Now Grab Your Airsick Bags

Don't say I didn't warn you. 

These painful, retchingly disgusting veins travel all the way up leg.  ALL THE WAY.  And that's all I'm going to say about THAT.

Now if I ever start waxing poetic about adding a seventh child, please pour a bucket of cold, liquid jello on my head and refer me to this post.

Of course I know a few ugly veins are nothing to complain about.  Everything else seems to be going swimmingly, and some minor physical indignities aren't really worth mentioning when you consider the grand 9 Month Prize.  But seventeen weeks to go feels about like the length of the Jurassic era right now.

I guess this must be like mile 14 of a marathon.  Something I likely will never know.

Camera Dump, Or: Oh Yeah. Those Kids.

I am sure an early love of lip gloss and curlers is not incompatible with her earning an MBA at Stanford someday.

 PVT leaves for three days, then makes them ice cream sundaes in martini glasses upon his return.  I would not do this if I were gone a year.

 How else is a girl supposed to get at the chocolate around here?

 This would be cute if I weren't already schlepping another stroller, baby and dog to meet the bus.

Who cares what we're watching?  There's popcorn!

Because nothing is more fun than sticking your bum in the air and having your thighs squeezed.

Falling Short. WAY Short.

I've recently read a couple books about large families, in the hopes that maybe they would give me a bit of a clue on how to be a better mother, a calmer mother, a more patient mother, a better organized mother, a mother who does not want to scream "Just go to BLOODY SLEEP ALREADY!" at 9 pm at night and wish fervently for a large White Russian. 

Alas, the two books I read just thoroughly DEPRESSED me.  First I read St. Michelle Duggar's "A Love that Multiplies."   No, I don't have 19 children, but I figured some of her insights into how she manages to raise what appear to be lovely, well-behaved children who have never heard of an Xbox could be valuable. 

Well, it is really too late for me to emulate the Duggar family life.  We've introduced all the gadgets, and if I started quoting Bible verses all day long my children would look at me as if I were from Uranus.  I am trying - TRYING - to raise them Catholic, but it isn't in my second nature to quote the Bible all day long.  And she is too perfect!  She never yells!  She speaks in a quiet, loving voice!  She never confesses that she is tired, or that if she has to break up another fight she will hop in the family van and drive far, far away from Arkansas...ugh.  I just can't begin to measure up.

The second one, Large Family Logistics, was even more depressing:  of course this woman, like Michelle, homeschools her nine, and drops little phrases like "lest you want to ship them off on the SCHOOL BUS" - as if this were akin to launching a kid off to a Pakistani terrorist camp.  Why is it assumed that if you have a lot of kids, you of course home school?  Isn't it more likely that the more kids you have, the more likely it is you will NEED to ship them off just to think, just to sift through the rubble?  I greatly admire homeschooling; I wish I had the stomach for it, but I don't think I could do it.  And while I understand the sentiment that one wants to protect one's children from the potential dangers of the secular world, in the end I do want my children to live in the world, and give them the tools to discern right from wrong when they're out there.  Because despite its dangers, the world is a whacky, wonderful place, full of people and stuff from which you shouldn't necessarily sequester yourself.


Ugh!  And this woman!  "Ask your husband when you wake up what you can do for him today" is one of her pieces of advice.  AAARGH.  Now I love PVT, but when the alarm goes off in the morning, and I have to drag my arse out of bed for the breakfastathon,  I am not too concerned right then about my husband, who after all is able to dress and feed himself before he goes off to work.  And "A wife should seek to make her husband's goals, not her own, the focus of her labors."  Sheesh.  I'm no hairy feminist, but if PVT had goals that were divergent from my own, we would probably have an issue. 

And:  "If you sow into your mind things that promote discontent...irrelevant reality shows, worldly magazines - then you will reap discontent in your life."  AARGH  Sure, an addiction to The Real Housewives of Beverly Hills and US Weekly are probably not my greatest attributes...but who would you rather have a glass of Pinot with, me or this chick?

Clearly I just don't measure up.  So where's the book for the wine swilling, reality-TV-addicted, shopaholic mother who happens to have a lot of kids?

I guess I'll have to write that book.

New Baby Dreams

Three out of my five children were thrown baby showers, and I can't reveal the two who were not, lest the poor two shower-less babies grow up feeling deprived in yet another one of the myriad ways children of larger families are slighted.  But really, that isn't too bad, given that once you are whacko enough to announce your third pregnancy in this country, people avert their eyes as if you had announced you have a newfangled contagious combination of leprosy and cancer. 

But one thing I have always insisted on for each baby is a new take-home outfit from the hospital.  Yes, each baby will get a ton of hand-me-downs, but that one new outfit is such a treat - well, I guess it's really a treat for ME, since I am pretty sure a 6-pound newborn doesn't really care what he or she is wearing.

