's First Day of School by Neil Gaiman.  If you're looking for a cute and fun children's book, check one or both of these out.  And, even though I pretty much have both of these (and Little Blue Truck) memorized, we still have fun reading them.

Thing two:
This is my favorite thing I've read lately.

Other than that, Horn went beep/engine purred/ Friendliest sound/ You ever heard.

That's all.

Juan Sanchez Villa-Lobos Ramirez

Well, here we are.  I'm about ten weeks pregnant and, according to my fancy chart, Sean Connery is currently the size of a prune, a kumquat or a Brazil nut!

The pregnant chicken says Baby Joe Biden (because he's number two to the President, get it?!) is the size of an ewok figurine attacking a squirrel.  I could see it.  PC also talks about genetic testing options and blah blah blah.  We didn't do it last time and we won't do it this time.  My midwife had asked us what we would do with the information and our answer was nothing.  We would do nothing with the information, so why collect it?  It's not like we're weird data hoarders or something.

I see the midwife today.  Which is good.  I'm assuming she will do a scan and we will finally hear the heart beat of Juan Sanchez Villa-Lobos Ramirez (thank you, google, for helping me find out Sean Connery's character's name from the Highlander!).

I know I'm not the only lady in the world that has miscarried, but man, subsequent pregnancies after a miscarriage can make a lady crazy.  I totally get why people buy those doppler things so they can obsessively check for a heart beat all the time and stuff.  If I had more money, I would totally be a baby-monitoring, technology-gadgety-whatever-hellicopter-momming psycho.  But I have to go to work, so I ain't got time for that shit.

Anyway, so, I'm in that weird stage of the first trimester where I have to constantly remind myself, "There's no reason this won't be a normal healthy pregnancy" and I err on the side that I'm crazy when my thoughts run away with me.  Like, the near-daily game I play called, "Is that gas or a miscarriage?"

Or if I stand up or move to fast and I feel a sharp pain in my lady parts and I think, "Did I move too fast or is that a miscarriage?"

Or my nausea went away a couple of weeks.  "Did my nausea go away last time?  Or is this a miscarriage?"

Last week, I did a tour of the wastewater treatment plant, and my nausea came back full force.  But it's since left again.

But it's okay.  There's no reason this won't be a normal, healthy pregnancy.  (Unless there is a reason?  2:30 can't come soon enough today!)

That's the other thing, the doctor's office wants to start talking about payments and stuff already.  First off, I don't have any mother fucking money.  And secondly, I am not even out of the first trimester and I haven't heard the heart beat and I am totally paranoid about miscarriage and... there's no reason this won't be a normal, healthy, pregnancy.

So, that's where I'm at.  I also got new lenses put in my Kamuros the other day.  Now I have fancy glasses.  Well, three pair of fancy glasses.

I was just trying to find a previous post, and one of the labels I have from the summer before Chumby was born is, "Rape jokes at the dog park."  I'm awesome.

If you're hungry, eat some Brazil nuts.  They're really good for you.  And keep your fingers crossed for me and Juan Sanchez Villa-Lobos Ramirez.

Well, shit.

About a week before Christmas, Mr. Adventure and I were having the age-old debate: Vasectomy or IUD?

I'm pretty anti-IUD.  My mom had horror stories about her old copper one from back in the 1970's and, more recently, a friend of mine had hers migrate from where it was put in and she had to have it surgically removed from her stomach.  I'm sure that's a rare thing, but it freaks me out.

Christmas Eve, after baby bedtime, the Mister and I drank a lot of rum and became unable to complete putting together Hamburglar's Fire Engine Play Set (a feat that took Sober Me less than ten minutes to accomplish the following morning).  PSA: Heavy drinking causes a decrease in fine motor coordination.

Do any of you have the TimeHop app?  The one that tells you that on facebook five years ago you fell down the side of an active volcano/fell into a swamp/are never going to drink again?  Well, I had one pop up about a hockey game about two years ago, which was the same day I took a pregnancy test and discovered I was pregnant with Chumbercules.  (Do you see where this is going?)  I realized that Lady Time had not yet come to me and she was about a week overdue for her visit.

"Well, shit," I thought.

