I wish I could unsee these

I dare you to click on these links. They're horrible.
http://www.huffingtonpost.com/2012/06/07/awkward-baby-shower-cakes_n_1571619.html#s=1055864

The last one will haunt your dreams.
http://www.pregnantchicken.com/pregnant-chicken-blog/2011/3/15/cake-wrecks-baby-shower-edition.html

Sissy and I took turns contemplating why on EARTH someone would decide to do such things with confections, before becoming physically nauseous and calling the session to a close.

This is mild compared to some of the monstrosities in those links--and you're on your own if you go for the Google image search.

2 simple rules for making baby shower cakes:
1. Parents don't want to eat a poorly-devised, icing-covered version of their future child.
2. Female anatomy is creepiest when pregnant, and ABSOLUTELY SHOULD NOT be modeled in any variation of fondant and raspberry jelly.

I need to lay down now.

"IT"

I was just mulling over the joyful phrase, "It's a boy!"
It's a baby, but is "it" a boy?

Just a thought, but...once you find out what sex your baby is, shouldn't the phrasing be,

"He's a boy" or "She's a girl"? Shouldn't that be printed on banners and teddy bears all over the world?

Since by figuring out what kind of person you're having, you eliminate the cause to refer to said person as "it"?

Scenario:
-What is that in your belly?/How far along are you?/WOW, are you PREGNANT?
-I'm pregnant./I'm due in October./ Yes. Thank you for noticing.

The problem is inherent in the next question:
-What is it?

If we all really thought about this, we would respond--it's a baby. A small human. IT's kind of a stupid question really, as even though you don't know the gender, a person is never referred to as an "it" in English.


Let's put this in another context.
Is that fish male or female?
It's a male.
Check for pronoun correctness:
The fish swam around the pond.
It swam around the pond.
Both make sense.

Is that baby male or female? (or however you want to ask.)
It's a boy.
Check for pronoun correctness:
The boy human swam around the pond.
It swam around the pond. Then it dried itself off, it ate a sandwich, and it hugged it's mom.
Unless you're observing from another planet, I'm gonna go with no.

I'm not sure who started this idiom, but grammatically it is a genuine failure. If the pronoun that should be used to describe someone is still a mystery (he or she), then we shouldn't use one until the appropriate time. If you'd like to join my hair-splitting campaign, you may ask your pregnant friends the following questions, so that they may give the following grammatically correct replies.

Have you discovered what gender baby you're having?
Why, yes I have. The baby is a girl.

Do you know what color (proper use of what!) you'll be painting the nursery?
Yellow. We don't want to know what gender the baby is.

Is your baby a boy or a girl?
My baby is a sweet little boy, and he likes to kick me in the bladder.

If you don't care, expect one of these weird responses at some point:

Do you know what you're having?
The doctor told me I should be having a baby, but I don't trust him.

Is it a boy or a girl?
What, my turtle? Turtle's a boy.

Do you think you know what it is?
Well, it makes me nauseous at times, and gain weight at others...could be Taco Bell.

Pronouns are important, people. Syntax is power. Babies are people, not things.
STAY IN SCHOOL FOOLS.

From Aunt Sissy

So. My sister. My children's future favorite Aunt. Made me this amazing book.

It may look like an ordinary scrapbook with a little boy with a moustache wearing a karate suit on the cover, but it is truly so much more than that.

It tells a tale of two young lovebirds who take a trip to Mexico. They had a lot of fun doing all sorts of things, and came back with a surprise!

"They hit pinatas and had fiestas, but something happened during one of their siestas..."

This lyrical gem then goes on to whimsy about all of the surprises this little surprise will bring with him, the preparations involved, and all of the fun to be had.

"Having a baby, it is a duty

but not as big as the one that comes out of its booty."

I laughed. I cried. Mostly I laughed. It's SO adorable, and I've never heard of anyone else having a homemade storybook about the conception and gestation of their first child (perhaps for a reason).

While out of the box, it was the perfect treat for a mommy and daddy-to-be. It's fun to know that she's daydreaming right along with us--projecting lots of finger painting, future science fair wins, and facial hair for our new little son.

Thanks Aunt Sissy :)

Garage Sale Find!

How cute, right? It's a wooden car ramp with a metropolitan twist! $2 at a garage sale in my new neighborhood.

I know it's early to be buying toys, but I just loved the look of this thing, and figured it could be decorative until the right time.

Because it's a wooden toy, I was worried it might be very old and have some toxic element to it (it's amazing how unwillingly conscious of danger your mind becomes), but I was pleasantly surprised to find a Melissa and Doug stamp on the side, and it was a no brainer after that. They make sturdy, creative toys, many of which happen to be wooden.

