7 1/2 week update

How do you spot the pregnant chick in the Farm Boy parking lot?

She’s the one rooting through the bags recently deposited into the back of the station wagon, eating the meat directly out of the package.

***

I’ve just been for my first ultrasound, and everything looks great. One wee baby snuggled in just the right spot, measuring one day ahead of schedule at 7w4d and with a steady, strong heartbeat of 158 bpm.

One tiny piece of the iceberg of anxiety has melted away. I can’t quite give myself over to giddy joy, but I find myself stoically satisfied. My next appointment, the ultrasound and blood work of the first step of the integrated prenatal screening test, seems a lifetime away at five weeks from today.

***

My regular OB was accompanied by a resident with a soft voice and careful manner. He welcomed me and asked me if I had any questions about the pregnancy. I told him that this is my fifth pregnancy and that I’m an obsessive researcher, and I could probably answer a few questions for him instead. He laughed in an uncertainly polite way, and excused himself as quickly as he could. I should have been less blunt, but I was feeling disconcerted instead of comforted by being back in the OB’s all-too-familiar exam rooms again.

***

I did have a few questions for my OB, things I just wasn’t comfortable asking the kindly resident with the liquid brown eyes. I wanted to know about testing for abnormalities, and I wanted to know if there was a pathology report from the D&C last November. I was standing next to her when she pulled out my file, thick with the reports and results from two full-term pregnancies, two miscarriages and the lost twin. I found myself reading over her shoulder, knowing it was a dangerous game and yet unable to stop.

As she told me that the pathology report did not include information about Trisomy 18 or other genetic abnormalities, I held my breath and felt separated from my roaming eyes, wondering almost idly what I would do if I stumbled across information about the lost baby’s gender and wondering if that’s what I was really seeking. Perhaps for the best, she closed the file before I could make sense of any of the clinical report and assured me that there was nothing in the file to cause any concern about my current pregnancy.

***

Seven and a half weeks and all is well. It’s all I need to know.

Blogger hiccups?

Hmmm, I seem to be having some trouble publishing my posts. Well, I’m fine but Blogger – not so much. A couple of weeks ago, someone mentioned that although they could see comments that obviously related to a post from that day, the most recent post she could see was from two days before. The same thing seems to be happening sporadically all over.

Since Wednesday, I’ve been having trouble forcing Blogger to publish my posts. It says they are published, and I can go to the page that holds the post, but it doesn’t appear on the top of the main page. And yet, some of you are commenting on it, so I guess you can see it. It hasn’t been dumped into my RSS feed yet, either.

Anybody else having the same trouble?

(Edited to add: Aha! Blogger coughed this one up AND the one about Stephen King, too. So now I have to publish two posts every day???)

Stalking Stephen King

I was 10 years old when I picked up a copy of Firestarter that my mom left lying on an ottoman. I was fascinated by the story of Charlie McGee, the little girl who could light fires simply by thinking about them, and by the way she was treated as a lab project. I became an instant fan, and went on to read almost all of Stephen Kings books… probably a large part of the reason that I’m almost 38 years old and still prone to being afraid of the dark! But in addition to scaring the pants off me at regular intervals for the past 30 years, I think I’ve also learned a lot about the craft of writing, and of storytelling, from Stephen King. Even after all the novels, I think On Writing remains my favourite of his works, and one of my greatest inspirations as a would-be writer.

So when we were noodling ideas on where to go on our summer vacation and we stumbled on Bar Harbor, and I realized that to get to Bar Harbor we’d have to drive through Bangor, Maine, my fascination with Stephen King helped seal the deal. I was introduced to the idea of Maine through the works of Stephen King: Salem’s Lot, Carrie, Cujo, Pet Semetary, The Tommyknockers, and of course, It. I think It scared me worse than any other book in my life, and it’s actually set in the town of Bangor, masquerading as “Derry.”

I was delighted to find out that the Bangor visitors and convention bureau actually sponsors the Tommyknockers and More Bus Tour of Bangor, a tour of some of the places immortalized in King’s work – and then was crushed to realize we will be missing the first tour of the season by a scant five days.

