7 Quick Takes about Forced Nostalgia, Funny Pregnancy Memes, and Why Teabags Will Be the Death of Me

It's 7 Quick Takes Friday! How was your week?

—1—

Does anyone know what a stereogram is? If you ever went to a doctor's office in the 1990s, you definitely saw a framed one on the wall.

Perhaps this will refresh your memory:

Ah, now you remember: just unfocus your eyes and see a 3-D picture pop out.

My daughter was reading a Goosebumps book (which totally defined the '90s for me) and looked up to ask, "What's a stereogram?" I had no idea, but once we Googled it the memories came flooding back to me, and naturally I had to get them some Magic Eye books from the library.

Because if there's one thing parents love, it's foisting stuff they remember fondly from their childhoods on their own kids and making them pretend like they enjoy it, too.

—2—

As I round the final corner in this pregnancy, I am getting SO cranky. I'm just crabby all the time, which can probably be expressed best in the form of memes:

—3—

Actually, that was fun and made me feel a  little better. How about a few more?

 

...or I will eat you.

—4—

Two of the midwives in my practice have recommended drinking herbal raspberry leaf tea to promote going into labor on schedule, and while such a thing sounds awfully hippy-dippy to me (I have a hard time listening to anyone talk about meditation, essential oils, or "chakras" with a straight face for too long) I figured at the very worst, it couldn't hurt.

So I emailed Phillip at work and asked him to pick up some for me at the store on the way home.

This was his response:

Desperate times, man. Desperate times.

—5—

Actually, let's talk about tea. I don't get tea.

So you put the little teabag in your cup, wait a while until your hot water tastes like hot water with half a hint of something else, and then throw away the teabag?

I hate buying stuff solely for the purpose of throwing it away. It makes me physically ill to buy paper cupcake liners for this very reason, you guys. These teabags are killing me.

According to the label on the side, this is supposed to "tone the uterus." This is just getting weirder and weirder.

Obviously, I'm not a tea drinker. In fact, this may be the first time in my life I've ever even tried herbal tea so there must be something I'm missing.

—6—

We finally bought tickets to fly to Phillip's family reunion this summer. Yes, for all seven of us (not counting the baby who can fly as a lap child.)

Apparently we're the first people crazy enough to pull a stunt like this, because on all the major travel sites (Orbitz, Travelocity, etc) you literally cannot buy more than 6 tickets at a time.

As Phillip was filling out the traveler's names, genders, and birthdays, he stopped about halfway through and gasped, "Come on, do we really have this many kids??" It was a little overwhelming.

We're trying not think about the fact that we saw tickets for hundreds of dollars cheaper a few months ago and didn't do anything about it.

—7—

Right now, I'm sitting in the bathroom supervising my 2- and 4-year-olds in the tub as I finish typing up this post, wondering what to write down for my seventh quick take, when my toddler stands up, starts peeing, and quickly grabs a bath toy shaped like a pirate ship to catch it all while giving me an extremely self-satisfied grin that says, "Aren't I clever?"

And there you have it.

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9 More Signs Your Kids Read Way Too Much

If I ever really wanted to punish my kids, I mean really punish them, I'd ground them from visiting the library — but they've never done anything quite terrible enough to warrant that kind of emotional pain and suffering.

When I wrote "9 Telltale Signs Your Kids Read Too Much," I was surprised at how many of you could relate! You mean you have children just like mine? Why haven't they met before? (Dumb question, it's because they're holed up in their rooms reading, just like mine.)

So here we are again with 9 more signs your kids read way too much. Which ones sound like your kids? Or maybe you when you were younger?

1. When your daughter is tired in the morning, her sister/roommate rats on her: she was up late last night secretly reading by the glow of the tiny red light on the carbon monoxide detector by her bed.

I have to sweep my kids' bedrooms of reading material and contraband flashlights at lights-out or I know they'll be up all night reading. They've obviously developed methods to thwart me at this, but I do my best.

2. "Go outside and get some fresh air" looks like this:

Playing outside looks different when you're a bookworm.

