And then. A few weeks have passed and I started imagining my little towheaded munchkin running around and I let out my breath. And then he started kicking, letting me know I need to accept it, and I started talking to him. He'll be a mama's boy and will be the light of my life and what the heck am I worried about? Mat can teach him sports, or maybe he'll be a smarty pants artist. Or both. Or neither. Whatever he is, whoever he turns out to be, he'll be mine and Mat's and no one else's. (Well, until he turns 30 and we let him out of the house.)
Otherwise pregnancy seems to be going great. It is amazing how your second trimester lulls you into believing that life might actually 'go back to normal.' I have energy, not too many aches and pains, and my only cravings seem to be for extremely disgusting cereal advertised to 5 year olds. I've been on a serious investigation into the disappearance of Eggo cereal from the shelves. If you are unfamiliar, please let me introduce you to pretty much the best cereal EVER. It's little pieces of sugar-laden highly processed corn puffs in the shape of tiny little Eggo waffles and tastes like butter and maple syrup. Holy crap it's good. I can't find these anywhere, but I'm willing to pay a reward to anyone who uncovers a box and sends it to me.
I've been through Apple Jacks (please see previous post) Cocoa Pebbles, Honeycomb, Reese's Pieces cereal (yes, exactly how it sounds, and possibly tied for best cereal ever) and am currently working through boxes of Golden Grahams and Marshmallow Pebbles. I'm also starting a movement for the comeback of Smurfberry Crunch cereal, which I remember from the 80's and was so good - seeing as how they have a new Smurf movie coming out it would seem appropriate, don't you think? Anyway, I'm able to keep pretty accurate records on the various levels of my cereal stores because I do not show these boxes to Katya and I'm pretty much the only one who partakes. These babies only come out late at night or in the morning after she's gone to school. They are so bad for her I would never allow her to eat them!
Other than my cereal fetish (which, if you know me, is not really out of character) I only have a few other minor complaints. Top of the list are the digestion issues as everything starts to get squished. I never even knew what heartburn was until now. Really. I had a hard time describing what it was until a lightbulb went off and got myself some Tums. Also, I have copious amounts of gas and it seems to explode out of me at the most inopportune times. This is quite embarrassing for me as girls are really not supposed to have bodily functions at all. The last incident was as I was picking up Katya at school. I went to the coat area to collect her things and it just so happened that every parent with a child was in the coat area at the exact same time as me. No one had a greater look of awe than I as I realized I was the host of a surprise fart party and the guest of honor just showed up. It happened so fast I couldn't repress the small jump I did (Whooo! as if the fart propelled me off the ground.) I ran, leaving behind scarves and mittens and my dignity.
The other issue is my smelly feet. It's really quite unreal. I've never had much of an issue with this before I was pregnant and now, I stink! And again, ladies should not smell, so this is really a jagged pill to swallow. All of my most comfy and supportive sneakers that have never before gotten odorous are so shockingly pungent now I have to leave them outside sometimes. What is this?!? Couple that with my superhero sense of smell these days and I literally can't stand it.
Needless to say, with all the combined above stated issues I'm not feeling incredibly sexy. On top of that, Victoria's Secret has gotten wind that I'm pregnant and has decided to up the after-baby motivation quotient and start sending me doubles of all of their catalog issues so I can browse often and reminisce about what I used to look like. Or maybe one is supposed to be for Mat as well? The Apocolypse will begin, however, the day I catch Mat looking. Although I have to give him credit. I did promise that my breasts would grow some more and they (still) have not lived up to the hype. And he hasn't said a thing except that I'm beautiful despite my constant body evaluation sessions. Good boy.
Though I was close to tranquilizing him on the day that we went to Babies R Us to register. First we had to listen to the 20 minute presentation on how, actually, to use the scanner gun. Which seems like overkill but actually is quite necessary for that complicated piece of machinery. Mat, already bored with the whole exercise, left after 2 minutes. Which meant that he didn't then know how to delete. And that would have come in handy, because I realized very quickly that he is trigger happy and I am clueless. Bad combination at the baby store.
We started at the closest thing, the breast pumps. And I froze. Within 3 minutes I was completely overwhelmed and nearly in a panic attack. We moved on and as I stewed over the pros and cons of the organic, eco-friendly Boppy cover vs. the cute green fluffy (though apparently toxic?) Boppy cover, Mat took off, disgusted with my indecision, and started just scanning things so he could get some use out of the gun. He literally was bouncing off the walls and his agitation was making me nervous. I then started making a list of all the things I needed to do research on first. And it turns out, I think I need to do research on everything from diaper pails to pacifiers to whether I need headphones for my tummy so Baby Bets can start learning how to speak in the womb or the electronic cry analyzer that will tell me if his cry means 'I'm hungry' or 'change my flippin diaper you lazy bum!'
The other issue was the company we brought with us, which seriously, duh. Katya came and wanted either for herself, her future brother, her friends, or me, every single thing on the shelves. Every. Single. Thing. 'Look at this Mommy, can we buy it?!' 'Ooo, we need THAT!' She'd pick it up, play for a second, drop it on the floor, leave it, we'd tell her to put it back, she'd whine, then finally say 'I can't reach it to put it back!' and over and over again. Oh my god.
We also brought Mat's mom, who, poor thing, was about as overwhelmed as I was. 'When I was having babies we didn't need any of this stuff! We didn't even have stores like these!' And I immediately longed for that nostalgic ignorance. I'd like things to go back to that, quite frankly. I mean, there is so much STUFF. If you have it all, you'd need a 10,000 square foot house and every moment would be a life altering decision of which device to use. If you don't have it all you feel like you are missing out on some great invention that everyone else has and really will save your sanity. I nearly had a meltdown, until I started following around another preggo and her friend with a baby and they seemed to have it all so pulled together. Sigh. We left shortly thereafter with maybe 10 items scanned and I set up a frantic Babies R Us date with my friend Loryn, sans obnoxious husband and crazy child.
So, let's recap what I need so far:
1. A boy name. We had Lola all picked out for a girl, and started doing all this stuff like taking a picture of a sign in Jerome that said "Lola's Place" and Mat got me Lola perfume by Marc Jacobs. We really were cute. Now, we are stuck between 3 boy names and are in a deadlock, with the oh so helpful input of our nearest and dearest. It's so interesting how we get lots of feedback on the names that they DON'T like. Not realizing, I suppose, that we may in fact choose that name and then we'll forever know how much they can't stand saying it.
2. Colors and designs for my nursery. Brown? Blue? Sports? (Uh, no.) Animals? Planes? How about books, art, and pictures of Paris? Yes!
3. Absolutely every possible thing for the nursery. Ditto for everything to actually care for the baby once it comes out of my body.
4. Motivation to get all this done.
5. Eggo Cereal.
Til next time!!
You had me laughing out loud while reading this post. I'm sorry to laugh at your expense, but this was hilarious, especially the fart party portion. But I found the secret cereal affair to be humorous too!
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