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As I roll around the city hoping to pop this baby out, I decided today that I was really craving some traditional Italian cookin.  I drove all the way to the bowels of Scarborough at Midland and Lawrence to hit up one of my favourite Italian bakeries/caterers/hot tables.

By the time I made it there, I was bitchin hungry so I planned on getting somthing from the hot table and making the trip worth my while in addition to buying some lasagna or veal parm.  Unfortunately, the kitchen was closed and the hot table was empty.  The lady behind the counter took one look at me and told me to sit down at a table and she’d whip me up some pasta.  No joke.  It was like out of the Sopranos or somthing.

All the little Italian ladies that work there started fussing about me.  Getting me water.  Asking about my due date.  Tsking me for being out by myself driving all over the city.  It was awesome.

So thanks to these ladies I had a lovely home made Italian lunch with all the TLC I needed thrown in for free.

Humanity scores a point today.

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Seeing as Boy_Child_2.0 has yet to arrive, we took the opportunity of time on the Easter long weekend to go through more boxes and crap in the attic.  James found another tote with baby toys and stuff.  Most of the toys are over 6 years old and likely riddled with good ol’ Made in China lead so they got pitched. Also in the tote was a bag of baby bottles and my breast pump.  Once again, it’s full of the magic poison plastic. 

Jack caught sight of the bag and demanded to know what the hell was going on with that evil contraption I was planning on throwing out.  I had to explain to him that it was a breast pump that Mommy used when he was a baby to get milk out of her boobies.  The purpose being so that Mommy could go out on exciting adventures whilst Daddy stayed home with the crying newborn feeding him nutritious, recently-expressed breast milk.

Of course, he demanded a assemble it.  The torture advice was put together and I handed it over to him.  The damn thing is so icky and nasty…. I couldn’t imagine what a 5 year old would want with it but what-evs.  Jack was absolutely intrigued by it.  He tried it on his own boobs but he knew that boys don’t have milk.  The next logical place was his belly button and then his nose.  He told me the baby would like belly-button-lint-snot milk.  Gross.

He then retreated to his room with said breast pump while I continued to sort through boxes.  A few minutes later, I went to check on him and he was still playing with it, although it had now converted to a more acceptable play thing for a boy his age.  It was now a special weapon of mass destruction that could suck things in, mutate them and then fire it back at enemies. 

I breathed a sigh of relief.

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Here are some of the things that people have said to me in my last trimester that I believe are inappropriate, rude, hateful, hurtful and just plain dumb.  Please refrain from saying such things to the pregnant ladies.  Considering how angry at humanity I’ve been feeling lately, some people who have said these things are damn lucky I didn’t land one in their face.  Enjoy!

1.  Wow.  You are huge.  And you’ve still got a month to go!  I was way smaller than that when I was preganant.  No one even guessed I was pregnant at 8 months.

2.  Wow.  You are huge.  How many you got in there?

3.  Wow. You are huge. I only gained 3 lbs when I had my kid. 

4.  Your husband is going to leave you for a skinny girl.  (My cleaning lady’s contribution. No joke.)

5.  What are you having?  Oh, that’s too bad.  You can always try again.

6. Have you decided on a name yet?    Oh, I hate that name.  I knew a kid in Grade 3 who was named that and he/she peed in class.

7. Have you decided on a name yet?  No?  You better hurry because I knew this couple that couldn’t decide on a baby name and the baby was called “Baby” for the first 3 months and now that couple is divorced.

8. You better get rid of your dog.

9. Your older child is going to regress once the new baby comes home and he/she will start pissing in the closet to spite you.

10. Looks like you have had a healthy appetite during this pregnancy.  (This is ususally followed by an inappropriate tap on my belly.)

11. Is the nursery ready yet?  Is the nursery ready yet?  Is the nursery ready yet?

12.  Don’t eat that.  Don’t drink that. Don’t buy that.  Don’t let the Dr. tell you that.

13. Ooooo that sounds strange.  You should look that up on the Internet. 

14.  I’m so glad that I’m done having kids.  But good luck with that.

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I don’t know much about the day-to-day dealings with little girls, but I do feel like I can comment on the activities of little boys.  In particular, my little guy. 

