Last week, I watched my son’s hand move across his chest and scratch something itchy on his bare torso. He had a fever from the hand-foot-mouth virus that I imagine he picked up by licking the ground somewhere in the playground. Before we had all that figured out, we were back in familiar dreaded territory worried that his low grade fever was going to spike and make him seize. A couple of sleepless nights later, it was just incredible irritability that we endured from this kid that knows how to miraculously scratch his itchy chest just so. I am amazed that easily by my son. His dark, very tan hand, moving across his pale rashy chest to find a specific spot that was bothering him to scratch it makes me stop and wonder at his coordination and ingenuity at being able to do that for himself.

I’m having a hard letting go of the baby in him.

I don’t write so much about him here. Maybe it’s partly because I don’t want to become one of those people who relay a mind-numbingly inane story about their child, all the while knowing that as fascinating it is for them as a parent to witness their child’s development, it is equally as uninteresting for their audience even if it is another parent. Instead, I find myself focusing on the circumstances surrounding Max and how they affect me. It’s a strange thing, because I am primarily preoccupied with this kid and how to protect him and keep him healthy. I also know that I’m attempting to preserve his privacy and placate my paranoia about predators by un-googlizing the blog and not posting photos…and not talking about him too specifically.

Until now. I think I’m about to attempt a GaGa GooGoo post about my son.

***

This waiting around for me to deliver the next baby is torture, but I’m not ready for her yet. I’m trying to memorize my Max before I don’t have the wherewithal to get out of the house in under an hour and a half. I’m totally happy sitting next to him on the sofa watching Nemo for the 15th time. It lets me study him and ingrain him into my mind’s eye. I haven’t been taking very many photos of him and I am feeling so little control over how to process and document his second year that I don’t care that he zombies out in front of the tv for me to do some of that.

Now that I’m released from the bed, I pick him up whenever I feel up to it. He wraps his gigantic toddler legs around my ever growing bump and puts his head on my shoulder. I can’t describe anything more divine. He’s started calling out “mommy” a lot, which is also quite a thrill considering he hasn’t really said ‘mama’ since he was a year old. Everything’s been about the mister until recently and it’s nice to be back in the club.

My mom clucks her tongue at me because half the clothes I just bought for him don’t fit. I keep thinking he’s much smaller than he is. The t-shirts have tiny little armholes and get twisted and caught around his shoulders and make him look like a Chelsea boy. I have to return all these clothes because I can’t see him for who he is. A shitty habit that I’m familiar with from the other end.

His temper is another thing. My mother keeps denying that his raging tantrums are unfortunate tributes to mine when I was a toddler all the way through to my early twenties. I cringed and managed not to cry when I saw her face after one of Max’s screaming fits. She said something about how that side of him comes from my father’s side of the family. An innocuous comment that most people would probably hear as a slightly comical deflection from a personal trait that she’s trying to hide, but it has a hidden heat to it that goes back to a place too deep for tears. I thought I was done with that place, but it’s still there. Memories of running after her and my baby sister during one of my parents’ crazy fights as she tried to leave behind the child who was a supposed genetic replica of her husband. Those were desperate times for her and I tell myself that she would have come back for me. The only thing that matters is that it doesn’t matter now.

I try to temper his frustrations and insecurities without anger and the disgust that my mother exhibits when she is reminded of the ugly side of my father. I know that his raging will eventually dissipate and remember that there is always a reason for it no matter how small or trivial. He could be furious because he can’t get a lid on the tupperware after the third try or he could be scared of what’s coming up with his baby sister. I am now constantly protecting Max from my mother’s scorn, an impossible scenario that is mixed with gratitude on my part for nurturing him and trying so hard to take care of him. She alternates from being completely offended and swearing off cooking anything else for him to cooing and gurgling with affection. It’s almost too much for me to take.

My poor husband, by the way, is being applauded by me for his monumental patience with this woman who has taken over the kitchen and is slowly taking control of the rest of the apartment.

***

Earlier this week, I threw my back out. She shook her head and sighed in that way that old Korean people do, as if they’re just disgusted to the core. I think her theory is that I’m still inextricably linked to my dad’s bad family luck and bad temper sometimes. I’ve got an impossibly difficult son who catches colds and viruses on purpose just to piss her off, and weird things keep happening to me with my weak cervix and my stupid back tweaking out because I lifted a floor cushion with my legs.

Max, who is so far an average toddler, is an extension of my temperamental self, which makes me actually happy with all the shitty aspects of my personality that have always been a problem in my mom’s eyes. It’s just another way that I marvel at my kid and his smallest accomplishment. The fact that he doesn’t fall off the chair as if he’s just learned to sit up by himself is something that amazes me every day. He walks in the door from a playground stint with his nanny and says “I’m back!”…at least that’s what it sounds like he said, and I’m blown away. I will be no less impressed with my son winning a Pulitzer than I am with him getting a spoon full of yogurt to his mouth. The bonus is that his dad is all mixed in there too, and the best part is that there’s shit that he does that comes from neither one of us. That stuff is like him inventing electricity for me.

I think he’s been having nightmares the past couple of nights. I’ve been having them too. I’m worried about the next thing in store for us. Excited, but very nervous. I’ve inherited some of my mom’s superstition, and the whole 11 past 11 thing is still happening to me almost every time I look at the clock. I heard Max crying just now so I didn’t look at the time until it was 11:12, and I am ridiculously relieved. The prospect of some foreshadowing that is to occur at 11:11, am or pm, doesn’t make me happy.

I want my son to know that I love him so dearly that it is impossible to describe. I have an irrational fear that he will not know that.

