23 Minutes

Dear Well-Meaning People At Our Vet's Office,

I know. I KNOW. He LOOKS CUTE. He's all blondish and be-dimpled, dressed up exactly like a real live human being with the polo and the shorts and the sandals. He'll tell you his name and his dog's name and his baby brother's name (though probably not in the same order you asked the questions). In other words, he LOOKS like the kind of kid you can win over with stickers and small plastic dog figurines...and inviting him into the back while you administer our dog's Bordetella vaccine sounds like a great idea, except for the part where you can't and it totally fucking isn't.

I don't know. I DON'T KNOW. He loves stickers! Especially circle stickers! Small plastic choking hazards are his FAVORITE! I don't know why today he's decided that stickers are the equivalent of putting dirty Band-Aids on his shirt and small plastic dog figurines are like, beneath him or something, God, and why his only true love in the world is your ceramic business card holder. Wait. That one I know. Because it is 1) Breakable, and 2) FULL OF A MILLION AND ONE FUCKING BUSINESS CARDS.

I do know a little more. See? He's three-and-a-half. Probably closer to four than I ever let myself admit, because FOUR. That's a PERSON. That's...not this kid right here, who is shrieking that I DON'T NEED TO LIKE TO READ A BOOK NO THANK YOU when I offer him something from your dog-eared collection of dog-themed children's books as an alternative to the business card holder. He is both acting his age and totally NOT acting his age, and I hope and pray this is just kind of part being this age. Dear God. He also, for the record, loves books, although today has been one of those fucking days where I would secretly like to fashion some kind of helmet that beams Yo Gabba Gabba directly into his brain if it would make him sit still and stop rolling around on the fur-covered floor like the Incredible Human Swiffer With Extra Whining Power.

(You're welcome for the clean floors, though. Don't mention it, we're just happy to help.)

I must admit to bullshitting you when I was all, "Noah, be GENTLE with Ceiba's leash, remember how I showed you? Don't pull on her, be GENTLE. You know better." Confession: I've never shown him how to walk the dog on her leash because he refuses to even acknowledge her waffle-stealing existence 99% of the time, like, I'm not even sure he's aware that we have a dog. I think he considers her more on par with an annoying battery-powered blinky-bloopy toy, and he has never ONCE been so fascinated with her leash and walking her around in circles as he is today and honestly I'm starting to wonder if maybe another mother and I got our children mixed up in the parking lot.

Please don't offer to let him go in the back with you please don't offer to let him go in the back with you please don't, oh crap. You did. Okay, watch this; it's really cool. I'll try to say "No, let's stay out here and wait together, okay?" and see how many words I can get out of my mouth before the screaming starts.

Three words! It's a personal best!

Fine. We'll go in the back -- path of least resistance and all, and a fierce desire to GET OUT OF HERE ALIVE -- and oh, look. There's dogs and cats in cages! He would like to stick his hand in those cages, and then he would like to run around and collide into pricey medical equipment. This is a TERRIFIC IDEA. You can tell that the vet thinks so too! Hi, Doctor. Yeah. It's us. There's an olde ancient Internet acronym for your facial expression. Double You Tee Eff, I believe it is called.

Okay! The vaccine took all of 30 seconds, which TOTALLY made this entire transition to the back room necessary and time to go back out front, Noah! Noah? Get...git...over here...now...hiss...gah...I will PUT YOU in the cone of shame, child, I KNOW they make them for your neck measurement I swear to...

Okay! Time to pay, make follow-up appointments at which I will feel deathly guilty over the state of my pets' dental hygeine, yep, I'd love a reminder card, something to look forward to! This! All over again! And oh God, please let the sticker thing go, I don't know WHY he's being such an ass about the sticker and I'm just all around mortified by this entire excursion and...wait...what are you asking him about?

Are we going to the bea...SHIT SHIT DON'T SAY IT DON'T SAY THAT WORD STOP.

