To baby or not to baby

I went to a Christmas party last night, and made sure my champagne glass was never empty for more than a nanosecond. Which means I found myself wide awake at 5:30 in the morning, suffering heartburn and playing with the pregnancy app on my phone. It is just about to be 2012, and assuming that the Mayans were just out of room on their calendar and we are going to live to see 2013, it's time to start thinking about the dreaded Second Baby.

To say "dreaded" is to be a tad dramatic. Of course I want a new little baby every time I see one, or hear one squeak, or see my 18 month-old daughter try to get the attention of eight year old boys all night long at said Christmas party (for instance). She's growing up fast and will be screaming at me and slamming doors in my face before I know it.

I've been looking at all of my pictures of her lately and, while totally missing that tiny baby she used to be, I've also been reminded of how much my life used to SUCK when she was new. The random crying jags. The breastfeeding every three hours all through the night. The milk coming in and flowing unbidden all over the couch. Hanging out topless with super engorged breasts. Being fat and wearing maternity clothes well-post-partum and/or never getting dressed. The gigantic production of leaving the house. The lack of independent play ability. Carrying that effing car seat everywhere.

I love that kid and I have loved her every step of the way, but I'm gonna go out on a limb and say that the infant stage is not something that I enjoy. Sure, they are cute and snuggly. But they are also tiny little leeches that suck every ounce of your life force for their own benefit. I'm not real excited to go there again. But they say it's easier the second time, right? Right?

So I'm torn. I can wait to space them three years and buy myself a mostly independent, non-pregnant summer now, but be stuck with a brand new baby next summer and have six years to wait before both my kids are over three. OR I can be pregnant this summer and have them more like 30 months apart. Opinions? I'd love to hear them.

to be continued.

You probably noticed that I couldn't help myself and messed with the blog template again. What can I say, I exert control upon my universe any which way I can.

I have more to say about the mom thing eventually. I want to tell you all about the Herbfarm and how I am restructuring the household budget in order to be able to eat there again soon. I want to talk about how every time my husband wears this one 5k t-shirt it makes me feel like a failure because he ran it on  whim out drinking one night (it was a midnight run) and I don't think I could up and run a 5k if I had a gun to my head.

But right now the baby wants grapes. She always wants grapes. I was putting her in her car seat the other day and noticed her hair was in her eyes. I asked her if she wanted me to go get her a clip.

"Yes." she said. "And grapes."

Someday I will be a grown up, but not today

Well, you'll be glad to know that I have completed the first three days of the Shred, and I'm only about three years behind every other mom with a blog in writing about it. I must say that my Google search for before and after pictures left me a little disappointed, but I wrote that off as other peoples' failures and not the ineffectiveness of the program. Naturally.

The whole workout thing is part of the general sort of "back to school" attempt at re-perfectionist-ing I end up cooking up about this time every year. I am very good at setting myself up for failure by attempting to implement several major lifestyle changes all at once. My plans for this September include getting Marlo on one nap, getting myself out of bed and dressed first thing in the morning like a grown up, having a family dinner on the table by 6:30 ever night, and the aforementioned daily workout. Yesterday, Marlo took two naps and wandered around in her pajama top and diaper all day. I got dressed myself somewhere around the four o'clock hour. We have a long way to go.

Introducing...Working Out

So I'm trying this revolutionary thing you probably haven't heard about. It's called "reacting to a stressful day by working out." Crazy, right? This approach is meant to replace my prior approach, called "bendy straw in a bottle of white wine." I'll let you know how it works. It's a pretty new idea that nobody else has ever thought up before, and I'm pretty excited about it.

Preliminary results are good. By that I mean I tried it last night and it seemed to work all right. Considering that Marlo was a nasty little (cute! love of my life!) beast who only took one hour-and-a-half long nap all day and almost got thrown in her crib straight from her bath - no jammies, no diaper, no nothing - I'd say it was a miracle that not one alcoholic beverage was consumed.

Stress relief is not my sole motivation. It suddenly dawned on me that my sister's wedding is less than a month away, and if I am serious about wanting to not feel like a schlub in my cute little maid of honor dress, I better get crackalackin'.  So no problem, I'll just do the Jillian Michaels 30 Day Shred in 27 days.

Domestic goddess, I ain't

You were probably thinking that I have been way too busy playing with my new chickens to post, but you were totally wrong. I do have at least a shred of common sense, but mostly a new-found phobia of commitment to the life and upkeep of other living beings. I am taking baby steps, seeing if I can actually get some herbs planted and cared for before I get myself into domesticated fowl. Plus, I have to go see Paul McCartney in Vegas in two weeks, so I should probably not get chickens before that.

