This Week was Stupid

This whole past week was just annoying and stupid. I'm going to summarize here so hopefully I can clear the bad juju and get on with things.

The badness begins on Saturday when I get a stupid haircut. It's all uneven and weird looking, plus she didn't thin out the ends. I have really thick hair, so when you don't thin out the ends, it looks all puffy and blocky. In short, I'm suffering from triangle head.

Same Saturday: We go to a bbq, only to have Caden announce 20 minutes later that he wants to go home and then stands at the door. We fight this fight for about half an hour until it's clear nobody will have any fun. We leave.

Tuesday: Caden throws the biggest screaming tantrum I have ever seen. On the front lawn. Neighbors stop their yard work to watch.

Wednesday: Okay, so I am about 7 months pregnant, and your body does weird things when you're pregnant. You know that red dot on my forehead? I call it my bindi, or my third eye of consciousness. Not to ruin the mystique, but it's really a blood vessel close to the top of my skin. Well, another one randomly crops up right above my lip a few weeks ago. On Wednesday at noon it pops, and blood starts pouring out of my face. I have to keep a towel pressed to it or else all hell breaks loose. It keeps going and going. I go through work like this. I have to walk into Caden's school like this to pick him up. We get home and I'm trying to get all of our bags and junk through the door with one hand like this. I have to let go in order to get milk and snacks. Blood pouring into my mouth. I knock over a WHOLE CONTAINER of juice in the refrigerator. I loose it. Finally stop bleeding at 10:00 that night.

Thursday: Very nice huge red scab on my lip. And remember my stupid triangle hair?

Friday: Go to different salon to get hair fixed. Come out looking like Carol Brady circa 1978. Only puffier on top. 

See what I mean? STUPID.

Our Little Green Frog

Caden is starting "preschool" at the JCC on Monday. Last night I went for the parent orientation, and I'm pretty sure that I'm going the be the one crying when we drop him off for his first day. I'm going to blame it on pregnancy hormones. The place is wonderful, the teachers and counselors are all sent straight from heaven, and they get to play in the sprinkler every day. He's so ready for this, and I know he's going to thrive. But then we went on a tour of their classrooms, and I saw this:It's the name tag on his cubby in the classroom, ready and waiting for him. He's in the "little green frogs" group. I took one look at it and just cried and cried. Luckily, I was the only one in the room at the time. Sheesh...

Korean Ladies Know Some Stuff

So for the second time this month, a Korean lady has taken one look at me and said "You're having a boy." How do they know this?

Yesterday, I was standing in line at Old Navy, when I suddenly feel a hand on my belly which I'll admit was a little surprising. That never happened with Caden. Anyway, it was this Korean grandma smiling at me and she told me I was having a boy. Correct. Then she was saying something about how I'm very young. Uhm... not correct. So aparantly her gift has nothing to do with actual eye sight.

The first time it happened was a few weeks ago when I went to get a pedicure. Pretty much the same thing went down, only she didn't even need to touch me. She just took one look at me and told me I was having a boy. I asked her how she knew, and she said it's because I'm small. Hahaha. Also not correct. But I tipped her a thousand dollars.

If a Tree Falls in the Woods...

... How many people could hear me yelling "Holy CRAP!!"?

We had a really powerful storm come through town yesterday, and I just happened to be at home to witness it first hand. The cleaning ladies were there at the time too. It was just after 3:00, and the wind started to blow, and the sky got dark. Like, 9:30 at night dark. And I was hearing a noise, but wasn's sure what it was. So I was kind of running around the house trying to figure it out, and I'm standing in front of the wall of windows when I see the tree go down. CRASH!

It was a HUGE mature oak tree. When it fell, it took up the entire length of our backyard and keeps on going into the neighbors' yard, demolishing a fence in the process. All I could do was stand there and point, saying "HOLY CRAP!" The cleaning ladies were frozen for a minute too, then they all started rubbing my belly and saying something in Spanish. I don't speak Spanish, but I assume it roughly translates into "HOLY CRAP!"

So here's a view from the other side. I was standing right in front of the glass. Of course later I find out that there was a tornado spotted in the area, and everyone was supposed to stay away from their windows. Kind of difficult in our little house made of glass. I'm pretty lucky that the tree fell away from the house instead of toward it. I'd have been a gonner I think.

Nice Try, Sucker.

I made the silly, silly mistake of thinking that I might be able to go a day without Zofran last week. Zofran, for those who don't know, is a little white miracle pill straight from Jesus himself that controlls nausea. As it turns out, I am Zofran's bitch. My little experiment lasted exactly as long as it took me to pull myself off the bathroom floor and drive to CVS to beg the pharmacist for mercy.
My mom told me a few months ago that she was sick all 9 months with her babies. And now she just told me that my grandma was sick all 9 months with her babies as well. I guess I'm resigned to the fact that this probably isn't going to end for me this time around. But the big question on my mind is, why in the world did these crazy ladies keep having babies (4 for each of them), if it meant puking for 9 months? NO THANKS!

It's A Boy!

Pete and I went for my 20 week ultrasound and found out that we're having another little boy. I've been surprised at how excited I am by the news, although I think I would be typing the same thing right now if we had found out it was a girl. But right now I'm really loving the thought of brothers.

Early on, I was absolutely convinced that this was a girl, but I think maybe it's just because I couldn't picture having a son who wasn't Caden. But I eventually got over that, so the feeling wasn't so strong. Most women say that their pregnancies for boys and girls were like night and day. But this pregnancy compared to the one with Caden has been like night and... later that night. Same fatigue. Same never ending nausea. And then 2 weeks ago I had a dream that we were looking at the sonogram screen and we saw a boy. That sealed it. I was pretty sure I knew the score before the tech confirmed it for us.

I sure hope boy #2 likes cars and trucks, because Caden is already excited to teach him everything he knows.

A Good Farewell

My grandpa Tommy passed away last month, and it was my privilege to take part in his final send off. Let me say one thing: My family knows how to throw an awesome funeral. It fit him to a T, and he would have loved every second of it.

As you can tell from the photo, he was a total bad ass Marine. At his funeral service there was a full Marine Corps honor guard and a 21 gun salute. And these weren't your old, pretty wooden ceremony rifles either. Those Marines were carrying the same semi-automatic weapons you'd see on the streets of Baghdad because this is wartime, son. (Did you catch that grandpa? The beauty is in the details, isn't it?)

The other thing we did was tell stories. All 7 of his grandchildren stood up together and just told stories about our favorite memories of him. And we didn't just eulogize him. We were talking and laughing with each other and with the people out in the pews. What a wonderful thing to inspire at your own memorial service.

I hope with all my heart that when I die (after a very long and happy life with my husband and children, Inshallah), that people have so many stories about me that it takes 3 days to tell them. I hope that there's at least one story that's so crazy and so juicy that my grandchildren fight over who gets to be the one to tell it. So I'm going to remind myself to take my kids on adventures, and tell them jokes, and teach them the real value of being ridiculous as well as forthright and upstanding. There's room for everything.

And I really hope, when my time is up, that they remember to put up that photo of me looking all hot and sassy in my bikini on the beach in Portugal.

Grandpa giving me a bottle.

Grandpa meets Caden for the first time.