Sarah Vs. Delusional Memories

Preface: I believe that children are a blessing and one of the most rewarding decisions you can make in your life. This does not mean that the process for obtaining them is nine months of euphoria. Worth it? Yes. Glorious? No.

My legs hurt, my hips hurt, my back hurts, my stomach itches. I am too hot or too cold all the time, I can't reach my feet, I still have morning sickness, I have really bad heartburn, and I have to go to the bathroom every hour. I am exhausted but can't sleep (see bathroom every hour). The baby keeps alternately pinching the nerves in my legs with his head and reshuffling my ribs with his feet. If one more woman tells me that being pregnant is the most glorious experience in the world I am going to shove one of the socks I cannot get on my feet down her throat.

Apparently I Smell

I have noticed a very interesting little trend in the last couple months that has exponentially increased in the last couple weeks. Everywhere I go in the house I have at least one, usually two shadows. I suppose they are smelling the hormonal changes, but every time I sit down one of them jumps on my lap and rubs their faces on my belly. It is sorta weird, very funny and slightly inconvenient. Every time I stop moving I get swarmed by kitties winding around my feet, sitting on my lap or keyboard or desk or in between me and my dinner... I wonder if they will be this friendly with the baby?

Bummer

I saw a recipe for Creme de Menthe brownies a month ago that looked amazing. It took me a while to get to a liquor store to buy the necessary Creme de Menthe for the recipe so I finally got around to making them yesterday. After two failed batches of brownies, I finally found a recipe worthy of the delicious minty frosting. I frosted them, crushed Andes mints on top of them, admired how pretty they were, and prepared to eat one. No dice, the baby was not in the mood for minty deliciousness so instead I sat on the kitchen floor and cried. After more than a month of anticipation, I was too nauseous to even attempt them. Of course Rob comes home from work at that precise moment and is left trying to figure out whether I am really that upset about just brownies, the pregnancy or something else entirely. I am sure he thinks that I have lost my sanity...

After staring at the brownies all day today, I took them to work so that someone could enjoy them. Apparently they were a hit, I believe it took about ten minutes for all of them to disappear. I did break off a corner of one tonight before the last one got devoured. Wow...definite keeper recipe.

Milton, Homer, Ovid and Poe for Babies

One of the girls from work asked if I had been reading to the baby. Apparently they have discovered that reading to the child in the womb and playing music for them has no effect whatsoever on their intelligence, so I haven't really been doing it. I told her as much and she expressed surprise that me being such an avid reader hadn't been reading to the baby. Selfishly, I see my reading time mostly disappearing after the bundle of joy arrives and have been reading obsessively for the last few months (at the rate of 8 or 9 books a week). I would share my books with him, but reading aloud slows me down. The one exception has been with epic poems. I tend to skip too much if I read those silently and tend to read them aloud. So to date, the only things that have been read to my child are "Paradise Lost," "The Illiad," "Metamorphoses," and some of Poe's poetry. At least if the studies are wrong and children are affected by what is read to them in the womb, my baby was exposed to some of the more pretentious classics. This should ensure that he is a book snob, correct?

It Takes A Child

After trying for months to get on a more regular morning schedule and failing miserably, I have found the key. The last two months I have woken up between six and eight in the morning every morning to answer nature's call. Unable to get back to sleep as Rob's alarm starts going off at this point, I have been able to actually stay up most mornings. Apparently having a child squishing the bladder is one way to get a night person up in the morning. I get the idea the little darling's sleep habits will do the job once he is born.