Star Wars to the Rescue, Again

It was cold outside, so I put on my new earmuffs. 

Noah stopped dead in his tracks.

"What are those?" he asked, staring at me with rapidly darkening eyes.

"Earmuffs," I explained. "They're kind of like a hat. They keep my ears warm."

I watched his body tense up, his rigid little internal alarm sounding the different! new! unfamiliar! alert as he tried to make sense of the funny-looking circles on my head. Was it a costume? Was I playing dress-up? Did it bother him? How much did it bother him? 

"May you take them off please?" he asked, in his usual pained attempt to politely frame a demand as a request. 

"I think I'm going to leave them on, buddy. It's cold outside." As I said this, it was my turn to rapidly attempt to gauge the danger level of the situation, to try to figure out our odds of making it to the car without a meltdown, whether this was a don't budge power through teaching moment or one of those times to just give in for the sake of everybody involved.

"It's okay, really. Just think of them like a funny-looking hat, but just for my ears."

It was interesting, in a way, to watch this, and him. Usually his reactions are zero-to-sixty, his impulse control so poor that he's generally already too far gone into a tantrum by the time he realizes there's nothing to tantrum about, really, so to see him hover on the verge like this and actually process the existence of a weird thing on Mommy's head...well, it was different. And like him, I wasn't exactly sure if it was good different or bad different.

He chewed on his lip for about a minute more. He raised his hands up to chest level. That's usually followed by some nervous flapping, then some anxious foot-stomping, and then...

He broke out into a wide, amused smile.

"You look like Princess Leia," he said. 

I laughed. "I guess I do, don't I?" 

"Can I wear them?" he asked.

It was my turn to stop dead in my tracks. I silently took the earmuffs off and placed them on his head. Over his EARS. Next to his FACE.

"You are just full of surprises sometimes, you know that, Noah?" 

"Not Noah," he corrected me. "I'm Princess Leia. See?"

Notes From the Other Side

BIRTHDAY UPDATE: I did get out of bed, eventually. We got burritos for lunch, and then Jason offered to go wrangle the boys while I went shopping by myself. I bought a pair of maternity pants, some mittens and a pair of stupid-looking but ridiculously warm earmuffs. Jason was all, "What the hell? I figured you'd want like, shoes or something." But I was all, "Shut up, my ears were cold. This is the best birthday ever!"

Then we went out for dinner and ordered dessert even though neither of us wanted dessert, because it was only 8:15 and if we left then we'd get home before the kids were even in bed and that's just a total waste of a babysitter, dammit, so we stayed at our table for an extra-long time having a very drawn-out discussion about how much we like our new coffeemaker. 

Also: He gave me a lovely set of birthstone rings, which I've never had before, other than one I wore as a purity ring in high school, OH YES I DID, but then I stopped wearing it, JUST I DUNNO BECAUSE, and I think I have it hidden in a box somewhere, because I still feel too guilty to wear it ever.

Now that I've been married for 12 years, I suppose it may be time to get over that guilt already. Boring coffeemaker dinner conversation aside, I'm pregnant for the THIRD TIME and my husband likes to put dirty books on my Kindle when I'm not paying attention. I am a ruined woman, through and through.

(Yes, that is my hand held up in front of the very entry you are reading right now. Because I really do just make this shit up as I go along and then hit the Publish button whenever I get bored and/or hungry.)

(NOW STOP STARING AT MY CREATIVE PROCESS.)

CHRISTMAS UPDATE: Shit, I totally spoiled it already, by mentioning the coffeemaker. 

Also: Legos. Oh God, so many, many Legos. We still haven't put together all the damn Legos. We will likely never put together all the damn Legos.

(We did, however, do a pretty good job at eating all that cheese.)

We also roasted a duck, braised some brussels sprouts and gratin'd a bunch of potatoes in even more cheese. It was good. I think that Julia Child person might know a thing or two about cooking! Because calling it merely "good" is like calling the number of gifts our children received "reasonable." 

