What the hell are you doing here? SURPRISE!

I semi-reluctantly headed to my brother's house today for a graduation party. It's hot out and I'm fat and pregnant and thought everyone would be hanging out in the back yard drinking their cold beers while I was stewing in my swollen pregnant lady suit, but I hadn't seen everybody in a while so I wanted to at least make an appearance.

I got there and no one was outside or by the pool.  I took note but didn't think it was weird for some reason.  My sister-in-law led me down the stairs into the basement where she said everyone was.  I saw some cute blue "Thank You" lollipops on top of a blue table cloth and really regretted listening to Joe when he said we didn't need to stop for a card for the graduate.

Then I saw my BFF since birth, who knows my family but isn't someone they'd usually invite to their parties...

I asked her what the hell she was doing there and then I saw all the WELCOME BABY signs the IT'S A BOY pennant and blue tableclothes and blue diaper pins and blue baby bottles. 

"SURPRISE!!"

I had no clue they would be throwing me a shower for my THIRD baby, especially after all the hand-me-downs I've gotten. Total. Shock.

I was getting kinda bummed recently that this kid wasn't going to have any new clothes (I bought the hoodie and some consignment clothes and he has the hand-me-downs). It's not a big deal, as long as he's clothed and warm is all that's really important, but I still wanted him to have a little something special to him. Now he has a metric butt-ton of something!

I don't deserve to be so spoiled!  I'm not the most affectionate person ever (in case no one noticed, *cough*) even though I am deeply grateful for the people around me.  So to everyone, thanks for loving me and my babies anyway!

Pregnancy dreams

When I woke up this morning there were a bunch of random little kids in my house and I looked outside and apparently school was only a half day because it was a "Hurricane Day", like a snow day but with a hurricane...

So anyway I'm yelling at these kids and then the parents come in and I'm like "WTF GET OUT OF MY HOUSE" and I started beating them up.  Then while I'm on top of the lady about to break her back I have a moment of clarity and say "Wait, am I mentally ill?  I don't have any kids do I? Is this my house?" and she told me no to all of the above but I didn't believe her.

So I jumped out of the 3rd story window and followed this homeless looking woman down the fire escape stairs (my house is only 2 stories in the suburbs, mind you) and on the way down I realize I'm Mark Wahlberg.  I follow the woman into the basement apartment and it's some super snazzy futuristic bachelor pad with futuristic coffee makers and Slurpee machines and giant fish tanks everywhere - something straight out of The Real World.  There's these 3 guys telling me I'm not doing my job protecting some mentally ill woman who thinks she has children but actually doesn't.  Great.  Patton Oswalt was one of the guys - I'm not sure of his significance but I like him so it's cool I got to meet him.

So I find out the crazy lady throws these "swinging" parties for hip urban parents, where they "swing" their children, like switch children for a month at a time because they get bored of whatever age range their kids are in, or whatever.  And to get to these parties, the families have to somehow enter through the washing machine.  I discovered this when I saw a family of owls fly in through the window into the washing machine and followed them.  This had never occurred to anyone else as weird before... Uh huh.

So Patton and the other guys are all like "I CAN'T BELIEVE YOU FIGURED IT OUT FINALLY, YOU'RE SO AWESOME!  HERE, I HAVE THIS RANDOM PILL THAT WILL TURN YOU INTO AN OWL SO YOU CAN ENTER THE PARTY AND SAVE ALL THE CHILDREN!"  So I turn into a vulture instead, but they said it's all cool even though I was nervous I'd be found out, and I went into the washing machine.  


There's all these parents shackled to the walls and the crazy woman (me!, but not me because I'm still Mark Wahlberg vulture) is dressed up like the Sun Baby on Teletubbies, sitting on a stump in the center of a menthol field (which looked suspiciously like marijuana) and she's reading The Stinky Cheese Man to all the kids.  Except all the kids are Violet and Leela clones, like hundreds of them.  I realize Violet and Leela are mine and I need to get them back, but I can't figure out which ones are the real them and I'm calling out their names over and over.

And that's when Violet woke me up from the dream with a fun and relevant surprise that I will get around to blogging later today.

How to Stay Excited About Giving Birth! aka Push Presents the Peasant Way.

