Month: September 2006

You’ll have to excuse me. This little blueberry of a baby has forged some sort of evil alliance with Simon, and they’re conspiring to make sure I’m so completely sleep deprived that I cease to function. For the past week and a half, Simon has been waking me three to five times a night (!) with grumbles in his sleep, whether for a lost soother or a cold that only seems to manifest itself during the night, and once I’m up, I’m up for an hour. They are very close to succeeding in their evil alliance.

All that to justify the fact that my brain is goo, and it’s an epic struggle just to make coherent sentences, let alone grammatically correct sentences that provoke stimulating debate. (But, speaking of stimulating debate – that was fun yesterday. Thanks for your two cents, and kudos to all of you for being so darn polite about it, too.)

I’m trying to avoid being the all-pregnancy-all-the-time blogger, but you’ll have to forgive me as that’s where my head is at these days. Hey, only seven more months to go! And there are just so many interesting topics related to pregnancy that we can talk about.

For instance, a friend of mine just found out she’s going to be a grandmother for the first time. Her son and daughter-in-law just told her last week – and she’s three months along. I couldn’t imagine taking three days, let alone three months, to tell my mom.

As you saw, I knew for all of about three hours before sharing my news with the interweb, and frankly that’s *longer* than I waited with Simon. I simply don’t get why people wait three months to tell people about a new pregnancy, and I’d like to know what you think. Even when we lost our first baby at 13 weeks, although it was truly one of the worst things of my life to have to tell everyone and sift through their grief as well as my own, I would still rather do it with the support of my friends than alone with Beloved.

What are your thoughts on waiting to announce a pregnancy? Did you tell people right away, wait for a special occasion, or wait for that mystical three-month mark? And *how* did you keep it a secret for so long? I have to restrain myself from telling strangers on streetcorners!

I’ve been following an interesting story here in Ottawa for the past couple of days. A mother to a five-month-old baby (and two older children) registered for an adults-only pottery workshop. It’s not a class, but a chance to use the studio tools and resources for a set three-hour period each week. The woman is still exclusively nursing her daughter and has not yet introduced solids or formula, and although she took the baby out of the studio to nurse her, the baby stayed in the class in her infant seat throughout the class.

Three-quarters of the way through the first class, the woman was approached by an official from the program and told that since her daughter did not meet the 19-years-or-older requirement of the class, she would not be able to bring her to subsequent classes. The city offered the woman a full refund of her registration fees when she indicated that she was unwilling to leave her baby at home. In an article in the Citizen, she says, “”I’m not asking to bring a child. I wouldn’t bring my year-and-a-half-old here. It’s not a day care. But the baby doesn’t do anything. She’s an exceptionally quiet baby. I just wanted to bring her until she starts eating pablum, probably about a month from now. Then I could make other arrangements, but now I’m nursing.”

She (and the Citizen article) are spinning this conflict as a ‘discriminating against breastfeeding mothers’ issue, but I’m not so sure I agree. I think the city was probably being a little too officious when they pulled out the “the baby is under 19 therefore does not meet the eligibility requirements of the class” argument, but I do see why they might have concerns about an infant being in the workshop.

I’m a fervent supporter of a woman’s right to nurse a baby wherever the hell she chooses. I nursed both boys in public, and have no problem with any mother nursing any baby anywhere. But I also have sympathy for the other people in the class – maybe mothers who signed up specificially to be able to get away from the babies for a little while, or maybe an infertile woman who finds the presence of a baby a painful reminder, or maybe someone who simply isn’t ga-ga over babies.

I personally don’t think the mother was being discriminated against because she was nursing, I just think that there are places that maybe babies aren’t welcome. There’s a huge difference between a mewling newborn and a curious five-month-old, too. I’m trying to remember my boys at five months, and I can’t quite imagine them being content to sit in the baby bucket for hours at a stretch. (Matter of fact, I think Simon had outgrown the baby bucket by about four months, but that’s another story.)

