Singing in the Rain

Some people love rainy weather. I am not one of them. The rain makes me cranky, pessimistic, and depressed. Plus, Los Angelenos forget how to drive as soon as there is any precipitation, so in addition to being in a bad mood, the rain makes me fear for my life. Benjamin, on the other hand, doesn't seem to mind the rain one bit. In fact, he really seems to dig it, and taking him outside to splash around gives me one way to tolerate crappy weather.

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LA recently went through a week of rain. And it wasn't just any rain; it was good solid sheets of the stuff that thoroughly drenched everything in sight. So last weekend, we dressed Benjamin in his little yellow raincoat and favorite camo galoshes and took him out to search for puddles.
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After a few minutes of puddle-splashing, Benjamin spotted some friendly crows hanging out nearby. He tried to run to them to introduce himself, but they were too quick for him and flew away.

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Benjamin really worked up an appetite with all that splashing around, so we made a stop at the neighborhood Pinkberry, where he refused to let either Mommy or Daddy help feed him.
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As you can see, he still needs to work on his table manners. Perhaps we should've done the puddle-splashing after Pinkberry!

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The Tiniest Poltergeist?

I've made it to 33 weeks, and I'm in the home stretch. Emphasis on stre-e-e-e-e-tch. My shirts are stretched out, my patience is stretched thin, and my tummy is stretched so tight that every time I sneeze, cough, or laugh, I feel as though my baby will come flying out of my belly button. Did I mention that our home is being stretched, too? Yup, the storage capacity of our home is being stretched to its limits with new baby crap. Even though we still have tons of gear left over from when Benjamin was a wee infant, we've acquired more stuff for Baby #2 - more cloth diapers, a double stroller, and baby girl clothes. Thank goodness my nesting instinct has kicked in, or else our place would be a total disaster. It's like I'm having a flashback to this time two years ago when I was in the throes of feathering my nest in anticipation of Benjamin's arrival. But this time, the joy of nest-feathering is tempered with the dread of knowing sleepless nights are just a month away. Yes, ignorance was bliss!
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Benjamin has been nesting, too. Sort of. He recently developed this strange habit of lining things up - his toy cars, his books, and - most strangely - his playroom furniture. I've gone into the kitchen, only to be barricaded in by a neat row of chairs. Or, I'll get up to answer the call of nature only to find that the hallway leading to the bathroom door has been blocked by the chairs.
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Benjamin's new obsession reared its head at our friend George's birthday party a few weeks ago. As soon as we got there, Benjamin got busy rearranging the metal chairs on the patio. Ten minutes after our arrival, he'd pulled them away from the table and lined them up in a neat row. Considering that each chair was twice his size, this was no small feat! The other partygoers - as well as Vince and I - looked on in amusement and a little puzzlement. Was this "normal" behavior? Sure it was cute, but the single-mindedness with which he rearranged those chairs was also a little odd. It was like he was a Boo possessed. It was strange, maybe even a bit creepy.
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If the incident with the patio chairs wasn't enough to creep me out, this was:

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It was the weekend, and I'd left Vince at home with Benjamin while I ran errands. When I returned, Benjamin was napping, and these chairs were on the table. I asked Vince if he was the one who did it, and he said, "No, that was the Boo. He's nuts." Maybe I wouldn't have found this creepy at all if it weren't for the fact that it reminded me of a certain scene from Poltergeist.
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Creepiness notwithstanding, I'm hoping that Benjamin's obsession with order will spread to other areas, too!

Benjamin's Outhouse

I recently ordered a new baby bathtub for our unborn daughter. When it arrived, it was packaged in a ginormous cardboard box. Never one to let anything go to waste, I turned it over to Benjamin to play with. I figured that a box that size would make a fine fort, truck, or cave for the Boo. The Boo, however, had different designs for his new toy.
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I watched in amusement as he removed the paper packing material from inside the box, stood the box on its end, and placed his little yellow potty inside. He then went to his potty, pulled his underpants down, and proceeded to, um... christen his new outhouse.
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Business finished, he stood up, pulled his pants back up, and went back to his playroom to continue about his afternoon. Thankfully, the deposit he had left in his potty was not of the variety that required a roll of TP and a brisk wiping!