Oh, hell. Yes, we needed the Bordetella because we're going to the b-e-a-c-h. On Friday. Which means it's totally not something we've mentioned to the c-h-i-l-d yet, because...well, never mind. I'm just going to crumble a couple of your business cards into earplugs for the ride home when he realizes we're NOT going to the beach right now and thinks that he's being punished for not being a good boy and perhaps I'll let him think that. Or not. I haven't had time to process my remaining patience level.

In summary, Well-Meaning People At Our Vet's Office, please accept my official and heartfelt apology for bringing an unhinged class five tornado onto your premises. Especially without a leash. He's really not usually like this, except for whenever it matters. THEN HE IS PRECISELY LIKE THIS. Thank you for maintaining that you found him utterly adorable, right up until the moment we left. Though I also wouldn't blame you if you're totally blogging about us right now.

Sincerely,
Amy

PS. I am also sorry that my dog has such a weird, unpronouncable name. Before her next visit I'll train her to respond to Sheba or Sayiba or something like that.

PPS. He really did cry the whole way home about the beach. It was kind of sad, since I do still like him a whole lot, in spite of everything. I wasn't mean about it and tried to explain that we're still going, just not today, but it didn't really do any good. Turns out he mostly just needed a nap. This has since been rectified. Within 30 seconds of getting back home. With extreme prejudice. And door locks.

PPPS. The little one sure was cute, right? HE liked your stickers.

PPPPS. Though for future reference, eight-month-old babies should not be given stickers. Particularly eight-month-old babies who belong to harebrained, distracted mothers who are trying to wrangle a sobbing preschooler and a freaked-out hamsterdog who just wanted to wind her leash around everybody's fucking legs, because she might not notice until much later that the sticker has mysteriously vanished. He's going to poop it out momentarily, I just know it. I wonder if we'll still be able tell what brand of heartworm pills provided the stickers! Oooh, suspense!

Forward Motion

A couple people inquired about the shoe box obstacle course I mentioned in yesterday's post. Yes, I was totally holding out on you. BEHOLD THE THRILLS:

Seven -- count 'em! -- SEVEN entire whole shoe boxes of various cheap-to-middling-quality shoe brands, each filled with wonder, excitement...and ADVENTURE.

Okay, more like "filled with cotton balls, dried beans, crumpled-up paper and packing peanuts."

This is a motor planning activity from The Out-of-Sync Child Has Fun. The boxes can be filled with pretty much any textured material -- carpet, sand, buttons - and arranged in different ways, depending on your desired level of difficulty.

End to end in a straight line (forcing your child to put one foot down in front of the other) is slightly tougher than spaced out and staggered. So to start, I've put them near a wall to help Noah keep his balance. (He's wearing his socks because otherwise he gets too preoccupied with picking beans and packing peanuts from the bottom of his feet.)

After some practice, we try it using only one finger on the wall. And then...

Ta-da! No hands! Hooray!

Aaaaand. That's the shoe box obstacle course. Make one of your very own today! Mine would ideally contain booze and hot fudge, although instead of stepping in it I would just drink it, because I would replace the shoeboxes with a margarita glass and a bowl. Because I am a planner who thinks ahead.

***

In other, more fearsome mobility news, the baby (who as of last night demonstrated exactly ZERO interest in anything but sitting) has spent all damn day scooting all over the damn place on his belly and knees. The only way to thwart him seems to be moving him off the hardwoods and onto the carpet.

So thwart him, I did.

NO. I THWART THEE.

Ceiba demonstrates her own scooting-slash-yoga move. This is the Deboned Chicken.

Ezra responds with the Horizontal Spiderman.

And then moves effortlessly into the I Will Be Crawling By Monday So Lock Up Your Daughters, Your Stray Electrical Cords & The Millions Of Choking Hazards In That Shoe Box Obstacle Course, Oh Crap.

Home Sweet Wine Rack

Well. So. Despite the weirdest trip to New York ever and a brief detour into FOOD POISONING*, I am back at home, finally. What's this thing, here, on my lap? A com...pooter? Internetty? Blawgs? Twitter? Facebook? Twitface? What the fuck?

Noah's Easter egg hunt this morning consisted of a dozen plastic eggs filled with pennies and leftover Halloween candy. I am pretty sure this might be a new record in half-assing.