The boys hit some kind of terrible, awful wall of consumption around 11 am, after a couple hours of bouncing from item to item, playing with each for far fewer minutes than Jason and I spent assembling it, then launching into a full-scale war of whining and screaming over PERFECTLY IDENTICAL TOYS PURCHASED JUST TO AVOID THIS VERY SCENARIO. Because that 99-cent plastic wind-up train is red with blue wheels and this wind-up train is red with yellow wheels and therefore terribly undesirable while the red wind-up train is clearly the GREATEST THING KNOWN TO MAN AND I MUST HAVE IT INSTEAD.

And then this would then trigger Ezra's latest self-defense mechanism when he senses encroachment on his possessions: Scream like you are being murdered, and then throw the toy in question as hard as you can against the nearest wall. 

He's a regular miniature King Solomon, this one. Wise beyond his inability to understand gravity, as seen in the super-attractive and festive holiday nose scabs.

And next Christmas, we're going to have THREE of them. "I don't know what we were thinking," Jason commented at one point, and I had to admit that right then, I didn't have the faintest idea either.

And somewhere, somehow, I swear I could hear the faintest cackling sound, coming from the back of a dresser drawer, where the ghost of an old and tarnished blue topaz purity ring was busy laughing its ass off at us...

33

Today is my birthday. I'm 33, and I just had to do math to figure that out for sure.

My gift to myself is a shameless whore-out post with little or no point other than to rack up a lot of comments from people telling me happy birthday. 

It occurred to me last night that I've never actually been pregnant on my birthday. In fact, the occasion has usually marked the end of a long year of fruitless trying. I know I've made getting pregnant my official birthday wish at least three or four times, with two of those wishes coming true in just a matter of weeks. 

This time, I thought it would be nice to maybe start LOOKING pregnant by my birthday, if that wouldn't be too much trouble for the Fates or Birthday Candle Goblins or whoever is in charge of that sort of thing. Everything else is going so well, with the no-longer-feeling-like-a-walking-migraine-of-hork and feeling the honest-to-God kicking and OH, I DON'T KNOW, the whole fetus-remaining-alive thing and stuff. So I didn't want to press my luck. 

I swear I woke up this morning looking like I swallowed an entire tin of Christmas cookies. Which may or may not have actually happened:

It's not nearly so impressive when I stand up. Thus, I believe this is another reason to not deviate from the Birthday Plan of staying in bed and exposing the baby to some enriching literature.

 

AKA, What to Expect When You're Expecting During the Zombie Apocalypse 

(SPOILER ALERT: Lots of canned goods, questionable medical services, speech bubbles full of HUMNGG!, GUB! and GRARR!, plus overall atmosphere of bleakness, doom.)

My Work Here Is Done

This morning Ezra decided to pull a stocking off the mantel, nailing himself directly in the face with one of those damn metal Pottery Barn stocking holders. He now has a big lump on his forehead and skinned and bloody nose. 

(And this is all of two days after he fell backwards off a stepstool, yet somehow managed to split the FRONT of his upper gums wide open. Toddler physics make no sense, other than the They Will Always Visibly Injure Themselves Right Before You Need To Take Their Picture Certainty Principle.)

Also this morning, Noah was filling me in on all the juicy preschool gossip, including one classmate's slow-moving progress towards potty-training. 

NOAH: And if she doesn't get to the potty on time, she'll have an accident!

AMY: Yes, So-And-So is still learning how to use the potty, and that's okay. Sometimes it takes awhile and...

NOAH: So-and-So needs to learn the TRUE SPIRIT OF CHRISTMAS!

AMY: Which...is?

NOAH: (thinks for a bit) Listening. And using the potty. 

16 Weeks, Stuff & Nonsense

AMY: Hey! Who wants to hear all the boring nitty-gritty details of a routine obstetrician visit? 

VAGUELY MUTED VOICE: ME! ME! I DO! I DO!

AMY: Great! Okay, so...

