Pregn

I get all the fun stuff, medically speaking. A week or so ago, I had a little sniffle so I was coughing quite a bit. This made my stomach sore. Then it was just sore in one spot, but only if I coughed, sneezed, or laughed too hard. Yesterday, I was drinking some water and I sputtered a little bit and coughed a lot. Then my stomach hurt a lot in that one spot, about three finger width's to the right of my belly button, but still only with movement.

I called mom and we had a "can this wait until Tuesday" conversation (my regularly scheduled appointment with the OB is on Tuesday). We decided it was just a pulled muscle and they weren't going to be able to do anything about it anyway, so I decided to just try to take it easy today.

This morning, I sneezed unexpectedly and it was the most painful thing that's ever happened to me in the history of painful things that have happened to me. I may have just imagined a popping or ripping sensation, but I'm pretty sure I felt it. I was crying it was so painful, and the pain didn't go away. The sharp, stabbing pain. I called the OB nurse and she said I had....

Abdominal Separation or Diastasis recti. In short, my stomach muscles have separated at that spot due to the stress of my big belly. Her solution: take it easy, lay down a lot, take Tylenol, and don't lift anything heavier than 10-15 lbs. Just so you know, Lillian weighs about 25 lbs, so... I'm not sure how that's going to work. Today, we laid around and did nothing. I didn't go to the grocery store or do laundry or vacuum or pick up toys. We watched a lot of TV and I read my book.

I'm no doctor, but I think the only cure for this thing is to have the baby, which won't happen for another seven weeks. I see the doctor tomorrow, so we'll find out if it will get better or not before then. If not, I'll just have to get used to having the messiest house on the block and turning my clothes inside out to get a second wear out of them. I'll keep you updated.

Terrible Twos

It's hard to be two: you can't eat toothpaste and you have to eat something besides sunchips. Other meltdowns occurred today when I wouldn't let her use the hot straightening iron by herself, when I wouldn't let her run in the sprinklers when we were late for our art class, I wouldn't let her eat a second pack of fruit snacks (in reality, I only brought one with me), when she got glue on her hands during art class, and when there was a piece of potato skin on the baked potato I finally convinced her to eat instead of the dreaded poison peanut butter and jelly sandwich I was trying to make her eat in the second half of the clip. And it's only 3:30.

Sometimes I think it's funny. Other days (like today) I think "Oh My Freaking Heck! You're kidding, right? Again, really?" and I end up saying things like, "I don't want to listen to you cry anymore, so you just go into your room and come out when you're done."

It's on days like this (as she's collapsed in the parking lot because I made her leave her stuffed animal in the car) where I think, "what am I going to do when I have a baby? Who's going to hold the baby while I pick up Lillian? Who's going to stop Lillian from running into oncoming traffic while I'm getting the baby out of her seat?" I guess only time will tell.

What if...?

Sometimes I like to ask Tyler whatever weird question pops into my head. Tonight, over shakes at Johnny Rockets, I was thinking about the movie Mr. Destiny, and I asked Tyler how he would verify my identity if he wasn't sure I was me. I'm pretty sure he hasn't seen Mr. Destiny so I didn't want to confuse my point with trying to explain the plot.

Me: What question would you ask me if you weren't sure I was me?
Tyler: What?
Me: Like, if you suspected I was a robot or an alien or something and you had to make sure I was really me. What is something you would ask me that only I would know the answer to?
Tyler (no hesitation): Whats four times five?
Me (a little confused): um... 20.
Tyler: Too slow, not a robot.

There followed a long conversation about robots and downloading memories (Tyler: they could have stolen all your memories so all I would have to go on is pure processing time) and how it would probably be an alien robot if it was so convincing that he wouldn't be sure if it was human or not.

I love my husband. I was looking for something like: what song did I play when I proposed, or what did I nickname the cat across the street. Nope, that's not his style.

Pregnancy update

I feel like I'm much bigger with this pregnancy than with the last one. But, I didn't take a lot of pictures last time and I have no scientific measurements so I can't quantitatively compare. Therefore, let science commence:

Week 32. 56 days left. Scientific measurement of my belly: 44 inches.