So, since living on a single family income makes frivolity a bit difficult, I couldn't spring for one of those fancy $19 pregnancy tests, so I went to the Dollar Tree.  Did you know they sell pregnancy tests for $1?  And it was positive.

"Well, shit," I thought.

Over the course of two weeks, we'd gone from, "Let's nip this potential for more baby things in the bud with a more permanent/reliable birth control solution," to, "Guess who's having a baby!"

"Maybe the dollar store pregnancy tests aren't terribly accurate," I suggested as I told Mr. Adventure the news.  And I scheduled an appointment with my midwife.

The girl that answered the phone when I called the midwife's office asked me how many tests I took.  "Um, one?" I replied.  Other than on TV, do women actually take multiple pregnancy tests?  It seems like a waste of money to me.

The midwife confirmed McCloud is going to have a sibling (who, after the Quickening, I believe I will call him (el bebe in utero) Sean Connery, because I don't remember Sean Connery's character's name from the Highlander film).

"Well, shit," I thought.

The midwife asked me how I was feeling.  It's weird.  We'd just finally for realz made the decision to only have one child, and now there's another coming along.  Which is great because I can die one day knowing that my son will not be left all alone (he has a half sister, but things can go either way with half siblings.  With full siblings, too, I guess.  It's probably best not to put all your eggs in one basket anyway.  Ha!)

I have an estimated due date of the end of August.  Which means I am going to be super pregnant all freaking summer.  Again.  Summer pregnancies suck.

I also feel like we are really finally hitting a groove again and we've established our new normal and having a 16 month old is awesome.  Having a newborn and a two-year-old seems like a huge pain in the ass.  But, I bet it will be awesome when they're two and four and can play together.

I guess I'm still getting a hold on how I'm feeling.  I know that I have a heightened sense of smell, but no nausea or acne or anything yet, so that's nice.  Hopefully this pregnancy is as smooth as the last one.  I think I need to stop drinking coffee.  I had borderline high blood pressure throughout my last pregnancy and I don't want that to happen again.  And I'm not buying a new car.  I'll just need car seats that are a bit more narrow so we can all fit into the Fit.

Here's a piece from McSweeney's called 30 and Pregnant.

Also, the Ugly Volvo has a new piece out.  It's about finding the time to read an article in a magazine with a toddler around.

"Look at me!  Sitting on a sofa reading a magazine!  Like a person!   This is like a thing a person would do!  I imagined myself doing other “person” things like going out for a drink with friends or seeing a show.  What an imagination I have!"

And I guess that's about it.

Also, according to the fancy chart I made back in August of 2013, Sean Connery is currently the size of a blueberry.  Or a Tic-Tac.  Either way, totally edible and could get lost in your handbag.

Happy new year!

Hi!

I hope you all had a pleasant holiday season.

We've been doing a lot of learning around the House of Adventure.  We learned that the Little Miss is more into building blocks than she is Barbie, so I'm returning her birthday presents and getting some blocks.

And Hamburglar is learning and repeating everything.  He said fuck for the the first time last week.  That was nice.  He also says shoes, socks, hat (of course).  And he learned "turkey" back in November and he recently started saying "turtle," which he enunciates very clearly.  He likes to point out that he is a baby, he calls water "wa" and, most importantly, he has learned to say "Hodor." Which has provided a lot of entertainment for the Mister and I.  And I'm sure that any Game of Thrones fans out there also appreciate it.

Mr. Adventure also taught Chumbercules to kick a ball!  I picked up a mini soccer ball at Old Navy several months ago for $3, and it's the perfect size for little toddler feet to kick.

He really likes his rocking horse and his fire engine play set, and a friend gave him some Mega Blocks as a Christmas gift, and we all have fun playing with those.

We had grilled cheese and tomato soup for dinner last week and Chumby was using a spoon on his own and most of the soup made it into his mouth!  It was all very exciting.

I think the most exciting thing that has happened lately, though, is this.  Jaws-themed baby crib!  They're going to need a bigger boat.

Also, for any pregnant ladies out there, the Pregnant Chicken has this super killer giveaway happening right now.

And, this is a little late (though still hilarious): The Ugly Volvo put up a new post a couple weeks ago.  And now I kind of want to sit on Willie Nelson's lap.