Christmas in January*

What does it say about me as a mother that I'm reluctant to pay full price for Carter's fleece footie pajamas, at $14.99 for two pair, but OldChristine bought the Monkeyboy Hannah Anderson jammies for Christmas that were almost $40 for just one pair?


*We typically "do" Christmas with our best friends at least a month after the date. It just always seems to work out that way, scheduling-wise. (One year we did it in April!)

Send good thoughts

I'm not much of a praying person, but I'm keeping my fingers crossed (The Atheist's Prayer, I call it) for Alexa. She's on my Spring Due Dates blogroll, 24 weeks pregnant with twins. Her son died in utero last week and this morning his water broke, endangering her daughter who is still hanging on. Send your thoughts/prayers her way.

I'm starting to take this personally

I don't want to keep bringing this up, but one more thing about Heath Ledger. The Mary Kate Olsen connection? I'm beginning to think that the Olsen girls are going after My List, one by one.

Opening Available

I'm unreasonably upset about the death of Heath Ledger. (Actually, the Hubster says that "any level of upset about his death qualifies as 'unreasonable'.") I'm not as upset as I was at the sudden death of Phil Hartman*, but the feeling of shock at learning of his death was the same. It just came out of nowhere.

I'm not much of a celebrity-watcher, but I always have a few favorites. I've enjoyed Ledger's performances in movies (with, perhaps, the exception of A Knight's Tale). I've even used the movie The Patriot in my Revolutionary War unit several times (although it's flawed, it has its merits). Brokeback Mountain broke my heart. It also doesn't hurt that, day-um, Heath Ledger was hot (that's with a capital-H-a-w-t). On a personal level, I can't stop thinking about the fact that his daughter was born only a few days before the Monkeyboy, so he's one of several celebrities with whom I shared a pregnancy. It's an odd association, I know, but I remember those who were pregnant when I was. It originally came to my attention back when another woman on a pregnancy forum I frequent posted that Ledger and Michelle Williams had been in the group that took the hospital tour when she and her husband did. I just can't stop thinking about his little girl. I think that if something happened to me, the Monkeyboy is just too young to remember me at all.

When I told the Hubster that he had died, his immediate response was, "Wow. Well, that opens up a spot in your Bottom Five, now doesn't it?" And as usual, he really gets right to the heart of the matter.


*You may remember his character Troy McClure from such educational films as "Designated Drivers: Lifesaving Nerds" and "Locker Room Towel Fight: The Blinding of Larry Driscoll."

Honestly, I read it for the articles

In Play(boy)'s Advisor column last month, there was a question regarding breastfeeding etiquette. A woman wrote regarding her best friend's habit of breastfeeding in front of the writer's boyfriend because, "even though my friend does her best to shield his view," the boyfriend is uncomfortable.

The Advisor's response?

Your boyfriend will have to deal. Seeing a little tit never hurt anyone.

Amen, brother.

Lyrically Speaking

In recognition of the bloody cold weather we've been having the past few days...

She plays Beach Boys records and she dances alone,
And before (before) before she goes home...
She wants a Piña Colada in a pint glass...
She wants to be where the summer won’t stop,
She wants gin clear water and milk white sand,
A sunburned nose and a drink in her hand
With a pink umbrella on top!

-- Gaelic Storm, " Piña Colada in a Pint Glass," How Are We Getting Home? (2004)

Parenting of Least Resistance

The other day I was lying on the couch while the Monkeyboy played with his balls. (No, not those ball. Get your mind out of the gutter.) The boy has a serious ball fetish, like my sister-in-law's cocker spaniel used to have. The ball of preference varies from week to week or month to month. For example, over the summer, he took to sleeping with his football. He decided on his own that this was something he wanted to do, and since a football in his crib seemed very low of the scale of things-that-should-never-be-put-into-cribs-with-young-children, the Hubster and I figured, Why not? We did comment to each other that we would have been embarrassed should anyone outside the family find out, lest it seem like we were deliberately trying to craft the next generation Joe Montana. We have no plans to be that kind of parent.

As the school year progressed, he abandoned the football for a variety of other, more hand-sized models. Currently, he prefers tennis balls, whiffle golf balls (yeah, the regular golf balls didn't quite work out for him, as he also likes to throw things with the arm of Ebby Calvin "Nuke" LaLoosh, both in terms of speed and accuracy), and the little plastic cannonball that came with his Fisher Price Pirate Ship this Christmas.

Getting back to my original thought, though, was that as he played in our Great Room with those toy balls, they often found their way beneath our behemoth of a couch. After rousing myself a couple of times to drag them out, I decided that the time had come for my son to learn some skills to allow him to problem solve on his own. I got out his toy broom from the laundry room, and showed him how he could use it to fish things out from under the couch.

You know what they say, Give a man a fish; you have fed him for today. Teach a man to fish; and you have fed him for a lifetime. Except my motivations were not quite so altruistic. I just didn't want to get my tired, pregnant butt up off the couch again.

Halfway

Today I am 20 weeks. The high water mark of pregnancy, both in terms of time frame and, for me, how I feel. With the Monkeyboy, I felt pretty good at twenty weeks, but it went slowly downhill from there. Right now I'm feeling pretty good, but based on experience I assume this is the calm before the storm.

My level II ultrasound was at 18 weeks 1 day. Everything looked good and we were even able to get a shot of the little guy's naughty bits, although we already knew what model baby we were getting. The one issue of concern for me is that all the measurements the tech took were over 19 weeks; they ranged from 19 weeks 1 day to 19 weeks 5 days. That's a big baby.

At my next OB appointment (a week from today), I'll be raising that issue with my doctor. At the Monkeyboy's delivery he told me (with his hands between my legs), "It's a mixed blessing that you're delivering this early, because you're very small down here.* This birth might not have been so easy if this was an eight pound baby."

By his due date, the Monkeyboy was eight pounds, three ounces. So now I have the contradictory fears of 1) another premature birth and 2) going to term. I'd rather not be induced if I get that far, but I also don't want to go to term with a huge baby,** and then push for three hours before having them tell me, "Sorry. Cephalo-pelvic disproportion. Emergency C-section." If I have to have a C-section this time, I'd rather it be planned.

One of the stressful things about this pregnancy and birth is that I sort of feel like I've never done this before. With my first pregnancy, I thought, I could go to term, or I could go over due, who knows? I've never done this before. But I still feel that way, except now I think, I could go early, I could go to term, or I could go over due. Who knows? I still feel like the impending birth is a big giant wild card.

*He didn't seem to find any humor in my "Thanks, that's what all the guys say" response.
**"Huge" in relation to lil ol' me, that is.

Stopping by the Woods on a Snowy Evening. Unfortunately.

What the fuck is wrong with some people? Vandals Rip into Robert Frost Home

The intruders broke a window to get into the two-story wood frame building -- a furnished residence open in the summer -- before destroying tables and chairs, pictures, windows, light fixtures and dishes. Wicker furniture and dressers were smashed and thrown into a fireplace and burned, apparently to provide heat in the unheated building...

Hopefully, for some people, prison will turn out to be the place where, when you have to go there, they have to take you in.