I don't have a clever title because it's Monday and I'm annoyed about that

This morning was a disaster. I woke up at the time when I should have been leaving for work, which made me super late and now I'm going to have to stay in for part of my lunch hour to make it up. And it's pretty much all Dan's fault. I'm sorry to say that, because I know he's my husband and he's wonderful and I'm only supposed to speak kindly about him. But facts are facts, and the fact is that it's his fault.


This disastrous morning started before I even went to bed. My mom called around 9:30 last night to confirm that my dad was not watching Lucas at all this week. I was confused, because I had thought that my dad had him the next day (today). Turns out, my mom was right. So there was the first monkey wrench in the works. I'm the kind of person who plans things, and I had already been mentally preparing my morning. I would get up, shower, get Lucas ready then take him to my dad's. Now, because he would be staying home with Dan all day, I got to sleep an extra hour. Ordinarily, this would be good news. But I didn't get to enjoy it as much because my mental preparations were completely messed up. (The exception to this is a snow day. I am nothing but overjoyed when my boss calls me at 6 to tell me that the office is closed because of snow.)


So then, Dan and I go upstairs to go to bed. This is always an interesting time, because we have this unspoken battle game that happens every night when Dan is home. Whoever gets upstairs first gets the remote and the good side of the bed (closest to the tv, and the side with the clock).


The remote game is actually fun. Here's how it's played:


Whoever gets the remote first gets it and can turn on any channel they desire, within reason. You are not allowed to bring the remote out of the bedroom. If you have to go to the bathroom to brush your teeth or wash your face, you lose the remote. However, if the other person is not upstairs or in the room at this time, you may hide the remote somewhere in the room so that the other person will have difficulty finding it. If they find it, they claim it until and unless they then have to leave the room. (Since Dan never goes online and doesn't read this blog unless I sit him down and read it to him, I can tell you that my best hiding place is under the mattress. It doesn't seem like it, but I actually lift the mattress up and put the remote right in the middle so that any exploratory swipes won't produce the prize.)


The good-side-of-the-bed game is not so fun. Here's how it's played:


Dan sleeps on the good side of the bed for the first year we are married. This is during the time we were sleeping in the bedroom that is now Lucas' nursery. We move the bed to the other room after we paint it a shade of green I now greatly regret, and the whole game changes. Instead of having the tv right in front of us as we did previously, it is now located on Dan's side of the bed (because that's where the cable jack is). Since Dan works nights, I decide that I am there every night and that I will now claim the good side of the bed. Now every night is a constant battle of "it's mine" and "no, it's mine!" Dan says that it's his because he had it when we first got married and also that it is actually his bed, since he brought it with him when we got married. I say that possession is nine-tenths of the law and that, since I possess that side every night, it is now rightfully mine. Kind-of like a common-law marriage. Also, Dan gets to sleep there when he comes home from work because I'm gone. So he gets it for at least part of the week and he should just pipe down and be happy about it.


(You might be wondering why this is all relevant. I actually am too, and I had to sit here for a second to remember where I was going with all that. Luckily for everyone, it came to me.)


Well, as I mentioned, the good side of the bed has the alarm clock on it. We used to have a clock on both sides until I brought the other one to my parents' house while I was pregnant and sleeping over there in case I went into labor while Dan was at work. So now there's one clock and I ALWAYS keep the alarm set for 6 a.m. Always. Dan uses his phone as his alarm, and this is how it's been for a long time.


So last night we went to bed at around 10. Dan was exhausted because he had worked the night before and slept only a few hours because he usually likes to get up early-ish and enjoy his first day off. He fell asleep really quickly, and I was left with the remote all to myself, not a bit tired because Lucas had slept through the night before and I got to sleep in until 8 a.m. (oh the luxury). So I made a huge mistake and got sucked into this movie on Lifetime. Except it was kind-of scary (about this lady who had her house broken into and was held hostage with her daughter) and then I couldn't fall asleep because I was on-edge.


I finally fell asleep and was dreaming that I was home from college on spring break and that I'd just woken up from sleeping in until 3 p.m. (you know, the good old days). And then I heard Dan say, "Katie you're late for work!" And I woke up and said "Leave me alone, I'm on spring break."


And then I realized that it wasn't spring break since I'm an adult in this cold hard world and I don't get a spring break. And then I further realized that my alarm had not gone off. What the what? I know I turned it on...in fact, it's still on, waiting to go off.


