Category Archives: Thoughts

The peeing, that is.

It was annoying when it was every few hours. Now it’s about every hour or so…ugh. I actually look forward to sleeping now, since during the night it’s still every few hours.

And I’ve been told it gets even worse.

—Thanks to Mom for forwarding this to me. 😀

The government recently calculated the cost of raising a child from birth to 18 and came up with $160,140.00 for a middle income family.

Talk about sticker shock! That doesn’t even touch college tuition.

But $160,140 isn’t so bad if you break it down. It translates into $8,896 a year, $741.38 a month, or $171.08 a week. That’s a mere $24.24 a day! Just over a dollar an hour.

Still, you might think the best financial advice says don’t have children If you want to be “rich.” It is just the opposite. What do you get for your $160,140?

• Naming rights—First, middle, and last!
• Glimpses of God everyday.
• Giggles and outright, deep belly, flat out infectious laughter more times than one would ever believe.
• More love than your heart can hold.
• Butterfly kisses and Velcro hugs.
• Endless wonder and pleasure over the simple things: rocks, ants, clouds, and warm cookies.
• A hand to hold.
• A partner for blowing bubbles, flying kites, building sand castles, and skipping down the sidewalk in the pouring rain.
• Someone to laugh yourself silly with no matter what the boss said or how your stocks performed that day.
• For $160,140, you can live through your childhood again; You get to finger-paint, carve pumpkins, play hide-and-seek, catch lightning bugs, and believe in Santa Claus for a while again.
• You have an excuse to keep reading the Adventures of Piglet and Pooh, watching Saturday morning cartoons, going to Disney Land, and wishing on stars.
• You get to frame rainbows, hearts, and flowers under refrigerator magnets and collect spray painted noodle wreaths for Christmas, hand prints set in clay for Mother’s Day, and cards with backward letters for Father’s Day.

For $160,140, there is no greater bang for your buck.

• You get to be a hero just for retrieving a Frisbee off the garage roof, taking the training wheels off the bike, kissing a hurt, filling a wading pool, and coaching a baseball team that never wins but always gets treated to ice cream regardless.
• You get a front row seat to history to witness the first step, first word, first bra, first date, and first time behind the wheel.
• You get to be immortal.
• You get another branch added to your family tree—and if you’re lucky, a long list of limbs in your obituary called grandchildren.
• You get an education in psychology, nursing, criminal justice, communications, and human sexuality that no college can match.
• In the eyes of a child, you rank right up there with God.
• You have all the power to heal a boo-boo, scare away the monsters under the bed, patch a broken heart, police a slumber party, ground them forever, and love them without limits, so one day they will, like you, love without counting the cost.

ENJOY YOUR KIDS AND GRANDKIDS !

I can sum up the entire 3-hour class in one word: WOW! 88|

I really want to breastfeed, and I knew it would be a lot of work. But after actually learning about it, and realizing just how often a newborn needs to eat—and how long each feeding takes? Wow, just wow.

I think I am actually feeling MORE overwhelmed now, rather than less overwhelmed as I’d hoped. I think Tom was really surprised, too, at just how much work and energy would be involved (which is a good thing!).

The one thing I wasn’t expecting? If breastfeeding is going well, you should do it for at least 3-4 weeks before introducing a bottle or a pacifier. That sort of ruins my plans for having mom or Aunt Marge help with the middle of the night feedings. :no:

I am sure it will all be second nature in a few days—and be worth it overall (once the exhaustion is over)—but in the meantime it’s going to be hard work.

For the first time during this pregnancy, I am starting to get all sorts of paranoid. (It doesn’t help that I picked up a pregnancy magazine, which revved me up even more.)

I am now thinking about the million things I don’t know, the things I need to write down in a list so as not to forget (helpful hints about what to take to the hospital), the things I still have to search for (pediatrician, daycare, etc.), the things I have to buy (I didn’t even think about winter stuff—I’ve just been thinking onesies-onesies-onesies), things to ask my doctor (to clarify what hospital she is associated with, what about a birth plan, etc.)…and the list goes on.

Good god.

So I have two pairs of jeans that fit, both the same style and color, just two different sizes. The smaller pair I can wear, but have to leave the top button undone. The larger pair are baggy, but then I can leave them buttoned. (I have yet to do any maternity shopping, although I fear it’s coming soon. But at least we’re in a big enough city to have nice stores!)

Anyway.

So I alternate which jeans I wear depending on how I’m feeling or what I will be doing (if I’m doing lots of moving or sitting, I wear the larger pair).

So yesterday I decided on the larger pair because I was going to be unpacking and moving around—plus I felt really fat and uncomfortable. They felt smaller than I remembered, so I quick read the tag and yes, they were the larger pair…so I was disgusted that in just a few days, the larger pair had gotten THAT much smaller. >:XX I mean, I know I will be getting bigger, but I swore I had just worn them a day or so ago and they were still too big.