3. The kids beg to go to the library like their peers ask to go to Disneyworld. Even though they say they've already read everything there — and they're probably right.

4. For a class assignment, your daughter's teacher assigns a book to the class where they can't know the ending in advance. Your daughter has already read it.

No problem, the teacher has an alternate title ready for that very circumstance. But your daughter has read that one, too.

The teacher takes two weeks to find a suitable third choice book and assigns it to her, but gives her a modified schedule for the book report since everyone else started reading 2 weeks ago.

Your daughter finishes the entire book before dinner that evening.

5. Your children own several book-themed items of clothing and merchandise. 

From the Percy Jackson series, for the uninitiated.

Okay, a LOT of book-themed merchandise.

A few items from our Harry Potter department. Legos not featured.

6. You're often summoned to evict someone from the bathroom who's been in there reading too long when others are waiting to use the toilet.

7. Gathering books to bring back to the library is an event and it looks something like this:

This is only the stack of returns of ONE child, mind you...

And hauling books home from the library necessitates the use of a dolly and/or a dump truck and looks like this:

Not sure where the rest are. Each kid is probably reading 5 of them simultaneously.

8. You have multiple copies of the same book in the house. I used to be so confused when I was picking up two or three copies of the same title around the house all day long. "Why do you guys do this?" I asked. Silly me, there was a perfectly logical explanation.

Your kids bring home library copies of books you already own because "Somebody else is always reading them when I want to read them!"

True story.

9. If you happen to wake up in the middle of the night and see the bathroom light on under the door, you know you need to go bang on it and yell, "No reading in there! Go back to bed!"


If this sounds like your house, you definitely need to go check out the original 9 Telltale Signs Your Kids Read Too Much. And then probably go knock on the bathroom door and tell whoever's in there to wrap up their book.

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Trauma, Guilt, and Time: How I Finally Came To Terms with My C-Section

If it weren't for emergency C-sections, my fifth child and I wouldn't be here today.

Over the past year and a half, I've written and re-written this post more times than I can count. I've put down thousands of words telling my C-section story, then erased every single one of them and cried because the whole experience was still too raw to write about.

I simply needed time.

I think it's a failing of our culture that when a woman has a difficult birth and recovery, our knee-jerk reaction is to say "well, at least you have a healthy baby."

While that's obviously the most important thing, (and the reason I'd do it all again if I had to,) it doesn't erase a woman's need for time to process the hard parts, the painful parts, and the scary parts.

My C-section and recovery was all of the above: hard, painful, and scary.

Since I had a condition called placenta previa where my placenta was completely blocking the baby's way out, we'd already scheduled a C-section.

But there were complications in the pregnancy that led to bed rest and an emergency Cesarean even earlier than we'd expected.

I was already emotionally tapped out from weeks of being hospitalized, and I felt like a rag doll as they wheeled me into the operating room and prepped me as fast as they could. I was being poked, prodded, swabbed, epiduraled, and cathetered all at once.

The surgery, which only lasted 8 minutes before my son arrived, was painful, despite everything I'd read assuring me I'd just feel "pressure and tugging." I felt like the chew toy in a game of tug-of-war rather than, in the words of some article on the Internet, "a handbag being rummaged through."

After that 8 long minutes I was relieved to hear the baby cry and so happy he was here, but when the nurse lay him awkwardly across my chest, wedged so high between my neck and the surgical curtain that I couldn't even look down at him, I was also heartbroken. I had so many IVs and devices attached to me that I couldn't even put my arms all the way around him.

After a few minutes they took him (and my husband) away to the nursery, and once I was alone there were complications: my heart rate dropped, and the medication they gave me to speed it back up had horrible side effects.

The anesthesiologist didn't tell me what was happening, or warn me that he was even giving me medication, so I didn't know what was going on when I started to feel warm, fuzzy, and dizzy.

My head hurt and it was hard to keep my eyes open. I felt like I was trying to breathe with a grand piano sitting on my chest. In all honesty, I thought I was dying.

By the time they finished stitching me up, my mouth felt like a desert and the room was spinning.

