Where the Hell Have I Been?! A Six Month Recap

My lengthy blogging hiatus was unintentional. I didn’t wake up one day and decide I was done blogging or anything so dramatic; it was just one of those things that kept getting put off for a myriad of reasons until it became bigger in my mind than it really needed to be and then I couldn’t decide how to jump back into it, like when you forget to email a friend back for a couple of days and it spirals out of control until one day you realize you haven’t talked in a year and it’s totally your fault and now you CAN’T contact them because it’s just SO AWKWARD.

(Please tell me I am not the only horrible person that does that.)

The initial reason for my absence was a simple lack of creativity: my damn kid was behaving too well and failing to provide me with easy material, and I was having trouble crafting any of my own tales of insanity (and there are many!) into anything remotely amusing. Since those are really the only two things I write about, I was tapped out. Now, under normal circumstances I probably would have gotten my shit together and written something lame just to avoid the above-described “now it’s been TOO long to blog again!” shame-spiral, but then my life underwent some serious upheaval and all I could think about all day every day was how overwhelmingly stressed out I was, and it just seemed disingenuous to write blog posts about my son dancing with glow sticks (sooo cute, you guys) when I was sending my friend daily texts that said “MY LIFE IS FALLING APART HELLLLLLLLP!!!”

(Too dramatic?)

And then I got pregnant, and in one fell swoop both of those problems were solved! I’m finding that now I have about a million things to say, and everything that I was stressing about no longer seems quite as important because there’s a HUMAN BEING GROWING INSIDE ME and I’m hungry and stuff.

(Of course, in reality the pregnancy actually makes the sources of my stress all the MORE relevant as well as bringing stresses of its own, but it gives me a positive focus and some serious motivation to at least pretend to be an adult who is marginally capable of handling life.)

So here I am! I’m back and committed to regaling you with tales of Bubba’s cuteness, embarrassing memories and photos that will make you pity and/or mock me, and, of course, news from the pregnancy front (today’s headline: I’m too fat for my pants). First, though, allow me to bring you up to speed on what’s been going on these last six months:

Bubba has maintained his interest in all things superhero:And I made him an AMAZING (if I do say so myself) decoupaged table with Marvel cards:

(And yes, his nails are painted in the above photo. We were bored. They’re Spider-Man colors! His toes were painted “green like a lizard,” if you were curious.)

Potty training was a success!!!

Which necessitated a journey to Toys R Us to pick out a new toy (or two), because I believe in positive reinforcement (AKA bribery):

My sister and I took Bubba and her three kids to Legoland:

Bubba’s been practicing his Big Brother skills with his baby cousin:We spent the summer in our luxurious resort-style pool:And cooling off with overpriced (but oh-so-delish) milkshakes:

And most importantly, I can assure you that my bond with my dear sweet Bubba has not changed one bit during that six month hiatus:

Whew! All caught up? Ready for more? Stay tuned…I promise not to disappear again.

I am the 1%! (For Whom Birth Control Does Not Work)

One evening earlier this summer, I was driving home from picking up some dinner when I was struck by how absolutely disgusting the tomatoes on the burgers I’d just purchased smelled. They weren’t rancid or anything — in fact, they looked downright farm fresh — they just smelled so distinctively tomato-y. It was so overpowering, I almost pulled over and threw them out the window.

Now, If you’ve ever been pregnant or are even a little bit smart, it’s probably 100% obvious what was going on at this point — there’s pretty much only one reason why a woman would suddenly be so bothered by an odor as innocuous as fresh tomato. Since I am apparently very dense, though, this did not even cross my mind until over a week later when I realized I hadn’t had my period in quite some time, and the memory of those goddamn stinking tomatoes came rushing back into my mind.

It took about three seconds for the home pregnancy test to confirm what the tomatoes had tried to tell me 10 days prior: I’m pregnant.

To say this was a surprise is an understatement. I’ve wanted another baby pretty much ever since dear Bubba had been sleeping through the night long enough for my brain to forget the abject torture that was the sleepless newborn months, but I hadn’t made any progress in convincing my husband and was resigned to waiting another year or two at least. My body and the universe had other plans, though, and laughed in the face of the birth control pills I was faithfully sucking down every night. “Oh no, you don’t,” my ovaries chuckled. “I’ll show you who’s really in charge around here, cuz it ain’t your husband and his ridiculous ‘only children are awesome’ theory.”

This is why the packaging says the pill is only 99% effective, by the way. The manufacturers know that the human body has the capacity to occasionally go rogue and start making family planning decisions all by itself, and when that happens, there’s nothing a few measly hormones can do about it.

After an initial period of shock (during which I demanded that my doctor order up a blood test to confirm the veracity of the pee-on-a-stick test, since I truly did not believe that birth control could just, like, not work), I quickly got on board with my fate. After all, I like babies and think I’ve done a bang-up job raising my first one (so far), and while I’m not religious, it sort of feels like if you get pregnant while using birth control, maybe the universe is trying to tell you something and you should just roll with it.

And so the countdown begins! The countdown to sleepless nights, diapers galore, breastfeeding and pumping and formula and bottles, childcare dilemmas, sibling rivalry (!), money woes…and love and joy and sibling bonding and cuteness and milestones and the daily wonder of watching someone develop before your eyes, and I really, truly, cannot wait.

Thank you, Ortho Tri-Cyclen Lo, for making me the 1%. Who am I to question your infinite wisdom?