locked n loaded

I have officially reached the point of being done with this pregnancy. Yes, it's early, but my body doesn't seem to think so because it's just rearing to birth these babies. Baby A is locked and loaded and not giving up her coveted "first one out" spot for anything. She's so low that my belly now rests on my lap whenever I sit down. I guess I'm waddling now because a few days ago W came walking into the room like a penguin, with his hands on his hips and hips sticking out, while saying, "Look! I'm walking like mommy!!" Someone needs to teach that kid some manners.

It's gotten to the point where I scare people when I'm in public, especially men. Police officers, construction workers, random guys in the store, the dads who drop their kids off at my kids preschool all seem to freeze when I walk by. Dudes, I promise the babies are not just going to fall out of my body, I'm ok. You aren't going to have to catch anything or see anything gross, I promise. Women just look at me and shake their heads for the most part. I hope most of them are shaking their heads with empathy in their hearts. Although, there was the mother and daughter combo who came around a corner as I was walking by and I saw the daughter's eyes pop out of her head while she whispered (loudly), "OMG! Mom! Did you see her belly?!" To which her mom responded, "Yep, and that is what happens when you have sex, so don't." Let me tell you how happy I am to be a walking advertisement for birth control.

Honestly though, I've really gotten to the passive aggressive point where the comments don't bother me much and I'm starting to have fun with them. My new favorite is when people ask me when I'm due and I stare at them blankly and then act surprised and say, "What? Me? No, I'm not pregnant." and watch em scramble. Or sometimes I'll give them my real due date of 7 weeks from now and laugh on the inside as they desperately try to come up with something to say that won't anger or offend the huge pregnant woman in front of them. For the most part they will say something like, Oh wow! You look fantastic for carrying twins. So, does that mean I would look horrible if I was carrying one baby?

I wish I felt as fantastic as everyone said I looked, really. Ever seen that show on the National Geographic Channel called "The Whale That Exploded"? (Disclaimer: if you haven't seen it, don't. I mean it, don't. You will regret it. It will scar you for life and quite possibly make you lose your appetite for at least a month. And if you are a sushi lover, you'll probably never want to eat sushi again. You will NEVER get the images out of your head, so really, do yourself a favor and DO NOT watch it.) Yeah, I feel like I'm going to explode, like the whale. My uterus is measuring at 43 cms, which in layman's terms means I'm 83 months pregnant. Ok, not really but it feels like it. I can't bend over, I can't get up from the sitting position, my kids have to pull me up when I lay on the couch, which they think is just the funniest thing ever. When I actually get to sleep at night I can't turn over unless I get all the way out of bed and get in again. I want my body back. I want to hold my kids again and carry them around. I miss cuddling them! The only good thing is that since the babies dropped, I can breathe and don't have heartburn anymore. Bright side, there always is one.



I know it is all going to be over soon and I'm really trying hard to savor these last couple of weeks because I will probably never experience something like this again. In fact, this might just be my last entry about this pregnancy, which I'm sure you are all thrilled about. Yay for no more having to hear about Joanna's uterus!! I won't gross you out with the gory details but let's just say that between the position of baby A and all of the contractions and because I am apparently the worst bed rester ever, I'm pretty sure these babies will be here soon. I promise I will update as soon as I possibly can once they are born. Thanks for all of the prayers and support through the course of this pregnancy. It has really meant the world to me.

fyi:

My uterus, the contents of it and the potential contents of it are not up for discussion, comprende? Contrary to what you may think, it is not polite or even socially acceptable for you to ask a woman, pregnant or not, if she is going to get her tubes tied. It is not nice to ask, "just how many of those are you are planning on popping out?" when talking to a pregnant woman, especially one who is carrying multiples. I'm not going to "pop out" anything, thankyouverymuch. For the record, I'm planning on having approximately 17,000 children, just to spite you.