First off, I am amazed at the pocket junk that he collects.  I am unclear as to the value of it but it comes in vast quantities.  Most of it is discovered in the washing machine.  God knows what stuff actually gets ripped apart and washed away.  Here is some stuff that I found recently:

1.  Rocks.  Every size, shape and colour. Even pieces of cement.  Tends to survive the washing machine process.  These can be found in his pants pockets, coat pockets, hoodie pockets and knapsack.

2.  Sticks.  Much like rocks, these come in every kind of configuration.

3.  Small change.  Pennies, nickels, dimes and recently I found $5 US.

4. Misc. candy. Some of it eaten.  Some of it melted.  Sometimes just wrappers.

5.  Pictures drawn by some girl at school, folded up into neat little squares.

6. A small toy, usually a Bakugan, a matchbox car, Lego, or Transformer.

7. String.

8.  A few hockey cards.

9. Canadian Armed Forces dog tags.

10.  A tiny light saber from his Star Wars figurines.

11. Glow-in-the-dark bracelet.

12. Super ball.

I think he needs a purse to put this all in.

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Pretty much as soon as I conceived, Ruby has been stuck to me like Play-Doh on a shag rug.  There has been no scientific proof that dogs can sense pregnancy however there is general acceptance in the animal behaviourist world that they do.

First of all, dogs can smell things a million times more intensely then humans and the thought is that they can smell the change in hormones and phermones.  (Can’t understand why they aren’t permanently damaged from the smell of their own farts!)  Secondly, they can detect the slightest change in behaviour - like the pregnant woman being more emotional or other people treating the pregnant woman differently.

Ruby has been absolutely velcroed to me since I got knocked up.  She loves the belly. She loves protecting me.  She sleeps curled up around my belly with her snout on it.  She’s getting used to the external pokes and jabs that Boy_Child_2.0 doles out and only lets out the slightest of pissed off moans and groans.  She also likes curling up in the small of my back - which I must admit that I like because it’s a like a nice warm supportive pillow.

I’m not sure if she knows what’s going on inside me.  Does she know that it’s a baby human?  Does she think I’m having a litter of puppies?  Does she know anything at all?

Needless to say, we are corssing our fingers that Ruby will be as great with this baby as Zephyr was with Jack.  Vizsla’s tend to be very good with children, despite their craziness and active lifestyle, it’s part of the breed to be very tolerant of small children and to accept changes in the pack order.  But every dog is its own beast and we’ll just have to wait and see.

In the meantime, it’s belly snuggles on the couch for me me and Rubes.  Too bad she couldn’t fix me a plate of cold chicken from the fridge. 

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I should scan this picture my kid drew but it’s in pencil and I don’t think it would turn out.  Plus it’s huge.  Anyway, I’ll try to describe it because it’s so freaking weird.

The picture shows our house.  Jack is in the house, sitting on the couch with the baby and Ruby watching the TV.  The news is on the TV as depicted by a gun.  Mommy and Daddy are in the gravity room which is beside the house and accessed by a small tunnel.

Outside, there is a fire raging all over the lawn and neighbourhood.  The fire happened because giant meteors which are seen in the sky are falling to Earth and burning stuff.  The good news is that it is starting to rain and the raindrops are putting out the fire.  Letter “d”’s are also falling out of the sky.

Despite the Armageddon, all of us are smiling in the picture.  Especially Daddy and Mommy in the gravity room.

After Jack explained the whole picture to me, I immediately went into panic Mother mode and grilled him on all the possible pyschological meanings behind it. 

Mommy: Do you feel safe in our house? 

Jack: Yes!

Mommy:  Are Mommy and Daddy in the gravity room because you think we don’t want to spend time with you?

