It's A....

Well, yes...yes, my friend IS having a baby...
but if you recall, tonight was the big Sex Reveal Party!
The one I have been just waiting for!

The friends decided to let us all know by cutting into a cake.
The frosting inside the cake would let us know if she was going to have a boy or a girl.
Don't be fooled by the pink plate...
SHE'S HAVING A BOY!!
My munchkin has a new buddy on the way!
I get to share the woes of circumcision, spraying urine, and all things boy with her.
And, because I'm me and tend to find the unspoken sexual innuendos where they don't even exist,
this photo is my favorite:

Haha.
Oh happy day!

Big Dreams in Small Packages

I've done it.
I've broken from the old and I'm starting fresh *HERE*
I know it sounds silly, but doing this has really been...an accomplishment.
I had a dream...
a dream I could say the things I wanted to
a dream I could be something, somebody
and for some reason, being those things meant starting this.

It's also been a little scary.
I want a new identity or I want the identity that I've always identified with.
A.Love
It's my not-really-an-alias, alias.
A.Love is this ME that is who I am and who I want to be.
She's been this inner me since I was 14.
It's not connected with hordes of last names that aren't mine.
It's not glued to being someone else's creation.
It's just...me.
I thought that she deserved a place to be those things.
A place to be a real wife.
A space to unwind the tattered mom I can be.
A spot to yell my heart out and not fear.
A place to just breathe without judgment.

So I here I am.
Celebrating a little...doing a little dance...and dimming the anxiety down
because although it's small
it's a big dream unfolding.
This.
This little place is my big dream.
Silly, no doubt, but it's mine.
image from creature comforts blog

Sex Party...

16 months ago, I became a mommy to a beautiful baby boy.

I also became the only one in my circle of friends to have a baby.
Not only was I experiencing the awkward transition of my life no longer just being my own, I felt like I had no one who really understood me.
In July one of my college roommates became a Momma to her little boy Noah. I admit, she has called me since as her only friend who could relate and I have not been there. Fluttering around with my own mutli-fold life, I have let her down.

Fifteen weeks ago, my first proximity close, in my circle friend found out she is having a baby!
I have been so elated.
While my hus approaches the truly honest side and says it as it is...TO the future parents,
"I'm just happy someone else will understand now,"
I have perhaps done a 360...or 180 (which is it?!)
I have tried to share nothing but the positive!
I feel like, through her, I am experiencing what I missed when I was pregnant.
(To this day, I would not wish pregnancy on anyone...although I have yet to meet anyone who had an experience like mine).
Am I excited someone will get it now?
YAH
but mostly I just want her to feel celebrated.
(Our group is a little closed off to the idea of life changing. One person's personal changes seem to affect the happiness of the whole. I'm not saying it's healthy.)

Tomorrow night, my prego friend and her supportive hus are having a Sex Reveal Party.
I get to find out what they are having!
I have sworn girl from day one...but suddenly I'm feeling boy.
I guess the most important question is:
Is my munchkin getting a future wife OR a future bestie?!
I am so so so so so so so so excited.
I have actually had to pull back the reigns on my excitement with my friend
(I have feared I have been raping her with my over involved enthusiasm.
Is it over involved if I said, "Can I hostess your shower?" before the pee stick was dry? Is it over involved if I sent her a "must register for" list? Is it over involved if I asked to set up a date to stock her freezer before the babe comes? Ah man, I'm a freak!!!)

I missed out on a lot of the goodness of pregnancy for many reasons.
A main one was that I was sick for the full 9 months but another is that I was so fearful of the change it meant to my life.
What if my baby sucked?
(Not literally, I mean, what if no one liked him?!)
I wanted my life to stay the same and I hated that it wouldn't.
I forced my new square life after his birth into the old round hole and it made it so hard on me.
16 months later, it is what it is and I'm comfortable in it.
I had no one next to me to tell me I was normal--I had you--my blog friends.
I want my friend to have what I missed.
I want her to know I'm here and she's not alone.
Is there such a thing as loving too much?
Yeek...yes...yes there is.image by anna ingalls

Snarky

I'm feeling particularly snarky at the moment.
(My word for bitchy when I don't particularly feel like admitting to to being that nasty.)
I'm trying to work something out in my heart that I'm not totally understanding.
I am feeling flustered and overwhelmed and insecure and...
just lots more and's really.
I'm trying to make sense of why the flood gates opened and all it took was my husband getting home from work late to set me off.
All of a sudden I wanted to complain about everything.
I was mad I made dinner.
I was mad I went through the extra work to make his favorite banana bread.
I was mad I cleaned the dishes only to make MORE.
I was tallying up how many times I have taken out the garbage and waited for some sort of sticker on my good wife chart.
I just shut down.
(It's not PMS)
I haven't slept for the last two nights.
Midget has his 4 molars coming in all at once which means lots of late night painful cries.
I'm barely making it to work.
I don't know what the next day holds for me at the office
(you know, economic crisis and all...finally hits my neck of the woods)
I just feel SLAMMED by it all.

I put a bite of the cold dinner I made in my mouth and spit it out.
"I'm not hungry. I need five minutes."
So here I am.
Hus took midge on a walk
(He's got a 30 pound baby strapped to his back in a baby bjorn--I don't even know if that is safe!?)
But I wasn't about to argue with getting some space.
My eyes are barely open and even my biggest dreams feel heavy.

