Random stuff from the past week.

I should preface this by saying that I took my first ever ambient just minutes before attempting this blog.

Rastus has been kicking HARD for about a week now! As in I yelp and grab for the protruding foot between my navel and ribcage. The other day, I told Hubby to talk to him to calm him down. While hubby had his face on my belly, he got solidly kicked in the head which made me yelp and jerk. So Rastus kicked his daddy in the head in utero!

*subject change*

Our kitty cat is Quint's favorite animal ever. We have to do everything kitty around here and I bet I nearly have Aristocats memorized. The other night, though, I had settled Quint down to read his favorite book, had gotten him comfy where his elbow wasn't stabbing me/his brother, when the cat decided that she wanted to join story time. I didn't think there was any more room on my lap, but she tried. After a minute or two, Quint pushed her off! Too many people on the lap.

*subject change*

After my flop of a yard sale, I packed everything up and had the ARC come pick it up.
Here's what I put out for them (not the swimming pool). And just a few hours later, only the Christmas trees were still there. Apparently they don't pick those up until November 1st. So we'll have a friend help us give those to goodwill. Wonderful feeling of emptiness in our storage areas.

*subject change*

Apparently my belly button outie is so funny to my son that it can produce a giggle any time I show it. Yesterday, I used it as bribery. "If you take one more bite of yogurt, you can poke my belly button." Worked like a charm for three bites in a row!

*subject change*

I've been sleeping so horribly for several weeks now that it's made me quite crabby. Monday night, for some reason, I got a good night's sleep! I only got up in the night 3 times! As a result, I felt pretty darn great all day Tuesday. Rastus was kicking the fool out of me, but I otherwise wasn't hurting. On the phone in the afternoon, after catching up with my husband, he said, "you seem like you feel good today. You seem, you know, nice!" He immediately started backpedaling and saying please don't take offense at that, but I though it was hysterical. I've been around me lately. I know I've been an effing ray of sunshine. He was relieved that I was laughing. Quint was in a good mood when I picked him up and I felt great, so we went to the park for a half hour while they finished filling my ambien perscription. Quint is very independent on the playground now!

I took the ambien at 8:15 and before nine was having great difficulty writing in this blog. It's now 5:45 and I seem to have a bit of a hangover, so maybe I'll nap a bit more. I only woke up twice in the night. I accidently broke a lamp I've had for nearly 30 years - I have hopes that I can find a replacement globe on ebay.

Off to nap time before my day must start.

Pregnancy pictures!

At least one friend (maybe two) wanted to see my current pregnant belly, so here we go! First, the baseline photo from last fall.


And now the current photo at week 26, 6.5 months.
When I first started taking these pictures, I worried that I'd get the two sets of pregnancy pictures mixed up. What was I thinking? There will always be a brightly colored toy if not my son in the picture that shows my belly.

Introducing.....

Rastus Cornealious Fudge!

(It kind of looks like God is holding him by neck/head. Can you see the fingers?)Who is, of course, a BOY!!!

With cute feet...
Other names we're not considering are Cleatus and Willie-Jack.

I am confirmed to be at 20 weeks pregnant and the Ultrasound predicted a due date of June 1st. Everything looked good and healthy! Lots of movement. I had to lay on my side and jiggle for a while in order to get him to turn and stop being shy.

Updates

Ok, ok, ok. So I haven't blogged in nearly a month. So here's a short update on life since the last blog:

Pregnancy is going great. I'm 19 weeks along and feel it kicking and moving with some frequency. I'm still in my regular sized pants. This seems very odd to me, but my doctor isn't worried, so I'm not worried. I'm still either nauseous or just extremely hungry in the morning and my little wonder drug fixes the swimmy headedness within 12 minutes.

Quint is doing great. He's running and playing and still dancing to his daddy's bagpiping on a regular basis. He has started to throw some temper tantrums, which we're trying to nip in the bud. He is obsessed with Mary Poppins which was starting to slowly drive me crazy, so both the DVD and the VHS are currently hidden. He's slowly moving on to Veggie Tales and Yo Gabba Gabba is due to arrive Saturday via netflix. He loves going outside and exploring the world. He loves climbing stairs. He's gotten in the habit lately of waking between 10:30 and 11:30 and going completely nuts until he gets a cuddle and a some crackers. Not good with another baby on the way. So we've been breaking him of that. Which is fun. Yeah, right. But almost daily, we have a crawl all over each other tickling and kissing fest which is tons of fun. As are the sweet running and hugging my knees thing.