Reading this article in Maine Today about Stephen King’s Maine, I followed references to Bett’s Bookstore in the heart of Bangor, home of a giant collection of King’s works and memorabilia. I sent a quick e-mail to the owner briefly outlining my fascination with Stephen King, our upcoming vacation and my disappointment at missing the bus tour. He returned my e-mail the same afternoon, saying he’d be glad to give me a copy of the same map they use for the tour if I’d like to stop by the store.

In my ongoing stalking research, I found this Roadside America link with photos and a map to the exact location of Stephen King’s own house, just around the corner from the bookstore. I mean, it’s one thing to take a walking tour of the Barrens *shudder* or to make my way up to the Standpipe, but to actually walk by Stephen King’s house? Way wicked cool!

So, our trip to Maine will be memorable for many, many reasons. There’s a playdate scheduled with an old bloggy friend I can’t wait to meet, and the boys’ first trip to the ocean (and out of the country, for that matter.) There will definitely be my first-ever visit to Target.

But Stephen King? I’ve got shivers just thinking about it.

Thomas the Tank Engine toy recall

A friend at work sent me this link today, and I was positively stunned. RC2, the American makers of the wooden Thomas the Tank Engine and Friends toys, has issued a recall on a number of engines and accessories over fears that the paint on the engines could contain lead.

(!!)

(I shudder to think how many of those trains we have, and how much time the boys spent with them – and yes, they have all been chewed on, drooled over and sucked on.)

I found the actual recall notice on the U.S. Consumer Product Safety Commission Web site, and it has details on exactly which engines and accessories are involved in the recall (seems to be mostly the red ones) and what to do. RC2 Corp has information on its recall page on which trains are recalled and how to return them (including information for Canadians and Americans.)

Talk amongst yourselves

Ugh. Not feeling well today. I’ve been really lucky with my headaches lately, as they are becoming increasingly rare. Unfortunately, right now when I do get one there’s not much to do but pray that the Tylenol works and crawl back into bed.

But now that you’re here, you can’t just wander away. In anticipation of our road trip at the end of the month, tell me the best (or worst, or funniest, or simply most memorable) road trip you ever took. For me, the stupidest one was hitchhiking from London to Sudbury with my boyfriend when I was 17.

Book review: Sweet Ruin

Today, I’m hosting a stop on MotherTalk’s blog book tour for Cathi Hanauer’s Sweet Ruin. (Disclosure: this means I get a free copy of the book and a small honourarium from MotherTalk.)

This was almost a 10-pages-in book review, because coming into the weekend I just wasn’t sure I’d be able to finish it in time for my date on the bloggy book tour today. I have to admit, I was biased against the book as soon as it arrived. With it’s girly pink cover and saucily bared shoulder, this book screamed chick lit to me and I’ve never been able to warm up to chick lit. More accurately, I haven’t actually read any chick-lit, ever. Couldn’t bring myself to peruse Sophie Kinsella, or pick up a Helen Fielding. The closest I’ve come is Janet Evanovich’s Stephanie Plum, and I really don’t think you can call a book about a bounty hunter chick lit, can you?

Anyway, all that to say that I did in fact judge this book by its cover. Even when I started reading it, I found it hard to warm up to the protagonist. Elayna Leopold is a 35-year-old wealthy subarban mother to six-year-old Hazel, and as the book opens she is recovering from a two-year depression following the loss of her newborn son, Oliver. After his death, she finds she and her husband Paul are simply going through the motions of their former life, hollow and bereft. Strike two against this book. When I signed on to the MotherTalk book tour, I didn’t even know I was pregnant, and I almost stopped reading a few times last week just because I didn’t want to think about healthy pregnancies that end in neonatal death. Kind of interferes with my new no-worries attitude, ya know?

But, I kept reading. I’m glad I did. About half way through the book, something hooked me deeply and completely, and I tore through the rest of the pages with breathless curiousity. The story examines Elayna’s slow ascent from depression after the crushing loss of her son, and considers the eternal question of where the wife and mother ends and the woman begins. When she falls in lust for Kevin, the gorgeous 22-year-old artist across the street, she finds herself awakened and invigorated for the first time in years… and can I just take a moment here to say holy hell, does Hanauer ever know how to make a scene sizzle! Her descriptions of the magnetism of lust are evocative and breathtaking – literally.

