Playing nursemaid, only not the dirty kind with slutty costumes and such

I'm in full-on caretaker mode. Poor Jason is laid up on the couch with his leg in a brace. He has to keep it elevated to prevent clotting. He's on mega-doses of percocet, and still hurts. Last night was really rough -- he just couldn't stay on top of the pain, even though, at my direction, he took extra pain pills. Sleeping is difficult. He feels guilty that I'm caring for him and Zeke and the dog and keeping the house together, while he can barely get from the couch to the bathroom without significant pain.

But I don't mind it. I can see how uncomfortable he is. And after the first day (the day of the surgery itself), when both Zeke and the dog seemed determined to fight me on every little thing, they've both calmed down. Zeke is learning to obey the two rules I'm insisting on enforcing these days -- don't touch the buttons on the TV, cable box or DVD player, and sit down in the booster seat when eating at the table. The dog is resigned to the fact that Jason, his favorite, can't take him on a million walks a day, so he's stuck with me.

Our friends have been amazing. Rich stayed with Jason at the surgery center until I could leave work to go pick him up, and has come by to visit him and to hang out and watch ski- and/or mountain biking-porn. Kathleen picked up Zeke at school on Wednesday so I could bring Jason home and get him situated. My friend Jen brought over a delicious meal so I wouldn't have to cook. Everyone has been so sweet and supportive and helpful, I'm really grateful.

And my mom is coming tomorrow morning. Thank goodness.

Too many things happening today. But Happy Anniversary, honey!

Today is the third anniversary of the Atlanta wedding.  That was our religious ceremony (presided over by my friend Karen, who played rabbi for a day), 5 months after the legal wedding in Australia.  

I actually forgot until I got to work and somebody mentioned the date.  Plus it's Earth Day.  Plus Jason's having knee surgery today.  Plus we're doing a short practice run of this classroom webinar I'm doing for local school district administrators and teachers on the ins and outs of the education stimulus money.  Plus I'm pregnant, and can barely remember how to get dressed in the morning.

So I've got alot going on.  But still.  I feel kind of bad for forgetting my anniversary.

Anyway, it's been a good three years.  Sometimes being married is hard.  Sometimes being married is easy.  But it's always worth it.

Family tradition

The summer between my second and third years of law school, I was living at home while I worked at the State Department.  Josh was home from college, and Sam was still in high school.  Sam was playing in a summer baseball league.  And my parents and Josh and I went to every single one of his games.  Usually there were 8 or 9 people in the stands for Sam's team.  And we made up 4 of them.  Meaning that most of the kids had no one there to watch them or cheer them on.

I found that baffling.  

It was never a question that we would be there to witness and applaud each others' accomplishments.  My plays and diving meets.  Josh's baseball and football and rugby games.  Sam's baseball and football and rugby games.  I used to drive the 5 1/2 hours up from Winston-Salem to northern Virginia to see Sam's high school games, particularly when his team made it to the state championships.  Or drive to nearby colleges when Josh's college rugby team had matches.

And of course, we were all at Sam's gig this past weekend.

The past weekend in New York was wonderful.  It was snowing when I woke up Friday morning, but I made it to the airport and my flight took off on time with no problems.  My brother Josh took the train down to NYC from New Hampshire.  We met up on Friday afternoon and made our way to Sam's gig.  

Sam and his band onstage at Drom Friday night

The gig was incredible.  Sam's voice sounded great, and his band is comprised of amazingly accomplished musicians.  The songs (all written by Sam) sounded terrific, the arrangements were outstanding, and the energy in the club was through the roof.  A number of my parents' friends that live in New York showed up.  A ton of Sam's friends also came, many from out of town, so he was feeling the love.  We all were.

Saturday was one of those gorgeous spring days when it seems like New York City is the perfect place to be.  We had breakfast at a diner, then took a long walk through Central Park.  People were out walking, jogging, playing fetch with their dogs, rowing boats in the pond, sunbathing. 

