I tell you what.

There is nothing quite like being best friends with someone who is 6 weeks more pregnant than you. The entire experience just seems very unfair.

I mean, we had about 2 weeks there in the beginning when we were both all barfy and heartburny, but then Jasmine was done with it and I still had a solid 4 weeks of urpy misery to make it through. There for a while in the middle we were both all cute and round and eating everything we could get our hands on, without a negative side effect in sight, but soon enough the uneven timetables kicked in again.

Jasmine neared the end of her pregnancy and was understandably uncomfortable, being a thousand months pregnant and maybe in labor maybe not, and all through this I was still relatively able to move about and function like a human. So I guess maybe that was kind of unfair for her.

But then she got to go have give birth to her spectacularly cute little baby and I was there for it, all weepy and hand flappy and sometime around…30 minutes after Addison was born I was like “Oh my lands. I have 6 more freaking weeks of this nonsense!” And instantly, the uncomfortableness of 34 weeks pregnant kicked in.

That’s how my body works. Its totally fine until someone mentions something like “Oh hey! You are 36 weeks along and dialated to a one” and then suddenly I have very painful contractions. That eventually go away, but are painful nonetheless. So now I’m at 38 weeks and have had contractions on and off for the last 2 weeks. Yesterday they were about 15-20 minutes apart for a good 5 hours. And today? Nothing except the usual pubic bone ache that I’ve had for so long I’m thinking of giving it a name.

So…bah. In the meantime I’m going to walk around the block a few times and maybe go snuggle Addison in hopes that her baby powers will induce labor.

So I have this issue with coffee. I love coffee. I love thinking about coffee, smelling coffee, reading about coffee, and drinking coffee. The problem with all this is, I am terrible at actually making coffee. I just cannot seem to get the ratio of water to coffee work out. You can try all you want to give me your formula, like my Aunt Nancy did (1 1/2 teaspoons of coffee for 2 cups of water) but I promise you it won’t be right. So I spend all this time thinking about how lovely a cup of coffee would be, I can taste it in my mouth and imagine its reviving power coursing through my veins, but then when I get up and make myself a cup, I am met with a foul liquid that tastes like crunched up garden mulch and sugar.

Jasmine does not make this any easier on me, as she has the ability to make amazingly good coffee with cinnamon and just the right composition of coffee, milk, and sugar. Sure sure, I could ask her to bring me a cup every morning, and she would maybe do it. But something in me feels bad about saying “Hey. I know you are all 9 months pregnant and about to have a human come crashing out between your legs, but would you mind driving over to my house with a steaming cup of joe? Mm’Kay thanks.”

Through my pregnancy I have had some relief from the cruel juxtaposition of my dreams about coffee and what I actually make at home. In the beginning I was all “Blahhhajchuir! Death liquid! The urine of Satan!” and then in the middle I was all “Mmmm…I just really love some tea. I am not a frail enough human to need coffee” but now I am 31 weeks along and find myself indeed a frail human who has an incredibly vicious want of the drink. The want is bad enough that I have been willing to drink the coffee I make and just pretend it is as good as I have dreamed.

This was all good and fine except that something like 20 minutes after the desire for coffee kicked in, Norah broke my coffee pot. Its my own fault really, because I am the dummy that lets her play inside the cabinet where my coffee pot lives. That was a little over a week ago, and I have been surviving on coffee from the cafe downtown, Jasmine’s house, an amazing cup of vanilla nut coffee from Atlanta Bread Company, and yesterday, some wretched tar from Sonic.

This morning Norah and I woke at a leisurely 9:30am, and after taking a shower, the coffee craving hit me. But I really didn’t want to drive to the cafe, nor did I want to pester Jasmine. So in a moment of desperation, I rigged my coffee pot to work again. I measured out some haphazard amount of grounds and used my Pyrex measuring cup to measure out some haphazard amount of water. Then I put the Pyrex where the pot should go and used a spoon to depress the thingy at the spout where the coffee comes out. I was rewarded with a half-decent cup of coffee.

There was much rejoicing in the land of Sadie. And I don’t really know why I felt compelled to tell this story, except to point out the fact that in the face of adversity I don’t just roll over and give up. No no! I am industrious and unconventional! I also have an unhealthy love of coffee.

Have a good day, friends.