***

The city is deserted. I hope everyone is having a fantastic holiday.

I got to tool around Manhattan with my family and park in front of every store and restaurant we went to. Max yelled out for Mommy and Daddy everywhere. The tourists probably thought we were just more tourists with a loud child who was running loose through practically empty floors.

My fingers and legs are starting to blow up. As I approach a week into being full term, this pregnancy is becoming uncomfortable in ways that I never thought I’d be expected to endure.

Looking back at his miraculously heart shaped face in the car seat, I decided that I could wait and bloat some more with just my untamed son and my gorgeous husband before we become four.

She watched her mother die in the streets of Seoul.

She practically raised two kids on her own, cooking almost all of their meals from scratch. Typical prep time: two days.

She survived refugee camps with her little brother riding on her back.

She survived a tiny backwater after being born in Tokyo and growing up in Seoul.

She survived me.

She survived my sister.

My mom is one of the most extraordinary people I know.

She barely tops 5 feet in height.
She’s shaped like a robin with twiggy little legs and a torso shaped like a dumpling.
Her laugh lines and hospitality belie her unbending iron will.
Her values are embarrassingly republican.
Her religion is more voodoo and superstition than spiritual.

My mom makes me laugh.

****

The loose stone that she found on my dresser was put there by the cleaning lady last Friday. My mom complains that this cleaning lady doesn’t know how to bend at the waist to clean the floors. She says that this woman just uses a mop with a long handle and stands when she cleans. My mom’s cleaning style is to get down on her hands and knees and scrub the shit out of every grout line and hard to reach space underneath the cabinet base boards.

No one could possibly live up to her standards.

She was looking for a q-tip and squeaked in surprise when she saw the sparkly stone next to the container. A little gift from the untalented and almost-fired cleaning woman.

“What is THAT.”

It was a false wedding proposal by the mister four years ago. My face was planted on a pillow – I think I may have been hung over. I heard the mister walk in and felt him shove a scratchy little thing into my hand. Annoyed, I turned over and looked at the twinkling diamond looking stone.

Is he proposing to me? This is original…

I waited until the next morning to ask him what was up, and he answered with a straight face that he had found it on the street.

Ooh. No proposal.

He thought it was a real diamond. I thought not. It was too big and too white and sparkly.

That was four years ago.

****

Yesterday, after the cleaning lady rocked my mom’s world by placing this tiny stone out in the open, my mom declared that it had to be real. After all this time, and me placing it in junk jewelry boxes and not paying attention to it, it had to be real. The woman is a diamond freak and proclaimed that it was a super high quality 1.8 carat diamond worth close to $30,000.

She had my attention with that last part. I started to spend that money within thirty seconds of registering that I could be the world’s biggest dork.

I called the mister and let him crow about how he was right (again). We were all giddy and flushed with the prospect of found money. I put this all of the sudden giant jewel into a small clear plastic envelope and put it next to my mom on the sofa like she asked.

Two minutes later, it was gone.

All of the sudden my mom was calling it the devil diamond. It was bad luck. Some black magic had made it disappear from some poor sucker four years ago, and now it was happening to us.
We backtracked for a day and a half. The mister, my mom and me replayed a tragically comical Lord of the Rings scenario about the Precious. My husband ratted me out for my horrible memory…something about me losing my wedding ring for a week and then twenty minutes after ‘fessing up, he found them in my jeans.

I told on my mom about how she lost my sister’s apartment keys for an entire hour just the day before. My mom stuck with her evil diamond theory. After they both turned on me, accusing me of never putting it in the envelope and never putting it beside my mother, I started to think along the lines of my mom’s witchcraft hypothesis. This stupid fake little piece of crap was turning my family into hairy little hobbits.

Over the course of the last day and night, my mom has been wearing a rubber glove and combing through the trash. I witnessed the first bag of garbage, but I had no idea that she had been doing it secretly to the other trash bins until she presented herself in front of me, holding the little plastic envelope.

She giggled. Enough said.

I called the mister and asked for an apology. My mom hadn’t seen me put the envelope beside her and in her compulsive cleaning way, she felt a piece of plasticky trash next to her and absent mindedly threw it away in the diaper trash bin.

My husband wonders why I go out of my way to clean and even cook when my mom’s around. I would do almost anything for this crazy woman. I feel like I owe her…or something like that.

I found myself walking ten blocks to the nearest jewelry store to get an appraisal for instance.
It took us a long time. I’m slow and took a break every other block to sit down or pee. I had to yell at someone just to complete the stereotypical pregnant woman picture. My poor mother had to wait over an hour to get her verdict. (we shopped and ate too)

****

I think the jeweler’s accent was Russian. He pushed his wife aside as she started to look at our treasure.

“Vat ees DAT?”

I asked him if he could tell us if it was a diamond, and he put it up to a scope.

“NOH. Deece ease gloss”

The jeweler didn’t even look at us as we silently deflated. My mom looked at me and shrugged. Crossing the street on the way back home, my mom declared that we can get a second opinion. Then she started cooking as soon as we got home.

I don’t understand her. I sometimes try to emulate her mothering style. It’s intense and I’ve never felt more taken care of by anyone. I think most people would say the same thing if they had her as a mom. Her obsessions, making the perfect chawan mushi, or the way she finds joy in her fairy tales, her $30,000 piece of glass, get her through the mundane and the back breaking grind of taking care of her children and grandchildren. I can’t stop her. It’s unnerving sometimes because she looks so little and fragile.

