Tasty feet and toys make Aidan's face look like this.

Aidan really and truly discovered his feet last night.  The previous week held the discovery of the presence of vaguely hand-like apparatuses at the ends of his legs, but he broke the wrapper off those tootsies last night and started trying in earnest to get them into his mouth.

He also started work on mastering the art of bringing toys to his mouth last week.  He’s still more likely to end up with a toy in his eye or conked against the side of his head, but maybe 2/5 attempts ends with a vigorously bitten and drooled on toy in his mouth.

In other words, my baby is ever-faster learning the mechanics of being a big kid and leaving more and more of his babyhood in the dust.  I keep looking at him pulling himself up to a sitting position, avidly watching me eat, and taking stompy little baby steps when I hold him up on his feet, and I wonder exactly how long I have before he’s moving around the house on his own, feeding himself and saying ‘No thank you’ to breastmilk the minute he discovers beef.

It was in the midst of all this discovery (on Aidan’s part) and wonder (on my part) that Wes proposed a vacation.  We’re pretty close to Victoria B.C., and we’ve visited before, and the local ship that takes people there was offering a 50% discount so long as you booked before September 26, 2010.

Wes asked me if I wanted to take a weekend vacation with him, maybe having Aidan stay with his parents while we escaped and took wine tours and ate leisurely meals.  On the one hand, I practically started salivating at the prospect of all that relaxation and time with my husband.  The more I started thinking about it, though, the more anxious I got.

The prospect of me leaving him for days makes Aidan's face look like this.

Not only would I have to bring a breast pump with me on vacation (which sounds exactly as fun as having a troupe of kittens kick litter right in my face), I’d be leaving my baby for days.  Days.  For all I know, he’d have learned how to walk and solve quadratic equations by the time we got back.

The more I thought about that, the more anxious I got, and I realized that spending money to go on a vacation where in all likelihood I would spend the majority of my time uncomfortable and anxious was probably a pretty dumb idea.  I’m just plain not ready, I guess.

I have no doubt that there will come a day when I will be ready.  This will likely be when Aidan’s weaned and I won’t have to bring my breast pump on vacations with me.  I guess all the change just freaked me out a bit.  Aidan’s figuring stuff out and growing so quickly, and now we’re discussing vacations, my poor brain just slammed on the brakes and put the kibosh on any more nonsense for a bit.

I did promise Wes that we would take another vacation to Victoria B.C. next summer, and that it would probably be the last vacation we took before starting to try to get pregnant with baby numero dos.  He agreed, and now we have something fun to look forward to!  But still, all these changes, they’ll likely be the end of me.

That’s kind of how I feel about cars right now.  It hasn’t been long, but I’m already feeling the ache.  Aidan’s had a fussy week, and normally that would be all the reason I needed to pack him up into the car, stop by Starbucks, and then drive with Beethoven on the radio and a hot chocolate in hand until my fussy baby became a peacefully sleeping baby.

Without a car, however, I’m somewhat limited in my fussy baby soothing repertoire.  What certainly doesn’t help is that the weather has, up until this very second, been the very definition of yuck.  Cloudy, raining, and cold.  Which all means that walking outside was a rather discouraging prospect (with the notable exception of Wednesday, when I dragged Aidan into his Baby Bjorn and walked in the rain because if we didn’t escape the house, one or both of us was likely to inflict property damage).

He doesn’t get these fussy spells often, but they do confound me so, and they usually herald change.  For example, yesterday.  My dear, sweet boy refused to nap.  This is what he looked like when I proposed a nap:

A nap?! I think not, woman. Now make with the milks!

By the time evening rolled around he was positively writhing with exhaustion and I felt like a wrung-out dishtowel.  I simply have no idea how to entertain a baby for that many hours in the day.  Naps are just as important for me as they are for him!

Today, however, he’s sleeping.  Really peacefully, I might add.  At a time of day he normally never naps at.  It would appear he’s fused his morning and afternoon nap into one, long, mega-nap.

Like most days, I have no idea what’s going on and feel like I’m just along for the ride.  Except not really, because I don’t have a car.

So that’s that.  A few short weeks until our van arrives.  I can handle it.  This is not an impossible task.  Unless Aidan decides to boycott sleeping and take up screaming instead, in which case Wes will be walking to work while I drive down to Oregon and back every day.

As our new routine emerged, I eased into my new life.  It looked nothing like my pre-baby life, but it was no less fulfilling for being different.  Every day helps me feel a little more like I’ve got a handle on my new life as a mother, and I can’t even tell you how good that feels.  Aidan and I have a lot of fun together, and even though I’m not perfect I know my little guy is healthy, happy, and learning.  Good enough, in my opinion.