Lap-band update! Ten months after the lap-band was installed in my husband, and something amazing happened day before yesterday! Are you ready? It's never been done before! I saw my husband's upper abdominal muscles!!! He even flexed them to make sure that wasn't fat after all! He's lost 38 pounds total now. And he still loves it.

My new job at the tax office is going OK, though there are very few hours to be had at this early point. I had one terrible, horrible, no good, very bad day of phenominal proportions. It involved me attempting a return, by myself, before I was ready, with (as it turned out) some wrong information. And once the client left (mostly because of my wrong information), she talked to the LOCAL NEWS CREW THAT INTERVIEWED HER IN THE LOBBY!! So I spent hours terrified that I had not only scared off one client (which is not that bad really), but that my mis-information might wind up on THE LOCAL NEWS potentially scaring off COUNTLESS CLIENTS!! It all turned out alright in the end. She didn't say anything on the news which was incorrect or even negative about our tax business.

My Christmas was really great! We went to Texas to visit my parents for a week. The flight with the baby was good! He slept for an hour of the 2 hour flight and I managed to keep him entertained and mostly quiet after that. He loved it at my folks house, except for the one dog that licked his face so much that I think that's why his face broke out a bit. He loved the other dog, and played fetch with her. He loved their extra fluffy cat. He loved their enormous fenced in yard with six wonderful steps to go up and down on endlessly. He loved that he could see outside at all times and could almost always convince someone to go outside with him by finding his coat (where ever we had hidden it) and shaking it at them saying, "outside!" until someone finally said, "alright I'll go out with you in the cold!" It was cold in Texas at Christmas. That never happens! Usually it's 50 degrees at least! He loved having a doting aunt, nannie, and grandpa granting his nearly every whim for nearly a week straight. He handled the family reunion day exceptionally well and even played a little ping-pong. He got so many toys that the UPS box we shipped back home cost $40! I got a new camera to replace my broken one, which is why we've been short on photos on the blog lately. Hubby got a gun safe (which we really needed) and a HUGE bottle of his favorite cologne. We stuffed and stuffed and stuffed ourselves with all manner of sweets and good food. I napped at will because there was always someone to watch Quint. We got to see Quint's namesake for several days. We got to see my best friend and her husband for most of an afternoon. All in all, it was a really great Christmas!

Let's see, what else needs an update.... we've hit on Quint, pregnancy, work, lap-band, and Christmas. I think that may be it. Oh wait.

Depression in general: I've been having trouble with depression which unfortunately (for hubby) manifests itself as being really nasty to dear hubby. Usually, in the winter blues months, I'm employed, I exercise, I make sure to get extra sunshine, I keep a full spectrum light bulb nearby and have plenty of reasons to see friends most days. This winter, I'm unemployed, a bit direction-less in terms of what to do with my life immediately (for the next 6 months), it's been too stinkin' cold to walk outside, hence little sunshine, I haven't put in the full spectrum light bulbs, and I'm a bit housebound. Not a good combo. So. I've decided that at either 11am or 3pm each day, depending on when I'm working, Quint and I are going for a walk if it is anywhere near 45 degrees OR I'm going to get out my workout video in the living room. OR I'll make an effort to chase Quint around our indoor racetrack (kitchen, living room, entryway) until I've been out of breath for some minutes. Also, I'm making an effort to contact my friends by phone and set up lunch dates.

Also to combat the winter blues, I'm starting to make lists of things to do and then ACTUALLY DOING THEM!! It's amazing how now that I have more time, I get less business things done. Granted, I usually conducted my business type things done while at work which is not possible now, but really? It took me 3 days to actually obtain my last paystub and get it emailed somewhere?! There is no reason for me to fall behind on any bills due only to neglect. We are not UNable to pay any bills right now. Quint goes to bed by 8pm. I've been going to be at midnight. That's 4 hours a day to get computer stuff done. I've ordered the $10 do-dad that will let me plug my regular desktop keyboard into my laptop so that balancing the checkbook is quicker.

