Still searching for a shower door blaster

Nearly a year into this gig, I am still stumbling all over the ways my life has changed. Home all day, in charge of the more domestic-ish stuff, keeping the family calendar in my head, keeping the baby's schedule in my head, juggling all the details. The newest thing I've tripped over is not so much the specific changes but the fact that my life has changed waaaay more than Phillip's has.

It's not that I've just noticed this. It was apparent the minute Phillip went back to work and I was home alone with a mewling infant. Maybe I've been blocked up with the other stuff and now that I've sufficiently whined about those things I can start in on this one.

When Jack was four or five months old I saw a change in the way I communicate with Phillip. Suddenly things like, "Do you even KNOW what I DO ALL DAY?" and "Sure, YOU get to go to the bathroom WHENEVER YOU WANT" were coming out of my mouth. I was vaguely aware that I was being either a) irrational or b) not entirely fair, but that didn't really matter to me. Up to that point in our marriage I'm pretty sure the only thing I consistently wanted acknowledgment for was the fact that I always clean the bathroom. (Phillip, while also having a disgustingly higher tolerance for bathroom filth, will vacuum every floor and wash every dish and take out all the trash and do every scrap of laundry before he applies a nuclear-grade cleaner to the shower doors. And the fact that he does all those other things is why I don't freak out too much about being the only person cleaning three bathrooms. But I digress!)

*** We interrupt this oh so fascinating post to share that the boy has fallen asleep in his crib, on his own, after only ten minutes of complaining about it. Could it be that we are on our way out of The Thing? Cue the choir of angels! ***

Part of not having a Real Job is not having feedback. And no co-worker to grouse with on your lunch break. Turns out I really miss that. I need to talk with someone about how something is going. I need to hear that I'm doing a decent job. I need a little encouragement every so often to keep going. I need to hear someone say, "You managed to get Phillip to music practice and the boy to a babysitter AND pulled off your baby shower at the same time, without any help whatsoever from your husband who cannot keep track of the nap schedule? YOU ARE MY IDOL." I mean, I wouldn't really have to be an idol, but I wouldn't mind if someone pretended, just for my benefit.

What I don't need is someone who waltzes into the kitchen and makes a suggestion, even a GOOD suggestion, about the thing that is frustrating me that very instant. Such as the fact that my child takes forty-seven days to swallow a tiny piece of toast. Oh dear God am I going to spend the rest of my life feeding the baby? Make your suggestion LATER, when I have not already rubbed my brain raw trying to figure out what I'm doing wrong in the feeding department.

See, I want feedback, but only the feedback I like.

The usual ending points for conversations and arguments are no longer satisfactory for me. Maybe I was fine apologizing and moving along before, but now? NOW I WANT SOME CREDIT. Now I need to hear, even if he's already said it, that I'm doing a good job. That I'm doing things he doesn't remember to do. Things he doesn't even realize need to be done.

I was in a vile mood this weekend. VILE. And I can't even tell you why. Absolutely every little thing was irritating to me. Nothing was right. Nothing went well. I was really really tired of deciding what to feed the baby and what time we were going to do things and what needed doing. When the baby refused- flat out REFUSED- to take his afternoon nap on Saturday, Phillip said, "Do you want me to do it?" and I marched out of the room without even looking at him. I may have even slammed a door. (I NEVER SLAM DOORS.) And then I unearthed my plastic caddy of earth-friendly tub and tile cleaners and made my bathroom look like it did when we moved in. (Except earth-friendly cleaners do nothing for shower doors. NOTHING.)

Phillip said, "Thank you for cleaning the bathroom." And I felt much much better.

Inconclusiveish

The tech said, "If you want to know my guess... Right now I'm kinda thinking... Well, you know, as far as I can tell right now... I'm guessing girl."

So. There you go. Girl. Sort of.

I refrained from running to the boutique baby store down the street and buying up their pink inventory. Apparently the umbilical cord also looks like girl parts in an ultrasound? And if the umbilical cord happens to be hiding the boy parts, well, you see what can happen. I have the Big Ultrasound in another couple of weeks so we'll hold off on the gender-specific clothing until then. At least.