Phillip came to my recovery room with pictures of the baby, but I was so groggy and my vision was swimming so badly I couldn't even look at them. He got me water for my parched mouth and I drank it with my eyes closed, drifting in and out of a half-sleep while I listened to him call our parents with the happy news.

It took 6 more hours before the medication wore off enough for me to see and stay awake. I learned that the baby, who I hadn't seen since the operating room, was stuck in the special care nursery awaiting transfer to the NICU at another hospital.

A few weeks later, he was able to come home and everything returned to normal - at least as far as the baby was concerned. But for me, months passed and I was still struggling with a body that felt battered and broken.

The nerves severed during the C-section hadn't healed right and I was left with a raw, tingling abdomen that made it seem like my body didn't even belong to me anymore.

Having had babies before, I was prepared to come home carrying a few dozen extra pounds and a little worse for wear, but nothing like this.

My older kids couldn't sit on my lap. I cringed when anyone touched me. Wearing clothes of any kind drove me crazy for months.

There was more than one night of tearful Googling at 2 AM wondering if I'd ever feel remotely like myself again. For many long months, I just wanted to scream, cry, or run away from myself.

Things are better now. More than two years have passed.

Some of the feeling has returned and I'm used to the numbness that's left. I can talk about my C-section without getting a lump in my throat.

Most of the time.

While I used to feel guilt about taking so long to get over it (after all, how could I complain when I was holding a healthy baby in my arms?), I should have been easier on myself.

I should've known that eventually, the fact of a healthy baby at the end of a traumatic birth does win out over the trauma of that experience.

It just takes time.

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7 Quick Takes about Living It Up Over Spring Break, Being Married to a Welterweight, and Going into Labor in Hollywood

It's 7 Quick Takes Friday! How was your week?

—1—

Spring break week here, and the weather is getting warmer and warmer. I couldn't put it off any longer.

We finally did The Great Seasonal Clothing Swap, which is an all-day nightmare where I pull down a ton of clothes from the attic and the kids each try on 50 pairs of pants, while I try to keep all the piles straight and yell at everyone a lot.

(Now, if that's not a fun spring break I don't know what is. I heard some of my kids' friends' parents are making them go to Disneyworld, poor saps.)

I've actually been putting this off for weeks hoping I'd go into labor first. Presumably Phillip or somebody would've had to do it if I stayed in the hospital long enough.

—2—

I've also been hard at work scrubbing bathtubs, deep cleaning the fridge, organizing the black holes in our kitchen we call "cabinets," and other domestic tasks I normally find excuses to avoid.

Please do not mention the word 'nesting' to me.

I'm not nesting. I'm a realist. I know I'm not going to do any of this stuff with a starving newborn strapped to my chest all hours of the day and night, so unless I want to shower with a mildewy curtain for the next year I'd better clean it now. It's all perfectly logical.

—3—

Phillip and I have been locked in a silent competition for the last few months.

It came about because we started eating a lot differently, basically a ton more vegetables and not much sugar or meat (I know, but it's slightly less awful than it sounds.)

The point of this was health, but then Phillip dropped 10 pounds in a couple of weeks and kept on going, which is a lot because he's already skinny.

Combine that with the fact that I'm pregnant and gaining weight at the speed of a Japanese bullet train, we thought it would be fun to see if we could tip the scales: him weighing in under 150 (because he's never done it before) and me weighing over 150 (for the same reason.)

And we did it! I officially weigh more than my husband, who's 8 inches taller than me. I feel like we deserve our own reality show now.

This picture reminds me of those photos tourists take holding up the Leaning Tower of Pisa. It's probably the closest we'll be getting to Italy for some time.

—4—

My 10-year-old had seven of her friends over this weekend for a backyard BBQ party, and it was quite interesting listening to their conversations. (If you just be real quiet, they kind of forget you're there.)

I learned a lot, including that if you have a dream where you and all your friends turn into waffles and your crush eats you, and then you ask him at school the next day if he likes waffles and you find out he does, it is (and I quote) "soooooo freaky."