YOU: Hey, wait a second, that was you, answering your own question, with your teeth clenched like a ventriloquist or something.

AMY: No it wasn't.

YOU: I saw your lips move when you made the "M" sound.

AMY: No you didn't.

YOU: This is stupid. I wish Cake Wrecks updated more than once a day.

Anyway! Okay, so...

Sixteen-week OB appointment this morning.

Results of the genetic screening from the last appointment reveal that my risk of Down syndrome is about the same of a 28-year-old pregnant woman. I am...not 28 years old. Nor am I 16 years old, which was where the risk of Trisomy 18 fell. These are apparently very GOOD numbers, so I am going to remain content with that and refrain from Googling so if I'm at all misrepresenting the SCIENCE behind these Very Important Blood Tests I apologize to the medical community. I simply wanted to tell the world about my spry and quite-young-for-its-age uterus. Even though I'm guessing that isn't specifically what the results were saying. 

(Also: YAY. And whew, particularly on the Trisomy one.) 

And speaking of things that sound like bragging but I swear I am just reporting facts here: My total pregnancy weight gain so far is a big, fat zero. No pounds gained. I was genuinely unnerved to notice this, because SERIOUSLY, I have not been exaggerating at all about the amount of pie I've been eating. We went through two dozen eggs and three packages of butter over Thanksgiving, we are already running low on Christmas cookies, I have regularly indulged in chili cheese fries on a near-weekly basis and one of my Big Cravings this pregnancy has been fancy boxed chocolates.* As in, ENTIRE BOXES OF THEM, consumed in a single sitting. Two sittings, tops.

Though I'd have trouble defining what exactly constitutes a "sitting" because THAT IS ALL I DO.

*Last-minute gift idea alert! I like the ones with the gooey cream fillings the bestest.

I know the stomach flu knocked me down for about a weekend there, but for real, I technically should have MORE than made up for that weight loss since then. My doctor thought it was funny that I was "complaining" about the lack of weight gain but I really am at a loss as to how I could possibly NOT have put on a damn good 10 pounds by now, puny ounce-sized fetus aside. He was all, "Eh, it's fine. Just try to gain like, three pounds by the next appointment."

So now that it's like, an actual assignment, be prepared to see my perfectionist self completely overachieve on that goal and show up in four weeks 20 pounds heavier. I'll be like Rocky, only with less running.

And that next appointment -- four weeks from today! -- is the Big One, the Big 20-week ultrasound that will hopefully tell us for sure that we're having another boy what the sex of the baby is. I had a dream about the ultrasound, and we were told that it was actually a girl, and I immediately had to shake Jason awake while shouting possible girl names at him, because we haven't the first clue what to name a girl.

Jason always resisted the Name Discussions until AFTER we found out we were having boys, so we've never once really settled on a single girl name. Two names that I've always liked have unfortunately become tainted recently by various Hollywood and tabloid jackasses, plus I always get this compulsive need to wipe the name slate completely clean with each pregnancy, so our runners-up names from the past rarely resurface. Because...they're used names, now, you see? Hand-me-downs. Previous rejects, so giving them to a subsequent baby seems wrong to me, like "oh, this name wasn't GOOD ENOUGH for your brother, but we couldn't be bothered to come up with anything else for you, so here you go."

I mean...yeah. I realize I'm probably the only person who thinks like that. But hey! I know you people don't come here to read about someone who's really well adjusted and logical and shit. Welcome to my neurosis, and/or Why None Of Our Children Will Ever Be Named Elijah, Despite The Fact That It Is A Perfectly Cromulent Name.

Okay, one last dumb story and then you can get on with your lives: My OB was in surgical scrubs when I arrived this morning, and I assumed he was either coming from or on his way to a delivery, but it turned out the office had just performed one of those fancy new non-surgical tubal sterilization procedures. (Adiana or Essure or whatever other one there is with the posters on your OB/GYN's walls with all the women gazing out over the ocean or the nearby fields of gold while wearing white linen pants.) During my appointment, he was quite adorably jazzed by how interesting the procedure was and wanted to tell me all about it, and then right after checking the baby's heart with his Doppler he stopped and asked, "So...how many children do YOU want?"