There is one thing that makes me think the tech is right, and that would be Elizabeth thinking it's a girl. Did you know Elizabeth is the Pregnancy Oracle? Last night I told Phillip that I bet we are having a girl, just because Elizabeth said so.

I did not think we would have a girl. Out of the eight children in Jack's generation (in our two families) only one is a girl. And in Phillip's family there aren't any whatsoever. Plus all the grandparents are silently (and not so silently) rooting for a girl and the way I see it, as soon as you get your hopes set on something you can automatically assume you're not going to get it. Phillip and I are hoping the tech is right, but I can honestly say we'd be just as happy with a second boy. It's hard to picture a girl, but it's easy to imagine another boy. Another Jack! Last night we were talking about what our girl would look like. The best we came up with is a Jack with longer eyelashes.

I'm pretty tired this morning. Probably because I spent several hours at the hospital last night with a friend waiting for her husband to come out of surgery. The author of the hoverblog (for those of you interested in local trivia) broke his leg playing soccer and will forevermore have to carry his x-rays to get him through airport security. Something about metal rods? Ouch. So thankful am I for my sedentary computer geek husband! We caught up on pretty much everything and I reminded her how we'd been talking about needing to get out at night more often. I suppose this was one way to do it.

While I'm being all random, I wanted to apologize for being an absolutely rotten comment-responder. I used to write back all the time, especially if you are NEW because you're NEW and you came HERE and how NICE OF YOU! But I have totally slacked lately and a comment-ignorer is not so cool. I'd blame it on my new Facebook obsession, but after you add all the friends in I'm not sure what you're supposed to do with it. Sigh. Yet more proof that I am not as cool as I say I am.

To complete the random, I have yet ANOTHER angsty SAHM post up, this time at Parenting. So. If you aren't sick of those yet, knock yourself out.

And Elizabeth, please consult your crystal ball and let me know whether I should bust out that pink preemie outfit my mother sent me (along with a blue outfit) when I told her I was pregnant the first time.

SIGH

Nap training: HA HA HA. Jackson Cheung will not be undone by a silly thing like NAP TRAINING.

With the exception of the chaos that was Easter, I've been working on the nap thing. I take him upstairs, I pop the pacifier in his mouth, I sit down with him and sometimes we read a story. Sometimes we sing a song. Sometimes I only sit down long enough to wrap a blanket around him and then it's time to deposit him in the crib. "It's naptime, Jack! Night night!" Then I shut the door and I leave.

After fifteen minutes I peek in at him. He's not asleep.

After fifteen more minutes I peek again. Still not asleep. This is when I often take him out, rock him and watch his eyes flutter close within SECONDS. Should I do this? Probably not. But I've got stuff to DO. That kid needs to SLEEP.

I have more tolerance in the afternoon. I let him sit there. More often that not he is in his crib for a FULL HOUR before I lose patience and pick him up. Sometimes I just stick the pacifier back in (he tends to fling them about the room) and leave. But it's true, sometimes I pick him up and sit down with him and rock in the chair for a few minutes and he's out. For two hours, usually.

But at bedtime? We sit, we sing, we read, we tuck into bed and he goes to sleep. Easily. Willingly. ON HIS OWN.

So I know he can do it.

He's not crying in his crib. Oh, sometimes he whines or protests, but for the most part he's banging on the sides or scratching the sheet or pulling off his socks and watching them float down to the floor. I have left him in his crib for over an hour, with nothing to do and no mommy to entertain him, and he has yet to fall asleep on his own.

I'm thinking he's either 1) not tired or 2) going through a Thing. I don't think he's going down to one nap, because if I let him sit in his crib long enough, it's ridiculously easy to rock him to sleep. But maybe his nap schedule is pushing itself back? Maybe I'm expecting him to go down too early? I was planning to just keep him up longer today as a little experiment, but that was before I remembered I have an ultrasound at 11 and BY GOD that child is going to NAP.

So, WHATEVER. If this were not a family website I would tell nap training what it can do.

Besides. We might find out if we're having a boy or a girl today. Not for sure of course. This is a dating sonogram at 16 weeks instead of the Big Ultrasound at 18-20 weeks, so it might be hard to see, and the baby might be shy. But still, the possibility remains. I am thinking boy. I am thinking he probably hates naps too.