Hot air balloon ride

Every company has a human resources department, right? The lady you go to when you need help filling out forms, or when you want to take some sick days. The head of the HR department at Tyler's work has apparently spent too much time around persnickety engineers and decided that she didn't like the name. Resources. Resources can be depleted. (Maybe she does other things besides regular HR things, and felt the title was insufficient, I'm not sure.) So, she held a contest to see if anyone could come up with a better name. The prize: a hot air balloon ride.


The winning name: The People Department.


A few people came up with either The People Department or something very close to it, so all their names were put in a cup and two were chosen.


Tyler had to be at the park at 6:15 am for his adventure. He says it was fun even though there wasn't much wind. I would think it would be fun because there wasn't much wind, as opposed to lots of wind making it terribly frightening. But maybe that's just me.

Art class

Lillian and I take an art class through parks and rec. It's once a week and although I usually end up doing most (read: all) of the project, we have fun with the other kids and Lillian has fun making a mess. Last week, we made witches out of paper bags. This week, sweet pirate hats. Lillian wore it all the way home in the car, but then didn't want to wear it for the picture.

Mom adventures

Tyler decided to stay a little late at work last night. Tentatively, he decided he was just going to stay 30 minutes later and take the next bus home. The bus passes right next to his work, but the nearest stop to our house is about 1.5 miles away, so Lillian and I go pick him up. In my head, I just planned to come get him 30 minutes later than I usually do, but the buses are fickle and there's a lot of traffic on his route so sometimes they're really early, and sometimes, really late, so I told him to call me when his bus was a little ways off, and we'd leave to come get him.

Lillian and I went to the grocery store and it took a little longer than expected, so I didn't have time to run home and drop the groceries off before the planned 30 minutes later time. We headed over to the bus stop but I hadn't gotten the call from Tyler yet and Lillian was restless (hello, we just got done from the grocery store) so I started up Elmopalooza on our portable DVD player that was still in the car from our drive to California and called Tyler. Turns out, he missed his 30-minutes later bus and was walking outside to catch the hour-later bus. As he was talking to me, he saw the bus drive by. Now I'm restless because that means we'll have to go home and get dinner going (by myself with a bossy, unhappy 2-year-old) and come back in some unspecified time. If that's how it is, that's how it is, so we headed home.

We pulled into our carport and I turned off the car, which turned off the DVD player, which turned off Elmopalooza. This equaled the end of the world for Lillian. She cried and screamed for Elmo to come back. I was hungry and tired so I hauled her and a load of groceries into the house and sat her on the couch. Our house isn't terribly convienent to the car port, so I had to close the door behind me when I went to go get the rest of the groceries. I came back, and the door didn't open. I pushed harder. I could hear Lillian still screaming and crying inside. I tried again. I threw my weight against the door. No good. I realized that Lillian had somehow locked the dead bolt. Great. I had set the keys down inside when I took the first load in. I tried the window next to the door. Locked. The windows into Lillian's room were locked to a paranoid degree. (Because I'm paranoid.) The only one I could get open was the kitchen window but that window is up high and is recessed, making it completely impossible for me in my 7-months gravid state to climb up there. Lillian was still crying, and now she was starting to be scared as I was walking around the outside of the house and telling her to unlock the door and not coming inside.

Luckily my neighbor Drew was on hand to climb in the window and unlock the door.

I made dinner and got Tyler. As Tyler was setting the table for dinner, I went to put away the cookbook which goes in the pantry by the water heater. I opened the door and stuck my hand in only to feel a water drop. I turned on the light and saw that we had pretty much a steady stream of water dripping down from the celing on the left side of our pantry.

Fabulous.

I'm thankful that Tyler took everything out of the pantry and set up a bowl to catch the water bcause I was ready to just let everything get wet. He called the maintence guy (who was actually happy to come fix our problem (which was something to do with the AC and there being a clog in the pipe that carries away the condensation) because, as he put it, he needed the overtime pay) who came as we were finishing up eating and took care of things in a very timely manner.

I was glad to go to bed.

Pumpkin Patch

Although my pictures are nearly as cute as Vivian's, here we are at the pumpkin patch.


A good time was had by all, including Lillian who wanted to get all the pumpkins. Except for the fact that it was stinkin' hot. Sometimes, I forget we live in the desert, then we decide to spend the morning outside, and I remember.


The camera died, so I didn't get any shots of Lillian being afraid of the baby goats and llamas in the petting zoo. Sorry about that.


This was the best I could do to get Tyler to smile. He's just goofy sometimes.

