Gabby has begun her twentieth month of life and I have passed the twenty week mark in this pregnancy. It seems like a nice point to sit back and assess.
The pregnancy part is quite a bit better. I still feel like I'm swimming through Jell-O much of the time, but that may have more to do with the cold/cough I've had for two months than the pregnancy itself. The nausea has finally abated (thank the pharmaceutical gods for that) and my mood is considerably brighter (ditto). I am now CLEARLY identifiable as preggo and not just chubby, and I've even had people offer me seats on the bus. There's even a silver lining to the constant congestion -- it hampers my super spidey smell superpower, so bus rides and trips to public restrooms aren't quite as gross as they could be.

And Gabby continues to take the world by storm. She's big into puzzles right now, and can actually put the pieces back in instead of just taking them out and scattering them around the room. She's a huge Sesame Street fan, and every morning she drags us out of bed, saying "Cookie? Cookie?" She doesn't want a cookie -- she wants to hear Cookie Monster and boogie to the Sesame Street theme song.

She's putting sentences together, too:

"Daddy gave me watermelon!"

When asked why she threw her apple on the floor, she responded, "I don't want the apple."

And my absolute favorite: "I love you, mommy."

Every Pregnancy Is Different

Hellz, yeah. I've certainly heard it before, but now I'm living it.

I feel a bit guilty and also somewhat shortchanged. The fact is, this pregnancy is hard. I'm very, very grateful that I was able to get pregnant at all, especially with comparably minimal medical intervention this time. But oh, geez.

Can I just kvetch for a moment? Am I allowed to kvetch and still be grateful? I hope so, 'cause I'm gonna. This is my blog, after all, and if I can't kvetch here, where can I?

Ok, so I'm nearly 19 weeks pregnant, and I'm still queasy. Thank the gods for Zofran, because otherwise I'd still be miserable. For the last however many weeks, I've been unable to choke down my prenatal vitamins (feeling very guilty about that) or my Zoloft (so I'm also depressed). On top of all that, I've had a nasty, terrible cough and chest cold for the last two weeks that has me sounding like an emphysemic octogenarian.

Last time, even though I was working full time, I could come home, put my feet up, relax and daydream. This time, I have a lovely, energetic, wonderful and exhausting toddler to care for, feed, bathe, and get to bed at the end of my work day. I love her more than my life, but sometimes I just want to come home and crawl into bed.

And on top of it all, I worry. I worry about whether the Doodlebug will come out healthy and happy. I worry over whether I will be enough for both of my children. I worry that at the ripe old age of 42, I may be too old for this. I worry about how Atomic and I both feel taxed to the limit as it is, and how we're going to get through the next few years. I worry about whether we'll have enough to support them and get them through school. I worry about where we're going to put the Doodlebug, since we currently seem to be fresh out of spare rooms. I worry about how in hell I'll be able to get two children up and down our stairs. I worry that I'll be a grouchy, unfun mom, a harried, nagging wife, and an absent, preoccupied friend.

I'd love to hear how all you intrepid parents of two or more manage.

Ok, that was just a teaser

Sorry, but I couldn't pass up the opportunity to taunt my dear, long-suffering mother with my prior post. That was horrible of me, and I am sure to suffer some karmic retribution for my wickedness.

And now, as that old dude on the radio used to say, for the rest of the story.

Before we embarked on the original Child Quest (you know, the one that ended up taking WAY longer than we expected and turned out to be fraught with obstacles and bizarre twists and sadness and lots and lots of needles and resulted in one absolutely beautiful child and one somewhat whingey blog), Atomic and I had agreed that we wanted to have two children. That seemed like the right number for us, which is not surprising given that we each have one sibling and each sibling has two gorgeous kids.

After the aforementioned long, fraught, needle-and-heartbreak-filled (and expensive! Did I mention expensive?) Quest, we had our sweet little Pebbles. We felt SO lucky and grateful for our good fortune that we agreed to just leave it up to the universe whether we had a second child or not.

Well, that lovely Zen attitude lasted, oh, about a year. And then we started to realize that, as grateful and complete and happy as we are with our one, precious child, it would be kind of nice if she had a sibling. And even though her initial reaction to said sibling might be something akin to murderous envy, it would be nice for her to have a little brother or sister who would be there after we're gone.

So we decided to saddle up and climb back into them stirrups. We had no idea how long it would take, or whether it would happen at all. Certainly the numbers were not with us. But we thought, what the heck. Let's roll the IUI dice. What's a few more injections? If it doesn't happen, it doesn't happen, and we still have the awesomest kid on the planet.

And guess what?

(Go on, guess)

Exactly! It happened!

And there was cautious rejoicing in the Land of Binky, Atomic, and Pebbles. And Binky threw up many times and learned that early pregnancy and labor negotiations are a terrible combination. And Atomic became ecstatic, worried, and grumpy by turns because he was not sure what he was getting himself into. And Pebbles carried on, blissfully unaware that her world was about to be set on its head by a tiny, squalling little interloper.

I couldn't quite bring myself to blog about it, though. I think that was primarily because this leg of the journey was comparably short and easy, which didn't really make for a good story. And then there was this other part of me, the superstitious part, that didn't want to say anything for fear of jinxing it. I still have that fear. I'm afraid that my joy, or my hubris, or my relative lack of suffering this time will cause something terrible to happen. Dumb, I know, but it feels real enough.

So I held off. And I decided to post today because, well, because my mom told me to. And because we got our CVS results back today, and we know there's a teeny little boy in there with exactly the right number of chromosomes in the right configurations. So, you know, maybe we'll actually be having another baby this December.

Eeep!

Out with it!

"NOW will you update your blog?" my mother asked me today. I could practially hear her foot tapping impatiently over the phone as she busily loaded up her shopping cart at Kohls with armfuls of cute little blue outfits.

"Yes, mom."

Ok, mom, here it is. I've updated my blog. ;-p

Vaccines

Brava, Dooce.

She summed up my own feelings on the issue pretty well.

Words, Words, Words

Recently added to the Gabby Lexicon:



Turtle

Shirt

Toe (meaning "tofu")

Eyes

Nose

Hi

Bye

Oh, boy! (Thanks, Jimmy)

Okay

And then there's a whole bunch of stuff that she says, entire sentences, nay, paragraphs, that we are simply not astute enough to understand. I predict there will be a lot of that in our future.

You Know You're A Mom When

You know you're a mom when your toddler excitedly runs up to you to hand you something, and that something turns out to be a booger, and you say, "Thank you, sweetheart" and absentmindedly stick it in your pocket (along with the sock you found wedged into the car seat, the banana chip that you pried off the floor, and something that may once have been a blueberry).

You know you're a mom when all manner of nasty bodily fluids no longer gross you out.

You know you're a mom when you spend more time thinking about what you're going to put in your daughter's Easter basket than about the project you're supposed to have finished by Friday.

You know you're a mom when you can sing 642 verses of "The Wheels On The Bus" from memory.

You know you're a mom when the sight of your little one running toward you with her arms outstretched moves you to tears.