Déjà Déjà Vu

When I was pregnant with Benjamin, I called my OB about anything out of the ordinary - headaches, cramps, pains, lack of pains, what-have-you. This time around, I've been a little less paranoid. Besides, the thought of trying to go in for a last-minute checkup with toddler in tow gives me the vapors. So my solution for most of what's ailed me is just to ignore, ignore, ignore. Unfortunately, certain things you can't ignore. Contractions and abdominal pain, for example. Those earned me my last two trips to the hospital. A fever of over 102 degrees is another example. And if you have that fever for more than a few days in a row, that means you get to take your third trip to the hospital. Man, I need a frequent flyer card.

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As soon as I arrived, the nurses took blood and other samples to test. They gave me Tylenol for my fever, and when that didn't work, they packed me in ice. Not comfy, but it did the trip! I also got hooked up to an IV so I could be given intravenous fluids and antibiotics. Even though I have pretty good veins, it took the nurse two tries to get a line going. Maybe my hormones were making me extra-sensitive, but it actually really stung! As I was about to say "ouch" in protest, I thought of the last time the Boo was in the hospital for a transfusion:

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That shut me up right away.

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Later on after Benjamin had gone to bed, Vince called our neighbor Shawn to come over and keep an eye on the monitor so he could visit me in the hospital. Since I hadn't eaten since that morning, he brought me McDonald's. And since I was bored out of my mind, he brought our latest Netflix arrival: House, M.D. Ironically, the episode we watched featured a pregnant woman on bedrest who had complications and delivered a very premature baby. Maybe I should've asked Vince to bring a different DVD.
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After Vince left, I tried get some sleep. In a way, I should have been happy to be where I was; it was, after all, the first time in almost two years that I'd have a chance to spend a night without a certain someone waking me up crying in the middle of the night! Ironically, it was his very absence that prevented me from getting my rest. I just missed him too damn much! I finally nodded off around 5 am, only to be awakened for another course of IV treatment at 6:30.

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By the early afternoon of my second day in the hospital, we were no closer to determining what was making me sick (in fact, they never did determine what the root cause was). My fever, however, had managed to stay under 100 for most of the day, which meant that I got to go home! My OB discharged me with instructions to see her in the morning for another shot of antibiotics. She also sternly cautioned me to "take it easy" and rest.
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Not likely!

"Bye, Bye, Daddy!"

Here are Benjamin and Vince giving each other their customary morning good-bye:
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Is it possible for something to be TOO cute?

The Best Thing Since Sliced Bread

Benjamin's always been an artistic little dude. He may have waited 15 months to start walking, but he began scribbling with crayons months before he turned one. As he's gotten older, he's wanted to experiment with different forms of media such as markers, pens, pencils, and - on a few unfortunate occasions - lip liner. I'm more than happy to supply him with the paper on which to doodle, but he'll often make a single mark on a sheet before casting it aside. What can I say? He's an artiste!
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It was time to look for a solution. How to satisfy the artist's craving for perfection but not decimate the rainforests? I tried Aquadoodles, but that only worked until he tried to Yogurtdoodle. And Etch-a-Sketch just didn't have the same satisfying quality that striking a pen across paper did. After seeing Benjamin frantically scribbling on the little chalkboard sign hanging on the front of his miniature shopping cart, it dawned on me - I needed a chalkboard! Since space in our home is at a premium, I decided that a wall-mounted solution would be best. And since I've been feeling too tired/lazy these days to mess with something as involved as sanding, priming, and painting a wall with chalkboard paint, I went with something even better - chalkboard ConTact paper!
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I placed an order for a roll of the good stuff on Amazon, and it arrived just two days later. I chose to place Benjamin's new "chalkboard" on one of the sliding glass doors off of his playroom. The glass made a perfectly smooth foundation, and the track which held the doors could act as a trough for catching chalk dust. The ConTact paper was ridiculously easy to put up, and the finished product was just what I was hoping for - a large, smooth, erasable surface on which the Boo could mark and re-mark to his heart's content. And since the paper is plastic, even if he does decide to use something other than chalk on it, a quick wipe with a damp cloth will make it as good as new!
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Benjamin immediately got to work going all Jackson Pollock on his new drawing surface.
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I wonder if Jackson Pollock ever had trouble keeping his paint where it belonged?
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New Year's (Not So) Rockin' Eve

