Confessions

Colorado, What The Heck?!

Unless you live under a bridge, I need not re-share the news.

I just keep wondering when God is going to renege on his flood promise.

I’ve said it before, but I’m going to say it again.  For all the people who consciously dread bringing children into “this world” because times are worse than ever, my opinion is the very opposite.  I’m not actually sure that times are worse than ever.  I feel like there was a time far before the land of electronic instantaneous communication (with video) but certainly sometime after the invention of the wheel when it was just as dangerous to live in this world as it is today.  Okay, maybe the fear was of something smaller and not as crazy in the head as a gun wielding psycho out West (something more like a germ or a hungry animal) but dangerous none the less.

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Humor, Other People, Pregnancy, Things I Said

I Know This is Already Everywhere and Old, But…

…it just feels so appropriate for–always.

 

And to those of you who have most recently asked for belly pictures, I offer this: find a tall, skinny, dark haired woman with a pointy nose wearing a sundress.  Ask her to stuff a size three soccer ball up her dress.  You’ve basically got a picture.  Better: blow up a balloon to a similar size and make sure she puts the “nipple” side out, and you’ve got me and my belly button.

Cheers.

Confessions, Isaiah

The Day All My Dreams Came True

First, the Chinese were wrong.  Freaking finally.

Second, I will not be scanning and posting any ultra sound pictures.  If you want to see what the baby looks like, Google “ultra sound picture.”  Yes.  It looks just like that.  Only cuter, probably.  (As I described to Eliott, “We’re going to see the baby, but really, it is going to look like a bunch of thunderstorm clouds on a black and white TV and will probably be really boring, so I’ll bring the iPod for you to play games.)

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Carter, Confessions, Eliott

Thoughts on the Terrible Two’s

I have become that mother who screams, “GO OUTSIDE!” about ten times a day.

It is a crying shame North Carolina isn’t big on basements.  Another mental note for the house we build one day.  I will make sure it has a big basement, which is padded, and filled with things I do not care about.  I will turn a blind eye when “fight club” develops down there, making sure not to burn the muffins I have baking in the civilization I have created for myself above.

I have come to the conclusion that my children were too intelligent for the “Terrible Two’s.”  Instead of spending nine months to a year of their lives in emotion-driven tantrum frenzy, they feigned innocence while silently observing and storing up all aggression to be distributed in a much more calculated and passive way.

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Carter, Confessions, Eliott

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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