In light of the list effort, here are some plans for this weekend:
Take down the Christmas stuff and put it all away.
Store clothes that Quint has recently outgrown.
Clean off the dining table.
Neaten up the garage (one hour)
Clean out my car
Make out a menu for next week.
Clean up the edges of our bedroom.

And if I'm exceptionally ambitious:
File things
Find the bathroom counter and scrub it.
Wax the hardwood floors.
Examine last year's taxes.
Put the blue loveseat on Craigslist.

The way things are supposed to be...

We firmly believe that God is looking out for us and that all our weird events have happened for a reason. That is NOT to say that we will ever know or understand the reason behind some of those things. But lately, I think I figured out one small thing.

The weekend of Quint's birthday party, Hubby was supposed to take a whirlwind road trip to his mother's town for a family reunion. He was to leave at like 4am Sunday morning and be back Monday night. But at 4am, after having gotten up, showered and dressed, he woke me up. He said he had this huge sense of foreboding. You may remember that I blogged about his Sept foreboding. As a result, he didn't go. Hubby has a very reliable gut.

Recently, I put it together that it was that particular Monday night that we got pregnant with our second baby. Now maaaaaybe we still would have gotten pregnant that night, but as my friend Suzette pointed out, after all that driving, "events" weren't very likely to happen.

So God wanted us pregnant right now and specifically that day. Makes me wonder what's in store for this little baby of ours!

10 weeks pregnant and other stuff

This pregnancy seems different in several ways, some of them blessedly different.

I'm at 10 weeks. Yesterday at the doctor's office I learned that I've gained about 3 pounds, but apparently I'm just more dense because my pants need a belt at times during the day. At other times, I can't keep them buttoned.

I'm cold all the time so far, but then again, it just turned cold outside and I've got a cold. So perhaps all bets are off on that. I'll have to look up when I started to feel warm while pregnant with Quint.

The biggest difference which is WONDERFUL!!! is that I haven't actually thrown up due to morning sickness! I hate throwing up. Hate. Hate. Hate. Instead, I'm nauseous until at least noon. And might be nauseous at any time for any reason. The doctor gave me some anti-nausea medicine which I left at home this morning - DUH!

Ding! (subject change)

Quint still refuses to feed himself soft, chopped vegetables despite the fact that he does it most days at Priscilla's. Tuesday, I tried in vain to get him to eat some mixed vegetables and all I got was a crying child and a frustrated mama. Finally, I dumped his mixed veggies in the blender with some peas and then he gobbled it up as I spoon fed him. So during one of my two evenings a week, I spent 30 minutes trying to get my son to do something that I know he can do, but refuses to do with lots of crying. I decided that forcing him to do this for himself can wait until I get done with my tax class.

Yes, I'm probably coddling him and am going to extra trouble to keep him from crying (lousy reason to not do something) but I've got enough stress in my life right now. I'd much rather watch TV on the floor while Quint wanders around the house playing with and carrying toys. Especially when he will come find me every 10 or 15 minutes just to give me a hug, cuddle for 30-60 seconds, and wander off again. Golden. I'd much rather get dinner out of the way and get to floor time. I'll become a hard-a$$ mom again in a month.

Quint really started walking everywhere Oct 17, 2010. My good friend with a granddaughter 2 weeks younger than Quint came over to visit Oct 16th. That little girl, Ava, was walking everywhere and Quint couldn't keep up. The very next day, Quint was walking nearly everywhere.

Ding! (subject change)

I took my mid-term in my tax class last night. The wonderful substitute from Friday helped me prepare for the mid-term, and I'm sure I made as high a grade as I did because of her. But I only made a 77. Not so hot. So I still have to work my buns off.

Ding! (subject change)

There's an Administrative Assistant position open upstairs at my work. I could do this job, seeing how I've been an AA before anyway and I've applied for it. I hope they consider me. There might be a slight pay cut, but staying with the same company would be ideal. Please pray that I get that job.

Hmmm....

Yeah, don't have a good title for this one. Or a good, cogent plan here at the onset. And this is likely to be depressing for all you loyal readers, but maybe I can put some hysterical spin on things and cheer myself up in the process.