Nice SEGUE, doctor! But I think you'd better hold off on that particular upsell for awhile. At least let me finish baking this one before I start making big life decisions like that. Right now I mostly just want to think about where I can pick up another box of chocolates on my way home. 

ARE YOU READY FOR SOME CHRISTMAS

'Cause we're ready for some Christmas.

Noah helped decorate the tree -- one of about a bajillion different firsts for him this year. We finally figured out that he's okay with having a tree in the house, he just doesn't want to see or even hear about it riding home on top of our car. Because...trees don't belong on cars? Because it might fall off? Because it's a flagrant violation of proper seat-belt usage laws? I DON'T KNOW WHY. I DON'T MAKE HIS RULES. All I know is that this year we skipped the whole picking-out-a-tree-as-a-family bit and didn't tell Noah anything about it until the tree was off the car roof and in our living room. This, he was fine with. 

More than fine, actually. Excited, even, to get going with hanging up the orbbamints.

So our tree has a LOT of orbbamints on that one side, towards the bottom. I am more than fine with this too.

Ezra supervised the garland placement.

I waited until he was in bed to begin the untangling and cursing of said garland, and only barely managed to finish sometime before breakfast. The magic of Christmas!

I used to pretend our  holiday garland was a Golden Lasso, too. Though if Ezra ever asks Santa for a Wonder Woman costume, he'll damn well GET a Wonder Woman costume. 

No, I'm still not over it, Santa.

As for this year, though, early signs are looking very promising for the current plan of giving Ezra nothing but a bunch of Random Plastic Packaging Shit on Saturday. OMG IKEA ORBBAMINT BOX IS GREATEST THING EVER.

Except for maybe snowman cookies.

Well. They were at least kind of excited about it, I swear.

I think the enthusiasm was dampened by my overselling of the accompanying hot chocolate as being something so delicious it was going to blow their little minds out their ears, but they both took sips of the tepid, barely-lukewarm liquid and shrieked and wailed from the HORRIBLE SCALDING HEAT WHAT ARE YOU TRYING TO DO TO US, MOTHER, WE COULD HAVE BEEN KILLED.

 

Moving on. 

Another Big First: Noah licked the bowl after we made cookies. 

Translation: Noah actively participated in the cookie-making process, complete with the BREAKING OF EGGS and the NOISE OF THE KITCHENAID, and then willingly TOUCHED THE STICKY, SLIMY BATTER with his OWN FINGERS and then ACTUALLY TASTED IT.

And declared it DELICIOUS. 

So delicious, in fact, that I was forced (FORCED, I TELL YOU) to make a whole separate batch of cookies just so Ezra could get his first taste of cookie dough.

 

Now all that's left to do before Christmas is make one last batch of cookies after the kids go to bed so I can get some cookie dough. This spirit of "giving" and "sharing" garbage is for suckers. 

And How Was YOUR Day?

It was on this exact day in history when I realized that I needed to make a change. That the working-outside-the-home thing and I were not a good fit. That my poor already-meager brainpower reserves were overextended to the breaking point, making each and every venture into the outside world fraught with danger and the potential to snowball into a comedy of errors, or at least a story that could only be told with at least a dozen "...AND THEN!" transitions into the next circle of absent-minded hell. That being required to walk out the door remembering my keys AND my lunch AND the daycare bag AND the work I'd brought home the night before AND my shoes AND where I'd parked the car AND the baby, omg the baby was just too much. Something had to give. 

Five years and a whole extra kid-and-a-half later, this remains probably one of the most self-aware things I have ever realized about myself. Five years later, and it still holds true that the simple decision to "get out of my pajamas" is usually the exact point where my day goes completely haywire.