I'm excited about the idea of finding things second hand, and in good shape. I was always a thrift shopper in college, and while I haven't used Value Village as my primary clothier in some time, I'm still quite fond of finding a good bargain.

I'm thinking that I may become a garage sale junkie--starting simple in my neighborhood, possibly hawking some estate sales as I gain experience, and then advancing to buying a large hatchback vehicle (perhaps off of someone's lawn) and scouring 6 different county newspapers weekly. None of my kids' clothes will match, and we'll have hundreds of Golden Books that only cost a nickel a piece. Familial bliss.

Tounge Tied

More new vocab!!

While we were chatting with our new doula friends today, a couple of interesting topics came up. This is the first one I had absolutely never heard of--apparently, tongue frenulums can make breastfeeding a horrible, painful task if they're too long or attachy. Check out this kid's under-tongue.

See? Horrible.

..And I really meant horrible and painful for mom. If the baby can't stick it's tongue out enough, it can't latch on properly, and things don't go well. It's called a "tongue tie", and it needs to be zapped with a laser, as it can also cause speech issues later on. Baby naturally gets spooked and screams for a minute, but everyone is much happier once it's feeding time again--which can be pretty much immediately after the procedure.

Guess what? Frank had one of these, and they're hereditary.

It's very common for these to go undiagnosed, but I will be hawk-eyeing that baby's tongue flap as soon as I stop crying from happiness. Let the research continue!

The Doula Oblongata

We interviewed a pair of doulas today that work as a team in the Baltimore/DC metro area. They were awesome, and we gave them our deposit on the spot, even though they have no other births scheduled for October, and totally weren't expecting us to make a commitment right away.

Hold up: what's a doula? Yoo hooo, Wikipediaaa:

A doula (pronounced "doó la",^[1] also known as a labour coach^[2] is a non-medical person who assists a woman before, during, or after childbirth, as well as her partner and/or family by providing information, physical assistance, and emotional support.^[1] The provision of continuous support during labour by doulas, or nurses, family, or friends, is associated with improved maternal and fetal health and a variety of other benefits.^[1][4]
A variety of organizations offer certification and training to doulas, though there is no oversight to their practice and the title can be used by anyone.^[5] In contrast to the goal of medical professionals (a safe childbirth), the goal of a doula is to ensure the mother feels safe and confident before, during, and after delivery.<sup>[6]

Not to be confused with Medulla, part of the brain, referenced in this clip from an academic film:</sup>

So then--we've contracted these two doulas, one of which will be on-call and thusly present at the time of my labor and delivery. They are unabashedly pro-natural birth, although I'm positive that's not the only situation you can use them in. I do have plans to have an unmedicated water birth, and although I have heard the midwife practice I'm now seeing works well within the boundaries of what I'm hoping for, I decided to go with a doula for a couple of reasons:

1: If your midwife is attending to more than one birth, you will obviously not be attended to by someone you know and trust for part of the time you're at the hospital. Your doula will be there from the start of your active labor (they come to your home and "labor sit" until your contractions are pretty close together and intense, instead of letting the hospital clock you from the minute you think something is happening) until up to two hours after you deliver.

2. You get to review your birth plan and any other details you're fiddling with a few weeks before you get into the reverse thunder-dome (one person enters, two people leave), which prepares the doulas to advocate for you. Awesome.

3. Advocate really means remind you of what you wanted if for some reason you're panicking or your husband has fainted. They can't speak for you--that's still something you and your partner have to do--but they can be a strong presence for you, and give you emotional support if your practitioner is absent or a bit prickly (or again, if your husband has fainted). That being said, Frank's not sure how calm he's going to be on that fateful day, so we feel comfortable having some extra help on board--for both of us. They're not there to squeeze out your significant other, they're there to help you help each other.

4. One is a massage therapist--BONUS.

They have a ton of experience between them, and had some great insight about the practice and hospital I'll be birthing with that I really would have had no way of knowing otherwise. They knew a lot about a number of practices and hospitals--an earlier conversation with them actually led me to the practice I'm with now.

I found that this has been a great, great reliever of anxiety. I didn't want to wait until my second birth to try the way I really wanted, and finding someone knowledgeable about my corner of the world made me comfortable enough to make the jump safely away from a practice with a 96% epidural rate. Where I am right now, I know it won't be strange for me to say, no thank you, I don't want an IV, or, I'd like to take a bath now. That's just how they do stuff.

And I hear all of your brains right now--maybe you think I'm a hippie, but some hippies actually get to enjoy having a baby instead of fearing pain and misery. That's what I plan to do.

