Give yourself a time-out while you're at it

Elle is such an easy kid. At least I think she is. Maybe I just think that because I'm so used to how challenging Joseph can be. Comparatively Elle just seems like a breeze. She even scolds herself when she does something wrong. This morning I woke up to:

Bump....thump....thump......rustle...swish......rrrrrriiiiiiiiip. "Oh no no no no no! Da do do do? El Ro! Wha happen? No no no El Ro! No rips books! Here. Fak it. There. Seeallbetter!"

Translation? Elle woke up and reached between the bars of her crib to grab a book out of the box next to her bed. She pulled one in and then looked at it for a minute before ripping it. "Oh no no no no no! What did you do? Elle Rose! What happened? No no no Elle Rose! No ripping books! Here. Fix it. There. See? All better!"

She's actually a lot harder on herself than I would be. Poor thing.

Is being annoyed good for the baby?

I've discovered an aspect of surrogacy that I'm less than thrilled with. Having an IF who is a massive worrier is turning out to be more than a little annoying.

J worries about everything. He's so worried about me inhaling paint fumes when we work on our house that he has offered (insisted really) to pay someone to do it for us and to put us up in a hotel while it's being done. Ok, we'll probably take him up on that but please, give me a little credit. I wasn't planning on spending house painting time with my face hovering three inches over an open can of lead based paint.

He's worried about what kind of foods I eat. Again, this could be a valid concern but again, give me a little credit. I'm a halfway smart person, I know how to avoid foods that are not safe for the baby. J's worried about foods that contain bacteria, foods that might contain mercury and (among other things) foods that might be too spicy. (Why? I don't know.) I swear that he's thisclose to hiring a personal chef to come over make sure that I only eat safe, bland foods.

He's worried about my doctor. Every time he talks to me he asks if I like my doctor, if I think he's a good doctor, if I think the doctor knows enough about IVF pregnancies to be my doctor, if I know what medical school the doctor went to, if I can spell the doctors name so that he can do a background check on him.

He's worried about medication. This is the big one. When I had the CVS done the doctor who did it gave me a prescription for antibiotics just in case of infection from the needle being inserted into my abdomen. J didn't want me to take them until I ran them by my regular OBGYN. I don't know why that matters though since he doesn't trust my OB's judgment on medication either. My OB prescribed something to me for morning sickness and I made the mistake of mentioning this to J. J called me back not 15 minutes later wanting to know the name of the medication I was on. When I told him he told me he had been doing some research and that he was worried that the medication was not safe for the baby. Aurgh! I told him as nicely and as gently as I could that while I was pregnant with Elle I lost a lot of weight and was sometimes so dehydrated that I had to have IV fluids administered. The doctor and I both felt that the morning sickness meds were a better alternative this time around. And according to the research I did the meds are considered perfectly safe for the baby. J's still not so sure. Cripes, he doesn't even want me taking Tylenol for a headache without running it by a doctor first.

Augh! Look, if you tell me that the reason you selected me to carry your child was because you trust me enough to do a good job at it, then trust me! Trust me enough to do everything I can to keep this baby safe, short of living in a plastic bubble. Trust me enough to know that I won't spend my days inhaling spray paint, eating potato salad that's been out in the sun for 8 hours and taking hallucinogenics. Just fricken trust me.

I know this all makes me sound like a huge bitch because how can I be annoyed that J just wants to look out for his baby and what kind of a cold hearted person am I anyway? Lay off ok? I'm pregnant and hormonal and not sleeping all that well. You would be annoyed too if you were in my position. And if anyone leaves a comment on this post taking any side but mine I'm deleting it because it will only annoy me more.

Quick, while we're at the stoplight!

Joseph is very, very literal minded. Part of that is his age and part of that is the Aspergers. He doesn't really ger sarcasm and often if something is said as a joke he'll think it's real. (It's a a funny thing though because he has a wicked sense of humor and he often suprises me with how witty and clever he can be.) Jesse or I will often forget that he's like this and we'll make an offhand comment that then requires 5 minutes of explaining to Joseph exactly why we said what we did and what we really meant by it. The other day Joseph saw a public service ad on tv about drinking and driving. It led to this conversation:

Joseph: Oh no! That commercial said you can get arrested if you drink and drive!
Me: That's right.
Joseph: Oh no!
Me: Honey, that's a good thing. People shouldn't drink and drive.
Joseph: But you drink and drive all the time! (He's frantic at this point.)
Me: What? No I don't! What do you mean?
Joseph: I see you drinking pop or water when you drive.
Me: Oh, well sweetie, it's ok to drink stuff like that when you drive. They just mean that people can't drink grown up drinks, things like beer, before they drive.
Joseph: Why?
Me: Because those kinds of drinks make it hard for you to be a safe driver. If you drink those things and drive it's not safe for you and it's not safe for the other people on the road. That's why the police have an ad telling you not to do it.
Joseph: So it's ok to drink water when you're driving?
Me: Right.
Joseph: (long, thoughtful pause) And you have to drink your beer while you're stopped at the stoplight?