"Daniel did you re-set this alarm?" And he buried his face in his pillow and started blaming it on Lucas for sleeping through the night again.


And then I scrambled all over the place trying to get ready for work. I didn't even get a chance to relish in the knowledge that my son had slept almost 12 hours for the second night in a row. We're talking real progress here, folks. I don't know what the definition of "fluke" is, but I'm pretty sure it's not, "Something that randomly happens two nights in a row."


At least it's a only four-day week. Let's hope this all-night sleeping continues so I can enjoy a little sleeping-in to help celebrate the resurrection of Jesus this weekend.

Caffeine: A Love Story

I truly don't know where I would be today were it not for you, caffeine. You have been my constant companion for more than 7 years (minus our brief and ugly break-up during my pregnancy). I love you more than I could ever express.

What I love most are the many forms you take, the many ways you present yourself to meet my needs. When my eyes are bleary and my head is swimming with exhaustion on a depressingly early Monday morning, you make yourself readily available in my a.m. cup of tea. When I'm dragging my feet during the post-lunch slump, you come to my rescue in a delicious can of Diet Pepsi. And although these days I avoid you in the evenings like I'll be avoiding bathing suits this summer, there was a time when you were by my side through those nights of cramming for finals and writing the thesis that I waited until the last minute to do.

Yes caffeine, you have been a faithful friend. Despite the fact that I find you disgusting in coffee, I love you just the same. No one's perfect, right? And now, when I need you more than ever, you are here for me. Now that my child has decided to play sleep roulette, one night pretending like he just might master the art of sleeping all night, only to burst my bubble with 10,000 samurai swords the next, you come through on your aluminum steed.

You make me believe that anything is possible. You allow me to get through the day somewhat coherently, regardless of how much sleep I've had (or didn't have) the night before. And even though you are not remotely discriminating in the company you keep (yes, I know about the others), I don't care. I love you that much. Call me self-destructive, but I won't answer. And even though we both know that all I do is take, take, take, you never cease to give.

So caffeine, my beloved, my friend, my life-blood, thank you from the bottom of my wired heart. I dread the day when that pee stick again turns up two pink lines and we'll have to part ways for another 9 long months. But never fear, for I'll be back. As soon as the fruit of my womb is born and sleeping under the warming lamp, I'll instruct the nurse to switch my saline IV to Diet Pepsi, just like I did last time. And then, yes then, we will have our joyous reunion.

But until then, dear sweet caffeine, I will rejoice in our relationship and faithfully visit you at least 3 times a day. This is my solemn vow.

Rotten is as rotten does

I know you think I'm perfect, but I'm here to tell you that it's just not true. I do have a few faults. Not too many - just enough to make me perfectly flawed and all the more charming.

One of my few faults is that I can be a teensy weensy bit judgmental. My dad always used to tell me that there's a difference between being judgmental and just making judgment calls. Basically what he meant is that in order to be a person of any character whatsoever, it is necessary for us to make judgments about what is right and what is wrong, what we agree with and what we don't. This has served me well over the years, but I've always had a problem walking the fine line between making judgment calls and just being judgmental.

An area that has always been difficult for me in this regard is judging how strangers parent their children. Having a baby has opened my eyes on just how wrong I was in so many of my judgments of other parents, much like how being a waitress has made me more lenient with servers at restaurants.

I try not to say things like, "Oh I'll never do _____" because I know that statements like those tend to come back and bite a big huge chunk out of my behind. Want some examples? "I'll never give up on breastfeeding." "I'll never let my child sleep in my bed." "I'll never be one of those pregnant ladies who gain 10 pounds of baby weight and 20 pounds of Taco Bell weight." I could go on. But I won't because it's depressing.

At the risk of tempting fate, I am about to put forth one such statement. I will never allow my children to misbehave in stores at such a level that it causes physical destruction to said store.

I was at Kohls the other day because my "fun money" was burning a hole in my pocket. I found an adorable Easter outfit for Lucas and a cute top for myself, which is unrelated to my story but exciting nonetheless. As I was waiting in line to check out, a girl I'd peg at about 7 or 8 got in line behind me with her mom and grandma. I wasn't paying much attention until I heard an ear-splitting shriek pierce the air.

"WHY can't I get that dress mommy? I want that dress! You said if I was good I could have that dress!!!" wailed the much-to-old-for-this-nonsense child. And then she proceed to push on the rope partition that showed where to get in line so hard that the posts wobbled. She was hanging on them and melting down about dress her mother would not buy for her.