After clearing out the too-small clothes

Jack has started flinging his arms towards me when he's ready to be picked up, regardless of whether he has balance or is leaning against something. Usually I manage to catch him before he falls. He's more aggressive with his walker toy, nearly running across the living room, and sharper and faster with his steering. He often tips himself forward over the walker and ends up in a kind of downward dog position where his feet aren't quite touching the floor. Yesterday he pulled himself up, lunged for a toy, tripped and fell on his face. When I helped him stand at the top of the stairs to say goodbye to his dad, he stuck a foot forward and didn't stop until we'd drunkenly stumbled down to the front door.

Yesterday afternoon we bought baby gates.

I also bought him some new clothes and I had to shop in the Toddler section, not the Baby section. I hardly ever buy him clothes. Mostly because the grandmothers do a fairly good job of outfitting him, but I never think the boy clothes, especially the TODDLER boy clothes are very cute. He's too young to demand his dinosaur t-shirt or his bulldozer t-shirt, so why do all of the little boy clothes come plastered with bugs and construction machinery?

It was weird to go to the Giant Baby Store and look at toddler-size clothes and baby gates and high chairs (I hate our hand-me-down high chair with the power of a thousand suns). It won't be long before my baby turns an entire year old. To make myself feel better I poked into the Tiny Baby section and bought a newborn size outfit for the new baby.

On the other hand, my kid is super fun. He can just DO so much now. A new baby will be a shock. Sometimes I catch myself thinking, "I can't wait until he starts walking so we can have FUN at the playground."

This morning I caught him "reading" to himself. And right after that he grabbed hold of the remote control and realized that pressing the up channel button makes him master of the universe.

Of course, his most impressive feat so far is not catching the Sickness Phillip and I have been passing back and forth for the last two weeks. Thank God. Excuse me while I go finish off the last box of Kleenex in our house.

Can't you take that child OUT?

Easter Mass was probably the most awkward and frustrating service I've been to since Jack's baptism, when he produced the largest poop in the history of babies mere minutes before he was supposed to be dunked in the water. Ever changed a blowout in the pew, right under the priest's nose?

Phillip was playing saxaphone with the choir and assorted just-for-Easter musicians which meant I was left to wrangle the boy alone. Phillip also had to be at church an entire hour early, right during prime napping time. We were off the hook for driving our neighbor to church since her daughter was supposed to pick her up, so we decided that we'd all get ready early, drop Phillip off and I would cross my fingers and hope that Jack slept in the car until it was time to go to church. Easy peasy.

So we got ready. I discovered that we were all wearing the same colors (baby blue and brown) which always makes me think of this couple who goes to my grandmother's church. I swear, the wife has bought the husband a tie to match every dress she owns. Anyway, I thought about insisting we change, except that Jack's outfit was bought especially for Easter and mine was the only thing that fit me in my closet and Phillip isn't really amenable to those kinds of suggestions. Oh well.

Oh, and then my neighbor called and oops, for some reason her daughter isn't going to pick her up in time to make it to Mass, could she snag a ride? Quick thinker that I am, I decided we'd follow the plan, but I'd just swing by and pick up our neighbor as I was driving around with my sleeping baby.

This was all going to work, right?

Jack was still awake when I dropped Phillip off, but drifted off as soon as I got on the highway. We drove north, in the ugly nasty so-unlike-Easter rain, and I was terribly proud of myself for pulling off the Happy Baby for Easter Plan. Then I noticed that we were low on gas. Like, really low. And when you have a car that only drinks diesel, it's fairly important to be near a gas station with diesel gas*. I pulled off the highway and prayed that Jack wouldn't wake up.

Weeeelll, the second I turned off the engine his eyes fluttered open AND NEVER SHUT AGAIN.

I still had half an hour to go. I hoped he'd fall back asleep if I got back on the freeway, but he wasn't interested. He was still awake when I swung by our neighbor's house. And he was wide awake while I yanked him and our assorted luggage out of the car and into the church.

