Valentine's Day

Brian has been in South Africa for over a week and isn't due back until Monday. Boden is sick of hanging out with me and me him. I love him to pieces, but there is a distinctive generational difference. The fact that he has rules that I place on him also drives a small wedge, but thank God he has a short attention span. I am on and off feeling sick and it makes me tear up when Boden says that he's lost his Daddy.

Oh, but it was Valentine's Day. A very special day of love and I'm beginning to believe that it is just another day for the retail sector to make money off the suckers, but I suppose we should be reminded of all the people in our lives who give us love and help us to love others. 

I was so fortunate to have the opportunity to first have breakfast with my father and his wife Debbie at the Cracker Barrel. Pregnancy aside, I love to eat. I also later had dinner or most of it with my good friend, Ashley and her daughter Eva. I say most of it because the kitchen was backed up and we had to ask for our dinner to go, because our children were having meltdowns and scaring the couples who were trying to have a romantic dinner. We wouldn't want to scare the in love couples out of having sex later on. It just wouldn't be fair. 

It was just nice enough to hear, "Happy Valentine's Day, Mommy."

9 Weeks

My baby is the size of a grape and about an inch long. Fingers, toes, and all the other parts are formed and becoming more distinctive.  Only 31 more weeks.

A friend described pregnancy as being similar to being abducted by an alien and I tend to agree with this theory. There is a range of new powers to ones being that only occurs while your are sharing your body with another human. One of my new powers is the ability to acutely taste and smell things. If I could drink this would be quite useful with wine, but wine tastes like ethanol right now, so no future as a Sommelier for me. I did notice that Boden's juice smelled more like pear juice and that was a turn off until I got desperate and poured myself a glass. It was good and had this kind of floury type of taste like bananas have. The ingredients: apple, pear, and banana. It turned out to be pretty good juice. How can I market this?

The other weird thing about this stage of pregnancy is the lack of ability to eat like the pig that I am. Everyone has this impression that pregnant women have the ability to eat like a competitive eater and right now it is furtherest from the truth. I can eat a handful of pretzels and feel absolutely miserable, however if I don't eat every two to three hours I feel nauseous. I'm eagerly awaiting second trimester just to get back to eating like a pig.

The good news is that I haven't come across a food aversion yet. There is still time, but I'm hopeful that if I just eat bland I will be okay. The last time I could see spinach in the frozen food aisle at the grocery store and my mouth would water in anticipation of vomiting.

Boden does not know that his world will be shared with a new addition. He is dealing with me and my lack of energy and talks about going to school. I feel pretty guilty about the whole situation. He is still sweet. He told me the other day that he was a big boy and then said I was big too. Thanks, son.

2009 Grammys

With the battery of negative news, I turned my attention to being entertained by some of the best musicians and singers and watched the 2009 Grammy Awards. I loved it all from Coldplay to Stevie Wonder. I loved watching Paul McCartney belting out "Sweet Caroline" during Neal Diamond's performance. It was all so good in every genre. Everything about the evening was purely entertaining until Neil Portnow's political proclamation. We get it! You love Obama. Play the effing music white boy or get off the stage! I want to see Justin Timberlake, damn it!

So, I think I walked away with a couple things that just really stuck out in my mind. The first was the very pregnant and Swaggerin' MIA. It could be once you are pregnant you get pregdar and notice every pregnant person. I was absolutely fascinated that she was out there trying to shake her bootie looking like she's been caught steeling and what the hell has she got on? The polka dot and sheer ensemble was like a very gone wrong Minnie Mouse outfit. 

Pregnant women are beautiful even if they get huge, but why polka dots on the boobs, belly, and butt? All those other guys are wearing tuxedos and MIA is... I don't know who put that on her. Maybe we can blame hormones. Never mind the guys, she was absolutely fascinating to me. Thank God she at least had sneakers on... I don't know why we pregnant women worry so much about the well-being of other pregnant women, but it could be the hormones.

These thoughts weren't just mine, because I swear at the end of their performance Chris Martin from Cold Play was on the edge of his seat and pointed at her and said something about her being so pregnant and doing that performance. 

The next probably isn't that surprising, but is Kayne sporting a black man mullet or did he let his mohawk grow out? Maybe I notice hair a lot or something, but it was like he is throwing a little too much into the 80s craze. I couldn't get a good photo from the Grammy's, but this is one from a radio gig he did recently. 

"Billy D! Billy D!"

Toilet training

As you've seen from previous posts we are potty training Boden. Things were going pretty well. Yesterday Boden peed at a friend's house on our Columbia trip. A new success.

Yesterday evening after dinner Boden tells me he has to go potty. Okay, I strip him down, not because he likes to do his business in the buff, because he is going to take a bath afterward. He sits on the potty for about 15 minutes. My patience is decreasing with his lollygagging on the potty. I leave him half-naked in the bathroom while I go back to the kitchen and scarf down the rest of my dinner as the bath tub is filling. 