Let me stop for a minute. If this were my child, I would have taken her firmly by the arm, given my purchases and wallet to my mother so she could check out for me and swiftly guided my daughter out the door and given her a stern talking to, along with a punishment proportionate to the behavior.

This mother, on the other hand, chose the opposite approach: ignore. While her daughter proceeded to swing on the ropes and knock down the posts, all the while screaming like some demon from The Exorcist, she simply said in a very bored and distracted tone, "Ava are you being rotten?"

As if that weren't bad enough, the grandma piped up, "No she's not being rotten! She deserves that dress for being such a sweet little thing." (No exaggeration - that was what she said verbatim.)

(Meanwhile, the lone cashier is helplessly watching the embarrassing scene unfold, her eyes pleading with someone to do something.)

So yes, Ava, you were being rotten. But it's because your mom and grandma were being rotten, too. They have spoiled you into a sense of entitlement, and they do not put your bad behavior in check.

Now I am painfully aware that it is not possible to control your child's behavior every second of every day. But I believe that your child learns how to behave from watching your behavior and observing how you respond to them when they act out. If you don't tell them when they are behaving in an unacceptable manner, they will naturally believe that any behavior is acceptable.

I saved the best part of the story for last. While Kohlgate 2010 was occurring, another mom and her daughter (who I would guess was around 4) got in line behind Banshee and her caretakers. As the younger girl and her mother looked on, the cute as all get-out girl said to her mother, "Mommy, that girl is being naughty."

Mama Banshee turned to Mama Angel Child and shot daggers at her with her eyes, her look clearly saying, "Oh no she didn't! Discipline your brat, woman!" But Mama Angel Child simply looked down at her well-mannered daughter and said, "Yes honey, she is."

I could go on for another 10 paragraphs about the sad irony of the situation. But I'll instead say again - I will never allow my children to act like this in public. Bring on the karma.

Say hello to my little friend

Hi, my name is Katie. I'm 5 foot 7, weigh an undisclosed (but steadily dropping!) amount, have brown hair and blue eyes. I love cheap wine (Arbor Mist is best), shopping and long walks on the beach. I would like to introduce you to my constant companion. Ladies and gentlemen, meet Mommy Guilt.

During my pregnancy I thought I might have successfully eluded Mommy Guilt. I didn't feel guilty for eating whatever I wanted and being as inactive as humanly possible (although I wish I had, because then maybe it wouldn't have taken me 4 months to comfortably fit into most of my pre-pregnancy jeans). I didn't feel guilty for occasionally indulging in a caffeinated beverage. I didn't feel guilty for letting people do things for me. Even now, I'm still surprised when my co-worker expects me to lift things at work because she would not let me carry anything when I was pregnant - and I mean anything. One time she went to Costco for the office and I picked up a package of 3 Kleenex boxes and she literally grabbed them out of my hands, told me not to strain myself and made me go sit down. I was surprised that she was concerned about me carrying something that weighed less than a pound (I mean really, is there anything lighter than a box of Kleenex? Maybe a feather.) But I didn't feel guilty.

Maybe I'm making up for lost time now. Mommy Guilt has become my worst best friend. Any time something remotely negative is said about my child, I take it as a personal assault.

"Lucas is fussy, do you think he might be hungry?"
Oh my gosh, of course he's hungry, what a terrible mom I am that I couldn't anticipate that!

"Lucas sure does like it when you hold him, he stops crying as soon as you take him!"
If only I hadn't spoiled him when he was 2 weeks old by snuggling him because I was in awe of his newness, his sweetness, his tinyness. It's all my fault and now he's a mama's boy.

"Lucas really doesn't like it when you lay him flat!"
It's all because we discovered at 3 months that he would sleep in the swing at night. We never should have put him in the swing, now we'll have to install a toddler-sized swing in his nursery because he'll never, ever, ever sleep in his crib and it's all because we were exhausted and it was either sleep or go mentally insane. I should have let myself go crazy because then they would have checked me in the loony bin and someone more fitting could have taken care of him.

Seriously, these are only slight exaggerations of what goes through my frazzled mind. I have no clue what I'm doing, and I feel like it's completely apparent to the entire world just from looking at him. It doesn't help that everyone has their own ideas and experience of what worked for them and they want to share it with me. I'm not trying to be sarcastic at all (for once). I totally understand that when people give me advice, it's well-intended. It's just unbelievably frustrating to hear conflicting ideas constantly - each time it seems like it's designed to make you feel like you're doing something wrong.