It is not a good idea to tell a pregnant woman, as she is walking into Starbucks, that caffeine is not good for the baby. Yeah? Well my fist isn't good for your face either. Why, why, why would you purposely put yourself in harm's way? I'll claim self defense when they arrest me for making it so your nose touches your left ear. You were harassing me. For all you know, I am walking into Starbucks because I have a wicked hankering for an overpriced pastry. Don't judge me! Maybe I was up all night with back pain and leg cramps and bathroom trips and my Grande Iced Toffee Nut Latte is the one freaking thing I had to look forward to all day and now you just ruined it. BITE ME.

And as I'm lumbering my not so graceful body out of my van, do not whistle at me. That isn't nice. I know that's not a, "DANG! You are so hot and I want you to have all of my babies", whistle. That whistle was a, "DAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAANG! Should I call 911 right now because you look like you are going to DIE?", whistle and it was rude. Now beat it.

When I say I'm huge and look like I'm "ready to pop" because I'm having twins, don't ask me why I want to have twins, or choose to have twins when I already have 2 kids under the age of 4. Don't roll your eyes and tell me that it's better me than you or that I'm going to have my hands full. I know this. I know I am completely blessed to be having these babies, and even with all the pain and grossness of this pregnancy, I wouldn't trade it for the world but I didn't choose to have twins. I didn't ask to have twins. It wasn't like I got down on my knees and prayed to God every night, "Lord, please impregnate me with twins because my life isn't stressful and challenging enough. Please give me twins because I am so completely enamored with the first 8 months of life after my babies are born, breastfeeding issues, sleep deprivation, postpartum depression and all, that I think it would be so awesome to do all of that, times 2." No. That is not how it went. I didn't ask to have twins, didn't choose to have twins, I was blessed with them. It was out of my hands and thank goodness it was because while I would have never chosen this, I am so, SO incredibly happy that we are here right now.

At the same time, don't ask me if they are natural. All babies are natural. Have you ever seen an "unnatural" baby? Let me know if you have, because I'd like to see that too. Yes, of course they are "natural". Do you mean, are they spontaneous? Are you asking how they were conceived? Does it really matter? Thank you for not being like the lady in the waiting room who wanted all of the details about how these babies were conceived, time frames, positioning and more, but I'm still not going to get into it with you. I don't even know you.

I understand that people are interested in pregnancy and want to enjoy it with me, but there is a line that is quickly crossed between genuinely caring and downright rude and judgmental. For the most part, people just jump right over that line and dive head first into the rude and judgmental pool. Yes, I am much more sensitive than I normally am, but really, just keep your mouths shut people. The world, at least my world, will be a much happier place. And as long as mama's happy...

geek squad this!

Last night I was dorking around on the computer and the wireless internet went dead. Normally when this happens it is because it is windy out or the microwave has been on for awhile or it gets really hot. But it was 10:30 at night, no wind, no one was cooking and it was nice and the device was nice and cool. I went to check the settings and the computer told me that it couldn't find our preferred network, but it wanted to connect me to a different network named "Bruce's Network".

Now, this normally wouldn't make me think twice because I'm used to living in an area that has multiple networks you can steal bandwidth from. But we live in the middle of nowhere. When I say nowhere, I mean the closest neighbor to us nearly a mile away. There's no way we could be picking up anyone's connection, let alone have a full strength signal from them. No one here had messed with any of the settings... I don't think anyone here even knows how to mess with the settings, and there's certainly no "Bruce" here, so something weird was going on. I immediately unplugged the Airport (Mac speak for the wireless router thingamajig) and made my dad go look outside to see if there was some shady person in a car sitting outside our house, trying to jack our connection or hack into our network to get our info or something. Yes, I'm paranoid. He didn't see anyone and I didn't hear any cars and there weren't any signs of a person having been outside our house either. We decided to call it a night and deal with it in the morning.

This morning I woke up and plugged in the Airport, plugged in my computer and still, I was being told to connect to "Bruce's Network". Nope, not going to happen. I don't know who Bruce is or what he wants or where he came from. I called my brother, who is an unofficial Geek, and explained the situation and was informed of the obvious: "That's weird". Yeah, no duh. Thanks, Captain Obvious. So he and I went through all of the obvious steps to try to remedy the situation, but no matter what we did, Bruce wouldn't go away and our network wouldn't appear. After doing a hard reset of the device, we were finally able to get rid of Bruce and make our network appear. And then my brother said, "Wait, wasn't the guy who lived in that house before named Bruce?"

