Confessions – Page 15 – The UnderToad

So Here’s the Deal

I hit sixteen weeks (two weeks ago today) with a vengeance. As predicted, the nausea was gone. And my energy is returning. Enter melt-down number one. I now have just enough energy to be bothered by the mess that is my house. I do not yet have the energy to fully tackle it. As it is, completing one or two tasks a day (outside of the normal routine of meals, entertainment, and bus driver) is about as much as I can handle, if I’m lucky.

Thank God I’m an American and have at least twenty pairs of underwear.

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Confessions

Today’s Kids

Okay, so I admit it, I try to catch a few minutes of the Today show with regularity. It isn’t that the reporting is necessarily intelligent nor the stories all that interesting. I honestly think it is simply the comfort of familiarity first thing in the morning. It also provides me with conversation nuggets for the rest of the day when I don’t feel like making small talk about my children (which is always).

Yesterday, this seemed to be the talk of the day:

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Confessions

You Pay the Babysitter How Much?!

For any readers over the age of fifty or those yet without children, here’s some free information (that should shock and appall you): the going rate for a babysitter (here in Mid-Sized-Suburban-Town, USA) is ten dollars an hour. This is for one or two children. I hear that my friends with more than three children pay more.

As one of the oldest girls in the neighborhood where I grew up with a criminal background that boasted of above average responsibility, I think I started babysitting when I was about eleven years old. Most of the neighborhood kids were the ages of my younger sisters, and to my best memory, I never changed a diaper in my life before Eliott was born.

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Confessions

Let There Be Fiber

I wake up every morning to NPR, twice. I get a ten minute teaser when John wakes up at 6:30. Then, many mornings from 7:30 to 8:30, I catch up as I lie in bed sort of defying the day (or Carter) to come and get me.

It is amazing the statistical nuggets of totally useless information available from 6:30 to 8:30 on NPR. Most often, I’m finding, statistics related to the general health of America consistently put me and my family in a much higher percentile than I could have ever hoped for on something like my SAT’s or graduation rank.

I knew I’d be a winner one day. And let me say, it is exactly as glorious as I always hoped it would be.

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Confessions

Productivity

After weeks of terrible night time sleep and the most fabulous naps of my life on our blue Lazy Boy, at eleven o’clock last night I broke the news to John that I would be sleeping on the couch.

The result? We’re considering investing in twin beds. (Grandma and Grandpa Paulus, I totally get it now.)

I have just had the most productive day in fourteen weeks. And so, I’m celebrating by eating a cinnamon roll and brogging about it. (I just made that up. Brogging. You know, bragging on my blog.)

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Confessions

It’s Raining, It’s Pouring

Books.

I swear. It does not matter when I put a book on hold, nor how many end up in my queue at the public library. Inevitably, they will all arrive in the same week.

I thought about reading Jeffrey Eugenides’ new novel, The Marriage Plot, at the beginning of January. I think my request for one of five books in circulation went in at number sixty-something.

More recently, I added John Irving’s In One Person, and magically was very close to the top of the list. Finally, I had a whim to tackle the entire Chronicles of Narnia this summer, and thought it would be easier to just get the edition that has all seven books bound in one. (They looked so innocent in that cute little paper-back boxed set I got from a book order as a kid. This looks as intimidating as Gone With the Wind. Geesh.)

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Confessions

Suddenly Starbucks

I’ve had this strange feeling looming in the back of my mind for a few days now. For a while I assumed it was the UnderToad, and pushed it away, believing it would resolve itself as long as I didn’t acknowledge it with too much thought.

It isn’t the UnderToad.

I’m lead believe this foreign and somewhat uncomfortable feeling is that of guilt.

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Confessions, Eliott

One Month Ago

I wrote this post a month ago, on the day that it happened. At the time, for whatever reason, I didn’t want to publish it, and wondered if I ever would. To spoil the ending, everything turned out just fine. Better than fine, in fact.

So I’m having a mommy melt-down right now.

Of course, it is Friday, which means my five year old will not get out of bed. This means the entire morning went the usual way it goes when Eliott decides not to do anything. But my new approach to this attitude is to tell her one time, “If you do not do all your jobs before school today, or if you are not ready when it is time to go, you will ride in the car to drop Carter off and come back home with me.” (Thankfully, school is currently a reward in her mind.)

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Confessions

Saturday Morning Porch Review

I’m not going to apologize for the lack of posting, structure, or general theme to my recent updates. Those of you who understand morning sickness, all day, for sixteen weeks, are impressed that my current children are still alive. Forget about this silly blog, which needs no food. But to those of you who echo the sentiments of my baby sister (at dinner a few weeks ago), sounding something like this: “You know I can’t even remember the last time I had the flu. I just can’t imagine, or even remember really, what you must feel like. And since I never really get sick, I honestly don’t think I’ll have a rough pregnancy,” I would like to paint a word-picture that the migraine prevented me from creating that night when I politely agreed that your pregnancies would probably be easy, and silently prayed for the ability to projectile puke all over you across the table at that very moment.

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Confessions

How To Survive Flying While Pregnant

Pregnancy fun fact #302: During pregnancy, lots of women become more sensitive and reactive to the scents around them. The increase in estrogen leads to a highly acute sense of smell.

I spent a four day weekend without my children or John in Washington state, catching up with my sisters, sleeping in a hotel, and not cooking any of my meals, all under the excuse of the dedication to a new elementary school building on the same campus as my K-12 high school.

It was a great weekend. Minus the flying part.

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