Gettin' Old

I like to say that LL changes every single day, but I only mean it in a technical sense. Many of the changes are very subtle, the kind of things only a parent would notice. He's a little taller, he's a little more steady, he can move a little bit faster. Then there are periods where it's like a whole new part of his brain suddenly came on-line, and we're like, "Whoa, this is a totally different kid!" We're in the middle of one of those periods right now. Some new link in his brain just came alive and suddenly he's understanding so much, and he's capable of doing so much more. It's really rather amazing. A few highlights:

After adding practically no new words for almost two months, LL is now building his vocabulary. "Up," "Down," and "cheese!" are the new favorites. He's currently eating a lot of cheese, because "cheese" is the only food word he knows, so every time I ask him what he'd like to eat, he says "cheese!" He has also added several new animal sounds (most prominently cows and wolves), which has meant a slight reprieve from the constant barking.

We're having real conversations! We used to have to coax him to say every word he knew, but now he volunteers appropriate words, and he asks and answers questions. He still gets by largely with four words: "Da!" (Russian for "yes".) "No!" "This" and "All Done!" When he wants something, he points in the general direction and says "this!" Then we play a guessing game where I pick things up one by one and ask, "Do you want X?" while he calmly shakes his head and says "No!" until I hit upon whatever it was he was asking for. Then he grins, nods, says "Da!", plays with / looks at / eats whatever it was, then says "All Done!" and calmly hands it back to me. Very civilized. The guessing part kind of sucks, but presumably that will get easier as he learns more nouns. For now, we're just happy that we have a way of figuring out what he wants that doesn't involve screaming and tantrums. And it's great that I've been able to reason with him on occasion: "Let's go change your diaper." "No!" "Why not? Is it because you want to keep playing with your car?" "Da!" "Hm... do you want to bring your car with you while we change your diaper?" "Da!!!" "Great! Pick up your car and let's go to your room!" And then he picks up the car and goes to his room. He wasn't at this level even one week ago.

We're having a lot of luck with avoiding temper tantrums using an "empathy" method that I didn't think would work yet, but miraculously does. The idea is that toddlers get upset about ... whatever (knocking over the blocks; having to wait for something; not being allowed to eat cake for dinner; having a dangerous object taken away from them) but they morph from simply being upset into being a screaming kicking ball of tantrum fury because they don't think that their parents understand why they're so upset. Being denied the cake is bad, but being misunderstood and dismissed is so much worse. So, when you see a tantrum about to start, you name the emotion, accept it, then suggest alternative ways of reacting. For example: "I'm sorry, LL. I know that you're angry that I won't let you have cake. I get angry when I can't have something that I want, too. It's okay for you to be angry, but it's not okay to kick your legs like this. Why don't we go find something else to have for a snack instead? Would you like a banana?" I have to say all of this while LL is still in the winding-up-to-a-tantrum phase, because once he crosses that threshold, I'm out of luck. But as soon as I see him start to get upset, I look him right in the face and start naming the emotion. He usually stops crying by the end of my speech, sniffles a bit, then calmly acknowledges the new activity. It's really quite amazing. It's amazing to me that "I know you want cake, but you can't have it" makes him tantrum, but "I know that you're angry about not getting cake" instantly calms him down. He hasn't had a full-blown tantrum in weeks.

LL is finally learning body parts. After stubbornly refusing to acknowledge eyes and ears, despite lots of singing of "Heads, Shoulders, Knees and Toes," and lots of reading of books like Karen's Katz's "Where is Baby's Belly Button?", he suddenly became obsessed with noses. For one day. And the next day, he was suddenly able to point to many of his body parts, none of which he was able to identify the day before. Mouth, teeth, tongue, nose, eyes, ears, hair, fingers, and toes. He's most consistent with hair, probably because he loves running his fingers through his curls.

He's suddenly into imitation. For a long time, the only behavior that we noticed him emulating was talking on the phone. (Everything vaguely rectangular was a phone.) But overnight, he decided that there are so many other things he could be imitating! He loves trying on our shoes and slippers and clothes (especially belts). He discovered during his last cold that he hates having snot on his hands, so he taught himself how to wipe his own nose with a handkerchief instead. No muss, no fuss! (Why he insists on handing the used handkerchief to me, rather than putting it down somewhere, is another matter.) And in a move that cracks me up every single time he does it, LL refuses to put down his sippy cup unless there's a coaster underneath it. If there's no coaster handy, he'll hand me his cup, run over to get a coaster, put the coaster where he wants it, take the cup back from me, and very carefully place it in the middle of the coaster. Every. Single. Time. We were at a play date last weekend, at someone else's house, and LL managed to find a stack of coasters on an end table, brought them over to where everyone was playing, spread them out, and then carefully moved every other kid's sippy cup onto its own coaster. (By the way, he gets the neatness thing from S, not me. And we've never even tried to enforce a coasters-for-sippy-cups policy. He just watched us do it with our own drinks, and decided it was cool.)

LL is finally reliably giving hugs and kisses. He's been doing the hugs for a while, actually, but the kisses are new. He'll follow commands like "Go give Daddy a hug and kiss," but better yet is that he notices when I'm feeling particularly tired (I lie down on the floor in the middle of his play area and say, "Wow, Mommy's really tired!" I'm subtle like that) and he'll come over on his own, give me a hug and kiss, and then pat my back encouragingly. The lip-smacking sound that accompanies the kisses is particularly amusing.

He's definitely into the "I can do it myself!" independence phase. He takes his shoes and jacket off by himself when we get home. He climbs into chairs by himself. When he's done eating, he takes his bib off and hands it to me before holding his hands out to be wiped off (and he wipes his mouth himself now -- it's very cute!). He loves brushing his teeth. He can stack cups and blocks into towers that are as tall as he is. At the park, he can climb the slide, sit down, and slide back down again all by himself. And he's finally reliably going to sleep on his own without crying. For a long time, he would scream when we put him in the crib; he usually stopped within 60 seconds, but it still bothered me that my peaceful night-night routine always ended with pitiful shrieking. Then suddenly last week, I put him in his crib and, instead of crying, he gently took his blankie from me, hugged it, smiled up at me, and waved bye-bye. It's so nice to be able to blow him a final kiss from the door and then walk out, knowing that he's happy and warm and comfortable and able to go to sleep on his own.

The more I watch LL interact with other children, the more I notice how easy-going he is. At playdates, other toddlers seem to spend much of their time throwing things and banging things and shrieking. LL is usually so much more calm than that. Not that he never throws toys. It's just not his normal mode of play. While other toddlers seem to yell the word "no" to everything, LL has this quiet normal-speaking-voice "no" that is usually accompanied by a gentle shaking of his head. Or, my favorite, he does his very thoughtful, "Hmmmm.... nah!" that is accompanied by a shrugging of his shoulders. How in the world did a one-year-old pick up the body language for indifference?

So, um, yeah. He's getting old. He's just two weeks shy of 18 months. The big one-point-five. It turns out that I'm getting old, too. Tomorrow's my birthday. My age will be a palindrome in both decimal and binary representations. Bonus points to anyone who identifies the other ages where this is true during a reasonable human lifespan. If you always ignore leading 0s, I count six other ages.

An Independent Boy

I'm not entirely sure how it happened, but my baby LL has been replaced with a little boy. And when I say "boy," I really do mean gender-stereotyped boy. He likes playing in dirt. He says "vroom! vroom!" while pushing toy cars. He is fascinated by trucks and airplanes. He is fearlessly obsessed with climbing to death-defying heights. He believes that chairs are for jumping off of, or flipping over, but rarely for sitting. He loves trains (and since the only television he's ever seen has been Packers games, I can't blame it on cartoons like Thomas). Even though he's still in the drunken-sailor Frankenstein-on-brand-new-legs phase of learning to walk, he has somehow already learned how to run. He figures out how toys work without our help. And he has this breathlessly happy, excited way of saying "Daddy!" that both melts my heart and makes me a bit jealous. (He says "Mama," too, but not out of excitement. He says it when he wants something. As S is fond of saying, LL clearly thinks of the word "Mama" as a command, not a name.)