WHICH WAS SO CROWDED. I mean, dude. I go to church every Sunday. Maybe I should let everyone else have Easter. They need it more than me, right? My neighbor was instructed to save seats for her daughter and son-in-law, so she snagged an open area and I snagged the next one. Me, the boy, my purse and the diaper bag. Plus our coats (the rain!) and the stuffed puppy and the pacifier. I'd forgotten the tub of Cheerios in the car. BAD MOVE, MAGGIE.

He was cute for all of ten minutes, and then the Whining began. The flailing. The back arching. The put! me! down! ing. Thank God some good friends and their baby sneaked into the pew next to me. I was trying to so hard to make sure my son was not annoying the crap out of the strange man next to me that it was a relief to have friendly baby people on the other side. And you know, my kid is no six pound weakling anymore. He's on the low end of the growth charts, but that doesn't mean he's like holding a spring daffodil for two hours (two! hours!) during Easter morning Mass.

He kicked his feet against the pew in front of us.  He pulled all the offering envelopes out of the wooden holder. He tried to pull down the kneeler. He tried to WALK DOWN THE PEW. He threw his stuffed puppy on the floor, along with the bulletin and the worship aid and his bottle. He wasn't too noisy, but I do believe I got my very first Dirty Look. It's entirely possible I misinterpreted, but still. I felt about four years old.

Jack wasn't even that bad. He was an overtired baby stuck in a crowded cramped spot for two hours (two! hours!). But by the time the service ended I was beat. I said my zillionth prayer for single parents. I resolved never to let Phillip join the choir on a permanent basis. I threw our boy Phillip's way and napped all the way to grandma's house.

I have grown up listening to my mother and grandmother decry the myriad of despicable ways people allow their children to behave in church. I have been dreading- DREADING- my very first Dirty Look. I try pretty hard to keep him happy and quiet during Mass, which means I never know what's going on and could not tell you what the homily was about to save my life. But I feel like that's the way it is right now. I'm not going to send him to the nursery- I want him to know that we do church on Sunday mornings, not playtime. I'm not above stuffing him with snacks the whole time or bringing books and markers and other Keep Quiet methods, but he's too little for all of that right now. Right now all he wants is to GET DOWN and EXPLORE and I can't let him do that. At least, not under the feet of the strange man sitting next to us.

During the kiss of peace the strange man stuck out his hand for Jack to shake and gave him the most brilliant smile. At least not everyone is dusting off their Dirty Looks.

*Biodiesel, what our car normally drinks, is $4.50 per gallon. We don't love the earth THAT much. 

Attempting to have a sunny disposition

I don't know why I'm so cranky this morning. I'm sure it has nothing to do with hauling a baby away from the stairs for the forty-seventh time in a span of fifteen minutes. Or being up half the night with a still! sick! husband and various pregnancy-related annoyances. Or not having any cereal to go with the milk in my refrigerator. Or taking a good look around at my house and realizing that every single surface could use a good hosing down. Or that the weather looks crappy or I need a haircut or Phillip has to work super late tonight or I got stuck helping one of those people who hate being helped with the Easter Vigil reception or that I have heaps of laundry or gifts I still haven't mailed or ARE YOU SICK OF THIS YET?

Me too. Let's talk about Getting Away From It All, shall we?

My new Thing To Look Forward To is my fifth anniversary. Not because my fifth anniversary is especially important (Me: "Look! Five years! Go us!" Phillip: "I've had my Sting CD collection longer than I've had you.") but because we've decided to use it as an excuse to go on vacation. Turns out my husband has piles of time off that he was not telling me about. Most of it we'll use when New Baby arrives, but in the meantime we thought we could afford a long-ish weekend away for our anniversary (the last weekend in June). I've been mulling this over for weeks now, because I am the Trip Planner in my house and all I have to do is say, "We're going HERE and it will cost X AMOUNT" and Phillip packs a bag and shows up.

So I'm trying to decide between Two Perfect Weekend Getaways. We could fly to San Francisco, rent a car and drive to Monterey. Or we could save the airfare and get a swanky hotel in Vancouver. DILEMMAS!