Jack: No!  The gravity room is fun. You and Daddy like bouncing around in there.  I was tired from being in there, that’s why I am on the couch.

Mommy: Why is there a gun on TV?

Jack:  Because it’s the news. It’s a grown-up show.  I’m waiting for Ben-10 to be on.

Mommy:  Why is the baby and the dog with you on the couch?  Do you think you have to look after them?

Jack: Of course I have to look after them - they can’t go in the gravity room.

Mommy:  Are you worried that the house is going to burn down?

Jack: No, we have a fire alarm.  Plus, it’s raining and that is going to put the fire out.

Mommy: Why are the meteors falling to Earth?

Jack: Because they’re cool.  I saw it in a book at school.

Mommy:  Why are there letter “d”s falling from the clouds.

Jack:  They’re supposed to be raindrops.

Mommy:  Is this a happy picture or a sad picture?

Jack:  Happy!  But one thing makes me feel bad.

Mommy: What’s that?

Jack:  I feel bad that I drew your legs kinda short.  I ran out of space.

Mommy: That’s OK.  Mommy has short legs in real life.

Kids are really weird.

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I always have a way of getting myself into embarassing situations.  Usually, I’m not the one that is embarassed but I inflict all sorts of pain on the people around me.

Remember to ask me the one about the time that the door to my washroom stall opened and I mooned an entire lineup of women and small children and IKEA.  That was classic.

Today was a whole new level of stoopid behaviour.  Fortunately, the only victims I may have offended was a bunch of alley cats that hang out on my back porch and possibly my next door neighbour with whom we share a driveway.

I was coming up from the basement with some laundry in my arms.  On the last step, my yoga pants hem snagged on a nail head that was sticking out. With my pants fully tethered to the steps, my body continued to be propelled further, like some kind of Grade Nine physics diagram showing motion.  As described by Wikipedia:

In physics, motion means a constant change in the location of a body. Change in motion is the result of applied force. Motion is typically described in terms of velocity, acceleration, displacement, and time.^[1] An object’s velocity cannot change unless it is acted upon by a force, as described by Newton’s first law.

All these things were happening to me!

The end was result was that I ended up face down on the kitchen floor (which is a very unforgiving granite… gorgeous BTW), my yoga pants wound around my ankles, my exposed butt in the air and my clean laundry mostly in Ruby’s water dish.

Because I’m pregnant, I do tend to be a bit clumsy and I must admit I’ve fallen a bunch of times already but the shock of doing so is very upsetting and as a result I burst into tears.  I couldn’t unsnag myself from the nail so I had to initiate an emergency eject from the yoga pants in order to stand up. 

Once free, the crying turned into an immediate rage (see previous post on my pregnancy anger issues) and I lunged to the utensils drawer in the kitchen and extracted the OXO meat tenderizer. In a flash and uttering all sorts of foul language, I smashed the offending nail head back into the step.  I made it my job that this beast would hurt no one else.

So there I stand gasping from the sudden burst of energy, the pain of the fall starting to sink in, bottomless (sans undies) with a meat tenderizer in my hand in the middle of my kitchen.  As I took the second to pull myself together, I saw something move out of the corner of my eye.  Out of our blindless, full-length kitchen window, I saw the back of my senior citizen (gay) neighbour scurrying up his back steps and into his house.  The recycling container lid was still reverberating having been slammed down with great force as if flung down in a hurry.

I tried to convince myself as I pulled on my shredded yoga pants and picked up the sopping wet laundry, that he didn’t really see anything.  That it happened in a flash. 

Who am I kidding?  It was a flash alright.  A flash of grossness that rivals a look back at Sodom & Gommorah which has burned the retinas of my lovely, sweet and innnocent neighbour. He’s probably giving himself a “Silkwood” shower as I type this.

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I went on a bit of a rampage this weekend.  It was part of the 1/3 purge that James and I have been attempting to do in the last couple of months.  We want to purge a third of our stuff by the end of this year because our house is too small, a baby is on the way and we both want less clutter and junk.  I also think I’m going through a nesting thing in which I feel the need to organize the nest before Boy_Child_2.0 arrives.

