Dear Jelus H8ters, Please send me hate mail about my baby registry more often. Special warm gooey thanks to Nola, Jomama, Kirsten, Jennifer, Todd and Allie. Your generosity and nice wishes just made my whole damn week. Thank-you cards will be sent out all Miss-Manners-promptly-like, just as soon as I stop snuffling over the kindness of strangers and whatnot. Also when I find the damn stamps. (A Note From the Management: This is in no way a solicitation of baby-related goods or an insinuation that presents will make everything better for poor, poor little put-upon me, but merely a demonstration that damn, you guys are amazingly great, and I'm beyond touched. But as you can see, we're totally good now, so if anyone else would like to do something, I think it would be extremely excellent if some donations were made to the Susan G. Komen Foundation in honor of Babalah's grandmother.) Read more →

GASP...WHEEZE...HUFF...ETC. The D.C. area was hit with a helluva thunderstorm last night, which good news! It's only going to be 90 degrees today! And there's almost no humidity! Bad news! It knocked out the power at my office, and while everything essential for actually working has been restored, the elevators are still on the fritz. Which means I...just...climbed...up...stairs...so...many...(gasp)...stairs ...(dies). Granted, I live on the third floor of a walk-up building, but usually Jason is with me and is willing to put his hands on my ass and give me a boost up each flight. My coworkers were surprisingly unwilling to offer me such assistance. (HA! ASSistance. GEDDIT?) (Oh, shut up, I just climbed up four flights of stairs.) (Here, look at some random pictures. Am all busy today and stuff.) This is Ceiba, playing our favorite game of "Wave Hands Wildly In Front Of Dog And Watch Her Respond In An Amusingly Manic Fashion." I'd explain the rules of this game to you, but they're really, really complicated. We always let her win. I mean, wouldn't you? And this is me, last Sunday, when I excitedly made Jason take a full-frontal photo, because "you totally cannot tell I'm pregnant from... Read more →

THIS ENTRY DOES NOT CONTAIN FURTHER BITCHING ABOUT THE SUCKITUDE OF PREGNANCY. (Except for this one part real quick.) As I was walking from my car to the office this morning, another woman started talking to me about The Heat. (Good Lord, The Heat. It's all anyone in the D.C. area can talk about now, honestly. With humidity at four frillion percent and temps in the upper 90s and power generators up and dying under the strain of all the air conditioners running at full blast, we're all kind of obsessed with The Heat.) (We're also kind of glassy-eyed and panty.) Anyway. So we're talking about The Heat and The Humidity and The Agony, and she made some sympathetic noises about how horrible it must be to be pregnant right now, which YES YES YES! My favorite topic! Let me tell you just how horrible it is! She mentioned that both of her children were born in the winter. Which, okay, I'm not going to get annoyed with that, unless you make it clear that you were just so super-fertile you were able to schedule a pregnancy at Optimal Seasonal Effectiveness or something. But then she started in with the... Read more →

Sidenote to "someone who used to care," and who sent the delightful hatemail regarding my whorish decision to post my baby registry online: Yes, my cyber-begging is indeed quite loathsome. Particularly the way I personally force each and every reader to spend their hard-earned money on baby supplies, usually at gunpoint. I totally did not post the registry because people repeatedly asked me to, or so my far-flung family would have an easy way to access it. No, I posted it because I feel entitled to get everything my greedy, selfish heart desires. Clearly, I cannot fool you, dear former reader, as you completely nailed both my motivations AND my financial situation based on the 500 words or so that I write each week. Your ability to document every single dollar I've spent during my pregnancy on extravagant handbags (I USED A COUPON, YOU MORON) and kitchen remodels (HOME EQUITY LOAN, YOU DUMBASS), is very impressive and also a little creepy. And while I am not usually the type who emails emotionally-fragile pregnant strangers to call them names, I DO feel close enough to you to confidently call you a raging, bitter asshole. Love, Spoiled Materialistic Pig Brat Girl. P.S.... Read more →

Late Friday afternoon, Jason IMed me with the news that Carbon Leaf, our favorite band in the world (and who are also "our" band and ours alone), will be playing at D.C.'s 9:30 Club in early September. The 9:30 Club, while awesome, is smoky, insanely crowded and standing-room only. And everytime I've gone there somebody has spilled a beer on me. So I told Jason that I probably wouldn't be up for attending a concert there when I am, you know, NINE MONTHS PREGNANT. And within five minutes, I was sobbing hysterically. And typing things like this: I HATE BEING PREGNANT. THIS IS TOO HARD. AND IT'S ONLY GOING TO GET HARDER ONCE HE'S HERE AND WHAT IF I HATE THAT PART TOO? WHAT IF I DON'T LOVE HIM? WHAT IF HE DOESN'T LOVE ME? I DON'T DESERVE FOR HIM TO LOVE ME BECAUSE LOOK AT THE AWFUL THINGS I AM SAYING AND HE CAN HEAR ME AND KNOWS THAT I'M A HORRIBLE MOTHER ALREADY. (At this point Jason reminded me that since we were instant messaging, the baby probably had no idea what I was typing, also, did I know I had Caps Lock on?) (No, he said more... Read more →