Broccoli

Pretty much the only vegetables/fruits Lillian will eat are peas, corn, cooked carrots, broccoli, and bananas. That's it. (What little kid doesn't like apples?) So, I'm always on the lookout for new ways to cook these things to keep it interesting. I got this idea from Rachael Ray:

Roasted Broccoli

Cut up as much broccoli as you're interested in eating and put it in a baking dish. Mince a few cloves of garlic and throw those in there. Drizzle some olive oil and season with salt and pepper and toss the whole thing to coat. Bake at 400 for 12-15 minutes.

Nutritious, delicious, and it makes your kitchen smell fabulous.

One way to improve your hearing

When I was little, we had this book called Mrs. Pigglewiggle which I loved and read over and over again, except, I think ours had a lavender cover. Mrs. Pigglewiggle, from what I remember, is an older lady who loves little kids and lets them play in her super cool house. She had some potions and things, but I don't think she was a witch. Or, maybe she was, I don't remember.

In one of the chapters, the parents have the problem of their kids being too loud. To help out, Mrs. Pigglewiggle puts some powder in the kids ears that makes their hearing extra sensitive. The kids find all sounds painful and can't even walk to school because the crunching of the leaves is too loud.

This is like what happened to me today. I have really waxy ears which I try to manage myself, but they they occasionally get so backed up, I can't hear anything and I have to go get them cleaned out.

Wow, the world is so loud. On the way home from the doctor's office, I kept trying to check if the doors or windows were open. Then, my phone rang and it was so loud, I actually winced.

I now know I have the loudest microwave on the planet.

Trip to California

Lillian and I just spent a week in California visiting family. Here's some statistics:
Total number of hours in the car: 17
Number of times we watched Elmopalooza in the car: 5
Number of Twizzlers packs consumed: 4
Full (or mostly full) Family gatherings: 2
New skill Lillian learned from Tristan: burping on command (or at least trying to)
Number of hours spent at the beach: 3
Number of pictures I took: 0
Number of times I broke Allison's sewing machine: 1
Number of hours spent lying awake because the Santa Anas were rattling the windows: 4
Number of popsicle sticks used to fix the window: 6
Number of times I thought "ugh! Where's Tyler?": 5,000 (Like when I was starving and trying to eat dinner and all Lillian wanted to do was to run under the trampoline which had 5 kids on it)
Amount of money I spent at Ikea when I intended to only buy a set of twin sheets (estimated cost $20): $75
Number of miles from home when we saw the sign that said "Extreme traffic delays next 10 miles": 20

So, how are you feeling?

Every time I talk to anyone whom I haven't seen in a while (a.k.a. everyone) they ask me how I'm feeling. Tomorrow, I'll be 29 weeks pregnant, firmly rooted in the dreaded third trimester. The answer to the question is: Overall, I feel pretty good. Some things about this pregnancy compare very favorably to when I was pregnant with Lillian. Including:

1. I remember having awful backaches with #1. My lower back and right inbetween my shoulders burned with achy painfulness. I can remember asking Tyler to push as hard as he could on my lower back to try to ease the pain. This time, nothing. My body gets tired from carrying around an all-of-a-sudden 25 lb weight gain, but not really achy. I suppose it's because my trunk muscles have been strengthened by hauling Lillian around for two years.
2. No breathing problems (except the one to be mentioned hereafter). I never had breathing problems until I moved to San Luis Obispo, and then after I got pregnant, my lungs took a complete vacation from any and all responsible behavior. I had to go on steroids and use my inhaler all the time. Probably, if we still lived in SLO, this would be the case, but now that we live in the middle of a desert, I haven't any trouble breathing.

Otherwise, things are improving from earlier in the pregnancy: I'm not so exhausted and I'm not throwing up (as much).

The one thing that is worse than the last time (other than the few extra weeks of morning sickness) is the crazy insane Braxton Hicks contractions. I vaguely remember these but I don't remember them as anything other than a 'huh, there's another one' sensation. Now, they knock the wind out of me and I have to stop what I'm doing and focus on breathing through it. And, although I didn't keep an official total, I'm pretty sure I had five thousand today.

People around town, like at the post office today, ask me when the baby is due and I say December and they say things like, "so, not too much longer." I think, 'are you kidding me?! Since when is 77 days not too much longer?' But I don't say that, I just say, "yup, pretty soon."

