I Feel Like Such A Hippie.

And also very excited.  I just ordered our first set of cloth diapers today!  I won't bore non-mothers-to-be with the details of cloth diapering, but suffice to say it's a bit more exciting to buy a dozen prefolds and cute little print covers than a pack of Huggies.  Pictures later.

This has brought it all home to me, though... both the baby, and our status as "green" people. 

So in the past few years, we've bought a hybrid, started composting, cut our disposable products usage by half - ie., using cloth instead of paper towels, generated less waste through buying recycled products and refilling non-biodegradable containers, etc - started using more "natural" cleansers (baking soda, vinegar, etc), and have plans for a garden this year.  I also make my own yogurt and have been known to make my own bread, rolls, and hamburger and hot dog buns - which disappear from this house entirely too quickly for me to consistently keep up with demand.  I use my own shopping bags.

It's been pretty easy, really.

And now, I'll be using cloth diapers, using a clothesline to dry said diapers, making my own detergent, making my own baby food, and of course, nursing.  To add to this, my latest kick is figuring out how to crochet or knit my own wool diaper covers, since wool has some pretty amazing properties that make it a natural for this sort of gig.

I feel very "crunchy."

That's not why I'm doing these things (I hope it goes without saying); I see real value in the steps we're taking to reduce our carbon footprint.  We get almost 50 mpg in the Prius, thus saving money on gas, while contributing zero emissions to the air.  Obviously, the fewer paper towels I buy, the fewer I have to rebuy; always running our washing machine on "full" and using cold water washes offset the energy increase.  Making my own yogurt is cheaper as well as contributing fewer plastic containers to landfills.  Making my own detergent is also cheaper, and hopefully will help Ivan and Savannah with eczema issues while keeping our cloth diapers absorbent and clean.  It's also better for the environment, as fewer dyes, brighteners, and other chemicals make their way into our water supply.  Cloth diapers - really, this is a no-brainer.  Two extra loads of laundry a week, or who knows how many years in a landfill?

And I have no excuse not to do these things.  I stay at home.  I have enough room in my household budget to experiment.  And I know how to use the Internet to do my research before I hare off on a wild and crazy pie-in-the-sky project. So that makes me responsible for being responsible.

In other news, Ivan Jr. has decided that the hours between 3 AM and 6:30 AM are playtime.  Right now his kicks are serious business; I've been known to press up against Ivan Sr. in the sincere belief that these kicks are so powerful, he'll be awakened by baby and will share my pain.

Only on weekends, I promise.

And it doesn't work anyway; Ivan Sr. can sleep through anything unless I call his name.  And even my cruelty has limits.  So here I am, the victim of my child's erratic schedule.  I can only hope this timetable won't still be set when he makes his appearance.

However... in another two weeks or so, I'll have my revenge.  Our little guy will find his current living quarters too cramped for his current shenanigans, and will not be able to get up his normal momentum, and punch or kick with so much vigor.  I might even be able to once again get some sleep.

In another two weeks, we'll be in the single digit countdown for weeks with 8ish to go - if this kiddo decides to make his appearance at 40 weeks.  Ivan Sr. would like him to postpone his birthday by a couple days, so he can complete a work project and be able to take time off.  He has finals the following week, and thinks that baby leave will be a good time to study.  Hahaha.  Silly daddy. 

We're getting so close, and still have so much to do.  Occasionally, this causes me anxiety.  Will we be ready?  I know that logically, all we need are diapers, a car seat, some sort of clothes, and a place for kiddo to sleep.  We do have (as soon as the diapers arrive) most of those basics - granted, we don't have a complete wardrobe or enough diapers to avoid washing them daily, but we'll get there.  The mini-crib is still in storage, but we know where it is, and we already have a couple of cute blankets to pad it. 

The rest will fall into place.

Irony, also titled "Awesome."

It's 4:30 AM.  In two hours, I have to drive Ivan to the MARTA so I can have the car so I can do my three-hour glucose test.

My instructions for this glucose test were not to eat past 11 PM.  So when I realized (at around 10) that Ivan wasn't going to be home until 11 PM due to school and work commitments, I rushed through cooking dinner and scarfed it down in 15 minutes.  I've since learned that my newly tender stomach thinks this is a BAD idea and I've been paying for it since, because apparently I can no longer be horizontal within two hours after eating a meal or I will start bringing up bile.

Of course, since I didn't eat dinner until 10:45 PM, I didn't take my Mucinex until 11:15ish.  Which means I had to choose whether to drink a full glass of water as directed and be up all night peeing, or deal with the sniffles and console myself with the fact that at least I won't have a sinus headache.  I eschewed the water.

So now my right nostril is completely clogged.  AND I've been up all night.  Just not peeing.