What do you think? Does the mother’s right to nurse her baby trump someone else’s right to be in a baby-free space?

Simon is two and a half, just a few weeks shy of two years younger than Tristan. You could never convince him of that, though. Far as Simon is concerned, he and Tristan are equals, and there is nothing that Tristan can do that Simon can’t do, too.

That makes the whole school issue a little prickly. Tristan loves school; loves it so much that he asked me at least three times each day on Saturday and Sunday when he could go back to school again. I’m hoping that enthusiasm carries him through high school at least.

And of course I want to bolster that enthusiasm, so I ask him about his activities, and his classmates, and the other minutia of his day. Through it all, Simon interjects regularly with things like “I go to school, too! My turn?” It’s the first time in Simon’s life that they haven’t been spending all day every day together, and I think it’s been hard on him. I try to drum up the same enthusiasm with Simon for the daycare provider, but it’s obvious to all three of us that it’s not the same. Darn smart kids. Dumb ones would be much easier to fool.

Even though they’re two years apart, I’ve come to think of the boys as on relatively equal footing. But two years is a big gap, and there are going to be a whole lot of things in the next couple of years that Tristan can do that Simon simply won’t be ready for, whether by externally-imposed age restrictions or simply different social circles. I guess it’s not reasonable to expect a birthday invitation from a classmate would include preccocious younger brothers, but it’s rather painful to try to explain to the two year old who got left behind, let alone explaining to the big brother that you’d rather he didn’t talk about the party at home. I skipped enrolling Tristan in swimming lessons this fall, simply because there was no equivalent for Simon – he’s already done the Parents and Tots level, and he’s too young for the preschool lessons. But is that fair to Tristan? Ah, the angst!

And yet, whether because of or despite my clumsy efforts, they are clearly becoming friends as well as brothers. Tristan has decided in the past few days that he is “Lightning McQueen” from the Disney movie Cars, and has taken to calling Simon “Mater”. Neither one of them has seen the movie yet, but Beloved assures me that Mater is Lightning McQueen’s congenial sidekick, and Tristan has bestowed a compliment on Simon with this title. It’s a fairly accurate representation of their relationship at this point, not to mention how adorable it is to listen to them say, “Goodnight, Mater!” “Goodnight, Light Queen.”

Some time between now and Christmas, we’ll be moving Simon from his crib in his own room into a big-boy bed – in Tristan’s room. Stay tuned to see how that transition fares! And if there is any justice in the universe, the pregnancy gods will give me back my precious coffee before then. Cuz I think I’m going to need a LOT of caffeine to get through those days.

Like most women I know, I have jeans in an array of sizes. Sexy jeans, for when I’m feeling fit; ordinary jeans; and fat jeans. I’ve been living in my fat jeans on weekends since Labour Day, and all my work pants seem to have a bit of stretch in them (can I get a hallelujah for lycra?), so I haven’t been thinking much about maternity pants just yet. Denial is not just a river in Africa.

Mind you, I’m only 8 weeks pregnant, and you might think it’s a little early to be thinking about maternity pants anyway, third child or not. I think I was around twelve weeks when I finally started wearing them with Tristan, probably a little earlier than that with Simon. Then again, I also kept 10 extra pounds as a souvenir of each pregnancy, so I’m not exactly svelte to begin with.

So on Saturday, Simon smeared something of unmentionable origins on my otherwise clean (fat) jeans, and I found myself rooting through the closet on Sunday morning looking for something to wear. I tried on my ‘ordinary’ jeans, and to my utter dismay, I couldn’t even get the zipper done up. You can’t use the famous elastic-through-the-buttonhole trick if you can’t even get the friggin’ zipper done up. And I don’t really wear track pants or yoga pants, so I was pretty much looking at spending the day with a towel wrapped around my waist, which I probably would have been happy enough to do except we were meeting friends for breakfast.

