Oh, by the way...

Last night, as Man and I snatched our 5 minutes of personal chat time before bed, he mentioned to me that induction is only 2 weeks away. As soon as he said that, it felt like my head imploded.

A: What???

M: Didn't you realize that?

A: Erm, no, um, yes but, wait, two weeks??? From tomorrow??

M: Yep. So, don't worry about her coming early or anything. Just take it easy the next couple of days and whatever happens, happens, and in two weeks she'll definitely be coming.

A: [head still imploding] But, I have stuff I need to get done, errands to run, shelves to clean off, what am I going to do??

M: [patting his crazy wife's shoulder] Put your feet up.

A: [going off on rant about no one else is going to do the dirty work for me, with school taking up so much of his time, etc, etc,]

M: You know, it's really ok. I'll help out where I can and we just won't worry about the rest.

A: [touched at his kind concern, but thinking he's out of his mind]

We finally said goodnight, falling asleep back to back since between his shoulder and my large stomach, cuddling has become increasingly difficult. He always falls asleep within one minute of his head hitting the pillow. I lay there, trying to mentally punch my head out back into place after that messy implosion.

Two weeks... why the heck is that so dang hard to process??

No baby yet

K has called to my attention the fact that, now that I've done the whole "I'm having false labor!" thing that it's a good idea to let y'all know whether or not baby has, in fact, been born.

Nope! Contractions every day, all of the associated crud of being in my final couple of weeks, but no baby. Tomorrow she'll be term. Tonight we have a Christmas party. Tomorrow we have another Christmas party. Today I have an appt, and I must make a dental appt for Tag whose trauma tooth is in fact changing color a few months after its one really rotten week. (anyone remember that? He creamed it twice within just a few days) Man told me to take it easy until baby comes and then I listed off all of the imperatives that absolutely must be accomplished over the next while until I do have the excuse of a newborn to keep me off my feet.

I'm thinking of treating myself to another season of Mythbusters that I can open when I come home from the hospital. Gotta do something with all of that getting-used-to-nursing-again time.

I'm getting into the really grumpy phase of things. I have boundless energy within this extremely tired, weighed-down, pain-ridden body of mine. I want to go crazy nesty all the while shouting "help! I'm bein' repressed!"

hm.... funny phrase to teach kids... sounds like a fun project. ;)

Animanaics

Having taken it easy today, we watched some Animaniacs (which my mom didn't let us watch as kids... oh, well. We can't all be as good as our parents) and I just adore this song.

Yakko's Universe.

Lyrics:

Yakko: Everybody lives on a street in a city

Or a village or a town for what it's worth.

And they're all inside a country which is part of a continent

That sits upon a planet known as Earth.

And the Earth is a ball full of oceans and some mountains

Which is out there spinning silently in space.

And living on that Earth are the plants and the animals

And also the entire human race.

It's a great big universe

And we're all really puny

We're just tiny little specks

About the size of Mickey Rooney.

It's big and black and inky

And we are small and dinky

It's a big universe and we're not.

And we're part of a vast interplanetary system

Stretching seven hundred billion miles long.

With nine planets and a sun; we think the Earth's the only one

That has life on it, although we could be wrong.

Across the interstellar voids are a billion asteroids

Including meteors and Halley's Comet too.

And there's over fifty moons floating out there like balloons

In a panoramic trillion-mile view.

And still it's all a speck amid a hundred billion stars

In a galaxy we call the Milky Way.

It's sixty thousand trillion miles from one end to the other

And still that's just a fraction of the way.

'Cause there's a hundred billion galaxies that stretch across the sky

Filled with constellations, planets, moons and stars.

And still the universe extends to a place that never ends

Which is maybe just inside a little jar!

Then there's The Parts of the Brain. Orson Welles singing a children's folk song? Hilarious.

And for persons like myself who are just absolutely terrible at geography, Wakko's State Song.

False labor

Ah, the joys of false labor. The dr says it thinned me out a bit but no more dilation. He doesn't want his patients walking around at more than a 4 though (I'm still @ 3). The good news is, we're one day closer to term.

And heck, something has to motivate me to shave my legs nowadays...

Insomnia

Have you ever gone to sleep, knowing something sigificant might happen tomorrow? You know, something inevidable but largely unscheduled?