He has also started cultivating his fiercely independent side. He has enjoyed holding his own spoon during meals for quite some time, but it was mainly ornamental (and a convenient teething toy between bites of food). Now he is actually feeding himself -- he uses his spoon for actual conveyance of food, dipping it into bowls and then bringing it to his mouth, repeatedly. It would be more effective if he didn't flip the spoon over every single time on its way to his mouth, but it works quite well for sticky foods that can just be licked off. He hates diaper changes. He hates putting on clothes. He hates that there are objects in the house that he is not allowed to handle and/or chew on. (Chanukah candles were a problem. He got really pissed that we wouldn't let him touch fire.) He is obsessed with electronics. He will only listen to books that he has chosen himself and handed to us, often turning to the exact page that he would like us to read first. He hates being thwarted. For a long time, he barely noticed baby gates, but now he shakes them angrily with his hands and shrieks in frustration whenever he encounters one. He also shrieks when he finds that his ever-growing body doesn't fit somewhere it once did, like in narrow gaps between furniture, or underneath small tables.

We took advantage of his desire for independence by finally changing LL's bedtime routine. For more than a year, we have ignored the advice to put him down in his crib "sleepy but awake." Early on, we just didn't have the fortitude to deal with the screaming that ensued. Then both S and I came to love the snuggling time that we got with LL by rocking him gently to sleep every night. The sleep experts all claim that soothing your child all the way to sleep will rob him of the ability to learn how to put himself to sleep, resulting in a baby that needs your help to fall back asleep every 3-4 hours, all night long. But these same experts say that a baby that can sleep for at least six straight hours without calling for help has definitely woken up and gone back to sleep by himself at least once during that time, and LL was sleeping for twelve straight hours almost every single night, so we were pretty sure that he had figured it out on his own. Nevertheless, S and I decided that it was finally time to stop rocking him all the way to asleep at bedtime. Partially this was planning ahead (waaaaay ahead) for possibly having another baby. Partially it was because the uncertainty of not knowing how long it would take to get him to sleep was becoming a problem. Mainly, though, it was just that LL had gotten so big that he doesn't fit lying sideways in my lap and I couldn't comfortably move him around while cradled in my arms. The bedtime transition went surprisingly smoothly. The first night, he screamed for exactly 15 minutes after we put him in his crib and closed the door behind us. (To be clear: this was screaming, not crying. He was not sad or upset. He was mad.) The second night, it was five minutes. He has rarely protested at all since then, other than a few shrieks when we leave the room, just to make sure that we know that this is not his preferred method of falling asleep.

He is finally starting to show some interest in "adult" foods, so we've been able to cut back a bit on the purees. Current favorite foods are cottage cheese, meatballs, grapefruit, tangerines, rice crackers, and spinach nuggets. (Spinach nuggets, by the way, are exactly what they sound like: they're like chicken nuggets, but with spinach instead of chicken. He is bizarrely fascinated by them.) He still rejects most of the common toddler foods like scrambled eggs, macaroni and cheese, avocado, bread, and pasta. But every once in a while he surprises us, like last week when he gobbled up an entire bowl of my broccoli orzo stew.

We took LL to the zoo for the first time, where he became obsessed with kangaroos. He hugged every goat in the petting zoo. He was very popular with the goats, possibly because he had smeared so much oatmeal in his hair at breakfast that he smelled deliciously like oats. At one point, he became so surrounded by goats and sheep that a zoo employee came over because she was afraid about him getting freaked out and trampled, but he was giggling so hard that she let them be. He tried his best to climb into the bear enclosure. He did not understand why he was not allowed to hug the bears.

S's company shut down for the holidays, so we have been enjoying lots of family time. I've gone into work a few times, but mainly just to work on job applications. Yep, I have now officially applied for several tenure-track assistant professor gigs. I'm also still working on two papers that I'm hoping to submit in the next few weeks, but I've decided to enjoy my time with S and LL and worry about the paper starting in January.

Happy 2010!

Toddlerhood!

LL is climbing on everything, and he's like half an inch away from being able to open doors. He's addicted to peek-a-boo, and has developed a dramatic flourish for when he throws his arms wide to reveal his face. He blows on food when it's too hot. He can more or less feed himself with a fork. But most exciting of all:

LL is walking!

Wait, "walking" is a bit strong. LL is taking five steps or so before carefully falling gracefully to the ground! Yes, he is now the definition of toddler. The Friday before Thanksgiving, he consented to take some steps while holding onto somebody's hands. (Before that, he would only take steps while holding onto furniture. Other human beings were apparently not stable enough to trust with the support of his 24 pound frame.) On Sunday, he let go of me and took two steps to S. On Monday, he rested. (Learning to walk is very hard work.) After saying a cheerful "hello" to his auntie, S's sister, on Tuesday, LL spent the entire afternoon insisting that Auntie and I sit on the floor a few feet apart from each other so that he could toddle between us. By Wednesday, our house was packed with all of the visiting in-laws, and everybody had to be very careful not to trip over LL, who was pulling himself up on any and all available legs and then setting off across the open floor before falling prostrate onto the ground, usually right in front of an older relative carefully balancing a heaping plate of food.

In related news, Thanksgiving was fun and busy and entertaining and frustrating and stressful, and thankfully, it is now over. S's family has some weird dynamics, and even after ten years, I'm still getting used to it. Also, S's childhood friend, D, who has known his family for a long long time and often spends Thanksgiving with them, was with us for the week and drove me crazy. (As an example: Friday afternoon I had just finished serving lunch to 20 people, for the third day in a row, and finished prepping dinner for the same 20 people, for the fourth day in a row, and finally gotten LL to nap, and my house was still full of guests but they were happy and entertaining themselves for a change, and I sat down to relax a little for the first time in forever, when D came over to me and told me that he and his wife wanted to go shopping but they didn't want to bring their two-year-old with them, so they were going to leave him with me for a few hours. And then they just left. And the two-year-old was in a strange house filled with people he didn't know, and he freaked out. And I spent the next two hours trying to calm him down and reassure him that mommy and daddy were going to come back for him real soon. Because in addition to hosting tons of family for 5 days and cooking a ridiculous amount of food, I was apparently running a holiday baby-sitting service. Also, D arrived at our house on day four with a horrible cough, and when we asked him about it, he said that he'd been really sick for a while now, but he'd been masking it with cold medicine so that he could still come over for Thanksgiving. He'd run out of medicine, so he couldn't hide it from us anymore. Jerk. Yesterday, LL started coughing. Shocking, right?)

On the plus side, S's family was totally charmed by LL, who really ramped up the cuteness for the week. No traces of separation anxiety -- he was totally equal opportunity, playing with everybody and going to the park alone with aunties and uncles that he hadn't seen since he was three months old. He even spent a good hour with a particularly grumpy uncle, handing blocks and stacking cups back and forth and clapping enthusiastically whenever the uncle smiled at him. I even got to see the first half of the Packers game while the turkey cooked (go Pack!) and LL wore his little Packers jersey and cheered for every first down, and crawled around the room tugging on people's legs to make sure that they knew that they were supposed to be clapping. He is scarily comfortable being the center of attention.

So, we survived. Everybody is now back safely at home, our fridge is full of leftovers, and we're slowly putting the house back together. I told S that I'm not cooking again for a month, but I'll probably break down after a few days of pizza and spaghetti. We won't have to host Thanksgiving for at least 6 years (longer if S's sister gets added to the rotation, which will probably happen soon). So, the next time we host, LL will be in grade school, we'll probably be living in a different state, we could have another child, and theoretically, I could have tenure somewhere. Freaky!

I'm feverishly back to working on job applications, with the hopes of getting all of the materials done by December 10 (a little over a week from now). If I can hit that deadline, I can turn my attention to a paper that I'm trying to finish, hoping to get it done before Christmas. If both of those things get done on time, I will be free of work obligations through the December holidays. S's office shuts down between Christmas and New Year's, which gives us an 11-day stretch of vacation during which we will both be free. Amazing! We had been planning on staying home and relaxing and playing with LL for that entire time, but we're starting to feel a little guilty about not bringing LL to visit family, so we might travel for New Year's after all.

Deadlines are looming. No more break time for me. Back to work!