She’s not perfect. I can blame her for a lot of baggage, but sitting at dinner tonight with her and Max, I felt sad, as if I missed being a kid and having her stage mom me through endless music competitions, swim meets, spelling bees and every conceivable academic race she could find – I remember being completely miserable.

Time is slippery. Max is no longer a baby as much as I try to hold on to that long gone reality. He’ll never escape the curse of being my baby and my first one at that. I’ll never stop worrying about him and tomorrow his voice is going to crack and he’ll be bringing home a date. His legs have lost their baby fat. His face is no longer a perfect circle. He gives me the worst attitude. I love it and I hate it. Everything happens so fast these days.

I got out my camera and shot them at the dinner table. I knew I had to just enjoy this moment. My mom and my son and my husband chowing down. It’s a beautiful day and there was some light still filtering into the room. We’re together in a suspended state of anticipation and a calm before the storm. I know that I will forget this time if I don’t stop to capture it somehow. When the baby comes, no one will be sleeping. We’ll behave horribly towards each other at times. I may forget how much I love having my mom here. I may not have time to cuddle my little boy. My husband may not recognize me through all the post partum mess and we’ll probably have to renegotiate our relationship again. This is a good time. Right now. I have to remember that.

Manufacturing adventure out of a tiny piece of whatever that fake gem is made of is a trick I want to pass down to my kids. Not that life needs more adventure or drama than it already holds, but my mom has a way of making me miss her when she’s right in front of me.

I know that she’ll eventually go back home, but we’ll always have these two days when we were semi-rich with money that we didn’t deserve.

The nanny has taught Max to say “mines” instead of mine. I am so completely bonkers about how to bring this up to her. Should I announce that no one is allowed to applaud his new vocabulary word because it’s just feeding into his growing toddler aggression? Every time she tells the story about how he says “mines” about all his stuff, I cringe and walk two steps forward and then run back into the bedroom to stuff my pillow into my mouth.

I love our nanny.

She has laid more than verbal “mines” all around me though. I hired her good friend to clean the apartment once a week. Every Friday morning, these two super cool women greet each other in my living room, coo over Max, ask each other who killed whom on Law and Order last night, rib each other about failing eye sight or graying hair and I love it.

The only problem is that the cleaning friend sucks at cleaning.

I’m a bit anal retentive and hard to please, so it’s no surprise that I’m unhappy with yet another cleaning person. I had to let the former cleaning crew go because every week they forgot to clean something important, something big, like…the FLOORS.

How does that slip your mind? It’s like saying “I changed his diaper, but I forgot to wipe the poo off his ass.” I should say something more diminutive when speaking about a baby’s butt, but I’m getting all heated up about this.

Plus, the head honcho would yell at her cleaning peons and tell them that they were taking too long. There would be four people in the apartment scrubbing furiously and completely terrified. I hated it. I felt like I was paying this woman a lot, but when I thought about how much the actual cleaners were probably getting paid, I felt like shit. So I fired them.

My current dilemma involves this cleaning woman, who I like personally, creating an ever growing list of grievances among the adult members of my household:

1. Shoving the mister’s more expensive, dry-clean-only button-downs into a soggy hamper full of towels

2. Mopping over an ipod cradle that she just didn’t think to pick up off the floor

3. Wiping down the kitchen counters with a dirty streaky sponge after my mom had just finished polishing them

4. Making the furniture UN-shiny and somehow a little bit furry

5. Throwing away some made-from-scratch soup that my mom left in a pot on the stove without asking if we were done eating it

6. Leaving caked on bleach in the bathtub to be discovered as Max is tummy deep in it

7. Stepping on my mom’s air mattress with her shoes on to get to the nursery windows…wtf.

That last one is killing me. Who does that? And then who denies it like they’re three years old instead of a grown woman with four grandchildren?

What the hell am I going to do? I showed our nanny the shoe prints on the show white sheets and then wiped as much off as I could before my mom saw it and freaked out. I wanted a witness. Unfortunately, the nanny speaks to this woman on the phone every day. I’m fucked. How do I fire her? How can I NOT fire her?

I brought up a couple of items from the list with the cleaning woman, but she didn’t seem especially concerned. She wanted to know why my mom didn’t put her food away in the fridge…which, I sometimes wonder about myself, but it somehow ended up with her lecturing me about how fragile these ipod chargers are around water.

I’ve brought down 300-lb. contractors to their knees because I am a notoriously bitchy perfectionist when it comes to the punchlist on my projects. I have no qualms about making a carpenter remake cabinets because the wood veneer is running in the wrong direction. Walls rebuilt to remedy a missed acoustic detail, ceilings relaid because tiles were chipped or dirty or because I just felt like messing with someone’s day. I can be that much of a bitch.

Maybe we can move and just forget to tell the cleaning woman where we are. Or I can develop a severe allergy to sponges or become phobic about sterile, clean environments. Max could become rabid, like I sometimes worry that he’s going to do, and start attacking her every time she walks in the door.

I should suck it up and step into the bitch light. After all, it’s nobody’s problem but mines.

It smells like a giant Fry Daddy in here.

I don’t remember my mom being a compulsive cooker, but she’s been in the kitchen non-stop since last Wednesday…I think I may actually be sick of Korean food. Who knew that was even possible?

There are piles of sweet pancakes with jelly filling cooling in tupperware all over the counters. I’ve eaten three of these Ho-tucks (or whatever they’re called) and I’m unreasonably upset at her for making three batches. She’s insane, so why do I think she should behave?

In other news, I’m intensely BORED. What do you call that condition where you alternate between being manically productive/happy and then depressed from mind numbing boredom.