So what I really want right now is a big, swinging porch swing to put in front of my house where I have no, real porch. I could really use some downtime with cookies, gently swinging, watching leaves fall, while my son does something safe and fun nearby. Several problems with this plan. I don't own a swing. Or a porch. So it would have to sit in front of the garage door very near the cat pan. And my son doesn't know what to do with himself on an aggregate driveway. And our lawn has no grass. Our lawn is patchy moss, sticks, leaves, mud, and a smattering of pretty green weeds.

Last weekend when I needed to hose off several things in the yard, I took him with me. I brought along the awesome table of musical buttons for him to play with. But he's seldom been in the front yard. Mainly because of the lack of a lawn. So he hung onto the little table and watched every move I made instead. At times I would relocate him and sit him down somewhere else, and he would not move a muscle. Well, OK, he did pick up a stick, wave it around, and then try to chew it. And aggregate is heck on the baby knees, so I don't see him crawling anywhere on that stuff.

Anyway, I need at least a 30 minute vacation. The combination of emotional things is not really working for me right now. That's the combination of being out of work and being pregnant minus the joy of having heard a heartbeat or something else doctor approved/verified. Very stupid and despairing conversations run through my head.

Emotional me: WWHHHHHHHHHYyyy haven't I found a job yet?
Logical me: Because you've only really been looking for a week, dingbat!

Emotional me: WWWHHHHHHYYYYyyyyy don't I feel pregnant?
Logical me: Did you forget the weakness and nausea from this morning?

Emotional me: WWWWWHHHHYYYYYyyyy haven't I felt the baby move yet?
Logical me: Because you're not even 7 weeks pregnant!

Emotional me: WWWHHHHYYYYY can't I seem to get anything done?
Logical me: Have you forgotten that you're pregnant? Lower your standards - NOW!

Emotional me: WWWWWHHYYYY can't I visualize this new baby yet?
Logical me: Because it's barely a tadpole! And it's not like you recognized Quint when he first popped out of you! You knew he'd be a baby, but you were surprised that you couldn't have picked him out of a lineup at 5 hours old. The baby is a THING UNSEEN! And it won't be seen until at least May!

Emotional me: WWWWHHHYYY am I so tired and fatigued?
Logical me: Has anyone told you that you're pregnant, loosing your job, and perhaps you're a little down?

Also, some realistic, if a bit discouraging facts:
After Thanksgiving, I probably will not get a job until January. No one really hires during the holidays.
If I find no other job, I'll have this job until Dec 10. Then no one will hire me until January.
I might get hired somewhere between January and whatever point it becomes obvious that I'm not just fat, I'm pregnant. No one will hire me at 7 months pregnant.
I don't really want to start a job until 6 weeks after the baby is born.
So, in all likelihood, I might find a job between now and Thanksgiving, between New Years and March, or after July.

*Ding!*

Here's a completely un-related funny! Scott here at work and my boss are very firmly Democrats. My boss is also black, so during the Obama campaign, she and Scott would chatter on and on (and on!) about how wonderful Obama was and wouldn't it be great to have a black president and blah blah blah. Everyone remembers those conversations. They both knew that I was a Republican and very politely left me out of the conversations. At times I would enter into the race conversation and say things like, "Does it have to be THAT black man? How about Eddie Murphy? How about James Earl Jones? I might actually vote for Morgan Freeman!" She was bouncing off the ceiling for WEEKS after the election. And yes, it is a very good thing that little black boys and girls can now dream about being president one day. If there's a country left by the time they become of age...

I think we can pretty safely say that most everyone is disappointed in Obama as a President. I feel much, much, MUCH more strongly about that of course, but I won't get into that. Scott and Jackie have been exceptionally quiet about Obama for over a year now.

The dollar taker on the coke machine is busted once again. I keep a box of change on my desk for just such emergencies and currently, I have nearly $40 in quarters in that box! There are three whole rolls of quarters in there. There's a sign on the machine that says that I have change.

Scott opens the box today to get change for his dollar. He sees all the rolls of quarters there and says, "Now THAT'S change I can believe in." I tilt my head at him. "Have you been disappointed by other change, Scott?" My boss snorts in the cube next door. Very, very long pause. Scott says, "I choose not to comment on that subject." I say, "I completely understand."