Teeth

I've said it before, and I'll say it again: teething sucks. Big time. I hear from friends that some babies aren't bothered by teething, most are only bothered by the first few teeth, and even more are only bothered for a day or two. LL is not one of those children. When he's sprouting a tooth, he is a screaming no-sleep mess for weeks. (He's still charming during the day, for the most part, though the never-ending sleep disturbances all night long for weeks at a time do take a toll on even the most cheerful toddler.) I'm not sure if it helps us or hurts us, but LL also tends to get his teeth in waves. He got the last six of his eight incisors all during two tumultuous months. After a brief break, he is now working on molars and canines. In the last month alone, he has sprouted four of them, and two more are threatening to break the surface any day now. One the one hand, that is an awful lot of pain for a little guy to handle all at once. On the other hand, I suppose it will be nice to get it all out of the way.

As a total aside: on the advice of my dentist (who was shocked when I told him that LL is 13 months old and already has 12 teeth) we bought LL a normal toddler-sized toothbrush, instead of using the fingertip infant brush that seemed to just give LL a reason to bite us every day. He loves it, and is getting very good at brushing his own teeth.

LL is still waking up every single night. We dose him with Motrin before he goes to bed, and like clockwork, he wakes up six hours later when the medicine wears off. The Motrin seems to dull the pain enough for him to sort of fall asleep, but it clearly leaves enough pain that he's sleeping very lightly. He's normally a deep sleeper, but lately, he wakes to every noise and then wants company while he tosses and turns and chews on his hand and moans slightly as he tries to go back to sleep. Though we had never really done it before, we've started co-sleeping after he wakes in the middle of the night. I figure, if he's going to want one of us to keep him company until dawn, we might as well all be horizontal. This strategy is leading to an increased quantity of sleep for everybody, though a decreased quality of sleep for me and S. But I'm so horribly sleep-deprived at the moment that I'm willing to take quantity over quality, at least for a while. Maybe just until the last four canines and molars come in.

In happier news, LL increased his vocabulary this weekend. His repertoire had included: all done, mama (or rather, "Mom-Mom", which I find charming), dada, dai (Russian for "gimme", approximately), dah (Russian for "yes"), no no ("nah nah!"), and when he's feeling particularly communicative: again. (Sadly, it's sometimes hard to distinguish "all done" and "again," leading to a very frustrated LL.) Many children say "dog" early on, but instead, whenever LL sees or hears a dog, he barks. It's a very obvious "arf! arf!" sound. He also does a fairly convincing "ee! ee! ooh! ooh!" sound when he sees a monkey. Either we've been spending too much time making animal sounds and not enough time actually identifying the animals by name, or LL is just a born performer. Either way, in a move towards providing names for the animal kingdom, LL has now added the word "bear." Between wall paper, pictures, books, clothing, and stuffed animals, our house has approximately 8 billion bears in it, so LL is getting lots of opportunity to show off his new word.

LL has also suddenly developed a taste for exploration. For a long time after he learned to crawl, he refused to do it outside. If we put him on a blanket in the grass, he stayed on the blanket. Which was kind of handy, actually. Now, he has discovered that sidewalks are fun. If I set him in the front yard, he takes off for the sidewalk, then proceeds to visit all the neighbors. If I can just teach him to stop trying to take headers off the curb, he'll be ready for his own paper route or something.

Fluid Dynamics

I'm a total cliche. My little boy is now 10 months old, and it turns out that I'm one of those mothers who goes on and on about how fast time flies and where did the time go? But rather than give another bulleted update on teeth (eight so far, all shockingly visible when he smiles, and I fear that there are early molars on their way) and mobility (no crawling, no pulling up, no cruising, no wanting to take steps, but he can bounce across a room on his backside a la Tigger when he really wants to) I'm going to talk about physics.

Back at LL's six month update, I mentioned that LL was figuring out the basics of physics. He had figured out enough about gravity to keep him upright in a sitting position! He had observed what happened when he hit one object with another! He understood enough about friction that he could pull a blanket to make toys on top of the blanket move towards him! Forces and opposite forces and bodies in motion! All good stuff.

But clearly, I was a bit premature in my assessment of his knowledge. Did you notice anything about what he had learned? It's all good classical mechanics stuff, but there's something notably missing. We are slowly discovering that his handle on fluid dynamics is not quite up to par. Examples:

Picking up applesauce with your fingers doesn't work very well. The applesauce tends to just slide through your fingers. Same with pureed squash. And pureed carrots. And pureed mango. And milk. Every time. If you want to feed these things to yourself, fingers are not a very good mechanism.

Lying on your back and holding a bottle up for yourself is very cool. But when you then roll onto your stomach, with the bottle underneath you (but still in your mouth), you're not going to be able to drink. See how the milk is at the opposite end from the nipple? That's a problem. Sorry, but it's not Mommy's fault. Yell at me all you want, but you will still need to roll onto your back in order to drink. It's not that Mommy is being mean or arbitrary. As they say: it's the Law.

Drinking out of sippy cups is a lot of fun. I understand that it's hard work to drink when there's a valve there, so I've done as you've asked and removed the spill-proof valve, so that the water flows more freely. But when you tip the cup upside down over your head, the water is going to come out. Onto your head. Yes, you're going to get wet. Sometimes the water is even going to go in your eyes. Yell all you want, but don't think that you're going to convince the water to behave any differently.

While we're on the subject of water, let's discuss bathtime. Yes, more than anything else, the bathtub is your own personal fluid dynamics laboratory. It's good that you spend so much time in the tub running experiments and making observations. For instance, I know that you're fascinated to figure out how the spray showerhead works. All those sparkling drops of water, flying out of a shiny metal nozzle! You can't help but want to touch it. But sticking your face there for a closer look? Probably not a good idea for a budding scientist who doesn't like getting his face wet. And doing it over and over and over? Well, I'm going to take that as a sign that you truly are a scientist. Good work.

LL is currently working on a book, LL's Introduction to Fluid Dynamics: A Practical Guide for Infants, with chapters on bottles, sippy cups, straws, pureed food, bathtubs, swimming pools, beaches, and sprinklers. There's also a super-special chapter for boys on what happens when you pee straight up into the air during a diaper change.

Bigger Pumpkin?

Sigh. After 40 weeks of comparing baby Barack's size to a different object every Tuesday, I am now left high and dry here at 41 weeks. I'm still pregnant, but there are no more size comparisons to be had. Why? Because I'm not still supposed to be pregnant.

I asked S how big he thought Barack was this week. I mean, what's bigger than a pumpkin? A large gourd? S's response: "Your baby is now as big as a one-week-old newborn." Thanks, dear.

Friends and family members have offered several theories on why the baby hasn't made his appearance yet. Two of these roadblocks were cleared away earlier today:

Problem #1: Perhaps the baby was waiting until he had a crib.

Solution: I called today to check on the crib. You may recall that we ordered it back in May, and it was due in by mid-August. Then the store went out of business, the order was transferred, the manufacturer started reporting shipping problems.... The expected date was pushed back to mid-September, then to late October. When I called today, I found out that the date is now mid-December. I had made my peace with using a bassinet for the first 6 weeks, but that's not something we can do for 3 months. I told the store to cancel the order and refund our deposit. I then asked them to place an order for our second-choice crib (one we liked, but not as much, and it won't match the changing table, and it's more expensive). Turns out the second-choice crib was in stock. They delivered it this afternoon. We now have a crib. Ta da! Barack now has somewhere permanent to sleep. You can go ahead and be born now, kid.

Problem #2: Perhaps the baby was waiting until he had a new car to ride home in.

Solution: We have a new car. (Yep, today was an expensive day.) We ordered a new car back in July, because both of our cars are old, tiny compact cars that can technically fit a car seat, but just barely. The car was (you guessed it) back-ordered, until early September. Then they revised their guess, to be mid-October. Instead, the dealership called this morning to tell us that the car had arrived. I haven't even sat it in yet (S drove it home, while I drove our old car) because, with my luck, my water will break in our brand new car. So, baby Barack also now has a nice comfortable new set of wheels in which to ride home from the hospital.

S and I have been joking for months about which would arrive first: baby, car, or crib. The final ordering: crib, then car, then (hopefully) baby.

Last note: our baby betting pool has now been decided. My mom had the latest guess, and even her guess has now passed, so she wins by default. I told her that it was her fault that I hadn't gone into labor yet, because she historically has won an awful lot of baby pools. Her response: "Okay, but I bet you'll go into labor tomorrow, before you need to be induced." I bet I won't. So we both put our money where our mouths are -- I bet her double or nothing for the entire size of the pool that this baby isn't going to be born before Thursday.