And just to complete the trifecta of pregnancy lame-o discomfort, I started working out again today, which would be great if I hadn't done it so enthusiastically.  Blame the 12-year-old world champion trapeze artist whose workout DVD I purchased with joie in my heart.  Okay, logically I know she can't be 12.  She's more pregnant than I am.  But she's incredibly young, fit, and makes me feel old.  And the one thing she doesn't have, which I do, is sciatica.

So to recap - I am having acid reflux, a clogged right nostril, and an attack of sciatica - which is in my left leg.

My stomach wants me to sleep sitting straight up.  This of course puts pressure on my left buttcheek, aggravating the sciatica.

My back wants me to sleep on my right side, aggravating the acid reflux and making my right nostril even more clogged.

My right nostril wants me to sleep on my left side so it can drain, aggravating the see above.

None of me is getting any sleep.

And I can't even have a cup of coffee in the morning because of this glucose test.

I know I said I wouldn't write any more complaint posts but man... I need a Mulligan for today.

Forty is fun. Other things, not so much.

You would think that any week that starts out with a birthday would be pretty damned cool... and actually, Monday really was. 

Ivan spoiled me with an intimate dinner at our new favorite restaurant, Yuki... which just happens to have the best sushi outside of Atlanta.  Sushi Mio will always have our heart, but this is our new treat.

Just look what the chef did for me when he found out it was my birthday:

Is that not kickass???  Just one reason we love this place.  The other is that Ivan always looks so blissfully happy after eating one of their huge oversized pieces of nigiri (maguro is his favorite, don't let him say otherwise).  The other, other reason is because of things like this:

Possibly the coolest dragon roll ever.

Of course, while we were at the restaurant, Ivan made me open my presents... which included the entire 4-volume set of the Paris Review Interviews.  I was stunned.  I had no idea what I was holding at first.  He said it was to inspire me to believe in my writing. 

Then he made me cry with my next present:

See, it's a mommy, and she's holding her tummy... it's called "Cherish - awaiting a miracle."  It's resin cast from an original woodcarving by Susan Lordi of Willow Tree . I sniffled and teared all through dinner.

After that, he gave me chocolate, which made up for it.

In other news, one of the mothers on my birth board passed away, apparently on my birthday.  Found out today (Tuesday).

She had been diagnosed with ovarian cancer when she was about 18 weeks pregnant.  On December 28th, she delivered her son, Harrison, at 25 weeks' gestation... just over the viability range.  They needed to deliver him as early as they could so she could be treated with chemotherapy and a complete hysterectomy.

Harrison is beginning to thrive.  Michelle, sadly, began to complain of headaches, and a lesion on her brain was biopsied.  She saw her son in the NICU, went to take a nap, and her husband snuggled down with her.

At some point, she died in her sleep.

Her husband signed onto our birth board to let us know.  The women have been a wreck.  Present company included.

One of our ladies is hoping to set up a foundation for Michelle's medical bills and Harrison's care.

Sometimes people restore my faith in all of us.  From big bad things like Haiti to little bad things like reaching out to a complete stranger whose wife was part of "us" for a short period of time, we are capable of great, good things.

The Good, The Bad, and The Ugly.

It's been an interesting week (or more) as we attempt to get life ready for Bebe and for Ivan's next career stop.  Who'd have thought the combination of the two would create such chaos?  Well, most anyone, I suppose.

I exaggerate a bit.  It's been mostly good, and I blame that entirely on me having the freedom to structure my day as best fits my energy level and brain fog.  We've been working on moving stuff around in the house to make life a bit easier to live and encourage ourselves to do more... to work on crafty projects, to work out, to be in places of our house that we hardly use right now and will enjoy when they are organized and fresh.  In the meantime, I have been throwing away a crapton of things that have no place in our lives.  I never knew what a hoarder I was.  I feel the need to not be, anymore.  I want clean, uncluttered, easy to reach and everything having a place of its own.

We're not there, yet, but it feels so much closer than ever.  I realize now just how deeply our rut has been since we moved here.  I'm so glad we're breaking out of it now.

The good - all of our house stuff that's going on... good health for the most part for both of us... paying off our septic tank bill and Christmas trip... and that we went to a baby shower Saturday last for a friend from my CBS days.  She's doing so well and had so many of our classmates and colleagues that for me it was both a reunion and intensely reaffirming - I once did a pretty important and very cool job and did it well, and met good people doing it.  I'd forgotten that in the past almost two years.

Ivan was the consummate guest; attentive to me when appropriate, wandering off with the rest of the guys to watch football, and being a good sport about playing the "guy games" when asked.  Given his superb palate and sense of smell, it was no wonder that he won the "guess the baby food" contest - correction, he tied it; this led to a "run-off" so to speak.  As Sarah (the hostess) explained the rules of the runoff, she started with, "Each contestant will choose one jar of baby food to finish, and--" by the time she got to "and," my clever husband had sidled smoothly over to the table where the jars resided, identified the applesauce, and was in position to grab it and go.  Grab and go he did, and won a neat little pocket tool.