*Ding!*

Stupid aspect of the tax code for today:

Tie-breaker Rules
If a parent can claim the child but no parent does claim the child, the child is treated as the qualifiying child of the person who had the highest Annual Gross Income for the year, but only if that person's Annual Gross Income is higher than the highest Annual Gross Income of either of the child's parents who could have claimed the child. If the child's parents file a joint return with each other, this rule can be applied by dividing the parents; combined Annual Gross Income equally between the two.

I have come to the conclusion, just one week into this class that the government is the largest producer of red tape in the world AND if you just look at the tax code, the government would like to encourage all of us to live a more Jerry Springer-style lifestyle.

So in the above example, if a child lives with someone other than their parents, that guardian can only claim the child on their taxes if their AGI is less than either of the parents. I think that's right. So only if the keeper of your child makes less than you can they take the child credit. That's just great. Let's shaft the person who is being responsible enough to care for a child who isn't theirs.

Updates

Lap-band update: Here he is in June.

And here he is in September, 30 pounds lighter.


Unemployment:
I applied for 11 jobs on Monday and 9 jobs yesterday. There's a church secretary job in a nearby town that looks perfect, so I'm hoping for that. I also signed up for the H&R Block Income Tax Course. It's an 8 week course that ends the last day of my employment at my current job. If no other job turns up for me, then I can take this course, get certified, and hopefully start working at H&R Block in January. The tax season will be over in April or May, by which time I'll be big as a house and getting ready to pop. I'll have my baby in May or June, and then can work on what to do next. The timing is perfect. The class is cheap ($199) and the only down side (so far) is how much time I'll have to spend away from Quint in the evenings. But that will mean Quint gets more time with his daddy, which is not a bad thing. I will desperately miss kissing his sweet little cheeks on those nights, but income for my family is incredibly important as well. I'll see less of him for 8 weeks, and then after December 10th, I'll be with him night and day for several weeks, catching up on cheek kisses.


Quint's illness:
Hubby took Quint to the doctor today and found out that he STILL has an ear infection. AND he developed gooey eye infections while on his second round of antibiotics. I'm starting to think he's immune to antibiotics. We got a different kind of antibiotics which the doctor said we should see rapid results with. Quint got a dose sometime during the day and his eyes stayed mostly clear all evening. Also, for the first time in weeks (since his birthday party Sept 11th) he was feeling good enough and was happy enough that I felt the need to get out the video camera. So we've got a couple minutes of him hamming for the camera. We've got an appointment with an ear specialist on Friday to talk about tubes or something.

Pregnancy:
I'm nearly 6 weeks pregnant. The fatigue has certainly showed up and I yawn non-stop. I'm a bit bloated. He's nearly lentil size!

Announcment

So I've had one heck of a week. (We're trying to break ourselves of cussing now that small fry is imitating our words.)

A week from last Friday, we had our Lincoln leave us stranded in traffic. This delayed our road trip, but thankfully only cost us around $514 in repairs.

We had a lovely trip to Ohio to visit my in-laws and that whole side of the family.

Monday, I returned to work and they told me that I'd be loosing my job in December. They gave me the rest of Monday off, with pay. A few minutes later, Priscilla at daycare called me to come get my sick child.

I spent the next several days at home wiping his nose and administering OTC medicines.

Lately, I seem to have more faith in Murphy's Law (anything that can go ironically wrong, will) than faith in God. I really gotta work on that. I'm thinking of starting a new blog about my faith journey. Anyway, based on Murphy's Law, what do you think would happen next in my "heck of a week"?

That's right. I'm pregnant.

Thursday morning, in those early morning, half-formed thoughts, I started to wonder when I should have started my period. Wasn't I supposed to have started while we were in Ohio. Hmmmm. When did I start last month? The 26th, I think. What day is today? The 30th? Oh crap.

So I went and took a test. After I had started the test, I thought, "maybe I don't want to know this today. I'm going back to work for the first time since they've emailed the whole company saying that I'm loosing my job. And last night, Hubby really talked down to me about why I'm loosing my job. " Too late to worry about that.