Oh right. Manic-depression.

I have to stop with the fucking shopping. I need help. I feel dirty you know? Sadly, it doesn’t make me want to shower more.

I’ve been told to stay in bed for one more week. It’s bullshit. The younger the doctors are these days, the more conservative they get. I’ve had other docs in my practice tell me that they tell their regular patients to start moving around at 35 weeks, which I’m secretly doing. Because the latest doctor reminded me that a 35 week baby is still a pre-term baby, I feel like a shit for walking the half a block to the drugstore. I need to get some of my strength back though. I can’t feel my legs sometimes because the muscles are all noodly and start to spasm if I move too fast or far.

The mister is working like mad because my mom is here to take care of me…and because she is making him turn to prescription medication to prevent him from flying off the handle when she walks into the bedroom just as Max is about to fall asleep from a story, turn on the light full blast and announce to my poor husband that giving him milk will help him fall asleep.

oh. my. gawd.

She’s announced to everyone who will listen that Max is very smart and loves her soup base best of all. And then giggles. She giggles because it tickles her that such a bright two year old has exquisitely good taste. What other two year old knows the difference between a fish base and a chicken stock base?

She may be right.

Mom has noticed how pregnant the mister is. The glass noodles/Jap Chae that she made for everyone disappeared within a day. My husband inhaled about three plates full. I think the fact that I don’t cook makes him very appreciative of home cooking…at least until the end of the week when he’s up to his eyeballs in Korean food and is begging for something else.

“It’s like tossing a biscuit to an elephant” she said proudly. Smugly even. His enormous appetite is famous, but she has made a personal claim to it and tells people that my husband just cannot resist her food. She now insists on making enormous batches of food that would feed an army for every meal.

Those damn pancakes are cool now. I’m going in for more despite my stomach ache.

Sleepless

I had five sips of coffee this morning. Those five sips created the three C’s of my current hell.

What. I can’t sleep.

I have to tell you, I actually hate complaining about being pregnant. It’s boring, no? But this is what’s on my mind, and I can’t shut it off, and I just want to get through tonight and wake up in…tomorrow.

Belly Dancing

My stomach is a freak show. To be more specific, the baby inside my uterus rocks my entire body, and if I was actually out in the world, someone looking at me would think that I was shuddering or twitching. But I’m not. I’m being manhandled by a little creature who is most likely less than five pounds, and whose head is jammed between my bladder and my cervix.

My god, baby! What the hell are you doing in there?

She rotates her knee or some tiny appendage and I can see a ripple in my skin that make its way from my belly button to what used to be the side of my waist, or the equatorial region of the sphere that is my belly. It fucking hurts too.

This is what is NOT relaxing about bedrest:

When I move too quickly or when she moves too hard, my uterus contracts. Make no mistake, being hermetically sealed up in my apartment, away from the humid sticky mess that everyone else in New York is slogging through, is divine. Taking a nap during the middle of the day is how, really, everyone should exist. At the heart of it though, being paranoid about delivering at 34 weeks really bites my fluffy ass.

I’ve been doing this for almost 4 weeks and I’m ready to trade places with anyone who wants to be on bedrest. The romance is gone baby.

I don’t miss work or anything like that.

I miss functioning as a regular biped who can walk down the street and pick up some sunblock for my little boy. I miss getting out of bed without feeling like I’ve done something horribly wrong by moving too fast and causing a nasty cramp to pierce the quivering muscle wall that’s shrink wrapped around my uterus. I miss playing with Max.

I’m fully aware that if I wasn’t on bedrest and was walking around with this baby cantilevered over the sidewalk, I’d be complaining about something else.

The Competition

I’m talking about who is more pregnant. Me? Or my husband?

I’ve never met a man who has aped the pregnancy symptoms of his wife more accurately and convincingly than my mister. This man should be chronicled in medical annals as the man who actually outdid his wife in all the crazy antics categories of eating weird food, mood swings, crying during commercials, narcolepsy, etc.

I think my hormones are contagious.

My husband consistently eats all the ice cream, the fruit, the chocolate covered almonds, whatever he bought or I bought for a very specific pregnant craving…of MINE. I am a cynical person and I have to say, I totally believe him when he says that he just can’t help it.

Falling asleep at 8:15, immediately after Max drops off to sleep, is my thing, but lately, it’s the mister’s. This is a man who normally has trouble sleeping before 2 am.

While introducing Max to Finding Nemo, I knew there was a good chance that I’d tear up during the scene where the mommy clown fish gets gobbled up. There’s something about hearing your husband announce that HE needs a tissue during a Pixar flick that makes you forget about crying and contemplate laughing instead.

Do you think I’m being played? Is this a passive aggressive way to shut me up with my complaining?

I can’t wait for him to snap out of it. I don’t like being married to myself.

I have an hour before the apartment is populated again. I don’t count. I’m basically a piece of furniture at this point.

Last night I booked my mom’s flight to Brooklyn. Oh how fun. She’s going to make my husband insane, she’ll chase after my son with crazy ass mini tupperware portions of blendered food that she’s slaved over and then pout when he rejects her pureed love. The bags of dried fish that always come out of her suitcase will never cease to incense the mister, but it’s his own damn fault. When she leaves, he inevitably throws away the fish that she’s stashed in the kitchen. If he could just hold out and leave it until the next time she visits, just once, I think it would take care of this vicious cycle of us misrepresenting how much we love her dried fish concoctions and her having to haul these stinky bags a thousand miles across country every visit.

This is one of those moments when I have nothing to write about. But I’m doing it anyway.