In other news, it's Marlo's first birthday on Friday, so I have been busy procrastinating about getting anything done for her party. We're having a taco bar and I need to draw up a tablescape, but I hate that word so much that all I do is sit around thinking about how much I hate Sandra Lee and her booze-fueled attempts to convince Americans to go to Tuesday Morning and buy a closet full of crap for decorating the kitchen each season.

Which reminds me of how much I love Tina Fey, for the cameo by Ina Garten in the 30 Rock finale in which she mentioned that Jeffrey was away. Oh Tina, thank God I can count on you to make that joke. And bonus points for Ina Garten turning out to maybe be a good sport. She may move up a spot on my "most tolerable food network hosts" list. The field isn't too competitive.

When I'm overwhelmed, I stay in my pajamas all day

I think I need to move my (very important) Blog Reading Time to the afternoon. Reading blogs with my morning coffee tends to turn into reading blogs at noon in my pajamas and still not having eaten.

I've noticed that when I put off my blog time until the afternoon, I'm much more discriminating. I'm skimming, I'm avoiding long link-following tangents. I read what I care about reading and I move on. Not sure why it's different, but it seems like it is.

And, if I read my blogs in the afternoon, I would avoid seeing things like this until after I had actually accomplished something with my day. As it stands, I read this particular post mid-morning and it stopped me dead in my tracks. At first I was inspired - the author of this post designed her nursery after a favorite tank top. I picked my color palette from a favorite pair of pajama pants. But inspiration was quickly overtaken by panic and stress. The woman bought balsa wood and painted it in a coordinating color and drilled holes in it all to MAKE BACKGROUNDS FOR THE LABELS SHE WAS PUTTING ON THE BASKETS TO HOLD DIAPERS. At this point, I am totally sweaty and on the verge of tears. How am I ever going to get any of this done? I've never even drilled holes in ANYTHING.

So basically I have total deer-in-the-headlights-itis. I had big plans to get the 1982 bathroom all repainted. When I needed a break from that, I was planning a trip to the baby furniture store to price out gliders. Maybe see if they have any mattresses or covers that will work with my bassinet. Instead I'm sitting here in my pajamas, eating M&Ms.

I know I'm overthinking this one. I have put together many a decent looking room totally by accident, and on a rational level I'm sure this nursery will be no different. But on an irrational level, however well I do or do not put together the nursery reflects how much I love the kid, or how good a mother I will be. I know that's asinine, but it's a feeling that's there somewhere. Maybe now that I've acknowledged it out in the open I can move on. Just buy some damn paint and get on with it.

T minus 4 months

Four months to go until my due date. That seems both exceptionally far away and mind-bogglingly close.

What was happening four months ago? September 27th. My calendar shows that it was my mother-in-law's birthday and that the Seahawks played the Bears. I had known I was pregnant for almost two weeks. It was still scary (scarier, anyway) then, and I was prone to waves of nausea. I think I remember eating a cup o' noodles in the car on the way to that football game. It was the first one we drove to, rather than take the bus, because there would be no risk of drunkenness. My grandfather was in the hospital, and we stopped by on the way to say hello.

Well, with that perspective, the baby seems farther away. All of that stuff seems like an eternity ago. But maybe that's just because it was an entirely different head space. My pregnancy was still a secret at that point, not to be revealed for another few weeks. The fall that sent my grandfather to the hospital set off a busy chain of events, which included Husband and I flying to Phoenix to drive home with my dad. Yes. You heard me. Two day, marathon road trip with a secret, fresh pregnancy. It was as fun as it sounds.

So now that I'm firmly in baby mode, and couldn't hide it if I tried, maybe it will go faster. Things are going to start happening quickly. Our birth class starts four weeks from tomorrow, and will occupy our Thursday nights until the middle of April. I have a doctor's appointment on Tuesday, another one four weeks later, and then I start going every two weeks already. Granted, four weeks is still four weeks, and thinking back four weeks to New Year's...THAT even seems like a long time ago. The ultrasound where we found out it was a Chopita was that week! It seems like we've known she was a girl for an eternity.

Whatever. As slowly or quickly as it goes by, there's still a lot to do. Like all that baby registery stuff I was going to get done after Christmas? Yeah, I think there are one or two items on there. I still need to register for (more) classes, and of course do the physical setting up of the nursery. It's nice to start the concrete action portion of this pregnancy, rather than living in abstract concept land like I have for the past five months.