Unlisted

As we were saying the “Bad Dreams” prayer tonight…

Lucy: “Maybe we should write God a letter about the bad dreams.”
K: “Okay, we can do that.”
L: “Do you have his address?”
K: “No, but that’s okay.”
L: “We need his address otherwise the mailman won’t know where to take the letter.”
K: “Well, God doesn’t exactly have an address. He’s kind of all around us, all the time.”
L: “Maybe we could just call him.”
K: “I don’t think he has a phone number, but if you talk to him he can hear you.”
L: “Opa has Santa’s phone number. I bet we could just ask him.”

Um, No

I am clearly outside the target market for American Apparel, but is this a good idea even for a younger, hipper and lither model mom-to-be? I have a certain "go on with your bad self" sense of pride that American Apparel would market to me, that this woman would even put such a get-up on her sexy, fecund self. And yet...I will be the one in the muumuu, thank you very much.

It's a...

SURPRISE. During our 20-week ultrasound, we resisted the urge to find out the sex (sorry Pie, call Dr. P. if you really must know), but did find out everything is AOK. The kind sonographer even told us the baby's arm position was "very advanced" and its brain was "really smart-looking." Well, duh. Pictures below. Good luck making any sense of them (Jason tried valiantly to find out the sex), but we are told everything is beautiful.

A footprint on the left, then another shot of a foot profile on the right.

Profile. Schnoz looks okay so far.

Five toes.

Sideways front view of face, with little hands in front, boxing.

Birds & Bees Lesson #3: Mom's Changing Shape

Yesterday, Lucy was rubbing my belly, which has gotten pretty round and pregnant. Upon encountering the indentation of my belly button — she couldn't quite make it out over my shirt, and it's getting kind of weird and flat anyway — she asked, "Is that your vagina?"

"Uh, no. That's my belly button, see?"

"Then where's your vagina?"

"Same place it always was."

Freedom!

My dears,

I'd like apologize to you for my ill temper these last several weeks. If I've been snippy, or thoughtless or irrational or hysterical, I'm sorry. Please let me explain.

You see, it's my pants. For at least a month, I have been squeezing myself into my "regular" pants. And apparently they have been cutting off the circulation to the happiness region of my brain.

I am realizing this now because I have on MATERNITY PANTS. Stretchy, cradling maternity blacks in a forgiving shade of black. I am reborn. The birds are singing more sweetly. The colors of spring are more vivid. Everyone is kinder and more attractive. I love you. And you and you and you.

But mostly I love these pants. Sorry I have been so awful lately. I am better now.

Sincerely,
Kate

P.S. I truly believe we could have a shot at peace in the Middle East if every person came to the negotiating table wearing these pants.

Curse-tacean

"Oh CRAB," Lucy exclaimed at dinner last night, glancing over at me and Jason as if to try on her new curse word. "I forgot where my locket is," she explained, then got up to go find it.

When she was gone, we cracked up and quickly debated the correction of an intended bad word that wasn't actually a bad word.

When she came back, I asked, "Lucy, what did you just say?"

"I said, 'oh crab.' Because I lost something."

"Well, a crab is a kind of animal. But if you meant to say 'crap,' that's like saying 'poop,' which is not a very nice word."

"Oh."

The Worst Day of Her Life

Lucy informed me this morning, between choking sobs and wails, "This is the worst day of my life." And I had to admit, it was looking like a pretty bad day. We sat on the couch at an impasse: I'd told her she was going to wear the shirt and skirt she'd promised to wear the day before, or lose TV for the rest of the day. She'd told me she would wear the shirt under a dress as a jumper, but would NOT wear the skirt.

I picked the wrong battle and I am sick about it. Here's what happened: she explained that she HAD to wear a dress or else. Or else what, I wanted to know. "Or else the girls will make me be a queen or a prince when we play princess — only girls who wear dresses get to be princesses." When I heard this, I dug in. I told her that nobody could tell her what to wear or what to do (except me and Dad), and she had all these new clothes and she'd told Dad yesterday she would wear this outfit today and that was that.

The morning dissolved into hysteria! Threats! Rage! (And this was both of us.) She pleaded, demanded, negotiated and pressed her proposed compromise to wear the new shirt UNDER a dress as a jumper, but I did not budge.

I won, but it was no victory. She went to school, her chest still heaving, wearing the @#$%ing skirt. Poor kid. She tried so hard to find a compromise. I should not have forced her to go to school wearing something that made her feel so miserable or would make things on the playground unnecessarily hard merely because I said so.

How humbling when the little person is the bigger person.