Yes, yes, his name was Bruce, and he died a year or 2 after my parents bought and gutted the house. As far as we know, he didn't ever have internet here. I can't believe that a dude who lived in a house with original 60's green shag carpet, orange counter tops and burlap curtains until the day he sold it would have internet, and wireless internet at that. I also can't believe that the electrical system that was in this house could even support a computer, but that is besides the point.

So unless someone sat outside our house last night, hacked into our wireless settings and changed it to be "Bruce's Network" and then drove off, all in the span of 3 minutes, Bruce is back to visit us. I don't know if he's mad about his house, or just wanted to come say hi, but he's made his presence known. I've lived with ghosts before, but they have never made their names known so this is new territory.

Last night was a full moon and the owls were going nuts all night and one still is even this afternoon, so I'm not sure if he's still hanging out, or if he left, but you can sure as heck bet that I'm going to be watching the kids very closely to see if they start talking to anyone or about anyone new in the house. And I might be sleeping with the kids, with the lights on, for the next couple of nights because the Airport is in my room and that's just a little too creepy, even for me.

fashionistas?

Ask most 2 and 3 year olds to go pick out their outfit for the day, and you will probably be frightened by the results. Before I had kids, I fully expected to be the mom who had the 3 year old boy who insisted on going out in a green dinosaur t-shirt and bright yellow shorts with his Superman cape and cowboy boots on. Or to have the daughter who wore nothing but tutus and plastic jewelry and striped shirts with polka dotted pants, and 2 different colored socks. I was ok with that thought. I think it is very important for kids to express their individuality and if they want to wear mismatched clothes and accessories, then awesome. But I will draw the line at expressing oneself through tattoos and hair color before the age of 16. After that, we will talk.

But somehow, I ended up with 2 children who have impeccable taste and can coordinate an outfit better than most 30 year old men (and some women) I know. You ask them to go pick out their outfit for the day and they will stand in front of the shelves, carefully choosing their shirts and shorts, making sure the colors match. Once they choose their outfits, they will go through their 19,000,000 pairs of shoes to find the pair that has the same colors as their clothes. Then they go to their bucket of sunglasses and pick out the pair that coordinates the best. CB will even go so far as to pick out a cloth diaper that best matches her outfit, or will pick a shirt and baby legs just to match her cloth diaper. If I pick their outfit out, often they will go back to the room to get a different pair of shoes that they feel matches better, and they are almost always right.

It can get pretty ridiculous at times, especially when they freak out if their sippy cup lid color doesn't coordinate with the color of their cup. They get pretty excited when their plate color matches their cups too. CB will constantly point out when my clothes are matching or not. Although, me matching is very rare these days because so few things actually fit and I stay in tank tops and elastic waist pj pants while we are at home because those are the only things that are even slightly comfortable. I am working hard to be sure she and W don't turn out to be like the 6 year old punk I encountered in the grocery store nearly 2 years ago who so kindly pointed out that my white flip flops didn't match my blue tank top. I am trying to stress that they are not allowed to give fashion advice unless 1) they are married to the person, 2) they are being paid to tell people what to wear or 3) one of their friends is trying to squeeze their size 10 booty into a size 6 jeans.

Truth be told, I'm pretty sure it is all my fault. Ever since they were born I have made sure their outfits have been coordinated, right down to the pacifiers and blankets. People used to laugh their butts off when they noticed that the binkie matched the outfit and jokingly say something about me doing it on purpose and I would say, "Um, yeah I did it on purpose!!" It's not like it is hard to put a blue binkie in the diaper bag. I don't know why I do it, and I know it drives my husband absolutely crazy. So crazy that I'm pretty sure he will go out of his way to make sure the kids' clothes don't match when he dresses them just to spite me. I know he can coordinate clothing too, he just thinks I'm a big fat freak show for caring. What can I say? It makes me feel good to see things in order. The rest of my life might be a complete mess, but if those sunglasses match that shirt, then life is just a little bit better. They are doomed, aren't they?