Yesterday I wrote a note to my two best friends from high school. Neither of them have had a baby yet, and since I am working on Number 2 over here, I like to terrorize them with stories of vomiting and heartburn that singes your nostril hairs and all that horrific tearing of your lady parts. Its a super fun pasttime, and I love being evil.

Yesterday I wanted to share with them the peril of the pregnant pants. The note went a little something like this.

So I just got back from buying another pair of maternity jeans. Don’t ever get pregnant. I mean seriously. Because if you get pregnant like I do then you will go through three completely different sizes of clothing in just nine months. What fits in the beginning is unbearable by 29 weeks and what fit you at 29 weeks laughable at 40 weeks when it takes all your strength just to roll your self out of bed in the morning. And then you will have another nine months after the baby is born to go through three more sizes before you end up somewhere near where you were before you got pregnant. Except that, you will actually be a totally different shape than when before you were pregnant, with parts of your body that are totally foreign and nothing like what you used to call “your hips”. And then, when you get pregnant again, you will realize that while you thought you had lost all the baby weight from the first baby, you are actually a whopping 15 pounds heavier than you were at this time 2 years ago.

You will just never fit into the clothes you used to wear before the babies came and ruined you (and totally stole your heart away and gave your life a bigger meaning, but whatever, none of that has anything to do with your butt, which you accidentally saw naked in the Old Navy fitting room. You might want to just gouge that memory out with a plastic hanger).

I mean sure, maybe you will be the kind of woman who only gains weight in your belly and the rest of stays all fit and firm and glowy. But not me. I gain weight everywhere and especially like to pack the pounds into my neck and JOWLS!

Anyway, I’ve got to go now. I’m going to eat a bean burrito. I want to make sure that the pants I just bought don’t fit me in three weeks.

Loves you!

HAHA! I am an evil, evil person.

Yesterday Rusty, Norah and I drove back from having Thanksgiving with my family in New Mexico. It was a lovely holiday and we returned filled to the gills with green chiles. I am never happier than when green chile essence is oozing out of my pores.

Nearly 75% of the 11 hour drive is on I-40 and since we have been driving the route about 2 times a year for 3 years, the scenery is increasingly familiar to us. The trip would not be quite the same without the Rose Leach sign in Oklahoma; the lonely trees and endless plains of eastern Oklahoma and western Texas; the leprachauns of Shamrock, Texas; the Biggest Cross in the Western Hemisphere!; the Big Texan restaurant with its promise of a free 72 ounce steak; the horrific weather of Amarillo, the stench of cows in Hereford, and the Allsup’s in Elida. These are the landmarks of our trek to and from New Mexico. Without them, I don’t know that I would be able to find my way home.

This trip however, I noticed another characteristic of that route. There is an incredible number of billboards for adult superstores. I counted at least 7. Christie’s Toybox, Adult MegaMart, and Fantasy Land all advertise their goods several times on I-40 and even though Christie’s Toybox and Fantasy Land sound harmless enough, almost like a good place to stop and let the kids stretch their legs, we all know that they are just cleverly named sex shops. And you should probably find another place to let your kids stretch their legs.

So my brain had been busy all day translating “Christie’s Toybox: 7 Miles!” into “Naked Shop!” and because of that I really cannot take responsibility for the fact that when I drove past the Recreation Department in our small Arkansas town and read “Adult Basketball Sign Ups!” I immediately thought, ‘Ew. Naked basketball.”

I blame Christie.

Another, more innocuous landmark of the trip is of course, McDonald’s. I don’t think it is possible to drive to New Mexico without stopping at McDonald’s to pee and get a cheeseburger. Its some kind of compulsion. The McDonalds’ along I-40 have seen some pretty bizarre sights, I’m sure, and we like to be sure to add our own little lunacies. For example, when Norah and I went to Roswell last summer we stopped at the arches to change a diaper and get some food. I thought it was just a routine diaper change, but when I pulled off her shorts, two adult sized handfuls of Cheerios came flying out the legs of her shorts and spewed around the bathroom stall. I, of course, left them where they were so that someone else could have the pleasure of trying to figure out how to clean up a hundred Cheerios in the big stall in the McDonald’s in El Reno, Oklahoma.