Halloween, thy name is Martha

I have been in sort of a crafty mood recently. This is how I've been channeling those feelings.

I showed these paper topiaries to Tyler after I was done meticulously cutting and gluing and he said, "oh, you made... big... paper... lollipops." I think he's never seen me being so Girly before, it threw him for a loop.

Note: I made these rats last year. I'm surprised I actually kept them, more surprised that we actually moved them to Tucson, and most surprised that I actually found them after we moved.

I like this wreath. I wish halloween lasted all fall so I could keep it on the door. I worked on this bad boy for about two days (probably much to my family's dismay as it took over the kitchen table) and when it was all done, I marched triumphantly over to the door to hang it up and... no nail. It was such a buzzkill. I wasn't sure how the apartment people would feel about me putting a nail in the door, so I bought a 3M hook that seems to be working quite well.

Going Private

I've been toying with the idea of making this blog private, and I think the time has come. If you want to continue to read me, please either email me your email address or leave it in the comments. I'll give it a few days, but let me know sooner rather than later.

We all knew I was a hippie

We all knew I was a closet hippie. No use denying it. When Lillian was small, I used cloth diapers on her for a portion of her life. I used the Fuzzi Bunz brand which does allow for a little growth, but not much. She eventually grew out of them, and I stopped using them and switched to disposables. Now that diapers are ridiculously expensive, I think I'll try to use cloth with the next one.

Since we're having another girl, we probably won't have a baby shower. I hear the popular thing to do when one is in my position is to have a diaper shower. So, you're all invited to my virtual diaper shower. If you had an inkling to buy me a present, you could spring for a cloth diaper. After doing some research, I've decided on the BumGenius brand. The version 3.0 fits babies from 7-35 lbs so theoretically, Lillian could wear them too (maybe they'll help me get her out of diapers. Not likely any time soon as she's still deathly afraid of the potty). You can buy them here for $17.95 each.

If you're not interested in participating, you could still get me a nice card. Or some chocolate. Yeah, that'd be good too.

P.S. Why not just reuse the fuzzibunz that you used before? I only had a few, like five I think, and I bought them off eBay, so after being used for whatever child and then for my child, they are a little worn out. Plus, they are size medium which would not fit a newborn, no way, no how.

September, in a post

I used to do a bit of camping. Then I got pregnant with Lillian and who wants to sleep on the ground when you're pregnant? Not me. So we quit. Then, everyone told us how easy it was to take babies camping. I didn't believe a word of it, so we never went. Then, Lillian became a really good sleeper, when we had her exact bedtime routine and she was sleeping in her own bed. A woman after my own heart, she does not want to share her bed with anyone. (Remember when we took that road trip to Idaho and no one wanted to share a bed with me because I would kick them and push them in the middle of the night? I very vividly remember trying to push mom out of the bed. When was that... 1993?) Every time I've tried to bring her in bed with me (like when she wakes up at 4:30 and is wide awake and not interested in going back in her bed), she refuses to sleep. Never have I been successful with co-sleeping that one. So, I pictured a similar disaster if we took her camping.

The ward campout was a few weeks ago, and in our quest to make friends and meet new people, we decided to go.


You'll notice I'm wearing a sweatshirt. It was amazing, I was cold for the first time in months. Some members of the ward complained and dramatically shivered. I sat around in my tee-shirt and relished the 45 degree chill until I really was too cold to do it anymore.

And my predictions about Lillian not sleeping... completely valid.


We all slept for maybe an hour before she was up and poking me and poking Tyler and playing with the zippers and singing songs to her animals and taking Bunny and going "boing boing boing" on Tyler's head until Tyler threw Bunny to the foot of the tent and waking me up to tell me that daddy threw Bunny and so on until sunrise.

When we got up, Tyler looked at me and said, "Well, I think I got about 3 hours of sleep total."

I'd be OK with trying again, maybe it was the novelty of sleeping outside in a tent that got her. Maybe the novelty of sleeping next to mom and daddy. Maybe if we got a bigger tent so we could make a little area just for her instead of trying to wedge her inbetween us in our two-man. Over hot chocolate in the morning, I tried to be optimistic when discussing these possiblities with Tyler. For him, this was a one time thing. Never again.



And now for something completely different.