—5—

Many of you probably know the Boston Marathon was on Monday, but what you may not know is that they open up the course at midnight the night before to bikers.

Unlike last year, Phillip rode both ways (about 60 miles) on the course, which I felt was excessive considering it was the middle of the night and only 45 degrees out, but it's his life.

When he came back home at around 5:45 I half woke up and asked how it was, to which he responded "Cold" before I fell back asleep.

Later he said he was thankful for getting in bed with my furnace of a belly, which seems to become a radiator of sorts when I'm gestating a tiny human.

—6—

I was a little confused about why Phillip wanted to do this crazy biking thing in the first place. He's not super-passionate about road biking, after all, and he never really gave me a satisfactory answer.

After a few days of thinking about it he told me, "Guys sometimes do dumb stuff just to say we did it, really."

So I guess I'm not missing out on anything by not having a Y chromosome.

—7—

We finally finished the final season of Downton Abbey this week and while I know it wasn't the whole point of the series, I just want to say that watching women in labor on TV drives me crazy.

It's always the same thing: water breaks and they're immediately doubled over and screaming in agony. Why? Surely, someone in the television industry knows someone who's had a baby and realizes it's not like this.

If anybody can recommend a show where the woman calmly asks herself, "Crap, did my water break or did I just pee myself?" then I will gladly watch it. Because that's keeping it real.

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How Motherhood is Just Like Being in the Mafia

Goodfellas. The Godfather. The Sopranos.

We love to watch the mafia on TV and in the movies, and it's probably because their family business is a lot more like ours than you'd think. Moms are a lot like mobsters because...

1. We know how to get blood out of everything. Kids are great at making it look like a murder scene every time they get a bloody nose, but moms can clean their carpet, clothes, and bedding so well it looks like nothing ever happened. 
2. It comes in handy having a secret hideout. Sure, we probably use it to stash a bag of Reese's Minis instead of laundered money, but every mom needs one. (I recommend keeping a Snickers bar inside an empty quinoa bag in the pantry.)
3. Nobody likes a rat. The cardinal rule of organized crime is: never, ever tell. Snitching, being a stool-pigeon... call it what you like, but tattling isn't welcome in this house, either.
4. We make offers they can't refuse. There's a reason we resort to bribes — they work. How else are we supposed to get the kids to try food not shaped like chicken nuggets?
5. Fuhgeddaboudit. Seriously — just forget about it. Whatever you and your brother are fighting about, I guarantee it's not important. Just end it and move on.
6. We're not above extortion. Who's too principled to lord that embarrassing potty-training picture over their teenager's head when they really need to? Not me.
7. Sometimes it's best to hire someone to do your dirty work. Not a single day goes by that I don't fantasize about having a cook or a maid on my payroll. Or both.
8. People are constantly coming to us for favors and advice. Whenever my kids need new shoes, have a run-in with the mean kid at school, or want to bargain for some extra Minecraft time, I'll give you one guess who they're coming to. My job is mainly handling requests of some kind, all day, every day.
9. We're pretty good at keeping surveillance on anybody suspicious. Moms do better research than the FBI when we think our kids (or someone who interacts with them) might be up to no good. And we're usually right.
10. Let me introduce you to "a friend of mine." It starts once you have a baby, and your eyes are opened to a black market trade of onesies and activity gyms right beneath your nose. If you need something, all you need to do is mention it to your mom's group and someone is sure to say, "I know a guy..."
11. Don't get between us and our Italian food. Try to separate me from my simple carbs and you'll be sleeping with the fishes tonight, buddy.
12. There's always a wiseguy. And it's usually your threenager.
13. It's not easy being the Don. It's more than a full-time job keeping the mob happy and under control. To our kids, it might look like we're in a pretty powerful position, but the truth is we lose a lot of sleep just trying to keep one step ahead.
14. We like to gamble. When you rarely leave the house after 8 PM, people assume you lead a pretty boring life. But no one takes risks like a mom. Going to Target without an extra pair of pants for the potty-training preschooler? Now that's ballsy.
15. We're usually running multiple rackets. Moms are born multitaskers, signing permission slips with one hand while we make spaghetti and untangle a Barbie doll stuck in someone's hair with the other. And yes, we saw you make that face at your sister behind our backs.
16. You never get to retire from "the business." From poopy diapers to prom dates, your kids will never stop needing you (even when they think they don't.) When you're a mom, you're permanently on call. Forever.
17. We can be charming, funny, and likable — but mess with our family and we'll break your knees. Enough said.

