Friday, June 20, 2008

Tennis Court Tantrums and French Onion Soup

Nearly four years ago The Hubs and I went on a trip to Wisconsin, sort of a last hoorah before he began his second year of law school, and I went back to teaching in September. It wasn’t much of a trip, just to an inn with some restaurants, a pool, tennis courts (we were beginners, but very into tennis at the time), and about the right amount of activity to make us feel like we’d gotten to get away for a break before the drudgery began again. What you need to know, Dear Reader, before I continue with this story, is that we had also been “trying” for one month. With the expectation that getting pregnant would probably take six months or so, we decided to go ahead and get going on that, hoping we’d be successful at some point throughout the year…

So we set off. We swam in the pool, ate at nice restaurants, and had a leisurely time. But not long into our little excursion, things got weird. Let me be more specific: I got weird. It began at the tennis court, on a fairly hot day. We were new at tennis, so it wasn’t totally out of the ordinary for one of us to get frustrated with our own lack of ability, but go ahead and fast forward to the part where I am sitting in the middle of the tennis court crying and yelling at him that he is hitting the ball out of my reach on purpose!!! To which he would have said, had he not be petrified of me at the time, “Isn’t that the object of the game?” Instead, he recommended I drink more water and we head to our room for a rest. I declared that no, we would continue playing, but then every time I was forced to bend over and pick up a ball from the ground, I would start crying again.

We didn’t know why.

When we finally headed in, me, red-faced and swollen, him, dumbfounded, we had to climb a fairly substantial hill to get back to the inn. I had to stop and rest half way through. As you can imagine - more crying. But why do I have to stop and rest?! Why can’t I climb this hill?! YOU don’t have to rest. Let’s just go! At which point I proceeded to huff up the hill, tears still streaming down my face due to total exhaustion, with a bit of stubbornness thrown in.
We didn’t know why.

Inside our air conditioned room, we watched the US Open. I took a pregnancy test, just because I had them with me despite the fact that I knew it would be too early, but sometimes you just gotta check, right? It was negative.

Then the food thing began. Let me just say, I am big on elaborate breakfasts, especially at restaurants, so when I ordered toast and plain scrambled eggs one morning, The Hubs looked at me and doubt passed before his eyes - he wasn’t sure who I was. This was the woman who had eaten huge plates of blueberry pancakes every morning for eight days straight when we were on our honeymoon. When the food came, I ate only the toast.

We still didn’t know why.

That night, when it was time to discuss our dinner plans, I declared that I wanted to stay in and order room service, didn’t feel like going out. More importantly, I wanted French onion soup and apple pie for dinner. As The Hubs scanned the room service menu he said they might not have those things; apple pie was not listed. I said he’d better call down and see if they had some, because I was going to have French onion soup and apple pie for dinner, even if he had to go out and find me some apple pie. Mercifully (for him) they had both items and they arrived to our room a bit later. When the food was presented on the table, I’ll admit, it looked a bit odd, the combination that I’d required, that is. I’d probably never ordered onion soup before in my life.

But the weirder thing was the whole apple pie bit. I’d always hated baked apples. In fact, they make me gag because of the texture. Hubs had heard my story about the time my dad made me try apple pie at a restaurant with his parents even though I told him I didn’t like it, and I proceeded to gag and barf in front of my grandparents when he insisted (he never made me try it again after that:) And now, here we were sitting at a table with really salty soup and mushy pie before us, after it had been made abundantly clear that these were the necessary items, on penalty of who knows what, should they not have made it to my stomach in a timely fashion. I scarfed them down and went to bed early.

And still, we really didn’t know why. . .because apparently we are morons.

About a week later when we were home again. I took another test, and my heart stopped for a moment.

one

Then I took another.

two

Then I switched brands and took another.

three

Then I called Hubs. I had done this while he was at school, because I was so certain they would be negative anyway so it wouldn’t matter. I’d always regret that decision, wishing we could have been together for it. I spoke to him between classes, and told him there might be news, but that I wasn’t sure yet (um, how?) He went back to class, and at some point leaned back in his chair in a weird daze, tilting the whole thing over and falling out of his seat during the lecture in the stadium style classroom.

