It's Decorative Gourd Season

Hi.

Sorry for the absence. I've been swamped with work and watching Gilmore Girls and parenting and watching Gilmore Girls.

I'm telling a story tomorrow night for The Porch in SLC. Eli from It Just Gets Stranger is the night's featured story teller. Eli's blog is everything a blog should be and is easily one of my favorite places on the internet. So even if my story is a total stinker, it will still be an event worth attending. Tickets available here.

Stephen and I are heading on a babymoon. Just Stephen and I. No Ivy. Half of me is looking forward to a week of napping and seeing movies and not answering the question "What are you doing?" 237 times a day. The other half is feeling like the worst mother in the world and like I can't survive a week without my child and I'm asking so many what ifs that I'm about five minutes from having to breathe into a paper bag. She'll be in the very capable hands of her grandparents who have collectively raised seven children, and she'll enjoy being spoiled rotten far more than she'd enjoy a beach, but STILL. My baby. But also naps. And diet cokes by the pool. And reading eight books. She'll be fine, right? She'll be fine.

Because we're leaving on a jet plane and LEAVING OUR KILLER DOGS HERE AND THE ALARM SYSTEM WITH LAZERS ON, I probably will forget won't have time to blog about Halloween. But I would never deprive you of photos of my kid in a costume.

Or photos of my dog in a costume.

Or my favorite Halloween video.

Gestational Gesturings

I am hungry. Always hungry. And not for green smoothies and quinoa. I am hungry for bacon and cheese and lots of carbs. Ramona must have the palate of a lumberjack.

In related news, I learned how to make Egg McMuffins at home, so I guess I really did deserve the Hope of America Award they presented me in sixth grade.

With T-15 weeks until due date, it's time to start thinking about preregistering at hospitals and finding the infant carseat and saying goodbye to the last pair of non-maternity jeans. Oh and a birth plan. Ha. The birth plan. Last time the birth plan was:
1. Get to the hospital in time.
2. Lay on the drama real thick until they administer the epidural.
3. Try not to be too grossed out by whatever happens next.

Aside from a few false starts, it went pretty much as I had planned, and I think I'll stick to the same basic outline this go around.

It's hard to avoid the natural vs. medicated birth talk when discussing baby's arrival. I always feel a little defensive. I have no justifiable reason for this. No one has ever given me any sort of grief for wanting a Betty Draper-esque hospital experience. Natural labor and delivery just seems like such a popular method nowadays, and maybe that's a vocal minority thing, but I feel like the girl who shows up to the first day of seventh grade wearing Doc Martens when Doc Martens were soooooo last year. So why not try it? Because I don't like pain. Last time, as soon as the real, undeniable, contractions started, I was in a lot of pain. Not the running a marathon kind of endurance pain, but the FORTHELOVEMAKEITSTOP kind of stabbing pain. I now recognize that this was due in large part to back labor. And probably exhaustion and fear and blah blah blah. But then I got an epidural and I freaking took a nap and then we had a lovely conversation about local restaurants with my Doctor as Ivy made her way out. And now I'm getting all nostalgic thinking about that day and all teary eyed thinking about holding another new born baby and I'm actually looking forward to the giving birth thing. So long as there are drugs. Lots and lots of drugs.

If you're out on the road feeling lonely and so cold

There's that moment when your child leans in close, looks you in the eyes, opens her mouth, and sneezes in your face. It's the moment you know you're doomed. No amount of orange juice or hand sanitizer or Airborne is going to stop the sick train headed for the you station.

It hit me Thursday evening. That first tickle in the ears. Then the scratch in the throat. By Friday I was self-quarantining and by Friday night I was pouring home-made saline into my nostrils because wikihow told me to. I woke up Saturday wishing that I hadn't.

I tend to get a bit dramatic in sickness. Last year during a bout of food poisoning I told Stephen to make sure my affairs were in order. But look. I'm pregnant. Which pretty much means having a mild form of about eight different illnesses for about a year. And pregnancy prohibits both Nyquil and Excedrin, the elixirs of life when a cold usually strikes. So being sick on top of sick and without the medical marvels I've grown so accustomed to felt like life was saying, "just give up and phone it in today." So I turned on Gilmore Girls. For eight hours. Ivy now knows every word to the theme song which is really all I've ever hoped for as a parent.

Anyway, I don't know if it was sufficient rest and time or the good people of Stars Hollow, but I'm feeling much better now.

Like mother like daughter

This morning I decided to make some sort of effort at being a "good mom" and take Ivy to story time at our local library.We walked into a room with a grown woman yelling a story at a group of wiggly toddlers, and Ivy turned to me and gave me a look that read, "what kind of freak show is this?". She refused to sit on the mat or get up and dance to the hokey pokey, and I started to feel like maybe I've failed her as a mother. Because honestly, I was also uncomfortable. I was uncomfortable around all the other moms who could tell that I've failed to properly socialize my child, I was scared of small talk, and I was hoping that parents weren't required to also dance to the hokey pokey. They were. It's kind of why we don't usually go to story time. Between the two of us, we're an antisocial wreck.

The narcissist in me loves that Ivy inherited some of my traits. She has my hair and my eye color, and she loves to tell jokes. But I was hoping she could skip out on my shyness. Because it's hard to be shy. It's hard to have people tell you how shy you are, even when you think you're being friendly. It's hard to dislike parties and it's hard to blush any time you have something to say to a group.

Sorry, Ivy.

Happy Weekend

Love,

This Unremarkable Nobody