This time we stopped in Yukon, Oklahoma for the diaper and wardrobe change. This particular McDonald’s committed the cardinal sin of bathrooms and expected me to change my baby’s diaper without the aid of a changing table. Now, at my own house I change diapers on the floor because I think its easier but my floors are relatively clean and familiar. I draw the line at laying my daughter down in a puddle of unknown liquid at some bathroom on the interstate. That’s just nasty. Since Norah can obviously stand on her own now I didn’t panic. I simply unbuttoned her jammies and then pulled the tabs on her diaper so I could change it standing up. As soon as I pulled it off, she peed. And not just a little tinkle, but a full-on pee that left her standing in a nice warm puddle.

Norah is so awesome like that.

So anyway, we are back in Arkansas now. We are in the thick of transitioning Norah to a toddler bed, I am feeling the baby move like crazy, and tomorrow Rusty is going to sign up for naked basketball. I hope everyone had a lovely Thanksgiving but maybe without pee puddles.

Norah loves stickers.

Her love for stickers may only be surpassed by her love for her blankies. Rusty and I definitely come in third, after the blankies and the stickers, and if she is feeling particularly motherly…we come in fourth, after her babies.

Its cool. I mean, its not like I carried her for nine months, or gave birth to her, or sustained her life for 8 solid months with NOTHING BUT MY BOOBS! (and eventually some rice cereal and avocados,etc). So no, I don’t mind being fourth in the love line, behind fabric and sticky bits of paper and various stuffed animals. Psshhh.

Anyway, she loves stickers. Every morning, after she has had sufficient time to play in her bed after waking up and I have had sufficient time to pretend that its not actually time to leave the nice warm covers, I go into Norah’s room and she greets me with a grin and crazy hair. Then we go into the kitchen to get a drink and just after asking for a drink she starts asking for a sticker. Then she spends the next thirty minutes taking them off her hands and then asking for help putting them back on her hands. Its a super fun game, let me tell you.

But recently she discovered another fun thing to do with stickers. Eat them! Mmm…delicious gluey paper.

Yesterday I found madarin oranges in her diaper and that was cool. I’m guessing tomorrow I’ll find the remnants of about 7 heart stickers.

In the interest of telling a story I am also going to open a can of worms. Rather, a bucket of worms in the mommyblog-o-world.

Rusty and I don’t practice spanking or swatting as a regular form of discipline. Lots of thought and reflection, as well as the education that comes with having a bachelor’s degree in psychology have gone into making that choice. I think there is a place for swatting young kids, but I don’t plan on doing it regularly, plus, it would probably end up being useless with Norah.

Once I swatted her hand because she was just being a defiant little booger. She glared at me and then continued with her actions. And once I swatted her butt. She was walking toward the street while I was putting the car seat I ran over to her, swatted her butt (not hard) and said “No! We do NOT go into the street without Mama or Daddy!”

It worked that time. She cried for a long time, and for the next thirty minutes would shoot dirty looks at me before crying again. Jasmine was there, and Isaiah too. It was pitiful and a little bit funny. But that’s the extent of our swatting experience. I use other discipline techniques, like positive reinforcement and redirection. Oh, and time out.

I really thought that time out was working ok. Norah has gotten to where she will sit in her corner until I tell her to get up, and usually she stops doing whatever she was doing that put her in time out in the first place.

However, I am losing my faith in the usefulness of timeout. On Monday I was watching Isaiah at my house. He and Norah were playing with those giant Lego things, and he started throwing them at me. I used all the tools I could think of to get him to stop before I lost an eyeball (he throws hard!) but he wasn’t listening. So I took the block from him and put him in timeout. Before I could even turn around Norah ran up behind me, slapped me in the butt and then laughed and sat herself in time out right next to Isaiah!

So I’m thinking that time out is really not that effective with Norah. She thinks its a game: Slap Your Mom and Sit in the Fun Corner

I don’t know what I’m going to do with that girl.

Before we left for vacation I got this wild idea to put Norah on the potty and see what happened. I fully expected nothing to happen besides her looking cute sitting on the potty like a big girl. I was not disappointed for lo, she did indeed look cute. We were getting ready to take a shower so she was naked, on the potty, giggling and kicking her feet and reaching for the toilet paper. Norah, like most other babies, comes into the bathroom with me every time I go so she has a general idea of what toilet paper is for. By that I mean, she knows how to unroll it and put it on top of my legs. So while she was sitting on the potty she kept reaching for the toilet paper and I kept saying “Norah, you can only have toilet paper if you actually do something.” Relentlessly, she kept reaching. The shower was running so I was about to pick her up when I saw it…The Poop Face. I held my breath, waited a minute, and sure enough SHE POOPED IN THE POTTY!