Even though I never did warm up to Elayna’s complex character – and I admit that a lot of that is simply judgementalism on my part, as I could neither agree with nor understand many of the larger and smaller choices Elayna made – I do appreciate Hanauer’s impressive ability to flesh out a character. By far, the most interesting character in the book is Elayna’s six-year-old daughter Hazel, a red-haired bundle of fiery energy and attitude perched precariously between being mommy’s little girl and a preteen diva.

I found this book both compelling and hard to read. Hanauer is a good storyteller with a keen eye for detail and dialogue, and once the story starts moving it accelerates with the inevitability of a train wreck. You can see it coming, but you can’t look away. But that’s not to say that I didn’t enjoy the ride – I just watched cringing, through splayed fingers, hoping that in the end at least the damage would be minimal. I found myself at times completely wrapped up in the story, my own guilt at hiding upstairs in stolen moments to read a few pages woven seamlessly into Elayna’s guilt at her more dangerous choices. Mommy-guilt has more facets than I ever realized!

In addition to the story itself, this book had a few interesting features that I particularly liked. There were a handful of book club questions at the end, and an interview with the author that you can read on the Simon & Schuster Web site – but if you want to read the book, I’d wait and read them afterwards. It was satisfying to finish the book and then read the additional material with the story fresh in my mind, and I’ve always been interested in process when it comes to writing.

In the end, Sweet Ruin stayed just far enough on the literary side of chick lit to win my approval. While it had its racy and titillating moments, the depth of the characters and the complexity of the relationships was enough to both engage and satisfy me. I’d recommend it as an ideal summer beach book.

What are you reading this summer?

Yay day!

It’s been a few weeks since we’ve celebrated a yay day around here. The sun is shining and it’s two weeks until our Bar Harbor vacation, which are two things worth celebrating all on their own right, but I have more!

My bliss right now comes from the fact that I’ve been able to spend a lot of time with the boys recently, and I think we’re all the better for it. We’re in a phase where they’re generally a lot of fun to be around (when they aren’t bickering like an old married couple, that is!) and I am constantly tickled by their expanding world views.

Kerry and I took the boys to Westfest on the weekend while Beloved attended a weekend-long seminar, and Tristan recounted his encounter with a life-sized Lunar Jim and Clifford the Big Red Dog with some enthusiasm. “But,” Tristan concluded with a worldly sigh, “it wasn’t the real Lunar Jim.”

“How do you know it wasn’t the real Lunar Jim?” I asked.

“Well, Mom, because I looked at his back and it had a big zipper on it.” Remind me not to let him get too close to Santa Clause this Christmas!

Later that day, Tristan also decided he needed to make a craft, but he was quite secretive about what it was. He asked me to cut a large circle out of a piece of paper, and returned a few moments later with what he called a CBC frisbee; sure enough, he had made an impressive approximation on his ‘frisbee’ of the exploding cabbage that is the current CBC logo – freehand, using only the image in his head for reference. Be still my patriotic, mothercorp-loving heart!

Yesterday after a bath, Beloved was helping Simon put on his jammies when Simon observed that his fingers were “fancy”. It took us a minute to figure out he meant they were wrinkled from the tub.

So my joy is simply that I love my boys, and they love me, and with that everything else in life is golden.

Care to share what’s making the sun shine on you today?

The lost post

Some time between midnight and two in the morning, I woke up with a perfectly brilliant idea for a post. I lay awake for a moment, working out the details and crafting the structure. As I stumbled to the bathroom and back to bed, I actually laughed out loud a little bit with delight at the sheer cleverness of it. I pulled the comforter up tight against my chin, making little mnemonic links in my head so I would be able to retrieve at least the kernel of the idea from the foggy recesses of my brain.