The California trip has the potential for much nicer weather and actually feeling like we went on vacation. I've been to San Francisco a time or two but I haven't been to Monterey, which everyone says is lovely. Phillip is especially interested in sun and I would be too, if I weren't so self-conscious about being mistaken for a whale while sitting on the beach. We also heard the local news talking about a $75 fare to San Francisco (one way, I think), which makes the entire thing much more enticing. Although I haven't been able to find it online so I think the local news was LYING.

But Vancouver... I love Vancouver. I have been to Vancouver a zillion times and I still haven't seen everything there is to see, mostly because we are too busy eating Chinese food in Richmond. Vancouver is an easy drive, we could lump the "transportation" and "hotel" budget together and, biggest plus of all, I wouldn't have to get in an airplane. Also, the neurotic part of me likes knowing that I would only be a few hours away from my baby, who will be staying with grandparents.

So I don't know. I think it depends on whether I can find those cheap flights or not. And Vancouver in the summer is often plenty warm enough for me.

I've left Jack in his crib this whole time, because HE WILL BE IN BED FOR NAPTIME, OH YES and I thought he'd fallen asleep. Until I suddenly hear howling, which I ignore because Jack howling from bed means I DON'T WANNA BE IN HERE and you know what I think about that. But after ten minutes of uncharacteristic wailing I walk into his room and see that he is standing up with his pudgy little hand stuck between a crib bar and a plastic thingy we have that hangs off the side of the crib and projects shapes onto the ceiling. I picked him up and sat down and IMMEDIATELY he fell asleep. So guess who gets the Worst Mommy award TODAY?

Oh, and I totally forgot to add my Contractually Obligated Parenting.com Link to my post today, which (surprise!) concerns the nap schedule. Here you go!

Question of the Day

At what point do babies start transitioning to one nap a day? More specifically, is it too early for my 10 month old to be kicking his morning nap to the curb?

It's never been a piece of cake to put him down for naps, but he TAKES them. Two hours after he wakes up for the day- boom. He's down again for around another hour. And three hours after that he almost always goes down for his longer afternoon-ish nap. My kid was quite amenable to following that 2-3-4 schedule that floats around the internet somewhere.

But today I didn't think he was EVER going to fall asleep. I rocked him, and when that didn't work, I left him in his crib. I went to check on him only to find him standing up and chewing on the crib rail, his pacifier flung across the room. I rocked him again and was nearly ready to give up when he suddenly decided to close his eyes, a full half hour after when he usually is fast asleep.

Then again, now that I'm writing this, I recall that yesterday morning he slept for an unheard of two hours. So maybe I am full of it. But no, he's been kind of a pain when it comes to naps lately. Wiiiiiide awake, flailing, stretching, arching, screwing around with his pacifier. And he hasn't been sleeping that great at night because...

...he has MORE teeth coming in (DAMN YOU TEETH) and we can't really tell if he's catching our colds (sounds stuffy, but nothing else) and maybe it's just The Usual. You know. Everything else that messes with sleeping schedules.

But I don't know. Maybe I shouldn't try so hard to get him to go down in the mornings, keep him up and see what happens.

I am really hungry. Know why? Because I puked up my entire breakfast, plus the prenatal vitamin I remembered to take, plus the Tylenol that was supposed to take care of my massive headache. I am fifteen weeks today. Do you hear that Universe? This throwing up business is supposed to be over with. DID YOU GET THE MEMO? I swear, my first pregnancy totally spoiled me. I didn't get sick one single time until mid-second trimester when we were flying home from Italy and I just barely prevented myself from being sick all over the poor woman next to me. I was sick a few times in the third trimester, but the first trimester was a freaking breeze.

I am going to take note of my stellar mood here and opt to sign off in favor of more breakfast. And a hot shower. That kid better sleep long enough for me to get my shower.

 

Change: not always horrible

Damn you Facebookers. As if I didn't spend all my time on the computer ALREADY. As soon as I figure out how to play one of those games everyone keeps talking about I am DONE FOR.

Anyway.

I went to see my new doctor yesterday and all is well. Baby Number Two says hello.