Less than 36 hours until I'm induced....

Pumpkin

Yes, I'm still here, and still pregnant, at 40 weeks. I'm not exactly happy about it, but not a whole lot I can do about it, either. S and I have both marveled at how quickly I went from "Hey, pregnancy isn't so bad!" to "I seriously can't go on like this!" Because seriously -- I can't go on like this. Our five day triple-digit heat wave (once again, without A/C) is thankfully over, which is helping a bit, but I'm still so gosh darn uncomfortable that I'm finding it a bit hard to see the positives. I'm not sleeping, and I'm barely eating, thanks to near-constant heartburn. It hurts to sit, it hurts to walk, it hurts to lay down, it hurts to move. Even the smallest task, like getting in and out of a car, seems like a monumental undertaking. Everything about me is swollen.

It's strange to count down to a particular date for 9 months, and then that day comes and is just another day. Nothing is happening. And somehow, I had convinced myself that I would go into labor before my due date, so I never really wrapped my head around being in this position.

We have tried every old wive's tale that exists to try to induce labor. And yes, I do mean every single one. Even the incredibly uncomfortable ones (eg, spicy food does not induce labor, it just makes heartburn even worse). S has even taken to yelling at my cervix ("Dilate!!!") and my uterus ("Contract!!!") but they're both ignoring him. Still, it's healthier than yelling at the baby ("Leave!!!") which was his initial instinct. He does occasionally plead gently with the baby ("Please come out so we can meet you!") but it's only brought about swift kicks to my hip bones. We even tried the tempting-fate approach and hosted a small Monday Night Football party last night (Go Packers!) but alas, I didn't go into labor by halftime like I had hoped.

My 40-week appointment is tomorrow. Hopefully I'll be showing some more progress, but either way, we're going to have to have a conversation about induction. Suggestions on how to kick-start labor are more than welcome. Even silly ones. In the mean time, I'm off to continue bouncing up and down on a birthing ball.

Watermelon

T minus one week and counting. Yep, I'm at 39 weeks. The famous "Enough already, get this thing out of me!" stage. I have to say, overall, I think that I have had an easier pregnancy than most. I've experienced quite the range of pregnancy symptoms, but each one has been fairly short-lived, with long respites that have actually been pretty comfortable and enjoyable. More good than bad. These last few weeks, though... they're starting to wear on me. Yet another heat wave without air conditioning, this one reaching triple digits, has pushed me over the edge. Unbearable heat. Unbelievably swollen ankles and feet. Painfully swollen hands. No more than 3 consecutive hours of sleep in weeks. A remarkably squirmy baby who manages to get his little legs kicking at every major internal organ I own. I am ready to move on.

My unrelenting exhaustion means that I was much relieved to have been off from work this past week. Around short but frequent naps, I was able to knock off just about everything on my to-do list. (A few small things remain, but they're very small. "Buy stamps" kind of small.) By Friday, though, I was out of things to fill my days, which is making the waiting even harder. Time moves sooooo slowly when you're home alone in an overheated house with nothing fun or productive to do. (Bored? Might as well begin labor....) Besides, the hospital has air conditioning. And it would have pleased the punster in me to go into labor on Labor Day.

I am still (naively) hopeful that I will deliver before my due date next Tuesday. My own guess in our baby betting pool is this Thursday, September 4. But as hours and hours go by without so much as a single Braxton-Hicks contraction, that goal seems further and further away. On the bright side, Dr. M probably wouldn't let me go too far past 41 weeks without inducing me, given that baby Barack is consistently measuring on the large side, so I have ~17 days max yet to go. In the mean time, we've rented DVDs, gone out to see some movies ("Tropic Thunder" was only so-so. "Bottle Shock" was light and fun.), had lunches out with friends, and been generally trying to socialize as much as possible. The waiting continues.

Leek

Here we are at 38 weeks. Anywhere from 0 to 4 weeks left. Know how far dilated I am? Zip. Nada. Not a bit. I'm also not at all effaced. It took Dr. M several tries to find Barack's heartbeat today because he was looking waaay too low; turns out Barack is still happily swimming somewhere up around my throat. You getting the feeling that this kid isn't planning to make an appearance anytime soon? Dr. M mentioned that he's on call all day Saturday, and he ended the appointment by saying, "So maybe I'll see you then!" I snorted with laughter, at which point he grinned and said, "Yeah, okay, probably not. I'll see you at next week's appointment instead." Stranger things have happened -- apparently women go from "not even close" to "holy crap active labor!" in short order all the time. I just don't see it happening for me.

My last day of work was on Friday, so I am now officially on maternity leave (woo hoo!). I am now deep in organizing and cleaning mode. Last minute errands. Trying to rest. Trying to do some fun stuff like movies and reading and lunches with friends while I still have the flexibility to do them easily. That sort of stuff. I have also been able to make some progress on my to-do lists, knocking off a whole bunch of stuff yesterday. The house is actually in pretty good shape. S and I have made it a mission to go to sleep each night with the house in a presentable condition, in case we need to leave unexpectedly. It's working really well so far. As of last night, when we hung some pictures and put away our initial supply of cloth diapers, I feel comfortable saying for the first time: the nursery is ready. There are definitely still things on my to-do list that I'd like to get done before Barack makes his arrival, but they're things like "get oil change for car," not "buy essential item for baby" or "learn about that whole labor thing," so I think we're good.

We have a baby pool among family and friends (for a few bucks, guess Barack's arrival date and time, and maybe win fabulous cash prizes!). The earliest entry in the pool (from S's mom) was yesterday. She emailed me in the morning to encourage me to go out jogging or something to induce labor. Instead, we continue to wait. Lots of other people have weighed in on when they would prefer we have the baby as well. My mom, a teacher, has an opinion relative to the upcoming start of her school year. My brother would prefer sometime this week, so that his visit would coincide with his favorite baseball team playing a series in our city. My dad has asked that we wait until the end of the week, so that he doesn't have to reschedule a contractor doing some work on the house. Everybody has an opinion.

S and I had a totally pointless conversation last night about when WE think it would be ideal for me to go into labor. Leaving aside that our opinion matters not at all, coming up with a hypothetical date is a delicate balancing act. On one hand, we want to have time to finish the few remaining things that we really want to get done, and take into account which events scheduled in the next few weeks we do or do not want to miss. On the other hand, I am growing increasingly uncomfortable day by day, so neither one of us wants to extend this thing indefinitely. We decided on Friday. Friday would be fine. Hear that, Barack? Friday works well for us. So maybe try swimming downwards a bit one of these days.

Swiss Chard

Full term, baby! 37 weeks! Though, anybody else think it's weird that after several weeks of comparisons to melons, we seem to have taken a giant leap backwards to leafy vegetable?

My appointment today was every bit as uneventful as I hoped it would be. Blood pressure lower than last week, weight up a respectable amount, urine still clear. Baby Barack is still head down, and is now officially engaged in my pelvis (ie, he's dropped enough that his head is now "locked in." At least, that's how we've been talking about it... turns out that "locked" is probably the wrong word, since we know at least one baby that managed to dis-engage right before labor, which is apparently no fun at all).

I haven't had more than 3 hours of consecutive sleep all week. I keep waking up from a number of factors: (a) needing to pee; (b) intense pain in my hips, legs, and hands; and (c) hot flashes. I had thought that I'd be finished with the hot flashes, at least for the next few decades, when I stopped the fertility treatment, but apparently not. They're no fun at all. When I wake up, I'm usually up for an hour or more, if I'm able to fall asleep again at all, so I am now seriously sleep deprived. I'm working from home today in the hope that I can take a nap this afternoon.

On the topic of work... I've heard from a lot of people about how they were incredibly efficient at work for the last few weeks before their maternity leave. How they were so anxious to leave things in a good place before disappearing from work for several months that they had a huge burst of productivity. They accomplished more during those last few weeks than they normally do in twice the time. Leaping tall buildings in a single bound! That sort of thing. I image it's tied a bit to the nesting instinct -- wanting to get everything arranged for the baby at home isn't that far from wanting to finish everything possible at work so that it can all be safely ignored during maternity leave.