The best part was that he was really confused about why Jesse and I thought that was so funny. He really thought he had it all figured out.

Abook, the WonderTeen

We love our babysitter. We all love having her here. In just a couple of months I went from being very skeptical about the idea of having a teenage girl in our house (on purpose!) to really enjoying having her around.

See, the thing is, I really don't like teenage girls. I didn't care for them much when I was one myself and if possible I like them even less now. Oh, I'm sure that most teenagers will eventually become perfectly lovely people but chances are, if you're between the ages of 12 and 18 I don't want to be around you. That's why I was so suprised to find myself not just tolerating, but really liking our babysitter.

First off, the kids really, really like her. She's very good with them and they respond very well to her. Whenever she comes over Elle runs over to her and yells "Abook!". (No, that's not her real name, that's just Elle's way of saying it.) If you have children you know how much stuff like that really counts for.

Secondly, she's just a really neat person. She's very artistic, she plays soccer, she goes dear hunting and she likes woodworking. She's really mature for her age and very interesting to talk to. I seriously wonder if half the reason I liked havingher around so much was just because I liked having someone to talk to other than the kids all day.

The sad news is that yesterday was Abook's last day of regular babysitting. She has some family stuff going on now so she won't be able to come over for the rest of the summer. The good news is that now Jesse and I have someone new we can call on if we want to have an evening out. Until now our list of babysitters was very, very short and contained only a few select family members.

So how did I go from being a hater of teenager girls and distruster of nearly everyone when it comes to my kids? It's simple, she's Abook, the WonderTeen.

Flashlight fun

This is a really cute montage my mom sent me of the kids playing at her and my dad's house. They were playing with flashlights and dancing. Cute!

Photo Sharing - Video Sharing - Share Photos - Free Video Hosting

Screw them all

Fuck you for making a comment about the size of my boobs as you walked past me. And fuck you again for repeating the comment louder when your friend asked what you had said. And fuck your friend for turning around and staring at my chest like he had never seen a pair of breasts before. Fuck me for knowing exactly what the two of you were doing but feeling so crummy and insecure that all I did about it was hunch my shoulders forward and feel dirty.

I'm so sick of these things. I'm sick of the neck and back pain I've had since I was 17. I'm sick of not being able to find cute clothes that fit right (or if I do, wearing it once and then stretching it out so much that I can't wear it again). I'm sick of people thinking it's ok to just openly stare at my chest when they walk past me.

The second I'm done having babies and/nursing these things are getting chopped.

My good luck ran out

I've flown several times in my life. Often enough that I feel like there's nothing really involved in air travel that can suprise me. I know that you can get stuck sitting in front of a kid who won't stop kicking your seat or a crazy old lady who won't stop talking to you or a rather large man who thinks that just because he's sitting in the middle seat he's entitled to use both armrests. I've been in all these seating situations and none of them were really that big of a deal. In fact, as soon as I got off the plane I forgot about them. I've been very lucky in that for most of my life I have never had a really bad seatmate.

All that changed when I recently flew from LA to Minneapolis. My good flight luck ran out. I was seated next to the most disgusting I have ever had the misfortune to "meet".

It all started out ok. As I sat in the waiting area I couldn't help but notice that there were about 40 or so young, obnoxious Army guys waiting for the same plane as me. I was worried that I was going to end up sitting right in the middle of all of them. Even under the best of circumstances I'm not a big fan of large groups of rowdy 18-22 year old guys. Not to mention, and I'm ashamed to even admit this, that there is still a little bit of Air Force snobbery left in me. I look down on the Army. Look, it's not right but I can't help how I feel. Air Force rules, Army drools!

Anyway, I didn't want to sit by the grunts. So you an imagine my pleasure at finding out I was seated no where near them. Yippee! I was even more pleased to find myself seated on the isle next to a man furiously scribbling out a complicated mathmatical formula on a notepad. He seemed like the perfect person to sit next to. He probably wouldn't try to talk to me as I read my book or did the crossword puzzle in the back of the in-flight magazine. My happiness lasted about as long as it took for me to get my seatbelt buckled.

Then the smell hit me. It was like sour milk combined with moldy fruit. "Please" I thought to myself "Let that be a random odor drifting from somewhere. Please do not let that be the guy next to me."

It was. If the flight hadn't been full I would have jumped up right there and asked to be moved to another seat. But the flight was full and I was stuck. I decided to read my book and suck on a hard candy and concentrate very hard on not paying any attention to the guy next to me.