I ran out to the living room and yelled at Rusty SHE POOPED! SHE POOPED! and then ran back into the bathroom in case Norah decided to play with it or something. I cleaned her up and we showered and then ten minutes later she pooped in her diaper again. Ok, so the potty pooping was probably just a fluke, a case of blind good-timing on my part. But still, the next day I thought I’d try again.

I sat her on the potty and stupidly, this time I gave her some toilet paper before she did anything to earn it. She apparently has a better idea of what it’s for than I earlier thought because before I could stop her she reached down between her legs and starting dipping the toilet paper in the toilet water. So, she has a better idea of what its for, but she’s still not totally clear. And guys, I do not clean my toilets near often enough so basically Norah was playing in dirty bacteria poop water.

I swooped her up off the potty and ran to the sink to wash her hands as fast as I could because I just knew she was going to stick those poop water hands in her eye or her mouth and we’d end up with some kind of terrible disease that only comes from poop ingestion and then my pediatrician would know that I let my baby play with poop and don’t wash her hands, which I DON’T! So I sat her on the sink to clean the germs (on Rusty’s side of the sink, hehehe) and washed her hands until her skin was pink and disease bacteria free and the while she’s going “Gahh! Gahh! Gahh….” looking longingly toward the toilet and her precious pieces of toilet paper. The little sicko.

I picked up my clean handed baby to put a diaper back on her because clearly we are not ready for potty training and then I realized, too late, she’d already peed all over the counter. A bathroom fiasco in line with the time she flung a ball of orange Dorito poop dangerously close to her own head while I changed her diaper at school.

So yeah, maybe we are not ready to potty train. Norah’s interest in the potty seems to extend no further than eating graham crackers while sitting on the pot, repeating “cracker!” like a little naked parrot.

–Sadie

Let me just have a moment to shake the dust off my authorship of this blog. I have been terribly (TERRIBLY) absent and for that, I do apologize. If not to all the readers, then to Jasmine who has a full-time job and is pregnant and has a family and still manages to keep things updated and fresh and funny around these parts. She is a wonderful friend, and a wonderful blogger.

Anyway. There are reasons for my absence.

First, for the past few months I have been stuck in this very boring place of uncreativity. My other blog has suffered even more. And my poor grandma is stuck refreshing a page that never changes, just hoping for a new picture of The Norah. But I’m guessing that I’ll have more to say now that I am free to let the cat out of the bag.

This proverbial cat in the proverbial bag has become increasingly hard to hide, not only from the real world but from the blog world as well and I am sure glad that I can spill.

People…I’m pregnant too. (squee!)

We found out in late August, and for the first two weeks I was all happy and bubbly, eating bratwurst and sauerkraut like there was no tomorrow, boasting about how “Oh I don’t feel sick at all. I don’t feel pregnant in the least. Look at my glowy glowy skin! It must be a result of my super-feminine powers! I’m going to go buy my ovaries a present!” And then it was my birthday and I was suddenly shot down this awful dark tunnel filled with queasiness, scary spotting, and evil trolls who smell like beef broth.

It was somewhere between the constant checking for increased spotting, mind numbing nausea, frequent and un-lady-like burping, and crippling heartburn that had to remind myself why in the Freaking World I wanted to get pregnant again. What was I thinking? Clearly I forgot all this misery somewhere in the piles of precious pink baby clothes and squishy bald baby Norahs.

And then, because I was having such a fun time laying in bed and moaning while my precious and helpful husband took care of Norah for me, we decided we would take a trip to the Alabama Coast. Totally reasonable. So we went, and I will not share all of the trip now because it is another story for another time (however, I did spend the night in a haunted house), but we actually had a great time. Greater than I expected.

As it turns out, the beach is a wonderful cure for all my pregnancy discomfort. If only I had known that sooner. But as I told Jasmine, I’m planning on installing a wave pool and sand bar in my guest bathroom so all is well. The beach was grand and filled me with happy beachy thoughts, but the other times, like when Rusty cooked hotdogs on the stove and  I about vomited off the balcony or when I gagged at the mere thought of a balogna sandwich…those times were not fun. In fact, they were pretty miserable times.