Just to give everybody a little point of reference here... 6 weeks: 30 weeks: (The Juicy Couture track pants, they howl in protest.) My belly button (seen here in the "OFF" position) is completely at the mercy of my child's head -- it'll pop out and then mysteriously recede as he flips and squirms and kicks my soft vital organs from within. At his most active, it looks like I've got a pair of rabid raccoons going at it in there. As for the girl in the first picture -- who really needs to eat a goddamn sammich or something -- she never, ever expected to get this far, and only posed for that first picture under protest, because something was definitely going to Go Very Wrong. Nothing has Gone Very Wrong, and for that, she is grateful, and would probably tell the girl in the second picture to shut the hell up with the whining and try to enjoy this amazing time in her life. She would also tell her to quit with the anxiety over paint and furniture and household clutter. She's no longer living in contant fear that her baby is going to DIE and LEAK OUT... Read more →

So. The third trimester. It's normal to be a little freaked out, no? What with the hormones and all? Here's a list of things that I am freaking out about. Please tell me if this all sounds about right: 1. The Nursery. Not painted. Not cleared out. Furniture not ordered. I know the kid will be in a bassinet in our room for the first few months and doesn't need a pretty room with a diaper stacker that coordinates with the curtains, but I would VERY MUCH BE HAPPIER IF THE ROOM WAS DONE, DESPITE THE POINTLESSNESS. Please do not argue with me over this point. Am crazy pregnant lady, give me some candy. Also, we really do need at least a dresser, because all the baby clothes we've received thus far are sitting in shopping bags on the floor and are periodically flung around the room by Ceiba. She has already eaten at least one pom-pom off a family heirloom-type sweater. 2. Diapers. I bought a package of diapers and some wipes at the grocery store this weekend so I could feel like I'd accomplished something. Now I'm concerned that I only bought the little-bitty newborn-sized diapers and this... Read more →

GODDAMN. IT IS HOT. STUPID CITY THAT WAS BUILT ON A STUPID SWAMP WITH THE HUMIDITY AND THE WHATNOT. FEET ARE TOO SWOLLEN FOR CUTE SHOES. HAIR IS LIMP. MOOD IS CRANKY. LET'S GET THIS ADVICE THING OVER WITH BEFORE I MELT OR RUN SOMEBODY OVER WITH MY CAR. Dearest, Smartest, and Most-Worldliest Amalah, I am going to be 26 soon, and have been married for a little over a year to my wonderful husband. The marriage was sort of a surprise to both of us, having both been consummate singles with no real plan of finding "the one" ever in our lives, EVER, but we have found each other and are madly in love and etc etc etc. My question is about children, since I know nothing about them or the gestation process which comes with them. I have plenty of years left with viable eggs and spanking-fresh ovaries, but my husband is 11 years older than me and we spend a lot of time talking about when we should have children. I mean, I'm ready now in the sense that "yeah, a baby would be nice because I'm female and married and mostly ready to procreate," but I'd... Read more →

SO. I TAKE IT Y'ALL LIKE SEEING INDULGENT BABY PHOTOS AND SUCH, EH? AND SEVERAL OF YOU REQUESTED MORE? WELL, I WILL GIVE YOU MORE. BUT I WILL NOT STOP YELLING BECAUSE I AM AN OVERLY VERBAL THREE-YEAR-OLD WHO IS REALLY PISSED ABOUT SOMETHING. Specifically, many of you requested "mall bangs" photos. And really, I looked. But I could not find any mall bangs photos. This is not to say that I did not wear mall bangs, because I did, and lo, they were multi-layered and gravity-defying, but I just don't seem to have any photos of said bangs in my possession. I did find one photo of me with about half my hair pulled into a ponytail on the side of my head, and I may also have been wearing a fanny pack in this same photo, but you know what? I'm not going to post that one. I embarrass myself for your pleasure enough as it is. No one needs to see half-head ponytails and fanny packs. Besides. There's enough mockery-inducing material in this little gem: (Click for bigger version, duh.) THAT, my friends, is a newspaper clipping from February 1997 about the re-release of the original Star... Read more →

No, really. Just TRY and guess. I am now scanning photos like a crazy photo-scanning fiend for no particular reason, except that I CAN and it's EASY and LOOK HOW CUTE I WAS ONCE. (Also, HELLO. Look at that nose, and look at this one. Hmm? You see it?) What makes the whole scanner acquisition even more delicious is the fact that I recently organized EVERY PHOTO IN MY HOUSE into a variety of photo boxes and albums. The baby's room is not painted, we have not ordered furniture, actual food products are still not allowed in my kitchen cabinets, and for reasons too bizarre to explain there is a spare kitchen table sitting in the middle of my bedroom. BUT AS GOD IS MY WITNESS, OUR PHOTOS ARE ORGANIZED. So would you like to see some photos of my pre-Amalah.com life? Too bad! That's what you're getting, and will probably get all week, until I get bored. Baby Amalah, who looks an awfully lot like her little bald grandpa in this picture. Also, the 70s, they were a very yellow time. Long-time readers may recall the story of Allison Last-Name-Withheld-Because-She-Was-And-May-Still-Be-Evil, my first-grade archenemy. That's her, right in front of... Read more →