So strong was the resonance of that flash of insight that the first thought that traversed the blank expanse of my brain upon waking was one of curiousity. I had an idea, said my sleep-addled brain, a really good idea. Now, where did I put it? And though I spent quite a few minutes sorting through dusty piles of clutter and looking in long-forgotten corners and cupboards in the dark warrens of my brain, it was no use.

There was even one breathtaking moment of near-revelation, when I sensed the impression of the idea standing nearby, waiting for me to quiet my noisy brain long enough to recognize it or follow the breadcrumbs of nearby concepts so the idea could reveal itself to me in all its inspired glory. But no. It’s gone.

Damn. I’m sure it would have been a much better post than this one, too. Any idea what it might have been about?

Six week update

Since I peed on the stick last week, I have only thought about being pregnant 682,465 times. This, I’m sure you will agree, is a remarkable improvement in restraint and shows definite progress in my attempts to curb the more obsessive side of my personality. This new zen attitude thing is really working out for me!

Not only do I continue to become more pregnant each day, but I am becoming less superstitious about talking about it. I like Fridays, because that’s the day I make the leap from the barely pregnant 5w6d to a very far-along and respectable 6w.

I am constantly reassured of my pregnant state in part because every morning I look at the peed-on stick in its place of honour on the lip of the bathroom counter (sidebar: when you are a sentimental and vaguely superstitious pack rat, at what point exactly is it okay to throw away the peed-on stick?) but mostly because the symptoms that have been the hallmarks of my previous pregnancies make themselves more apparent each day. I’m a little more peckish than usual, and my stomach rolls unpleasantly as soon as it detects anything close to hunger. My attention span, not good on the best of days, is practically non-existent.

*looks around*
*blinks*
*notices you waiting*

Oh, sorry about that. What was I saying? Right, pregnancy symptoms. I’m crushed under the weight of a fatigue so big that even Rip Van Winkel’s 20-year nap wouldn’t take the edge off of it, which is nicely complemented by the fact that where I usually sleep like a happy log, my sleep all week has been fitful and punctuated by stretches of insomnia.

The crankiness? Oh, no, that’s not a pregnancy symptom. That’s just me.

Hard though it is to believe, my abdomen is already swelling, too. I suppose being on my fifth (!!)pregnancy and having borne children that were larger than some charted asteroids has weakened my abdominal wall beyond repair. I had barely finished peeing on the stick when my stomach pooched out. All I can say is thank god for drawstring summer pants.

Speaking of size, I guess this pretty much halts the progress of my steady but incremental weight loss. I weigh just a little bit less than I did last summer, and have lost a total of nine pounds since February. I think I’ve gained three since last Wednesday. I think I just gained another one there while I was thinking about it. I’m sure this has nothing to do with the fact that the baby made me eat poutine for lunch yesterday and spicy sausages and perogies for dinner. Willfull little creature, it is. It’s been demanding butter tarts for three days, and only the fact that Farm Boy was sold out of them has prevented me from acquiesing – which, of course, has only intensified the craving. Oops, I think I just added another pound just thinking about it.

I work on the edge of the Byward Market, fer crissake, home of some of the best restaurants, cafés and shops in the city of Ottawa. Surely to god I can find a decent butter tart out there somewhere, right? Oh, and for my American friends: a butter tart is like a personal-sized pecan pie, with or without the pecans, occasionally with raisins or walnuts, but gooey-er and altogether more decadent.

Uh, excuse me. I have a – um, a thing to do. Yes, an important butter tart work-related thing. To get. I mean, to do. Quick, point me in the direction of the nearest bakery, it’s an emergency!

Edited to add: I love my peeps. Kerry and Trixie came back from a coffee break with not one but TWO butter tarts for me. And Beloved called to say he found a box of my favourite pecan butter tarts at the grocery store this morning. Oh, heavenly tarty goodness…

Episode 156 of the daycare saga: the one with the nanny

What’s that, you say? You’re dying for another long, rambly post to update you on the endless saga of our search for quality, affordable child care? Far be it from me to deny you the joy of a post like that.

So. Last time you saw our heroine, she had recently had the rug yanked out from under her by the judgemental and unprofessional caregiver who quit by leaving a note in the mailbox after a mere 14 hours with Tristan and Simon, and she had recommenced the time-consuming and exhausting search for child care. (I’m switching back to first person now. The third-person thing was getting rather tedious.)

