• Previous posts

  • Dissolved
  • Two new delights
  • Less noise, more me
  • Good times
  • Not Ken’s Dream House
  • The joy of different
  • This must be the place
  • All of the feels
  • Life update: endings and beginnings
  • Adapting to the lasts
  • At the same time
  • Take a picture it’ll last longer
  • Horsin’ around
  • Surrender, Dorothy
  • College let-go

Archives from 2002-2006

My friend Jen came over to visit this week with her son Theo — you may remember Theo from his internet fame as the Wii Baby, AKA the Child With the Most Infectious Laugh On the Planet — and the boys promptly went nuts, galloping around the house like very small but enthusiastic ponies. They plunged into the Legos, raced in and out of the play tent, and invented some horrific throwing-themselves-to-their-death game on the couch which involved a lot of high pitched shrieking and giggling and CLIFF DIVING while Jen and I hovered nearby wringing our hands and shouting “BE CAREFUL!” at children who had lost the ability to hear us as well as any sense of self-preservation their crazed little toddler brains may have initially contained.

I loved seeing Riley playing like that, even he did briefly morph into Psycho VonBatshit and earned himself a parental threat (“Do you want to go to your ROOM?” — feh, like that’s even a punishment, I mean what’s in his room? A CRAPLOAD OF TOYS THAT’S WHAT) to which he sullenly replied “No” while shooting me the sort of expression I thought was reserved for pissy teenagers. It looked pretty much like this:

Heh. JB is going to be so thrilled I posted that photo.

(Whenever Riley gives me that look in response to being disciplined for spitting, swatting, kicking, etc, I can’t help but wonder when it is that kids develop some good old fashioned fear of their parents’ wrath. You know what I mean? Not like you’re afraid your parents are going to hit you or abuse you or anything awful, but just that dreadful feeling of uh oh . . . Mom/Dad is going to be pissed. Because having my kid essentially give me a frowny, bratty eye-roll when I’m telling him, in the I-am-not-fucking-around Voice of God no less, that there is NO [INSERT INTOLERABLE BEHAVIOR HERE] ALLOWED, sooooort of makes me want to feed him to wild dingoes.)

Watching Riley and Theo basically jet off and do their own (vaguely suicidal) thing made me a little hopeful for our future with two children in the house. Man, I really hope that Riley and his brother enjoy each other in the years to come — and spend lots of time playing together, and concocting plots against their parents, and of course eventually bailing each other out of jail.

So, I have only one more OB appointment — not this coming Monday, but the following — before Operation STP Removal, which seems insane. I guess because I had Riley at 37 weeks, and this week will be my 37th week with this pregnancy, I feel like I’m in unfamiliar territory where I could suddenly, like, go into labor at any moment oh my god. Not that this will happen, surely, because hello I have a PEDICURE scheduled, among other things.

At this point my belly is large and frightening, and when I sit upright on the couch cross-legged, the bottom of my stomach actually rests on the cushion below me. Only a few of my shirts still fit, everything else is too short to cover the vast expanse of skin. It is truly amazing that the human body can be stretched to such mind-boggling proportions without splitting open like an overripe melon, you know? I might even be able to appreciate the physical miracle of it all someday, when I’m no longer waddling around with a 45-pound backpack strapped to the front of me.

A long-ass time ago when I was still very optimistic about exercising throughout this entire pregnancy (pardon me while I issue a short, bitter, Edna Krabappel-esque laugh, here: HA!) I bought this goofy Denise Austin workout video, then promptly filed it with our other DVDs and forgot about it. Because I had some very important things to do over the next several months, like seeing whether or not I could eat a whole jar of Claussen dill pickle spears at a time.

I tried it out last night, though, after trying unsuccessfully to find a comfortable position to sit in that didn’t send shooting sciatic pains through my hips or trigger the increasingly hyper Jimmy Leg too much. I finally decided that the only relief I’d get would be through some body movement, and while this made JB very hopeful that it might be BIDNESS TIME, if you know what I mean and I think you do, I informed him that I felt exactly as sexy as a beached manatee, and did he want to get busy with a beached manatee? (JB: “Beggars can’t be choosers.” Me: “Yeah, well if wishes was horses we’d all be eatin’ steak.”)

At first I tried to follow along with an Inhale show, but I quickly discovered that intense non-prenatal yoga isn’t so great when you haven’t been exercising and you’re shaped like a biological practical joke. That whole rapid-fire vinyasa business isn’t designed for people who take ten minutes to gruntingly heave themselves up off the floor, you know?

So I dug up the Denise Austin video and gave it a shot, and it was . . . it was okay. Actually, I felt a little ashamed during the “workout” (really just some extremely low-impact stretching and toning, at least during the 3rd trimester section) because 1) it was so incredibly wussy and yet I felt like it was just right for me, and 2) Denise Austin is relentlessly perky and cheesy and keeps saying things like “Making your body so strong for baby” and repeating the marketing bullet points from her DVD (“Fit and firm throughout your pregnancy!”). She kind of talks to the camera like she’s talking to a dog, which gets a little old (“Good job, you are doing sooooo well, doesn’t that feel so good?”). Power-peppy aggro-cheerleader Chalene Johnston or scary Billy Blanks (“COUNT IT! COUNT IT!”) would be more fun.

However, I slept halfway decently last night for the first time in I don’t know how long. So maybe there’s something to this whole “exercise is good for you even when you’re a beached manatee” theory I keep hearing about. Tonight I’m going to try out a prenatal yoga video I rented from Amazon Unbox (did you know you can download videos straight to your TiVo from there? The future is NOW!), so I’m hopeful that doing some ongoing exercise in some shape or form (JB: “I’ve got your shape and form right chere“) will continue to help reduce some of my late-night restlessness. Because there is only so much pacing a person can do before their husband will suddenly shriek to stop it, stop it, STOP IT BEFORE THE BABY FALLS OUT.

In other baby-related news, BabyCenter has released their Top Baby Names of 2007 list and while Smalltopus’s name hasn’t been on any previous Most Popular lists, it is now. I will be mean and tease-y and give you a hint by saying that it’s in the top 40 names, but remember, I’m not telling yet because I want that particular data point to be revealed alongside a photo of a helpless pathetic newborn so people are less tempted to tell me what a fucking suck-ass name we chose. Anyway, I guess it’s more prevalent than I had suspected, but at least it’s a popular boy’s name, unlike Riley — #76 on the boy’s list, #20 on the GIRL’S. Crap.

← Previous Page — Next Page →

• My product review site:

  [Older recommendations]