Now that you know how much you have in common with the mob bosses you love to watch, all you need is a cool nickname. "Angel Face" and "Jimmy Blue Eyes" are already taken, but "Messy Bun" or "Lady Yoga Pants" has a nice ring to it, too.

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Once Upon a Recorder, Some Parents Lost Their Minds

One time years ago, we bought our then 4-year-old a recorder.

You heard me right: Phillip and I, of our own free will and choice, used our own money to buy our child a recorder and bring it home.

It was a toy we saw in the $1 section at Target, sometime near Christmas, and thought, "What a fun thing for her to play with, and it's only a dollar! Let's put it in her stocking." And so with that thought, in the cart it went.

What fools we were.

When our 4-year-old got her hands on the lovely orange plastic harbinger of doom, she asked, "What is it?"

"It's a recorder," we told her, excited. "You put it in your mouth, put your fingers on these holes, and when you blow it makes music!"

Yet, what came out of the recorder next was certainly not music.

With the vigor she'd previously reserved for blowing out her birthday candles, she emptied the full extent of her 4-year-old lung capacity into that thing and made the most unholy sound I'd ever heard.

It was like a dog whistle designed by Satan.

Our smiles began to fade as she continued blasting air into the recorder, over and over, clearly delighted with herself.

"Here, let me show you," I offered, prying it from her hands. "Blow softer, like this."

My daughter nodded eagerly.

"And if you wiggle your fingers like this," I continued, "it makes different notes!"

I handed it back to her, only to hear the demonic shrieking noise again. It turns out that "possessed teakettle" is the only sound that can come from a recorder in the hands of a 4-year-old, regardless of how much time and loving instruction you've given her.

Eventually, the recorder made its way to our attic, where toys go to die.

Fast-forward several years later, and that same child is now a 4th grader, bringing home a real recorder from school nightly to practice "Hot Cross Buns."

Life has come full-circle.

To be fair, I do see a marked improvement. She plays actual notes now, for starters.

However, the recorder is still the recorder. I've discovered that even the prettiest sound that comes from a recorder is not much better than the ugliest sound that comes from a recorder.

When she fills our house with strains from "Twinkle, Twinkle, Little Star," Phillip and I look sideways at each other and all we can say is the same thing we said to ourselves back when she was assaulting our eardrums at age four: "At least she's cute."

Wish us luck getting through the rest of the school year.

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7 Quick Takes about Reaching Dental Nirvana, Breaking a Family Heirloom, and Abstract Paintings of Tractors

It's 7 Quick Takes Friday! How was your week?

—1—

Ugh, I am SO TIRED. What do you call creatures that aren't nocturnal, aren't diurnal, but sleep until 3 AM, wake up to go to the bathroom, and then lie awake for hours and feel exhausted for the rest of the day? Because I'm that.

I've always thought this was the cruelest joke of the third trimester of pregnancy: you can't even get caught up on sleep before you're going to be up all night with a newborn.

—2—

I had a really exciting trip to the dentist this week, and I'm not even being sarcastic.

I had a small cavity, and got a filling with something called "air abrasion." As my dentist explained to me, you blast out the decay with cold air and powder instead of doing the whole shot of Novocaine and drilling routine.

The pros:

• No needle in my gums
• No numbness (and by that I mean no drooling the first time I try to eat or drink anything)
• No watching smoke rising from my mouth as they drill and trying to pretend it's totally no big deal

It was absolutely painless and I was in and out of there in 20 minutes. And did I mention the lack of shrieking drill sounds and freaky smoke coming out of my mouth?