In the past two and a half weeks (good gravy, has it only been 2.5 weeks?) I’ve posted four new online classifieds and answered more than twenty of them myself. I’ve called daycare centres and home-care agencies. I’ve called phone numbers from posters taped to the mailbox and the community bulletin board at the grocery store. I’ve handed my business card out to strangers I’ve stopped in the park and at Tristan’s school, after sidling casually up to them and engaging them in conversations that usually go something like, “Hey, great weather we’re having, eh? So, do you know any child care providers with open spaces for a 3 and 5 year old?”

I’ve asked other mothers at my bus stop, asked neighbours over the back fence, and even had an old friend that I ran into in the grocery store – who happens to run her own home daycare – asking around for me. For a relatively shy person, I’ve walked up to a whole hell of a lot of strangers and started talking to them. I have, in short, been working the hell out of the surprisingly solid network of parents, friends, childcare providers and strangers.

Much as I’ve tried to shield them from the conversations going on, the boys are aware that Joanne won’t be their caregiver anymore and neither will Bobbie. Tristan has taken to evaluating every adult as a potential caregiver, and has broken my heart a few times by pulling me aside and whispering, “Can {so and so} be our new caregiver?” He has shown a preference for people with swimming pools, extensive toy collections, and other 5 and 6 year old boys with whom he can play.

We’ve decided to try something new this time around. We’re going with – as I have alluded to recently – a live-out nanny. We interviewed someone last week, and although I really liked her, what we could afford was less than what she was hoping to make. I made her an offer last week, and she came back with a counteroffer a few days ago. After much soul-searching and wringing of hands, I told her we simply couldn’t afford that much, and she came back with a reduced counteroffer, and I simply couldn’t say no again. She hasn’t gotten back to me since I accepted her counteroffer, but I’m starting to relax into the idea that it will all work out.

We’re going to be paying her $382.50 a week, which is more than $100 more a week (ouch!) than we are currently paying. BUT, she has a car and is willing to shuttle Simon back and forth to nursery school three days a week while juggling the same-time pick-up and drop-off of Tristan. It’s a hassle, but gives her three days a week with a two-hour midafternoon break. She has a 9 month-old son of her own, and he’s the sweetest, gurgliest, chubbiest 9 month-old I’ve seen since mine were that age.

Having a nanny is a whole new frontier in paperwork, though. She’s considered an employee and I’m the employer, so I have to register a payroll account and deduct and remit the payroll taxes and workers’ comp premiums and all that stuff. Gah! Good thing I at least know a little bit about this stuff from all the years I worked in the tax centre.

If any of you have any experience or advice about the legalities of hiring a live-out nanny (or “domestic worker” in government parlance) I’d appreciate your insight. I’m drawing up a contract that covers vacation time, stat days, sick time, working hours and the usual. And no, the irony has not escaped me that back in February I balked at half this stuff when looking for a child care provider and now I’m offering more benefits AND more money than I refused back then. But at least she is my employee now and that gives me some control over the conditions of employment – which means at the very least that she can’t take on extra kids without involving me in the decision. I’m a little weirded out by her being in my house with my kids when I’m not there – and potentially when I am, most of all. A new adventure for all of us, I guess.

And the money. Oy. In Canada, you can deduct $7000 per child (younger than 7) against your income for tax purposes. Her annual salary will be just shy of $20K, which is $6K MORE than the annual child care deduction limit – and that’s not even considering the $155 a month for Simon’s nursery school “tuition.” Not to mention the fact that it’s damn near 2/3 of Beloved’s annual salary last year.

We’ve decided to suck it up for this year. It will be tight, but my heart was so set on this nursery school for Simon and I am frankly feeling so burned by the whole child care search that if we have to make due on a tight budget for a year we can. A little over a year from now, Tristan will be in school full time and Simon will start morning JK at public school and we can re-evaluate everything then. And of course, our lives could be changing considerably this February – but I’m not counting any of those chickens just yet.

Stay tuned – you know there’s more to come.