Man and I crashed into bed around 10:15. It took me over an hour to go to sleep because of a feeling of anticipation, but by 1 I woke up with regular, painful contractions that hurt enough to keep this tired pregnant lady awake. So, I've had a bath, shaved my legs, pumiced my feet, made up the call list and child care instructions paper, all the while sipping water and am considering trying to sleep once more. Contractions are once again irregular but painful. Thank heaven for Tylenol and sheer exhaustion.

This baby is coming soon.

To do

My life has become one big to do list, "just in case". Yes, nesting again. I spent the morning picking up some misc errands only to come home to a neglected house. Of course that means it's nap time for everyone who takes naps. lol

Left to do: mail one small package, fold 4 large loads of laundry, clean up the kitchen, assemble and freeze garlic bread, run to the thrift store for a drop off, pack my own hospital bag (the baby's coming home bag is all ready to go), change everyone's sheets, sweep the whole house (which, of course, needs to happen every day anyway), and I'm sure a few other things I'm not recalling off the top of my head.

And, here I sit. Why? Because at Costco this morning I was almost certain I was going into labor. The contractions are getting pretty painful if no sitting happens for very long.

Anyone want to take bets on whether she'll be born this week or next? I'd prefer to wait until next week, since there are two Christmas parties I'd like to go to this Thursday and Friday. But then, I'm teaching a class on Monday the 17th, and I wouldn't mind having to call in a sub for that. It's a pretty fun class though -- acronyms and terms. Also, she'll be officially term this coming Friday which is sort of the goal. Thanks to K, though, for reassurances that nowadays 36 weeks isn't so unusual or anxious-making.

Dr's appt is tomorrow morning. I'm excited!

36 and counting

Yesterday marked 36 weeks gestation for little Freida. Just one more week until we have a full term little one. My Braxton Hicks contractions (fake, "practice" contractions) are getting more serious, I can feel her little head engaging, and now I'm washing little blankets and a small mountain of burp cloths in earnest. Thanks to friend E, I have a stash of newborn clothes for her to come home in. We're all getting the feeling that we need to wrap of various items of business pretty quickly, like getting registered at the hospital. In my defence, I just barely hit 36 weeks which is about the earliest they want you to get that stuff done.

I went to the dr this week to have my eye looked at again and part of the "since you were here and you happened to be pregnant" routine they wanted to do a Doppler of her heart. Two different nurses tried for 45 mins to find her heartbeat. They finally called someone up to get a better Doppler (no, this wasn't my OB's office) when the dr basically said "forget this", grabbed an ultrasound machine from the other room, found the heart in 1 second, and declared everyone safe and sound.

So my question is, why is it so dang easy for them to "just grab" an ultrasound machine from the next room rather than wait for a superior Doppler, but it takes weeks to schedule an ultrasound otherwise? I know, I know, the system has procedures it has to go through, protocols, formalities, proper channels. ::sigh:: Now I know why Tom Cruise bought his own darn ultrasound machine.

According to a previous ultrasound, if Freida kept up her track record of being about 3-4 weeks ahead of her due date, then I'm now waddling around with a 40 week-sized little person. A lady in the ward gave birth recently to a baby who was 10 pounds, 10 ounces and had a 16" circumference head. She blames junk food. Thank goodness for C-sections.

Anyway, I've gotten up to 45 on Free Rice. And yet I am well (quoth Benedic from Much Ado About Nothing).

Click to donate!

It's a phenomenon. I've seen these around for a few years, where you daily visit a website and click a button and some mysterious force will donate a penny or so to any given cause (pets, breast cancer, etc).

Wikipedia has an article on Click to Donate sites.

Google Click to Donate and you'll find many opportunities to do so.

The only problem is, it's boring to open a bookmark full of sites every day, click through them, making sure to get each and every one with the morning comics. And then, if you forget to do so, you feel bad, like you've cheated someone out of all of your little pennies that might have made a difference. What if you have slow internet? I don't want to load 100 sites a day just to donate pennies.

My Uncle J sent the perfect solution. FreeRice.com. It's a vocabulary game that increases vocabulary awareness and donates 20 grains of rice every time you get a word right. This gives you incentive to get a word right, since your score is basically how much rice you give away.