Working full time only compounds the Mommy Guilt. I see Lucas 4 hours a day, max. Maybe 2.5 of these hours are quality time when I can snuggle him and play with him. That in itself is enough guilt to keep me completely occupied. I look forward to the weekends when I can spend some time with him and relax a bit.

This past weekend, Dan's mom was watching Lucas for a couple hours so we could take care of some errands. By some strange miracle, Dan and I were alone at our house for 10 minutes or so before we had to pick him up. We were sitting there just basking in the quiet, when the thought crossed my mind that I wouldn't mind leaving Lucas at the in-laws' for a few more hours so we could just enjoy laying around the house for a while more.

Enter Mommy Guilt. How could I wish for alone time when I hardly saw Lucas during the week? On an intellectual level, I know that i need some time for myself, to rest and recharge. But Mommy Guilt knows right where I live. And let me tell you, it's not on the intellectual level. I live on the emotional level. And the emotional level does not allow me to take time for myself guilt-free. If I'm going to have alone time, you can bet it's going to have a price on it. (And I'm not saying all this to try to garner sympathy or anything. I just figure that if I'm going to over-share my life for the world to see, I might as well be honest!)

It's a constant war with Mommy Guilt. Hopefully one day it will go off and quietly die somewhere. For now, we're engaged in emotional combat. Mommy Guilt: 100; Mommy: 5.

Spring Cleaning

This post is apropos of nothing, but it's been on my mind.

My house is messy. There, I admitted it to the world. And not the kind of messy where you know it's clean but when people come you say, "Oh excuse the mess!" so either a) they will think, Wow this is messy? She's a great housekeeper if this is messy or b) in case they really do think it's messy (even though you think it's clean) they will think At least she knows its a mess. No. I'm talking the kind of messy where if you stop by unannounced I will literally make you stand on the porch for 5-10 minutes so I can hide the piles of stuff that are everywhere. And I am not even joking.

Example: One night a few months after Dan and I were married, we were hanging out with our friends at some restaurant or bar. We all decided to go back to someone's house and while I was in the bathroom, Dan nominated our house. When I came back and heard that we were all heading to our place, I gave Dan the Death Stare and put on my fake happy voice. "Oh our house? Great!" And then I took great care to let everyone know that our house was messy, we weren't expecting company, no seriously our house is really messy I'm not even lying.

And then I pulled Dan aside and very unhappily asked him why he invited people over when our house was such a disaster. He suggested that we ask people to drive around the block a few times so we could race in and clean up. He was serious. Normally I would have been embarrassed at that idea, but the embarrassment of my nasty house far out-weighed the embarrassment of asking our friends to circle our neighborhood while we hastily straightened up. So we actually informed our friends to drive slowly and if they got to our house before a certain time to drive around and come back. I'm almost dying of shame as I'm reliving this experience.

Let me clarify: Our house is not dirty. We don't have dishes piled up in the sink from last week, we don't have moldy food sitting in various rooms of the house, we don't have garbage cans overflowing with trash that no one will take out and our toilets don't have rings in them. You don't have to worry about catching a disease from my house. You do, however, have to worry about walking around in the dark in my house, because you could trip over a pair of shoes or a pile of clean (and folded) laundry and break a bone.

So no, we're not dirty. We are messy. We have too much clutter and not enough places to put it. We have too many clothes and not enough dressers for storage. And we are (I have to face it) just a little lazy. Or maybe a lot lazy. We just have a lot of little things that would take a few seconds to take care of. Sadly, if you add up all the seconds it would take to take care of these little things, it would amount to an entire weekend. And there-in lies the problem.

I didn't realize how messy our house was until one time we had Dan's aunt come to clean our house (she cleans houses as a side job). She was there when I left for work in the morning at 7:30 and she was there when I got home at 4:50. Her face was bright red from the energy she was exerting, and she didn't finish until 5:30. I'm pretty sure it took all her self control not to run from our house screaming when she was finished. But MAN did our house look good. I don't think it was that clean when we moved in. It actually smelled clean for five days.