We stopped and had a rest at a coffee shop.  

I went downtown to meet my friend Anne, who writes A Good American Wife.  I had never met her, but because we've struck up an internet friendship through our blogs and our mutual friend, Elizabeth, it was like we had known each other forever.  We sat in a park and shot the shit and chatted with the guys that play speed chess.  

Then I headed down to the Battery to meet up with the family again.  A friend of a friend of my dad's is an architect involved in a new art installation in the newly rebuilt South Ferry subway stop, and we were invited to be part of a private tour explaining the installation, how it was made, what it symbolizes, how it was installed, etc.

From there, we took the train up to Lincoln Center to go to the movies.  We chilled in the Barnes and Noble for awhile, and then went to the theater.

After the show, we went to a wonderful Indian restaurant for dinner.

Then we went to our respective beds and collapsed.

Sunday was calmer.  Josh had an early train, so I didn't see him.  After breakfast, we went to Zabar's so my mom could get some bread, and them my parents headed back to D.C.  Sam and I went for a walk by the river, and then hung out at his place until it was time for me to leave for the airport.  I was too tired to do anything else.

Some of the people at Sam's gig expressed amazement that the whole family came in to watch him play.  But it's just what we do.  Some of it may be a factor of moving around so much when we were growing up.  In every new place, we had to rely on each other for both support and companionship, because for a while, we were the only ones we knew.  When we were overseas, my brothers and I all went to the same school.  

But the truth is, plenty of my friends grew up the same way, and many of them had (and continue to have) fucked up family dynamics that bear no resemblance to ours.

So maybe we're just blessed.  We have great parents who have a great relationship who showered us with affection and blew sunshine up our asses from the day we were born.  Josh and Sam and I each went through typical sullen teenager phases, but they passed fairly quickly, and we remain close and supportive.  Though its more difficult now with busy schedules and children thrown into the mix, we make an effort to get the whole family together when we can -- for Thanksgiving, for summer vacations at the beach, whatever.  And we truly enjoy each others' company.

Again, I am a lucky woman.

Compatibility

It's no secret that I have been a bit on the tired side lately. Getting a decent night's sleep has been akin to locating the Holy Grail, in terms of degree of difficulty. And while I'm generally in a pretty decent mood, the more tired I get, the more I am frustrated by little things, particularly little things that interrupt my sleep.

Two nights ago I was completely exhausted. Jason was going out to meet a friend for a beer, but was kind enough to wait until Zeke had been bathed and put to bed, because I was too tired to manage on my own. As it was, I got into bed at 8:30, approximately 3 minutes after Zeke was ensconced in his crib.

At midnight, Zeke woke up and started to cry. At first the crying worked its way into my dream, then I woke up. I stuck my fingers in my ears, put my head under the pillow, and waited for him to go back to sleep, which he did after about 20 minutes.

Some time after that, Jason got home and crawled into bed. He's generally a pretty quiet sleeper, but when he drinks beer, he snores. Not horribly, but enough to wake me up (I'm a terribly light sleeper, so pretty much everything wakes me up).

Snore snore.

I kicked him. He rolled over and stopped snoring.

A few minutes later, the snoring started up again.

"JASON!! STOP SNORING!" Kick kick.

Quiet for a few minutes.

Snore snore.

"Goddammit! Go sleep on the couch!"

He sleeps like a dead person, so he shifted slightly but didn't wake up at all.

Finally, I went back to sleep.

3:30 a.m: Zeke wakes up and starts to cry. The prospect of lying there listening to him is far less attractive than the prospect of just bringing him into bed with me, where I know he'll sleep quietly, so I get up and get him. Jason sleeps.

5:00 a.m.: Zeke wakes up and starts to cry. "Ba??" he pleads, meaning he's thirsty and wants a bottle.

"Oh, all right! Goddammit!" I'm so frustrated.