I just recently woke up from one of those coma naps. Drool on the pillow. My big fat ass pointed at the door with a giant wedgie to suit. The nanny must have been completely turned on by that. I heard them leave for Max’s art class but I couldn’t move. It’s times like these that I look to the internet for distraction…but no one seems to be writing. I can’t fault anyone for that, but I’m sick of shopping. Can you believe it?

My other options for entertainment?

Movies (27 Dresses or Gosford Park - i.e. James Marsden or Clive Owen - oops - does that count as sex?)

DVR’d episodes of “Lost” (i.e. see if Jack is going to cry in this one too)

Read (books or better yet, trashy magazines i.e. NOT Siblings Without Rivalry by Adele Faber. Halfmama’s pick. I ended up calling my sister and absolutely failing to implement all the handy tools I learned in the book.)

Check off crap from the massive To Do list

Shop some more (also known as Checking off crap from To Do list)

Call friends back (but only the ones who haven’t basically called me a fattie in the past three months…that narrows it down to the one who hasn’t seen me for three months)

Instead, I resort to the blog.

With nothing to say.

At least I can show.

Shopping for some schtuff to put on the walls in the nursery (something I should have done the first time around, but in hindsight, Max didn’t really deserve pretty pictures in his room so I feel justified in my failure to finish all this interior design crap for my own flesh and blood) I ran across this outstanding alphabet animation.

For some reason, they decided to translate the book version of Bembo’s Zoo: An Animal ABC Book by Roberto de Vicq de Cumptich into this delightful little Flash exercise.
The letters dance around and arrange themselves into various animals. I heart.

I can also vent.

Back to the sister. Who, before I launch into this, I love dearly and can be a wonderful person when she’s not being a crazy BITCH with bitch ass friends.

*ahem*

She actually suggested that I get a speech therapist for two year olds because I joke a lot about how I wish I understood what Max was saying. The thought never crossed my mind that there could be anything delayed about his speech. He just turned two a couple of months ago and if he’s not completely coherent in a few more months, I’m still not going to sign him up for therapy.

Adele Faber, the author of the book that made me feel like a total incompetent jerk, says in the beginning of her other book, How to Talk So Kids Will Listen & Listen So Kids Will Talk , “I was a wonderful parent before I had children.”

Funny right? So I forgive my sister for being such an idiot. Maybe I’ll try again to talk to her.

Eh. Who am I kidding. My mom’s coming next week. We’re headed for some good old times with some blatant regression (on my sister’s part thank you) in trying to vie for grandmommy attention.

Siblings… was a great book. Very insightful. Just watch Jon + Kate Plus 8 to see how casting your kids into roles can already seem disastrous.

My hour is up. Getting very excited! I can hear my munchkin whooping it up outside.

A short animated film by artist Jeff Scher “L’eau Life”

I’ve been shopping instead of drinking. That nesting instinct is strong. I underestimated the power of the preparation panic that a mother will feel right before her child is born. Maybe I just forgot because it must have happened to me when I was pregnant with Max. I was scared shitless with my first baby because I was already almost 2 cm dilated for 2 months that first time around. I never. ever. took a shower, and moving from side to side was agonizing because I thought it would trigger the floodgates and I’d start the whole process of labor for real. I froze for the good of the baby.

This time, it’s summer. I’ve gotten cocky just because I’m still closed up even though just barely. I never had time to get the nursery in order for Max, and I can’t stop fixing it now. Getting down on my hands and knees and laying carpet tile does NOT equal bedrest. As bad as that was, I think the real asshole move on my part is the water drinking aspect of the third trimester to do list.

Thinking back to the first pregnancy, that was one of the things that caused my body to attempt to prematurely punt Max out of the womb. I’ve temporarily given up on the environment and purchased a case of 1.5 liter bottles of water to keep by me at all times. It dawned on me as I left for my sonogram this morning that the two half filled bottles skulking around my dresser and the nightstand had been there for more than a day. I felt great. I still do. I felt so good this morning that after the sonogram confirmed that my cervix was still 1.8 cm long, the same as last Wednesday, I almost walked out of the hospital explicitly ignoring the sonogram doctor’s instructions to stay for the contraction monitor where they wrap two disgusting velcro straps around your belly and slide cold KY jelly underneath those little paddles to measure the baby’s heart rate and any activity that your uterus is making.

I thought he was being overly cautious. QUACK.

She hiccuped. A lot. She moved and kicked and punched and I had to punch that little game show button like I knew the answer every time I felt her. I looked over at the paper chart trickling out of the machine and noticed that there were very small mole hills showing up on the uterus measuring thing. Couldn’t feel any of that though.

Mary, the perinatal specialist walked in. We’re buddies. She told me I was contracting and said it had nothing to do with how much the little girl was squirming around.

I thought about the organic mango juice cocktail that I bought from the fancy coffee shop that was clinking around in my purse. I thought about what else I had drunk this morning.

*SHIT*

Mary brought the doctor back after she told on me about the contractions. I had that fancy glass bottle jammed into my mouth and I was sucking hard as they told me that I needed to come back tomorrow to see if I was still contracting. The mister tried to defend me saying that I HAD been drinking a lot of water, but just not today.

The stuff they give you to make your contractions stop are pretty un-baby-friendly from what I remember. Tributylene is found in a lot of cleaning products. I couldn’t find the articles that I had read two years ago when they wanted to give me that stuff, but thankfully I stabilized on my own.

