Warning: May Contain Nuts

It is typical for me to have a plan of attack for every day.  Today’s plan went something like this:

Wake up

Shower

Get Gideon out of crib, change diaper, put on clothing

Breakfast

Play with trucks and trains

Go get gas and a car wash

Go to World Market to see if that mirror I want is on sale for 25% or more

Lunch

Naptime

Work

Clean House

Play outside

Dinner

Bedtime for Gideon – bath, massage, teeth brushing, story time, prayer, song time

Bible Study

Bedtime for Jud and Kim

I think that’s a pretty good schedule of events.  I had everything pretty well ordered and figured that it would be a good day for everyone, especially if that mirror was on deep discount. 

And then I walked into the hallway and pretty much knew that the scene I was about to encounter in his room would be messy.  The stink was permeating the entire top floor of our house. I opened it up and found him sitting in the corner with all the blankets on the other side of the crib while he clutched Chuchi.  He looked nervous and asked for Papa.  I opened up the curtains and confirmed my suspicions.  I whisked him away to the shower, peeling off the soiled clothing and diaper on the floor that is easily disinfected. 

Once dried and clothed, I turned my attention to the crib.  The blankets are no big deal, but getting that crib sheet off with a belly the size of Delaware was going to be too much.  I took him down for breakfast.  Happily seated in a chair that is not designed for tiny people, I offered him waffles, which he politely refused.  I offered oatmeal.  That was a negative too.  I offered Honey Bunches of Oats and that received hearty approval.  Content with his delicious, but messy cereal and a cup of milk, I called for backup.  

My dad’s hours are flexible, if not completely insane and overwhelming to the average bear, which lends itself to saving me when I am need. I figured he’d have a hole in his schedule at some point to swing by and dislodge the sheet from the mattress.  I was right and he kept me from some serious back strain.  Thanks, dude!  I owe you big!  

Following breakfast and trucks and the visit from Papa where he saved the day, Gideon wanted a snack.  He got one and then we went down to move over the blankets.  Only they were still not clean.  Too much poo.  I added more soap, more softener, closed the lid and off we went to fill up the car.

I like BP and they are usually really clean stations.  Since there is one on the way to World Market, I pulled in. I swiped my debit card, confirmed that I wanted a car wash, chose my fuel grade and pumped away.  Waiting for my receipt to print was taking a while, so I finally cupped my hand over the little screen and read that it was inside the store.  Awesome.  How did it know that I really wanted to haul my kid out of his car seat to go inside?  I walked in and asked for my receipt.  At the time, I was the only car out there, so I didn’t specify which pump.  Yeah, the mistake is mine.  I get Gideon strapped back in and look down at the receipt to find the car wash code.  No number.  No letters. Not the right amount that I paid for gas. I get him out again.  We go back inside.  

There is now a line five people deep.  I am holding a child who can see a mop, a broom and a dust pan all within two feet of him and his determination to help keep BP clean is obvious.  A county sheriff is behind me now and I am not wanting to get questioned about my parenting by the law, so I try to point out letters we can talk about, “yes, that’s a B.  Those two are Es and that’s the letter R.”  My patience is wearing thin.  My hip is wearing down from the weight of one gestating baby and one squirmy toddler. I finally approach the counter.

I tell the woman that this is the wrong receipt that I was on the end, at pump 10 and have $18.23 in gas plus a car wash.  She tells me pump 10 is diesel.  I tell her she is kidding me.  She asks if I had $18 in gas.  I confirm.  She tells me I am on pump 1.  I say okay and ask for my receipt. She prints it out. 

Back in the car and ready to make it clean, I see the line is five deep and decide to soldier on to World Market first.  While there I find the mirror marked down 20%, not quite what I was hoping for, but still a good price and since there are only two left, I put it in the cart. I go over to the window treatments and have less luck finding what I want for our bedroom, but discover one panel that matches two we already own that were struggling to cover the window by themselves.  It is 30% off.  Score.  We buy both items.

The car wash is now no waiting but Gideon hates it.  He’s been in one before but I don’t remember it being that loud either.  He is shrieking until we get the green light and then he yells “Go, Dog Go!”.  I pull forward enough for the blowers to do their job. Completely out, he starts clapping and smiling.  I agreed.  

Home and lunched and now napping, the day is a bit more on course (although technically right now I should be working or cleaning). Off to get something done….

What? Me Make a Mess?