My problem: I've had no such work-related energy boost. In fact, I am now in the position where finishing the project that I desperately wanted to finish before my maternity leave is an impossible goal. And by "impossible" I don't just mean "unlikely that I can finish it in time." I mean "my last day of work is Friday, and there are enough outside dependencies for this project that it cannot be completed in one week, even if I had superhuman endurance and strength." Some of this isn't totally my fault -- some of those outside dependencies were, um, less than dependable lately. And even if I had been 100% focused on this project for the last month, the terrible state of my hands and wrists due to pregnancy carpel tunnel would have prevented me from being very efficient. But if I'm totally honest with myself, I have to admit that a large part of why the project isn't finished is that I've been finding it impossible to focus on work lately. I've been less efficient than I have ever been in my entire professional career. I just cannot seem to focus on anything. It sucks. I go to work each day with the best of intentions, and by the end of the day, I find that I've accomplished very little. Blame my painful wrists. Blame my lack of sleep. Blame the frequent interruptions for doctor visits and delivery guys and baby-related phone calls. Blame my sudden inability to multitask. Whatever it is, it's killing my work life.

So, who are these people who get so much accomplished before their maternity leave, and how do they do it? Because I have three days left to get everything in order at work, spread across both my university and my two outside jobs. My goal has switched from "get everything done" to "get everything in a state where I won't feel TOO guilty about it for the next four months." And maybe that was a more realistic goal all along, but for someone whose main identity has been related to work and study for a long long time now, in a lot of ways, that goal also seems like a harder one.

Crenshaw Melon

Today is 36 weeks, which means that we are under the 1-month-to-go mark, theoretically approaching that "could be any day now" point. At my appointment today (which I now will have every week until Barack makes his appearance) everything looked good. Blood pressure is holding steady, baby heartbeat is strong and solid. In the past two weeks, I gained just half a pound, bringing my total 36-week weight gain to 22 pounds. I'm really happy with that total, since that puts me right on target to stay around the 25 lb mark I was hoping for. But 1/2 lb in two weeks this late in the game? How did that happen?

Today's appointment also included my first cervical check -- not my favorite way to pass the time. Dr. M poked at Barack's head a bit, which was really uncomfortable, but I feel weird complaining about it, because if that hurt, I'm in for a world of trouble in actual labor. Anyway, Barack is head-down, but his head is not yet "engaged" in my pelvis, but rather is still freely bopping up and down in there. (Explains the thumping that my bladder takes when I walk around.) I'm also not at all dilated, so we may be here for the long haul.

We asked Dr. M several going-into-labor questions, all of which he dismissed rather easily. For the first time ever, he also seemed almost annoyed that we were asking such silly questions. He came around, though, when we had this exchange:

Me: I did have several contractions after finding out that the Packers had traded Brett Favre....

Dr. M: I don't think it's anything to worry about, because the Aaron Rodgers [the Packers new QB] looked pretty good in last night's preseason game.

Me: True. I'm nervous, though, because their first regular season game is the day before my due date.

Dr. M: Again, it's really nothing to worry about. The hospital maternity wing has giant flat screen TVs in the rooms. ESPN is on channel 30. But at least now you're asking important questions!

My kind of doctor.

Honeydew Melon

Today marks 35 weeks. Five weeks to go, give or take the 2-3 week error bars. I can't believe I'm actually far enough along now that those error bars are starting to effect my perception of things. Weird.

In a completely practical sense, we're ready. As in, if the baby were born today, we'd be okay. We have just about everything that we want to have on hand for the first couple of weeks, barring a few things that I've ordered online that are currently on their way to us. The only big thing missing is the crib, and we have a workable substitute for that now, so as pissed as I am about the situation, it's nothing we can't work around. We have a mohel, we've discussed the bris ceremony with the rabbi, we've discussed travel plans with the family, we've finished our baby prep classes. We're good to go.

Understand, however, that I'm not actually saying that we're totally ready in all senses of the word. Leaving aside the "Oh my G-d we're about to become parents!" emotional readiness that I don't think anyone has before the big day, there's still a ton of stuff that I want to get done before baby Barack makes his appearance. I have a big project at work that I'm frantically trying to get done before my maternity leave. We haven't packed our bag for the hospital. We haven't installed the car seat in the car. I have a sewing project that I'd like to finish before I go into labor. We haven't quite agreed on a name. (We have a front runner, which we'd probably just go with if forced to make a decision today, but we'd like to keep looking around some more.) I've done several loads of baby laundry, but there's still a few more loads of wash and sterilizing that I'd like to do in advance. I haven't quite finished the paperwork for my state-sponsored maternity leave benefits. There's still some nursery decorating that I'd like to finish. I'd like to have a nursing bra or two on hand right away, but I'm having a hell of a time finding any that fit. Oh, and the house looks like a tornado disaster area -- I'd like to get it presentable before it gets hit by Hurricane Barack. Nonetheless, these are all things that could be thrown together if need be, or done after the birth, so overall, not too bad.

That's the status. Physically, my hands and wrists are killing me (worst carpel tunnel I've ever had) which is making it difficult to finish that project at work. My feet are swollen beyond recognition. I'm peeing constantly, and often finding it hard to breathe. Overall, though, this all seems pretty mild compared to how bad other women I know have had it during the final month or so. And I'm actually sleeping better than I had been, which is helping.

My advice for comfortable sleep during the third trimester: pillows and a husband to support your belly and back. I am always warm these days, thanks to the built-in radiator that is my unborn child. Despite the heat we've been having lately, I still pile pillows in front of me and under me, to support my stomach as I lay on my side. This tends to heat me even more, though, causing S to retreat far onto his side of the bed, complaining that I am so unbelievably warm that he would burn himself if he touched me. This left me with nothing to support my back (pillows were of limited help there). Now, I super-cool our bedroom every night to near-frozen temperatures. I still feel pleasantly warm, but the frigid air freezes poor S. When we get into bed, he naturally snuggles towards any heat source, which means that he stays put firmly against my back, providing awesome back support for me all night long. Breathing the cold air is giving him a bit of a sore throat, but the decent night's sleep puts me in such better spirits that we've decided it's worth the trade-off. Way to go, S -- taking one for the team! (Not that cuddling with his wife is such a big sacrifice....)

Cantaloupe

Today marks 34 weeks. Only 6 weeks to go (or less, if you believe yesterday's ultrasound measurements). I'm really starting to think that I'm going to go into labor a bit before my due date, like a week or so. Or maybe this is just wishful thinking, since I'm reaching the "uncomfortable" phase of late pregnancy. This is also my 100th post, in ~10 months. From initial infertility workup to 34 weeks of pregnancy in 100 easy installments.

Thanks for the pack n play suggestions. I'm torn about it, because I wasn't planning to own a pack n play. Their main purpose, from what I could tell, was for baby to sleep in while at Grandma's house. Since my parents and S's parents live in different states, they each bought their own pack n play to keep there, so we wouldn't have to lug one with us whenever we fly to visit. So, I didn't think that we needed to buy one for ourselves. Several friends heard this and told me I was nuts, insisting that I would use it around the house and to bring other places. I'm still not convinced, but the pack n plays with built-in bassinets are cheaper than standalone bassinets, and more compact for storage, so I guess that's probably what we'll do. I'm still viscerally upset that the most obvious big thing for any nursery, the crib, is the one thing that won't be there when Barack is born, but I know that I'm just having an emotional reaction to it, and it actually won't matter; the pack n play will be fine. Right?

Part of why I'm upset is that I spent a fair amount of time researching safe sleeping quarters for newborns. Firm mattress, high-quality snug-fitting sheets, that sort of thing. So, now we have a great safe mattress and several recommended sheets (the one place where I feel like I splurged a bit, to get all cotton, all-around elastic, higher-than-normal thread count, etc.) but I'm not going to be using them for several months. Instead, for the first 2 months (or more!) I'm supposed to be okay with having the baby sleep on a flimsy piece of foam that comes with the pack n play. And the sheets I've seen that fit the pack n play "mattress" are loose-fitting cotton-polyester blends that are rough and practically see-through. Is that really the safest sleeping quarters for a newborn? Even the pack n play manufacturers warn that they're not meant to be permanent sleeping quarters for babies. And if it really IS safe... it means that I wasted a whole lot of energy making the crib safe, because apparently it doesn't matter. Either way, I get upset. Blech.

