02Jan
Will someone please tell me what the deal is with maternity clothes? I don’t understand. They cost a fortune, first of all. And because there are not many discount stores (like TJ Maxx or Marshalls) that carry them, you are usually stuck paying full price. And while I have never had problems forking over cash for clothing, I DO Have problems forking over cash for clothing that I grow out of in about a week.
I think I’m doing it wrong. I’m buying clothes and then outgrowing them in record time. Two weeks or one good washing later, the pants don’t fit and I can’t button my blouses over my belly. And everything is made out of stretchy material, which is awesome for laying around the house in. But when I have to get dressed to go out in public, I feel like a sausage that someone is squeezing in the middle.
I actually think I know what I’m doing wrong. Its that I’m scared to buy bigger maternity clothes. For Christmas this year, my Mom gave me a few really cute maternity outfits for work. She also gave me a pair of enormous jeans. E-nor-mous. I unwrapped them, held them up, and started crying right there in the middle of Christmas. Just burst into tears right there next to the Christmas tree. My Mom immediately took the jeans and put them in a box with the promise that I didn’t have to look at them.
If I was mature enough to handle it, I actually need those bigger clothes. Maybe they’re a little too big right now, but I’m getting so big, so fast that it won’t take long at all before I’ll be able to fit into those jeans (hence the Christmas tears…). I don’t know why I have a problem with getting so big. I have never been a weight watcher. I don’t even own a scale! When I went to the doctor for my first prenatal visit, I couldn’t even tell them my start weight. I had no idea! But now that I’m packing it on exponentially, I’m starting to feel huge!
To solve this problem, I have decided to wear sweat pants. To everthing. Maybe if I pair sweat pants with a sensible heel, no one at work will notice. And for church, I could just wear little white gloves for a hint of sophistication. I think that might work…
Me: How do you think the baby will know who we are when he’s born?
Chris: He’s gonna know who I am ’cause I’m gonna catch him.
Me: Catch him?
Chris: Yeah, catch him. When he shoots out.
Me: We should probably talk a little bit about the delivery process…
05Jan
This past week, my sister and her main squeeze, John Michael were visiting. We had a rootin’ tootin’ good time. They came into town to go down to Times Square for the ball drop, but they had some problems getting there and ended up coming home before midnight. While that was a bummer, the rest of the week really made up for it. We layed around and watched football, ate, went to Mystic, CT, ate, rode a horse carriage through Central Park, ate, went up in the Empire State Building, ate, and then we ate some more. It was pretty delightful.
But as with all company, its great to see them come and its great to see them go (sorry, Gin) and so I spent today de-hostessing my house. Laundry, putting away Christmas decorations, wrestling socks from my dogs… And as I’m doing this, Chris is making an effort to help. Sort of.
Now normally, I try not to generalize about gender stereotypes. Chris is a unique individual and is shortcomings unique characteristics are all his own. But when it comes to cleaning, I have found several traits that most men share. Not all. But most.
For example, when I clean I clean the entire house. Whether the junk belongs to Chris, me, or the dogs, I put it away. I’m not a great deep cleaner, but I can straighten up a room pretty quick and its because I don’t distinguish between whose belongings are whose. Chris, however, will only clean up his things. I asked him today if he could straighten the living room while I cleaned the kitchen, downstairs bath, and living room. Seems to be a fair trade, am I right? But when I went into the dining room (which is the catch-all room in our house), he had put away only half of the stuff laying in there. My stuff was all in a nice little pile on the dining room table. What’s with that?
And laundry is no different. In our house, we don’t really split chores in half or have assigned jobs (mostly because I’m pretty lazy and if Chris waited for me half the time, we’d be living in filth with no socks). But laundry has traditionally been something I do most of the time. And I really don’t mind because Chris is pretty darn good about helping out around the house, so if he doesn’t like that one task, I don’t mind taking it over. But when he does do the laundry, he will wash everything but he only puts away his. He leaves my clothes in piles downstairs. Now, its not that tricky to figure out my closet arrangement…especially when we’ve been married for almost 4 YEARS NOW. Why can’t he just put my clothes away when he puts his away? I put his away when I do it, so what’s the hold up on my clothes?