So I took a deep breath and tried not to think about the fact that I’m only two months pregnant, and I pulled out a pair of maternity jeans. Right at that moment, I think my belly popped out. And yet, for the next two hours I pulled and tugged and yanked as those suckers slid right off my hips. The towel would have been easier and more flattering. I even tried safety-pinning the hem of my shirt to the waist of my pants, which promptly tore a hole in the hem of my shirt. And of course, every time gravity did its work and the pants slid down, they brought my underwear with them, so every two steps I had to not only hitch up my pants, but stick my hands into my pants and yank my underwear back into place as well.

Not pretty. Nothing puts me in a bad mood faster than pants that don’t fit. Oh, how I hate the transitional phase.

So after breakfast, the boys went to the bookstore while I went directly to the maternity store. Did you know they’ve invented stuff and totally changed the look of maternity clothes in the two years since I’ve had Simon? They have these pants called “now and after”, that are designed for the early months and the time immedately post-partum when you have all of the flab but none of the belly. They’re full of lovely lycra, and rather than a belly panel they have a thick elastic waist at the back, so the waistband runs under your belly. They’re actually rather flattering, so I bought two pairs – which I will alternate for the next month and a half. (Who am I kidding? At this rate, I’ll have outgrown the transitional pants by next Wednesday.)

And although they looked absolutely adorable in the store, and seemed to fit quite well, I discovered on the way to work this morning that they have the same gravitational susceptibility as my maternity pants.

If you see a girl wandering about downtown employing a rather unique and awkward-looking “step-step-hitch-step-step-dig-yank-step” gait, do be sure to say hello. I’m heading out to find some suspenders…

Oh my god, I’m so hungry. Hungry, hungry, hungry. I’m hungry all. the. time. Sheesh, you’d think I was pregnant or something.

It’s really inhumane how hungry I am. This child I am gestating is the size of a grape seed, and demands more caloric intake per day than my 47 lbs son consumes in a week. And it’s not just the lip-smacking, vaguely peckish, tummy grumbling hunger, either. This is insistent, impossible-to-ignore, death-is-imminent-unless-you-eat-right-NOW hunger. Constantly.

I’m trying to be good, but it’s so haaaard. < /whiney voice > I’ve got a stash of apple sauce cups and almonds in my desk drawer. I’ve got boxes of raisins in my messenger bag. I try to eat small, healthy things throughout the day. And I am always, always starving.

I remember the rule of thumb from last time around, that ‘eating for two’ is a myth and that at most, you should be consuming an extra 300 calories a day. That, in case you are wondering, translates into one Tim Horton honey cruller doughnut. (320 calories, to be exact, but I’ll take the stairs an extra time today to make up the difference.) Psh. As if that’s going to make a dent in the Hunger That Ate New York.

Every day this week, my eating pattern has been something along this line:
6:45 am, on the bus to work: one box of raisins.
7:15 am, at my desk: one muffin.
9:30 am, at my desk: handful of almonds (mmm, salty)
10:30 am, at my desk: a cup of applesauce.
(by this time I am so hungry I lick the bowl and foil peel-back lid clean of any speck of apply goodness)
12:00 (if I can hold off that long): lunch
(I try to make good lunch choices, but by the time lunch comes I am so hungry I want comfort food. Heavy, warm, gravy-soaked comfort food. And then I eat it, and for the rest of the afternoon I groan and my esophagus burns from the reflux and I curse the repeating taste of the damn gravy that tasted so good on the way down and will now haunt me for the rest of the afternoon.)
2:30 pm, at my desk: more almonds.
5:00 pm, making dinner: eat large chunks of whatever I am cooking raw as I prepare for dinner.
5:30 pm: dinner.
5:35 pm: remnants of Tristan’s dinner.
8:30 pm: snack.

At least I don’t (looking for wood to touch) have much morning sickness to contend with. If I don’t obey the command for food with adequate haste, my stomach starts to roll, but otherwise I’ve been pretty lucky.

