Playing Catch Up

Wow, Internet. It has been awhile, yes? I wish I could say that I have been meaning to write, but honestly, I have been sorely lacking in material. Unless, of course, the mundane is your cup of tea. Really I should probably be on here blogging about the primaries….I swear it feels like these damn things should have happened moons go. This season of endless campaigning is pushing me precariously close to apathy. And what about the writer’s strike??? My DVR has nothing to do now. NOTHING. Well, it sees many, many episodes of Caillou (where is his hair??), Franklin and, of course, the tried and true Mickey Mouse Clubhouse (please, for the love of god, new episodes already!). But really, what fun is that? I feel bad for it. Poor little DVR. As for my own TV watching….well, I am so jonesing for The Office and Pushing Daisies. But thank you, Bravo, for Project Runway. Without you I would be one small step closer to crazy.

Alrighty…on with things. Pregnancy has left me with the complete inability to organize my thoughts, so I think I am just going to do a few random bullet points as things pop into my head to bring us all up to speed:

• Liam will turn 3 exactly three weeks from today. Tell me, how in the hell did that happen? How is that just yesterday I was pacing and jiggling my colicky newborn, practically begging him to grow? I take it back. Give me my baby.

• Speaking of baby, Kid B is growing and on the move. I felt the first really discernible hi-yah karate kick to my insides today. I am 22 weeks. And, no, I do not know what we are having. We had our ultrasound the week of Christmas and chose not to find out. Now it is driving me crazy and I want to know. No I don’t. Yes I do. No I don’t. But, ummm yeah, I do. Wait no, no, no don’t tell me. What say you?

• Back to Liam. He is nowhere near being potty trained. I’ve been taking the laid back, he’ll do it when he is ready approach……having the potty chair out and available and asking him daily if he wants to try. All queries to sit on the pot have been met with a shriek of “NO” as he bolts out of the room. Something tells me he is going to need a bit of a nudge in the right direction. So, he’s got 3 more weeks of lolly-gagging and then we are getting down to business. I am dreading every second.

• On a more progressive front, he is now out of his crib. Well of course he is, some of you may mutter…he’s THREE. You need to understand, this kid had a serious love affair with his crib, never climbed out of it and did not even want to discuss the idea of ever sleeping anywhere else. But on New Year’s Eve we decided to set up an alternative slumber spot in his room, right along with his crib. Liam brought up all the tools he got for Xmas and helped daddy and grandpa put his new IKEA bed together. It is truly a wonder of Swedish technology and he L-O-V-E-S it! He slept in it that night and hasn’t looked back. In fact, we took the crib down on Sunday after he told me he wanted to give it to the baby. How much do I love that kid??? He’s a wonder.

• The Christmas holidays were fun on the whole. Christmas morning was particularly delightful with Liam this year. My parents and brother were here….for SIXTEEN days! It felt like sixty. Not that I didn’t love having them all here. Mostly it was just that we were all sick and hacking all over each other. None of us were getting any sleep because we were up all night coughing which meant that none of us had the energy or patience to deal with the only one of us who did not get sick…..the very active, very ornery, very loud Liam. Poor kid, even grandpa got after him a few times. For the most part, we spent our days stuck inside listening to my mom bitch about how awful she felt, how bad her throat her hurt, how hard she was coughing, how miserable and achy she was. The rest of us were just as sick if not sicker but chose to suffer in silence rather than play company to her misery. How very passive-aggressive of us.

• What else.... I have found myself on the Memory Album committee at Liam’s preschool and it is proving to be a big, fat pain in the ass. It is a tremendous amount of work and my class co-member seems to be out of the country more often than she is in and so I am left to do the bulk of the picture taking, editing and downloading myself. Remind me to request that I not be on this committee next year. Seriously. Sign me up for maintenance, toilet scrubber, snot wiper…anything but Memory Album.

• But aside from that…I can’t begin to tell you how much I love this school and Liam’s teacher and the other parents in class. LOVE. I am a big fan of the co-op school idea but I wasn’t sure how good of a fit it would be. I am here to tell you I couldn’t be happier and either could Liam. And next Fall he will attend 3 days a week with the same teacher. Awesome.

• I have also now found myself a Vice President in my local MOMS Club. It's a bit of work but actually quite fun and I have been lucky to have found myself becoming fast friends with a small but lovely group of women who have proved to be both very fun and very supportive. I have needed both quite a bit lately.
  

• Ummmm….let’s see. My sweet fat cat Simon is still AWOL. It has been 6 weeks so I am not too hopeful. It completely sucks. Liam keeps asking about him and I keep thinking I hear him yowling at the door and the tinkle, tinkle of his little red bell. I told Husband that I just wish I knew what happened to him. He says no, I really don’t. He’s probably right.

• Speaking of Husband. He is the best. He continues to demonstrate the patience of Job with me. I can barely stand myself most days, so I have no earthly clue how he is able to remain so steady and true in my presence. But he does and I am grateful. He’s a good guy.

• And on the topic of mood swings and raging hormones... This pregnancy is going well. I don’t think that the reality of another baby has truly set in for me yet. That wretched, WRETCHED morning sickness has passed and I’m so busy with Liam and life that the fact that I am carrying around another little being is sort of an afterthought these days. Maybe once the baby starts Riverdancing on my ribcage it will become more real for me….I don’t know….maybe I am just in denial. This whole pregnancy is so different from my last one, both physically and emotionally. Not that I am not thankful or looking forward to holding another soft little smell good piece of wonderful in my arms…..it just doesn’t seem real yet. And, honestly, I feel a little lonely this time. With Liam, I had my friend Jodi ahead of me 2 months and my cousin, Piper, behind me 4 months. It was nice to share the whole experience with them. Actually, Piper and I were due with our babies just two weeks apart this time around, but a few months ago she and her husband suffered a heartbreaking loss and now it is just me. And I don’t mean that in an awful selfish way…..or that my sadness for her has somehow robbed me of any of the joy I have for this little bun. I just think about her everyday and I miss having her to bloat and bitch with. That’s all.

Okay….that got a little heavier than I had planned, so maybe it’s time to wind this up. I’m not sure how often I will get back here to write, but I do read other blogs, so at least there’s that. As Liam approaches 3 he drives me a little crazier every day, so I do have quite a bit to say about this decidedly un-delightful developmental stage. So, maybe I will go with that and just get all that frustration down on “paper”. Honestly, I don’t think there are enough hours in the day to get all that down….but maybe it will make me a more frequent visitor around here. Who knows.

What I do know is that Husband is taking tomorrow off (after way too much overtime) and I get the whole. entire. day. to myself. As soon as I finish this post I am going to make a list of everything I want to do so as to not miss out on a thing. This kind of respite does not come my way very often and I need to fully stock my energy stores because come Saturday morning I will be visiting haircut hell with Liam….another post all in itself.

Peace out.