I get him a bottle, he goes back to sleep.

Jason sleeps, undisturbed. Fucker.

7:00 a.m.: Jason's phone starts ringing, but it's a ring I don't recognize, and it doesn't kick into voicemail after 4 rings, so I realize it's some kind of alarm.

"What the FUCK?!?" I yell, loudly.

Jason stirs, says, "wha..?" and reaches over and turns off the phone.

I finally decide to get up a little while later.

At 8:20, I'm dressed and ready to go to work. Jason and Zeke are still passed out in the bed. Then I realize that Jason has an important appointment that I think is at 9:00, so I need to wake them both up and get Zeke dressed and off to school.

I tap Jason on the bottom of his foot. He opens his eyes and looks at me.

"What time is your appointment?" I ask.

"9 o'clock," he replies. He looks at the clock.

"Mmm hmmm," I say.

Then I bark, "Zeke! Wake up!"

I've never done this to him before. He lifts his head up immediately, looks around, sees me, and gives me a smile. My heart thaws slightly.

"Come on, honey, we've got to get up and go to school."

Somehow, I manage to get Zeke up, changed, dressed, fed and out the door in 20 minutes. The entire time, I'm glowering at both him and Jason for keeping me awake all night. Zeke doesn't notice that I'm trying to give him the stink-eye, and he's chattering and giving me hugs and being all sweet. It's hard to stay mad.

Later, after I've calmed down, I'm talking to Jason on the phone. And I mention how tired I am and how I feel like he and Zeke are in some kind of conspiracy to keep me from getting any sleep.

"Did you hear me yelling at you when you started to snore? I kept telling you to stop snoring and to go sleep in the other room."

"Nope, I didn't hear anything. I'm really sorry, baby, next time I've had a few beers I'll sleep somewhere else."

"Yeah, well. I'm just so tired. I don't mean to be grumpy."

"I know, baby. And I must say, it's such a treat to wake up to the dulcet tones of your wife screaming, 'IS THAT YOUR FUCKING PHONE??'"

He laughs. He's so good-humored about it.

I realize for about the millionth time that I married someone with the perfect temperament to deal with me. And apparently, that temperament has been passed on to our son.

I'm a lucky woman.

Living in weather oblivion

When we lived in Hawaii, Jason and I used to joke that the qualifications for becoming a weather-person there were a limited command of the English language and maybe a pulse.  Because every single day, with very limited exceptions (like gusts of wind that shut down the entire island of Oahu), it was 83 degrees and sunny.  

And sometimes having so much sameness in the weather could get boring.  I missed the seasons, particularly the crazy bursts of color and warmth that erupt in Atlanta every March and April.  

But there's also something kind of nice about never having to check the weather report.  I didn't have to worry about whether a particular outfit was weather-appropriate.  I could walk outside in a tank top and shorts pretty much every day, and know that I was going to be perfectly comfortable.  The only thing we used the weather report for was to determine where on the island there would be good waves, so we could plan our surf outings accordingly.

The thing about living in that kind of oblivion is that it's a hard habit to break.  

Which is a problem if you're living in Denver.  Because here, the weather could be 70 degrees and sunny one day, and then 30 degrees and snowing the next.  

And there's no normal level of gradation to increases or decreases in temperature.  We arrived here in late February.  For the first 3 weeks we were here, it was in the high 60s and 70s, sunny and beautiful (if a tad on the dry side).  Then there was a blizzard.  Then it warmed up again.  Then it cooled off again.  Then it seemed that spring had arrived.  It's been very pleasant that last couple of weeks, with the trees budding and the grass getting greener.

And sometimes I was aware of what the weather was supposed to do, but usually I wasn't, because I still have not gotten into the habit of checking the local news for the weather.