And you know what the most cruel cut of all is? I’m losing my taste for coffee. With Tristan, I had a complete aversion to coffee – couldn’t stand the idea of it. With Simon, I had a mild aversion through my first trimester, but was back on it by the fourth month.

This time around, it’s not so much as an aversion to coffee as I just don’t have the same level of adoration I normally have for it. Rather than running off to get my second (and sometimes third) cup of the morning, I end up leaving more than half of my first cup to get cold on my desk. I’ve actually started to downsize from my daily extra large, just because it’s going to waste.

Oh cruel pregnancy, I’ll happily deal with the hunger and the sciatica and the gas and the hormones and the disruption to my digestive tract, but for the love of all things holy, please don’t take my coffee away from me!!!

I’ve got a handful of little things that I can’t quite make a full post out of, so you’re getting the dog’s breakfast post today. (Hey, I just checked on dictionary.com to make sure I had the right meaning for dog’s breakfast, and it says this is a Canadian slang term. How about that!) Ahem, where was I? Oh yes.

First of all, I wanted to say a huge thank you to any of you who might have gone out last Saturday to the garage sale to help raise funds for Shona, the friend-of-a-friend I mentioned last week. You know what? They raised $2500 in a single morning. Isn’t that amazing? Jojo has more details on her newly minted blog.

Second, I have another message to pass along from an old friend of mine. Cooper from the blog Been There, who was so terrific in setting up the clearinghouse to help out after Katrina, sent me this note last week:

Recently I saw the documentary film, The Motherhood Manifesto, and through the film I learned that in Pennsylvania, where I live, it is legal to ask someone in a job interview if they are married or have children. As you can guess, this hurts mostly moms and single moms. PA is one of 28 states that is in this predicament, and we, and the other states, aren’t covered by the federal regs either.

I have been working with Joan Blades (co-founder of MoveOn.org) and others at MomsRising.org, as well as women in Pennsylvania to help get legislation passed (it has been stalled in the state house and senate — for 6 years!) that would make this practice illegal. I wrote an article about it that ran recently in the Pittsburgh Post-Gazette.

Anyway, if Pennsylvania can do this, it means so much to moms everywhere, and could create momentum for many critical issues involving moms and families, and on this type of discrimination. PA could start a chain reaction, and we need to drum up some noise. Momsrising has create a web page for this, and we have been blogging over there too. We have information, links to PA legislators phone/email info and a petition. You don’t have to be from PA to send a message that this is important.

I have to admit, I was really surprised to hear that this kind of thing could be legal. If you can do anything, or even lend a voice of support, please do contact Cooper through Momsrising. Sisterhood!

And finally, to end our all-altruism-all-the-time festival, I give you this link to the goodest milk on the Internet. I’ll be stocking up. Hey, 764 Amazon reviewers can’t be wrong…

(Confession: I didn’t find the milk thing on my own. My Google ju-ju is not that good. Anyone care to guess who fed it to me?)

So I’ve made a decision. Isn’t it exciting? I’ve drawn a line in my sandbox.

No ads on this blog.

Or at least, no ads on this blog TODAY. Maybe in some other circumstance, maybe with some other set of conditions. But not today, not right now. Hey, it’s not much of a stand, but it’s mine.

I’m not as morally opposed to advertising as Andrea. I don’t think advertising is evil, in and of itself. But when I started reading stuff like Jen’s post on GreenStone Media on Literary Mama, I started having second thoughts. And Ann’s post reminded me of the reasons that I love and value blogging and being a part of the blog community and why I got so addicted to it in the first place. And finally, and perhaps most influentially, Marla’s polemic on the subject tipped me over the edge.