On to happier topics. My cousin J (the only relative who lives within a 500+ mile radius of me) threw me a baby shower on Saturday. I had waffled for months about whether to even have a shower (in traditional Judaism, you don't have baby showers) and finally decided to go ahead with it only a few weeks ago. In the week leading up to the shower, I was starting to have doubts again. Part of it was a tempting-fate hesitancy, and part was because it seemed a little sad to be having a shower without any family there other than J. But, most of my local friends came, J did a gorgeous job decorating, had a ton of great food (including several desserts made by a friend with pastry chef training), and the weather was fantastic, so we got to hold the entire thing outside in J's park-like back yard.

The best part was the surprise that J had for me at the beginning of the shower. Several friends had arrived, and we were sitting and talking, when I saw one of my friends look at something behind me and scream. I turned around to find my mom walking towards me. She and J had secretly arranged for her to fly here for the weekend (more than 2,000 miles).

Something to know about my family: we love pulling big surprises on each other. My brother and I, on numerous occasions, have planned surprise parties for my parents. Since we all live in different states, these involve secretly making long-distance travel plans and then showing up at my parents' house when they haven't seen us for months. I also helped my sister-in-law surprise my brother several years ago with a birthday trip to Las Vegas -- he found out about the trip 2 hours before their flight, and only found out that S and I were in on it when I jumped on his back in the lobby of the MGM Grand while they were checking in. Fun stuff.

But no one in the family had ever pulled a surprise on me, until now. And I really didn't see it coming. A few weeks ago, my mom had casually asked whether I wanted her to come to town for my shower, and I told her that was silly. It was just a small party, I'd see her a few weeks later once the baby was born, and she should save her money for that trip. But, she decided that she really didn't want to miss it, and thought it would be fun to have some mother-daughter bonding time before Barack makes his arrival and she'd have to "share" me with my dad, my in-laws, etc.

So, I had a wonderful weekend with my mom. We hung out at home after the shower, so I could show her everything we've done for the baby so far. On Sunday we went shopping, buying tons of baby clothes as well as a bathrobe for me to wear at the hospital. Her flight home Monday morning was soon after our doctor's appointment, so she came with us and was just going to wait in the waiting room until we were done. But when we found out that we were going to have an ultrasound, S went and got her and brought her to the room so that she could see it, too. She's never seen a fetal ultrasound before (didn't have them when she was pregnant with me and my brother, and lives too far away from my brother and sister-in-law to ever be included in any of theirs) and she was just blown away. It was fantastic.

Of course, once my dad found out that she got to see the ultrasound, he started regretting not having come on the trip with my mom, and we're all a little worried that my mother-in-law will be jealous when she finds out, since we don't think that she even knew I was having a shower. But we'll leave the potential family drama alone. For now, all is happy.

Pineapple

Today is 33 weeks. The pineapple stage. Ever since I found these produce comparisons back in week 5 or so, I've been both looking forward to and dreading the pineapple week. Dreading because ... ouch. But looking forward to it because, when your baby is being compared, size-wise, to a lentil or a kidney bean, growing to the size of pineapple seems impossibly far away. And yet, here I am. 33 weeks. Wow.

Things are going really well, but are also getting increasingly uncomfortable. My hips are getting worse, feeling like the bones are going to pop out of their sockets any minute now. Actually, that applies not just to my hips, but to my knees and ankles, too. It helps when I keep a pillow between my legs while sleeping, but I inevitably kick it aside during the night, so I always wake up hurting. My leg joints are just always hurting these days. But some of that might be from falling off a ladder Saturday night. (Note to self: when you're clumsy and off-balance, don't climb ladders. But hey, the nursery wallpaper border is done.) Heartburn has returned, though honestly, I know so many people who suffered from heartburn for all 9 months that I really shouldn't complain after having so many carefree months behind me. And I'm not sleeping at all. The combination of sore joints, heartburn, and nonstop kicking just doesn't lead to sound sleep. Today, I asked my manager for permission to work from home several days a week instead of just one, so that I can elevate my feet and take an occasional nap. Thankfully, she agreed, so that should make my life easier and hopefully enable me to work for 5 more weeks like I want.

We had our second birthing class this weekend, and unlike last week, I left this one feeling like maybe I could do this labor thing after all. I think that my main problem is with the videos of women going through labor. The information and advice and relaxation techniques that we're being taught are great, but the videos are killing me. Our instructor believes that, the more deliveries you see, the more comfortable you become with it, so she likes to show us as many deliveries as possible. (She does a lot of other things during the class, too, but breaks them up with labor videos.) All of the early ones she screened just showed women who were clearly in tremendous amounts of pain. That is to be expected, I know. The problem: there was no upside. They weren't coping, they weren't getting help, they were just in raw never-ending agony. Each one looked like she wanted to just kill herself and get it over with. This view of delivery might be honest, but it is NOT comforting.

On the other hand, one video showed a woman who I swear must have been acting. She was so preternaturally calm that there is no way I believed that she was actually giving birth. Her husband was the same way -- robotic, as if in a trance, always there saying and doing the exact right thing, the entire time using this soft, soothing voice usually reserved for calming mental patients. S said that he was really intimidated by how perfect the husband was, but I'm convinced the entire thing was staged. Or they were both completely stoned out of their minds.

It was the last video of the class that finally calmed my nerves. A nice middle ground. The woman in this video was in pain, did realistic things to manage the pain, got frustrated, worked through it, and survived to hold her baby. Her husband and nurses did realistic things to help (massage, hot showers, joint breathing exercises) and those things provide a realistic amount of relief. She clearly wasn't enjoying labor (duh) but she also wasn't jumping out high-rise windows. A labor like that would clearly be no picnic, but I believe that I could get through it. So, that's the image I'm holding onto. Also, the couple had awesome 1970s hair and thick Boston accents. I love me a good Boston accent. Wicked cool.

Jicama

Today is 32 weeks. Big milestone, baby-survival-wise. I'm thrilled about that. But I'm also frustrated by a completely unrelated topic, which just has to be talked about today. (I also have a doctor's appointment later today, but reporting on that, and how S has brought on an amazing new level of panic, and how we started our birthing classes this weekend, will all have to wait for a later post.)

Some of you may recall that back in March (19 weeks ago exactly), I wrote about how Brett Favre ruined my birthday. I wrote about how I grew up in Wisconsin, and Brett has been the only quarterback I've ever really "known." I wrote about how, when he announced his retirement earlier that day, I shed the first tears of my pregnancy when I contemplated that my unborn child would never get to see Brett Favre play football. On that day in March, I was thrilled to be entering my second trimester, moving past the big pregnancy danger threshold, but I couldn't shake the sadness over something as silly as football. Blame the hormones.

Well, here I am in my third trimester, beginning of month 8, less than 2 months of pregnancy to go, hormones raging once again, and Brett Favre is messing with me. He might not want to retire after all, and the Packers might not want him back. Basically, he's saying that he wants to keep playing, but he hasn't actually committed to it. And the Packers say they'll accept him back on the team, but they won't actually commit to letting him play. Favre and the Packers are basically facing off in a giant game of chicken, waiting for the other one to cave and say "I love you" first. They're both so scared of being snubbed (stupid egos!) that neither wants to admit how much the other means to them. As a fan, it's frustrating as hell. At this point, I don't even know what I want to have happen. Possible options:

1. Favre stays retired.
2. Favre is welcomed back to play for the Packers.
3. Favre is traded to another team, possibly the odious rival Minnesota Vikings.

I've made my peace with Favre being retired, but I'd also love to see him playing in the green and gold for another season. But when I cried over baby Barack never getting to see Favre play football, I clearly should have been more precise: I certainly don't want Barack to have to see the horror of Favre taking the field as a Viking. I shudder at the thought.

But I do know this: as much as I love Brett Favre, I'm a Packers fan first and foremost. I'll be cheering them on this season no matter who their starting quarterback is, starting by buying this authentic infant-sized cheesehead for baby Barack. In the meantime, I have a plea for both Favre and the Packers organization: please, stop messing with the overly emotional pregnant lady. Make a decision already. Because seriously, I can't stop crying as it is, and the fact that I'm crying this much over football is starting to get downright embarrassing.