Now, how much is 20 grains? About 1/4 of a teaspoon. I havn't counted. But based on that assumption it'd take 192 right answers to make one cup of of rice, or approximately 3840 grains. In about 10 mins I've racked up 1060 grains of rice or just slightly more than 1/4 of a cup. I think I've gained more than 1/4 cup worth of vocab though. I'd say that this is worth a daily click just to get the brain juices going.

It also has a slight competitive aspect to it: different words are assigned to different levels, based on how many people get any given word right. On a scale of 1-50, people very rarely get higher than 48.

My highest level so far: 42. Which is, of course, the answer to life, the universe, and everything. I am content.

And no cheating. >:-( I've been tempted, but have yet to look anything up before making a semi-educated guess. Thanks, Mom, for all of that Latin and Greek! And Shakespeare!

Ack!

Just got back from the Dr appt. I'm 50% effaced and 3 cm dilated. He looked me in the eye and said he's pretty sure I won't be pregnant for 4 more weeks. I've been coughing like crazy, fighting this nasty cold, and I finally asked for an antibiotic today since it's so stubborn and I'm so sick of fighting it. And it's giving me a nice sinus infection to boot.

But ACK!!! Our due date was just some sort of nebulous "some day" event that I was carefully not thinking about so I wouldn't get all nesty and crazy. Forget about that sort of calm. I still need her to stay in there another week and a half so she's full term but after that... anything goes. My dr said if I get too dilated without any real action that it would be safer to induce so I don't give birth where I don't want to. Man has very strong feelings about making sure we're at the hospital with pain medicine, and a sterile environment and all that jazz.

Anyway, sorry if I alarmed anyone by posting the title and nothing else at first. I accidentally hit the "enter" button instead of tab.

Weekly update.

It seems like weekly updates lately! Oh, well, here's how the week went. (grumpy post)

Lil' Miss Pebbles got some shots a couple of weeks ago so last week her general irritation and fevers just seemed to be residual nastiness from those. The poor child hadn't had a well-child check up since she was 4 months old but I didn't remember the aftershock of immunizations being so difficult to deal with. Come to find out that, after teething so nicely for all of her other little pearly whites, her second year molars were playing merry heck with her ability to deal with life. She basically either cried or slept from last Wednesday until last night. I poured pain meds down her throat as I could since she refused to take them but we still managed to lose more sleep than we found. Last night she threw herself on the floor and just wailed for the 12 dozenth time so I left my almost-untouched dinner and went to the store to get some chewable pain meds. When I came home I told her I had some candy for her which she eagerly ate. 30 mins later she was tentatively smiling and showing interest in her own dinner. Relief! And now I will never go without a variety of pain-killing mediums ever again.

Looking forward to sleeping through the night, I lay my tired head down only to find myself groggily kissing Tag's ear because "a spider crawled into it and bit" him. Huh? Go back to bed kid. He's such a good boy and went back to bed but a few mins later I woke up to his pained wailing. He's usually pretty good about pain so I got up to see what was going on. His ear still hurt. Packed with wax. We went through about a quart of water trying to get anything out and did manage to get some results, but not before he was done with the whole operation. Great. More pain meds, sent him back to bed, but he was still up every 30-60 mins with pain or nightmares or being scared. This morning we get to wash it out until I'm satisfied that it's clean.

We had some friends over Saturday and they were kind enough to tolerate our crazy kids and we still managed to have some good fun and conversation. They're fellow Whose Line Is It Anyway fans, Man grilled, and I mostly stayed on the couch after enduring a lot of standing time at a community Christmas party earlier that same day, the redeeming coolness of said party being the three large bouncy structures they managed to fit into the community center ball room. It kept the kids busy while we caught up with friends and wore Tag down enough for a good nap.

Last night I tried ginger bread again with slightly better results. I used normal molasses this time but foolishly used a recipe that didn't call for salt and had too much baking soda in it. Oh, well. Third time's a charm and this last attempt was worlds better than the blackstrap nastiness from last time.

The only thing that has gotten me through this week has been a couple of phone conversations, especially my dear friend M who happened to phone right in the middle of a Pebbles melt down. Thank you, M! You were the high light of my week.

Now, off to clean out a Tag ear. Too bad I can't just take it off and send it in for a factory refurbishing. Or turn it inside out like a belly button.