Apple Store of My Eye

I had to ask what, exactly, a "word retrieval disorder" meant, when we met with the child psychologist to go over the action-packed, 25-page report on Noah's evaluation. I understood most of what was in there -- ADHD, auditory processing, some too-early-to-tell red flags for dyslexia for us to "keep an eye on" -- but the word retrieval bit was a new one. 

Was it like apraxia? I asked.

No, she said. That's an inability to form words. This is more about plucking the right word from your brain soup. Basically having it right there on the tip of your tongue, but unable to remember it, or only coming up with words that are similar in concept, but not quite right. 

For example: saying shovel when you mean hammer, bicycle for motorcycle, or in a unique-to-Noah coping mechanism the psychologist noted, expanding a simple sentence to include a ton of extra, early "filler" words, thus buying himself more time to come up with the more difficult verbs and nouns that would come later. 

That was really fascinating to see, she said. He's already very aware of what's difficult for him, and is coming up with his own accomodations in lot of those areas. That's a very, very good thing. 

***

The suggested school-based accomodations for a word retrieval problem include providing Noah with a "word bank" to choose from during fill-in-the-blank tests, or allow him to write expanded responses instead of counting on him to remember a single specific word, and to use lots of mnemonic devices and categorization exercises to help with his word-memory skills. 

I couldn't help but think that man, we are getting crazy obscure here, with the stuff you can now officially label as a "disorder." I mean, really:

PROBLEMS WITH WORD RETRIEVAL! CAPS LOCK COMPULSION! PUNCTUATION DEFICIT DISORDER! I HAVE ALL OF THESE PLUS WEIRD DOUBLE-JOINTED RING FINGERS. 

***

Last night, after dinner, Jason suggested we all head to the Apple store to check out their selection of educational games, to see if they included some age-appropriate typing or keyboarding skills. (This was another accomodation the psychologist recommended, to teach Noah to type as a less-frustrating alternative to handwriting.) Noah demanded clarification, probably thinking that we wanted to take him to a fruit store, which would have to be one of the WORST IDEAS EVER, unless we were talking bananas. Did the apple store also have bananas? 

No, we told him. The computer store. The one with the Dora games you like to play. 

Oh, okay, he nodded. I like the computer store.

A few minutes later we hadn't left yet, and Noah was getting impatient. 

Are we going to the...

That's as far as he got before his face contorted and the tears started. 

The word! I can't say the word! My voice doesn't remember that word! Naughty voice, why won't you remember!

Then he balled up his fist and started punching himself in the throat. 

Holy shit, I thought. Stop!

Computer, I said, as soothingly as I could. The computer store.

He repeated it and immediately calmed down, taking big deep breaths. I don't like when my voice forgets the words. It makes me angry. 

Of course it does, I said. It's frustrating. Everybody's voice forgets the words sometimes, though. 

We decided to go to the fruit store another time. We went to the playground instead. 

34.5 Weeks

PREGNANCY PRO TIP: Once your belly reaches a size where it starts provoking unsolicited comments/predictions from strangers regarding your due date and/or the likelihood of you "making it" to said due date and/or shit like "another MONTH, plus some? whoo-boy, get ready for a 15-pounder there, mom," consider dressing in clothing that allows you to blend into the wall color. 

 

I find it incredibly slimming. 

Yellow & Black & Read All Over

Hidden among my father's rows and rows of books -- every book that had ever landed on the high school English curriculum list, plus a few from the banned column, for good measure -- was an impressive stash of Cliffs Notes. 

I remember being surprised by the huge number of yellow-and-black-striped study guides one day while digging around for something to read, something more challenging than the pathetic selection of Christian young adult fiction-with-a-Jesus-message my school's library offered. I think I was on a Thomas Hardy kick, or maybe it was Vonnegut by that point. Either way, I knew I'd find something that would alternately impress and/or horrify my own English teacher, but I wasn't expecting the Cliffs Notes.