Big shout-out to my sister, who so nicely provided little Easter baskets for both of my children, without which my children would have received NO Easter baskets, because you know what you get when you go to Target the day before Easter in hopes of stocking an Easter basket? You get empty shelves and some irregular bunny cupcake mix. Possibly some Christmas tinsel.

I did eat both of the Cadbury Creme Eggs from the baskets, though. I had to. Those things are terrible for children.

Noah has been wearing an Easter sticker on his nose all day. I don't know why. It's like his parents let him eat chocolate lollipops for breakfast, or something.

Ezra did not get any chocolate, but he did wake up with a whole other tooth. So that's also something. Something straight from the bowels of HELL, that is. But still, something.

And now, a Ball Poppers Are Serious Business Interlude:

The It's Past Noon But We're Still In Our Jammies Brain Trust begins the experiment.

One's an engineer in the making, while the other has spotted his reflection in the TV cabinet.

Dude, I think a ball rolled over this way oh wait look my thumb yay never mind.

*Oh, but more on THAT LATER. ACK.

The Tuesday Redirect

So my maternity leave officially ends this week, all around. Just in time for all our family to depart and for me to suddenly be thrust into solo double-hammer-time parenting for the very first time. Not really sure which rocket scientist worked THAT schedule out. Oh, wait, it was me. Right. Okay.

*wanders off stage right, audience hears muffled cries of "STUPID, STUPID" and some head-slapping sound effects*

Ahem. Anyway! I'm back at the Advice Smackdown (thanks to Sarah of Whoorl and Kelly of Mocha Momma for filling in the last couple guest-author spots), although I admit I'll be cheating a bit longer by only answering easy questions. So those of you who have submitted questions that require actual brain power and thinking, well...you just hold onto your horses there, missy. I'd say it'll be at least mid-December before my mind catches up to my typing fingers. In the meantime, mush and nonsense, ahoy!

Baby sucking on Daddy's pinkie finger = mush.

Baby wearing floppy-eared puppy booties = nonsense

And on that note, this week's Time & Money-Saving Tip is up at the Luvs MomSpeak site. It's about pee-pee. Yes, it is. I'm certainly not expecting another 136 comments on a post about pee-pee, but you have to admit that would be pretty awesome. (NOTE: If the sight of the word "pee-pee" triggers your gag reflex, the post also includes a photo of my cleavage. See? Something for everyone!)

For those of you interested in neither babies nor cleavage = hamsterdog

Homeward Bound in Sixty Seconds

This morning, my dog -- the dog I frequently threaten to give away and/or skin into a mitten, the dog who sees an open baby gate as a chance to poop in the basement, YAY BASEMENT POOPING IS THE FUNNEST POOPING OF ALL POOPING, who has apparently also been occasionally peeing on our dining room rug, and we didn't even realize that until we each grabbed a corner of it this weekend to move it to the other side of the room, OH MY GOD WHAT IS THAT SMELL, the dog who eats the cat's food and steals waffles right off my child's plate, the dog who barks herself senseless every damn day when the mail comes and thinks all our guests are made out of ham, the dog who is the biggest eight-pound pain in the ass on the planet -- escaped out of our backyard.

We'd been calling for her inside the house -- I'd let her out in a half-asleep stupor and couldn't really remember letting her out. Did I let her out? There's waffles on the table and she's not frantically head-butting the back door to get at the waffles, so I must not have let her out. We muttered curse words about the baby gate and the basement but she wasn't there. We prodded her bed with our feet and poked lumps under our covers and kept listening for the sound of her collar. Noah happily mimicked our confused calls from the breakfast table. I opened the door to scan the backyard for what felt like the 10th time and finally noticed that the gate was open, just a little bit.

I screamed that the gate was open. Jason asked me what did I mean the gate was open. I screamed again that THE. GATE. WAS. OPEN.

I ran outside our house in a pair of nursing pajamas and Jason's Crocs, shouting her name, staring at the empty street and sidewalks and vast dog-less expanses of other people's yards, baffled that she wasn't patiently waiting by our front door like she has every time we've accidentally locked her outside when she slipped by our feet while we brought in groceries.