Four Navel Oranges

Stupidest produce comparison ever. There really isn't a single fruit or vegetable the right size for 31 weeks? You have to resort to comparing Barack to a portion of a bushel?

Moving on.... We met with our rabbi this morning so that we could move forward with pre-planning the bris. Quick background for people who aren't Jewish and have never seen an episode of Seinfeld. A "bris" is the Jewish ceremony for circumcising a newborn boy. It involves a bunch of prayers, the circumcision, bestowing the name on the infant, and then a lot of food. Because after seeing an infant's foreskin cut off, you want to follow it up with a bagel and lox sandwich. A "mohel" is the guy who actually does the cutting. Of the foreskin, not the bagels.

I thought that the meeting would put me more at ease about it, and I guess regarding some things (eg, planning the ceremony) it did. But now I'm even more stressed about finding a mohel. Our current top pick mohel made the rabbi cringe a little, and we got the strong feeling that they don't get along. The rabbi said that she would try to work with whomever we picked, but that the ceremony wouldn't be quite as smooth if we went with this particular mohel. That would be bad, because a bris is tense enough without adding additional tension between the rabbi and the mohel. Two mohels that the rabbi did recommend are ones that we've already ruled out (one because we've seen him in action, and they were the worst bris ceremonies we've ever been to, because the guy is slooooow, and for pete's sake, circumcision isn't the sort of thing that you want dragged out; the other we ruled out because the mohel just seems... stupid. I don't know how to put it more delicately than that). Another recommended mohel doesn't meet what we want. That leaves just one more mohel on our rabbi's "recommended" list, so I guess we'll have to call him and see what we think. But I hate this feeling like we're out of good options. I also didn't realize until recently how much variation there is among mohels. Weird.

And in yet other news: holy crap I'm tired. As in, I've started nodding off in meetings. I've been leaving work at like 4:00 so that I can go home and hit the couch. Everything I have to do to get through my day, no matter how small, seems to require more energy than I have. And it's certainly not because of physical exertion -- my sciatic nerve, which hurt a little for a very brief one-week stretch several months ago, flared up in new and exceedingly painful ways in the middle of last week, and got progressively worse until I was hardly able to walk at all by Saturday. I barely left the house on Sunday, issuing a pathetic refrain of "Ow ow ow ow ow" with each step when I had to do mobile things like walk to the bathroom. The self-imposed activity restrictions seemed to help a bit, because the pain is down to a dull roar rather than the unbelievable shooting pain of last week, but I'm scared of walking too far or doing anything too active for fear of provoking it. I'm doing the recommended exercises, but the other treatment that's been recommended to me (sitting with a heating pad) is out of the question, because our temperatures have once again climbed to the 90s. No way I'm using a heating pad in this heat.

One final bit of news: we are now legally ready for the baby to arrive. You can be the most unprepared parents in the world (have zero diapers at home; forget to buy a crib or bassinet; own no infant clothing at all; have sharp objects scattered willy-nilly around your dwelling) and still be cleared to take your newborn home from the hospital as long as you meet one legal requirement: you have to have a car seat. As of this weekend, we are now legal. We own a car seat. Which is good, because we do, indeed, have zero diapers at home, no crib or bassinet, and a fondness for sharp objects.

Cabbage

I seem to have misplaced the month of June. Anybody know where it went? I remember May really well, but now suddenly, bam!, it's July, and I'm 30 weeks pregnant. Not quite sure how that happened.

I had my 30-week appointment this morning. Dr. M is out of town for another 3 weeks, so I saw a different doctor instead. All systems normal, full steam ahead. Heart rate was good, weight gain was good, measurements were good, urine tests were normal. Feet and ankle swelling is normal. Breathlessness is normal. Blood pressure has dropped even further (explains the recent headaches and dizziness). All good.

I had what I think was my first Braxton-Hicks contraction on Saturday. S and I were eating lunch, and suddenly I felt what I initially thought was a strong stomach cramp, until I realized, "wait, that's not where my stomach is ...." It lasted a good 45 seconds or so, and I was uncomfortable for a good half hour afterwards. I described it to the doctor, he asked a few questions, and then concluded that yep, that was probably my first contraction. And he warned me to start expecting more of them in the weeks to come. Fun fun.

I went back to work this week. Wait, that's not right. I did my bi-annual job swap. My work life is a little ... unorthodox. Basically, I have 3 jobs. (S says that gestating is job #4. Our friends joke that taking care of S is job #5, but that's not completely fair to S. So, let's stick with just the 3 that I get paid for.)

During the academic year, I'm a full-time PhD student (job #1), in addition to working part-time at a private not-for-profit research lab (job #2) and part-time as a consultant of sorts at a technology start-up (job #3). During the summer, I switch my focus so that I'm full-time at the private research lab, still part-time at the start-up, and stopping by the university only once a week or so. Year-round, that adds up to 60+ hours/week. During the academic year, those hours are pretty flexible day-by-day -- I can work from home a lot, and some of those hours can be done at odd times, like 10pm-midnight, when I tend to be really productive. (Feel free to toss that statement back in my face after the baby's here, by the way.) But during the summer, when I'm full-time at the research lab, my time is a bit less flexible and my hours are more regular, since I need to actually be in the office and attending meetings during normal work hours. That's the schedule that I started this week.

My plan is to continue this schedule until either (a) 2 weeks before my due date (where the number "2 weeks" was chosen completely arbitrarily and could change at any time); (b) I go into labor; or (c) the pregnancy starts exhausting me so much that I can't manage the long days any more. Whichever comes first. At which point, I'm taking a break from all 3 jobs, cold turkey. I'll ease back into school starting in January. I'll hopefully add a few hours for the private lab starting in February or March. Whether or not I have the energy to also return to the start-up post-baby remains to be seen.

Last week, of course, I slacked on all 3 jobs. (I desperately needed a bit of a break.) During the week, I managed to all but finish my baby registry; order curtains for the nursery; order the crib mattress, crib sheets, and car seat (note: the mattress and sheets are now on their way, despite the fact that we're still waiting on the back-ordered crib...); interview and choose a pediatrician; and start shopping for a new car. Nice vacation. Now, back to work!

Butternut Squash

Things are great here at 29 weeks. S is home safe and sound, in time so that we could celebrate our 5-year wedding anniversary on Sunday with a nice dinner and a stay in a fancy hotel. Most importantly, the hotel had air conditioning, so I was able to escape the heat for a bit. (The high here on Friday was 99 degrees. Our house doesn't have air conditioning, because it never gets that hot here. At 1am, as I was still unable to sleep, the temperature inside the house was still above 90. I can barely describe how much it sucked.) The weather has now returned to normal (temps in the high 60s to low 70s, right where I like them). Barack is kicking up a storm, but isn't making me quite as seasick as he was last week. While in Israel, S bought a mezuzah for the baby's room, as requested, along with a copy of The Very Hungry Caterpillar (Eric Carle) in Hebrew, which is very cute. Life is good.

My main update for this week isn't so much a change in me as it is a change in everyone around me. (Okay, maybe it's a little about me, too, but I'd prefer to blame everyone else.) During the second trimester, as we were announcing the pregnancy to friends and family, everyone was excited and friendly. Yes, some people offered us advice, but it was mainly of the "hey, this worked for me, if you want to try it" variety. (Cures for morning sickness, lotions that helped with itchy skin, books that were particularly helpful, that sort of thing.) Nothing too overbearing, nothing too obnoxious, nothing that I didn't mind ignoring if it didn't sound right for me. Everything was very upbeat and well intentioned.

Lately, though, the comments and advice have taken a decidedly darker turn. Instead of happy suggestions of things I might like to try, everyone seems to be focused on dire warnings of horrible things that might happen. I'm a pretty independent person, fairly level-headed, so I don't really believe half of what people are saying, and I seriously doubt the degree of doom being predicted if I don't listen to the advice, but I have been more hormonally emotional lately, so I have to admit: it's starting to get to me. A few things of late:

1. A looooong tirade from J. about the horrors of circumcision, and how much she absolutely hated doing post-circumcision care, and how the entire circumcision experience was the most horrific thing she's ever had to do. Keep in mind here a few things: (a) we're Jewish, we're going to have a bris, so this is a done deal for us. Statements about the horror of it all are absolutely not going to change our minds, it's only going to add anxiety about the event itself. Also (b) J. herself (also Jewish) has not one but TWO sons. Both are circumcised. So, even experiencing the "horror" for the first one didn't actually stop her from having a bris for the second one, and she doesn't actually expect it to stop us, either. So the whole point of the tirade, I think, was just to make me dread it. Thanks.