Take this week, for example.  My brother Sam is doing a big gig with his band tomorrow night in New York City.  I've had plans to go for a month.  My mom and dad and my brother Josh will be there as well.  It's a big deal.  I've been looking forward to seeing the family, and to being able to sleep through the night without having to wake up to Zeke crying or Jason snoring or the poor blind dog banging into a wall.

So color me astonished yesterday when I was in a meeting with some folks at work, and they started talking about the blizzard due to hit tonight.

And I'm all, "the what with the what now?  What freaking blizzard??"

Apparently, we could get over a foot of snow from storms that are supposed to start tonight and last through Saturday.  Which is a problem when I'm supposed to be on a flight that leaves tomorrow morning.  According to the weather report that I finally bothered to look at, it's dumping snow in the mountains right now, and Denver is right on the edge of where the storm could be snow or could be rain, depending on whether it's a couple of degrees colder or warmer.  So I could be fine, or I could be snowed in.  Nothing to do but wait.

And it's not as if being aware of the storm sooner rather than later would have made any difference.  I can't control it either way, obviously.  But it's still taking some getting used to, this notion that changes in the weather can affect my life at all.

Old world charm

My lovely mother bought me a new pair of maternity pants to add to my paltry “career” wardrobe. And today they reek of cigarette smoke.

No, I haven’t developed a nasty habit that will not only harm my lungs, prematurely wrinkle my skin, turn my teeth yellow, stink up my breath, and subject the Joey to a risk of low birth weight and other similar ailments. Rather, I took the pants to Nana to be hemmed.

Nana is a local seamstress who is something of a Denver institution. She’s a little Greek lady, probably around 60 years old, who has a tiny shop around the corner from my office. There is no discernible technological system organizing her shop, either on the money end or any other. Her cash “register” is a drawer that is filled to the brim with an assortment of bills and coins. Her sewing machines look about a hundred years old. She has a TV with rabbit ears on in the background so she can watch her stories while she works.

And she chain-smokes More cigarettes in her tiny little shop, so everything reeks. The rule of thumb is, make sure you pick up your stuff within 24 hours of dropping it off, or be consigned to a trip to the dry cleaner. (I missed the 24-hour cutoff with my new pants.)

“Why on earth would you put up with such conditions?” you ask. “Surely there are other seamstresses in the area.”

There probably are. But I don't want to go to anyone else. And stop calling me "Shirley."

First and foremost, she does good work and her rates are cheap, which is especially good for me, since my runty frame dictates that any pair of pants I acquire will be at least 5 inches too long. Hemming expenses for me are pretty much a line item in our family budget.

But more fundamentally, I go to Nana because I find her charming. She’s sweet and always asks how I’m doing and how the pregnancy is progressing. She tells funny stories. Her husband died last year, but she keeps on keeping on in her low-tech, unconventional way. She isn’t trying to make a statement or take a stand against political anti-smoking correctness. She’s just being herself. And with her heavy Greek accent and her short black/grey hair, she reminds me of Christina.

So if I have to stock up on Dryel, so be it. Nana’s got my business.

The second time around

So many friends and family who live far away or whom I don't often see have sent Passover and Easter wishes lately, many of them asking how the pregnancy is going and how I'm feeling.

The short answer is, I'm feeling fine. I don't have any nausea anymore, and aside from some pregnancy-related hypersensitivity in my teeth (I'm going to the dentist tomorrow), I don't feel uncomfortable or cumbersome (yet) at all. My belly is starting to pooch, but other than my boobs getting a little bigger (oy!), I haven't really gained weight anywhere else and my clothes mostly fit and all is well.

The long answer is, it's alot more exhausting to be pregnant and work a full-time job and take care of a toddler, as compared to when I went through it the first time. Particularly when that first time, I was living in Hawaii and working from home and had a super-flexible schedule, so I could nap when I wanted and hang out at my desk in a tank top and pajama bottoms. And every afternoon, Jason would come home from work and we would go to the beach for an hour or so. He would surf and I would sit in the sun and read a book. So in addition to having a rocking tan, I was plowing through 3 or 4 library books a week, sleeping as much as I needed to, and generally feeling pretty relaxed. Life definitely didn't suck.

