Conversation with my daughter on the phone last night:
Me: Hi, baby. How are you?
Brenia: I’m at Nama’s.
Me: I know you’re at Nama’s. Are you being a good girl?
Brenia: Do you wanna talk to Stacia?
Me: Are you being a good girl?
Brenia: Do you wanna talk to Stacia?
Me: Okay, baby. I’ll talk to Stacia. I love you!
Brenia: Bye!
I had my glucose test yesterday. I got to drink the orange goo. It may look like orange soda, but it tastes nothing like Sunkist. And everyone knows that’s the only orange soda worth drinking. Anything else is just vile.
With my first pregnancy I got addicted to Sunkist. I had to cut down on caffeine and there’s very little in orange soda. This time around I completely lost my taste for it. Instead, I started craving Mountain Dew. Luckily, I am allowed to have a bit. I have to keep it limited, but the only real side effect during pregnancy is low birth weight. I don’t think that will be too much of a problem, considering the 9 and 10 pound kids I tend to pop out.
Though baby’s size is down slightly. She’s only measuring 2 days ahead now, as opposed to 9. My doctor wants to do another ultrasound at 36 weeks so we can see just how early I can go. We are officially down to a double digit countdown!
The girls’ week at Camp Grandma’s is almost over. It should feel weird here, I guess, but I’m so busy doing the things I never have time for that I barely notice the quiet. I’ve gotten our bedroom fairly organized in preparation for the office transition. We have no spare bedrooms so baby is taking over the office. He’ll just have to deal with a corner of our bedroom. Of course, that means I can no longer just shut the door on his noise. It’s bad enough I can feel the bass vibrate my bathtub each night when he plays City of Heroes—now I won’t even have an insulated wall between us.
I also finished most of my baby shopping. The only thing left to buy is a crib mattress—seeing as how the old one is still being used on a toddler bed—and the bedding. After that it’s just clothes and diapers. For the rest of my natural life. Speaking of clothes, I also got most of Stacia’s school clothes bought. I discovered all of her skorts and shorts from the spring were still in great shape. Shirts she ruins with gusto, but the shorts seem to have survived. I took them to a few stores and bought some matching tops. I hate this time of year. She needs new school clothes because she destroyed all of last year’s, but I hate spending a lot of money. Because I’m cheap. And because she’ll just need all new clothes again when it cools.
School starts in one week, so it’s good I’m almost ready. Well, I’ve been ready for weeks, but now I almost have her ready too. Tonight I have to go to the Back to School Night. I promised I would go check the class list and see who she knew, since she couldn’t go herself. When I made the offer, I was thinking I’d just pop in and jot down the names I recognized. It occurred to me this morning that this could take a lot longer than I thought. I’m bound to run into everyone I haven’t seen all summer and spend a few minutes catching up with each of them. Such is life in a small town.
That’s all the time I have for catching up here. I’m sure I’ll be posting with more regularity once we get back to a daily schedule.
I haven’t updated in awhile, partly due to the blog upgrades, but mostly because it’s SSDD around here. If you want to know what I’ve been going through, read a list of “possible” pregnancy symptoms/side-effects. Check all of the above. I’m all over every, single disgusting, annoying pregnancy-related issue—most of which you don’t want to hear about, even if you did purposefully visit a pregnancy blog.
I always feel so guilty about how much I hate pregnancy, knowing as I do how many women would give anything to be in my shoes. I attempt to relish the moment, but I mostly find myself counting down the days. I couldn’t tell you what month I’m in, but I can tell you I have 15 weeks to go! Less, really, since at last measurement little Lorelai was looking about 9 days ahead of schedule. My doctor has promised to induce early and I’m going to hold her to it.
Oh, how I loathe summertime. I am just not cut out for warm weather. Today I had intended to beat the heat with an afternoon at a local water playground. It was not only so I could wear my new maternity bathing suit and even out those weird tan lines. It was also a bribe to get the girls (I don’t know why I still link to them every time—their blogs have not been updated since 1992!) to do their chores. All I wanted was the crap picked up off the living room floor so I could vacuum. Yes, I occasionally do that.
Instead, they chose to lay on the floor and whine about how it just isn’t fair. Why do I have to do all this? Um, maybe because you’re the ones who made the damn mess in the first place. Then my mom gets after me with her whole Cinderella-complex. I’m thinking it’s really not too much to expect a 7-year-old to clean her own messes. It’s not like I have her cooking my dinner or ironing my clothes. After 4 hours, the living room—which was really not that messy, by the way—doesn’t look much different then it did last night, except for the addition of breakfast crumbs.
I did manage to get them to pick up the eleventy hundred pairs of shoes they had strewn about the first floor on their way up for nap/quiet-time. Of course, that was met with huge sighs and groans about how it was just too hard to carry that many shoes at the same time. Then I mentioned that perhaps they had too many shoes to begin with and I should come visit the shoe rack with my donation box. Extra hands suddenly appeared and all shoes made it to the appropriate locations without any mishaps. It’s a miracle, I tell ya.
I feel sort of bad that I’m the one counting down the days until school starts. I’m sure that makes me a horrible mother in some eyes. I’m just so tired of breaking up fights, tearing down soda-bottle walls between lunch seats (at least they figured out how not to fight for one 20-minute period per day), and listening to whining about how unfair it is that they have to do something other than veg out in front of the television.
2 weeks. I can manage for 2 weeks. Besides, they are going to Camp Grandma’s for 1 of those weeks so I really only have 5 more days of this nonstop, in-your-face, what-can-we-do-now summer schedule.
Yesterday I managed to “sleep in” a bit. I got up at 8:15. This is the exact same time I always get up, but usually the last hour consists of my lying in bed with my eyes squeezed shut trying desperately to ignore the pitter patter of little feet as they fly between bedrooms. I get the occasional burst-in of “Are you awake yet?” (NO!) and “Whachu dooning?” (Mommy’s still sleeping!)
On this day, the girls didn’t wake up until just after 8. It is amazing how refreshing and rejuvenating 1 extra hour can truly be—especially coming on the tail end of a kid-free weekend. It didn’t stop me from being flat out exhausted by noon, but it was nice nonetheless. At least someone else now knows just how exhausting my everyday life is.
A few Lexie quotes from the girls’ return after their 2-day visit:
Welcome to my life!
Conversation with my little sister, Lexie, who is taking my girls for the weekend—for the first time ever, I might add:
Me: You aren’t planning to take the girls to the dress shop with you, are you?
Her: Yes.
Me: Do you want me to come with you?
Her: No, why?
Me: Have you met my kids?
Her: It’s only going to take a minute.
Me: Yes, a minute—with you stuck in one place surround by pins while my girls run wild around a bridal shop.
Her: They won’t be running wild. They’ll be sitting still behaving.
Me: uncontrollable laughing
Her: What?!
Me: more giggling wildly Have you met my children?
Her: They’ll be good—that’s how they get to eat McDonald’s.
Me: Okay, maybe you’re learning this mom thing.
Her: I had a plan! Don’t make me look like an idiot.