My new doctor's office is right next door to the hospital where Jack was delivered, except I thought it was IN the hospital so I'm roaming around and feeling all warm and fuzzy because our hospital experience was so wonderful and look, that's where we carried our new baby down the hall and oh, that's when we took him outside for the first time blah blah blah. And then I was almost late to my appointment because 1) I was in the wrong building and 2) my memory lanes are always somewhat long.

So then I found the right office and went in and started filling out paperwork. I caught glances from the other women in the waiting room and I realized this was an OB's office and that means we are all sitting here waiting to endure the drag-and-a-half that is the Pap Smear and THAT, ladies (and gentlemen? probably not) is why I wasn't so big on an OB. I don't know. It just feels like there is MORE TO ME. We'll just leave it at that. Although I did forget to ask my doctor what I do if I think I have caught pneumonia and am about to die. Do I call her? Do I have to have a primary care physician?

But my new doctor is delish. She is, maybe, a few weeks older than I am. She was chatty- in a GOOD way. She was friendly. She seemed to be more excited than I was about Baby Number Two. She was the same kind of scatterbrained that I am, which means you are carrying 4000 details in your brain and you're not sure which one is the most important so you try to say them all at once and inevitably leave one out or get sidetracked and you kick yourself later and have to start all over. Which might be annoying to other people, but I TOTALLY GET IT and also, it's not the kind of scatterbrained that makes you think this woman should not be anywhere near your delivery room.

Part of the excitement involved the ultrasound- she hurried out to track down her little ultrasound machine and hauled it into the room and now I see the advantage of the OB. The portable toy ultrasound! I'm supposed to get a "real" one in a week or two for dating purposes, but she was all, "But it'd be fun to see a picture right now, don't you think?!" All about the fun, my new doctor. So she put the little plastic thing on my stomach and there was the baby. Hanging out. Looking all baby-shaped and everything. It was, I think, the first time that I spent quality time with THIS baby and ONLY this baby. She printed out a little indecipherable picture for me and I haven't really stopped looking at it. I didn't like Jack's pictures- I prefer to think our insides are made of stuffing, or maybe custard filling- and I don't even know where they are. But this one is just blurry enough to hide things like bones and just sharp enough to make out a shape. There is an actual baby in there, people. Madness!

I was not a fan of the nurse, however. She was man-sized and TOLD ME HOW TO LEAVE A URINE SAMPLE, MY GOD and also was not so hot at the drawing blood thing. I'm sure she's a nice person, but you know. I prefer not to have forty holes in my arm.

That was a little more TMI than usual, eh? Maybe I'm loosening up. Maybe it's because Maureen asked me what my maiden name was and I had to google it just to see if it still comes up and IT DOESN'T. There's only one piece of evidence of me pre-Phillip left on Google. Add that to the un-Google-able-ness of my married name and that makes for one free-feeling blogger. But I'm still not putting my blog address on my Facebook page. It'll be our secret.

Monday you can fall apart

I got so caught up in The Sickness over here that I completely forgot to thank you for your reading suggestions. I am nearly done with the last Harry Potter book, so I'll be returning to those comments fairly soon. People are always telling me I should read this book or that book, but they're nearly always of the Heavy Topic variety or trying to get me to learn some Lesson or whatever, and the truth is that my favorite books in the world are about a teenager named Anastasia Krupnik.

There. You've been warned. You'll find no Literary Atmosphere on this website.

When I wasn't reading Harry Potter (it is amazing how much of that book I didn't remember) I was setting up a Facebook profile. I KNOW. I am not quite sure what Facebook is FOR, but now I've joined the club and you people better friend me so I don't feel so lonely. I saw how many of you are Facebookers because Facebook stole my email address book and TOLD ME SO. But of course I am too embarrassed to friend YOU. Because what then? What comes next? I just haven't figured out this social networking thing.

Oh, and then there is the whole matter of putting personal information on Facebook, because anyone can find it and what if I add my URL too and then EVERYONE WILL KNOW WHO I AM. I mean, I'm okay if YOU know who I am, but you're in, like, VERMONT and chances are you didn't go to my high school or work with me. I can't decide if I want to be found. I don't know if I'm going to post my highly Google-able maiden name or my school information or anything that will make it easier for the Past to find me. That assumes, of course, that the Past is looking and I rather doubt that.