RADIOHEAD

So, as I referenced months ago, Frank managed to score us 2 tickets to the Radiohead show in DC, which was yesterday. After my early afternoon, 3-hour nap, we got ourselves showered and dressed to head out to DC. The first band went on at 7:30, and since we left the house around 3:30, we had time to stop for one of these little beauties:

On any other day, this is a rainbow snowball...but today, this is an In Rainbows snowball.

After icy treats, we hit the road, making pretty good time to DC--about an hour. We found $15 parking not far from the Verizon Center, and went to this cool BBQ jam for dinner. Getting into the arena with a paperless ticket (you swipe the card you used to purchase tickets online to get into the show) was a bit confusing, not only to us, but I think to most people who work at the Verizon Center as well. We did however manage to get in, after beginning exactly where we started the giant loop we were gradually directed in--luckily we were still plenty early, and the weather was flawless, so no harm.

I became very excited, very quickly. Frank and I were all about getting t-shirts to commemorate this very special event, and I made sure to pick one out that I could wear all summer.

It's really hard to take a picture of yourself in a t-shirt (I'm wearing it right meow), and I don't want to walk upstairs where there's a mirror. You get the idea--it's a mirror image of the word RADIOHEAD printed on a fifty-percent organic cotton t-shirt. Pretty awesome. Worth at least the 40 bucks I paid for it.

Seriously though, I really like it.

PRESHOW SEQUENCE:
I went to the bathroom, we got to our seats.

We got waters and popcorn, I went to the bathroom.
The opening band came on, I got antsy about not having enough to eat for Radiohead's whole set.
I got a pretzel, I went to the bathroom (and awkwardly held the pretzel with my chin).
Time elapsed: 45 minutes.

The openers (Caribou) finished up their 5 song set, and before long, Thom Yorke and his gang of alternative geniouses took the stage!

 They were awesome--I'm SO glad we went.

I managed to stand (and shimmy and shake and bounce and bop) for what I would guess equates to half to two-thirds of the show, but let myself sit for songs I wasn't super attached to, or that were slower. This was a necessary evil that took more willpower than just standing probably would've.

Back in my day, not so very long ago, I would've never dreamed of buying assigned seats for a show like this. I wouldn't have just been shimmying and bouncing--I would have been JUMPING for entire songs and screaming my head off in-between numbers...but that was then.

The big initial reminder that I needed to take-er-easy came during the first song of Caribou's set. Theo turned into a little rock as soon as the bass kicked in. He was all balled up in my belly! At least we know that he can hear--or...that he could before the concert.

I was already sitting at the time, so I quickly muffled my bump with my jacket and the two t-shirts that Frank and I bought. His startled little body loosened up in less than a minute, but I still kept the buffer there until Radiohead started up, and thankfully, he seemed to like that much better. Good boy.

The second big reminder actually came after the fact--today to be exact. I think I got a little to riled-up during Bodysnatchers, and my round ligaments are maaaaa-ad. I was a little grumbly this morning, but ugh, by about 3pm I could barely walk! I had to take some Tylenol to relieve the ache in my belly. I mean, I've been to a concert or out dancing and been sore before, but this was just alarming.

I did contemplate calling up the midwives juuuust in case, but...I didn't. The Tylenol helped just fine, and the pain was really only in my sides. I like to discount and tough-out most things that ail me, which may or may not be smart with a bundle inside me, but I'd like to think I'd know the difference between symptoms of dancing too hard and preterm labor.

I'd do it again--and I think Theo would too.

Awesome Sunday Morning

Frankie and I needed a day to ourselves after a decidedly detached and tired week, which resolved in a LOT of crying on my part the night before. Turns out I needed to mourn leaving our first home as a married couple, you know, for a couple of hours. Kind of snuck up on me.

So my puffy eyes stayed closed long after we should've been up for church, and we held each other in bed until I needed to eat so badly that I actually got light-headed while laying down (10:30am). Every time I opened my eyes, I couldn't focus--it was kind of like the spins after a night of drinking, but without the impending vomiting. I realized that we had eaten dinner a bit earlier than usual the night before (7pm instead of about 9), and that probably accounted for the extra symptom.

I eventually pulled it together, as Frank declared that he would be making pancakes, and I happily decreed that there should be chocolate chips involved. I went downstairs to retrieve ingredients--the kitchen doesn't quite have room for everything, so we've been bringing things up as-needed for various kitchen endeavors.

After going up and down the stairs exactly two times, I began to feel ill, and had to sit and eat a banana at the table, closely followed by a greek yogurt in bed, and a brief nap.

I awoke to the sight of my Franker, holding a short-stack. I managed to sit at the table with him, and eat the delicious whole-grain pancakes he made.

And by eat, I mean bite out all of the chocolate chips before I got too full :)

After also finishing my milk, I again retired to the bedroom with my radiohead Pandora station softly playing in the next room. I slept for three hours. It was glorious.