I knew exactly what they were, and how most of my peers used them: For cheating. You read the guide and not the book, and hopefully gleaned enough information to bullshit your way through class discussions and tests. They were a safer bet than renting a movie version that might have changed everything, but of course they cost a lot more, and you ran the risk of having a teacher or parent catch you with them.

And then there was my parent, who was also a teacher, who owned dozens of them. More than dozens! Right there in our house, steps away from my bedroom! Dickens, Shakespeare, Hawthorne. Books I'd enjoyed and books I'd barely been able to endure. 

I can't really explain why it blew my mind, but holy SHIT, it blew my mind. 

So I asked him about the Cliffs Notes. Why did he have them? Weren't they like, totally solely for cheating? Weren't they a sin of some kind?

Well, yes and no, he told me. He bought them to help him write tests that would weed out the cheaters. The kids who relied solely on the notes and regurgitated the sample essays and themes. Cliffs Notes left stuff out a lot, you see, so he could include questions about the left-out stuff on exams, thus quickly teaching his students a lesson: Mr. Corbett Will Not Let You Get Away With That Crap. 

But sometimes the guides were helpful, if you've read the book but need a little help understanding what you've read, or keeping characters or historical events straight, or just want to maybe read a different interpretation than what your teacher tells you.

Here he gave me A Look, since we had a bit of a private joke about my English teacher's absolute butchering of Great Expectations the year before, because every single work of literature contained Christ-figure symbolism according to him, and I'd gotten so fed up with it I'd written an entire paper arguing that Miss Havisham represented a "fallen Christ figure" just to be a pain in his ass, and he gave me an A on the goddamned nonsensical thing. 

After that, I frequently helped myself to the Cliffs Notes. Never in place of the reading the assigned text, because, well, my dad trusted me with his Cliffs Notes. He knew I wasn't a cheater. He knew I didn't need to cheat. I was smart, I was an A student, I'd been holding my own with him in discussions on Shakespeare since junior high. 

The funny thing is that I didn't really and truly know he knew all that until he trusted me with his Cliffs Notes. 

Then Heart of Darkness happened. Heart of Fucking Darkness, by Joseph Fucking Conrad. I hated that book. I simply could not get into that book. I tried, over and over again, but somehow ended up lost and frustrated only a couple chapters in. I had a lot of other projects going on so I procrastinated, figuring that I could speed read it under pressure at the final hour in time for the exam. 

The final hour came, and I was in tears. Never in my life had I been so thoroughly defeated by a book. Never in my life had I encountered a book I hated so much that I just could not get through it.

I went to my dad's study in a panic. Had he ever read Heart of Darkness? Ever taught it in class? What was I missing? What was wrong with me?  

Nothing, he said. I hate that book too. The horror! The horror! Terribly written. It's a chore to get through. 

And then: Do we have the Cliffs Notes for that one?

Yes, I said. But...I haven't read the book yet...

You tried, he said. I won't tell. 

And he never, ever did.

(And I did just fine on the test.)

Cracky

Why is today still spring break? Why wasn't one whole week off from school enough? Why this one extra stupid day -- the same day, of course, that I traditionally spend alone and gleeful as I thoughtfully and judiciously "edit" the contents of my children's Easter baskets because THAT BUNNY HAD NO RIGHT TO BE SO GENEROUS -- of stir-crazy kids running around the house begging for peanut-butter eggs?

And honestly, I'm not so sure Noah is particularly thrilled with being home with me anymore either. He's bored and done and over it too. Especially since I won't let him ride his little brother like a donkey anymore or swaddle the dog like an infant.

I am No Fun, you guys. And he is done with me, professionally. 

***

You know what IS fun, though? The new car. The kids looooovvvvvve the new car. They want to live in the new car. Yesterday, in a fit of We're Completely Out Of Activities related boredom, we simply opened all the doors to the new car and set them loose in it to climb and explore and turn traction control on and off.

Jason and I kicked back on the grass with iPhones and Kindles and supervised (which basically meant we looked up frequently enough to confirm that nobody had magically started the car and put it in gear and taken off for a new life on the road) and congratulated ourselves on being the greatest parents ever.