Hey, do you think it’s a coincidence that these smart ladies are my co-presenters in the Motherlode conference next month? It’s not. These are women I admire and respect, women whose opinion I value, women who have been very careful not to criticize or even try to overtly influence my earlier decision to run ads on this blog. In fact, they’ve said they don’t really care whether I run ads or not, and that the choice is all mine, and that they’ll still respect me in the morning. How’s that for peer pressure?

I could link to dozens of other smart, well-written and knowledgeable posts on this same subject that I’ve read over the past two weeks. Some supported the idea of advertising on blogs, some opposed it, and some were indifferent. But for me, it came down to an idea Marla planted in my brain, and ties back to Ann’s exploration of blogging versus traditional media.

This blog is about me. (And you know how I love it when it’s all about me.) It’s my version of the story of us, of Beloved and Tristan and Simon and the other characters who populate our universe. It’s personal, sometimes painfully so, and I just don’t feel right about turning a profit on that. Maybe someday when a publisher offers me a contract, I’ll feel different. But right now, $50 or $60 a month isn’t the right price. I don’t bear any ill will to people who choose to run ads, and frankly I’m not all that perturbed by ads that don’t flash or blink or interfere with my reading of the content I came looking for. And maybe some day in the future, I’ll be swayed the other way.

To be honest, there were other mitigating factors in this decision. Most of them had to do with logistics. I’d have to change my layout around more than I expected, for one. And you know how I feel about change. And then there were issues about how exactly the cash would wend it’s way into my pocket, and that was more complicated than I expected.

If I were a different type of blogger, I’d have ads plastered all over the place. If I were writing about current events or pop culture or technology, I’d have no hesitation whatsoever. But this is me, and my life, and my family, and it just doesn’t seem right to put that up for sale.

The blog isn’t just about me, it is me. When I started doing this early in 2005, I did it for two reasons: to flex my creative muscles, and to record the minutia of our daily lives. Life is so crazy, so hectic, so fast-paced, that it’s so easy to forget what it was like, and I love it when I stumble across something in my own archives that perfectly captures a moment – a moment that would have been completely lost if I hadn’t taken a moment to write it down.

And then you all started showing up, and it became about you, too. One of things I most love now is the conversation that goes on. I love that you’ll weigh in on the debate, but I also love the fact that you will laugh with me and cry with me and celebrate with me. This blog is a gift (background music swells to a crescendo) and I don’t think I can put a price on that. I will happily share it with you for free, but I just don’t feel right about selling it. Ya know?

There are a lot of posts out there right now discussing the commercialization of the blogosphere, and in particular the momosphere, and how politics and popularity may or may not be changing the blog world. These are important conversations, and I wish I had the time or energy or focus to contribute to them more coherently. But this is the best I can offer. This is my blog, and these are my reasons.

As always, I invite your discussion on this. All the other cool kids are talking about it, and dontcha wanna be cool?

It’s bedtime. I’m pulling Simon’s shirt off to put on his pyjamas.

Beloved: Loookit that belly! Whatcha been eating?
(and no, luckily for him, he was not talking to me)

Simon: Play-doh.

So this may come as a surprise to you, but I’m not much of a fashionista. You’re shocked, aren’t you? (Okay, stop laughing.)

I’ll admit, just about everything I know about style and fashion I get from What Not To Wear. That’s how I learned to stop wearing faded denim cropped tight at the ankle and get on board with my now beloved if ill-fitting wide-leg, low-rise, dark-wash jeans. The one message that has been drilled into my head over the past few years is that skinny-leg pants are evil. EVIL!

That’s why I was so alarmed the other day when we were watching the premier of Survivor and this ad for GAP’s latest look came on. If you can’t see it on YouTube, you can see it on GAP’s home page, too.

I must admit, I cried bitter, salty tears when I saw it. Of all this season’s fashion trends (more of that horrid puffy skirt, the big ruffled shirt, 80s shoulder pads and leg warmers) could you imagine one that would make a chubby pregnant woman of advanced maternal age look more ridiculous than skinny black jeans?