For the record, I am only required to Leave The House once a week, other than the weekends, but that doesn't count because Jason is there so he can supervise. I mean, so it's a team effort. Yes. That. On Thursdays, however, I alone am responsible for getting everybody up and fed and dressed and out the door for Noah's weekly OT appointment.

Yesterday, AS YOU MAY ALREADY HAVE BEEN AWARE, was a Thursday. So up and out we went, and I was feeling pretty good, considering I'd managed to shower and dry my hair AND find one whole hat for one whole child, so I only had to remember to repeatedly yank up one coat hood over one head, while muttering old-lady threats about colds and catching death. 

In fact, the only snafu was when I remembered that I'd never brought in my travel mug from my car, so I needed to run out and grab it and wash it out really quick so I could take my coffee with us. (NOTE: In my lifetime, I have personally purchased a good four dozen high-quality travel mugs, every single one of which is sitting in a desk drawer or under a car seat somewhere belong to my husband, so the travel mug featured in this story is my very last mug, a cheap promotional one that Tracey and I received when Mamapop won Best Pop Culture Blog from The Baltimore Sun. Tracey said I could keep our major award, which was very nice of her, except that it leaks all the time.) 

ANYWAY. BUT THEN! I retrieved the mug from the car, only to realize there was a very gross, very frozen chunk of last Thursday's coffee still in the bottom. We were already running late, the car was already running (in a very FORESHADOWINGLY-like manner, by the way) and the kids were already buckled into their seats and there I was, waiting for some warm-ish water to flow from the sink faucet in the kitchen so I could melt a week-old expired coffee ice cube or at least break it out with a knife handle or something. 

After a few desperate minutes, I put the mug in the microwave -- expressly disobeying the printed instructions on the bottom -- but then changed my mind after 10 seconds because you know, it would be SO LIKE ME to have to call Jason and tell him that I blew up the microwave for just this exact precise reason. 

Finally, I had a nice, cleanish cup of new coffee and we were back in the car. Which is when I noticed that the gas light was on.

Just like it had been on last Thursday, when I had consciously decided to NOT get gas, because 1) the gas light comes on in my car almost laughably early, like with more than 30 miles to go (according to some display thing on the GPS screen that I can check to more accurately gauge my gas-tank recklessness), and 2) as long as I made it home and then never left the house again, odds were good that Jason would drive the car next and would stop for gas. 

But we were all terribly sick last weekend, so nobody drove it anywhere, so I was now stuck knowing that I'd already cashed in my free early-gas-light trip and was probably close to fumes at this point. But we were late! Because...well, I'd spent all that time trying to melt that thing out of my travel mug.

We made it to OT on time, though I knew there was NO WAY we would make it home without filling up. But no matter, there were about three gas stations super-close to the therapist's office...I could stop and still get Noah home for a quick sandwich and catching the school bus in plenty of time. 

Except...for some reason, instead of just -- I DON'T KNOW -- driving to one of the actual gas stations that I was already familiar with, I decided to head towards the one that the GPS said was the closest. Huh! I thought. I had no idea there was a Shell station right there! That's really convenient, actually!

And it really would have been convenient, if it existed. Which it didn't. It was an office building. So I changed course and headed towards ANOTHER gas station, right around the time the stupid computer screen thing started yelling at me like, SERIOUSLY, YOU HAVE NO GAS, WHY DON'T YOU STOP AT A GAS STATION. YOU WERE LIKE, FIVE FEET FROM ONE A MINUTE AGO, MORON.

Oh, and did I mention it was snowing? Because it was snowing. What started as flurries around the time we arrived for OT was now a full-on snow "event," as the local weather people like to call it anytime we start seeing ACCUMULATION! Of UP TO TWO INCHES! YOU ARE ALL GOING TO DIE IN YOUR CARS! YOU ARE PROBABLY ALSO ON FIRE!

So there was a crazy amount of traffic, as the lines on the road were already more or less covered up, and as you know, when the lines on the road get covered up, everybody forgets where the lines ever even were to begin with. 