When I saw the two little blue marks, I let out a little shriek of surprise. Thankfully, I didn't wake up my husband with my little shriek. I trembled through the rest of preparing for work and left without telling him. I just didn't have the guts.

I had an appointment with my GP that morning anyway for a followup for some of my medications. His nurse is a sturdy black guy. He asked me how my day was going so far. I emphatically said, "not good." He paused in his blood pressure taking and looked at me funny. I told him that I found out on Monday that I'm loosing my job and I just had positive pregnancy test. He gave one small snort of amusement and then said, "Mazel tov!" throwing wide his arms for a congratulatory hug. Three times while I was telling him the details of my wonderful week, he would hug me, say "Mazel tov!" By the third, I was nearly weeping on his shoulder. He kept patting me and telling me that it will be OK, you'll have some great stories to tell in 20 years, children are a blessing, and other encouraging phrases that did not sound corny. (Other folks told me the corny ones.) At one point, I referred to the pregnancy as "the baby" and realized that I didn't mean Quint. That hit me like a blow to the stomach.

I told the GP as well. He said his youngest three children were similarly close together, but the last two were twins. Yikes. I told him and the nurse that I hadn't told my husband yet. At one point, the GP suddenly stopped listening to my chest and said, quite alarmed, "You have told your husband about the job, right? It's really not nice to hit a man with both on the same day." I assured him that Hubby knew about the job. He told me to make an appointment with my OB/GYN and try not to worry about it. Things will work out alright.

I left and went to work - my first day back since they had sent around an email saying that I would be leaving. I was dreading having 15 people drop into my guest chair and caringly asking me if I was OK and saying they were sorry and all the sympathy you would expect at a job you've had for nearly 5 years.

As soon as I got to work, I put my stuff down and went to the desk of my best friend at work. She's the first person I told about my other pregnancy, she lent me maternity clothes, a breast pump and gave me tons of advice. I drop down in her guest chair and request a piece of paper and a pen. She gives me an odd look and hands me some scratch paper. As I'm writing, she asks me if I'm OK. I just grunt. I hold up my sign saying, "I'm pregnant" and then immediately start shredding it. I hold up my trembling hand which she takes in hers. She asks me if I'm alright and I say "NO!" She hugs me, then holds her head up - fingers on temples - and keeps saying "are you f***ing kidding me?" over and over. I've had similar thoughts!

While we're still sitting there in shock, a co-worker comes up to her desk and wants to know what we think of the news on the email. What news? We look and it seems that one other person has resigned, and another person who was not well liked seems to have been fired. Of course the firing was reported quite diplomatically and politely, but does anyone resign - effective yesterday - on their own?

So because of this new news, my job news was no longer the latest news! There were by far more (gleeful) hall conversations about the firing than folks stopping by my desk. I was quite relieved. I was delighted that Quint had been sick and put off my return to work until that day.

Throughout the day, I just barely resisted the urge to beat my head against the desk at our stellar pregnancy preventing skills. Near lunch time, when I probably needed protein the worst, I was nearly in an all out panic. I went on a walk, called a friend and basically freaked out screaming "what am I gonna do?!" After some acknowledgment that this might not be fantastic news, she answered my question. "You're going to look for work and have a baby." Of course, I am. My take out lunch hit bottom around then and I started to think rationally again. She was very reassuring and peeled me off the ceiling again. I was worried that Hubby would think he needed to bolt right out and get a different job that made more money, or would head into a spiral of "we're going to be destitute FOREVER!" or some other non-helpful over-reaction. He works in politics. It's an election year. He may start to talk to folks about theoretical jobs, but none of those will be hired until January. And none of the maneuvering can start until after the election anyway. Conversations along the lines of, "if I get elected and I could offer you blah, would you be interested?" have, in my experience, been the most useless conversations ever. Contingencies based on 3 maybes are pretty much pointless to discuss, much less count on.

How on earth am I going to tell my sister and friend who have been trying to get pregnant for so long?! How do I tell them that I'm knocked up by accident?!

When I got home at the end of the day, Hubby had a friend over to have a fire in the firepit. Quint was out there with them and was a snot covered mess! I took him in and gave him a bath, hosing down his gooey eyes and nose in the process. Hubby's friend left while we were in the tub.