I ran this way and that, my voice echoing a little, blood pounding in my ears. My voice sounded weird and panicked as I called and called for her. Ceiba. Ceiba. Ceiba. Baby girl. Little dog. Please please please.

I rounded our fence corner and suddenly, there she was. Running towards me. She stopped a few feet away, probably trying to size up the heapload of trouble she was in, but it only made me start to cry and flash to every nightmare I've ever had about trying to catch a runaway pet. You see them, they stop, you're so close and then they bolt away again, and that's usually right when you discover that your shoes are made of cement.

She stopped for only a few seconds though, before closing the distance between us and letting me scoop her up. She smelled wet. Her paws were muddy and left footprints all over my giant belly. I took her back inside, where Jason was still struggling to put on pants and I realized that the whole terrible search ordeal had probably only lasted a minute or two.

She heard my voice, she came running. Like a good, good dog.

Totally scored herself a post-traumatic stress waffle afterward.

34 Weeks

Yes, yes, I know, I know. I'm getting dangerously close to the point where I simply cannot go a day without at least posting that yes, there is no baby yet and all is well with my womb. I'm sorry. It's just that the baby's sock drawer is not going to repeatedly arrange and rearrange itself, y'all.

I've also been blowing my writerly load via dozens of long emails to my husband, since we've learned that we are only allowed to argue about politics via electronic methods. Otherwise we get a tad...shrill with each other, as during major election years our usually happy existence as independents ends, and we retreat to our separate party corners and hiss and spit and furiously send each other links that SO TOTALLY prove that the other person is a complete fucking idiot.

And while I usually just end up defaulting to the surefire "I am never sleeping with you again unless you pull your head at least PARTWAY out of your ass," I'm thinking that's not going to be particularly effective this time.

I mean, check OUT this slammin' physique. Wouldn't YOU be okay with letting the Bush tax cuts expire as planned in 2010 for a chance at that ass?

That's what I thought, suckahs. (And that IS a maternity tank. Those extra four inches of visible fishbelly are so fierce.)

If current "plans" hold -- and oh, I do so love using the word "plans" in regard to ANYTHING birth-related, since it makes me think of "birth plans" and how all the pregnancy books list that as something one should pack for the hospital ("darling, can you please fetch me my chapstick, Yanni CD and seven-page birth plan from the suitcase? It's in the front pocket. No, that's the back-up copy, I mean the one I had laminated.") --  I'll be having this baby in about five weeks.

And...we feel ready, more or less. Oh sure, we still haven't gotten all the various baby gear down from the attic yet and I'm still only assuming that the car seat is where I think I left it, and a full inventory of Noah's infant hand-me-downs reveals a horrifying shortage of 3-6 month sized feetie jammies but...eh. We're ready. We've been gripped with crazy baby fever over the past few weeks, which is convenient! What timing!

Whenever we see someone out and about with an infant, our conversations go something like this:

NOM, I say. SMUSHY BABY THERE MMMM.

GOOD, Jason says, SQUAWKY NEWBORN CHOMP.

Then we nod and go back to gnawing on bones and bitching about Geico ads. (And short- vs. long-term solutions to the energy crisis and Iraq timetables and OH MY GOD SARAH PALIN.)

I'm not sure when it happened -- the 3D ultrasound, the crazy visible kicks and rolls and undulations of mah belleh, the discovery of baby socks that look like shoes, the temporary threat that things might in fact NOT be as perfect and surefire as we thought? I don't know. But here we are, at 34 weeks, and we are finally able to have a conversation about The Baby that doesn't involve a heaping hot dose of TERROR and WHAT HAVE WE DONE? Undo! Ctrl-Z!