Except that -- and oh, we walked right into this one just like a Creed song -- when Noah was first informed that our Green Car was no more and we now had a new White Car, he took the news (predictably) very badly. Not a fan of change, that one. And I rushed to soothe his tears with the little detail that HEY GUESS WHAT, THERE'S A TV IN THE NEW CAR. Upon hearing this, Noah froze. His eyes went very, very wide. Then he said, "Let me get my coat."

"The TV in the new car is just for special trips," I tried to explain, "Long trips. Like going to see Grandma. Not short everyday trips."

To which my children were like, "HA HA FUNNY MOM NOW HOW'S ABOUT THAT DESPICABLE ME DVD?"

"Well," I tried next. "Today can be all special trips, since it's the first day in the new car. After today, though..."

"AND WOULD IT KILL YOU TO POP SOME POPCORN?" was pretty much the response I got.

Monsters. I have created them. Or at least equipped them with personal wireless headphones.  

***

It's something like 900 degrees outside right now (give or take a few degrees to account for the whole eight-months-pregnant thing), but since our one big planned organized outdoor activity was scheduled for Friday, that means it was 41 degrees and pouring down rain the whole time. 

The eggs were real and wet and covered in grass and filth, as if you plucked them straight from the underside of a chicken, for that extra authentic experience...

...which was admittedly dampened a bit by the sight of a parks employee openly marching through the egg hunt area with cartons of hard-boiled eggs, dropping them half-heartedly into the grass with a look of STUPIDEST JOB EVER on his face, while all parents in the vicinity rushed to explain to their preschoolers and toddlers that he was simply the Easter Bunny's HELPER, YEAH, THAT'S TICKET, and he just looks that grumpy because the Bunny doesn't offer very good retirement benefits.

None of our eggs made it to the (indoor) decorating table intact. Ezra kept dropping them and Noah insisted on "opening" his eggs to check for candy inside.

I sense I've let that one down in the whole "know where your food comes from" department, a little bit.

And there's your belly photo for the week, right there. I know you can't see my face or anything, yet I still feel like the massive amounts of fun I was having at the time really radiates through, somehow, anyway, regardless. 

The Great Confession

A long time ago, back when I only had one singular solitary child, my car had to go to the shop for a few days. I rented a car in the meantime, but when I arrived the rental place had given away the last mid-size class car I'd reserved. 

So they offered me a minivan. I think they thought I'd consider this a fabulous upgrade, since I was clearly SUCH A MOM and all, but I made a face, like, really? Ugh. My mom car is a Subaru WRX! It's a turbo. And a stick shift. It's fucking fast as shit. We used to take it to the racetrack for rally-car driving lessons. Until we got tired of replacing the tires so often. And, you know, we had to put a car seat in the back and a stroller in the trunk. And stuff. 

But I took the minivan. And to this day, I remember that moment out in the Enterprise parking lot when I opened those remote-controlled side doors and saw how easy it was to get Noah in and out, and all the interior room, and how smooth and quiet it drove and was like, damn, I could get used to this.

AND I WAS SO ASHAMED. 

So my Great Solution to the minivan question was to simply never, ever drive one again. Because I knew.

***

Last night, after test-driving every giant-ass all-wheel-drive SUV option in existence, Jason finally convinced me to sack up and go to a Toyota dealership to look at a Sienna. We needed to look at ALL the options, you know, before we could really make up our minds. 

We approached the sad-looking row of fat-bottomed symbols of I've Officially Given Up Everything I Used To Be on the lot and I immediately started bitching. It's ugly. It's too big. Why is the trunk like that, what the hell is that thing for, the DVD screen blocks my visibilllllllity, blah blah blah. 

"Where are the keys?" I asked the saleswoman.

"Push-button start," she explained, "Right there."

"THAT'S DUMB," I muttered.

I pushed the button. Whee! Heh. I like buttons.