I really don’t want to have this baby yet. She’s about 4 1/2 pounds I think. The sonogram can be amazing sometimes. We saw her chubby cheeks and big fat lips. It was just amazing. I was so proud of her for being over four pounds last week, and now I’m thinking she’s so little. I need to stop screwing around and ignore the birds chirping, the sun shining, my little boy dancing in front of me asking me to pick him up.

Most importantly, I need to DRINK.

And shop. I’m freaking out. There’s so much to do still. Bassinet. Shelves. Armoire. Handbag. No wait, that’s not really necessary for the baby is it? And raise your hand if you do NOT have an online store for baby and kid stuff.

And finish these little side projects.

And finish talking to the super cool graphic designer about the other stuff.

And take a shower. I can drink the water as I wash the front parts. That’s it. I have to be smart about this. Can’t forget to drink. My husband jokes about making me wear one of those beer hats. I’ll do it!

No I won’t.

Looking around the waiting room this morning made me laugh. I just don’t know exactly why.

Going in a circle, there was a woman in a wheelchair with her mom next to her. Some bozo insensitively placed a chair directly in front of her for his wife because the room was so crowded at one point and didn’t think to move it back when they found seats together. The woman in the wheelchair couldn’t get out without her mom having to struggle with dragging the chair out of her way.

Next to them sat a woman with a head scarf and lots of eyeliner. Her husband gave her a shrink wrapped croissant that looked soggy and completely inedible.

The Russian couple next to them each had their own iphones. The woman’s oversized Louis Vuitton bag looked miniature next to her enormous stomach. Her husband’s belly was almost a perfect match.

The odd couple with the mommy totally power dressing with 4″ stacked heels and Dolce on her arm was accompanied by her husband in shorts and a pompadour. He carried her other two bags and a backpack into the room fifteen minutes before her. She eventually showed up with a crackberry glued to her ear and it never fell off the whole time I saw them.

The Brooklyn couple with faded t-shirts and no makeup was next to the sporty couple who was next to the hippie chick with birkenstocks. Another business couple except the dude was suited up and the wife was basically in her pajamas. A husband completely engrossed in his paper was ignoring his wife who I would have assumed was too old to be pregnant had she run into me on the street. A mother and daughter, I assumed, until I saw that the mother, who was much much older than the full grown woman next to her, was pregnant when they were called in. My favorite couple was the lovey dovey couple who kept holding hands and giggling. They were clearly excited about their first pregnancy, and what must be their first trimester.

We were all there, bellies in all kinds of shapes, with or without partners, moms, children. It made me feel more at peace with my situation for some reason. Maybe because we were all going through the same thing and it will work out just fine for the most part. We write about our experiences like I’m doing, thinking for a second that we’re unique in the specific problems that we’re dealing with. Preterm issues, non-existent ankles, uncommunicative husbands, whatever the problem, they were all the same problem or rather, we all had the same end goal in mind. A healthy baby.

I followed about four women out of the room when they eventually called me in to hook up to the contraction monitor. I don’t know how people would describe us. Me and my loud-mouthed husband. We were at one point in our lives a tiny bit like almost everyone in the room. I vaguely remember giggling and holding hands when I was pregnant the first time. There have been moments when we weren’t speaking to each other. Both of us have been obsessed with work at one point when the other was more interested in nothing stressful.

There ended up being so many women in the room with me who are also trying to stop early contractions. I was astounded at how many.

I wonder if everyone’s got their bassinets ready.

ps. Completely off topic - Guess who posted one of my “finds” online? swissmiss.

I’m behind on a couple of projects that I’m supposed to be doing for friends. Everyone I know is having their second baby and redecorating their nursery. Having to rely on online design blogs to tell me what I missed at ICFF this year is more than annoying. Apparently, the show was heavy on the kids’ furniture, but maybe that’s because I frequent kid-related blogs a lot. I admit, I’m always drawn to mini-chairs and tiny poufs, but when I do see grown up stuff featured on the NY Times site, for instance, it just reiterates that I care much less about pillow cases and coat hooks than seeing what’s new in big people furniture,etc.

This is more of a brain dump (or just pure procrastination) of what I’ve come across in my research for wall stickers that I found noteworthy. Obviously, the main intent of the blog is not to focus on design, but I’ve got too much time on my hands and procrastination is an inextricable part of my process (omg did I say “process?”) whatever you call it. I promise you this though, I will refrain from using the phrases “love, love, loving this…” or “this tickled my fancy” or something else typically used by design and style bloggers. I don’t know about you, but those cute little sayings always make me a little nuts.

My frient (friend+client) emailed me about this image from Rare Device.

do you like this for new baby’s room?

Maison Georgette - Designer
Vinyl Wall Poppies

My response was to flood her with a bunch of sites that have stickers that I love for kids.

Dragonflies
Funky Little Darlings

Zebra
Dvider

Hybrid by Antoine Manuel
Greener Grass Design

Race ‘Ya
Blik Surface Graphics

Moon Kite also from Blik

Combination of Open and Sweet 16 dots from Blik
(photo from Modern Tots for Netto’s Case crib)

Along the way, I found something really useful for people who live with what real estate agents swear are “windows” in urban markets. (i.e. pieces of glass that look out onto an airshaft with brick 4 feet away.)

Orba Adhesive Window Film
Feel More Human

Then there’s this super cute, actually affordable coffee table.

What’s up with that? It’s not a sticker but I thought this was worth sharing. There are other colors, of course, but this table is only $300. That’s like three tanks of gas.
And it’s shiny and supposedly environmentally forested at the same time.
Park Coffee Table by MOD
Feel More Human

(Again, this is not a sticker…just in case you thought it was, Heh.) For the price of one tank of gas, I saw the antler coat hooks that we have in our hallway from last year. The only difference from the picture is that ours is white and looks like crap because it’s covered with bags, jackets and other junk that’s way too heavy for this deceptively unsturdy, bent rod piece of wall candy.