2. A discussion with my boss about maternity leave somehow morphed into a speech about exactly how excruciatingly painful each of her labors was. In graphic detail. The milder parts of the speech included the phrase "worst pain imaginable" several times. It's not like "labor is painful" is headline news or anything, but do you really need to beat me over the head with it? At work?

3. An innocent comment to L. over dinner about how we've pretty much decided on a pediatrician left me with almost an hour of warnings about the horrible things that can happen if we choose a bad one. I could sum up what I took away from the discussion with one sentence: don't choose a grossly incompetent pediatrician. What L. clearly wanted me to take away from the discussion was: if you don't choose the absolute best possible pediatrician, based on criteria that was important to L. and therefore should be of utmost importance to everyone, and which would clearly lead me to pick the exact same pediatrician that L. chose... our baby might die. Variations on exactly how the baby could die were sprinkled throughout the discussion, with an emphasis on how I, personally, am in a position to prevent it, if I only choose the correct doctor.

4. I ran into M, a former coworker who is now a respected professor at an excellent university. He congratulated me on my pregnancy. Then he went into detail about how his first child was born while he was in grad school finishing his PhD, and the baby completely derailed all progress on his research for 2 years, until his wife quit her job to stay home full-time with the child, thus allowing M. to ignore his family for a while to buckle down and finish his dissertation. He assured me several times that, if my husband was going to keep his job, he could all but promise me that I would never graduate. Ever. As I tried to explain my plan for balancing family and school, he kept shaking his head and calling me naive.

I have lots more examples, but this last one sums up why they're starting to get to me: it is actually possible that all these people are right, and I'm just being naive. Maybe things really are going to suck for a while, and maybe a lot of that will end up being my fault because I make crappy decisions. As much as I don't think they will; as much as I believe that it's possible to find a happy balance; to make an occasional sub-optimal decision without it ruining anyone's life; to make a mistake and then be able to move on from it... the overall message seems to be this: I only believe that now because I'm naive. (Of course I'm naive -- every first-time parent, by definition, has never done this before.)

It's just a lot easier to smile, and to look forward to the next several months, and to maintain my optimism, when everyone around me isn't trying to convince me of something else.

Chinese Cabbage

Third trimester! Woo hoo! That's right, I've hit 28 weeks. Kind of in shock about that. Over the last week or two, this kid has grown downright violent. Several times a day, he gets into this groove where my whole abdomen is quaking with movement. It is kind of cool, but it's also starting to make me feel a bit ill. And my heartburn returned yesterday, after kindly taking several weeks off, and the heartburn really doesn't mix well with the kicking.

It's been an odd week. S is still in Israel, and having a grand time. He's been good about calling me almost every day, though our conversations tend to be only 2-3 minutes long, because using his cell phone internationally is very expensive. Also, because of the time difference, it's usually very late at night for him when he calls, so he's exhausted. So, that's ~20 minutes total that we've spoken in the past week. Is it odd that, in that very limited amount of time, he's mentioned not once but twice that it might be cool to move to Israel? Not that it wouldn't be kind of neat to work in Haifa for a while.... It's just, you know, the timing is probably a little off.....

Our power went out yesterday morning, and stayed out for the entire day. I had to throw out almost everything in the fridge. It doesn't even make sense that it went out -- I don't live in one of the areas of the country that's been hit by storms and flooding lately. Rather, I live in one of the areas that was 90+ degrees for the past week, with no rain in weeks. It's normally very mild here, rarely gets that hot, so we don't have air conditioning. I hate heat that high under normal conditions; experiencing it while pregnant sucked.

The earliest I've fallen asleep all week is 2:30am.

The class I was TAing is finally officially over. I am much relieved. I can now turn my full focus back to my own research, at least for a couple of weeks. And by "full focus," I mean, "as much focus as I can muster, given the kicking and the debilitating lack of sleep."

My nesting instinct seems to occur in odd hyper-focused obsessive bursts. I'll get a particular topic in mind, and then I'll work on just that one thing to a ridiculous extent, neglecting almost everything else. For a while, it was cleaning off the bookshelves that needed to be moved out of the nursery. Then it was researching car seats. The past two days, it's been music. While fiddling with the electronic controls on a bouncy seat, I discovered that I have no patience for the tinny electronic music that seems to accompany all infant gear (swings, toys, mobiles, etc.). It's really annoying. And obnoxiously repetitive. So the obvious question came to mind: why do I have to listen to it? I understand that music can be an important brain development tool for infants. I'm not questioning the importance of exposing a child to music. Rather, I'm questioning the need to expose my child to really BAD music. My mother-in-law has acquired a huge collection of CDs with perfectly pleasant and appropriate music (lullabies for soothing times, nursery rhymes and kid jingles for play times, etc.). I'm leaning towards buying baby Barack his first iPod, loading it with non-insanity-inducing children's music, hooking it up to a home speaker system, and calling it a day. Want to play music while Barack is merrily swinging? Choose a nice playlist and have at it. Want some soothing music for Barack to fall asleep to? Put the speaker system on the built-in sleep timer. The system I'm looking at even has a remote control, so I don't have to walk into the nursery to change tunes or turn it off. To me, other than being a bit expensive (and even then, I have a gift certificate that's been gathering dust for a while and will cover almost the entire thing), this seems like the perfect setup. Now if I could just get myself to obsess about something more important for a change....

Head Of Cauliflower

I'm at 27 weeks today, and I'm exhausted. It could be because my bloodwork from last week shows that I'm a bit anemic. It could be because I haven't had a decent night's sleep in weeks, due to a certain in-utero baby kicking me all night long. It could be because the class I'm TAing this quarter had its final exam yesterday, so I've been dealing all week with ridiculous grade-grubbing undergraduates who didn't do enough work all semester and are suddenly panicking about the class. It could be because my husband, who has been sent on ONE business trip in 10 years, found out last week that he needs to go to Israel for business, and he decided that as long as the trip was paid for, he'd go early and do some site-seeing, and that's not exactly the kind of trip that's easy to throw together at the last minute.

So, what do you think? Is the exhaustion a chemical side-effect, sleep deprivation, over-work, or just stress? Any thoughts?

My doctor's appointment this morning went well. I shocked everyone, myself most of all, by passing the glucose screening with flying colors. Other than the slight anemia, which is officially "not a big deal," I'm doing great, medically. I also found out that Dr. M. is going to be on vacation for the next 6 weeks, which shouldn't matter much at all, but has me slightly irrationally freaked out.

S. left this morning for Israel. He and another coworker are staying in Jerusalem for several days, then moving on to Haifa for a series of business meetings. In all, he'll be gone for almost two weeks. I'm very excited for him, because he's never been to Israel before and has wanted to go for a long time. I just always imagined that his first trip there would be with me, so I'm a little sad that I couldn't go with him (here in Week 27, I'm no longer cleared to fly long distances). He's in good hands -- we have a distantly-related-by-marriage friend who lives in West Jerusalem who has invited him over for Shabbat dinner, and to give him a bit of a driving tour -- but I'm still nervous. Mainly, I'm nervous that he'll be so far away for so long, with a huge time difference that will make it difficult for us to talk at all while he's gone. But also, I'll admit to being a little nervous about him being in a somewhat volatile region without any experience (and without speaking the language).

I am interested, though, to hear about his experience getting through Israeli security. He was warned by several Israelis not to tell the security guys that he converted to Judaism, because "it will just confuse them." (Judaism is, for the most part, anti-proselytizing, and there are very few converts; when hearing that somebody converted to Judaism, the reaction of most Jews is "Why?!") Those of you who have never traveled to Israel may think it's odd that this would even come up during an airport security screening, but trust me -- it will. Israeli security is an amazing thing, and just about everyone gets interrogated on religion and personal background as a matter of routine. It's not just a "Did you pack your own bags?" kind of place.

S. is under orders to buy a mezuzzah for the baby's room. I'm under orders to eat more iron-rich foods like red meat. Barack is under orders to stop kicking occasionally so that I can get some sleep. Progress on all three of these items to be reported on in a few days.