Being hugely pregnant with a husband and toddler means that you're not going to be doing a whole lot of partying on New Year's Eve. Still, Vince and I had planned to celebrate in our own old-fogey way by spending a quiet evening playing board games with our buds Julie and Shawn. Not too terribly exciting, but it was still something that we were excited about. Unfortunately, our unborn baby girl had a different sort of excitement in mind.

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I'd been experiencing symptoms of preterm labor for several weeks, most of which I'd ignored. Why? Because I'm invincible! And also because I have a toddler who makes impromptu trips to the doctor very inconvenient. Two weeks prior, however, my symptoms were severe enough to warrant a trip to the hospital. Julie took me so Vince could be at home with the Boo. Several hours of monitoring, tests, and exams later, I was discharged with strict instructions to "take it easy" or else risk being put on bed rest. I did my best to listen to my doc - after all, I had a Roomba now, so daily vacuuming was one of the chores I could cross off of my list! I suppose I wasn't taking it easy enough, though, because on I woke up on the morning of NYE with abdominal symptoms so strong that I was having trouble walking. By the afternoon when the pain had progressed to the point where I was having trouble standing up straight or breathing, I knew it was time to call the doc, who told me to go straight to the hospital. Since Vince wasn't feeling well (and becomes so bored in hospitals that he drives me batty anyway), I called my best bud Deb to take me.

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As soon as I arrived, they hooked up me to the monitors and took samples for testing. As I lay there resting, my pain lessened and my tummy stopped contracting, which led to my getting a lecture on what "taking it easy" really means. Apparently, it doesn't mean being a jungle gym for my toddler. And I guess it also means that because I have a Roomba to do my vacuuming, I'm still not supposed to be moving furniture or rolling up area rugs to clear the floors for it. How was I supposed to know??

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Apparently, mine wasn't the only belly causing problems that night; the maternity ward was bustling! As a result, things weren't happening nearly as quickly as they had the last time. And as the hours ticked by, I started to worry. You see, Deb and her hubby had made NYE plans to meet some fabulous friends at a trendy restaurant in Hollywood. When I called her at 3:00 pm to ask for a ride to the hospital, I figured that since my previous trip there had lasted only a few hours, I could have her back with plenty of time to spare. Boy, was I wrong. After three hours had passed and we were still waiting on more tests to be performed, I urged Deb to leave and let me take a cab home. By the five-hour mark, I was begging her to leave. By hour seven, she was ready to tape my mouth shut. And not only did she insist on staying, but she told me that she wanted to stay - and she actually meant it! It brought tears to my eyes, but I guess that that's what true friends do - they give up the chance to get gussied up and mingle with the fab and famous in order to sit in their sweats and feed ice chips to their pregnant friends.

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In the end, I checked out fine and Deb managed to make it to her destination exactly one minute before midnight. The docs told me that my symptoms may have been caused by a purely mechanical issue: my abs stretching out and separating. Yikes! I was told that in order to avoid being checked into the hospital and put on bedrest, I really needed to try take it easy by staying off of my feet and getting some help with Benjamin. I was also advised to get some more support for my growing belly in the form of a maternity belt:

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Is this not the least sexy item of clothing you've ever seen? If Vince still finds me attractive after seeing me in this, then it must mean that he really loves me!