Here's the thing though. When someone is sitting 2 inches away from you it's hard to ignore the. That's why I couldn't help but notice that the man next to me started to dig in his nose. He had damned near half his hand in there. Every so often he would pull out his finger, inspect it and then flick whatever he found to the floor. And it wasn't like he was being discreet either! He was openly just jamming his finger into his nose over and over and over. And after he finished with one nostril he went to work on the other. At this point I would have happily sat on a grunts lap if it meant getting away from this guy.

Then it got worse. Yes, worse. He started to dig in his ears. Oh god, I tried not to watch. He would pull out large gobs of wax and then wipe it on his notebook paper. He didn't even try to fold up the paper or throw it away or anything! He just left it sitting there like he was proud of it! Like it was part of the mathmatical equation he was working on!

Next he started digging in his teeth. Whatever he found in there ended up on the floor with his nasal trophies. (I wonder how he decided what to flick and what to wipe?) Then he started in on his eyes. All through his picking and wiping and picking and flicking routine I told myself to be calm, it would all be over soon. After all, the man only had so many holes on his face that he could clean out. It couldn't go on forever.

Then the scratching started. He would lift up hsi arm so that his pit was about .4 cenimeters from my face. Then he would start to scratch. And he would scratch and scratch and scratch. Then he would do the other side. (I should mention that as bad as I had it the woman on the other side of him had it worse. I noticed that at one point he had taken his flip flops off and had his feet under the seat in front of her. Why she didn't say something I don't know, I would have.)

There was still more scratching to be done! After all, what's a flight without a solid hour of scratching your balls? After the ball scratching he started in on the face picking again. Oh, it was so horrible. And to top it off, as we were waiting to get off the plane he nearly knocked me unconsious when he hit me in the head with his carry on as he wrestled it out of the overhead compartment. I didn't even care at that point. All I cared about was getting off that plane, finding a bathroom and scrubbing down the entire right side of my body.

It was so terrible. I figure whatever bad flight karma I wracked up out to have been wiped out with that one flight though. Now I can go back to having reasonable pleasant, booger flicking free flights.

The kids who are mine

I've been so caught up with this pregnancy and everything involved in it that I've kind of stopped talking about my kids. That just seems wrong since they're the whole reason I started this blog in the first place.

The kids are good. Now let me tell you a little bit about my cervix!

Ok, I really don't have anything to say about my cervix. But the kids really are good.

Joseph did really well with summer school. His writing improved a lot. I would like to think that this was partly due to the rigorous summertime workbook schedule I had him on. I would like to think that but I can't because at some point Workbooks Every Day No Matter What became I Don't Even Remember When We Last Did A Workbook. (This is one of the many reasons I don't homeschool. I have no discipline. After 5 minutes I would be like "This is boring. Let's do Play-doh!") I guess the important thing is that his writing really did improve. Thanks to his soccer program I think he's also had some big improvements in gross motor skills.

I'm hopeful that all of the improvements he's made this summer will help Joseph feel like he really fits in with the other kids next year. He's starting to notice that there are things about him that are different from other kids. He asks things like "Why do other people like to eat lots of kinds of foods but it's so hard for me?" and "Why am I so much shorter than all the other kids? Can you put me in a class with only kids who are short like me?" and "Why do I have to go to speech therapy when other kids don't?" Most of the time he's really good natured about these things and they don't really seem to bother him. I hope he can keep his great, upbeat way of looking at things.

Elle is great too. I mean, really, really great. She's at such a fun age, every day she does so many new things. She's a natural little charmer. With her big blue eyes, her pink, round cheeks and her pretty red hair she's a very cute baby. If I'm out in public with her people actually stop me to tell me what a pretty girl she is. What makes her even cuter though is her charming little personality. She's very affectionate and sweet and happy go lucky.

One thing I love about kids Elle's age is how fun it is to watch them learn to talk. I think Elle learns to say something new each day. Just this morning Joseph sneezed and Elle said "Bess you" for the first time ever. She's able to put together some pretty complex sentences like "I go up stairs" and "Where is she?" My favortie things that she says though are both just one word. If you tell Elle "I love you" she's always respond by saying "Too". Get it? Instead of "I love you too" she's babyfied it to "Too". Come on! That's cute! The other thing she says that just kills me every time is what she'll say when she's doing something she really enjoys. If she's sitting with Joseph and playing Little People she'll look up every so often and cry "Fun!" Like she's so overcome with how great it is just to be doing whatever it is that she's doing.

So there, that kind of turned into a big brag session about my babies. I can't help it, I have awesome kids. I kind of forgot what neat little people they are while I was on bedrest. I think I was a little stressed and bummed out and I forgot to take the time to notice what really great kids they are. I need to not do that again because they really are fantastic kids.

Note to self - Focus less on the kid you're growing and more on the one's you're raising.