I often dream about that day and the next few days that followed. Dan and I decided that we were going to keep our house clean and that having his aunt get it nice and clean was the perfect jumping-off point. We were like the masses of people who promise on New Years to get in shape, lose the weight, quit smoking, eat healthy, scrapbook all their pictures, walk the dog every day, etc. etc. And you know the route those promises usually take.

So we're back to Square 1. Some weekends we make a half-hearted effort to get the house clean. We are often successful on the downstairs, which is really the most important part. The upstairs is like no-man's land. Clean clothes are piled everywhere because we don't have the space to put them away and I can never get motivated enough to cycle my clothes by season (which I really should do, now that I think about it). Dan's dirty work clothes are lying on the floor right beneath the laundry shoot (which is probably the wrong usage of the word "shoot" but spell checker is giving me red lines underneath every alternative spelling I try. Schute? Shoote? The journalism major in me is ashamed.) because it's way to hard to open the door and throw the dirty clothes down. But who am I to judge? I'm too lazy to move my clothes from the bathroom floor after I take a shower.

The moral of this story is that I want a cleaning lady. Regularly. I would sacrifice a lot to have Dan's aunt come once every month. I've suggested this to Dan before but he's not quite as willing to make the same sacrifices. But I might win yet. Maybe I'll suggest a trial basis of two or three months. Once he sees how much happier our lives are when our house is routinely scrubbed to a shine, he might be more willing to come over to the clean side.

Welcome to Crazy Town

I haven't had a chance to post in a while because life has been inSANE around these parts. I have literally sat down to blog at least 4 times in the past week and just deleted the post after a few lines out of sheer exhaustion.

Lucas has been sick for more than a week, and having a sick baby is exhausting in every sense of the word. I'm physically exhausted because he wakes himself up at night coughing. I'm mentally exhausted because I'm expected to think and function after these nights. I'm emotionally exhausted because I'm constantly worried that things are going to go from niggling cold to pneumonia in no time flat.

Ah, parenthood. The good life. We've taken Lucas to the doctor, I've called the Nurse Line through my health insurance, I've called the doctor twice. The doctor is concerned but confounded. All he can tell me is that it must be a cold that's really hanging on. Lucas hasn't had a fever, hasn't lost his appetite, and isn't turning blue when he coughs (which apparently is the only color we worry about. It's no cause for worry when your baby coughs so hard that he turns bright red and the veins in his head protrude like little blue pipe cleaners. Just in case you were wondering.)

The nurse on the Nurse Line basically asked me yes or no questions which she plugged into her computer, then read whatever the computer spit out at her. I know this isn't her fault, I'm sure she has to follow protocol and can't tell me about what she did when her kid was sick. But it doesn't make me feel better when I call the Nurse Line and get the same results I could have gotten from plugging Lucas' symptoms into WebMD.

So basically all I can do is continue to smother Lucas' feet in Vicks (you only put it on his feet because apparently Vicks can cause babies to overheat if you put it on their chests), give him warm baths before bed, run the cool-mist humidifier at bedtime and fill the bathroom with steam and sit in there with him. Which is what I've done for pretty much this whole week. With no visible positive effect. ::Sigh::

I've been fortunate that Dan has been home for the worst of it. When Lucas first started getting sick last Sunday, he only had a little cough and suddenly started sleeping from 8:30 p.m. until 6:30 without waking up. I was a little concerned but glad he was sleeping because I knew he was getting the rest he needed and I knew I was getting the rest I needed. Dan was home from Thursday until last night, and Thursday was when things really started going downhill.

We actually moved Lucas back into our bedroom on Thursday night because we were getting up 100 times a night to put the paci back into Lucas' mouth after he coughed it out. (And by we, I mean Dan, because when Dan is at work I am the one who gets up with Lucas every time, so I lovingly provide the same opportunity for Dan when he doesn't work.) And normally we don't have to get up to put the paci back in for him because he'll usually spit it out but stay asleep, but now he's coughing it out which wakes him up and then he wants it to go back to sleep. In a word, it's been miserable. And now Dan's back to work. I can only pray that Lucas gets his rest tonight, because I know his poor little body needs it.

And the very best news of all is that I have now contracted Lucas' cold. Never let it be said that my little guy doesn't know how to share!

So usually I am not very good at accepting advice, but now I am begging for it. Does anyone have any idea how to help Lucas kick this cold? (And that's what I really want to do - kick the crap out of this evil, sadistic cold that has taken over his helpless little body.) I am willing to try anything that doesn't include putting medicine in him, which the doctor has explicitly told me not to do. Please help!