What I haven’t gotten a handle on yet is being a wife too.  Before Aidan was born, I feel like I was a pretty good wife.  Wes and I devoted a lot of time to each other and to our marriage.  It’s very easy to give a ton of attention to your spouse when there’s no adorable little baby to steal the show.

It’s been almost six weeks since Aidan joined our world, and Wes and I still have yet to go on a date.  We are terrific parents to our baby, and we help one another as much as possible, but we’ve definitely gotten out of practice paying attention to one another.  So, we’re going on a date!  A real date, with just the two of us, where we make eye contact and get to eat at the same time without one of us holding the baby.

According to Wes, we’re going to go on a quest for the best burger in Seattle.  Sounds like fun, no?  Is it weird, then, that I feel anxious?  I’ll be expected to converse with my husband, and I have nothing to talk about except Aidan.  I am the most boring person on the planet, how am I possibly going to make sparkling conversation with my husband?

Maybe the first post-baby date is supposed to be a little rough?  Maybe everyone gets out of practice being spouses when they’re getting used to being new parents?  I don’t know.  What I do know is I could use some good conversation topics for my first post-baby date with my husband.  Any of you have any good topics of conversation?  Any cool tidbits you’ve learned?  Random facts?  Gossip or news items?  Help!

The driving need to do laundry is a weird one, though.  I seriously want nothing more than to pour detergent into a machine, push buttons, and listen as water whooshes over precious little outfits.  Maybe it’s because this is one of the last things I have left to do to get ready for Squishy (this and also shopping for and buying cloth diapers).  There’s just something so nice about clean clothes, and clean baby clothes are even better.

I mean, the nursery is done.  The last thing we need for the nursery is a dust ruffle (which has been bought and is just waiting to have a ribbon sewn on it by Wes’ mother) but other than that the nursery is done.  Thank you notes for baby gifts have been written, we have wipes, baby shampoo, a carseat, a pediatrician, a stroller, toys, books, and a fuzzy bouncy seat.

Once we get that whole cloth diaper situation taken care of, we’re officially ready.  Except for the clothes.  Those still need to be washed and folded and put away, then taken out and re-organized, then lovingly admired at least a few times.  Then we’ll be ready.

Except we won’t be.  Because Wes is still looking for a job and I’m still trying to wrap up projects at work.  And we don’t have the laundry done.  And we don’t have cloth diapers.  So, what I’m saying is, we will be ready but maybe we won’t be.  Which isn’t helping my anxiety at all.

Also not helping matters is that two other bloggers whose due dates were rather close to mine have already given birth (Heather and Sarah, if you’re curious).  This is not giving me much security in the idea that we still have time to get our act together before this baby comes.

I’m not scared of the birth, or of breastfeeding, or of sleep deprivation.  I’m scared that this baby’s going to be born and Wes will still be looking for a job, none of the baby clothes will be washed, and I won’t be able to figure out his cloth diapers and we’ll just end up using them as expensive dust rags.

Veteran moms, please help me out: At what point does the imminent birth of your child feel more exciting than terrifying?

It all started out with hot cocoa.  At my work, we have a large 3.5 lb. 54 ounce container of Swiss Miss hot cocoa mix.  I had a hankering for some of that chocolatey goodness, so I grabbed a mug and started mixing.  As I was carrying the hot cocoa container back to the shelf, it slipped from my fingers and landed on the ground in an atomic cloud of cocoa.

Even after vacuuming the carpet and cleaning the cocoa off the walls, it smelled overwhelmingly like cocoa in our office all day on Friday.  Nobody complained, because cocoa smells so nice, but it was rather embarrassing to be that chick who flings hot cocoa around the office like a monkey chucking excrement.

Then, I left work.  In my car.  Which I steered over a piece of metal in the road.  Said piece of metal punctured my tire so thoroughly that when I inspected the damage you could hear air exiting the tire from ten feet away.  Luckily for me, I was a block away from both my mother in law and sister in law, one of whom called AAA to change the tire and the other who let me occupy her couch while I waited.

My dignity and car destroyed, I went for the piéce de resistance: Damaging Wesley’s car.  I took his car to the grocery store on Saturday (Kermit was out of action due to his gimpy spare tire) and, as I was backing out of the garage, smashed his side mirror into the side of our garage.

So forceful was this impact that one of the pieces went flying clear across the garage.  It’s not that I was being careless and fiddling with the radio while backing out.  It’s that my brain simply does not work anymore.  I have a brain cloud, but no one’s offering me a vacation and unlimited shopping spree in payment for jumping into a volcano (If this statement confuses you, I recommend watching Joe vs the Volcano).

So, I added Krazy Glue to my shopping list and came home chagrined to tell Wes that he now had yet another thing to do around the house.  He glued his car back together (he wasn’t even mad at me for smashing it!) and we moved on to bigger and better things.