And it's not that life now sucks -- far from it -- but I'm tired all the time. Zeke hasn't slept through the night since we arrived in Colorado. At first I thought it was the climate -- I was waking up completely parched in the middle of the night, and so was he -- but it was also the temperature. If he woke up after 4 or 5 in the morning (after going to bed at 7:30 or 8), I would get up and give him a bottle, and then bring him into my room and let him sleep the rest of the night snuggled up between Jason and me.

But sometimes he would wake up at 1 or 2 in the morning, and I just wasn't willing to let him off the hook that early. So he would stand up in his crib and cry for awhile, and eventually he would lie back down and go to sleep.

And I realized that he hasn't learned how to pull the covers back up over himself once he's gotten out from under them. So he'll go back to sleep, but then he'll wake up in a couple of hours, freezing.  I'll bring him into bed with me and curl my body around him, as he presses his ice-cold hands and feet against me to warm up. So then I feel mean letting him cry.

Not to mention that regardless of whether or not I go to him when he cries during the night, I wake up. So I'm tired all the time, because I never, never get a decent night's sleep.

All I can say is, thank God for Jason. Because when Zeke starts tugging on my hand because he wants to go downstairs and play with his trucks, or go to the park and run around and go down the slide and swing on the swings, I don't always have the energy. And I feel inadequate as a parent. So Jason has picked up an enormous amount of slack, willing to run around with him until they're both exhausted.

So on the one hand, the pregnancy is going fine. But on the other, I'm tired, and I don't have the time anymore to just lounge around and relax in the sun to my heart's content. It's much harder this time around.

Crazy wonderful

I love Passover.  It ranks up there with Thanksgiving on my list of favorite holidays, and for many of the same reasons.  The gathering of family.  The chronicling of what everyone has been up to, and how the kids have grown and changed.  The noise and chaos.  The rituals.  The traditions and symbols, particularly the tradition of being thankful for your freedom and of committing to work for the freedom of others.  It's a nice blending of religious themes with the kinds of democratic ideals that embody what I love about being American.

And I'm not a religious Jew -- I struggle mightily with concepts of God and sanctity and even Jewish chosen-ness (as much as I like the idea of being part of a special group).  But I love Passover, and I love being Jewish at Passover.  

Celebrating Passover this year presented a bit of a dilemma.  We couldn't afford to fly to Washington to celebrate with my parents.  Both of my cousins are out of town this week, so crashing one of their seders was out.  And though I love hosting seder myself, the current state of our kitchen made the prospect more than a little daunting.  Specifically, we have less than half of the cupboard space in our new kitchen that we had in our kitchen in Hawaii, so we're scouring Craigslist for inexpensive hutches or chests that we can use to store dishes, glassware, linens and what-have-you.  In the meantime, everything is a jumble.  I have no idea where most of my cooking utensils and tools are, where my spring-form pan is (for flourless chocolate torte), where my roasting pan is (for brisket), etc.

So, it really wasn't going to happen at our house without me going completely insane.  But the thought of not having a seder to go to made me really, really sad.

Kathleen to the rescue.

Kathleen is friends with a couple that she met on the street one day.  Their names are Alison and Pablo.  And they are Jewish.*  Kathleen jokes that she needed Alison to meet me to give her (Kathleen) some Jewish street cred, because apparently, Alison appeared a bit taken aback by the Christmas decorations Kathleen had up in her house around Christmas-time.  Kathleen wanted me to provide assurance to Alison that Kathleen was cool and not a weird religious nut.

So basically, it was inevitable that Alison and I would meet and be friends.