Among other places, you can order it from Greener Grass Design or spend the money driving to your kid’s grandparents’ house 100 miles away.

Now what? Oh, right. I’ve got to get to work.
Bedrest isn’t so bad…it would be better if people would start writing on their blogs again.

HINT HINT.

My husband, who is a little crazy, wants my cervix to buy him a drink after the 2nd baby is born. It’s true, that one particular body…part (I don’t think it’s an organ is it?) has put us through the ringer.

I had a very nice morning despite having to sit through the mister’s cabbie-style slalom driving uptown to my doctor’s office. He’s a notoriously bad driver, but very sweet. He remembered that I’ve been obsessed with these ballet flats by Sue London (they have baby girl versions too!) and offered to veer off into the meatpacking district so I could pick some up.

After not being able to speak to anyone in my 6-person OB/GYN practice who knew anything about anything for five days, the doc of the week told me to stay in bed. Oh-fficially.

I wasn’t surprised or anything, but why couldn’t they have told me that last Wednesday? There is no new information between then and now.

I emailed my office and told them I wasn’t coming in anymore. They replied - DUH.

I thought about the pleasure of not having to commute into work and decided that the one Asian man, the one Asian woman, three black men, +/- 20 black women, and three or four white women…oh and the two bald white men who offered me their seat should be very happy because they are all going to heaven. I don’t think of heaven and hell much except when it comes to people who’ve offered my pregnant butt a seat on the subway.

The people going to hell:

1. To the Chinese playboy who smelled like mothballs - I’m only calling you a playboy because you had that stupid playboy bunny on your socks and your gold chain was visible all the way down to your belly button because your shirt was sadly unbuttoned THAT MUCH. Your wrinkly tan and your averted gaze did not do much to endear your pathetic lazy ass to very pregnant me. Have fun roasting.

2. To the preppie junior exec who’s eyes were broken - the blinking doll tactic was not convincing AT ALL. Every time you looked at me, somehow, your eyes would shut? Is that really something that works on other women? Granted, your asshole factor was increased by deux, because the indignant woman sharing the greasy pole with me started talking very loudly about how disgusting some people were with their ipod headphones jammed into their ears. She ripped you a new asshole, you wuss. But even though you didn’t hear her, or pretended that you didn’t, it doesn’t mean that you didn’t see my torpedo like belly standing in front of you or hear the scathing remarks from the nice old lady next to you who eventually gave up her seat. I felt like a moron taking a seat from an older woman, but dammit, I needed to sit down!

3. To the bottom feeding chef lady - your lists of groceries and your cellphone could not have possibly been that fascinating. You burned a hole through your cell phone staring at it’s blank screen and then crossed out everything that you wrote on your shopping list because there was nothing else to write. When you turned red after hearing the disembodied voices criticize everyone on the train for pretending not to see me (sometimes, loud-mouth new yorkers are darling) I could even sympathize. I would turn red too knowing that I was a total butt face.

There are many many more jerks and jackasses that either pushed me out of the way to race to an open seat, or suddenly passed out upon seeing that I was pregnant so they wouldn’t have to get up.

But what I want to know is why the majority of do-gooders were black women? I’m sad to say that only one Asian woman offered me her seat. The two white guys, complete strangers to each other, offered me their seat at the same time. I mentioned before that they were both bald or had shaved heads. Either way, weird.

I saw a great list on kottke.org: Jason’s rules for the NY Subway

I was so, like, “I totally know what you mean!” and in the middle of laughing my ass off, I realized that I am now one of those people who move too slowly for my own taste. I would want to slap the back of my own head if I were trapped behind my big waddling butt. Hmm. This is deep.

Whatever.

After the mister spent $96.00 filling the gas tank before the doctor’s appointment (that’s NINETY SIX), he scrambled into the car and said, “Your cervix is an asshole”. Yes. It’s true. Some people could say that I too have doubled my asshole factor by having an incompetent cervix that’s barely holding it together and threatening to prematurely dilate.

And lastly, inflation sucks. Gas prices? They really suck. At the shoe store, I picked up a pretty green bracelet made of what turned out to be large bead-like seeds.

“How much is this?”

“One fifty.”

I put the bracelet back. I don’t think you should pay $150 for three rings of seeds. The mister pointed out that it was worth a tank and a half of gas. And I almost bought it. Blame it on my cervix. I’m twice the asshole that I used to be.

I’m thinking back to everything that’s happened since I last wrote and the only consistent thing that seems to thread all the strange events together is that every time I look at a clock, it’s 11 past 11.

The fact that the time is a perfectly monotonous palindrome makes this whole ground hog day phenomenon more spooky. My husband thinks I’m nuts.

In about 5 minutes, the nanny will have folded the stroller downstairs and coaxed Max up each step, counting in unison, “one, two, tree, pour, bive, sick, sen…” He’ll stomp into the bedroom and find me here typing against the headboard and grin at me with surprise.

I can hear him now asking for a dee-dee, aka a cookie. Everything he says starts with a “d” sound now in addition to his favorite “b” sound.

Ice cream = dai-dee
Truck = duck
Duck = duck
Hummus = das
Shoes = deuce
Juice = deuce
Jack’s Show = dat doe

Aside from his horrible toddler rages and night terrors, this kid is delicious and delightful. And I’m instructed not to run after him or pick him up. It’s impossible not to, not only because he’s irresistible, but because I’m an idiot.