Unfortunately for me, this included washing a light blue baby blanket with a bright red baby blanket, thereby turning the back of said light blue blanket (which, pre-wash, was a lovely cream color) a not-so-masculine shade of pink.  Laundry fail.

I showed my handiwork to Wes, and he suggested that perhaps I should retire to our room to fold laundry.  He said, “I’m pretty sure you can’t break anything just by folding it.”

And he was right.  But still, I feel like I accomplished a lot (of destruction) this weekend.

Besides, it’s not as though my blog is drowning in new content this week (I wonder if slacker bloggers are on anyone’s pet peeves list…)

Ok!  So, my pet peeves…

People who misuse words that sound similar but really aren’t. For example, someone who uses eminent when they meant imminent.  Affect vs. effect, illicit vs. elicit, insure vs. ensure, you get the idea.  This bothers me most in writing.  When spoken, sometimes I can give someone the benefit of the doubt owing to speech patterns and the general unwieldiness of the human tongue, but in writing?  There’s no excuse.

Bad table manners. I don’t want to see you chewing away with your mouth open, hear you slurp your soup out of your spoon, or watch as your napkin sits unused by the side of your plate while food speckles the corners of your mouth and the top of your lap.  Sure, not everyone knows how to drink wine properly, and very few people know how to eat an artichoke at a fancy restaurant, but criminy.  How difficult is it to not behave at a restaurant like you’re eating a Hungryman dinner in your underwear while watching reality TV?

People who choose squiggly fonts in bright colors for their work emails. Unless you are the director of admissions for clown college, this kind of thing is not cute.  Or endearing.  It’s unprofessional, and it makes me want to delete your email without even reading it.  How am I supposed to take a requisition request seriously when it looks like a kindergartner scribed it with a crayon?

Calorie counts at restaurants. Actually, let’s just include most instances of the government trying to “help” me.  I don’t want your help.  I don’t need to know that my scone has 700 calories, I don’t want to pay higher taxes so you can “help” me get health insurance I’m able to procure on my own thanks so much.  If you want to help me, leave me alone.  I’m a big girl, I can decide whether my hips are capable of adding a scone here and there, and I can get health insurance on my own.  Seriously government, do us all a favor: Stop “helping” the economy with stimulus packages and just leave us alone.  Your spending is helping all right.  Helping us all into an early grave.

Weed smokers at concerts. You’re standing there at a concert, super excited and waiting for the band to start playing, when the smell hits your nose: Weed.  Foul, stinky, weed.  Thanks to some jack-hole who can’t enjoy live music without being high as a kite, you’re forced (literally, you can’t escape thanks to the press of bodies all around you) to partake in an illegal substance against your will.  I don’t think weed is evil.  I don’t think it’ll ruin your whole life.  What I do think is that it’s inconsiderate to remove my ability to choose what goes into my body.

People who leave public bathrooms in complete disarray. I was at Babies R Us this weekend and the bathroom was so unspeakably foul I was actually angry that I had to use it so often.  How is it ok to leave toilet paper all over the floor, or bodily fluids dripping off the toilet?  Where is the decency, man?

That’s all I can come up with for now.  How about you?  Any pet peeves you want to get off your chest?

In some kind of prankish turn of the norm, time seems to be speeding up.  I always thought ten months of pregnancy (nearly a year, for goodness’ sake!) would seem like an eternity.  I was so very wrong as it’s become abundantly clear that ten months is no time at all.

I keep looking into our nursery, surveying the walls that need to be painted, the crib that needs bedding, the clothes that need a dresser, and feel something best compared to panic.  Squishy will be here any frigging day now and I shall have to scrounge around for twee little socks to put on his delicious little feet!  He won’t be pleased if he comes home to a non-colorful nursery and a naked crib, will he?

Wes assures me we have time.  He always looks at my frenzied eyes and backs away slowly to avoid startling me into a rampage, muttering platitudes like, “We have three months.  We have plenty of time.”

He does his best to be accommodating, but there’s really only so much one man can do in a weekend and there’s really more than enough Crazy to go around.  I’ve kept it contained for a good long while but it’s bursting out from around the seams.

What he doesn’t know is we actually have no time at all.  Because of the wormholes.  All I know is that if I wake up tomorrow and it’s February and I’m in labor?  I will grab a roller and paint that room myself.  Then I’ll have a baby.  If nothing else, his walls will be painted, gosh dang it.

I’m nesting in a bad way, and the only cure is not more cowbell but rather more sweat!  More projects!  Painting, sanding, scraping, caulking, re-arranging!  And it all must be done now!  How can we abide in a house with off-white door frames?!  What will the baby think when he comes home and the caulking around the bathtub is coming off?  Horrors!

Wes’ very generous (and talented, and funny) brother came over on Friday and Saturday to install our new windows and I have but one word for you: GORGEOUS.  Who knew our backyard looked like that?  When we look out the window in our bedroom, we can see things.  Things that have heretofore gone unnoticed thanks to the musty windows that had stood the test of 20+ years.