Kathleen and Alison were talking over the weekend, and Kathleen mentioned to Alison that I was looking for a place to go for Passover seder.  Alison told Kathleen that Jason and Zeke and I would be welcome to join her and her family at her mother's house.  I thought that sounded lovely.  Kathleen and Alison and I met up for drinks so that Alison and I would at least meet before I showed up at her mother's house with my family in tow, and we took to each other immediately.  

The evening was crazy and wonderful.  The seder itself was a bit haphazard.  We were trying to get through the Haggadah, but there were kids running around everywhere and then Alison's mom and her mom's husband started serving food, even though it wasn't technically time yet, and we tried to keep it going but finally we gave up.  But the food was delicious and Zeke had a great time playing with Alison's children and we got to meet and hang out with Alison's husband, Pablo, who is terrific.  Pablo's mother, who only speaks Spanish, was visiting from Argentina, so she and I spoke Spanish all night.  By the end of the night, it was as if we had all known each other for years.

One of my favorite Passover traditions is the emphasis on taking in strays -- Jews who are new in town or far from home, who need a seder to go to.  I've always loved being able to play host in the past, and it was lovely to have it come full circle and be able to feel at home at a seder, even when I'm far from my family and on unfamiliar turf.

Happy Passover, everyone.  Next year in Jerusalem....

__________________________

*Pablo is originally from Argentina, and his family got there after escaping from Poland to Spain, leaving Spain because of the civil war in the 1930s, going to France, and eventually making their way to South America.  Amazingly, our ancestors are from similar areas in Eastern Europe, and his last name is a very close derivation of my dad's family's name before it was anglicized at Ellis Island.  I suspect that we are distant cousins.  

 

The perception of power

I have a bizarre ability to scare people. Not in a "boo!" kind of sense, but more in a "do as I ask or there will be hell to pay" kind of way. It's not something I'm particularly proud of, largely because very rarely do I try to throw my weight around to try to get what I want. I don't see the point in being snide or sarcastic or mean to service people on the phone, for example, because A) I think it's rude and obnoxious, and B) it usually doesn't work. If you need someone's help, you're far more likely to get it by being nice or appealing to their sympathies.* When all else fails, I'll write a stern letter to management and casually mention that I'm a lawyer. That works too. But again, it's rare that I do that. "Kill them with kindness" is a much more effective strategy.

Which is why I find recent events curious.

I haven't been thrilled with Zeke's new daycare. Maybe I've been spoiled, because his daycare in Hawaii was so wonderful, from the organization to the warmth of the individual caregivers. I haven't felt the overwhelming love in the new place that I felt from the Cole Academy, and I've been disappointed in what has struck me as a lack of attention to detail in the level of care my baby receives.

For example, every day the parents are provided with a progress report at the end of the day, detailing their child's activity during the day: how much and when he ate, what his diaper changes revealed, how much he slept, what activities he preferred (so far, Zeke has almost exclusively preferred language or reading-based activities). And with the exception of one day, in the month that Zeke has been at his new school, his progress report has never been completely filled out. So I was often wondering whether Zeke napped or not (which definitely affects how the evening routine will go), or whether he ate all of his afternoon snack, or when was the last time he pooped.

And maybe that's because they've been pretty lackadaisical about changing his diaper. At Cole Academy, they changed his diaper every hour (which I thought was a bit of overkill, not to mention expensive). At the new school, they only do 4 changes a day, which is OK, but my expectation is that in any event, if a kid is clearly walking around with a load in his pants, the teachers will deviate from the schedule and change a diaper if change is obviously warranted.

But one day last week, Jason went to pick Zeke up, and Zeke was wandering around with one shoe on -- outside, in March -- with the other shoe buried somewhere in the sandbox. He had a ribbon of snot snaking up his face where someone had clearly done a half-assed job of wiping his nose. And you could smell the shit in his pants from 4 feet away. Yet, the two teachers outside "supervising" the kids were standing off in the corner, talking to each other and maybe glancing occasionally at their young charges.