So I'm driving, all white-knuckled and over-caffeinated, with both kids in the car, and I can't even figure out which thing on the dashboard to freak out more over: the now below-E gas tank indicator or the clock, which says I have all of 15 minutes to get Noah home in time to catch the bus.

But I make it to the gas station. I pull up to the pump and reach into the diaper bag for my wallet.

No wallet.

No wallet.

NO WALLET.

No wallet, all of 10 cents in the coin tray, no secret $5 bill or credit card in the glove compartment, zero gas. Oh, and a cell phone with a red battery-charge indicator and yes, I have a car charger for my phone but no, I had no idea where it was at the moment.

I did the only thing I could think to do. I drove away from the gas station, back towards the snow-covered highway. 

See? Brain. Thinking. Not good at it. Obviously I'd hit max capacity for problem solving sometime that morning, probably during the thing with the mold-flecked coffee ice cube.

I called Jason and told him to like, omg, pray or something. He -- in a typical lack of faith and/or confidence in my coping skills -- ordered me to get the fuck to a gas station and wait for him there. I mewed sadly about the bus! The bus! I have to get Noah home for the bus!

"Yes, which you will most certainly NOT be able to do while stranded on the side of the highway."

(Right around this time, I drove directly by my old office building. Or more like...coasted, as I tried to use the snow to my advantage instead of the gas pedal. I'm beginning to think that general business park area has it in for me, for real.)

10 minutes later, Jason called back. He was still looking for my wallet. I told him to look in my black purse, which I'd carried last week to a BlogHer Meet-Up in Bethesda, which NOW that I think about it, was the other last time I left the house by myself. (I drove Jason's car. So he could have the carseats in case of an emergency. Also, because I knew my car needed gas.) He said he already checked that bag, and it wasn't there.

So. To recap. Things Amy Was Currently Freaking Out About:

1) No gas. Still sitting in traffic trying to get somewhere close to Gas Station Number Three, AKA the one every single driver in the area seemed to be flocking to, because OH MY GOD SNOW SNOW SNOW PANIC ALSO I NEED BREAD.

2) The bus. Even though that was pretty much a done-and-missed deal by now and I was going to have to drive Noah directly to school, I was upset because I didn't call the bus depot ahead of time to tell them Noah wouldn't be on the bus like I'm supposed to and what if I get in trouble for that? Or the bus skids on the ice right outside our house and everybody dies and it was ALL MY FAULT because I DIDN'T CALL, or maybe the bus driver will just be generally kind of MAD AT ME from now on?

3) My wallet. Where the hell was it? Did I lose it? Drop it? Get pick-pocketed? What happens if I got into a fender bender or something without my license right now because the road is slippery and you know, there are all these IDIOTS out there who don't know how to drive in the snow? I may be an idiot who spends 15 minutes melting coffee backwash from promotional travel mugs before driving her children miles and miles away in the snow with no gas and no wallet, but AS GOD IS MY WITNESS, I know how to drive in inclement weather. Kind of. Pretty much.

4) Phone battery. Seriously, where the fuck did my car charger go? Ohhhh, that's right, last week I met HeatherB for lunch and she texted to say she desperately needed an iPhone charger and all I could find in the house was the plug part but not the cable part so I yanked the cable from the car charger and then I guess I took the whole inside the house or something and see? All my problems in life stem from unsupervised outings. 

5) Starvation. We were almost out of the only snack option I had on hand: A bag of cheese-pretzel sandwich things that I desperately needed to believe was counting as a nutritious, pre-school-day lunch for Noah.

EPILOGUE

I made it to the gas station. We sat there for awhile until Jason showed up with a credit card and I racked up the single-most-expensive fill-up in my entire car-owning life. I drove Noah directly to school and got there before his bus, because the snow delayed everything by a million billion minutes or so, and when he got back home I fed him the entire contents of our pantry, because the poor kid was starving and I am mother of the fucking year.