So I've been allowing myself to browse newborn delights, and while it's too early to buy anything - I have to wait until I am REALLY sure this baby is going to be born - I have stumbled upon a few little things:

Ugh.  Deadly adorable.  As is this: 

I just love this little ensemble.  I didn't know Petunia Pickle Bottom made stuff besides oddly juvenile diaper bags. 

And my dear friend Kappa Kappa Karen, who has actually mastered Pinterest, alerted me to this little bauble for which I might actually need to take up knitting:

Wow.  Isn't that just awesome - especially for a brazen hussy like me, who has never donned a Hooter Hider in her life, and just lifts up her shirt and goes for it?

Even we mummies need to be a little naughty and subversive sometimes.

The Heart-Wrenching, Mind-Bending Dilemma of a Suburban Mother of Many

Today is the start of Gymbucks redemption, dear friends.  Oh, how I have waited for this day!  I have $275 in Gymbucks, which means I can buy $550 of kiddie clothing for $275.  Hooray!

Here is my pressing problem:  do I go to the mall in PERSON to redeem my precious Gymbucks?  Even though I rather detest our local mall (it has kiosks of CRAP in the aisles), and I will have Sylvie, who will either be writhing impatiently in her stroller, or alternatively, running all over the store or out into the mall?  In this case I will have to quickly pile clothing with a mere half of brain, since one half will be occupied with Sylvie, but I will get the endorphin rush of REAL LIVE shopping, and may see things that aren't online - the serendipitous find you won't stumble upon via a website.

OR do I simply shop on the website, methodically checking off my list, where I will be sure to get everything I need, avoid the trip to the crappy mall, but potentially have a little less FUN?

Oh the angst!  Oh the trial - how do I DECIDE?

***

The update you were awaiting with bated breath:  I wussed out and stayed home, ordering everything online.  I figured it would take me a LONG time to buy $550 worth of clothing, so I happily clicked and added to my basket for a while.  When I went to review my basket to see how MUCH MORE I had to buy - EEECK!  I was up to $890!  I guess even an obscene amount of Gymbucks doesn't go far with 5 kids.

Just Give Me Some Humidity Already

Argh, I have been a grump, lately, haven't I?  Perhaps a particularly potent combination of the January/mid-pregnancy blahs.  Thankfully I got something today which brightened my sourpuss-ness a bit: 

Yes, another beauty gift with purchase (well, $125 purchase)!  I will be looking for products that combat the awful bone-dry winters here.  EVERYTHING is dry, you all.  My knuckles are crackling and scaly.  My hair is liable to go up in flames from an errant spark of static.  Why can't some of the dripping, sweating, lava-like humidity of summer be magically recreated in winter?  What kind of sick joke is this climate?

OK, OK, I'll stop.  But my next article in Tulsa Kids is about how to keep your hair healthy and somewhat hot and lustrous during these terrifying winter months.  Luckily I conned a few mummies with ravishing hair to (I hope) disclose their secrets.  I also got a "Damage Remedy Hair Spa" treatment at a local salon - I'm pretty sure my $55 did squat. 

So how do you keep your hair from growing up in flames in the winter?  Do I really have to wait until summer?

Where I am So Tiresome You Will Want to Gouge Your Eyes Out with a Mascara Wand

PVT has been out of town, and here is what he will come back to:

- An exhausted, grouchy wife with matchbox-dry winter hair who has managed to gain FIFTEEN pounds.  The baby weighs about 8 ounces.   HMMM.  Someone needs to stop inhaling Cheez Whiz and liquid lard, apparently.

- Disrespectful, shitey kids.  Exhibit A:  when they woke up to a dusting of snow the other day, they were sure they were going to spend the day playing Nintendo and throwing snowballs.  When I broke the news to them that the roads were perfectly clear and hence that meant YES, there was still school, I might as well have told them that their dog, XBox and Nintendo DS had all been decimated by an errant lightening strike, so distraught and stupefied were they.  And the names they called me!  IDIOT!  DUMMY!  You know, because I'm in charge of the weather!  What am I doing WRONG, dear friends?

- A house that is covered in little red spots and stains.  No, I don't have a dog in heat.  Sylvie has been on breathing treatments for a dry little hack (I keep thinking it's going to turn into pneumonia, but the doctor will throw me into the street if I bring her back).  Apparently breathing treatments deplete one's supply of potassium, so the doctor told me to give her Gatorade.  Sure, OK - she loves it!  Except of course I buy the RED Gatorade - WHY, people?  After a jillion kids you would think I'd buy the most innocuous color, like yellow! - so red she has dribbled all over her clothes and the carpeting with her bottles and sippy cups.

The great irony about all this is that I'm tentatively starting a book about why I think people should have bigger families.  Ha!  Ha!  I can't even handle my OWN family - who in the freak is going to listen to me? 

Oh, I need to stop complaining.  So I think I will content myself with shopping:  since I can't wear flip flops anymore - how dorky would that look with my hose from hell - I think these flats will make a lovely everyday mom shoe:

With all the money I'll be saving in pedicures, they'll pay from themselves, oui?