When he came home finally, I took another, fully expecting the result to be different now that he was here, because obviously it would be impossible for us to be pregnant on the first try.

4 tests

That was test four (as my four fingers indicate). And he looked at me and said, “We did it!” And here I am, finally letting it hit me as we stood over the tests in our bathroom.

preggers

And here he is, looking proud and, um, potent.

spreggers

And there we sat, having flashbacks of the previous week, the crying, the salty soup, the toast, the crazy woman (me), and, of course, the beer I shared with him, the seared rare tuna I ate for dinner one night, the underwater breath-holding contest we played in the pool, withholding oxygen from our poor spawn (I won though).

And then we knew why.

And we haven’t gotten to get back on the tennis court since.

Labels: Hubby, Pictures, Pregnant, Tales, Vacations and travel

posted by Beth @ 11:37 am  

Friday, July 13, 2007

Here’s Watcha Don’t Wanna Do - second installment

Number One: If you happen to be pregnant and roaming around the CVS with your toddler and that Eric Clapton “Tears in Heaven” song comes on, you don’t wanna stay there. For the love of God, run - run as fast as you can out of the store because we all remember what that song is about.  If you stay, you’ll have to accept that everyone else in the store, including your son (who is also wondering why you are lovingly stroking his cheek and kissing him repeatedly when he just wants to play with the bottle of sunblock), will be wondering why there is a huge pregnant woman aimlessly walking around with tears streaming down her face in the CVS.

Number Two: You’re out on the patio with your toddler, who is happily playing with his sand and water table. You’ve just finished a phone conversation on your cell and now you’ve noticed you have to pee…because you always have to pee…because you are nearly 9 months pregnant. When you get up to run in to the bathroom, you look around the patio to make sure your kid can’t do anything more than over-water your plants while you’re gone. You glance at your cell phone on the other side of the patio and on the ground. And you note how in your current huge state you hate getting things off the ground. And you decide that your son has shown no interest in the phone since being out here so it is ok to leave it there while you run inside.

You know you did the wrong thing while you are sitting there peeing.  You just know.  So when you get back out onto the patio the first thing you do is look at the spot on the ground where your cell was sitting - empty.  And you think perhaps you imagined leaving it out there because obviously you wouldn’t actually do that because it is so incredibly stupid so this must be one of those stories you see being played out in your head that didn’t actually happen.  But when you look inside on the desk where you would have put it it’s not there either.  You don’t see it anywhere out on the patio and it’s not over the railing.  You ask your cherub where your phone is, at which point he goes and retrieves it from his sand and water table, the water side…

You call your husband; he sounds…distant, and not in the emotional sense.  And then later it has no picture on the screen.  So the phone is taken apart and left to air dry overnight.

So my message to you: don’t stay at the CVS when the saddest freakin’ song in the world comes on, at least not while pregnant, and don’t leave your cell alone with your toddler.  Just don’t.

And with that, we are off to the shore tomorrow for a week.  I realize that with my infrequent blogging habits as of late no one will even notice this departure, but I figured if I had a good excuse to explain my absence I should take it.  Bye Bye.

Labels: Pregnant, Tales, Toddler

posted by Beth @ 2:33 pm  

Friday, May 25, 2007

Here’s Whatcha Don’t Wanna Do

You read a lot when you’re pregnant about being careful of your balance, or lack thereof.  Because you are a lot bigger and constantly changing in size, it’s hard to keep a good sense of balance and it’s important to avoid awkward situations in which you may become thrown off.  You don’t wanna ignore that advice.