The people Tyler works with are silly; they have dress up days all the time. On Talk Like a Pirate Day, they all dressed up like pirates, except Tyler who is not silly enough for that, and they handed out eye patches and gold earrings. Tyler also tells me that every email had to begin with 'ARRRRRG!'

Lillian caught the vision, except we couldn't get her to put the patch on just one eye.





Also, you never know when one of your stuffed animals will have an accident.


Better to be prepared.

My visit home

That's a picture of my brother-in-law with a gun. Don't mess with him. 'What is a picture of Jason (Tyler's brother) doing on a post titled 'My visit home'?' You may ask. Well, I went into iPhoto to find a picture of my family that I'm going to visit and this picture was oddly stuck in the folder labeled 'Calder Family Pictures.' I thought that was funny, so I put it up.

In a few weeks, I'm going to visit my family in Orange County. I'm so so so excited because my wonderful brother Austin and my beautiful sister-in-law Chantel are going to be there (and their awesome kids).

Here's a list of things I want to do while I'm there:
1. Go to the beach
2. Eat at Wahoo's or that restaurant in Anaheim that Anne took me to (with Anne of course).
3. Sew a purse with Allison
4. Hang out with some old friends. Depending on who calls me back, this could be Mallory, Vanessa, or Tanya, or maybe some combination of them.
5. Go on our kid-friendly adventure as per Allison. Did we decide on the discovery museum?
6. Of course spend time with my family.

Anything else Lillian and I should do?

The baby's due in December so we won't be able to go back to California for a while, although we're really lucky that both mom and Tyler's parents are going to come out in December (for the baby. Did you really think they liked us enough to come on our account? Pfft.)

It's going to be great.

My wildest dreams

Last night, I had a dream. Of all the things I could have dreamed about: Hawaii, being an astronaut, eating chocolate cake, not being pregnant anymore without having to go into labor, I dreamt about cleaning. In my wildest dreams, I started with the kitchen, moved onto the living room, and finished up by mopping the floors. Woot.

Practice makes perfect?

I decided that Lillian was going to be the Morton's salt girl for Halloween. All she needed was a bright yellow dress, white tights, yellow shoes, and an umbrella. I'm a pioneer woman, I can sew a dress, right? I've sewed before.


This dress turned out alright, except it's gigantic. The last things I sewed for Lillian, I made when she was a baby, which makes for easy sewing and fitting. She can't go anywhere and doesn't mind staring into space while I work the machine.


This one I had to work on only while she was napping. I'm fairly happy with how it turned out except for a few minor flaws (the pleats don't really line up on the front and I screwed up on one of the sleeves in the back), except I couldn't size it to her. While sewing, I compared it to one of her existing dresses so the sleeves and the hem are the appropriate length. Otherwise, it's a potato sack.


Good thing she's the cutest sack of potatoes I've ever seen.

Pima Air and Space Museum

We ventured out to the Pima Air and Space Museum a few weekends ago. We took this biplane to get there. Lillian flew.


This is a hobby plane that you can order in a kit. After sitting in it and manipulating all the controls, it reminds me of the inside of mom's piano: held together with shoelaces. And, I'm not entirely sure I want to be up at any distance off the ground with nothing between me and certain death besides shoelaces. So, we won't be buying one of these.


Tyler's an aerospace engineer, so I've heard a few things about airplanes. Above is an engine from an SR-71, what Tyler always described as a "super-secret, super-fast spy plane." (Pictured below) I guess there are only a few in existence... six maybe? He was really excited, talking all about how fast they are, telling me they go mach whatever, explaining to me about how the engine works and how it's essentially a big supercharger. It's pretty interesting, but I'm not an aerospace engineer, so I wasn't really impressed...


... until I saw this plaque. I can't really comprehend how fast mach whatever is but 67 minutes, 54 seconds to cross the whole United States is really, really fast. I couldn't believe it. I called Tyler over so he could look at this and be impressed. He got that look on his face that I assume all husbands get when talking to their wives about things like this (and wives get when talking to their husbands when talking about other things, like when I had to explain to Tyler that if the baby looks like she's going to poop in the tub, take her out and sit her on the toilet) and he says, "What do you think I've been talking about? How fast did you think mach whatever is?" (Wikipedia says they go mach 3, so that's probably what Tyler said.) At any rate... wow, mach 3 is fast.