—3—

The kids broke the piano, which I suppose was bound to happen eventually despite our "no pounding" rule.

The culprit: a broken hammer.

When a few of the keys stopped working, Phillip immediately started taking the piano apart. That's the difference between us. When something breaks, his first impulse is to dismantle it and figure out why, and mine is not to touch it and yell at anyone who does in case we break it more.

Sticker inside informed us the piano was last tuned in 1974... maybe it's time for some maintenance, anyway.

I think that's also why he wants to understand how the Internet works and I'm completely satisfied with the explanation, "It's just magic, okay?"

—4—

At my last midwife appointment I got my the-end-is-nigh ultrasound to check the position of the baby, and everything looks good. We are clear for takeoff.

At the beginning of the ultrasound, the tech asked "Do you know if this is a boy or a girl?"

As many of you know, I didn't want to know the gender but Phillip did, and the kids have been on-and-off hounding him ever since to let them in on the secret. "I won't tell Mom!" they claim.

Liars.

Phillip has just started telling them he forgot, so they'll stop asking.

Anyway, when the tech asked "Do you know if this is a boy or a girl?" my 4-year-old piped up and said, "Only Dad knew, but then he forgot."

She'd probably never heard that one before.

—5—

This week I've had two Twilight Zone moments with the kids where I walk away confused, not sure exactly what happened but pretty sure I must've done something right:

First, I went to a doctor's appointment leaving the 3 oldest kids home. The deal was if they finished their homework and chores by the time I got home I'd take them to the library, which is like telling normal kids you'll fly them to Disneyland. When I walked in the door they were frantically working together to finish the last one's chore of unloading the dishwasher. Teamwork!

Second, while I was browsing recipes on Pinterest planning our meals for the week, the kids pointed to a picture of brussels sprouts and yelled, "That! Can we have that?" I said, "Hmm, I don't know if brussels sprouts would go with any of the meals I already planned...." They were like, "Please, please, please!"

I know you think I'm making this up, but I'm not. Apparently brussels sprouts can be pretty disgusting depending on how you make them (I don't know, I was always scared to try them before I was 30,) but Phillip makes the best brussels sprouts you've ever had.

So it's not as weird as it sounds. But I guess it's still pretty weird.

—6—

My 4-year-old proudly brought me this picture of a tractor she painted.

Still not sure how this is a representation of a tractor, even after she explained it to me.

"How did you decide to paint a tractor?" I asked her. Since we are not farm people and it's quite possible she's never even seen a tractor except in books, this was pretty random.

"My brain," she told me. "My brain said 'tractor.' So I did a tractor."

Fair enough.

—7—

The weather has been warming up lately and we had one of those perfect days yesterday where Phillip took all the kids outside and they were playing basketball together in the driveway.

Since my kids would, 99 times out of 100, choose to sit inside and read, watching them all get out and spontaneously do something active was a nice surprise.

Then I heard my daughter saying, "Can we play Minecraft now, Dad? We all did 10 baskets."

Never mind. Bribery, now that I would have expected.

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No One Cares If Your House Is a Mess

When I was entering those angsty teenage years, my mother used to tell me "Don't worry about how you look. Everyone else is so busy worrying how they look, they don't even notice the things you're insecure about."

Or maybe that's just what I tell my pre-teen, I don't remember.

In any case, it's true. I spent much of my teen years obsessing over whether my ears stuck out (they did,) whether I'd ever get a voluptuous figure (I didn't,) and whether my pimples were visible from space (they were, but so were everyone else's.)

With all the wisdom I've gathered as a 34-year-old, I now see that was a lot of wasted time that could've been put to better use, say, learning how to knit sweaters for homeless cats. Or digging holes and filling them in for fun.

However, I realized yesterday that maybe I haven't actually learned my lesson. I still care way too much about appearances, but the name of the game has changed.

Yesterday morning (I use the term "morning" loosely, mind you) my doorbell unexpectedly rang. I happened to be showered and dressed in real clothes, but my house was a complete mess.

Last night's dinner dishes were littered all over the kitchen counter.