The purge centred around our first aid kits and our medicine chest.  Ruby, our 9 month old puppy had a medical emergency on Sunday which required gauze and stuff. As James was tying to tend to the dog, I was frantically digging through our stuff and I realized that we were missing some of the essentials and that most of our meds were expired. Yikes.

So the purge began.  I rifled through everything and disposed of most of it.  Later on, once Ruby was doing better, James went to the drug store and restocked all our supplies.

It felt very grown up of us.

So I ask y’all to do the same! When you have a spare moment, take a gander at your first aid kit and your meds and see if everything is up to snuff.  Be prepared!

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I know that I’m probably the only woman in the world who feels this way but the baby kicking around inside me kinda grosses me out.  Not that I want it to stop!  I know that movement is good and all and that it’s usually a sign that all is going well in the placenta apartment.

Nevertheless both the concept and the physical manifestation of a living, growing thing existing inside of me seems completely unnatural.  When Boy_Child_2.0 fires one of his fists into my bellybutton, I don’t automatically think, “Oh isn’t that sweet!” followed by some calming belly rubs and cooing at my navel.  It’s more likely that I think, “Fuck!  What was that?  EWWWWWW… that was someone’s foot troucning on my insides.”  Sometimes it makes me feel queezy.

So needless to say, I experience some guilt over it.  I try not to think about it to much.  I make weird faces when it happens and I worry people think I’m not well.  I know so many women who say it’s the best part of being pregnant.  It’s this private communication between you and your baby-to-be.  I’ll keep that mantra in my head.

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Sigh.  I’ve reached the point in my pregnancy when I develop a deep hatred for the world around me.  Sadly, I have 10 more weeks to go before the birth of Boy_Child_2.0 so there will be no end to this until then.

I had similar rage issues when I was pregnant with Jack but I think it happened in the last month of pregnancy and it was a sweltering and humid summer and things on my body that I didn’t even know I had, started to swell and sweat and feel uncomfortable.

I can’t blame the hot weather this time around.  It’s so freaking cold and snowy here that no part of my body ever feels warm unless I’m under my down duvet with the dog curled around me.

I assume the main culrpit is hormones.  I should google it but I’m afraid that it will say something like… “hormones in the third trimester should cause women to be feel full of life, warm, happy and at peace with the world…. women who don’t feel this way should see their OB/GYN immediately for bloodtests and painful uterus examinations”.   I’m pretty sure I’m abnormal.

The rage consumes most of what little energy I have.  I’m mad at the maternity pants that continue to slide down when I walk no matter what size I wear.  Short of wearing hideous suspenders, I continue to wrench them back up to my ears at every opportunity.  I now do this whenever I’m in public places, like in line to get my tea, or the elevator because I want to make everyone suffer along with me and the sight of a angry pregnant woman wrestling with her wardrobe in order to cover her nudity is indeed sufferable.

I’m also get really angry at people who waste my time.  This happens everywhere, from the driver in front of me at the gas station, to the idiot with 15 items at the 10 items or less line at the grocery store, to telemarketers, to small children, to people at work, to people on TV shows.  The list is endless.

I’m angry when I eat garlic or beans and I’m up all night with a host of gastro-intestinal problems which means I sleep less. And that makes me grouchy.

I try to reason with myself. I am very thankful that I have a job and that I get to work with people I really like.  I am thankful that I can still make my way around and that I haven’t been ordered to bed rest. I am thankful that my family, including Jack is exceptionally patient with me.  I am thankful that I have supportive friends all over the world who are there to listen to me.  And of course, I am thankful that I was able to get pregant and I am able to have such a moderate pregnancy.

Thus, I must conclude that this irrational anger is hormone-related.  I can only imagine the joyful human being I will transform into when I go through menopause!

At the first sign of a hot flash, I suggest you all run!

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