BUT ANYWAY. What was my point? Oh yes. Facebook. I'm on there. Ta da.

In other news, I have my first OB appointment today. I'm nervous. Sort of. Most of me is very nonchalant about this stuff. A teeny weeny part of me is always scared something is wrong. With Jack I was scared because I'd read the entire internet and knew full well that not everyone ends up with a healthy baby after nine months- do you know how much can go wrong? It is a freaking miracle that babies are born in the first place! But with this baby, I haven't really had time to obsess over all the potential horrors. With this baby I have occasional flashes of "Gee, I didn't do THAT right". Like, I don't think I told you how much ibuprofen I consumed when this second baby was just a mass of cells. Before Christmas I hurt my back and right around Christmas I hurt my neck. I was in awful pain Christmas Eve and could barely turn my head. I was swallowing Advil like candy for at least two weeks (and it IS sugar-coated, mmm!) and you know what you are not supposed to take when you are pregnant? ADVIL. Also, there was a holiday called New Year's Eve where I believe I drank at least one entire bottle of wine in one sitting. And that's not counting all the wine I drank during the holidays leading up to that one, making up as I was for last year when I was pregnant and therefore not allowed to partake of my beloved fermented grape product.

I mean, I will be surprised if this child DOESN'T have three eyes.

I know I know I KNOW, people do all sorts of things when they don't know they're pregnant yet, blah blah blah. And it's not like I'm sitting around wringing my hands about this stuff. But I do think about it. And I wish I hadn't consumed all that stuff.

Oh, and then there is the part where I spend way less time thinking about this baby than I did about the first one and OH THE GUILT and guilt=I deserve something rotten to happen and... see why I'm not big on being discovered via Facebook? I AM KRAZY.

Also? I never remember to take my prenatal vitamin. To Azkaban with me!

And? AND? Guess who has a sore throat TODAY? If Phillip took my cold, made it 50x worse and GAVE IT BACK TO ME I am going to KILL HIM.

My mom is going to call and say, "I can't BELIEVE you dare complain about that SAINTED MAN."

It's nearly 9 in the morning, but Phillip is still in bed. He's called in sick- which never EVER happens- and I'm glad, because he IS sick. I told him last night, "You should stay home tomorrow." And I may have added, "I'll do everything with Jack, you just stay in bed, even though I have to get ready for the shower Saturday morning, and I won't mind at all if you just lie about in bed, moaning and whimpering as though you are a delicate 19th century flower dying from consumption."

Except, of course, I didn't MEAN it.

Don't mind ME if I just sit here and rant a tiny bit about how I didn't get to lie about in bed all those days when I was THROWING UP and TOO TIRED TO LIVE.

Phillip never passes up an opportunity to remind me how mean I am, how devoid of sympathy, how MADE OF STONE I am when it comes to Sickness. According to him, this extreme lack of empathy is one of my biggest, if not THE biggest, flaws. See, Phillip catches The Sniffles several times a year and because I do not immediately fly off the handle about pneumonia and strep throat and oh dear God BIRD FLU, I'm being mean.

After nearly five years of marriage, I still can't figure out if, when I get sick, I'm just not AS sick as Phillip gets OR if I just suck it up better than he does. If I don't get AS sick as he does, then it's true, I'm probably being a big fat meanie who needs to pony up the Theraflu and heating pads and find that last ounce of sympathy in my blackened heart. I get colds all the time, but they rarely incapacitate me the way they seem to do with Phillip, and I hardly ever get REALLY sick. Phillip is always very nice to me when I'm sick.

It's true. When Phillip gets sick I do not magically turn into Nancy Nursemaid and surround him with lotion-infused tissue and giant glasses of orange juice and a telephone with the doctor's number pre-dialed. Especially not now that I have an ACTUAL baby who needs to be coerced into lying down for his nap.

I'M JUST SAYING.

Let's just cross our fingers he doesn't read this one.

Anyway. I have to take a shower and get dressed and write up a shopping list before Jack wakes up. Because Phillip is sick and I'm not going to have him do all the Jack stuff, he needs to stay in bed with his bottle of Robitussin. SERIOUSLY. Can you be serious AND snarky at the same time?