Earlier this week, I went to pick Zeke up in the afternoon. The kids were outside on the playground. He was standing very listlessly against the fence, playing half-heartedly with an abacus-like bead thingy. The teacher reported that he had slept for over 3 hours during naptime -- an extraordinary nap for him -- and that during playtime, he didn't want to play and fell asleep on her shoulder when she picked him up.

"Ha ha!  Isn't that funny??"

And I'm thinking, "He must be ill.  What the fuck is wrong with her powers of observation?  Why did nobody call me??"

When I got to the car and put him in the carseat, I realized how bad it was.  He kind of collapsed in the seat, and I discovered that he had a fever and was not at all well.  As in, he was sitting with his head back, eyes at half-mast, his breathing labored, his forehead burning.

The straw breaking the proverbial camel's back was later that week.  Jason dropped Zeke off in the morning, and when he got to the toddler classroom, there was not a single adult in the room.  A gaggle of 1-year-olds was wandering around or sitting on the floor, looking confused.  A teacher from another class wandered into the diaper-changing area to change a kid's diaper, and when Jason asked where the toddler teacher was, the woman said, very nonchalantly, "oh, she'll be back soon."

So I made an appointment to talk to the director of the school.  And sat down with her last Thursday afternoon, and explained in a calm, rational voice, the nature and basis for my concerns.  It was a very cordial conversation.  At no point did I yell or lecture or speak in a stern tone.  The director was very sympathetic and responsive to my concerns, and said she would investigate and remedy the situation immediately.  I left feeling somewhat better.

The next day, I got a call from one of Zeke's teachers, informing me that he seemed clammy and lethargic, and that he was crying a lot and having a hard time functioning without being held by an adult.  We had taken Zeke to the doctor's office earlier that week, and she had indicated that he had had an ear infection, but that it appeared to be on the mend.  She called in a prescription for antibiotics, but advised that we not fill it unless his symptoms appear to get worse again.  So I figured that Zeke was relapsing, thanked the teacher for letting me know what was going on, and left work to go pick him up and fill the prescription.

When I got to the school, Zeke was happy to see me, but didn't appear particularly sick or emotionally fragile.  I was all worried about taking him to the drug store and having him melt down while I waited for his prescription to be filled, but he was happy and chirpy and flirted with everyone in the pharmacy.

I mentioned to Jason that I thought that the teachers might have overreacted, and that Zeke had seemed OK when I got him.  

"They're probably scared shitless of you now," he responded.

"Why?  I didn't yell at anyone.  I didn't threaten or try to get anyone in trouble.  I was very calm in talking to the director."

"Baby, you have no idea how you come across.  You can be at your scariest when you're at your calmest."

"Huh."

I really don't try to scare anyone.  It's not my intention to come across as bitchy or mean.  

But I guess in this situation, let them be scared.

___________________________________
* There are limited exceptions to this rule. When our movers finally delivered our stuff, the delivery guys declared that they would not be unpacking or reassembling any of the furniture, even though that's what I had paid for, and that they would not be removing any of the mountain of packing material that was piling up in the living room, even though that's what I paid for. I completely blew a gasket and yelled at them off and on for the entire 3 hours they were moving stuff into my house. It did not, however, persuade them to do what I wanted, which kind of proves my earlier point.

Help! My body has been invaded by a space alien!

The pregnancy is going well. I'm feeling fine and all seems to be progressing appropriately. Last week I went in for a 14 week ultrasound. We got some 4-D shots in addition to standard ultrasound images.

(The space alien, hand to forehead, proclaims "woe is me!")

(Profile shot -- nice strong spine, cute button nose)

I'm still at the point where the baby is too small for me to feel any kicks, so when I saw him (I don't know that it's a boy, but I don't feel like saying "him/her" every time) bopping around like he was attending a rave, it was thrilling. When I start to show a little bit more (right now I still look chesty and chubby rather than pregnant), I'll start posting "bump" pictures.