As Quint was playing on the living room floor, oscillating back and forth between his parents, I asked Hubby to mute the national news. My heart was pounding. I said, "I have good news and bad news, which would you like first?" He made three guesses as to bad news about my job. I finally said, "it has nothing to do with work." He thought for a second and then said, "you're pregnant!" "Yes."

His first reaction was a thrilled, double fist clenched, "YESSSS!!!" which relieved me to no end. It took him about 60 seconds to get down to the, "oh crap, what does that mean for our money?" (The answer to that is "nothing good".) But joy was the overriding emotion. We talked about things for a few minutes and then he excitedly said we should go for a walk. Great idea. He asked if he could call someone (I forget who) and I asked if we could just own the news for the duration of the walk, and then tell people. He agreed.

On our walk, we had a very good talk and there was no extreme drama on his part. There was no panicked reaction like "I need a job" with him grabbing his keys as if he's going to bolt out the door and go find one this instant. He took it quite well and my own joy started to take over.

We now need me to have a new job sooner than later. We need to check to see if I could still get my severance pay even if I left before December 10th. We will need a double stroller. Quint will be 21 months old when the new baby is born.

When we got back from our walk, I fed Quint and he and I went to choir practice. We called Hubby's mother before I went to choir and we called my folks after I got back from choir. I tried to be all casual with my folks, calmly asking Dad to come to the phone as well, talking about Quint's sickness while I waited. I said, "we've got some news." and mom blurted excitedly, "you're pregnant!" Well, yes! We had a fun conversation.

Throughout the weekend, we told just about everyone else. I'm sure we missed someone, but I'm not sure who, seeing how we were both making phone calls. We would tell them about my job, then ask, "then what do you think happened?" and nearly every time, people would guess that I'm pregnant. And then laugh like hyenas.

Here are the frequent questions:
Were you trying? No.
How long have you suspected? I suspected about 15 minutes before I found out.
Are you going to go back to work after your job ends? As our money stands now, I have to.
When are you due? June 2nd.
What are you going to name her (everyone thinks it's a her!)? Charlotte Rose was what we talked about a few months ago.
How did Hubby react? see above. Also, when I showed him the stick later, which he insisted that he didn't need to see, it seemed like it electrocuted him a bit. I said, it seems a lot more real when you see that, huh?

So, we're going to have a baby. Last time, we found out we were pregnant and Hubby got a job three days later after months of being out of work. This time, I find out I'm losing my job and three days later we find out I'm pregnant. This supports my sister's theory that you can only get pregnant when one of you is out of work.

Pregnancy week 26

A lot has happened since I last wrote, but completely catching up everything would make for a really long blog. We spent the week at the beach relaxing, lounging and swimming in the sea. We also took a day trip to Fort Sumter which was very interesting. Middle of the week, I tripped on some stairs and damaged my foot a bit. The baby wasn’t hurt since the trip basically meant that I sat down hard. But my foot has swollen and hurt ever since. That’s been 8 days now and I’m about sick of my foot hurting and limping. And I can’t take Advil because of Baby boy.

We got to see Hubby’s Dad and family on our way back from the beach and had a lovely visit with them. While we were gone, we had our cat locked up in our house whereas usually she enjoys being an inside/outside cat. I expected her to meow at us for about an hour when we got home, but it was more like 2.5 hours. So she read us the riot act!

While I returned to work Monday morning, my brain seemed to arrive back at work on Tuesday morning. Not so fun for me or my co-workers. Today, Hubby’s car wouldn’t start and he needs to go out of town Thursday, so that’s been a pain today. Well, for him. I just went to work and left him at home with AAA on the way.

Our baby boy now weighs nearly 2 lbs and is probably around 14 inches long from head to heel. He is a very active little boy. This past week, seems to have very sharp elbows every couple of days. He seems to be hosting some jammin parties about the time I go to bed, but they seldom keep me up. HUBBY can feel the party from outside my tummy too. Last week, we were in a store with music playing with a loud beat and I really think Baby boy kicked me 5 times in a row with the beat of the song. Pre-natal toe tapping! We were at the beach this past week and I played in the surf a lot. I wondered what that felt like for Baby boy. If it was a pleasant, floaty ride, or if it felt like I was vigorously shaking a 2/3rds full Coke bottle. My belly button/turkey timer is nearly popped, but not quite. For the first time ever, I can turn my belly button inside out. Dat a'int right! My hands and feet have started swelling more, and I think that I will soon need to buy a larger sized costume jewelry wedding band to wear instead of my wonderful wedding set. I NEVER take my wedding set off for fear of loosing it, so this is a scary prospect for me.