I'm just having that kind of moment.
I really hate these.

Frost This

I'm going somewhere sensitive.

Food.
Kids food and diet habits specifically.
Now, I'm not the mom who prescribes to anything in particular.
I mean, yah, I thought I was an awesome mom for giving my son organic Gerber jarred foods.
I thought I deserved an award for paying the ten cents extra for the DHA enhanced pureed veggies.
I patted myself on the back for the one week I actually made my own baby food.
BUT
But I'm not the soy-milk, vegan, protein lifestyle mama.
I like watching my kid eat a Joe-Joe and feel it's not too bad since they don't have the hydrogenated oil.
I think it's fun to give my son a popsicle.
I personally eat crap.
Lots of it.
I've given the munchkin an oreo.
With that being said--I'm all for fun, yummy snacks.
But what I don't let my kid have is
Caffeine.
He's 16 months old!
I don't let my kid run around with a cup full of candy.
He's 16 months old!
(Did I already say that)
Um, I have a problem though...
if other people offer him said caffeinated beverages and processed sugars,
I feel like a bad person if I say,
"Please don't give him that."
I want to be a relaxed, cool mom who's hip with the jive and such.

So when I went to his school to pick him up today and got his lunch back full and she told me,
"He had pizza today."
I said, "Oh! He eats pizza! I didn't know that. How fun!"
and when we were walking out and another she said,
"Can I give him a cupcake?"
I felt obligated to say, "uh-huh"

Great. Thanks. Now I get a freshly napped baby with pizza on his adorable GAP T AND (added bonus) a sprinkled chocolate cupcake in front of his face.
THRILLING!
(I know. My fault. I said, "uh-huh")

Well, I did what only a decent mom would do.
I let him eat two bites in front of the staff
(because frosted covered babies are soooooo cute...until YOU have to clean them)
and proceeded to think,
"Really?! REALLY? Now I have a lunch bag, his shoes, a 27 pound baby, AND a cupcake in my hands?"
We walked out the gate and to the car and I did it...
I broke the damn diet.
I hate the frosted top of the cupcake and gave the baby the cake part because now I had a whining baby who only knew he wanted MORE, MORE, MORE. PLEASE, PLEASE, PLEASE
(Sometimes, baby sign language really sucks!)

To wrap my rant up,
please don't offer my kid a big fat cupcake right before I'm getting in the car and make me look like the weak person I am who has to say yes but wants to say,
"No. Frost This!"
Clearly, I have some issues and just want to blame someone else for the cupcake I ate.
It's my prerogative, right?

In Stitches

It was upon my 72nd hour of Vegas-ity that I was heartily encouraged to channel my inner Carrie Bradshaw and adopt a column divulging the woes of self division as woman & mommy. As I sat in my seat of leather clad delirium on my flight home, I reflected as best I could on the past three days—the freedom and the inability to perform at the fast partying pace that I once could.

I laughed as I realized, the last time I pulled an all nighter I was not in heels and I was not the one drinking from the bottle. Oh how times have changed. Once born to perform on little sleep and watered down Vodka, I now faced the reality that I was other... and I was old.

It could have been the five seconds of podium dancing or the moment a younger woman head butted me in a club (my certainty is wavering) but there were definite moments I felt like I no longer belonged anywhere. I certainly did not belong in the venues that had bulky, muscle-milk drinking bouncers and at times, I still feel foreign in my baby bouncer one.

So here I am, recapping all the ways in which mothering has both challenged and bettered me. I sit and relive the moments I complained too much about the responsibility it holds, the burden it can feel to be, and appreciate the laughs that the realities of my life evoked. Perhaps the birth of something new is about to begin—one that won’t tear me apart but will definitely leave me in stitches (whether it’s from laugher or the growing pains—we shall see.) Welcome to my reality as Woman & Mommy--today just happens to be a day that I wouldn't trade it for a shot and a hangover.

"Fat Guy In A Little Coat"

Have you ever felt uncomfortable in your own body?

I mean, I am pretty sure most women routinely say,
"I feel fat"
to which their husbands roll their eyes and think
"I don't want to hear it!" and either say that or "Babe, you're not fat."
I mean, what are they supposed to say?
"I noticed. Why don't you go for a walk,"
Oh my, he better never say it though! EVER.

Have you ever felt SO out-of-the-ordinary-uncomfortable that despite the 99% odds that you can't get pregnant you still wonder if someone could possibly be wondering,
"is she or isn't she?"
I mean, have you ever gone so far as to take a pregnancy test to try to validate your unusual tummy growth?
Lets just pretend I did.
Despite the odds being in my favor that I wouldn't be
it'd be pretty freaking fabulous to learn I wasn't just fatter for no reason.
3 minutes later
a big fat
-
(that would be a negative. negatory. empty womb.)
Interesting, the reaction I had:
"PRAISE GOD! Wait, *$% Really?!"
There is ZERO part of me that wants to be pregnant.
There was 100% of me that wished I had a reason for the bulge.
So, you've done that right?!
No?
Oh...Ok, off to the gym...
or the car for a drive to the local Circle K for a Snickers.
(What?!)