Bad bad bad idea. It seems Boden has decided to do his business on the floor. Okay, that's great. Disinfect and get him into the tub. A little humorous event.

Clearly, I will not leave him alone unsheathed again, but that's not the only potty training that needs to occur in the household. Now that I'm pregnant, I'm frequenting the bathroom in the middle of the night. Men if you LOVE your wife, then don't leave the frickin' seat up to the toilet. 

My eyesight is BAD, so much so that contacts do not correct it perfectly. I do well to feel my way around in the middle of the night. I have learned to change diapers without looking and other feats. 

So, last night when I had to pee at o'dark thirty, I could not tell the toilet seat was up. My husband had been sleeping in the other room, because he had contracted the funk, so I wasn't concerned about falling in. Anger could not describe the way I felt. Getting up and yelling a curse word and slamming the seat down with my foot did not erase the gangrene that was sure to be growing on my butt. It isn't that we don't clean, but the whole grossness of viewing misses of the past and not knowing what was lurking. 

I wanted to disinfect my butt and worried that the growing baby inside was going to be infected in some way. This wasn't a good way for me to fall back to sleep and I glared in the dark at my sleeping husband as I made my way back around the bed to my side. 

Men, put the effing seat down. It is a courtesy that will make your wife happy and your life easier.

Incubation

There comes a time where you just have to be honest and put yourself out there. I'm growing another human. For those of you suggesting all types of medicine during my funky weeks of insane amounts of mucus, sinus pressure, and sea lion coughing thank you. There was a reason I couldn't get all drugged up and that is because of this tiny little sesame-sized life inside my belly.

I have so much to look forward to in the upcoming months of the first trimester to which I dub the bitchiphase of pregnancy. Men you think pms is bad, bitchiphase is three months of everything you do gets on my frickin' nerves and sobbing at touching commercials. If you have ever experienced a hangover, then you have the same feeling that one would feel during bitchiphase: sour stomach, nausea, and fatigue. My last pregnancy I had many food aversions. It was odd to me how I could think of spinach and my mouth would water anticipating the vomit. Vomiting never came, so I just had the nausea, which I cannot decide if it would be better to vomit and get it out of the way. Grocery shopping is challenging to say the least.

I will keep you fried followers updated on the progress. The good news is my last pregnancy was quite humorous to me even though I looked very much like a flesh-tone version of Shrek. I'm trying not to think that far ahead. Although I still have flashbacks of me being so swollen that my feet looked like I was baking bread over my flip flops and the memory of my friend Ashley exuberantly sticking her finger into my leg and clapping like a three-year-old all wide-eyed and oohing at the silly puttiness of the dent she has just created that would stay in my leg for 45 minutes. 

However big I get,  I'm so rockin' the Buddha belly in a 'kini this summer. I am not afraid. I will be the one floating around with the fruit tray.

Expected human eviction date: 09-09-09. How cool is that for a birthdate?

Sick of Being Sick

Dear infection/virus or whateverthehell is making me feel like shit,

This is your notification of eviction due immediately. Pack up your mucus and exit the body. Tell you relatives to get out of my son. His body is not a vacation spot either. 

You've had your stay since Christmas and it is January 19th. I do not want to cough anymore. My back hurts from coughing. I'm tired of the lack of being able to breath and hearing my son suffer the same. The inside of my head aches from your destruction of my sinuses. I have tried Zycam, nasal steroids, Mucinex, Robitussin, and Tylenol. I have tried numerous sinus cleanses and it is a gross process. 

Leave my body. Leave my son's body. You are ruining my life. My house is a mess. My husband has been avoiding me, which I can't understand why you making me look so sexy and all. My son had to be x-rayed. 

We went to prompt care!!!!!!! Effing prompt care!!!!!!!! Do you know how much I hate that place?!!!!!!!!!! We waited for a hour and ten minutes to be seen and to be seen by a doctor that wasn't a MD!!!! No offense, but this guy was doing nothing to explain what was plaguing our bodies he kind of asked me what I thought I had. Huh? Excuse me Doc that is why I waited an effing hour is so YOU can tell me what the hell is wrong and stop your lectures about not having seen my son's pediatrician and my doctor. That is why I'm paying YOU on a Saturday.

There is no more energy for me to expend on coughing, snot, fever, etc.. I need to go on with my life without you. I've got other fish to fry and you are pissing me off with your neediness. 

My happy Boden

It is some harmless evidence of his early days of potty training that

 is so going to be a yearbook picture one day.

Here is Boden in his Cars pjs and wellies.

I swear there was no prompting by me taking this picture. 

He just does this kind of stuff.