My only frustration is that we don't have a name. (Jason changed his mind. Don't even get me started. He changed his mind but has not offered a single usable alternative and WOW, YOU MIGHT EVEN SAY HE FLIP-FLOPPED, MUCH LIKE A CERTAIN PRESIDENTIAL CANDIDATE.) (Okay, I'll stop now.) Jason wants to name the baby after he's here, in the hospital. Which is fine, except that I secretly continue to use "the name" in my head and I seriously doubt I'll be able to think of him as anything else, but I have decided to exert my energy elsewhere. The aforementioned sock drawer. The search for the perfect coming-home outfit, which is driving Jason crazy because I think I have rejected every pair of blue feetie jammies in the tri-state area as being either 1) Not special enough, 2) Too frou-frou, 3) Not boyish enough, 4) Too boyish, oh my God, my newborn is not coming home clad in MONSTER TRUCKS, and 5) I dunno, I just don't think raccoons are the statement I'd like to make on the birth announcements. Don't you have something in a teddy bear motif?

And...Jesus, I should stop before I make our household sound ANY MORE INSANE.

Quick! Look! Pet photos!

Way to keep it classy there, everybody.

Things. Lots of Things.

THINGS I AM TERRIBLE AT:

1) Choosing the correct-sized plastic container for storing leftovers

2) The metric system

3) Closing dresser drawers all the way

4) Painting my own toenails

5) Anything involving the post office

THINGS THAT ARE CURRENTLY BUGGING ME A LOT:

1) That damn haircut

2) Our defective Wii

    a) Which would scratch a ring onto every game we played after a few hours of use.

    b) Which would render the game completely unplayable.

    c) Usually right at some critical moment, like right when you were about to fight Darth Maul in Lego Star Wars.

    d) Which you were totally kicking ass on, by the way.

    f) And yeah, I know it's geared for 10-year-olds, I WAS STILL RULING AT IT.

    g) Anyway, we'll probably get our repaired console back in about six weeks.

3) No one around here who is not gestating is willing to move furniture around and get the new baby's room set up.

    a) Or help me with my plan to rearrange the dining room, which I also feel is an essential pre-baby endeavor.

4) This irrational feeling that our ultrasound wasn't completely definitive and we're actually having a girl.

5) Also ants. In the kitchen. I hate ants.

THINGS MY DOG HAS EATEN WITH NARY A SINGLE NEGATIVE EFFECT:

1) Chocolate cake

2) Chocolate Easter candy

3) Four paper towels

4) Seven butter wrappers

5) Approximately 428 crayons

6) A roach trap

7) Packing peanuts

8) Shoes of various materials and price points

9) An entire bag of baby spinach

10) Houseplants

PLACES I FOUND TRACES OF THAT ENTIRE BAG OF STALE HAMBURGER BUNS SHE ATE:

1) Laundry pile

2) Linen closet

3) Under decorative throw pillow

4) All over living room floor

5) Bottom of my foot

Bite me, Atkins.

Neverending High Drama & Nonstop Blog Excitement

Dear Ceiba,

STOP EATING CHOCOLATE THINGS YOU FIND IN THE GARBAGE.

Love,
Amy

***

Dear Self,

STOP THROWING PERFECTLY GOOD CHOCOLATE THINGS IN THE GARBAGE.

Love,
Amy

***

Dear Amy,

DON'T YOU TRY TO BLAME THIS ON ME, THAT WAS NOAH'S CHOCOLATE BUNNY AND YOU DIDN'T EVEN GIVE HIM ONE BITE.

Love,
Self

***

Dear Self,

I HOPE THE DOG IS SITTING ON YOUR LAP WHEN THE DIARRHEA HITS.

Love,
Amy

***

Dear Jason,

STOP LEAVING BAGS OF GARBAGE BY THE BACK DOOR. WHAT, YOU THOUGHT I WOULD TAKE IT OUTSIDE? DO YOU NOT REALIZE THAT IT IS VERY FAR ALL THE WAY ACROSS THE LAWN AND THE GRASS IS ALL WET AND I CAN'T FIND MY SHOES AND I THINK YOU SCOOPED SOME CAT POOP IN THERE WHICH MEANS IF I TOUCH THAT BAG THE BABY WILL DIE SO THAT'S WHY I DIDN'T TAKE THE GARBAGE OUT BEFORE THE DOG RIPPED THE BAG OPEN AND ATE THE LAST REMAINING BITES OF CHOCOLATE EASTER BUNNY THAT I THREW OUT THE OTHER NIGHT, BECAUSE I JUST LOVE OUR CHILDREN TOO MUCH.