Random Thoughts Wednesday

So I just remembered that my sheets are in the washer still. Now I have to wait for them to dry before I can go to bed. Why don't I just put a different pair of sheets on the bed, you ask? Because when Dan and I got married, we had two sets of sheets: one gorgeous set that we got as a wedding gift and one slightly-less-nice set that we bought ourselves. Well, Dan left our gorgeous wedding gift sheets in the washer for a week where they proceeded to grow a particularly resistant strain of mildew. Even my mom couldn't fix them, so into the trash they went. (Dan will say that I left them in the washer but that is not true. Don't listen to him if he ever tries to tell you the story his way.) So now we have one set. I wash them and then put them back on our bed regularly, so I normally don't care about our lack of sheets. But this is one time where I do care. I should probably go buy another set so this doesn't happen again.

Anyway, here I sit, bored with what's on TV and with a bunch of random thoughts bouncing around in my head. So I figured I'd start Random Thoughts Wednesday, where I share with my adoring public my random thoughts that are too short to make a full blog post out of. And since I simply adore comments on my blog, I'll open it up to my readers to post their random thoughts in the comments section. Everyone needs an opportunity to share their random thoughts!

- Why are popsicles so delicious? I'm convinced that Kroger puts some sort of addictive substance into their IcePix popsicles. I could subsist for at least an entire weekend on IcePix popsicles alone and I'd love it.

- I have a few weddings to go to this summer and I want to get a hot dress for them because I plan on being at my goal weight with some hot, toned arms to compliment my skinny bod. I am willing to spend a little because it's something of an investment piece, but I have no idea where to look. Victoria's Secret has this awesome dress that is like 7 dresses in one. It's pricey, but I really like it. I'd probably get either black or purple. What do you think?



- Dan and I decided to do a version of The Total Money Makeover starting in March and I'm excited. We want to get our debt paid off in 4 years (minus our mortgage). I think it's really awesome that this is actually something that is attainable for us, and I'm glad neither of us ever got into the pit of credit card debt. Student loans are plenty, thank you very much. And note to our friends: we won't be fun for the next four years because we won't have any money to do anything since we're doing the debt snowball. But after four years, we will be SUPER fun because we'll have like half our income freed up. So hang in there with us and we'll be fun again soon.

This concludes Random Thoughts Wednesday. Not as exciting as I thought it would be, but maybe they will get more interesting! Now you can share your random thoughts with me!

Baby Mama

I have always known that I wanted kids. I, like most little girls, loved playing mommy to my baby dolls. I saved all my First Communion money to buy a Crimp'n'Curl Cabbage Patch doll, who I promptly named after the bus driver who took me to and from school each day (Beth Anne, for anyone wondering). I did go through a brief phase in college when I decided I didn't want kids, but that faded pretty quickly.

At my wedding shower, we played a type of Newlywed Game. Dan was asked questions about me prior to the shower, and I had to guess what his answers were (not what mine would be). One of the questions was how many kids I wanted, and Dan and I both accurately answered "four to five." Some people weren't surprised, but I think the majority reaction was "Say what?!"

When I got pregnant with Lucas, I was pumped to be getting started on number one of four to five. I actually really liked being pregnant and had an easy pregnancy (even though my poor body is still reeling from the experience 3.5 months later).

Then Lucas was born. Mothers of older children fawned all over him, telling me how much they missed the newborn stage. And I sat in my hospital bed (and on my couch, once we were sent home), shell shocked and wondering what the h-e-double-hockey-sticks they could possibly miss about the newborn stage.

If you had asked me in the first two weeks (ok, month) when we were going to have our next baby, I would have straight-up laughed in your face. "NEVER," I would have shrieked. And then I would have started crying. In those first long weeks (the longest of my life), I wondered in all sincerity how and why anyone would have more than one kid.

And I'm not even concerned about the physical birthing of the child. I got lucky and had a pretty wonderful birth experience. Except the actual pushing part. At that point, I was so tired and in so much pain that all I could think was "Never mind! I take it back. I don't want to have this baby, I'll just be pregnant for the rest of my life." But by then, the only way out of it was to push through it (haha get it? push?).

No, the physical labor and delivery is not what put me off kids in the first few weeks. It was the actual motions of parenting that did it for me. And if I'm being honest, perhaps off-the-wall hormones had something to do with it as well. That first month is grueling when it's your first baby. It's probably hard when it's your second or third too, but when it's your first you have absolutely no idea what to expect or how long each phase will last.