So, I’m pretty sure my kid is smarter than me (is this the pregnancy brain talking?  I don’t know. Yes and maybe no).  He’s already doing these (what I have obviously qualified as) advanced things that kind of wig me out and I am not just saying that because he is the light of our lives.  He really is amazing.  Here are a couple examples:

– Imaginative play.  Okay, so maybe I dug out my old Child Growth and Development book from college to check on this one and then did some brief google searching to confirm that I can be amazed at the things he does during the day.  Several months ago he began to pretend like he was picking fruit from trees and from the ground.  He’d cup his hand and bring me a hand full of air that I needed to pretend to eat with him.  We’d laugh and he’d pretend to pick more.  He pretends all the time. Trucks. Dogs. Trains.  He might have nothing in his hands at all or he’ll find an object to pretend like it is something else.  From all that I’ve read this doesn’t typically develop into the things he’s doing until 3 years old.  See?  I can be amazed by that.

– Letter identification.  A few nights ago while getting a bath he picks up the foam letter P and I tell him that it’s a P.  I ask him “what is P for?” He thinks for  a second and tells me Papa (which is his latest rendition of Poppy).  Then he digs around in the water until he finds the D and tells me that it’s for “woof woofs” and I say “you mean dogs” and he says “mmhmm., woof woofs”.  Today I was about to throw away our bulletin from Sunday but first he had to identify all of the As and Os on the page. I didn’t say a word.  He just started pointing them out and telling me what they were.  Blows my mind. Who taught him all that? I’m not showing him flash cards or making him listen to tapes while he sleeps or anything. Oh yeah, you’re right.  It was probably just Cookie Monster. Score one for Sesame Street.

Of course, it’s no surprise that I find his day to day life completely awe inspiring.  It’s the right way for a mom to be, I think (provided she still knows that her kid’s diapers still stink).  I just couldn’t be more proud of how his little mind is developing. All that sleeping and eating sure are paying off!

Of course, if you don't feel like spelling, there are other uses for letters too

If I’ve spoken with you at all over the past seven months, or if you’ve ever allowed a baby to grow inside your womb then you already probably know this, but just for the record, no pregnancy is the same.  Speaking more directly from my own experience, this pregnancy is vastly different than the last one. Here’s a quick rundown of the dissimilarities:

Heartburn

Then: I had a few weeks experience with it last time, at the very end and it was the first time in my life that I’d ever felt acid creeping up into my esophagus.  It was the worst thing that happened last time and I could hardly believe how it kept me awake at night and just how many Tums I could chew while Jud slept beside me.  

Now: Hahahaha! It is always with me.  It’s not a late night problem.  It’s not merely a spicy food issue.  It’s ever-present.  It’s vomit inducing. It’s hard core.  The Tums still work, thank the Lord, but I am also eating them all throughout the day.  It’s worse in the afternoons and late evenings, can choke me away from eating at all and will be on the top 10 list of the things I am most enjoying as I hold my daughter in my arms. 

Pain

Then: I had some shooting bizarro round ligament business while my body stretched out it’s nether regions to make way for Gideon.  It drove me to my knees from time to time and made me wince.  It was stabby and sharp, but quickly went away.

Now: I feel like a 350lb 65 year-old woman. My legs and knees and ankles are sore.  My back is all ‘oy’ and ‘grind’ and ‘creek’.  My stomach skin is crying out for her to stop doing that pushing thing where her entire back is forcing my already thin epidermis to ache. 

Contractions

Then: I was waiting for them all the time, hoping they would come, excited for every Braxton Hicks seize of my belly.  It didn’t really have any pain attached to it and since my water broke before I was really in labor, I never really felt hard contractions until the Pitocin started dripping into my veins. I have no idea how much worse/better the pain was because of the meds. Maybe I’ll find out this time.

Now: I have plenty of contractions every day.  They aren’t organized or progressive, but they can take my breath away and cause random women at World Market to ask me if I am okay. I’m staying hydrated and I don’t typically do much heavy lifting (save the little boy who runs around and must be corralled for baths and bedtime and even still he is under 30 lbs), but they still come and interrupt my day with little reminders that in about 10 weeks our lives are going to be very very different.

Fear

Then: Every teeny tiny anomaly meant I was loosing the baby. I didn’t want to buy things, even when the due date was getting really close, for fear that having all the stuff and then no actual baby would break my heart into shards and I would be left with a bassinet and no bundle of joy to lay inside.  Lots of anxiety.  Lots of paranoia.  Plenty of random google searches and consequently blog reading that scared me senseless. 