nature week

One of the things that seriously sucks about living way out in the middle of nowhere is that during the summer months, nature inevitably finds its way into your home and there is no escape. Our invasion began this week and it came with a vengeance. It all started on one particularly craptacular day, as I was trying to write some papers and birds kept flying themselves into our big sliding glass door. 4 in less than 30 minutes, and that was just the beginning. Because I couldn't concentrate on writing anymore, I went to take the veggie scraps out to the composter. I noticed there were a bunch of files around and then I saw the dead owl laying on the ground. Nice. Once I came back inside, 2 more birds catapulted themselves into the window. The dumb things seriously need to learn how to fly. Our windows aren't even clean (thanks to W and CB) and they are covered by a porch! It isn't like we put runway lights on the ground leading them to fly into the window.

Later that night as I was brushing my teeth, a mouse ran across my foot. It was like the icing on the cake to my craptastic day. Of course, we didn't have any traps because we used them all last year so I couldn't do anything about it, but cry, and sleep in the kids' room cause there was no way in heck I was going to let a mouse have an opportunity to be my bed buddy.

The next day was slightly less eventful, except for the fact that I managed to get bitten by a million microscopic monsters when I took W out to ride his bike. The bites were so bad and itched so horribly that I spent most of the day putting straight ice on my skin to keep from scratching it off. Oh, and one of the dogs managed to catch a bird and eat it.

The day after that, as I was out with the kids, I heard my mom screaming for help in the kitchen. So I ran my pregnant butt into the house, expecting to have to put out a fire or slam a robber over the head with a shovel or mop up a major dishwasher explosion of soap, but instead was greeted by a gutsy little mouse who wanted to play. Fine. You wanna play, I'll play. Game on. The next half hour was spent trying to trap the mouse in the kitchen so I could catch it and figure out what to do with it. Of course, we still hadn't bothered to buy traps, so I had to improvise. That is what we moms do. We figure things out. So out came boxes and buckets and canning jars to block off the space under the cabinets... it was a mess but I was pretty proud of my ingenuity. So proud that I took a picture:



I managed to trap the thing within my barricade but couldn't bend over far enough to throw a bowl over it because he was so fast, and there was NO way I was getting on my hands and knees because 1) I would never be able to get up again and 2) um, no, not getting that close to it, thank you very much. So he got away. Then that mouse either cloned himself or multiplied because the mice kept coming. And the bugs kept biting, and the birds kept dying.

The final count for the week?
1 dead owl
2 dead birds thanks to the dog
4 dead birds for other reasons
1 dead rabbit (we think) thanks to the cat
9 yes NINE mice that have been caught and disposed of
1 random rooster seen in the road
73,468 bug bites on my body

The bug bite count is no exaggeration. Ok, well it may be a little bit exaggerated, but it sure as heck feels like I have that many bites. I'd share a picture, but the pictures wouldn't be very appropriate and I don't want to scare small children. These bites are ALL OVER, horrendous, give me hives and make me itch like I have rolled in poison ivy and then licked someone who had the chicken pox and then rubbed my belly against someone who had shingles. I itch so bad that I sit and cry most of the day and wake up with my skin bleeding because I've been scratching in my sleep. Aren't I hot?? Don't you wanna come sleep next to me? There is nothing that cures the itch, not even the most off the wall folk remedies. Believe me, I've tried just about everything. And this is on top of all of the other itching I've been dealing with from the pregnancy.

I'm really hoping that our Nature Week is over or that we have at least seen the worst of it. I refuse to let the mice put me into preterm labor because I was over exerting myself while throwing bowls at them... or running as fast as possible the other way. Gotta love the country life. Really.

**Side note for those of you wondering: the doctor doesn't think that I have PUPPPS, but I'm beginning to wonder if he's wrong and these bites are really a PUPPPS rash because I am the only person in the house that has them and they aren't on my face or belly button... the only thing isn't convincing me that this is PUPPPS is the itching and bumps only appear after I have been outside and/ or in the sun but the itching and bumps calm down after a few days. I guess only time will tell.**