"I AM STILL ONTO YOU, MINIVAN," I warned it. "STOP TRYING SO HARD."

The saleswoman smiled from one of the middle-row bucket seats. She reclined it a little and flipped out a fancy, La-Z-Boy style footrest.

"No SHIT, WHAT?" I sputtered. "That's ridiculous. This whole car is ridiculous."

Jason looked up from the brochure. "So you can hook up an XBox in here too?"

"MOTHERFUCKING CHRIST."

***

I drove it about 10 minutes down the road, executed a ridiculously easy U-turn, and practiced parking. Jason asked how it compared to the last big lumbering crossover SUV we'd just finished test-driving, the one I said was "fine" and "not too much like driving a truck, only kinda."

"DAMMIT," was all I said. Which told him everything he needed to know. 

We switched seats and Jason drove it back to the lot. The saleswoman left us alone to play the 4,000 other various buttons and cubbyholes. 

"I knew this would happen," I sighed, after discovering the built-in sunshades on all the back windows. 

"I know," Jason said, while messing around with the iPod interface on the navigation screen.

We went inside. I sat down and sighed deeply.

"I want a white one. Do you have a white one?"

***

They did.

And now so do I. 

(NOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOO.)

(YESSSSSSSSSSSSSSSSSSSSSSSSSSSSSSSSSSSSSS. XBOX PARTY IN THE BACK SEAT, Y'ALL.)

This Post Brought To You By The Power Of Drugs And Also Drugs

Guess what! Guess what guess what! I AM FEELING SLIGHTLY KIND OF A LITTLE BETTER. Definitively, objectively so, even.

(Still in bed, however. I left the house exactly once this week, to take Noah to karate, but I sat down the whole time. I PROMISE.)

(The previous parenthetical written for 1) my mom, and 2) several of you adorable people, who have been leaving clucking comments of concern and ordering me not to do anything at all, YOU MEAN IT.)

The turnaround came from the proper combination of drugsdrugsdrugs, in my case an antibiotic and 12-hour maximum strength Mucinex. The problem, however, is that one of these drugs lists "tiredness" as a side effect and the other one lists "drowsiness." Taken together, I have been experiencing something that can only be described as "HOLY SHIT COMPULSIVE ALL-CAPS EXHAUSTION." 

Thus, every time I go to write anything I keep *zzzzztt!* doing *snarfhuh?* this thing *headjerk* where I'm *drool* falling asleep *ggguhhhh* in between every other *zzzzzzzz* word. 

Oh, and did I mention it's Noah's spring break this week? Yeah. I did enlist as many extra babysitting hours as I could finance, but still. It's been super edumacational and stimulating around here, with a lot of "Hey! you know what's fun? Watching Nick Jr. in bed with Mommy! Yaaayyy!"

(Also: The hidden stash of Easter candy somehow managed to end up in my nightstand. I don't know HOW that happened.)

(Also also: We somehow don't have any Easter candy anymore. Another profoundly mysterious mystery.) 

However, I do have one parental moment of victory to report: Ezra is finally, completely, oh-my-God-it's-for-real-this-time potty trained.

*here is where I totally planned to include a picture of the Mighty Ez with a pair of Buzz Lightyear underpants on his head, but then thought better of it, AKA my husband was like, "DUDE HE'S OUR SON" so never mind*

Despite an early, optimistic start at something like, 18 months old or whatever insane nonsense I'd been fed by fellow cloth diaper users about OH IT'LL BE SO EASY THEY ALL TRAIN EARLY IN CLOTH DIAPERS YOU WON'T HAVE TO DO A THING*, Ezra quickly changed his mind and steadfastly refused any and all suggestions/bribes/boot-camp-style approaches, to the point where if I offered big-boy pants to him in the morning, he would simply march over to the changing table, pull a diaper out of the drawer, lay it out neatly on the floor and then plop his bare butt on it, arms folded, like, I have made my choice, woman. Now snap this thing up so that I might take a crap in peace. 