If you do ignore it, you may decide it’s a good idea to sign your 2 year old up for a free circus class for a few weeks.  And you may decide that you can handle all the things they do in circus class even though you are pregnant and large, things like getting up and down off the floor a lot, helping your toddler do somersaults, etc.  These things may include assisting your child while he’s hanging on a trapeze just a few feet above a very thick mat, like one of those that are about 1 1/2 feet thick.  If you ignore the advice, you may think it’s ok to stand on this thick mat even though you are huge.  Then, when you start to move around the trapeze you may discover the path is somewhat narrow.  You may step a little too close to the edge of the mat, which may give way a little more than you’d expect due to your extreme largeness.  And then you may use the other foot to step down off the mat so you don’t fall.  But, because you don’t have a good sense of balance, you may not totally clear the mat with the other foot.  And your little toe might get caught on the side of the mat as you go down…and it may try to stay there, on the mat, as your body descends.  When you land you may think you only jammed it, but when you look down and see that your little toe is sticking out to the side at about a 45 degree angle you’ll realize it’s more than jammed.  Then you may start to faint during your child’s circus class.

If you ignore this advice, you may then have to spend the rest of the day in the ER after making your husband come home from work.  You may have x-rays and find out you broke your toe, like totally broke it.  You’ll be instructed to stay off of it for 3 days, which will be virtually impossible since you have a 2 year old.  Then you’ll have to heal for about 4 weeks, making several follow up appointments with a specialist, taping your toe to the one next to it in hopes of straightening it back out, and wearing “only hard soled shoes” for much of your summer, not that you can see how you are to fit your foot in any type of “hard soled shoe.”  And you’ll have to do all of this while being in your third trimester and wrangling a toddler, who, believe me, does not give a crap that your toe has a “big toe boo boo - whoa!”

I’m just saying, if you ignore this advice, it could happen to you.  When pregnant, don’t stand on squishy mats, mats meant to create a sense of safety, because, for pregnant ladies, apparently mats break toes, not falls.

Labels: Pregnant, Tales

posted by Beth @ 4:42 pm  

Friday, May 4, 2007

Oh, The Horror

I’ve had some requests for belly pics. I thought it would be fun to do a comparison of this pregnancy to my first and Oh Dear God was it a mistake to look at the old photos. Not fun.  Torture.  Now I need water ice.  Here is a picture of me at 24 weeks pregnant with Sam:

24-weeksa.jpg
Now here is a recent picture of me at 24 weeks. I realize The Belly is obscured, but in this case that’s really not a problem seeing as it is freakin’ huge anyway. Dude…Dude. At least my son is hugging me in an attempt to console.

hug.jpg

Labels: Pictures, Pregnant

posted by Beth @ 3:00 pm  

Wednesday, April 4, 2007

Wordless Wednesday - Smile?

big-smile.jpg

smile.jpg

This is what happens when you ask Sam to smile for a picture nowadays.

In other news: I wrote a long post a few days ago to make the following announcement, but as I published it our internet died. I know better; I know I should always copy everything. But after that I just couldn’t bring myself to rewrite it. So without suspense, insight into my feelings, anecdote, what have you, Sam is going to have a little brother:)

Labels: Pictures, Pregnant

posted by Beth @ 12:25 pm  

Thursday, February 1, 2007

Who’s got it worse? Me or Jack?

Whenever I was feeling sorry for myself while pregnant with Sam - not like a serious sorry for myself but like a, “Oh I’m so tired and gassy and sick of my job and bloated and fat and ugly and it sucks,” sort of way - I would watch one of the Lord of The Rings movies. Frodo had it bad, he really did. Has to leave home to do this damn quest that he didn’t even sign up for, bear the weight of that blasted ring, sleep on the edge of rock cliffs, leave his friends, get stabbed by Ringwraith blades…man, it’s rough. I knew that no matter how I was feeling I didn’t have it as bad as Frodo and should therefore feel good about my situation. During my third trimester when my hands and feet broke out in unbearable itchy rashes that were untreatable due to the dangers of the drugs to the baby I watched a whole lot of LOTR, but by then I was taking it much more seriously and I really wasn’t sure that Frodo did have it so bad. At least when Frodo went to sleep on that rock cliff he didn’t lay there scratching his feet until they bled…anyway…