Oh well. I just chalked it up to having gotten bigger and not paying attention.

So as the day wears on I had to unbutton them and I just thought Holy Crap, this sucks, I will have to go maternity shopping sooner than I thought—how depressing.

But the more I thought about it, I was sure I was going crazy. So I looked at the tag again—more closely—and yep, I had grabbed the smaller pair!

Phew! :>>

So I still have a few weeks before I have to get maternity pants. 🙂

Work IS making me sick.

I mean, of course I don’t want to be here. And of course I am ready to quit. But I didn’t really think that could cause my symptoms.

So I thought “What do I do at work than is different that at home?”

Well, it has to be because of the sitting position I’m in 95% of the day. I don’t sit like this at home. I do get up and walk around at work, but not much—I mean, there’s no place to walk TO unless I want to walk around the building (and it’s HOT!).

And then once I feel icky, it continues even once I get home…

The next 58 days cannot come quickly enough.

I honestly think being at work makes me sick. I feel like a million—no, a hundred!—bucks in the morning, and by the time 9:30 or 10:00 rolls around, I am feeling oogy. Today I felt a little nauseous, headachy, and whatnot.

Yuck.

It’s not as bad as it was before, but it’s not like how awesome I felt over the weekend…so I came to the conclusion that it’s the job making me feel this way.

Thankfully, I only have about two more months here, unless our house sells more quickly.

My coworker just got more sympathy (from my boss) about some random pain she had last night than I got for six consistent weeks of morning sickness. Lovely. >:XX

I have decided I have Not-Quite-Morning-Sickness, otherwise known as Daily-Oogy-Sickness.

I talked to my mom this weekend and she told me she threw up just about the whole nine months…so I should be VERY glad I am not experiencing that.

But it is just exhausting being so tired all the time. And always feeling out of sorts.

Work days are the hardest—and especially Mondays, after I’ve been able to nap whenever I want over the weekend.

In a perfect world, I would tell my boss I was pregnant and ask if I couldn’t just go in the back and lie down for a bit. Or hell, since we’re talking a perfect world, if I couldn’t just go home at 3 or so, since that is when I feel the worst.

But I know none of that would happen. I am guessing the attitude would be more like “Sorry you don’t feel good, but we still need you to answer the phones.” Which I guess is true, but it doesn’t make me feel any better.

For the past few days, at least three times a day, I have sworn I was getting cramps or starting my period. Yes, even though I had a positive at-home test and a positive doctor-administered test.

I am just scared that this can’t be real. And each time I realize I am NOT starting my period, I breathe a little sigh of relief. But it’s very tiring.

On one hand, I try not to think about ANYTHING pregnancy-related, because the more I do, the more excited I will get. But on the other hand, every day (at least 10 times a day) I think “Wow, I’m pregnant.”

First things first, let me say I have no way of knowing if I am pregnant, because it’s entirely too early, but there are just unusual things happening, so of course I jokingly tell Tom that I must be pregnant!

A little background: We are on the first month of using the Clear Blue Easy Fertility Monitor. I peed on the stick when it told me to, and we had sex when it said was the best time—so if the sun and the stars and the planets were aligned, there is no reason I shouldn’t be pregnant. :yes:

So, what are the possible (but highly unlikely) signs?

• I have been feeling weird all the time… Not an upset stomach or gas or nerves or “morning sickness” or anything familiar, but just a strange, unfamiliar weirdness. It’s almost like my insides feel tight.
• I have to pee ALL THE TIME. Just today, I peed at 3am, 6am, 7am, 9am, and 10am. I only had a smoothie for breakfast—no other liquids.
• I have had headaches—long, all-day headaches—for some time now.
• I seem to be tired (or exhausted) all the time.

Taken individually, these signs mean nothing. Hell, even taken together they mean nothing! As I said, it’s entirely too early to be having pregnancy symptoms, even if I do happen to be pregnant (if I was, I would be less than two weeks pregnant—and I don’t think ANYONE can tell ANYTHING at two weeks).

So, in the meantime, I just wonder what it would be like if I actually was pregnant right now. For one, it would be great news, since we have only been trying for two months (actually only one seriously). And for two, it would be scary as hell because, well, just the thought of parenthood is scary—when it becomes a reality?! 88|

Now, don’t get me wrong. We would both be excited. Elated, even.

But in the meantime, we are NOT getting excited in the least. Especially after what happened the last time we did this. 🙁

So, stay tuned.

I haven’t written in a long time so there’s too much to catch up on.

There’s too much to catch up on so I postpone writing.

I don’t write because there is no way I can catch up.

You get the idea.

So I am going to try to start writing more, and I may or may not try to catch up on past dates/events…