We had a great time.  Then I had my glucose test and nurse check on Tuesday.  The rest of the good is that I am gaining on track (even with Marymom's awesome Christmas cooking) - 18 pounds over 28 weeks, which the nurse said is wonderful given my age and inability to be as active as I was pre-pregnancy - and that the moment she touched the Doppler to my stomach, she picked up an incredibly strong, steady heartbeat.  I swear, she could have just held the thing above my abdomen and picked up on it... that's how strong and loud it was.  Very reassuring.

The bad - I guess it's really not so bad.  I failed my one-hour glucose test, which means I need to take the three-hour.  Right now all this means is that I'm a candidate for gestational diabetes, which isn't good, but isn't nearly as bad as all sorts of other fun things that could happen during pregnancy, which have not.  I may not even have GD; my body has always processed sugar bizarrely, and I haven't had GD yet.  But I am 40 on Monday, I was overweight to start, and I may just be pushing my body too hard, and this is how it pushes back.  We'll find out on Wednesday.

Which leads to the ugly - as in, my body's most colorful way of pushing back.  I am now on a constant diet of Pepcid AC and Gaviscon, thanks to my clinic's advice.  I have acid reflux to end all acid reflux.  Strangely enough, it's not directed by what I eat.  I eat bland mashed potatoes, and have acid reflux.  I drink a glass of water, and have acid reflux.  I lie on my back... and you get the picture.

It's been explained to me that the thingy at the top of my stomach leading to my esophagus (in technical talk, the hiatus) has probably relaxed itself a great deal, much like my pelvic ligaments have.  In the case of the pelvic ligaments, when arising from a sitting position, I walk like a woman who has been cruelly used.  In the case of the hiatus, it means that whenever I bend over, lie down, or breathe, whatever is jostling about at the top of my stomach wants to make its way up through the hiatus and into my esophagus.  This causes heartburn, or as in the case of the very ugly on Thursday... immediate and prolonged retching.

But there's more!  Disclaimer - it does get even more ugly...

There is nothing uglier than a bathroom sink full of the evidence... unless it's a bathroom sink that chose THAT VERY INSTANT to display the aftereffects of what Ivan later (read, 2 AM) described as a hair clog (even though I've had my hair cut and have not been washing it in the sink anyway!  How unfair is that???).  A hair clog that had been thoroughly... saturated.  With the excruciatingly slow-draining contents of the sink... which were once the contents of my stomach.

A husband who will tackle the unclogging of a sink after his wife has anointed it with the contents of her lunch is a husband to be cherished, adored, and appreciated. 

And I do. 

I Resurrected My Camera!

I'm so happy that I decided to take my camera apart, reset it, recharge the battery, and stick the memory card back in... because we got back our pictures from FL!  YAY!

I won't post too many of them since I'll go ahead later and add them to my Facebook photo album, but the Temple was too lovely not to share, and Christmas was too enjoyable:

 

Since I suck at captioning photos (apparently), we have:

Roger the Reindeer

Kate with the awesome tree skirt Mary made for her

The layette Kate bought for the baby

The awesome quilt and sign book from Mary

The car seat and stroller combo from Mary and Peter

Different areas of the temple and grounds

The monk who invited our son to become ordained

There are so many more wonderful pictures, and I will definitely try to get them up on Facebook ASAP.  I just wanted to share these for now.

Stay tuned to hear about our first couples' baby shower for a girlfriend of ours who is expecting twins (and I am so relieved we are not), and how Ivan won the baby food contest... but for now I have chores awaiting me. 

Eight Hours of Anything.

Last night, after my third trip to the bathroom and my capitulation to the awesomeness that is Mucinex because I just couldn't breathe, I realized that I cherish and miss getting 8 hours' of sleep.  At this point, I'd settle for 4, but either my nose, the baby, or my bladder wakes me up every 2 hours.  As I was lying awake, I realized there are many things I no longer do for 8 hours.

Work.  Seriously, how screwed would I be if I was trying to work through this?  I can't even do more than 2-4 hours' housecleaning without getting tired.  I'm sitting here avoiding going downstairs because the moment I do I will feel guilty that my Christmas decorations are still up. (Ed:  They're down now, and sitting in front of the attic crawlspace where they normally live.  I'm just exhausted by the idea of hauling them INTO the crawlspace.)

Travel.  Gone are the days when Ivan and I could hop in the car for 12 hours and stop only for fuel.  On our trip to FL, I knew I would need to stop every few hours.  What I didn't know is that without those stops, I would be a morass of pain and swelling.  It was awesome to use Roger as an excuse to get out and work my legs.