I’m not sure yet, because we still aren’t caught up with the new season, but I think my pity character for this pregancy will be Jack Bauer. I mean, seriously, dude returns after spending two years being tortured in a Chinese prison only to find out he will now be handed over to another group who wants to torture him to death and he is sacrificed for the country that abandoned him…several times. Rough. I guess I shouldn’t feel so bad about the fact that my farts make me gag and want to vomit.

Am I the only one that does this? Do others have characters that they fall back on to comfort them in times of pregnant misery? If so, who are they? I love a good pity party.
And I suppose I should explain where the heck I’ve been:

I know, ridiculous. It has been so long. Everything is fine. We are alive and I appreciate those of you who have contacted me to make sure things are ok. We’ve just had a whole lot of sickness going around. Not even a week passed after that Norwalk virus thing before Sam came down with a fever and a bad cold, and then I caught it. And we STILL have it. It’s now been two weeks. We’re recovering but it seriously feels like we’ve been sick all winter. We’ve been trapped in the house, which is not good for one’s psyche, especially when we get very little sunlight in here, and it’s just been kind of rough. Top it off with the constant morning sickness nausea and you’ve got a pretty good sense of what’s going on over here. But we are alive and even heard the babe’s heartbeat today, so all is well.

Labels: Bodily functions, Pregnant

posted by Beth @ 9:13 pm  

Wednesday, January 17, 2007

A public apology to my husband

Hubby, I am sorry.  I am sorry that on any given day of the week you are able, with 96% accuracy, to predict what I am going to wear.  Furthermore, I am sorry that this is not due to some complex OCD schedule of ‘the green shirt on Tuesday and the black stripes on Wednesday’ I have going but instead, is because you just have to think of what I wore the day before…because I wear the same thing every. single. day.  I am even more sorry that apparently my current one outfit leaves much to be desired.  When a friend came over for a playdate the other day, after not seeing me since before the holidays, she took one look at me and exclaimed, “Wow! Pregnant!”  Great.  Just great.

It’s true, at 9 weeks I look like I am in my second trimester already and this outfit, my one outfit, does happen to consist of oversized maternity clothes.  And when I took a good look in the mirror I saw that she was indeed being extremely generous because I did not, in fact, look pregnant; I just looked really fat.

And so, Hubby, I am sorry.  I am sorry that I have looked like a heifer for the past week and a half. I promise not to wear that awful plaid maternity shirt from Old Navy anymore, at least not until it actually fits, and we will both pray that that day does not come because man, if that thing ever actually fits my body I will have surpassed the 50 pound (that’s right 50!) weight gain that I had when pregnant with Sam.  I don’t think it’s even a maternity shirt really, it’s just a really really big shirt that they put in the maternity section.  Oh, but it matters not - it’s gone.  It’s folded and placed neatly on top of the overalls that I sported for my entire third trimester.  It was so unfortunate when I saw pictures of myself in those overalls.  Hubby, why didn’t you tell me?  You have to TELL ME these things.  Just like when I saw my reflection in the rear view mirror the other day and it was really well lit, and I gasped to see what has happened to my eyebrows.  You have to tell me when the arch part is gone and has been taken over by tiny rogue hair buds!  Come to think of it, why the hell didn’t you tell me how awful that shirt looked?!  How could you let me leave the house like that?!  Do you want me to look like a heifer or is it that you’ve just given up?!  I am not a heifer, damn it, not yet at least.  We’re a good 30 pounds away from true cow state so you keep your eyes peeled and when I walk out in a tent and a unibrow you best be opening your mouth and ducking!

Labels: Pregnant

posted by Beth @ 7:25 pm  
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