*LIESSSSSSS

All I wanted in the world was to get him out of diapers before The Coming Third arrived and we're all transported back to the magical days of mustard poops and 8-10 diaper changes a day. So I am really ridiculously pleased that we managed to hit that goal, right as we're closing in on the final weeks. This will really free up my schedule to maybe finally getting around to finding the missing crib screws and that box of nursing bras that I know is around here SOMEWHERE, just...not in any place that would seem to make any logical sense. I dunno. I haven't looked in the crawlspace where we keep the extra paint cans yet, so....

I promise I'm not posting the underwear-on-your-head photos, okay? Stop looking at me like that. 

(But for the record, I have them. Just so you know.)

(AND THEY ARE ADORABLE. JUST LIKE THE WAY YOU SAY "I GOTTA GO BAFFROOM, C'MON.")

Almost Bed Rest, But Not Quite

The fun continues. If by "fun" you mean "AMY IS SICK AGAIN AND TALKING ABOUT BEING SICK AGAIN." Which I am guessing is not at all what you meant.

So. 33-week OB appointment this morning. Highlights for discussion included:

1) The flu, the aches, the misery, the two-week-old cough that's getting worse instead of better, probably because I keep thinking I feel a little better and then immediately rush back out into the germy world to Get Shit Done and/or Not Neglect My Children and/or Completely Overdo It (see: the rest of this entry).

2) More weight loss thanks to coughing fits leading to vomiting fits several times a day, and a doctor who finally stared at my weight numbers and made a face, like, HMMMMM, but then went on to insist that it won't affect the baby...

3) BUT since it's obviously kicking the ever-loving hell out of me, I should go ahead and stay in bed for as much as possible this week.

4) Also, here are some precautionary antibiotics that I just know aren't going to do a thing because it's a FUCKING SUPER-VIRUS FROM HELL. (AKA YOUR LOCAL PRESCHOOL CLASSROOM.)

So far staying in bed for "as much as possible" has equaled about 30 minutes. Ish. Not counting trips to the bathroom. 

***

But! On Saturday we took the kids to see Rio. They liked it. Jason and I both fell asleep. Now I know that I was just doing the right thing for the baaaaayyyybeee. 

(Jason was just really bored.)

***

Yesterday, we all went out for Sunday breakfast before dragging the kids to Carmax so we could test drive a series of seriously unexciting Big Fat Oversized Family Car Options. Highlights included:

1) I never got the matzoh ball soup I ordered. 

2) They had scrapple on the menu, one of my dad's favorites. I thought, "Oh, right. That happened."

3) Then I went back to plotting running someone over with my car in retaliation for the soup mix-up. 

4) THIS IS PROGRESS.

5) The poor car salesman did not understand how completely underwhelmed I am about our next-car-purchase options (quad-middle-seats-plus-third-row-blah Buick Enclave, GMC Acadia, Toyota Sienna, Such-and-Such ZZZZZZZWHOCARES) and kept trying to point out All The Awesome Features And Things And Such, like, "this one has the DVD player!" and "look at this faux-woodgrain luxury trim package!" 

5a) My feedback mostly consisted of shoulder shrugging, saying stuff like "well, I don't HATE it," and coughing on him. 

5b) The immobile "We Would Never Sell This Car at Carmax" example car in the showroom? Pretty much the greatest playground my children have ever, ever visited. Hours, they played in that thing.

BEWARE THE GHOSTLY GIGANTIC PREGNANT LADY IN THE WINDOW REFLECTION. CARMAX WOULD NEVER SELL YOU A CAR WITH A PREVIOUS POLTERGEIST HAUNTING REPORT.

6) We did not buy a car. I think we've more or less settled on what we'll buy in the end, but I am pretending that we still have lots of gobs of time to buy a car. Which we do, right? 40 weeks minus 33 is like, two more trimesters, at least. I think. 