The unloaded contents of my kids' backpacks lie in random piles around the room; I hadn't gotten around to sorting through them yet.

The floors needed a good sweeping and vacuuming, which admittedly you couldn't really see because of all the toys everywhere.

I put on a confident face and opened the door — or at least, I tried to. It hit one of the three laundry hampers filled with clothes in various states of clean and dirty waiting to be washed or folded, which I swept out of the way with a face that was quickly turning red.

It was my neighbor, stopping by with some mail that had accidentally been delivered to her house.

I invited her in and tried to smile, nod, and make small talk although I was totally preoccupied with the disaster area into which I was welcoming her.

The bi-fold doors that normally hide the disorganized chaos that is our laundry closet were flung wide open, treating her to a display of a gigantic pile of mismatched socks and a shelf about to collapse under the weight of cleaning supplies, light bulbs, batteries, and whatever else we'd stuck up there and forgotten about ages ago.

I tried to look her in the eye but found my gaze darting all around the room. Did she notice the crumbs on the floor? What about the fact that there was a pair of child-sized underwear in the corner of questionable cleanliness?

Stepping over a pile of playing cards my toddler had dumped everywhere, it was hard to resist the urge to apologize for my messy house.

I knew that saying "I'm sorry it's such a mess around here" would just be an invitation to look for it. I knew it would only be a big deal if I made it into one. I knew I was more aware of it than she was, and that even if she did notice, it probably just made her feel better that her own kitchen looked similar (If not right at this moment, then it probably did yesterday.)

Logically I knew all of these things, yet I still felt super uncomfortable. And the moment she left I flew into rage cleaning mode.

I guess I'm not so different than my preteen self, after all.

I don't care anymore if my ears stick out, or that I could totally share training bras with my 9-year-old, or if a bright red zit (thanks, pregnancy hormones!) cropped up last night on the end of my nose.

But I do care what my house looks like. Let me rephrase that: I care about what other people think about what my house looks like.

This is how teenage insecurity manifests itself in your 30s, I guess. This is the way we compare ourselves now.

Maybe I should call my mom so she can remind me that everyone else is too preoccupied with their own messy houses to notice mine. Moms are smart like that.

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Pregnant Confessions

Pregnancy is a miraculous process that brings a new life into the world; it's also a time when women like me do some things they'd never admit out loud to anyone.

Here are my pregnant confessions:

Confession #1: I've used my preschooler as a cover for visiting the restroom.

Yes, I've grabbed my 4-year-old's hand and taken her with me to the restroom because I didn't want it to look like I was the one who had to pee so urgently she couldn't sit through 10 more minutes of church. I'm a grown woman with a bladder compressed to the size of a chickpea right now, and my preschooler is my smokescreen.

Confession #2: I've cut in line because "I'm pregnant."

I'll also accept the offer of the lady in line at the restroom to go ahead of her, fully realizing she assumes it's the cute preschooler at my side (and not me) who needs to go. I'm not lying exactly, it's just that she's not asking and I'm not telling. Thanks anyway, though, lady. You're still preventing an accident, you just don't realize for which one of us.

Confession #3: I've forgotten how far along I am on multiple occasions.

When you finally become so gigantic that it's safe for strangers to assume you're pregnant, everybody starts asking about it. Everybody. And quite often, when the woman at the post office counter guesses how many days, weeks, or months I have left to go, I'll just say "yep, good guess" because I can't remember.

Confession #4: I let people carry heavy things for me.

Pregnant women can run marathons (hello, childbirth is a marathon) and generally be amazing, but there are a surprising number of people out there who assume we aren't supposed to lift anything heavier than a Kleenex. I've let the kindly grocery bagger help me out to my car and unload the bags into the trunk, not because I have a medically valid excuse, but simply because I hate unloading groceries. I can only get away with this because I'm a million weeks pregnant.

Confession #5: I've lied about why I'm eating to my children.

In my non-pregnant state, I'm forced to eat my secret candy or have a second helping of dessert while hiding in the closet or after the kids go to bed. But when I'm pregnant? Right out in the open, in front of everyone. I've also taken the last handful of chips in the bag because "the baby needed it," an explanation the kids accept at face value. I don't even think I feel bad about this.