That was what was hardest for me. The simple fact of having absolutely no idea what to do or what to expect. I worried that everything I was doing was wrong. I worried that I would neglect to do something that would ruin my baby forever. I didn't know that you were supposed to do "tummy time" until Lucas was about a month and a half. After learning that, I had visions of Lucas as a 21 year old, his head flopping all over the place because he had never learned proper neck control as a result of my neglecting to do tummy time when he was 3 weeks old.

After the first four weeks, I turned some sort of a corner. The baby blues began to dissipate, and I fell into a semi-routine (as much of a routine as you can when you have a newborn, anyway). Then when Lucas was 8 weeks old, I stopped nursing (well, pumping, since we never got the hang of actual nursing), and I started to feel more like myself. It was easier to take Lucas places, and I could be away from the house for long periods of time without having to either a) rush home to pump or b) haul my pump along with me and find some place private to pump.

Then Lucas starting growing and developing, and he began to flash smiles that melted my heart. And then one day he actually giggled. I thought I was going to die from happiness. There is no way to describe how thrilled I was with that first baby giggle. My heart felt so full that I never knew it could hold so much love. I was actually relieved, because I did not experience the immediate falling in love that so many women describe when they first meet their baby. With that giggle, I knew what it was like to fall in love with my baby.

By that point, I had already decided that it wouldn't be so bad to have one or two more. I figured I'd just power through the newborn stage, and that it would pay off when my kids were older. And then a few weeks ago, I was browsing through some pictures of when Lucas was first born and I realized that I was turning into a mushy pile of love, reminiscing about how little he was, how he used to fit perfectly on my chest, how he used to fall asleep on my shoulder. And then I "accidentally" stumbled onto the maternity section of Gap.com, just so I could see what cute new maternity fashions they had. And then my uterus began to ache a little.

And then Dan and I did our budget and we saw how much Lucas was costing us and decided to wait a couple years for another one.

The Book Club

I went to a book club meeting tonight in an attempt to branch out and meet fellow moms who are also Catholic. (I've been going to a mom's group at our church, and one of the women who is in that group with me invited me to the book club. The group only runs for 9 weeks total and is more than half-way over, or else I would just stick with that group for now.) I'm very happy with the friends I have, but if I let myself, I will just keep my life on cruise control and never really make new friends, so this was my attempt to put myself out there.

All the women that were there were very nice, very friendly and very Catholic. And I don't want to say this was a problem, but they were all older than me. A few seemed to be around my mom's age (which I'm not saying is old, but it's older than me) and the rest I would guess were in their mid-thirties. (Again, not saying this is old, just older than me!) Their kids are all older than mine, and I got the impression that most, if not all, were finished having kids. And if I'm being honest, I really didn't hit it off with any of them. So now I'm wondering what to do. Should I keep going and see where it takes me? Is it really possible for me to form the kind of friendships I'm looking for with women at such significantly different points in their lives?

I got home and talked to Dan about it, and he said he thinks the main problem is the age difference. I agree, but I also think it's more than that. I'm looking for people I can be myself around, and that seems to be really hard to find. I think that's what everyone wants in a friend.

When I was driving to the book club tonight, I heard "Jane Says" by Jane's Addiction, which brought me back to the beginning stages of Dan's and my relationship. When we first started dating, we would drive around for hours and hours just talking and laughing, and, for some reason we would always listen to Jane's Addiction. I don't really know why; I don't love Jane's Addiction. But anyway, the point of this tangent is that it made me think about the reason I ended up knowing that Dan really was the one for me.

Everyone knows I broke up with Dan frequently before we were married. He even took to calling the time period from mid-September through mid-November "break-up season" because that's usually the time of year when I'd start thinking about our relationship and decide we needed to break up. ANYWAY (man I'm on a roll with the tangents here), the reason I ended up realizing that Dan was the one for me was because I could really be myself around him. I could be goofy, crazy, sarcastic, angry, sad, happy, whatever. I could be all these things and he still loved me.

I'm not expecting to find a friend to whom I feel as close as I do Dan. I don't know if that's possible, or even something that would be a good idea. I guess I just want someone in a similar place in their lives, around whom I can be myself and who gets my sense of humor (now that's a tall order).

Dan said I should Google "how to find friends," but I think I'll save that as a last resort.