I'm starting to panic a bit about my long to-do list before Baby boy arrives, but I can start tackling a good bit of that this weekend. We bought a crib and baby swing this week and the baby's room is coming together. I can probably sign up for the cord blood registry while at work this week. They offered $200 off as a Father's Day promotion, so I think I'll take advantage of that. That costs nearly $2000 to set up! But stem cell research is always progressing, and think what they could do with stem cells in 25 to 30 years when Baby boy might need it! I’m starting to get wallet attack pretty bad. The short list of expenses right now is cord blood registry, whatever car repairs need to happen today, Hubby needs new glasses, we need to buy a video camera for the baby, and a interactive computer video camera for the computer (maybe just $30!). Still that could add up to $3000 pretty quick. Right now, we have about $1000 extra per month for this kind of “un-budgeted” items which seems like a lot until you look at the price tag on this list. Because of craigslist, we paid $35 instead of $105 for a baby swing, and $175 instead of $250 for the crib. And the crib we bought is of higher quality than the $250 one we picked out for our registry.

Hubby and I are REALLY enjoying my roller coaster mood swings. (Can you hear the sarcasm there?) We have reminded each other that considering how many months of our lives we will spend together, it will be relatively few that I'm pregnant. Basically, this too will pass. Then we'll just have sleep-deprivation to deal with. And, you know, that radical change to every aspect of life thing. Nothing too big, right?!

Ok, so this was a really long blog anyway, and I left out a great many details. So, sorry for the length! But there’s only like 3 of you reading this anyway, so no big harm there.

not a pregnancy blog (riiiiiight)

I really didn't intend for this to be a pregnancy blog, but it's always the big thing on my mind!

We've entered a new phase of pregnancy. I spent 2 or 3 weeks in the "nauseous all the time but don't hurl" phase, but now I've entered a more annoying phase. A potentially problematic to keeping the pregnancy a secret from work phase. It's the never nauseous but might vomit with absolutely ZERO NOTICE phase!!! As in, my first clue is the fact that my body, involuntarily makes that huge lurching gagging motion and I just hope to God that nothing comes out that first try. This morning, it was mid-primp. Leaning in close to the mirror looking for zits or flakes when I see myself make the vomit motion. "what the h3ll. Really?!" I say, but dutifully go over to the toilet. The whole episode I'm talking to myself with highly logical reasoning. "It's not like there's anything in there, so why don't you just quit. I said quit, you're not going to get anything. Oh, great prove me wrong...what the h3ll is that anyway? where did you get that? Quit showing off and let me comb my hair." I'm actually saying this out loud and the cat comes to investigate. I don't usually talk to myself in the mornings. I talk to her. She sees what's going on and wants to look in the toilet, not understanding why I lovingly fling her aside. It does pass and I never have that clammy, sweaty phase, so that's a relief. I finish getting dressed and go downstairs to eat and leave. Neither of which is a problem, oddly enough.

Had a dream this weekend that I'd had the baby and could communicate easily with it. Upon reviewing my dream, I'm not sure if he spoke back to me or if it was more telepathic. He was a fat little Michelin man guy and about 5 months big even though I'd had him yesterday. People would ask me his name and it was only at that point that I would realize that he was a girl. I'd forget again in a few minutes and realize it all over again. He agreed with me that I should really keep his gender straight. Also, I didn't know other basics like his birthday, weight at birth, or how old he was. Very weird. Also, I was the size I am now, even though I'd supposedly had him yesterday. I'm currently a size 10 with only a little extra thigh and bellybutton fat extra from "normal" for me. Wouldn't that be great!

Spring is springing here with lots of daffodils bursting everywhere and those wretched Bradford Pear trees blooming their pretty and stinky blooms. (No flower should ever smell like crotch.) It will be 70 today! Woohooo!!