I apologize if this list spoils it for other women out there who also do these things secretly while they're pregnant. If you want to talk to me about it, you can probably find me waiting in line for the restroom at the library. I'm the one with the preschooler who looks slightly confused about why she's there.

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7 Quick Takes about What Happens When Engineers Write Love Songs, Abusing Household Electronics, and a Caption Contest

It's 7 Quick Takes Friday! Here's our week in 7 quick takes — how was yours?

—1—

I can't believe I did this, but I actually signed up for a "student-led conference" with my middle schooler; this was in lieu of a parent-teacher conference which apparently is soooooo not progressive.

You heard me, my daughter came home on the bus and I packed her up in the car and drove right back to school with her, where she had a Google presentation all ready for me about how she's performing.

It wasn't very productive and my daughter said she'd much rather have just talked to me at home (me, too!!), but for all my making fun of it I can actually see the merit in teaching kids to self-evaluate.

Plus, we stopped by her personal landfill locker to clean it out before we went home so it wasn't a total loss.

—2—

You know this song? Of course you do, it plays on the radio every 30 seconds.


Phillip and I were listening to Pandora one night and this song came on (surprise, surprise) so I asked him what he thought of it.

Considering it, he said "I think about 70% of me loves 80% of you."

"Gee, thanks," I laughed.

He looked at me seriously and said, "What? Statistically, that's highly compatible."

Pshhht. Engineers.

—3—

Reasons I can't leave my toddler alone while I'm in the shower anymore:

Exhibit A

Exhibit B

I found our wireless computer keyboard upside down on the floor with the plastic tabs on the back broken off. When I asked what happened, I was informed that the toddler was jumping on it.

Actually, the reasons why I shouldn't shower while he's awake anymore have probably gone through the alphabet several times already, including this (see Take #2) and this.

Then again, there's this memorable shower moment courtesy of his sister, so maybe I just shouldn't shower at all anymore.

—4—

This past weekend, our family was able to just sit still for a few hours and listen to General Conference, a worldwide broadcast from our church. Church leaders spoke on different spiritual topics, and as always, as I listened I could feel my priorities sliding back into their proper places.

Can we do this every weekend?

We try to get our kids involved, too. As you can see here they paid rapt attention for several hours:

Disclaimer: this is during the opening hymn from the choir about 30 seconds in. Our kids may not have actually looked like this the entire time.

A few years ago I got the idea from Christina at Hands Full and Loving It to print out pictures of our church leaders and have the kids attach a treat to each picture.

When that person speaks, we pass out their treat. It's since become a tradition in our family to attach our apostle Quentin L. Cook's picture to the package of cookies. The kids call him "Quentin L. Cookies," so he's obviously their favorite now.

Thank you, Elder Cookies.

While they eat their treats, we all take a few notes on what that person talked about and put them in a Ziploc bag along with the speaker's picture. Throughout the next few months we periodically pull out a bag and review it at Family Home Evening (like a weekly family devotional.)

If you tuned in to General Conference this week, how does your family like to do it?

—5—

There were many great thoughts given during Conference that I hope to go back and re-read and re-watch later, but if I had to pick my favorite it would probably be this one:


The speaker is a leader of my church who is German, telling about some parallels between Jesus as the good shepherd and the destruction he witnessed as a boy during WWII in Germany. Well worth 20 minutes of your time.

And yes, since you noticed, he does look terribly good for a 75-year-old.

—6—

At recess, my 4th grader started an ongoing rap battle with a friend (according to her, it was the friend's idea). She's rapping as Darth Vader and her friend is Voldemort.

I didn't get the full details, but I think my favorite diss from Darth Vader (i.e: my daughter) to Voldemort is: "I gotta whole army, you ain't even gotta nose."

This kid is going places.

—7—

I took this photo and thought it was deserving of a caption contest. What do you think the kids are staring at in there?

Best answer gets shared at the dinner table at our house next Friday.

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