• preg-nuts

    Puzzle Brain

    I put my too-much-time-on-my-hands/baby-brain skills to good use again and made a little count down flip chart thingy (it’s actually resurrected from my Paris count down). I know baby’s never come on the exact due date but I thought it would be fun to add even more daily anticipation into the mix. Plus, sometimes I worry that Toby doesn’t realize how quickly January 15th is really going to get here. So now he gets to look at it on the fridge every day. Oh how he loves me! Unfortunately my tendency to make little crafty things like this is not one of Toby’s most favorite traits of mine. It’s right up there with the “x-the-box-if-you-remembered-to-put-the-toilet-seat-down” chart. (I’m joking.)

    The other day he said to me, “Either our kid is going to love art and be an artist themselves or they are going to HATE it.” And he’s right. Not that Toby and I are amazing talented artists or anything but it is so much a part of our daily life. We don’t really have a regular life. We don’t get up in the morning and go to a regular job. Our jobs don’t end in the evening and then we come home and relax. We pretty much work all the time but it’s fun work so it doesn’t seem like work. It’s a strange set up but I think it will work. It’s gotta work! I have no alternatives!

    Sure, sometimes I wish Toby could just close his office door and we could have dinner at six on a real table with real chairs. Sometimes I wish he didn’t stay up until 4 in the morning every single night, working. Sometimes I wish his office crap didn’t migrate over onto our kitchen counter and if I don’t keep an eye on it, it would take over the coffee table too. Sometimes I get tired of reading trade magazines and looking at paper samples while I’m in the bathroom. And yes, sometimes I wish the paychecks came at regular intervals. But this is our life and I wouldn’t trade any of the above for my regular job back. I can’t even imagine Toby holding down a regular job.

    What I’m trying to say is: while I’m really looking forward to being a stay-at-home/freelance-working-mom, I’m just not sure how it’s all going to work out yet. My latest worry is how a baby’s sleep schedule is going to affect our 24-hours-open-somebody-is-always-awake house. In normal families (or at least in all the books I’m voraciously reading) they always say, “have dad get up and tend to the baby now and then so you can get some sleep…” and I wonder: well, what if the dad is already up all the time and he’s trying to work on his computer? How is that going to work out? Toby likes to work at night because that is when it is quiet and he can concentrate. How is he going to concentrate if there’s a screaming baby waking up every half hour? It’s not like I can take the baby out for a walk at 2 am. Or will it work out perfectly because Toby is always awake when I am asleep? Maybe both he and the kid will be night owls and they’ll have all sorts of bonding time without me? (Oh no! Something else to worry about! Will I get jealous of their time?!!!)

    I feel like all these worries are like a puzzle that I just can’t do yet because I don’t have all the pieces. I desperately want to plan out how the pieces are going to fit, but I have no idea what shapes the pieces are going to come in.

  • preg-nuts

    Weigh In Day

    I hate my monthly doctor’s visits. Mostly because that means it’s time to get weighed. Thankfully, this month, I managed to only gain three pounds instead of six like last time. It’s amazing how much better I feel after my doctor says “good job” instead of “you need to do better.” Who would have ever thought I’d have to “diet” when I was pregnant. So I’m pretty happy about the three pounds. I almost want to throw myself a little party and eat a bunch of Reese’s peanut butter cups. Arg.

    That’s the good news. The bad news is that I scored one point too high on that glucose test I took for gestational diabetes last week. I knew I shouldn’t have had cereal on the morning of that test. Ugh. So now I have to go back and take a three hour test to make sure I really am diabetic. My doctor says I’m probably not but they want to be on the safe side. I’m just bummed because now I have to fast and then sit in the lab waiting room for THREE HOURS!!!! That means it will be past noon before I get to have breakfast. I’ll be bored AND grumpy. It’s a good thing I don’t have a regular 9-5 job. Sheesh! What do normal women do?

    I think I’ll take my laptop and catch up on making spy emblems and work on my paris postcard. Bet you thought I forgot about that. Well, I didn’t. I’ve been working on it for a few weeks now and I’m about 1/3 done. It’s taking forever because I’m trying to illustrate all the major stops we made. It’s going to be neat. Hopefully the detail will show up when printed. And that’s all I’m going to say because I don’t want to set myself up for more failure.

    The other news is that the doctor thinks my fibroid tumor may have moved out of the way. How she can tell by fingering my belly is beyond me. But it was pretty uncomfortable. Every time she hit the spot where the tumor supposedly is, it felt like she was pinching my funny bone. I wonder if I’m going to feel that way all the time when the baby gets bigger and sits on my tumor. (Every time I say the word “tumor” I use my Arnold Swartzenegger voice.) The good news about the tumor, is that I get to have another ultrasound! Yay! More chances to see what my little girl looks like. I’m really excited about that.

    When I made the appointment today I could only hear every fourth word that the operator was saying. Thanks to my birds chirping in the background and some police helicopter that was flying over our house. (Whoorl informed me there was a fire on the next street over) It’s always sooooo loud where we live. It doesn’t help that we have single pane windows that have at least an inch gap in them so every little sound slips through. I want to move soooooo bad! I haven’t even told you about the latest saga with our landlord. Our tub is falling through the floor and she’s trying to fix it with caulking and a better splash guard on the door. But that’s another blog post.

    * * *
    On a totally different tangent, does anybody know anything about sewing tea bags? I’ve got a bee in my bonnet. I want to make my own tea bags and tags for a party idea. I’m googling everything but nothing very helpful is coming up.