7) LA LA LA *cough, choke, wheeze, hack* LAAAAA

It's Like Winning the Lottery Only More Contagious-Like

Because I am pretty sure this pregnancy JUST WON'T COUNT without at least one unwarranted, after-hours trip to Labor & Delivery, I went and diagnosed myself with pre-eclampsia last night and called my doctor's answering service in a panic. 

I'd had a headache all day that was getting worse by the hour, and I was feeling increasingly woozy and tired and out-of-it. My body was a mess of weirdly unspecific aches and pains in my back and sides and shoulders and maybe my abdomen or maybe my uterus, I don't know, it just allll hurts, and I was having these really ridiculously violent coughing fits where I would basically cough until I threw up. By the time I realized I was ALSO running a fever, I was convinced that I was dying of pre-eclampsia or HELLP syndrome or an acksploded gallbladder or something else bad and awful and very dramatic, I am sure. 

The on-call doctor returned my call, listened patiently to my moaning and agreed that the headache in particular was disconcerting. I put on my shoes and made a mid-air thumb-wrestling gesture to Jason that completely baffled him, even though I don't know HOW it could have been clearer that I wanted him to text our babysitter to find out if she could come back and watch the boys because WE were going to the hospital. I mean, DUH. 

Then the doctor asked me a couple other questions and it was my turn to be baffled, because she was asking about things that were totally NOT on any pre-eclampsia checklist I'd ever read on the Internet, and I'd totally read at least five or six that day, but I answered them anyway while mentally assessing the hospital-ready state of my underwear. 

"Yeah...I'm pretty confident it's NOT pre-eclampsia. I'm actually gonna say that sounds an awful lot like the flu," the doctor said. 

"Ohhhhh," I said. "Yeah. Now that you say that..."

And then: "But I already HAD the flu. In JANUARY. And it's APRIL. How do you get the flu in APRIL? For the SECOND TIME? And...and..."

"Yeah," she responded. "That's some really lousy luck. Lemme call in a prescription for Tylenol with codeine for you."

In summary: 

Wake me up in June, maybe, fuck this, the end. 

From the Boy Who Brought You "Fuckles"

(Actual word-for-word transcript from actual video taken on Monday, which is sadly not exactly suitable for public consumption because one of the on-camera participants was only clad in his underwear, and the other one decided to take off his pants at some point during the conversation as well, and I don't really remember why that was exactly, but they were also standing on top of a wobbly rattan ottoman they'd placed on top of an unsteady upholstered storage bench so they could yell HI! HI! HI! out an open window to random strangers on the street, and then Ezra attempted to climb out the window entirely so really the near-nudity thing was the least of the problems we had going on that day.)

Noah: The people in Japan need our help!

Amy: Really? Why do they need our help?

Noah: Because the earthquake and the wave. And all the guys had to run away! Like this!

Noah: *mimes running motions with fingers across his torso*

Amy: The guys?

Noah: Yeah, the guys! Had to run away from the earthquake and the wave, and then everything got broken.

Amy: So how can we help Japan? What should we do?

Noah: We should FIX IT.

Amy: How can we do that?

Noah: *thinks*

 Noah: The builder-fixers!

Amy: The builder-fixers?

Noah: Yes, they know everything about building. AND fixing. So we send the builder-fixers to Japan, and they will help, and things won't be broken anymore.

(At this point video derails into some random sibling-on-sibling body slamming and ottoman-rocking and the aforementioned escape attempt by Ezra who managed to get one foot up and onto the lowered window pane and both curtain panels in his fists and then the filmmaker suddenly wakes the fuck up and sees how this is all going to end [HINT: HORRIBLY] and finally puts the camera down to go rescue her children from their own damn selves.)

Help Japan. Send a builder-fixer today.

Awful

Everyone -- okay, well, not EVERYONE, but enough people for it to feel that way -- keeps telling me how lucky I am to have the new baby to look forward to. How thankful I must be! What a wonderful thing! What timing, in the midst of so much sadness, to have something so purely joyful and happy to focus on.

The problem is: I don't feel any of those stupid things. 