My OB/GYN is always telling me, “I mean it. NO sex, NO exercise, NO going to the gym.” I try to tell her with a straight face that there is no way in hell that I would ever willingly find myself inside a gym, next to a conveyor belt that forces you to run absolutely nowhere lest you find yourself face down with all body parts on the floor except for a chattering chin bumping up and down on the end of the belt.

And then there’s the sex and the complete lack of it, well, it’s not that I don’t have the motivation, it’s just that I’m never awake. Besides, she had told me in my first trimester that sex wasn’t safe with my history of preterm labor. The poor mister listened to the news and was appropriately appalled.

Her last instruction is always my downfall. “Don’t run after your son. Don’t pick him up.”

Can you imagine? During my first trimesters, she modified her statement by saying that maybe I could pick him up until he was over thirty pounds. He’s still under 30 though! She also made a concession about maybe letting me pick him up while I was sitting down.

It doesn’t really matter. Even though I’m on bedrest for the second time during this pregnancy, I have to be in another room in order to quash any possibility of caving in to Max’s request to pick him up to cuddle or soothe.

Max turned two in April. We had a blast. A small group of kids showed up at the zoo and a humongous brown cow said “how now?” to under-thirty-pound Max. The squeal coming out of my two-year-old’s wide open mouth was pure adrenaline and sheer delight. Running around and unloading 20 pound cakes and liters and liters of soda and water, I basically acted like I wasn’t pregnant and close to the mark when I went into labor at 28 weeks with Max.

I didn’t pay attention to the tightening of my stomach the whole day until the next day when I was walking to dinner with my parents, far behind Max and the mister who were literally running at toddler pace the entire way to the restaurant. Maybe the little girl was doing that all important somersault and just shifting position to be head down. Maybe it was just a very strong braxton hicks contraction. Whatever it was, it felt like my insides were flipping out and I finally sat down on someone’s stoop.

I waited for the sensation to stop or slow down while my parents stared with worry and my sister and the fiance walked back to see what was going on. Max and his dad finally noticed they were alone and my husband, exhausted from the weekend and keeping up with Max, ran back to where I was sitting.

If I could ever be accused of being a drama queen, I suppose that would have been the time. I finally stood up after the roiling sensation stopped and we all decided to motor on the extra two blocks to dinner. My stomach was tight as a drum, and I secretly fretted.

Living in Brooklyn has been easy in great part because of this particular restaurant. Blue Ribbon Sushi is an outpost of a Manhattan sushi restaurant that is pretty effing good. I’ve been eating there almost once a week because the mister’s strategy has been to get us out as much as possible before I’m out for the count either on bedrest or dealing with post partum fun. I’ve come a long way from the first pregnancy where I ran away from goat cheese as if it would levitate and chase me down with fatal consequences. This time around, I’ve been eating soft cheeses, mostly domestic, even blues (omg), and sushi (no tuna though), and sipping wine from my own glass (very very moderate amounts) instead of just breathing in the delicious fumes from the mister’s glass.

That night, however, I started worrying about my raw dinner in combination with the in utero polka that my tiny daughter was performing in protest? She wasn’t liking something and it was either the contractions or the food I was feeding myself.

All of this swirling in my head made it impossible to appreciate the fact that I finally saw and even spoke to the ever-elusive a-list celebrity that I’ve been passively stalking for two years. Jennifer Connelly lives a block over from us and the mister seems to run into her twice a day. I’ve seen John Turturo so often that I almost resent the sight of him because he is NOT the other celeb, the one that I seemed destined to never see in person.

Max started to bug out from all the cake and excitement from his birthday party so we left dinner early. In the waiting lounge, I sat down next to Jennifer and family (Paul Bettany, helloooo!) and proceeded to wrestle with our new stroller. It had kind of registered that one of the most beautiful women in the world was next to me and that her husband was issuing some kind of sympathetic comment about how the new strollers these days were much cooler than when they were using them. I kind of looked up, cranky and distracted, and made a half-hearted response about how this new one was supposed to be easily storable, and compact unlike the bugaboo which I hate like poison now…and they both chimed in about how they hated their bugaboo and we probably made one of the bugaboo-hating people in the world throw up a little in their mouth.

Then I think I ran away for fear of saying something scary uncool like, “you’re so small in person!” to Jennifer or “you’re much more handsome in person!” to Paul.

The next day I was on bedrest and I was hearing the same “no sex, no gym, no picky uppy” from my OB. Then she said I could go back to work. They couldn’t find anything physically pre-termish about the pregnancy.

In the month between Max’s birthday and now, I started working for real and totally kicked ass on a surprise presentation that I had to make to the new president of a major financial institute. We got the job. I tricked myself into thinking I wouldn’t have to go on bedrest again, started working later and later and then on the way to work, I found myself turning around and walking back to my apartment trying to focus through the pain that was splitting my uterus down the middle.

Doctor’s office, hospital, IV, doctors and residents poking my cervix to see if it would do any cool tricks for them like OPEN. I think the one dude was trying to make my cervix dilate. After all the physicians came and went, I never got to see my actual doctor. I’m kind of pissed at her now. She’s out until next Tuesday.

No one can tell me why there was pain, but they did see some minor contractions. Probably because I was dehydrated. Speaking of which, I need to grab something to drink while I wait for one of the doctors to call me back to tell me “no sex, no gym, no picky uppy”. My whole life is about no sex or no gym. Shut up with that.

I’m on bedrest until someone tells me I’m not. I’m hoping against hope, baby. You’ve got to try. It’s been two days and I’m already going nuts.