Love,
Amy

PS I THREW OUT THE LAST REMAINING BITES OF CHOCOLATE EASTER BUNNY BECAUSE I WANT TO LOOK PRETTY FOR YOU.  *SNIFF!*

***

Dear Everybody,

I ARE FINE. EAT CHOCKOLATE ALL THE TIME. MAKES EARS GO A LITTLE HUMMINGBIRDIE BUT THATS IT. I HATE THAT DIET DOG FOOD, ARE COMFORTABLE WITH BODY IMAGE, THINK U CAN ALL BITE ME, BYE.

Love,
Ceiba!

PS ALSO ATE SEVERAL WRAPPERS FROM STICKS OF BUTTER.

Grateful

...for the first peanut-butter-and-jelly picnic of the season.

...for the little girls next door.

...for a warm deck and soft bellies.

...and for naptime. Especially naptime.

11 Weeks

So I have only thrown up twice this week.

Quick! Let me know you've read that sentence (use some hand signals, or just cough kind of pointedly) so I can delete it. My blog has become a passive aggressive ASSHOLE, and has somehow artificial-intelligenced itself into my digestive tract so anytime I mention feeling relatively okay it decides to punish me.

(Shit. I bet it's reading that paragraph right now. Quick! Pretend we're talking about something else.)

...and then I was like, OH MY GOD, there's a llama in the backyard! But it was only the hydrangea.

Dog butts: for when you cannot think of an appropriate segue.

So I'm somewhere in the vicinity of 11 weeks, and starting to feel like I might just make it out of this thing alive. Last week was definitely the worst -- I threw up pretty much every night, was unable to eat dinner, and then woke up every morning with crashing blood sugar and ravenous hunger, but was always faced with three smaller beings who insist on being fed first, even though SOME OF THEM eat food that smells like rancid-cold-cut-and-mackerel salad, I AM NOT SAYING WHO.

Whut? Can't I horf cat fud in peace over here?

(By the way, since I am a crumbly emotional mess these days, I feel the need to counter all my dogthing-mocking with a declaration of love for the hamsterdog. She may need a diet, probably a bath and definitely a less disproportionate headsize-to-body ratio, and my GOD, must she have an aneurysm EVERY time the mailman walks by, but she really DOES get plenty of love and affection and clearly, way too much ham.)

My next OB appointment isn't for another week and a half, which means the reassurance from my last visit is starting to wear off and I'm fighting the urge to call and invent a pressing reason why I need an ultrasound RIGHT NOW, since "I only threw up twice this week!" or "I dunno, I think I feel a little less gassy" won't really cut it.

I rented a doppler last time, and ended up accidentally keeping it (and paying monthly rent on it) for close to 18 months, and then stupidly sent it back when I was one damn payment away from owning the damn thing outright. (Every once in awhile, though, I get a $10 check from them, presumably from people who stumble upon the referral number I posted ages ago. So I'll probably break even in about 23 years, provided I keep my Google Page Rank up.)

Needless to say, I am not allowed to rent another doppler ever.

Oh, and about this. I still don't know. Your comments certainly got me jazzed for the idea of a big birthday reveal moment, but then a minute later I get distracted by something and change my mind. Jason is firmly in the find-out camp, but is willing to go along with whatever I ultimately decide, probably because he KNOWS I won't really be able to hold out and will eventually cave, so it's safe to indulge me for now. So...realistically, I'm guessing we'll find out, unless the baby is modest and keeps his legs crossed for the next few ultrasounds.

(Yeah, I said his. In a way, I think the whole issue is moot, because I'm fairly sure it's another boy.)

Still fairly sure it's a Wonderpet.

The belly at dawn, as compared to the belly at night, with a day's worth of bloat. Ah, dignity. I must have left it in my other pants. The ones I can't button, no matter what time of day it is. Stupid pants.