EPILOGUE TWO

My wallet was totally in my black purse. Jason said, "Oh, THAT black purse." I have not yet asked him which black purse he thought I was talking about, because the only other black purse I own is a crystal-encrusted black satin evening clutch that is smaller than my actual wallet, and for the sake and safety of our family I need to keep on believing that that's NOT the purse he looked in, because ONE OF US HAS TO BE SMART, AT LEAST A LITTLE BIT. 

Sugar & Spice

Ladies, let's talk about feminine dryness. Sponsored by...

Oh, I'm kidding. Let's talk me being pregnant some more. 

Someone asked me how I was feeling yesterday, stomach flu aside, and I was happy to inform them that I'm feeling really pretty good, now that I've hit 14 weeks.

And then it occurred to me that hmmm, I think I've been saying "14 weeks" for more than a week now. And then I completely blanked on how far along I actually am, and had to go off and re-consult an online pregnancy due date calculator thing.

I'm 15 weeks. And a half.

If I were my first-time pregnant self reading that, I would call my third-time pregnant self an asshole. A terribly callous, disinterested asshole. Man, just thinking about the self-righteous, paranoid sermon my first-time pregnant self would've lathered herself into makes me tired. Bitch needs to back the truck up and calm the cluck down, if you know what I mean. Could you tell her that for me? I can't even deal with her. She's so screechy about everything.  

Instead, this pregnancy seems...so quietly marvelous, so mysteriously separate from me and yet so very simply ALL MINE. I can feel the baby's whisper-feathery little movements, when I'm lying on my back (OH GOD NO) at night, and the crazy-fast thumpthumpthump of his heart is now ridiculously easy to find with the doppler.

(I never told you this, but for quite a few weeks I couldn't find the heartbeat, even though I was at the point where I was sure I *SHOULD* have been able to find it, and I walked into my 12-week ultrasound secretly convinced beyond any doubt that the baby was dead. CONVINCED. I even tried to give Jason a heads' up the night before that I had a very strong feeling that we were going to get some bad news, so. You know. Prepare thyself, for I have the Motherly Hunch of Doom. When the giant BABYNESS filled the ultrasound monitor I was like, "Oh! Never mind!" And Jason totally laughed at me.)

We won't know "for sure" about the sex for another month at least, though I admit we're operating under the assumption of another boy. (I know, I know, but if you saw what we saw at the last ultrasound, well...even the doctor was like, "Yeah, that's a boy.")

We have the name picked out. We've used it aloud, even. We've opted to not discuss girl names unless the next ultrasound completely shocks the hell out of us. I know everybody -- oh my God, EVERYBODY -- assumes we want a girl, or were deliberating trying for a girl, and nobody ever believes me that SURE, we'd want a girl, but in the same way we'd want a boy, if that's what it is, because the only thing we were even semi-deliberating trying for was a BABY. 

A girl would be lovely, of course. Super fun, I'm sure. I always assumed I'd have daughters, but rest assured...there is no pang. No pink-tinged hole of regret or feeling of loss when I picture myself as the mother of all boys. There is -- really and pinkie-swear truly -- nothing but cheesy-ass JOY at the image of Jason and I simply buried under a big old pile of OUR CHILDREN, however many we end up with or however worn out that same old recycled "Thank Heaven For Baby Boys" onesie looks in my imagination. 

Sometimes -- yes, I make jokes about it. Usually while scrubbing the base of our toilets or like, I don't know dude, it's a fruit sticker. I jokingly pout in the clothing stores. I hold up the little-girl options to show Jason and stick my tongue out because oh my God can you believe how cute this is and I didn't even show you the matching leggings and ballet slippers. And then I put it down and buy Basic "Daddy's Lil' All-Star/Champion/Bruiser" T-Shirt Version 732 instead. 