Now: Who has time for all that worrying?  Oh yeah, people who are not raising Gideon.  He is so busy and creative and fun and exhausting that I barely have time to make sure we’ve turned up the heat for the day (or turned it down when we are headed out the door [note: purchase programmable thermostat]).  

In Remembrance

Then: I knew it was slipping. I’d read all the information about how you loose 10% of your brain power when you’re gestating and how it takes about a full year to get it all back in working condition.  I knew I had to write things down if I had any real hope of completing the task.  It’s not like me to be forgetful and I was slightly frustrated at myself for the things that I’d let slip through the cracks, especially when it came to work.  Nothing huge occurred, but people would ask “did you get this” or “where are we at with that” and I’d just be completely blank.  I couldn’t recall anything about those things and I’d have to admit it.  Bluffing is also apparently not something pregnant women do well. 

Now: I’ll be in the middle of a sentence and completely loose my train of thought.  I write things down and then loose the notepad or envelope on which they are written.  The other day I lost Jud’s cell phone because I was going to be helpful and bring it upstairs from the table and instead of doing that I somehow put it on the love seat.  It took a full 24 hours to find it since it was on vibrate while we called it, happily buzzing away on a soft surface.  

They aren’t huge differences to you, maybe, but I think I will be even  happier to have this baby snuggled in my arms than the last time.  I suppose we’ll have to have another kid before I can say “girls are harder to carry” or “boys are easier”.  Did I really just admit that, God willing, I’d be open to being pregnant again?  

What? You didn't want to eat a pan full of sauteed onions?

So, for Christmas, I put up an Amazon.com wishlist that included hair products.  Bumble and Bumble hair products to be exact.  I love pretty much everything they make and the only real down side is the price.  Tiny bottles + Big Price Tags = Presents.  

Wanting to please me and make my hair gorgeous, Jud drove to the only place I know of in this town to buy Bumble and Bumble items – T’eez Salon.  I haven’t been there in a while and apparently, they no longer sell Bumble and Bumble products.  They now have their own line of products, which is fine, I’m sure, for someone else.  I don’t mess with the hair.  I use what I know.  Only trial size products that last for a few weeks can sway me to make full on purchases outside of what I know or what was featured on the Smackdown. 

But, poor Jud was in a pinch and Christmas was fast approaching and there was some woman making him describe my hair type and then convincing him to purchase their products.  There’s a lot of hair product fumes around there, so I’m surprised he didn’t just straight up pass out while all of this was happening.  Instead, he got two bottles, spending $45 and left.  He wrapped up the bottles and gave them to me on Christmas morning.  

It really is the thought that counts and the fact that he braved a salon AT ALL warmed my heart.  It did not make me willing to pop open those bottles and see what happens.  I’d rather have the $45 to buy the Bumble and Bumble stuff online. So, off I went to make a return.

And thus begins the annoying part of the story.  I haul my third-trimester rear end with Gideon on my hip into their main entry.  I take the bottles out of my purse and tell them that I’d like to return them.  She tells me that they can only offer me in store credit. I tell her that I don’t want in store credit.  I want my money back.  She tells me that I should buy a curling iron.  I think about what I could do with another curling iron and tilt my head. I tell her I don’t need a curling iron.  I want my money back.  She asks if I get my hair cut there.  I tell her that I used to.  I don’t anymore.  The only reason I am there is because they used to sell the products I use and when my husband came to buy them for me, they sold him something that was not even a one for one product that I use. She tells me I could get my hair cut there.  Oh really.  I guess I didn’t realize that I COULD get my hair cut there.  Is that what they do there?  I had NO IDEA.

I relent and tell her that I’ll just take it in a gift card to re-gift to someone.  She does some typing and tells me ‘okay, it’s in the system’ as if that is going to satisfy me – the customer who came in with a receipt that did NOT specify a return policy and got sucker punched out of my sweet sweet Bumble and Bumble product.  I tell her that I want a gift card or something.  She tells me that they don’t do that.  I tell her I want something in writing and then magically, somehow, she finds a gift certificate card to write the info on.  Wow.  Did I almost loose that $45 completely?  I think I did.  I have the sneaking suspicion that she was going to delete that right out of the computer, otherwise, wouldn’t she have written it down on the card in the first place? 

Outcome: My blood was boiling.  I do not have my money back.   I did not explode with gestating rage all over a girl who works at a salon.  I will never patron T’eez salon again.  If you do, and are interested in buying my $45 credit there (for say, $35) let me know.