Sunday, November 29, 2009

Happy Holiday-ing

Well I hope everyone had a great Thanksgiving. And a great November for that matter since I've only posted once since the beginning of the month. We enjoyed our Thanksgiving...we spent it up at Will's family farm/retreat/whatever it is which is perfect for Thanksgiving as far as I'm concerned. It looks rustic but is actually very modern on the inside, it's made of stone, it's secluded in the woods, and it's only a 40 minute drive away. Far enough to feel like we're going somewhere for Thanksgiving, but close enough that traffic doesn't bother me much because it's such a short drive. We spent 2 nights up there, and combining my family and Will's family worked out nicely. I did all my prep ahead of time too, so all I had to do the day of was saute canadian bacon pieces and sprinkle some blue cheese on the brussel sprouts. Everything went quite well except for the fact that we took the dogs with us and they peed all over the place at night. My just barely potty trained 2.5 year old does better than my idiot dogs who have been housebroken for over 6 years. Just another way the dogs make life easy and enjoyable.

Then, wasting no time, we moved right on to Christmas. Emily is now old enough to not only understand but anticipate holidays, so it's lots of fun to do Christmas-y things. She went with my parents (Gemmy and Dibby) to pick out a Christmas tree yesterday morning, so we couldn't get away with being Christmas tree-less around here for very long after that. We've opted to use the fake tree again this year since Will is allergic to the world and his allergist says that getting a real tree is one of the worst things you can do if you have allergies. He's working on his allergy shots, and by next year he should be impermeable to all allergens. The problem is, it is SO easy to bring the tree up from downstairs, unfold it and plug it in. It feels lazy and wrong, but it's so nice to get everything set up in an hour or so. Perhaps Emily will just have to enjoy picking out a real tree with Gemmy and Dibby every year and then just get by with our laser-beam Christmas tree at home (I'd forgotten how very PIERCING the LED lights on the tree are. Decorating it is kind of like staring directly into the sun).

So today Will is hunting (I know...this is a new thing, but I would be thrilled to get a whole deer's worth of fresh meat!) and I have plopped Emily down in front of some Christmas specials so that I can clean up my house. I hate plugging her into the TV, but having her watch the same specials I loved growing up is not bad for her brain, it's wholesome and traditional, right?

Thursday, November 12, 2009

Coming back to life

Wow. I can't believe November is half gone. The last thing I remember was Halloween. And this was supposed to be my lull before the holiday season in which to get ready for the baby that will be here in LESS THAN 2 MONTHS. Yeah, that hasn't happened yet.

Halloween was incredibly busy, like I fell asleep at my friends' Halloween party on the couch watching Bolt with the toddlers before 10PM busy (I am a party ANIMAL). But we managed to take Emily trick or treating as an eff-a-lant, and that was my goal for the day so it all worked out. She still needs to learn that it's important to knock on someone's door BEFORE yelling trick or treat, and that the proper way to show appreciation for the candy is to say "thank you", not "I want a lollypop instead", and that you should not go busting into people's houses even if they do have a really cool light up ghost sculpture in the front hall, but she had a blast and is still talking about trick or treating 2 weeks later. Even better, she didn't notice when all of her candy except for one lollypop mysteriously disappeared. We're definitely not going to be able to pull that off next year.

The next few days were spent getting Emily excited about going to the farm, showing up to said farm only to find out that it was closed for rain (even though there was no rain), desperately trying to find a different farm to take a very disappointed 2 year old to, going back to the original farm the next day because damn it, I had free tickets and I was going to use them, realizing that chasing a toddler up and down slides and onto moon bounces alone CAN'T be good for keeping babies that are not yet finished gestating inside where they belong, taking Emily to the local science center's open house because she needed some education after all that fresh air (and apparently because I was trying to kill myself), then kind of just dropping dead with the swine flu.

I am now DECIDEDLY immune to the swine flu, because when I showed up to my OB last Friday coughing my lungs out into my fetching little SARS mask, the nurses said "Oh pshaw! You can get the swine flu shot unless you're moderately to seriously ill" and gave it to me. I certainly FELT at least moderately ill, and a swine flu test or even having them take my temperature before getting all needle-happy would've been nice, but they know what they're doing, right?

Then I don't really remember much about the next 4-5 days, except that my lungs somehow filled with razor blades and that I called the ER at 3AM on Saturday night because I figured my flu had gone into pneumonia or bronchitis but I wanted to make sure they'd bother to admit me if I bothered to drag myself in. Of course they don't give medical advice over the phone and told me to call my doctor, but the thought of trying to get the OB on call (who barely speaks english) to understand my hoarse croaking over the phone, followed by a night of sitting on a hard bench in the ER waiting room exhausted me enough that I was able to fall asleep and just continue my fevered moaning from home for the next few days. Also Tamiflu? Sucks.

So now I've finally started wobbling, delicate and weak, back out into the world, and it's a scary place. After spending so very long on my couch, I kind of miss it. There are no nor'easters hitting my couch, there are no preschool representatives trying to sell me their "hands-on approach to education" on my couch, and there are no impossibly, exhaustingly wide grocery stores to walk across when I'm on my couch. And on my couch I am not asked to do high-level problem solving, like "Should you buy ice cream now, when you don't have time to run it home to your freezer before it's time for your ultrasound appointment?" or "Should you bring some food to eat or just randomly run errands until it's too late to get lunch and then have to starve until you can go home again?"

I am hoping it's just that I'm not fully recovered yet. It's tough to take it easy when you've finally started feeling better and the doghair tumbleweeds are starting to become sentient and the groceries are not buying themselves and preschool waitlists are filling up, but I'm hoping if I force myself to take it slow, I will be back to normal (well, pregnant normal) soon. I don't think I can handle bumping around in this squinty brain fog, crashing into curbs and melting gallons of ice cream for much longer.

And because I don't have the brain to figure out a good way to finish this post, LOOK! PICTURES!

One excited eff-a-lant


Emily, Will, and me looking huge in my Juno costume that I kind of ran out of motivation for putting together


Pictures from the ultrasound...they surprised us and did a couple in 3D which was awesome


Charlotte's nose and mouth


Fight the power! Also, hide the face, which Charlotte does fantastically