One time, Jason recalls looking up from whatever giant Lego construction project he and Noah had going all across the living room floor and seeing me curled up on the couch, paging through a (sorely misdirected) American Girls' catalog that came in the mail. And he worried, then, that I was missing out on something. Of course Jason would be more than happy to swap the Legos for a tea party and the lightsabers for princess wands -- he's just a good, involved dad who loves his kids -- but later he actually did wonder out loud if I was sad about not having any girls.

I wasn't. I'm not. My boys are just...my boys, my babies, the ones I was meant to have. They are as sweet as the sweetest sugar in the world, and they give me everything -- EVERYTHING -- that I ever wanted out of motherhood, and so much more. 

And in...oh, who can remember exactly how many weeks, I get to do it all over again. Maybe we'll have a girl. Or maybe another boy. I don't care. I really don't care. It's delicious either way. 

Surviving in the Desert

I don't talk about my in-laws that much. I mean, do I? I don't think I do. FUN FACT: I have probably deleted all of about...three or four blog entries, tops, ever, since I started this site (counts on fingers...oh my GOD) seven years ago. But I still remember the very entry I deleted. It was about visiting my in-laws, and despite sound incredibly tame and ridiculously nice compared with the kind of screeds you saw flying across the average anonymous Blogspot blog back in those Wild West days, I deleted it at Jason's request. 

So I've been good, right? Other than occasionally holding them up as a case study for the Advice Smackdown, I feel like I've barely mentioned them. So I'm due! I can talk about my in-laws for just a little bit. It's my Christmas wish.

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Generations

As much as I would LOVE to write an incredibly detailed post about our weekend of non-stop stomach-flu illness (and as much as I'm sure y'all would LOVE to read about it), the fact is I previously committed today's posting spot to the American Cancer Society. They asked me to participate, once again, in their More Birthdays campaign, and contribute a monthly-ish post to help raise awareness of their research and programs and website. 

Today's post, according to my official editorial calendar (translation: an email from a few weeks ago that I have miraculously NOT LOST) is supposed to be an introductory sort of thing -- explaining why I chose to participate in the campaign in the first place.

Which, to put it eloquently, would be something along the lines of: Well, DU-U-UH. 

Last night, Jason's phone rang at exactly 2:32 a.m. I was deep in the middle of a stress dream involving being late for high school (after being awkwardly felt up and then promptly dumped by Michael Cera, that JERK) when I heard it ringing. It stopped soon after I fully woke up, but of course I lay there staring at the ceiling for awhile, panicking.

Was that The Call? 

My dad had another blood transfusion on Friday, meaning there was probably just enough time for his numbers to crater again. Or just enough time for another infection to set in. Was my phone on silent? Buried in the couch cushions? Had my mom -- or someone else -- called Jason after failing to get in touch with me? Would our home phone start ringing at any second, the clear sign that there was News, Bad News? 

I waited. I realized my phone was on my nightstand -- on silent, yes, but the screen thankfully did NOT register a slew of missed calls from my mother's cell phone. Our home phone never rang. 

It turned out it was just a wrong number, stupidly dialed in the middle of the stupid night. Jason never even heard it. 

***

When the leukemia diagnosis came in September, we didn't know how much time he had left. We still don't. When I was asked for four months of topic ideas for the American Cancer Society series -- I'll be writing once a month until March -- I couldn't give them that. I just...don't know what's going to happen, or when.

But.

He was here when I found out I was pregnant. 

He was here for Noah's fifth birthday, and Ezra's second.

He was here for his 35th wedding anniversary in October.

He was here for his 81st birthday last month, and for my mom's birthday last week. (She would probably kill me if I told you her age, but I think my dad would be okay if I divulge the secret that he married a much younger woman.) 

I am pretty sure he'll be here for Christmas, and my birthday on the 27th.

After that, it's baby steps until they get to spend another Valentine's Day together, another grandson's birthday. Easter, spring. 

And then, my due date.

It could happen. I want it to happen. 

So. That's why I chose to participate in the "More Birthdays" initiative by the Amercian Cancer Society.