Joe and I are not the type of people to make things into Hallmark occasions.  In fact, our three year anniversary was this past Sunday and what did we do?  Well first, we didn't realize it was our anniversary.  Joe went out to pick up a Craigslist find and half an hour after he left, he called me and said, "Oh, happy anniversary by the way."  Oh yeah!  Happy anniversary to you too!  Then we spent a romantic lunch out with the girls and my mother at Famous Dave's.  Apparently the #1 ingredient in their corn muffins is rufies, because we came home and the entire family passed out for 3 hours.  Upon awaking, we ate our leftovers and then all passed out again.  That's called keeping the Sabbath my friends!  And that's my kind of anniversary.

So, us being casual celebraters, I was pretty amused when I heard about "push presents," a gift given by Dad to the mother to somehow make up for the fact that she just pushed a human out of her hooha.  You're getting to not be pregnant anymore, I thought, what better gift is there?  I've spent the past three years convinced push presents were something pretentious white people do because they have a disposable income and are entitled to gifts for every occasion.  But this pregnancy, I have come to realize how us po' folk can take advantage of this phenomenon.

About halfway through your pregnancy when you're not yakking at the thought of food anymore and have begun giving into the cravings, think of what food you want more than anything.  Now deprive yourself of it.  For me, it's donuts from Fractured Prune.  To be honest, I rarely eat them - like two or three times a year maybe.  They're fucking delicious and every time I eat one I think to myself why I don't do this more often, but they're just not something I think about constantly.  Until they became the forbidden.

Now, I cannot wait to push out this baby so I can have a dozen of those babies!  I've spent the past two months thinking up all the glaze and toppings combos I'm going to get, which ones I'm going to eat first, which ones I'll share half of with Violet and Leela.  I've driven by the storefront and daydreamed about waking up at 2am to nurse the baby and finishing off the Almond Joy donut I had started when he nursed for 45 minutes an hour earlier.  Every time I freak myself out remembering how the transition contractions felt like I was imploding, I remember I get to drown myself in sugary glazey toppingy caloriey fried pastry mouthgasms afterwards.  Oh, and I'll get a baby to cuddle!  But more importantly, donuts.

A week post-partum, I may not have anything but some baby and some literal sugar tits to show for my push present, but damnit, I will be one happy woman and I will only be out $15.  Take that and shove it up your custom birthstone earring and matching necklace set.

Flavors from left to right: 1 hour post-partum, 3 hours post-partum, 5 hours post-partum...

I bought Harvey his very first clothing item today.

How have I made it 32 weeks and I remain in denial that I'm going to have a new baby this year?

I at least feel pregnant now.  Things just started to hurt in the last 3 or 4 weeks.  Luckily the aches and pains still aren't as bad as they were with either girl.  I'm still able to squat without having to prop my vagina up with crutches to keep it from falling out.  I can roll over in bed in less than 5 minutes.  I can even sit on the floor for short periods of time and get up without assistance!

But still, somehow I've made it a month into the third trimester and it hasn't sunk in.  Er, actually it may have sunk in, TODAY, because I realized it's not ok that I'm not freaking out about all I have to do.  I haven't prepared my house at all.  I haven't figured out a sleeping situation for Number 3.  I haven't figured out where I'll store his clothes considering we only have two usable bedrooms and five people and their clothes to squeeze in those rooms.  I haven't figured out how I'm going to afford a wardrobe to hang.  Two hours ago I hadn't even bought him a single thing, but thanks to Target he is now the proud owner of a plain gray newborn sized hoodie for $6.  Hey Big Spender!

I guess during my Target trip I entered the "dream nesting" phase - I went there to get a new cabinet to reorganize my kitchen and all of a sudden it all hit me.  Holy fuck, I need shit organized.  I cannot stand clutter.  If I trip over one more toy or find one more stray cracker box on the floor or even see that pile of pots sitting on my stove because it has no other place, I might commit suicide.  If I can't get my junk drawer closed one more time, I might commit homocide.  If I so much as see half a goddam footprint on my freshly mopped floor, I swear to Allah I will suicide bomb the Earth!

Yeah, I'm a pretty intense dream nester.  Meanwhile, that cabinet is sitting out in the back seat of my van rather than being put together and filled with countertop clutter and then closed where I won't have constant anxiety attacks over it.  Hopefully the real nesting superhuman energy will kick in soon!

Perfect fit!  PS Don't judge me by my tie-dye.