Shopping.  It's not just the walking around and putting things in a cart or taking them out or trying on clothes or whatnot.  It's the people.  They exhaust me.  At the grocery store, I heard a lady say, "If we're in danger from global warming, how come it's so cold?"  I wanted to smack her with a loaf of garlic bread.

Sitting.  Seriously?  Seriously.  I used to sit at a desk (or in my studio) for loooong hours at a time, getting up only to get more coffee or  walk to someone's office.  Now if I don't get up from the computer or the kitchen chair or wherever I'm currently ensconced every hour or so, my ass feels like it's being manually flattened from the sheer weight of the rest of my body.

Socializing.  I felt so bad on our trip to FL that I was a lousy guest.  It seemed like I couldn't function in polite company without a nap.  After a few hours I just felt kinda spaced out and stupid.

I promise I won't do too many complaint entries, but I really am dumbfounded by the difference 20 years' time makes in my energy and activity level.  I played volleyball the weekend before I gave birth to Kate.  Now, I'd probably get winded watching volleyball.

I'm sure the weather isn't helping, and I know I will feel better once we get our house rearranging done, so that I'll have a dedicated workout area that does not require me moving several heavy pieces of furniture every time I want to exercise.  Stay tuned. 

Our Son, The Buddhist Monk.

True story.

We had a lovely time in Florida, spoiled rotten by Ivan's mom and stepdad (Mary and Larry).  Kate and Roger came along too; Savannah decided to stay home, so we left Kinsey behind to babysit her.

Grandma Prescott (Larry's mom) was there too, as was Mike, Ivan's big brother.  It was SO awesome to be surrounded by family for a holiday!

Mary and Peter (Ivan's dad) jointly gave Baby Ivan the car seat and stroller frame we wanted - the most important purchase, since we can't bring our son home from the hospital without the car seat.  Now we can! 
Grandma Prescott bought him some Snappis, which are the coolest things ever for cloth diapering - no more safety pins (thank goodness).  Big sister Kate bought a bouncy seat, which actually will rock too, and two outfits:

And Grandma Mary couldn't resist this awesome book and quilt set with beginning sign language - something I've been interested in and intended to teach our son.  I never said a word to her about it, and when I asked her how she knew, she said, "I know you guys."  How cool is that?

Baby Ivan got spoiled rotten, but he did some giving in return.  He bought his daddy a Goodnight, Moon board book complete with its own bunny for snuggling, and got his mama the pregnancy workout DVD she's been wanting.  It's an excellent way to work off the pounds I'm sure I gained from eating those incredible Christmas cookies MaryMom made...

On Saturday Mary hosted a party with a few friends, and there was much gnoshing and chatting and laughing and... playing of Rock Band!  Mike bought us Rock Band: Beatles for Christmas, and I wish I'd had the presence of mind to get a picture of Mary and her girlfriend Cheryl crooning to "I Am the Walrus..."  We met a really cool lady named Traci, who invited us to visit the Buddhist temple in Kissimee with her, since we were going to be passing through that way to visit our friends Don and Nick.

So we did!

While we were at the Temple, Ivan and I happened to come across a gentleman who turned out to be the head monk there.  He invited us to attend the Temple in Decatur - not too far from our home, actually - of which he'd been instrumental in getting set up.  We had no idea what kind of a head honcho he was til we'd been chatting for like, half an hour, hahaha!  He talked to us a lot about enlightenment and how important it was to let go of negativity and what factors in our life could create it.  Really was an awesome experience.

While he was talking, Baby Ivan was squirming so much that I couldn't hold still.  I started rubbing my tummy as surreptitiously as I could, but it still drew his attention.  So he asked what we are having, and we told him a boy... and you should have seen his eyes light up, hahaha!  He told us that his temple had mini-classes and the baby was welcome to come study and to become ordained.

So our son totally has a place at the Temple already.  Bitchin'.

Sadly, after we said our farewells, I dropped my stupid camera and lost ALL the pictures on it... Christmas Day, the gorgeous Temple shots Kate took, the first two shrines she took... broke my heart.  Of course I didn't realize it til we got home.  SO here is what I have for posterity:

Okay, I'm having a LOT of trouble with my camera now.  I might have a corrupted memory card after dropping it.  SO this post is without pictures simply so I can get it posted. :-(

Then we visited with our friends Don and Nick, which was awesome (and of course I forgot to take pictures).  We had lunch together at Ker's - the guys and Kate polished off a couple big plates of wings and I failed to finish my fish and chips (incredibly huge pile of fries, which were oh, so good).  We had lots of talky and really enjoyed ourselves before heading home with dog and kid crashed in the back seat.

So, a really good vacation, an awesome experience with Buddhism, wonderful times with family and friends new and old... and a career for our kiddo, should he ever be at a loss.