Another thing that drives me crazy about cleaning with Chris isn’t something that I’m aware is a trait of “man”-kind. I think this next one is a Chris thing. He re-cleans after me. I will go through an entire room of deep cleaning (you know, with supplies and stuff) and I’ll hear him in there like an hour later re-cleaning something. It. Drives. Me. Crazy. That room hasn’t been touched with a dust cloth or vaccuum in 3 weeks, and when I finally take the initiative to do it, he has the audacity to come behind me and “fix it?” Drives. Me. Crazy. He never actually comes out and criticizes my cleaning (he’s still breathing, isn’t he?), but I think re-cleaning is almost just as bad as saying that outloud. Clearly, he thinks he could do a better job. And, clearly, something must have physically prevented him from doing that better job in the THREE WEEKS that the dust sat there accumulating. But let me pick up the dust cloth and, suddenly, he’s all about the cleaning. Er, re-cleaning.
I guess I should be thankful. Lots of wives have husbands who don’t help at all. And in the grand scheme of things, Chris takes care of more than his fair share of things around the house. And he kills spiders for me which gets you many gold stars in my book. Its not so much that I am judgmental of his household strategies, its that they baffle me. I’m confused.  I just don’t understand them.
Then again, my weird habits include painting my dog’s toenails and paying extra for scented trashbags, so who am I to judge?
06Jan
I had one of those days today. You know the kind. The kind where you wake up and right off the bat you can’t find the tights that you wanted to wear and your pants are too tight to be appropriately worn in an office. The kind where your breakfast of hot maple and cinnamon oatmeal explodes unexplainably in the microwave, leaving chunks of oatmeal and spice all over the kitchen. The kind where your inbox at work inexplicably eats incoming new emails before you have the chance to read them, leaving you promising all kinds of inappropriate things to the IT guy if he’ll just fix it. The kind where you sit in a “problem-solving” meeting, only to discover that “problem-solving” means your job just became more difficult and time consuming. The kind where you show up to your doctor’s appointment expecting to be rejuvinated by an ultrasound of your Beanie Weenie, but instead you are told by your doctor that you’ve been scheduled for the wrong type of appointment and can you come back next week instead? The kind where that entire box of Cheez-Its you ate for lunch because you didn’t have time for anything else starts to feel like a really bad idea. The kind where you take a 30 minute shuttle ride all the way out to your car from your office at the end of the day only to find that your car keys are still sitting in your office.
Yeah. Its been that kind of day.
My only bright spot was my doctor’s appointment (once I got over the whole your-here-for-no-reason thing…). The doctor wanted to listen to the baby’s heartbeat. And I ain’t complainin’ about that! I love that sound! But the problem was she couldn’t catch him! I knew he was moving around a lot lately because I can feel him rolling around in there, but I had no idea how much he was moving until today! Every time we’d hear one or two heartbeats, he’d roll over to the other side of my stomach and she’d have to chase him with the heartbeat-hearing-machine (very technical name). She’s find him again, we’d get one or two beats, and then he’d roll over to the other side again. It was hysterical! And, I like to think, brilliant. My son is brilliant. He’s already playing hide and seek. Brilliant.
I told Chris the other night that maybe the baby is building his own Man Cave in my belly. Whatever he is doing, he’s working hard at it because he’s moving around like crazy! My BFF, Emily, said he’s like a beta fish. I think that’s a great analogy. Except now when I feel him move, all I can picture is my bright blue beta fish from college, Dave, who had a huge tumor on his neck and eventually died because I went out of town and forgot to feed him.
Hopefully my parenting skills will be better than my beta skills…