I’ll take a picture of the inside to show you later, but I can’t show you what the outside looks like yet because the trim around the windows has yet to be painted.  Apparently caulking takes time to set and dry?  And you can’t speed it up just by being hormonal and demanding?  And sometimes your husband can’t just dry caulking with his mind-powers, even if you get really good and grumpy about it?

Or something like that.

In an effort to sate our painting lust, Wes scraped the old paint off our exterior door frames and re-painted them.  It makes a big difference!  It’s amazing how less derelict your house can look without peeling paint coming off the doors.  Duh.

Wes is a good sport about it all, never complaining when I greet the end of one project with a list of several more.  I assure him that eventually the nesting will stop, when our baby is home and I’m too busy drowning in laundry and diapers to worry about house projects.  He nods, smiles, and doesn’t believe me at all.

It goes without saying that it feels completely adorable, and every time Squishy gets busy I have to pause and smile.  It’s impossible to be irritated when Squishy gets going.  We also reckon Squishy’s starting to be able to hear, because when Wes puts his face right next to my tummy and tells Squishy about his day, the baby starts kicking like crazy when he’s done talking.  Either the baby likes listening to Wes talk, or the baby is really into coding and geekery.  We’re cool with either.

I think there may also be a growth spurt happening, because I am the bottomless pit.  I eat, and immediately after I start fantasizing about what I might get to eat next.  I feel like a hobbit, with my second breakfasts and elevensies and suppers.  No hairy feet yet, thank goodness, but my expanding tummy will soon negate the fact that I’m tall and give me a rather portly appearance.  Two steps removed from hobbit-dom for sure.

Something weird has cropped up lately.  Something I’m hoping other women who have come before me have experienced so I won’t feel like such a weirdo.  It’s about food.  I’ve gotten weirdly territorial about food.  Like, if Wes and I are eating dinner, and we need leftovers for the next day and there’s only enough left for one of us to have a second helping, and Wes offers to split the second helping with me?  I get murderously angry.  Like, two seconds away from throwing an elbow right in his face and then running away to finish the food in a secret place where he can’t have any.

This is weird, right?  We’re in no way short on food, so why am I acting like a starving hyena dragging carcasses off into the wild and snarling at everyone?

The only thing I can think of is this is some sort of weird pregnancy instinctual thing, held over from a time when food scarcity brought out The Crazy in pregnant women.  I mean, do I feel like there’s a food shortage?  Heck yes, see the above wherein I mention the newfound state of perpetual longing that is my stomach.  Do I know in my brain that we have a perfectly sufficient amount of food and that the baby and I are in no danger of perishing from starvation?  Absolutely.  So what gives?

Poor Wes hardly knows what to do about the whole situation.  One minute his wife’s all happy and eating delicious food, the next she’s glaring at him like he just finished an entire bag of Ruffles without asking if she wanted some first.  All he wants is a little extra dinner, because it’s delicious, and suddenly he’s getting the death glare and all kinds of unpleasantness.

What is wrong with me?  I have to hope this is somewhat normal, but maybe not.  None of the pregnancy books have told me to watch out for “sudden and inexplicable drive to hoard and protect food.”  Perhaps this gem is located in the appendices?

Now, I’m not naming names, but just to be clear, that person may not be in possession of his/her eyebrows any longer so thorough was the rain of hellfire that descended upon him/her this afternoon.

On some base, philosophical level I’m a bit sad that the absence of potato chips and ice cream at our house is enough to trigger what may have been the screechiest conversation of my entire life.  I mean really, what am I?  Some kind of animal with no sense of shame or propriety, incapable of anything so complex as perspective and self-control?

On the other hand: Ruffles.

In other, less homicidal news, this weekend brought with it a very special occurence: Wes’ birthday!  He’s now living the last year of his twenties and we’re determined to do it up right.  We figure a career change and new baby ought to send his twenties off with a bang.  Heck, why don’t we buy a new house while we’re at it?  Let’s see how many changes and transitions we can cram into the last year of Wes’ twenties before he starts prematurely aging.

Oh my gosh, I think it really behooves me to stop typing now.  I’m obviously not over my chip-induced rage (Learn well, readers: Don’t ever assume a pregnant woman doesn’t want something.  If it’s salty, crunchy, sweet, cold, hot, or edible, chances are excellent she will cut you if you take the last one) so I’m going to hug the puppy until he passes out from a heat stroke or until I start feeling lovey-dovey again.

Obviously it needs to be noted that whoever ate the chips and ice cream is still awesome and completely cool.  I share this story not to make fun of the completely (un)anonymous person but, rather, to make fun of myself for how out of touch with reality and exceedingly ridiculous I’ve become.  Right then.  As you were.