However, in the midst of all that urpy barfy goodness, I take solace in these things:

Rusty is very excited about this baby. That makes my heart happy.
Norah will have a playmate all the days of her life.
Gahhh! I get to paint another room in my house!
OMG. I love Taco Bueno.
I also love elastic waistbands.
I get to share not only this time of pregnancy with Jasmine, but also the absolutely incredible power of labor and newborns and breastfeeding in a way that we did not get to experience with Isaiah and Norah. (I don’t know if that sentence makes sense…but y’all be sure to think happy thoughts for our husbands.)

Today was my first official OB appointment and depending on whether you ask my fetus or the sac I am either 8 weeks exactly, or 8 weeks and three days. We saw a heartbeat, flickering on the screen and even though the nausea is still lurking around and the belches keep on coming, that little heartbeat was such an amazing sight.

Oh, and you can all expect to eventually see a masthead with mine and Jasmine’s big ol’ bellies hanging out in their glory.

I’ve talked about my job once before. It is, truly, a great job and frequently moves me to getting all smooshy and weepy. I’ve had to learn some new skills while working there, which is good too. For instance, not long after starting there I learned how to give lice treatments and then pick lice and nits. Anyone out there done this before? Yeah…its super fun. When I became a shift supervisor I had to learn to be comfortably responsible for all the medication dispensing and logging that happens on my shift. This part of my job causes me considerable angst. I’ll go ahead and say this may  be my least favorite part of my job. Keeping track of and dispensing medicine is stressful business, especially when you are doing it for that many kids. I’ve learned how to check the drug interactions, give breathing treatments, and the best way to put in eye drops. In addition to the medication business, as a supervisor I had to learn how to creatively deal with any kids who are having a hard time on their wings, and even more difficult, I’ve had to learn how to deal with staff.

Recently, I’ve had to prepare and serve meals for the kids and staff as well. And if making ham and cheese sandwiches wasn’t enough to give me a panic attack, then heating sloppy joe mix (in the microwave) and slapping it on some buns certainly was. In fact, the dinner business freaks me out so thoroughly that last weekend, when dinner prep required adding four cups of cheese to alfredo and heating the meal in the ovens…my boss called in our receptionist to do it for me. So I would not lose my sweet little mind. She’s a good boss.

But my most recently learned skill is the ability to tighten braces. See, every shift the supervisors fill out the Supervisor Log, which is basically the run-down of the shift, who did what and any instructions that need to be left for future shifts. Since I only supervise once a week, these logs are priceless. A few weeks ago I was working after having been gone for two weeks. I noticed that the four shift entries leading up to my shift all included this message. DON’T FORGET! HANNAH’S BRACES NEED TO BE TIGHTENED ON SUNDAY!! I read it the first time and took note. I smiled the second time I read it. The third time I started to get suspicious. And the fourth time I read it I realized…the others are on to me. I am forgetful.

Despite having four reminders to tighten Hannah’s braces (and no, that is not really her name) there were no instructions as to how to do it, except “Use the little blue key with a wire at one end”. Got it. So I wrangled the case manager for help, took the blue key and went to ask Hannah how to do it. Surely she would know. It’s her mouth after all. So I asked her and she said “You put the wire in the little hole and you pull down”. How hard? How far? Til when? Will it hurt?

So the case manager and I went to it, both of us confused. We both tried, did exactly what she said, but were not getting anywhere. We pulled down. We pulled forward. We wiggled the wire end of the key and pulled down again. We stopped just short of doing a rain dance and forming a little golden calf out of napkins. Finally, after having spent at least 25 minutes with either my or the case manager’s fingers all in her mouth, I figured it out. You put the wire in the hole, turn the blue stick sideways, and rotate the whole thing backward so that it tightens. Psshhh…Take that crazy little braces! It only took half an hour for two adults and a gaggle of teen girls to outsmart you and your little wire self!

So if I ever find myself needing another job I can put these things on my resume:
Skilled in changing diapers and wiping poop
Excellent nit-picking abilities
Retains something like composure when in charge of dispensing and logging medications, and Band-Aid application
Can tighten braces

1. It wasn’t me who put Norah to bed early so I wouldn’t have to share my burrito with her.

2. It wasn’t me who put Norah to bed early so I could play Mario Party 8 either.

3. It wasn’t me who let Norah dump and entire box of goldfish crackers into the back of my mom’s car.

4. It was definately not me who looked at Norah and laughed when she got ahold of a handful of salsa, ate it, turned bright red, and then proceeded to freak out and fling everything from our table at Taco Bueno onto the floor.

5. Hahahahaha! It was pretty funny though.

–Sadie