Cascadia still sucks

I can't get dooced if I already quit, right? Check out this article that describes Cascadia's serious financial troubles and the collapse of most of Multnomah County's mental health system. And while I am glad I got out of there when I did, I am furious about the fate of the thousands of clients and the hundreds of excellent, caring clinicians that work there. The mental health field is tough enough without having to work for an amazingly clueless administration that has driven the agency into the ground through countless failed organizational attempts.

Happy Birthday Sam!

Today my brother and I get to share the same age for the next six weeks. How cool is that? Love you and am sending you many good thoughts right now.

Baby on the brain

It's official. I am having a harder and harder time thinking about anything else besides when is this baby going to come and what it will be like once he is here. Unfortunately, both lines of questions are unanswerable at this time and so here I am at 10:30 at night blogging instead of sleeping. I can't help but wonder if this will be my last night of real sleep and am ironically sabotaging it by thinking about it.

But aside from some dread of hospital gowns and the after pains of labor, I am really ready and excited to have this baby. To meet him at last and to watch Mizz meet his baby brother for the first time. My heart swelled (apologies for the cheesy cliche) when I watched him practice holding a baby last night (with a doll, that he named Jackie and has been taking care of periodically today). This is a huge development from the toddler that dumped his friend's doll out of her stroller so he could pilot it around the house. Mizz has been so gentle with my belly and frequently talks about everything that he is going to teach his brother. Hopefully, that doesn't include the peeing on the floor or how to drive Mom nuts in general business...However, I have to faith and acceptance that Baby T will excel in these areas completely on his own. Fortunately, Dave and I are getting better and better at dealing with the challenges as they come.

The Carpets are Cleaned

So, the baby can come. OK really I am still holding out for Mother's Day weekend. But yesterday was the first day when the crazy pressure abated somewhat and I thought to myself "wow the house looks really good!". Which is great because in another month, it will probably look like a tornado came through.

Bigger is Better

Through a mouthful of noodles today, Mizz announced that he wanted to go to Costco to buy some more macaroni. My boy aims high and wants his pasta by the pallet apparently.

Almost 35 weeks!

My midwife appointment today was really reassuring. Baby T is head down and very low. And he is not 10 pounds. Her best guess was that this little one will be in the ball park of Mizz's birthweight (6-7 lbs). His heartbeat is strong and steady and through a hand held ultrasound, I got to peek at his head and its position. Mizz was really excited to hear the heartbeat, almost as excited as he was to play with the midwife's tape measure. My next appointment is in a week and a half and then it's every week until this baby makes his appearance. It all seems very surreal to me right now. On one hand, I spend a lot of time imagining and worrying about what it is going to be like to have two kids and at the same time, I feel like I can't even begin to fathom having a newborn again, let alone a newborn with a toddler.

It's been a good week!

My week started off with a Tea for Baby T shindig. I can't really think of any non-corny way to express how wonderfully touching it was to be surrounded my so many of my friends for an afternoon of uninterrupted schmoozing. Many of the women there I almost never see without their children, so the time is usually more chaos and less actual discussion. Eating yummy tea sandwiches and outrageously delicious hand dipped strawberries was a major bonus as well. Thank you Gabrielle for hosting and to all my friends who were part of it.

And then, on Monday, I realize, that work had become more work than it was worth. Hoisting my beluga self out of chairs 18 inches off the floor no longer seemed like such a good idea. And so, I spoke with the boss man and we worked out that my last day before maternity leave is April 21. Just two more days of work and then I will have Monday and Fridays to properly dote on myself. Or sit home and fret. We'll see.

And then, today, Mizz calmly poo pooed on the potty. We celebrated big time and while I am wise enough to not be tossing the pull ups yet, I feel like today was a break through of sorts. I won't embarass myself or Mizz with the details of it all but my fears of having a four year in diapers are more or less relieved (not to judge four year olds in diapers, but rather the thought of a year long struggle).

Freecycle, your're the best!

We have managed to give away extra venetian blind hardware, waterbed rails, and hundreds of blank cd cases to people that actually need/want them. More importantly, they didn't end up at the dump. I was already feeling groovy, and then I got this response to a posting about our very dusty audio cassette collection:

Oh Franny, we would be so happy to get these tapes, my daughter has Down Syndrome and she has tiny little hands that can not span a CD disk to put it in a disk player properly..LOL we tried, and she scratched upseveral before we gave up and now just dub to tape, but she loves the inserts and feel cheated when I dub to blank tapes...she is quite the music freak.. we buy her second hand music tapes alot, as that is easy for her to use.. with the tapes not being made anymore we are always on the look out to find tapes for her.. We would be gratefull for your consideration.

In less than 4 hours freecycle had connected us to these apparently really nice people who lived maybe 5 minutes away. And our music will get some more good use.

They can't do this to me

The powers that be have decided that it is time to renovate my personal Fred Meyer store. I suppose Mizz would beg to differ. It is, in fact, his very own Fred Meyer store, which also happens to be his favorite store, as he will frequently point out. I wonder if the Fred Meyer store would still be the fave if we had ever made it to the tunnel store (see some previous post that I am too lazy to look up). I think it is his favorite store because if Mizz is ever in need of anything (one day he wanted his very own steering wheel), he is sure that they have it at the Fred Meyer store. In any case, the store has been completely ransacked during the construction and so I now know where NOTHING is. And I have zero chance of figuring it out, because there is no system and they keep moving things. So I suppose I either need to take myself somewhere else or just deal with the chaos until sometime this summer. As for today though, I went to the grocery store, managed to leave with the very basics and could only come up with PB and J for dinner--not too impressive I realize.

Seriously

I know it's trendy, but I love my Sigg water bottle. As a pregnant lady, I need to drink my weight in water. And trust me, that's a lot of water. As a mom, I read and pondered all the recent hype about Polycarbonate water bottles. And finally, as someone that cares about what the world looks like in 50 years, I've decided that on this issue, it is okay to be trendy. And really, it isn' t that hard to conclude that reusable water bottles (and coffee cups for that matter) are smart for many reasons (convenience, economics, ecologically, etc.). For further convincing, check out yahoo's story on why buying disposible water bottles is ridiculous for most people. I am guessing that many people are swayed by the pretty commercials and packaging and aren't aware that the bottled water they are drinking is less regulated than what comes out of their tap.

Spring Pics

And by spring, I don't mean me. With this belly I am not springing anywhere these days.

Left out of the orientation

In the orientation to the parenting class I teach, I have never thought to include the suggestion that you not show up to class drunk. It sorta seemed to be implicit in the overall curriculum. Apparently though, for one gentleman tonight, not so much. So with him playing the jovial smart aleck and another gentleman playing the angry after many, many years man, the class tonight was not as productive as it could have been.

Here is the product info!

You too can now have your very own suitcase that protects baby's "fragile neck and spine".

It's got a silver lining!

But is it FAA approved?


This is the strangest baby product I have seen to date. With the urinal for toddlers a close second. Although, who needs a urinal when you have the whole house to pee on? But I digress...I admit I haven't yet read the description, but from the pic, it looks like a baby in a suitcase. I have officially gone off the pregnancy deep end and am searching the internet like mad for the magic products that will make this transition easier. If I could just get a break from the freaking oxytocin, I might be able to sit still long enough to accept that there ain't nothing out there that is going to make me feel truly prepared.

So instead, at this moment, I am second guessing the paint I chose for the office (as the third coat is being applied), obsessing about used crib mattresses, and looking at wall decorations. If I weren't me, I would be laughing at myself right now.