The oh-shit moment of general pre-baby non-readiness has morphed into full-on crazy anxiety about the reality of what's coming. Three children. Three! As in, the two I already have, plus ONE MORE.

WHAT THE FUCK KIND OF MATH IS THAT.

Obviously, I'm feeling a bit over-pummeled in general right now. I'm trying to grieve for my father, support my mother, adjust to an entirely new diagnosis for my son, juggle a full work load and the four-frillion mundane details of everyday life that we all have going on a regular basis, plus, you know, GESTATE.

There are probably even more people than that phantom "everyone" I mentioned telling me to be gentle on myself, to cut myself some slack, that there is no right way to navigate losing a parent, especially just weeks away from becoming one yourself, either for the first or the third or the Duggareenth time.

However, for anyone thinking they might want to use me as a compass, I should admit that I'm operating at an emotional level just north of basketcase. 

I keep changing the text-message chime on my phone, hoping to find one that doesn't immediately cause an involuntary shudder of dread; then I go ahead and ignore the majority of messages I get anyway. Watching Noah's attentional difficulties interfere with karate class bring me to tears; I re-read his kindergarten IEP and evaluation results with a sense of relief and yet also know exactly what pages the worst parts are on; then Ezra keeps asking "Where's PopPop?" for some reason; no less than 15 minutes later I'm ready to abandon both of the little monsters in the produce aisle of the grocery store. 

I've typed out and deleted more paragraphs as part of this entry than I can count. The whining! Oh, it's not any more tolerable from myself than it is from my children, who seriously: going to be left to be raised by the organic mangoes if they don't knock it off, so help me God. 

The stress has -- unsurprisingly, I suppose -- taken a toll on my thus-far near-embarassingly "easy" pregnancy. I've lost weight, I'm back to my first-trimester habit of hovering over the toilet bowl shortly after dinner each night, I'm plagued by long and almost-daily stretches of false labor pains, I have a cold I cannot shake, I am constantly light-headed and tired and scatterbrained and sleeping poorly at night thanks to the baby's pointy, elbowriffic gymnastics. 

There's nothing wrong -- my blood pressure is fine, the contractions are meaningless, my doctor is completely unconcerned with barely 10 pounds net gained in 33 weeks and simply reminds me to drink more water and "take it easy," blissfully unaware with how close he comes to getting kicked in the shins whenever he says that.

And I know. Welcome to the third trimester of pregnancy, which is BY EVOLUTIONARY DESIGN, made to be deliberately miserable so you'll want the baby to come out at the end.

But. I don't. Not really. Not yet. 

I admitted this all to Jason yesterday, when we were out having lunch and I once again fretted about the logistics of LEAVING THE HOUSE OUTNUMBERED BY CHILDREN. I admitted that I think about the baby and only feel...dread. Fear. Not happy or grateful or joyful. More like...pangs of ohshitwhathaveIdonetomylife. Proactive disgust at all the messy postpartum business of lochia and leaky boobs and spit-up and all the sleep-deprived gruntwork involved in newborn care, and the fear that I have officially pushed myself past my mothering limit, and am doomed to lose my temper at SOMEBODY, ONE OF THEM, ALL OF THEM, every day for the next 20 years. 

"That's awful, isn't it?" I said.

Jason looked at me from across the table and frowned like a sad little Precious Moments figurine. "Yeah, it is." 

I thought about suggesting that this was not the most helpful reply he could have come up with (RESPOND TO MY HIDEOUS HONESTY WITH LIES NEXT TIME, OKAY?), but I noticed Noah was picking kind of roughly at a tiny little freckle that recently appeared near his thumb. 

"Stop that," I scolded. "You're going to hurt yourself. It's just a freckle. Look, I have them too."

"I don't like fuckles!" he wailed. "I don't want any fuckles!"

Ezra raised his hands over his head and joined in. "FUCKLES!"

I covered my face and tried to not laugh. At which point the waitress -- who had been standing there for God-knows-how long -- cleared her throat and awkwardly asked who got the pancakes with bacon and who got the pancakes with eggs.